Chương 20

The noise reached them before the doors did. A long, candle-lit chamber hung in midnight blue and silver — Vey colours, laid on thick — and packed wall to wall with upper-years who all appeared to be talking at once. A table down the centre carried cold meats and wine. Chairs lined the walls, and the guests had already settled into camps defined by age, rank, and old grievances along them, old families here, hangers-on there.

A servant took Elara's cloak, another offered Cal wine, and somewhere near the doors three young noblewomen burst into laughter over a shared plate of sugared pears. John felt the stare before he found its owner. Seraphine, half the room away, glass in hand, watching them over the rim of someone else's conversation. Oddly, her gaze seemed fixed on him, but he dismissed it as his imagination. The lady smiled and lifted her glass a fraction. Then someone stepped between them, and the room closed over her.

John shrugged, ignoring the matter as he had no interest in involving himself in the sisters' squabbles. His gaze panned over the room, eyeing the treats. Cold meats and little pies crowded a long table beneath the chandeliers. Cal took the wine. He'd been promised a trap and saw no reason to face it thirsty. Mirelle surveyed the room. Elara stood beside her in pale blue, composed enough to make everyone else's interest look vulgar. That interest followed Cal from the doorway.

It caught on his grey sash, his bronze badge, the peace cord knotted through his sword guard.

"Try to look less pleased," Elara murmured.

"I'm delighted."

"You look ready for an execution."

"Well, to be honest, I believe I've attended friendlier ones." Her mouth tightened. He suspected that was the nearest she intended to come to laughing tonight. Seraphine found them before they reached the wine table. She greeted Mirelle warmly, kissed the air beside Elara's cheek, and welcomed Cal as if his presence had been her dearest wish. Her gaze touched his badge, travelled to his face, then remained there a moment too long. Again. She led them to a cluster of Vey acquaintances near the head of the room.

The next hour ran the way he'd expected. Wine he sipped slowly. Introductions he wouldn't remember. Garrick Agnew was among them, mild and immaculate, though he had company enough to keep him occupied. He offered Cal a stare before an older gentleman drew him into a discussion of road levies. Cal was glad to be ignored. Garrick's family had already taken one attempt at Elara, if John's recollection could be trusted. He had no desire to inspire another through lively conversation.

Near the wall, three young noblewomen bent their heads over a shared dish and pealed with laughter at something one of them had said. Two servants in Vey blue moved through the crush collecting empty cups on a silver tray, quick and quiet. The barbs came, as promised. A dark-haired noblewoman with her hair pinned high — Lady Livia of House Arden, mid-twenties, sharp when she smiled — wondered aloud how much Vey money it took to command a Bronze-rank blade these days, and whether one got what one paid for.

Heads turned. John gave her a slow nod, agreed that he was very reasonably priced, and let the silence sit until she had to fill it herself. She wanted him red-faced or bristling. He, bored and unamused by the attempt, declined to be either, and after a second attempt died the same death, she took her smile elsewhere. The rest passed pleasantly enough. He endured questions about the Guild, his quarters, his duties, and whether Elara had truly selected him herself. Mirelle intercepted the worst of them.

Elara answered the rest with such exact courtesy that several people regretted asking. Seraphine, for her part, was civil. Gracious, even. None of the quiet cruelty Nessa's gossip had promised — and Nessa's gossip was usually accurate down to the seating order, which meant the graciousness was a coat Seraphine had put on for the evening and could take off just as easily. What John couldn't fit anywhere was the staring. Every time he glanced up, her eyes were already on him. Once beside the wine table.

Again while Elara spoke with a grey-bearded knight. A third time as a pair of servants in midnight blue passed between them carrying empty cups on a silver tray. Cal finished his drink and excused himself. The washroom lay beyond a narrow passage where the salon's music dwindled to a persistent thump. Inside, pale stone deadened what remained. Cold water ran from a brass spout into a shallow basin, carrying the smell of lye soap. Cal washed his hands and studied the man in the spotted mirror. Half-lidded eyes.

