Erdmun de Vries

Erdmun de Vries is the second of Saul de Vries’ sons, four years younger than Matin and temperamentally closer to his sister Emlyn than anyone else in the family. He understands the de Vries world perfectly well and is good at it, yet there was a time when he came very close to walking away from it entirely.

Unlike Matin, Erdmun never accepted the family path without questioning it. He enjoyed the intellectual side of trade, the challenge of negotiation and the satisfaction of closing a difficult agreement, but he was far less comfortable with the weight of expectation that came with being born a de Vries. For several years in his late teens and early twenties, he openly considered leaving the family business and making a life of his own elsewhere.

Emlyn understood that better than anyone.

The two have always been close, partly because Erdmun was one of the few people in the family who never treated her rebellion as a phase that would eventually pass. When she left, he admired her for actually doing what he had only imagined. Her decision forced him to confront the difference between wanting freedom and being willing to accept the uncertainty that came with it.

In the end, Erdmun stayed.

He tells himself that he made a practical choice. The family business offered extraordinary opportunities, security, influence and work he was genuinely talented at. All of that is true. Somewhere beneath it, Erdmun also knows that when the moment came to step away from everything familiar, he did not quite have the nerve.

That knowledge has never made him bitter toward Emlyn. If anything, it has made him more protective of her. He understands the cost of the decision she made because he came close enough to making the same one himself. He is also far less inclined than Matin or Saul to lecture her about returning home, and occasionally acts as an unofficial bridge between Emlyn and the rest of the family when tempers have become too entrenched for direct conversation.

Within the de Vries business, Erdmun has developed into an accomplished Dealmaker. His style is more energetic than Matin’s and somewhat less controlled. He is particularly good when negotiations are becoming strained, when people are frustrated or when a stalled agreement needs to be pushed toward a conclusion. Erdmun understands pressure instinctively and has a talent for identifying the small concession that will make someone accept the larger terms.

He is ambitious, although he is not entirely certain what he wants ambition to lead to. Matin seems destined for ever greater responsibility within the family empire, while Erdmun remains more interested in the actual work: contracts, difficult clients, competing interests and the moment when a chaotic negotiation finally becomes an agreement.

That makes him an excellent second son.

It also occasionally makes him wonder what he might have become somewhere else.

Erdmun is sociable, sharp-witted and easier to know than his elder brother. He enjoys taverns almost as much as formal dinners, keeps friends outside the merchant elite and has a tendency to become involved in other people’s problems after insisting that he has no intention of doing so. He can be impatient, particularly with arrogance, and his temper is considerably easier to provoke than Matin’s carefully controlled irritation.

He is still unmistakably a de Vries. Erdmun likes good clothes, good wine and the ease that money provides, and unlike Emlyn he has never attempted to pretend otherwise. His wealth is worn lightly rather than hidden, reflected in fine fabrics, excellent equipment and the assumption that practical problems can usually be solved by paying someone competent to deal with them.

His relationship with Saul is affectionate but occasionally difficult. Saul sees enormous potential in his second son and cannot quite understand why Erdmun has ever been ambivalent about the life being offered to him. Erdmun, in turn, respects his father deeply while remaining wary of allowing Saul’s certainty about the future to become his own.

With Matin, there is both admiration and mild rivalry. Erdmun knows his older brother is the more accomplished Dealmaker and is comfortable enough with that most of the time. He also enjoys the rare occasions when he spots something Matin has missed and will make absolutely certain the entire family hears about it.

Ganley receives much the same mixture of brotherly affection and merciless mockery that Erdmun once received from Matin.

Erdmun is handsome and well dressed, with dark hair, green eyes and the polished appearance expected of someone representing one of Aranthaes’ richest merchant families. His clothing tends toward rich green and gold, though he wears it with less formality than Matin and often looks as though he has removed some expensive outer layer the moment nobody important was watching.

Of all Saul de Vries’ children, Erdmun may understand Emlyn best. The difference between them is simply that when they both reached the door, she walked through it.