Chương 100: Chapter 95

Ellara Talk about feeling out of place. I had seen projections of events like this, and I was almost positive I had no business being anywhere near one. I had a lot of time to think about it. Half a day of high-speed transport travel to get to the southern coast and Azurea proper, and even from the transport I could see why people came here. I had grown up on Valecis Isle. I had lived here my entire life.

I had never once been to the southern coast, which was the kind of thing that was easy not to think about until you were looking at it directly and understanding, for the first time, what you had been missing. Azurea announced itself slowly. The city was both a look-at-me and a somehow-ignore-me place, arranging itself along the southern coastline with the confidence of something that did not need to choose between the two.

Broad avenues ran parallel to the water before opening onto promenades that met the beach without interruption. The resort towers caught the last of the evening light along their upper levels, pale stone and treated glass reflecting the sea back at itself in warm golds and deep blues. Cultural halls lined the inner streets.

Waterfront venues were already lit for the evening, their terraces extended toward the water, music drifting from several directions at once in a layered, unhurried way that suggested no single performance was competing for attention because none of them needed to. We even caught a glimpse of the old Altamir Coliseum, where gladiatorial combat had taken place before the Marchborn invaded. Three thousand years old and still in use. The newer construction showed its polish openly.

Azurea was not a place where old met new in any comfortable sense, mostly everything here was new and expensive in the specific way that announced the expense with all the subtlety of a punch to the face. The cleanness of it. The proportion. The way the security was present everywhere and visible nowhere, folded into the rhythm of the city so completely that you felt safe without being able to point to the reason. This was where the young, the beautiful, the famous, and the obnoxious spent their time.

Recognizable faces from the World Tree Lattice moved along the promenades in unhurried groups. The beaches below the walkways were pristine and monitored, the surf beyond them catching the light in long, even breaks. The water was warm and clear, the coral reefs visible beneath the surface in elaborate formations. The villas set back from the waterfront were the kind that did not need signage or gates to communicate what they were. The architecture said everything, and said it without hesitation.

"I do love this city," Kaoru said, following my gaze out the window.

"It's a world-class destination for a reason."

"You sound like a travel guide," I said.

"Where will you be heading next, Mr. Proprietor?" Kaoru smiled, the tips of his ears warming.

"You are hilarious. But I'm serious. Azurea is worth seeing in the daylight," he said.

"The morning markets along the southern promenade are—" He paused, searching for the right word.

"Indulgent. In the best possible way." I believed him completely, even if I did not entirely know what that meant yet. We moved through the outer edge of Azurea's resort district without stopping, the transport following the coastal road south and east, past the waterfront towers and the curated beaches and the particular kind of beautiful that existed to be seen and enjoyed and talked about afterward.

I watched it through the window with the specific feeling of someone encountering a version of a place they thought they knew and discovering the version they knew had been incomplete. Then the road curved inland and the resort face of the southern coast fell behind us. We headed west toward Mirefall and the hunting grounds of the royal family. Mirefall sat east and north of Azurea, on a road maintained for the Royal Family, though the advent of flying transport had made it largely ceremonial.

Most people attending would normally have flown. But the martial arts gala was steeped in tradition that dated back nearly a hundred years. The procession of beast-drawn carriages was one of the opening ceremonies that people came out to watch, and they loved it. I was fairly certain the nobles loved it too, though they would never admit it. All the image-capturing and projection coverage and waves of adoration were supposedly for the common folk.

But famous people who claimed not to enjoy that kind of attention were almost universally lying. Mirefall resolved slowly out of the dark as the overwhelming illumination of Azurea fell far behind us. The road was lit by mana lanterns strung across the grounds, another tradition that did not make it into the main projection coverage. I was drawn to them immediately. Bright and elaborate, arranged in configurations of blue, red, and gold that suggested deep-seated tradition and a genuine joy in the display.

The warm gold and coastal blue mixed with the movement of the northern winds, giving the procession of carriages an almost ethereal quality as they moved through their progression. Before long I heard the sound of people gathering, excitement audible even through the transport walls. The dense foliage around Mirefall was thick and clearly well-maintained along the approach road.

We crossed through a massive gatehouse, the Arcanum, Technica, and Sanatio Expressions maintaining it strong enough that even I, with my limited mana sense, could feel the energy radiating off them. Two months ago I could not have felt them at all. That I could now was as much a testament to how much I had developed as to how powerful the wards themselves were. Without me realizing it, Kaoru took my hand. My face went hot. I did not pull away.

