Chương 66: Chapter 65: Better be worth it

The Progenitor faction is not a monolith. It never has been. Lord Trinket himself said that two people with IQ 20 in a room would produce three opinions and a published rebuttal. What keeps the faction together is the shared conviction that progress justifies the argument." - From the collected addresses of Sera Voss, Area 5 Principal, Progenitor Faction Lucianne wanted to see Waggy. She did not phrase it as a request.

"If you'd like to meet Waggy, I can bring him by this afternoon," Kara offered.

"Now would be fine," Lucianne said, and returned to whatever she had been looking at before Aldric had interrupted her with the matter of Kara's existence. Aldric gave Kara an apologetic look. Kara kept his expression neutral, turned and went to get Waggy. This had all better be worth it. Waggy was in the room near the cabinet. He had apparently spent the morning reorganising Kara's pack to his own satisfaction and then fallen asleep. When Kara entered the room, he woke up, stretching.

"We're going up to meet someone," Kara told him. Waggy looked up, no objections in principle, reserving the right to form opinions on arrival. They went back up to the east wing. Pip noticed Waggy before Lucianne did. She had been in her structure - clearly Pip's preferred position when Lucianne had visitors, given the way she occupied the highest tier, composed, like she was receiving an audience. The moment Waggy came through the door, Pip abandoned all of that.

She went rigid for half a second, then made a sound that was extremely sincere, and came down from the structure in one fluid motion to the floor. From there she stared at Waggy, fixed and trembling slightly, a creature who had just discovered the world was significantly larger than previously advertised. Waggy looked at her. Then he sat down and began grooming his left ear indifferently. Lucianne had gone slightly soft around the eyes.

"He's extraordinary," she said, and for once the words had no social architecture around them.

"He knows," Kara said. Waggy did not look up from his grooming. Lucianne crouched - the princess affect briefly offline - and reached toward him. Kara tracked her hand.

"The stubs on his back," Kara warned.

"The sharp one on the left - I'd leave that alone." She looked up at him. Her expression said she had noted the warning, filed it, and was now making a separate and fully informed decision to ignore it. Her hand moved deliberately toward the sharp stub. Waggy watched her coming. He watched her touch the tip. He watched the small bead of blood appear on her finger.

Then he turned his head to look at her face - slowly, deeply offended on behalf of every intelligent creature everywhere, living and dead, that this was how things were. He held Kara's gaze just long enough to communicate this, making sure Kara did not feel felt out from this assessment. Then he turned away and resumed grooming himself.

"Miss Lucianne -" Aldric was already moving from the doorway, kit appearing from his jacket at the speed of a man who had maintained that kit for years predicting exactly such an outcome.

"Aldric, it's a scratch."

"I did hear the young man say not to touch it," Aldric said, strained, a man who had said versions of this sentence many times and expected to say it many more.

"Whatever. It's fine." She was already back to looking at Waggy, the finger pressed absently to her thumb.

"I just wanted to know what would happen."

"And now you know," Kara muttered. Aldric treated it regardless. Lucianne submitted with practised tolerance, keeping her eyes on Waggy throughout. Then came the photoshoot. It began reasonably - Lucianne gathering Waggy into her lap, Waggy tolerating this with the composure of someone giving the situation a fair evaluation. The first photograph was straightforward. The second involved repositioning his head slightly, which Waggy permitted.

The third required him to face left, which he did, though his expression suggested he was doing this as a professional courtesy. By the fourth pose - chin tilted up, which Lucianne achieved by placing one finger under his jaw - something had shifted. Waggy's eyes had gone flat, and the attention was aimed at the door. The fifth pose required him to sit upright with both forepaws forward. He sat. He did not put the forepaws forward. Lucianne repositioned them. He let them be repositioned.

The moment she retreated to capture it, he put them back. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. She repositioned them again. He put them back again.

"He keeps moving," she said.

"Yes," Kara agreed, mentally readying Waggy's favorite treat. The sixth pose - some arrangement involving Pip that Lucianne had clearly envisioned in advance - was where Waggy made his final assessment. He sat through approximately three seconds of being positioned, then stood up, stepped off her lap with complete composure, walked to Kara's feet, and sat down facing away from her with the dignity of someone who had submitted a thorough report and was now awaiting no further questions.

Pip watched this from Lucianne's lap. Then she looked up at Lucianne. Then she climbed off and sat next to Waggy in quiet solidarity. Lucianne stared at the space where both of them had been.

