Chương 76: [Soren Vyrelis]

The Ardenveil ball had not changed in the forty years since Soren had last attended it in this particular face. The hall was the same. The music was the same, that careful, boring arrangement that offended no one and pleased no one, chosen precisely for that quality. The candles were the same, burning in their hundreds along walls that had been built to impress and had achieved it, once, a long time ago.

The chandeliers above threw light across gowns that cost more than most families in the empire would see in a lifetime, and the tables that lined the far wall held food enough to feed a village through winter. Most of it would go untouched. That was the point of it. The people were different in name only. New faces carrying old ambitions, dressed in colours that announced their house before their mouths could. Rings on every hand.

Enchantments sewn into hems and collars, subtle enough to miss if you weren't looking, obvious enough to be noticed by the people they were meant to impress. He stood at the edge of it with a glass he had not touched and watched them perform for each other. A copper plate on the wall caught him in passing. Long black hair and a short beard, pale skin, eyes that looked blue in the candlelight. The face of a man much younger than the reality.

There was a particular quality to these gatherings that he had never found a satisfying word for. Not corruption exactly, though that was present. Not vanity, though there was plenty of that. It was closer to repetition. The same hungers wearing different clothes, the same calculations behind different eyes, the same alliances forming and fracturing and forming again the same way they always had. He had watched enough of these rooms to know that the players changed and the game did not.

A young lord from the Cassen family was laughing too loudly at something Edric Voss had said. Voss received it with the ease of a man accustomed to being laughed at on cue, the mossy green and brown of his house sitting on him like old money that had stopped needing to announce itself. Soren's eyes moved on without hurrying. He had known Edric Voss for longer than the Cassen boy's father had been alive, and nothing about the man had ever surprised him.

Cavan Morre's voice carried over the music from somewhere near the centre of the room. It always did. Soren looked at him once, at the red the Morre house had chosen for themselves, and returned to his glass. A family of fire mages in red. He had never decided whether that was confidence or a lack of imagination. Across the room, a woman in Mevari green and gold was watching him. Not obviously, the way these things were never obvious here, but watching nonetheless.

House Mevari had sent their eldest daughter this year rather than the usual second son. She was not looking at him the way people looked at a younger son of a old house lacking in power. She was looking at him the way someone looks at something that doesn't quite add up. Nearby, low enough to be almost nothing.

"... is that one of the Vyrelis family?"

"Shh, he'll hear you." His eyes moved across the room the way they always did at these things. Who was speaking to whom. Who was being careful to avoid whom. Who was watching the door. At the far end of the room a table of older nobles sat in the full colours of their houses. These were the families the empire had been built around and they knew it. No one approached their end of the room without invitation and no one had been invited tonight.

Soren wondered why Morre had sent his loudmouth of an heir before he dismissed the thought and moved on. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Time and again, the same play, different actors. It was not so different from watching a tide. He saw it before it became a problem he could solve. A serving girl was moving along the far edge of the room, a tray of wine balanced in both hands.

She was young, younger than she should have been for an event like this, keeping her eyes down, her path efficient, her presence as close to invisible as the work allowed. Edric Voss had noticed her. He detached himself from the Cassen boy and positioned himself in her path. He said something as she passed that made her stop. She kept her eyes down and her face still. Voss laughed and let her continue. The room hadn't noticed. Or rather, the room had noticed and found nothing worth remarking on.

She would know what that meant. A man like Voss didn't let things end at a ball. She would keep her face still for the rest of the evening and her hands steady on the tray, and underneath both she would be terrified. Soren turned his head slightly and found his guard at the edge of the room where he always stood at these things. The guard came without being summoned twice. Soren kept his voice low.

"Make the arrangements." A small movement of his eyes toward the girl. His guard followed it, held it for a moment, then nodded once and withdrew toward the eastern wall to wait. It would be handled before the evening ended. When she returned to the back with her empty tray there would be someone waiting with an offer. Work on Vyrelis lands, good work, safe work. If she had family they would be considered. She would not be told why the offer had come tonight or what had prompted it.

She only needed to know that it was genuine and that there was a way out if she wanted one. It was not enough. It was what he had. He lifted his glass and drank. Two older nobles sat nearby, their voices low beneath the music. They had noticed the interaction.

"Looks like old Voss won't be getting any entertainment tonight." The guard's movement had drawn attention. Cavan Morre came across the room with two of his people behind him, his glass held loosely, his path direct. Sharp featured, well dressed, the kind of face that had been told too many times that it was worth looking at. He stopped a few feet from Soren and looked at him.

"Vyrelis." He glanced toward where the guard had gone, then back.

"I wasn't sure that was you. Always at the edge of things." Another glance after the guard.

"Reduced to your own staff for company? I suppose when a house has fallen as far as yours the options become limited." One of his people laughed. Soren considered him for a moment. There was a particular kind of confidence that only came from never having been told no.

"Your concern is noted, Morre."

"You are not wrong. We are a small house. We have always chosen to be." His eyes moved back to the room. Around them, without any particular hurry, the nearest guests had found other things to look at. Not quickly enough to be obvious. Just enough.

"A piece of advice. Some things are wiser left uninvited. Perhaps your father forgot to mention that." Cavan's eyes met Soren's. The blue was there. So was something else. A pull of yellow at the edges, the pupils not quite the shape they should have been. Close enough to miss. Cavan was close enough. His eyebrows drew down. His mouth opened. An older lord appeared at his shoulder, orange at the cuffs and collar, his attention entirely on Cavan, his voice low.

"Morre. I've been meaning to speak with you about your father. If you have a moment." He was already turning, already moving. He did not look at Soren. Cavan looked at Soren once more. Grimaced. Then followed. Behind Soren, two voices, low and close.

"... my grandfather pointed out one of their family once. Said it was impossible, that the man had disappeared fifty years prior and looked just the same."

"Shh. He'll hear you."

"Must have been a relative. He was going senile in his old age."

"Just leave it." He looked across the room. The serving girl was gone. The space where she had been working was filled by someone else now, an older woman moving through the guests with the ease of long practice. His guard had returned to his place at the edge of the room, hands clasped, eyes forward. He thought about the road home. The quiet of his own lands, the people there who knew him as he was rather than as whatever this room decided he must be.

He had been coming to events like this one far longer than he liked but someone needed to play the role and unfortunately, that was currently his responsibility. He set his glass down. The candlelight caught his eyes as he did, the yellow pulling briefly bright before settling back to something that could almost be mistaken for blue, if you weren't looking closely.