"Just wait until you see what's next," he said.

"You're going to love it." Then the full breadth of Mirefall came into view. My eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open before I could stop either. I knew something of its history. The estate had been built before Vera arrived on Valecis Isle, which meant it carried the particular weight of something that had survived being repurposed.

The stone was darker than Lumineth's pale construction, cut from the coastal rock of the island's southern quarries and laid in the wide, horizontal patterns of a tradition that had prioritized space and permanence over decorative elegance. Later additions had introduced Vera's aesthetic, arched colonnades, mana-integrated lighting channels worked into the facade, gardens laid in the curving geometric patterns the Dominion favored.

It was all fine and well-considered, but the original structure sat beneath all of it like a foundation that had decided it was not going anywhere. It took a single direct line of sight to understand that Mirefall was enormous. The projections had not conveyed the scale of it, the way it resolved in stages as we approached, each stage larger than the previous one, until the transport turned onto the arrival path and I understood, for the first time, what I was actually looking at.

"You have gone very quiet, Lady Arcanus," Kaoru said.

"I'm no lady, Kaoru," I said.

"If you don't stop calling me that, people are going to get the wrong idea."

"You are the most ladylike person I have ever met, possibly excluding my sister, though she barely counts because she's basically a princess. If anyone treats you as anything else, I would take it as a personal insult and demand satisfaction." It was not lost on me that he used satisfaction correctly that time. I smiled but rolled my eyes. He said it without condescension, which I appreciated.

He had been like that since he collected me from the house, attentive and considerate, adjusting the evening around my comfort without making an event of it. He had noticed when the transport's climate system was too cold and changed it before I said anything. He had explained, briefly and without making me feel like I should already know, what the arrival sequence would involve and what would be expected of us within it.

He had looked at my dress, the dusk-blue one from the shop, the one Sarina had helped me find, and said it suited me in the direct, sincere way that left performance aside and allowed a genuine compliment to simply sit between two people. Kaoru Yamato, I was discovering, was a genuinely different person when he was not trying to prove something to my brother.

The transport joined the arrival queue, which was its own kind of spectacle, a long, patient procession of vehicles that cost more individually than most people earned in a year, moving in careful sequence toward the white carpet. Through the window I could see the projection rigs already in operation, their lenses tracking each arrival with the focused attention of something built to miss nothing.

World Tree Lattice correspondents stood at intervals along the approach, speaking into handheld crystals in the animated, carefully modulated tones of people who understood that millions of feeds were carrying their words in real time.

"How many people do you think are watching this?" I asked, a sudden shyness settling over me as I looked out over the attendees and their transportation. Kaoru considered it.

"The tournament Gala typically draws significant coverage. This cycle, given everything that has happened on the island recently—" He paused with the diplomatic precision of someone choosing words around a subject with several sensitive edges.

"The drama between the Eastern and Western Blocs, the ongoing political instability over the last year, the viewership will be higher than usual." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I nodded. What he was saying without saying it was the Preserve footage, the attack, the Ghost's appearance, the political situation with Atillia and the Vera-Ava alignment questions that everyone on the World Tree Lattice had been discussing for weeks.

Every person with a connection to the network and a reason to care about any of those things was going to be watching this arrival sequence. I looked down at my dress.

"Kaoru," I said.

"You look exceptional," he said, without waiting for me to finish the question.

"You will be fine." I looked at him. He was in the Yamato formal colors, deep indigo worked with silver, the crest at his collar precise and understated. His pink hair was arranged with considerable care, worn with the ease of someone who had learned not to acknowledge the effort. He looked exactly like what he was, the direct-line heir of one of the most significant warrior clans of the Dominion of Nigon, attending a major political event, completely in his element.

I looked like a scholarship student from Valecis Isle in a very nice dress.

"Lady Ellara, I wanted you to know," he said, with the bubbling certainty of a teenager who meant every word of it, "that you look amazing. I can hear the doubt running through your head. Stop. There is not a girl here today who can hold a candle to you." I felt myself flush despite everything. The transport reached the head of the queue. The door opened. The sound arrived first.

