Chương 70: Book 2: Chapter 6 - Dinner Party

They will seat you at their tables and pour you their wine and ask you to smile while they carve up your future between them. Smile. Let them see the son, the daughter, the subject, the grateful recipient of their plans. Every tyrant is undone by the thing he failed to look for in the face of the person he believed he owned. - The Red Sash Manifesto, author unknown ISABELLA William Marcell had arrived without fanfare, not even a servant at his hip.

I'd seen him enter from my position on the balcony overlooking the main entrance, but my father wished me to arrive late and so I caught only a glimpse of him in a form-fitting white and blue dinner jacket before he was escorted through the study where I knew the Duke would be waiting with Victor. Dinner was to be served promptly at six, my entrance expected at half-past five.

I'd been made ready over an hour ago, leaving me to spend the intervening time pacing my bedroom as I tried to decide on an approach to this dinner. Through tronic-wires to several Academy contacts in the far west, I'd managed to learn who the man was, if only in broad strokes. His name was known out there, but mostly from word of mouth rather than first hand accounts.

He grew up in a place called Laoroosh - a small, isolated coastal town best known for being the birthplace of a former tournament champion and little else. Records indicated he was the son of a fisherman, his mother a half-Sendari from a low class merchant family who had died in childbirth. His father drowned when he was thirteen, caught in a storm off the coast near the Whitefish Isles.

Orphaned and with no siblings, records lost track of him for some years until he reappeared in his early twenties with a small fortune - where it came from nobody seemed to know. Conflicting accounts say he'd either won it betting on fights in the Everton pits or as a member of a pirate vessel that roamed the west coast of the continent. Whatever the truth of it, his small fortune became a much larger fortune after a series of successful investments.

Ambitious and driven, he'd made his way east, buying up mining claims and hiring artisans throughout the Dragon's Tooth Mountains. Best as anyone could tell, the Blue Phoenix had started in Carriston, a small border settlement in the Kaz-Varr foothills. When the Stone-Sworn rebellion took out a good chunk of the competition, he was in an ideal position to profit, turning a small brand into a very large one.

It was a plausible enough tale, eye-witness accounts going back at least a decade, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was way off about him. That look in the square had set my entire body on edge, but nothing I'd found about the man would explain how he could possibly have seen through a high-level stealth enchantment. I'd gone back and forth a dozen times on whether it was a coincidence, my latest turn had me convinced it was. And yet that feeling wouldn't leave me...

My newest chambermaid, Priscilla, watched me with quiet amusement.

"There's nothing to worry about, My Lady," she said, pulling a needle through an embroidery stitch.

"I'm sure the young master will be swept away by our beauty." It took considerable effort not to tell the poor girl to amuse herself somewhere else, but I knew they all reported back to my father.

"I'm sure you're right," was all I managed. The time finally came and I braced myself for the unpleasant evening ahead. Even if this man was what he appeared to be, Alastair Thorne would not take lightly the outward show of hostility he'd made challenging him so openly in his own city. I expected to feel the growing pressure of my father's anger as I approached the study, but there was nothing, if anything the air felt light, an easing I hadn't experienced in this house since before the failures in Kaz-Varr.

I reached for the handle on the door and nearly fell over... laughter. My father's laughter. I'd heard that sound exactly twice in my life, both before my mother had died. Panic rising, I opened the door. My father sat in his smoking chair, William Marcell in the armchair just to his right. Victor was on the couch across from them, leaning back and sipping on a glass of dark liquid with the hint of a smile on his face. They turned to me as I entered, my father's eyes still wet with moisture.

He wiped a tear from the corner of one eye.

"Isabella!" he said with an enthusiasm that was so strange to me it almost felt like a dream, rising from his chair.

"Come in, come in. William was just telling us the most extraordinary story about a customs dispute last month in Miller's Cove." The man who I'd seen standing on that platform all but calling my father a thief stood now in his study, executing a well-practiced courtier's bow as if he had no concern in the world.

"Lady Isabella," he said, eyes twinkling.

"Your father exaggerates, it was hardly extraordinary, just very expensive." A servant offered me a glass of champagne and I took it, sitting beside Victor on the couch.

"I'm sure," I said, [Royal Bearing] recovering my momentary lapse in focus.