Lean face. A small scar near the jaw he still couldn't remember earning. Cal Rook looked bored even when John Gavoni was working quite hard at staying alive. It was a useful face for a gathering like this. The door opened. A young nobleman entered, dressed well enough to make the plainness of his coat expensive. He went to the neighbouring basin, washed his hands, and glanced towards the mirror. Then he looked again.

"Ah," he said, recognition glinting in his gaze, "you are Elara's retainer."

"So my badge tells me," John said, reaching for the folded towel. The nobleman's brows rose. For half a second, Cal wondered if he'd already managed to insult another Vey relation. Then the man laughed — an easy, unguarded sound that hadn't been anywhere in that salon all evening — and introduced himself as Renard. Vey. One of Elara's older brothers, which explained the colouring and resemblance around the eyes but nothing else. He flicked water from his fingers and examined the towel with open suspicion.

"Does the Lady Seraphine always gather this many people?" John asked.

"Only when she wishes to punish the walls." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. John dried his hands. Renard leaned one shoulder against the basin and reluctantly picked one of the towels, having seemingly ascertained it looked clean enough. The man, it developed, had opinions about Asterhall. Chief among them: that the freehold was criminally short of decent entertainment. The salons were the same forty people trading the same forty rumours.

The theatre was worse. The card rooms were full of cheats too rich to call out. He delivered all of this while drying his hands with great thoroughness, as if the washroom were the only room in the building where a man could speak freely — and John, who had spent the evening being stared at and priced, found he agreed with every word. He spoke at some length about Asterhall's failure to provide proper entertainment.

The plays were earnest, the musicians cautious, and the lecturers offended when students raced horses instead of attending their lessons. Cal agreed that this showed a troubling lack of perspective among the lecturers.

"You ride?" Renard asked.

"The body remembers how." It was true, though poorly phrased. Renard only nodded, apparently taking it for mercenary modesty. Renard grinned at that. He had a horse, he said — a brown, cost more than good sense allowed, and he meant to race it once the season opened. He needed company on morning rides who wouldn't fill the time with politics.

"Come out with me, then. I'll send word."

"I'll look forward to it," John said, and meant it, which surprised him a little. Renard went back to the party. John didn't. The thought of returning to the gossip — who had snubbed whom, whose betrothal was quietly dying — held all the appeal of a second deposition, so he drifted down a narrow hall instead, the noise thinning behind him, and let himself out onto a balcony with a breath of cooler air. It was nearly empty.

At the far rail, a few yards off, two figures spoke in tones the wind pulled apart before any of it reached him. He took the near corner and rested his forearms on the stone. Below, the hillside dropped away dark, and Asterbridge lay across it as a rolling patch of warm lamplight — scattered points stitching together, street by street, toward the bright smear of the market square. Beyond that, nothing but black, and the river's dogleg holding a strip of sky. He let his shoulders come down. First time all evening.

He'd worked through most of a comfortable quarter hour when someone joined him at the rail.

"You found the best view in the house," Seraphine said.

"I should charge you for it."

"Put it on the household account." She laughed, low and pleased, and settled beside him. Closer than the empty rail required. Small talk followed — the crowd, the wine, whether Elara was finding her feet, whether he found the Academy very dull after the road. He answered everything, pleasant and useless. She was the last person in this city he intended to hand a grievance to, so he indulged her, and watched the lights, and waited for her to get bored. Unfortunately, she didn't get bored. She got closer.

It was gradual, the way tide is gradual. A laugh that leaned her toward him. A question pitched softer, so he'd have to incline his head to catch it. Then a swell of noise from inside — a toast, cheering — and her hand came to rest on his forearm, steadying herself against nothing at all, and when the noise passed the hand stayed, and she had somehow gained a full step. Her perfume reached him. Her eyes had gone warm in a way that no amount of civility explained.

"It's so loud," she said, with a small, suffering glance at the doors.