"They're both very opinionated," Kara said. She looked at him. For a moment he thought she was going to say something sharp. Instead she made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"Apparently." He took them outside that afternoon - Waggy and Pip, not Lucianne, who made clear with a slight lift of her chin that the grounds were not where she intended to spend her time. The walled garden led out to a cleared slope before the treeline, and Pip went at the grass like she was experiencing it for the first time.

She covered the ground in full extension, went up a tree and came down a different way, found a beetle and examined it with thirty seconds of complete scientific attention before releasing it. Waggy trotted alongside her, managing the terrain between ground and low branch. Kara sat on the slope, watched the light move through the treeline, and ate a small piece of dark chocolate and a pretzel that this particular region was famous for. Over the following days, a pattern settled.

Kara's primary responsibility became Pip's care - morning walks, afternoon time in the garden, grooming, and the food preparation she required, which turned out to be far more involved than Lucianne had apparently ever bothered to look into. Aldric confirmed, with careful neutrality, that the previous arrangement had been largely improvised. Kara encountered Edric twice that week.

Once in the corridor outside Lucianne's suite - tall, well-built, a hawk on his forearm that watched everything with sharp professional interest. He saw Kara, registered him as staff going about their work, and moved on. The second time was in the garden, where he was walking with Lucianne and stopped to let Pip investigate his boots. He waited without complaint while she did this, then continued. He had not spoken either time. He asked Brenn about it over dinner that evening.

"Edric Fayne," Brenn said, passing the bread without being asked.

"The families had a handshake agreement on the direction when both of them were still in middle school. Formal announcement came later, but everyone who needed to know already knew. His father runs the Fayne faction, northern part of Area 5. Solid mid-tier operation. The alliance makes Senior Tomas' path to Area 5 principal essentially clear."

"So a political marriage?"

"Always was." Brenn said, without judgment.

"Edric's decent enough. Attended University 5. Made their dungeon team - so he's clearly talented. Same as Miss Lucianne did at University 11." A pause.

"He mostly keeps to himself, not much to complain about him." The party was announced two days before the end of the week. A formal reception in the great hall - the full length of the castle's central wing, vaulted ceiling, long tables arranged along the walls, the central floor cleared for the evening. A string quartet in the upper gallery. Candles in elaborate chandeliers that set the mood.

The kind of occasion, Kara gathered, where every conversation happening in the room was understood by everyone else in the room to be happening for a reason. He was not attending. His assignment was Pip. Lucianne had told him that morning - Pip got anxious in crowds, she wouldn't be happy alone in the suite. She always left her with a caretaker on such occasions. He brought Pip to his room as the residents began filtering toward the great hall.

She explored thoroughly - checked corners, investigated the war umbrella with a caution suggesting she understood its purpose, spent time at the window watching the lit castle above her. Waggy watched her from the bed. They had arrived over the week at a mutual regard between two creatures who had each decided the other was competent. Kara scrolled through his interface. Pip eventually settled on the back of his chair. Waggy drifted off. Kara drifted off not long after.

The notification arrived somewhere past midnight, he had kept a different tone for this one. He registered it without fully surfacing - read it, read it again, understood it on the third pass. Return Pip immediately. I want to cuddle her. He sat with this for a moment. Pip was asleep on the chair. Waggy was asleep on the bed. The room had arrived at a natural end to its evening through general consensus. Kara put on his jacket. The east wing corridor was quiet, the string quartet long finished.

There was light under Lucianne's door. He knocked. No response, but it wasn't silent inside. Her voice, low and continuous, the cadence of someone mid-conversation. He knocked again, louder.

"Come in," she called.

"Just leave her and go." He opened the door. Two lamps burning low. Lucianne was in the armchair by the fire, legs tucked under her, speaking through the interface in a relaxed tone. A glass held loosely in one hand. The bottle on the side table was close to empty. Kara set Pip down. Pip made a small sound toward Lucianne and picked her way across the furniture. Lucianne reached out without looking and gathered her in with one arm, still talking. Kara turned toward the door.

"- I know how long it's been, you don't have to tell me," Lucianne was saying, something younger and more vulnerable in her voice than he had heard before.

"That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I keep -" A pause, listening. A laugh that caught halfway and came out closer to a sob.

"You always do that. You always make it rational." Kara's hand was on the door.

"I miss Davan." Quiet. The kind of thing you say only in this dark, and only to someone you trust.

"It's been more than a year and I still - and Edric is good, I know he's good, but he's not -" She stopped. Pressed her lips together.

"I know. I know." Kara stepped out and closed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor for a moment. Davan. He turned the name over. He had heard it before - he was almost certain he had heard it before. Someone had said it or he had read it, and the context sat just at the edge of reach, close enough that he kept expecting it to surface and far enough that it didn't. He walked back toward his room, turning it over.