"Though in my experience men rarely tell stories in which they're outwitted." He gave a small nod, taking his seat and a sip from his glass.

"On the contrary, my lady, those are the most instructive. And, I find, the most amusing."

"Is that so? I do love to be amused." Something moved behind his eyes, but his aura remained steady as a slumbering heart. He smiled, a dazzling display of white teeth that I was sure never failed to earn a reaction.

"Well, as I was telling your father..." he launched into a recounting of some border dispute with a western lord he'd gotten the raw end of, but I was barely listening. Victor was watching me watch the magnate, dark rings around his eyes making him look older than his twenty seven years. The failure in Kaz-Varr had landed heaviest on him, that Gold-Rank power still there but his usually unflappable confidence had dulled by a year of even more failure here at home.

His unsuccessful attempts to stamp out Morrigan and his Greycloaks hung around his neck like a visible weight. I met his eyes and he looked away. William and my father carried on amicably, my confusion only growing as they discussed trade routes, tax loopholes, the corruption of inland officials, and the rising cost of supply-chain disruptions.

The man was good - deferential without groveling, disagreeable just enough to show a backbone, a deft touch steering every subject back toward areas my father had expertise without lowering his own competence to do it.

"Victor," my father said, the warmth in his voice fading.

"You're brooding. You'll give our guest the impression that the Thorne family produces only one conversationalist per generation." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. I could see the insult had stung.

"Apologies, Father."

"He's been like this all year," my father said as if Victor were not even in the room.

"First the failure in Kaz-Varr, now he lets an idiot in a grey cloak humiliate him at every turn in his own city. We put down one rebellion only for another to rise up in its place." Victor said nothing, his aura a grey miasma like a rock absorbing the rain.

"I understand his struggle," William said, his voice mild and unhurried.

"The winning and the holding are different disciplines entirely. But then the deck has been stacked against you." He turned to Victor.

"I would like to offer my help with your Greycloak problem. This city is to be my new home, and chaos is bad for business." Victor had the good sense not to scowl, but I could see he wanted to.

"I have the problem in hand, I assure you."

"Of course, I am not questioning your ability - your skill is legendary even in the far west." Victor appeared pleased at that, the man certainly knew which buttons to press.

"I only mean that I have some experience with problems of this sort, and that my resources are at your disposal."

"And how do you propose we handle it?" Victor asked, the question surprisingly earnest. I'd never seen my brother seek advice from anyone save my father.

"You clearly don't lack for ability, but you may consider taking a different approach to the question. Insurgencies can be difficult to root out by force, they are designed that way." He tapped a ring on his glass absentmindedly.

"I had a smuggling ring harassing my western routes last year, I hired men to infiltrate their ranks and map the network's roots from the inside. It's slow, unglamorous work, but in the end it's the only way to ensure the tree never grows back." I watched Victor from the corner of my eye as the conversation returned to other, far less interesting topics. My brother had never had peers, only subordinates and rivals. There was something different in his look, but I couldn't say exactly what.

"I have a question," I said, interrupting a story about northern versus southern merchant cultures.

"That show in the town square yesterday." I paused, considering how to phrase the accusation.

"It was a rather provocative speech you gave, you all but called my father a thief in his own city."

"Isabella," my father started, but stopped himself. The Duke gestured to his companion as if giving him permission.

"I do apologize for that, My Lady, it was a stratagem I devised. With the Duke's agreement, of course." My face felt suddenly very hot, the corset making it hard to breathe.

"We've been exchanging letters these past weeks. He told me about growing unrest, rebellious factions in the city who seek to capitalize on your family's... difficulties for their own gain."

"I'll admit, when young William proposed the idea I thought it a bit risky - giving the people hope in trying times only to tear it away again could have unpredictable consequences," my father said, the cruelty of their of scheme coming into sharp clarity.

"But it is true that restlessness needs a shape and hope is far easier to manage than anger."

"I don't care much for politics, truth be told," William continued, unbothered by the thought of crushing a suffering population even further, "but business requires stability and I believe together we can steer the ship through these choppy seas."

"It's elegant," I said, the bile in my throat catching.

"Very clever. I confess, I was entirely taken in by the charade."

"I'm a stranger to these lands, a blank slate without the baggage of shared history." The man's aura remained a cipher to me, calmer than anyone I'd ever met save Vex, and yet there was an unrest behind his eyes that was perhaps more unsettling than the calm.