It was musical in theory, there was definitely music somewhere underneath it, but mostly it was the layered noise of a very large number of people all oriented toward the same point at once. Correspondents speaking into crystals, projection rigs humming with active feeds, the ambient pressure of an audience that existed partly in person and partly across every connected node on the World Tree Lattice. I had watched events like this on projections. I had understood, in the abstract, that they were large.

I had not understood what large felt like from inside it. Kaoru stepped out first. The reaction was immediate and focused. The correspondents closest to our position adjusted their angles, the projection rigs tracking with the automatic precision of systems built specifically for this. Someone called his name from the crowd beyond the barrier, a voice carrying the recognition and excitement of someone who had decided they loved him before he had done anything at all.

Kaoru turned his head slightly, acknowledged it with a nod that was gracious without being effusive, and offered me his arm. His ears went slightly pink. I took it and stepped out. The carpet was white and very bright and very long and there were more people looking at me than had ever looked at me in my entire life simultaneously. I kept my expression composed through an act of will I was not entirely sure I possessed.

"The latest arrival from the Yamato delegation," one of the correspondents was already saying into her crystal, her voice carrying the warm, practiced authority of someone who did this for a living and was good at it. She was perhaps thirty, impeccably dressed, with the particular alertness of someone whose job required her to know things before other people knew them and deliver those things in a way that made the audience feel included in the knowing.

"Yamato Kaoru, direct-line heir of the Yamato clan of Nigon, his elder sister Lady Yamato Akemi arrived earlier this evening representing Yamato Tenshūkan at the Five Seat Martial Tournament. And with him—" A fractional pause.

"Ellara Arcanus, a student at Arclight Academy, attending tonight as a guest of the Yamato delegation." A brief pause. The correspondent touched her earpiece.

"We're seeing some interesting results searching that surname on the Lattice — there's an Eastern Bloc reference, the—" Another pause. A slight correction in her expression.

"The Arcanda clan, actually, not Arcanus — our researcher is clarifying that Arcanda is a single-Dominion plane in the Eastern Bloc, agricultural, been essentially closed to outside contact for over a century — no relation to Arcanus according to our research team." The correspondent's attention had already moved on, smooth and unhurried, the way professional attention moved when something had been filed and found uninteresting.

"A fascinating name regardless, and certainly a fascinating evening for a young Arclight student attending on the arm of a Yamato direct-line heir—" I felt the observation land on me from several directions at once and kept walking. Kaoru's pace was exactly what it needed to be, unhurried enough to give the projection rigs what they needed, purposeful enough to prevent the carpet from becoming a stationary event. He had done this before. Many times.

I could see it in the way he moved, the ease of someone who had long since made peace with being observed. He acknowledged correspondents when acknowledgment was appropriate, gave the rigs their angles without appearing purposeful, and maintained throughout it all the composed, pleasant expression of someone entirely comfortable in his own element.

Then the crowd pressed closer on my side with more aggression than I was used to, though I felt no ill intent, just the simple physical reality of too many people in too small a space, all trying to get a better angle on something they wanted to see. Projection devices extended over the barrier on handheld rigs, lenses angling toward us.

Voices called out, Kaoru's name, the Yamato name, and then my name twice in quick succession in a way that made my stomach drop because I had not prepared for the specific experience of strangers calling your name with familiarity when you had never met them. Someone with a projector rig leaned over the barrier and the lens was approximately forty centimeters from my face. I wanted to step back.

I held my ground instead, kept my chin level and my pace even, focused on the entrance to Mirefall at the end of the carpet and thought about nothing else. I gave them a smile. I was here with Kaoru, and I did not want to embarrass him or his family. Something shifted at my left. It was so subtle I barely noticed. A small repositioning, a quiet word from Kaoru to two of the Yamato attendants who had been trailing at a respectful distance.

They moved forward without appearing to hurry, adjusting their formation so that they occupied the space between the crowd barrier and my left side without making the adjustment look like what it was. A third closed the angle from behind. The geometry of our group changed by perhaps half a meter in total. The press of the crowd eased.

The projector rigs still had their angles but they required more effort, and the correspondents who had been closest fell back slightly in response to the quiet, professional certainty of people trained to make that happen without incident. I exhaled once, quietly. Kaoru kept his eyes forward and continued moving, continued acknowledging, continued being exactly what the carpet required him to be.

But I had felt the signal go out and I had felt the response come back and I understood that he had noticed before I had said anything, before I had shown anything, and had handled it without making me feel like something that needed handling. I made a note of that. Ahead of us, another delegation was completing their arrival. I did not know their names, affiliation, or house, but I could read the weight of them from twenty paces. The way the crowd reacted. The way the correspondents leaned in.

