Gerffron wanted to return home with her.
This was the plan — simple, domestic, the kind of plan that required no particular strategy. Gorgina had gone to the palace despite the physician's expressed reservations about the timing of her return, had gone because she was Gorgina and the paperwork had been waiting and the paperwork was not going to become less urgent by waiting further. Gerffron had planned to finish the delegation's afternoon session and then go to her office and suggest, with the tact of someone who had learned how to suggest things to people who did not take well to being told things, that perhaps the first day back after a significant illness was not the day to work until the evening bell.
He had gone to her office.
Her office was empty.
Not messy-empty, not recently-vacated-empty — empty in the specific, cleaned-up way of a room whose occupant had departed some time ago and whose staff had attended to it in the interval.
He looked at the room.
He looked at the stack of documents on the desk — reduced from what he imagined it had been that morning, but not cleared.
He turned to the administrative assistant in the outer office — a young man with the specific, slightly fraught quality of a junior palace employee who had been managing an unusual afternoon.
"Duke Wadee," Gerffron said. "Do you know where she—"
"Are you—" the assistant started, and then looked at Gerffron with the rapid assessment of someone trying to place a person. "Are you the consort? Her husband?"
"Yes," Gerffron said.
Something moved through the assistant's expression.
It was a specific something — the expression of someone who has been given information that their sympathy has a strong opinion about and who is deciding how much of that sympathy to show and in which direction.
"The Duke was — she wasn't feeling well," the assistant said, carefully. "She was seen leaving the office by — the Crown Prince was here. He carried her. He was concerned about her condition." A pause. "He took her to his chambers."
Gerffron looked at him.
"His chambers?" he said.
"Yes, sir." Another pause. "I should — I should mention that the Crown Prince's chambers are in the southern wing. They're — it's quite heavily guarded. Visitors without prior appointment are generally not—" The assistant stopped. He looked at Gerffron with the expression of a man who is delivering information to a person whose reaction he is watching with the specific, conflicted sympathy of someone who cannot intervene in a situation but feels the weight of it. "I'm sorry," he said. It was genuine.
Gerffron nodded.
"Thank you," he said.
He turned.
He missed, by approximately four seconds, the assistant turning to the colleague at the adjacent desk and saying, in the low but not inaudible voice of someone commenting on something they find painful:
"That man has been trying to hold that marriage together with both hands. She doesn't deserve it."
He was already in the corridor.
The southern wing of the royal palace was a different architectural register from the administrative and formal wings — less ceremonial, more residential, the specific quality of spaces that were private rather than official. The corridors were wider. The ceiling height was different. The guards were different — not the ceremonial guards of the public-facing spaces but the working guards of a space that took its security seriously rather than performing the taking of it seriously.
Gerffron had walked to the southern wing.
He had walked with the specific, focused speed of a man who has a destination and a purpose and has not yet arrived at the stage where he has thought about what he is going to do when he gets there.
He reached the outer guard post.
He explained his business.
The guard looked at him.
The guard had the expression of a man who has been told many things by many people attempting to gain access to the Crown Prince's chambers and who had developed, through repetition, a comprehensive skepticism about all of them.
"I'm the Duke Wadee's husband," Gerffron said. "I believe that she is with Crown Prince. I am here to—"
"No access without prior appointment," the guard said.
"My wife is—"
"No access without prior appointment, sir."
"I understand that, but the circumstances—"
"Prior appointment, sir."
Gerffron looked at him.
He thought: this is the specific, impenetrable stupidity of institutional authority.
He said: "She was unwell. She was brought here without—"
"I cannot help you, sir. Come back tomorrow morning with an appointment."
The guard had the specific quality of a man who has delivered this conclusion many times and has achieved a state of complete imperviousness to counter-argument.
Gerffron went around the corner.
He assessed the wall.
The wall had windows.
The windows had ledges.
