“Greenward’s place is probably bigger,” Violet said.
“It was bigger,” I agreed. “It felt a lot less though.”
She frowned at that, which was fair. It hadn’t made much sense even to me until I said it aloud.
The carriage rolled through a set of tall iron gates and onto a long walkway that led up to the manor itself. Flowers had been planted on both sides of the road in a steady procession of color that ran the whole length of it. I watched them pass and noticed that I actually recognized them. They were the same flowers I had seen all over Myrrheim. The same ones in the window boxes of the cafes or in the great obscene beds outside the Farstep terminal.
When I had gone to Greenward Manor, many of the plants there had been things I had never seen before and have not seen since. Julian had filled his grounds with only the most exotic. With flowers that grew nowhere near Aelheim and doubtless cost a fortune to keep alive. I would not have noticed the difference at all if it wasn’t so obvious. It was the difference between a man trying to run from who he was, and a man who had accepted it.
There were guards all around us, walking the grounds and standing at the bends in the road. Most of the men looked like they were actually doing their rounds. Back then they had looked like they’d been there only for display. The carriage slowed, and stopped.
Two servants waited outside our carriage, and then there was Duke Solair himself. When I had arrived at Greenward Manor, there had been a small army assembled to receive me. Here there were three people.
The door opened. The others stepped out first, one by one. Damian moved to offer me his hand.
Violet stepped in front of him and held hers out instead. Damian opened his mouth, said nothing, and stepped back. I took Violet’s hand and let her help me down.
Duke Solair stepped forward. “I am pleased you accepted my invitation,” he said.
I inclined my head. The answer to this was rote. “How could we refuse one so generous?”
I had been turning this visit over all day. Why invite us at all? Anias had been right that he did not feed and host every Lord who passed through his city. Which meant we were not a courtesy. It meant I had something he wanted, something I had not yet offered him myself. Why he had not simply asked for it, I could not say. Perhaps it was better for the thing to be offered rather than demanded? Perhaps there was some advantage in it I couldn’t see.
I had thought about it very hard, and only one thing really stood out. The single thing my House had done recently of any note had happened in the Everfrost. We had cleared it. I had declared that the Everfrost would see spring again. It was tantamount to announcing that we had reclaimed it. Purified land in a place once thought lost, that was all we had to offer that a man like this might want.
The thought annoyed me. But if he wanted some kind of arrangement out there -an outpost supplied, or maybe some kind of holding- then we could talk about it. The people in the Wastes needed food. It did not matter so much whether it was House Veyne feeding them or House Solair, so long as someone did. Their Chief had wanted men. I supposed this might be one way to get her some. The balance would be in not giving up too much, but at least this was a negotiation I was willing to have.
I opened my mouth. “My lord, I have thought-”
The Duke turned. I stopped. I hadn’t even noticed there was someone behind him.
Behind him was Liora Solair. She was dressed in fine yellow now, her gown sewn over with so many small jewels that it caught the light when she shifted. Her green hair had been done up in a style I had never seen before, every strand of it still looked to be in its place. She was staring at the ground.
“Now, Liora,” the Duke said gently. “Introduce yourself.”
She looked up, but only for a moment. “I- I am Liora Solair,” she said. “It is a pleasure to see you again. I’m- I’m sorry for not introducing myself properly last time.” Her gaze dropped back to the path before she had finished the sentence.
I blinked. “Esra Veyne. I’m sorry for not introducing myself properly last time too.”
Violet stepped forward and gave the girl a long look up and down. “So it’s you.”
Liora flinched. “...Yes?”
Violet huffed. “Well. I’m Violet Indri. Understand?”
“...Yes?” the girl said again.
Violet nodded gravely. What she was nodding for exactly, I didn’t have the faintest idea. Liora only looked more confused than before, and more frightened besides.
I let it go. “Where is your son?” I asked the Duke. I didn’t see him anywhere, and he hadn’t seemed like the type to hide behind someone else.
An heir should have been here. House Veyne was not important, I knew that, but greeting us would have cost him nothing, and a man like Solair would understand that better than anyone. So why was the boy absent? Hell, I’d half dreaded that the point of this visit was for this ‘Edward Solair’ to try and win me over. To have him missing entirely was very strange.
The Duke rubbed the back of his head, and for a moment looked only like a tired father. “My heir is being a little… stubborn,” he admitted. “He should come out soon.”
That made even less sense. From everything I knew about noble houses, there was no such thing as an heir ‘being stubborn’. Not unless they were truly strange like me or Violet, anyway. If the boy was being stubborn, the simplest thing in the world would have been to make him stop. Well, it was none of my business.
With introductions out of the way, it was about time we got to the point.I opened my mouth.
The Duke clapped his hands together. “Well now, come inside. My steward has prepared quite a feast.” And then he was walking, servants trailing after him. His daughter cast one shy glance back at us and followed.
I stared after them.
