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Show the elderly and ailing Gundarholts about their son when, suddenly, both old people died of heart failure within a few hours of each other. Armand began the rounds of the alehouses in the Needlesmith Commendium that night with Hoqqam, both to celebrate his newly acquired elevation to Head Merchant of the Gundarholt Manor and to hold off his fearful return to the big, empty manor house. Hoqqam himself had only just heard of his sister's imminent death at the hostelry at which he'd left her not a SevenDay before, gravely ill with fever and not a credit to her name. Therefore the two of them sympathised with each other in noisy revelry for two solid days. Armand was found in time for his parents' funeral by the Needlesmith Commendium's Posse Comitatus, but he was in no shape to go anywhere except the NewOxbridge Life Support System in the north end of the MedBattlements. A week later, Armand was installed at Needlesmith Hall on the MedTech's strict orders. He'd had the Hall's servants running and fetching for him apace, while querulously calling for this and that and plainly showing his misery at being under the eye of his partner, her good Doctorship, Anya. On the second day; Dr'Anya had gone into his room to talk to him .following a tirade he'd directed at Magri. "Marry; fair sir, thou couldst show some restraint with the good woman...," she said. Such an affront catapulted Armand from his bed, livid. "Look ye," he screamed at her, "Needlesmith Hold be mine! Seest thou, woman?" He stood 117 |