He was twenty-six years old and had, in his previous life, been a scholarship student rather than an athlete, and in his current life had spent two and a half years in house arrest followed by three years of limited physical activity supplemented by garden work.
The wall was not going to yield to his current skill set.
He looked at the wall for a moment.
He looked at the windows.
He began moving along the wall with the specific, attentive quality of someone who is looking for a point of access rather than actively planning to scale the building, but who is not ruling it out.
He was assessing the second window's accessibility when a hand covered his mouth from behind.
He made a sound that was entirely undignified.
He was pulled sideways — not roughly, with the specific, practiced efficiency of someone who had done this kind of thing before and understood how to move a person quickly without damaging them — around a pillar and into the shadow behind it.
He looked at the person who had done this.
Styrmir looked back at him.
He was leaning against the pillar with the relaxed, entirely comfortable expression of a man in his natural habitat, which apparently included the shadow behind pillars in the southern wing of royal palaces.
"I thought you were an assassin," Styrmir said, in the specific, low register of a person who is both amused and conducting a serious conversation simultaneously. "You were moving like one. Very suspiciously." He tilted his head. "I was actually going to offer a collaboration — two people are more effective than one, generally, and I have some thoughts about the Crown Prince that I have been keeping professional, but under the right circumstances—"
"You," Gerffron said, at a volume that was the whisper version of sharp, "are a diplomatic delegate and a guest of this country. You absolutely cannot speak about the Crown Prince like that. It could be considered treason. They could have you removed from the delegation."
"Could they?" Styrmir said.
"Yes."
"And would the Veldrathi court consider that an appropriate response to a guest making a light comment about—"
"Styrmir."
"Fine." The corner of his mouth moved. "What were you doing?"
Gerffron looked at the window.
He looked at Styrmir.
"I am retrieving my wife," he said.
Styrmir's jaw did the thing it did.
The small, involuntary movement — the specific, brief something that arrived and was managed back before it could become visible to anyone who was not paying close attention.
Gerffron was paying close attention.
"She was brought here when she fainted in her office," Gerffron said, in a lower voice. "She is apparently in the Crown Prince's chambers. I have been told I need an appointment to enter. I do not have an appointment."
Styrmir looked at him for a moment.
He looked at the wall.
He looked at the windows.
He said; "I can get you in."
"How?"
Styrmir looked at him with the expression of someone who has a plan and is enjoying the moment before he explains it.
"Styrmir, How?"
Styrmir took hold of his waist.
He did not take hold of his waist in the way that a person took hold of a waist when they were about to ask a question — he took hold of it in the way of someone executing a plan with the specific, committed efficiency of someone who has decided that the window for discussion has closed and the window for action has opened.
Gerffron had approximately one second to process what was happening.
That second was occupied by the specific, rapidly escalating awareness that Styrmir was moving, and that Gerffron was being moved with him, and that the direction of the movement was upward.
"Wait—"
They were on the window ledge.
"Styrmir—"
They were through the window.
Gerffron's arms had, without his explicit authorization, found their way around Styrmir's neck in the specific, comprehensive grip of someone who has discovered that their body has strong opinions about heights and is expressing them through the most available anchor.
They landed on the inside ledge.
Gerffron's legs did not immediately agree to support him.
He stayed where he was, which was against Styrmir's chest, which was where he had been for the entirety of the window experience and which was, structurally, still the most available support.
"You're fine," Styrmir said, in the low, warm, entirely-too-amused register.
"I am fine," Gerffron said, through his teeth, not releasing the grip. "I am completely fine. I have never been more fine. This is fine."
"You can let go."
"I am going to let go in a moment."
"We're on solid ground."
"I am aware. I am going to let go in a moment."
Styrmir said nothing.
He was, Gerffron was very aware, not moving. He was not moving in the specific, patient way of someone who is prepared to wait.
Gerffron let go.
He straightened.
He arranged his expression.