A notepad slid into the edge of my vision. Sere had drawn the girl in a few quick lines. Even in the picture she was staring down at the ground. Beneath it she had written: She’s cute.
“Maybe we scared her,” I murmured, and ruffled Sere’s hair.
It was fine. I had actually read about this. Nobles always liked doing the proper thing before they got down to business. I was being overeager. First we would eat, and then we would get down to business.
At least, I hoped so.
The table was massive, and it was covered in dishes. Most of these dishes I had never seen before. Some I was not even certain how to begin eating.
There were things wrapped in leaves and things buried in sauces and things that had quite clearly been alive recently and had been left looking rather too much like it. I picked up the smallest fork I could find and hoped for the best.
Violet was not doing much better. She had a fork buried in something I was fairly sure you were meant to twist open with your hands and eat the insides out of, and she was currently stabbing it. Damian was doing the best of all of us, though from what I could tell that was because he was only eating the few dishes I did recognize. Anias sat on the far corner, and she was the only one who didn’t seem to mind. I was following her lead, but trying not to make it too obvious.
I turned toward Sere to check on her, and found that her entire attention had been claimed by a lot of…croissants. I hadn’t seen those before, not even in Layers. She’d taken the entire dish for herself. This could not possibly be good for her. I decided it could be a problem for later. After I found out just where Duke Solair had acquired those.
Duke Solair himself sat across from me. On his right was a boy a few years older than me. The boy who had tried to attack me in the coliseum. Edward, the heir who had finally deigned to appear. He was glaring at me. Every time our eyes met, he glared harder, as though I had done something to deserve it. I could not for the life of me think what.
He muttered something under his breath. “...can’t believe that’s her.” He said it with a particular weight, which told me he must have seen me in one of the papers.
On the Duke’s other side sat Liora. She kept meeting my eyes and then dropping her gaze to her plate. Even I could tell that her manners were not very good. She’d put her arms on the table, or she’d hold a glass the wrong way. They were small things, ones that Sere or Violet didn’t care for either. I only noticed them because of who this girl was.
And each time she faltered, the Duke leaned over and corrected her, gently. A word here, a touch on the wrist there.
It was a strange thing to watch. This man simply loved his children. It was an almost foreign concept to me, both from my life, and from the little life I’d lived here. It was the opposite of Cordelia and her father. The opposite of my mother and I.
It was during the dinner that I saw a servant set a dish before Liora before she could ask for it. She had reached out towards the plate and before her arm could even stretch fully, a servant had already moved it, plated a portion, and set it down at her elbow. There had been no gesture that I had seen. The servant had simply been waiting for it. It was a small thing. It annoyed me, and I could not have said exactly why.
“I have been meaning to ask,” the Duke said, and I looked up. He nodded toward Sere. “That is the girl who was with you, when you saved my daughter from those… ruffians.”
“Yes,” I said.
He studied her for a moment. “My apologies but I do not know all the noble children of Aelheim. What House is she from?”
Sere and I looked at each other. I looked back at the Duke. At least he didn't ask why she didn't talk. “Sere is not a noble,” I said.
“Hmm.” The Duke considered this. “Pardon me. It is odd, to see a future duchess keep company with a commoner.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” The words were sharp, which was stupid. They’d left before I could make them softer.
The Duke shook his head. “No. Of course not.” He gestured down the length of the table, to where the steward sat sitting next to Anias. “My friend Seras is no noble either. It does not make him any less competent. It does not make him a better or worse friend.”
The steward inclined his head. “His Grace is too kind.”
The Duke sighed. “It seems Seras is a little shy before guests.” He turned back to me. “So you see, I have no objection. I am only surprised to find another noble who shares the opinion.”
“Many people find me strange,” I said.
“So I have heard.” He almost smiled.
The dinner wound to its end. Servants came and cleared the plates, and I thought, finally, that the time had come. I opened my mouth again. “Now about-”
The Duke turned and waved to his daughter. “Liora wanted to show you her library, didn’t she?” Liora flushed and nodded quickly. “Go on, then.” He looked back at me. “She would like that very much, I think.” His gaze moved to Violet, then to Sere. “You two should accompany her as well.” Finally, his gaze turned almost apologetically, to Damian. “I am afraid you cannot, of course. You understand.”
Edward’s head came up. “But Father, you can’t just-”
“Come now,” the Duke said, his tone was mild. “It has been a very long time since she has had friends over. Let her be.”
The son sat back down with a small thump.
The three of us rose and we followed Liora out. I cast one last look back at the Duke as we went. He was watching his daughter leave with soft eyes, and I had a suspicion that I had been very, very wrong about why I had been invited here at all.
Liora’s bedroom was a library. As close to a literal library as a normal room could be. There was a bed set in the middle of it, with shelves that ran from floor to ceiling on every wall and stood in rows besides, and the bed sat in the center of them. It was possibly the most out of place thing I had ever seen.