"And I find I'm actually enjoying talking to you. Perhaps we might continue somewhere quieter." Quieter than a deserted balcony. Right. His new body wasn't ugly — he'd checked, the mirror and he were on speaking terms now — but it was not a face that made noblewomen of her standing forget themselves inside an hour of acquaintance. Neither was his conversation, which tonight had consisted of agreeing that wine was wine.

He'd read enough light novels in his first life to know this chapter by heart: lure the lowborn retainer somewhere private, coax one forward move out of him, and scream. By morning he'd be a Bronze-rank brute who had laid hands on a lady of House Vey, and every filthy version of the story would have Elara's name in it too, because he slept under her roof. And underneath the cold arithmetic of it, something simpler burned: she had looked at him and seen a dog who couldn't govern himself.

That was the whole load-bearing wall of her plan. He found he minded that more than the plan itself. Even if he had it wrong — even if this was genuine appetite — she was still the sister who had spent a childhood sharpening herself on Elara and the past day or so trying to pry him out of the household. There was no version where he was flattered. The politeness went out of him all at once. He felt it go and didn't reach after it. She noticed. Of course she noticed; reading people was her trade. Her hand withdrew.

"Is something wrong?"

"I'm bored," John said. His voice came out flat and cold and exactly as he wanted it.

"I've been bored for a while now, if I'm honest. I kept waiting for it to improve." Her face didn't move, but her eyes did — a flicker, recalculating.

"I'll admit to some disappointment," he went on, unhurried, watching the flicker widen.

"I'd assumed that whatever you lacked next to your sister in looks, you'd make up in charm. Seems I gave you too much credit on both counts." Stillness. Complete. The two figures at the far rail went on murmuring into the wind; between John and Seraphine there was nothing at all. She stared at him, lips parted around a reply that never assembled itself. He pushed off the rail.

"And you were a fool," he added, almost gently, "to think this would have been enough to seduce me." He turned to go — and stopped. Elara stood in the balcony doorway. Just within earshot. Flushed, eyes too wide, one hand on the frame as if she'd arrived mid-step and forgotten to finish it. Behind her the party glittered and roared and had nothing to do with any of them. Nobody spoke.

His own words hung in the cold air where he could hear every one of them again, and he wondered — briefly, uselessly — how much of the conversation she'd caught. The seduction? The insult? All of it? He decided it didn't matter. It was said, and he'd say it again Seraphine recovered first.

"Elara—" John walked past her, crossed to the doorway, caught Elara by the hand, and drew her along with him back down the narrow hall. She came without a word, feet catching up to her by degrees, and when she was walking on her own he let go, and she trailed after him like a sleepwalker. At the table, Mirelle marked their return from her place at its edge. Elara sat, answered a question from a neighbour a half-beat late, and stirred her wine without drinking it.

Mirelle's gaze travelled from her to John and settled there, a flat, interrogative stare. John shrugged. Seraphine reappeared some while later, composed to the last hair, laughing at the right moments, working the room as if the balcony had happened to two other people. She did not look at John. She did not look at Elara. And she was the first of the evening to make her graceful excuses and retire. The walk back was quiet. Mirelle carried what conversation there was.

Elara kept to John's far side and studied the paving stones with scholarly devotion, her cheeks and the tips of her ears still holding colour — the wine, he judged; she'd had at least three glasses, and the night air was doing her no favours. Whenever he glanced her way she found something urgent to examine in the opposite direction. He let her be. It had been a long evening for everyone. Lamplight in the foyer. Nessa was waiting up, which was normal, with an envelope in her hands, which wasn't.

She held it out to him, not Elara, which was most odd. A Guild officer had called just after dark, she reported. Formal notice, for Cal Rook, to be delivered into his hands. John took the envelope, broke the seal and read it standing. The Guild of Bonded Blades presented its compliments and informed him that, in light of his involvement in the attempted abduction of Lady Elara Vey, his membership and his Bronze-rank certification were placed under formal review, pending the Guild's own inquiry. He read it once.

Then again. A crumb of dark wax clung to his thumb.