"The second balcony is left," Styrmir said, with the pleasant professionalism of someone providing navigational information.
"Lead the way," Gerffron said.
They moved through the southern wing's residential corridor with the careful, ducking efficiency of two people who were not supposed to be there and were aware of this fact.
Styrmir moved first.
Gerffron followed.
He followed with the specific, reluctant acknowledgement that Styrmir was considerably better at this than him — moved with the natural, unhurried ease of someone for whom moving through spaces undetected was a skill that had been acquired through necessity and had stuck.
Two balconies.
One pillar.
Behind the pillar they pressed flat against the stone to avoid a passing guard — the guard's footsteps, the specific rhythm of a man on a routine circuit who was not expecting anything and therefore would not notice anything unless it announced itself.
They were pressed together in the shadow of the pillar.
Gerffron was aware of this.
He was very pointedly not looking at the person he was pressed against.
He was looking at the guard.
He felt, from approximately two inches to his left, the specific quality of someone containing something.
He turned his head.
Styrmir was looking at him.
Not at the guard.
At him.
With the winter-pale eyes and the specific, compressed quality of someone who is doing everything in his power not to smile and is succeeding only technically.
Gerffron gave him the look.
The look communicated several things simultaneously: this is not the time, this is not the place, I am aware of the situation and I would like you to stop enjoying it quite so visibly, and also we are hiding from a palace guard and could you please prioritise that.
Styrmir looked at the guard.
The guard passed.
They continued.
They reached a door.
The door was not fully closed — the specific, careless quality of a door that had been pulled without being checked, that had latched but not clicked, that sat fractionally open in the frame.
Gerffron looked at the door.
He did not go in.
He looked through the gap instead — the specific, narrow gap of a door not quite shut, which was enough.
It was enough for everything.
The room was lit by lamps — the warm, amber quality of a room in the early evening, the specific light that made things look softer than they were. The room was large. The furnishings were the residential register, the personal rather than official, the accumulated quality of a space that had been lived in for a long time by a specific person.
Gorgina was on the bed.
She was sitting up — slightly, propped by pillows, the specific position of someone who had been lying down and had managed to achieve a vertical compromise. She was in the formal clothes she had worn to the office, slightly rumpled in the way that clothes became rumpled when the person wearing them had been horizontal.
Teivel was beside her.
He was in a bathrobe — dark, well-made, the specific quality of the kind of comfort that expensive households provided — and the damp quality of his hair had dried into the informal, slightly ungoverned state that hair achieved when it had been wet and had been left to decide for itself.
They were not talking by mouth but by their lips.
They were — Gerffron's eyes registered the arrangement with the specific, clinical precision of a person taking in a scene — they were close. The specific, unremarkable closeness of two people who had been in proximity for long enough that the closeness had stopped being something either of them were consciously managing.
He stood at the gap in the door and looked.
He looked until the specific, slow understanding of a scene arrived — not the intellectual understanding, which had been immediate, but the felt understanding, which took longer and arrived in layers.
He looked at Gorgina's face.
He looked at Teivel's face.
He looked at the quality of the room.
He looked until a hand covered his eyes.
Not suddenly — with the specific, deliberate care of someone reaching for something they have decided to reach for, that had the warmth of a palm and the specific quality of a gesture that was trying to be kind rather than dramatic.
Styrmir's hand.
Covering his eyes.
Gerffron did not move.
He stood at the gap in the door with Styrmir's hand over his eyes and the room on the other side of the door doing whatever it was doing, and he thought — with the specific, very quiet quality of a thought that arrived in the gap between the knowing and the feeling — about nothing at all.
His hands were not shaking.
This surprised him.
He had expected them to shake.
They were not shaking.
He thought: I have known this. I have known this for a long time.
He thought: knowing something and seeing it are different.
He thought: I have seen it now.
"Come on," Styrmir said, quietly.
He turned Gerffron away from the door and steered him back down the corridor.