“T-this is my room,” Liora said. She gestured around, then seemed to lose her nerve. “I haven’t- I haven’t had many people in here before. So. Um.”
Violet sighed and turned to me. “Great. She loves books even more than you do.”
“It certainly seems that way.”
Sere had already drifted to one side and pulled something off a low shelf. It was a picture book, from the look of it. She settled onto the floor with it and began to turn the pages.
There were worse ways to waste a day, I supposed. When I had first come to this world, I would have killed to spend a whole day doing nothing but this.
“Woah.” I turned, and to my surprise it was Violet, of all people, standing frozen before a shelf. “Holy hell, how’d you get this?” She pulled a large book free with both hands.
“Oh,” Liora said. “That one came from outside the Kingdom.”
I moved closer to look. It was another picture book but every page held a different blade. Each one was drawn in loving detail, glowing with intricate designs and brilliant light in different colors. Vaelin hummed at the back of my mind, and only then did I understand what I was looking at. Those were all Godblades.
If there was one book in all the world that Violet might actually want to read, it was this one. Even if I wasn’t entirely sure that looking at the pictures counted as reading. I…might want to look at that too.
“Hey, hey- are there more like this?” Violet’s eyes had taken on a dangerous glow.
Liora glanced around the shelves. “There are… a lot more like this. Is there anything specific you-”
“Everything you have!”
Liora went to fetch them. There was a small rolling step set against one of the taller shelves, and she climbed onto it to reach a high row. She had just laid her fingers on the first spine when a servant appeared -from where, I did not know- and took the books down for her. Another servant came through the door and took her gently by the arm and helped her down off the step, so that she would not fall. The shelves weren’t that high. It would have hardly counted as a fall at all.
Something crossed Liora’s face. It was there and gone in an instant. Then she thanked the servant, and her thumbnail pressed hard into the side of her finger.
Liora recovered, and led Violet to a section of shelving that turned out to be devoted entirely to fighting. There were pages and pages of forms and techniques, most of them thick with diagrams and drawings. Violet made a sound I had never heard from her before. She looked at Liora the way a starving man might look at a rabbit.
That left me to find something of my own. I pulled a slim volume from a shelf at random and sat, and for a little while the room had no sound at all save for the turning of pages and the soft sound of a girl who had not been allowed to climb three steps.
It was late by the time we made to leave. I had resolved to make one last attempt. As the Duke walked us toward the entrance, I said, “My lord. Before we go, I would like to discuss House Veyne’s holdings in the Everfrost. As an addition to our prior conversation.”
The Duke glanced at me. “I had thought we’d put that matter to rest.”
I had suspected as much over the last hour, but now it was all but confirmed. None of this had ever had anything to do with our deal at all. The carriage was waiting in the dark some dozen feet away. I turned to go to it.
Behind me, Liora had started forward. To walk us out, I think, or to say her own goodbye in her own words. She had got as far as opening her mouth when Edward stepped in front of her, and a servant draped a shawl over her shoulders because the night was cold, and the Duke said something fond about not keeping her up too late. She closed her mouth.
I stopped walking. “Actually,” I said, and turned back around. “I would like to say one more thing.”
The Duke turned back to me, eyes furrowed. “Your daughter needs more experience,” I said. “With everything, I suspect. She needs to be allowed to do things, and fail at them. Even too much of a good thing can become too much. She clearly wants to. Why does nobody here let her?”
Edward exploded. “How ungrateful can you be? We invited you into our home. We have been nothing but cordial and you would stand there and say that about my sister? How dare you?”
I could not help but suspect that he was the reason for all of this. A wall built out of love was still a wall. Close it around a person too tight, and they could take no step save for what the wall let them.
“Edward,” the Duke said. The boy went quiet.
The Duke looked at me for a long moment. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s the truth,” I said. “Why else?”
He paused. He looked at his daughter, at Liora, who had gone very pale beneath her borrowed shawl. He looked back at me. Then, oddly, he looked at Violet.
“Would you perhaps marry into my house,” he said slowly, “if it were my daughter instead?”
Liora made a small, panicked sound.
I stared at him. “No? Why would that change anything?” And because it needed saying, I pointed. “And besides, a betrothal is no fairer to the other person in it. It would be no fairer to your own son, or your daughter, since you mentioned her.”
The Duke frowned. And then, oddly, he smiled. “Perhaps there is an agreement to be made here, after all.”
“I am not putting myself up-”
He raised a hand, and I stopped. He looked once more at his daughter, standing small in the doorway. He looked back at me. “Let’s talk just for the scales and the coin,” he said.
I stood there in the cold, more confused than I had been at the start of the entire day. I had refused him at every turn. I had taken his hospitality and then told him, to his face, that he was failing the daughter he so plainly adored. And he looked, somehow, more pleased with me than he had at any point since I’d arrived.
None of it made any sense at all.