"I do intend to make this city my home, that much was true, but there is a natural order to things and the people must learn to live within its boundaries."

"Or be hammered back down until they do," my brother said, the dread I'd been feeling all evening crystalizing into hatred. The dinner bell rang, ending the conversation with a finality that felt like death. The meal that followed was a haze, decades of practiced indifference carrying me through despite the spiraling fear and rage. My father stood beside me as we said our goodbyes, promising to have dinner again soon.

"Well, I'd say that went rather well," he said when the door finally closed. I gripped the dagger under my dress to keep from screaming.

"Yes, Father, I'd say it did." +++ MASON I dismissed my carriage three blocks from Ravenshall and stepped out into the night, vomiting into a nearby bush. The street was empty, mana lamps throwing pale circles on wet cobblestone. I leaned against a wall in an alley between a butcher shop and a cooperage, pressing my forehead into the cold brick and breathing slowly until the shaking stopped. Four hours sitting next to the man who had killed my parents asleep in their beds.

Four hours laughing at his jokes and pretending to revel in his cruelty. Four hours watching him hold court in a house built on the ashes of my life and smile while he paraded me in front of his children like a toy. I'd suppressed the fury that had been with me since Peristonia, smiled politely at his humiliation of his son, the open disdain he had for his daughter, the sheer inhumanity of his posture toward his people. He'd tortured and killed my best friend, but still I ate at his table and drank his wine.

Months of preparation had gone into tonight: simulations, research, planning, training social skills and cover stories, aligning the pieces like the dominos in a chain. It wasn't enough. I'd still almost cracked... almost. Everything had been leading to this moment, and I'd nearly let it all fall apart. I pushed off the wall and started walking, the cold air helping me to find myself again.

The city was quiet at this hour, the shops shuttered, the streets clear of people and animals, a curfew had been in effect for almost six months, only a few drunks willing to brave the consequences. Pushing aside the self-recrimination, I tried to focus on what I'd learned, recalibrate my approach as I made my way toward the shoreline. Victor had been exactly what I expected - broken, resentful, full of bravado, but under it all a child who needed his father's approval more than he needed air.

It was sad, honestly, a boy who Fenris remembered loving poetry and music had become something close to an empty shell for his father to fill with his own ambition. Isabella, on the other hand, was far more complicated. Those big blue eyes instantly bringing me back to that moment seven years ago - a young girl's tears in the darkness of a tavern where my life had taken its most drastic turn. It had been her, there was no mistaking it. She wasn't like the others.

[Deep Structure] had shown me the truth she tried to keep hidden, the powerful skills she used just to stay alive in her own home. Fenris had expressed fond memories of the girl, remembered her as bright and self-assured, kind and curious. Her records from the Academy spoke of a girl with prodigious talents, isolated by her family's reputation and succeeding in spite of it. Still, I saw in her no signs of the sweet child Fenris had told me about...

but then nothing soft could hope to survive Alastair Thorne's twisted savagery - Victor certainly hadn't. She carried a dagger under her dress, strange for a noblewoman, and used Dark Arts skills that didn't match the profile. I'd agreed to Alastair's mailed proposal for a courting arrangement assuming that the proximity would allow me greater access to her father and his operations, but if she harbored secret motivations of her own, that made her something of a liability.

I'd need to spend more time with her before I could say exactly how to proceed, but time was something I had in small enough supply as it was. The Petracca estate was dark against the cliff when I reached the harbor road, a spattering of lights where artisan wagons had been setup and a makeshift encampment erected for the workers who would spend the next however many months seeing it restored.

My mother's laboratory lay underneath it, the portal that I used to travel to and from the factory in Kaz-Varr was once again dormant. Tomorrow I would begin the real restoration work away from the city's eyes, the supplies already prepared and waiting. Tomorrow the next phase would start, the heritage that my parents had left for me soon to be reclaimed in full.

Tonight, I walked by the sea and listened to the waves and the animals in the night, looking out toward Peristonia where I knew that abomination still tortured hundreds of souls inside its walls. Something would have to be done about that, but that was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I'd walk, I'd think, and when the sun came up I'd find my nerve again, I'd do what I came here to do. Tonight, I let myself be free of it. Just for one night.