An older man in formal attire that suggested military tradition adapted for ceremony, accompanied by two younger people who carried themselves with the particular straightness of heirs told since childhood that their posture was being evaluated. They moved through the carpet with the efficiency of people who had no interest in performing more than was required. Important. Clearly important. I moved on.

Two arrivals behind us, a transport opened and the crowd reacted before the door was fully extended, a sound different from the others, not the measured appreciation of people recognizing political significance but something rawer and more immediate, the energy of an audience responding to someone they had already decided they loved. I turned my head enough to see without stopping. I recognized her immediately, along with pretty much everyone else. That was the point of Sael Vourne.

The twenty-two-year-old A-lister moved with the ease of someone who had long since stopped thinking about her age as relevant information. The formal attire was deep amber worked with gold that caught the carpet lighting in warm, honeyed tones. Absolutely striking, and none of the restrained political elegance of the delegations around her. She was more deliberate, dressed to be noticed, to be seen. I swear everyone is taller than me. Sael Vourne was no exception. Though she cheated with heels that defied gravity.

She was fair-skinned with coppery fiery curls like a bonfire on a hill. Her hair had to be either genetic mutation or an actual mana trick because those were the only explanations that accounted for such a fiery radiance. She smiled and the crowd went wild. She had the kind of presence that projection rigs loved because the light did half the work without being asked and the other half was simply her.

Her features read as approachable from a distance and, based on every projection I had ever seen her in, considerably more arresting up close. She moved with the unhurried, complete confidence of someone for whom accommodation was the natural state of things. At first glance it might have seemed like arrogance, though it was nothing so conscious as that. She had the deeply ingrained expectation of a person who had been in front of the public eye long enough that being watched was simply a state of existence.

The correspondents pivoted almost as a unit like a creature with many heads. The projection rigs swung with a speed and unanimity they had not shown for any of the political delegations. Her name went through the crowd in an exhaled ripple, a collective sound of recognition and longing and awe. The loud admiration reached us several seconds before the correspondent commentary caught up, professional composure slipping just slightly in a way the political coverage had not permitted.

"—this was not on the confirmed arrivals list, this is — yes, that is Sael Vourne, for those of you just joining the feed, Sael Vourne is in attendance tonight at Mirefall — let's see if we can't get a moment of her time to talk about her latest production and her rumored romance with Kaereth Valmor—""She's connected to Kaereth Valmor too?" I said.

"Two princesses and a top-tier projection artist. That man really does get around."

"Money, power, and influence will do that," Kaoru said, with the mild composure of someone describing weather.

"I'm told he's also quite the jokester." I snorted at that. Sael Vourne paused at the top of the carpet, just a breath, just enough, and the projection rigs caught her from six angles simultaneously. She knew exactly what she was doing. She always knew exactly what she was doing. That was part of what made her extraordinary, not just the face, not just the figure, not just the way the amber and gold moved when she breathed, but the complete awareness behind all of it.

Every role she had ever played had that quality underneath it. The sense of someone who understood precisely what they were giving the audience and had made a deliberate decision to give it. Then she moved forward and the carpet reorganized itself around her the way crowds reorganized around things they could not stop looking at.

"What is she doing here?" I asked.

"The same thing everyone else is doing here," Kaoru said.

"Being seen."

"She could be seen anywhere."

"Yes," he said.

"But here, tonight, with everything happening politically, being seen here means something different than being seen at a premiere or a fashion event. She knows that." A pause.

"Sael Vourne always knows that." I looked at her for one more moment, the amber and gold, the unhurried movement, the way the light found her without being invited, and then returned my attention to the entrance ahead of us.

"They're going to talk about us," I said.

"They're already talking about us," he said.

"That started when you stepped out of the transport."

"What are they saying?" He considered it for a fraction of a second.

"Simply how amazing you are and how nobody here can match your beauty or refinement." I rolled my eyes.

"When did you become so smooth with words?"

"I've always been smooth with words, especially when I mean them. It's just that your brother brings out the competitive side in me." I laughed.

"Let me give you a word of advice, Kaoru. Being competitive with my older brother is not a good idea. It's a very quick way to land yourself in a sea of disappointment." Kaoru at least seemed to consider my words. We kept moving.