By the following morning, every person who worked within the Wadee estate's walls knew.
This was the nature of households — not gossipy by intention, but structurally transparent to the people who moved through them daily, who heard things through doors and registered things in corridors and assembled, from the ambient information of shared daily space, a comprehensive picture of the domestic reality they were embedded in.
The fight had not been loud.
The library fight was not the kind of fight that happened loudly — both parties were constitutionally incapable of being undignified in public, and whatever the private version of themselves had been reaching toward in the library, neither of them had crossed fully into the register that produced raised voices and objects being thrown.
But it had been heard.
The quality of it. The closing of the door. The yelp — brief, quickly suppressed — that had come from the library approximately twenty seconds after the Duke left it. The specific, compressed quiet of a household that had absorbed something and was processing it.
By breakfast, positions had been established.
Not formally — nobody called a meeting, nobody issued a statement. The positions established themselves through the specific, organic mechanism of people-who-work-together sorting themselves according to their sympathies, which happened the way weather happened: without announcement, simply as the new condition.
Selfi was on the Duke's side.
This surprised no one.
She was on the Duke's side with the specific, slightly fierce quality of someone who had been on the Duke's side for eight years and was not about to stop now, regardless of the specific circumstances that had produced the current division. She managed her morning duties with the compressed efficiency of a woman who has a position and is performing it correctly and is also making clear, through the specific quality of her correctness, that the position exists.
She brought Gerffron his morning tray.
She set it down.
She said nothing.
She left.
Wren was on Gerffron's side.
This also surprised no one.
She had arrived at her position through the specific, accumulated evidence of the past year — the terrace, the library evenings, Oswin's finger, the compressed weight of a year of proximity to a man who had been consistently and comprehensively himself in all the ways that mattered to her. She was on his side with the warm, practical quality of someone who has assessed the situation and found her conclusion and is not moving from it.
She brought him his tea separately, before the morning tray, with the specific warmth of someone who knew he had not slept well.
She did not say anything about it.
She left.
Sera was neutral.
She announced this, to Wren's mild surprise and Selfi's undisguised disapproval, in the servants' corridor at the seventh bell.
"I haven't heard both sides," she said, in the tone she used when she had arrived at a position and was not going to be moved from it. "I'm not choosing one until I have."
"There are no two sides," Selfi said. "There is the Duke and there is—"
"There is always more than one side," Sera said. "That's why they're called sides. If there were only one, it would be called a fact."
Selfi gave her a look.
Sera gave her a look back.
Wren looked at the corridor wall.
"I'm making tea," she said, and went to make tea, which was the most useful available contribution to the situation.
— — —
Gerffron arrived at the palace at the second bell.
He arrived limping.
He was limping in the specific, controlled way of a man who had decided that the limp was not going to be visible and was applying this decision with the full, slightly futile commitment of someone whose decision was losing the argument with the ankle.
He had not consulted the physician.
He had decided, upon examination, that the ankle was the same ankle that had been sprained before and that the sprain was a recurrence rather than a new injury and that a recurrence of a known sprain was manageable with the same approach that had managed it previously, which was: ignore it until it stops being a problem.
The ankle had not yet received this memo.
He went to the collection point where the day's programme had scheduled the city market tour.
The carriages were assembled.
The delegates were filing out.
Princess Caelith was there — arriving with the specific, observant quality she brought to everything, the quality of someone who was always slightly ahead of the situation she was entering.
She looked at his gait.
She filed it.
She greeted him with the correct warmth and stepped into the first carriage.
Styrmir arrived.
He was in the informal morning attire he wore for non-session days — the practical equivalent of the formal coat, the choice of a man who understood the difference between the register of an official occasion and the register of a city market visit and who had dressed accordingly.
He looked at Gerffron.
He looked at his ankle.
He looked at Gerffron.
"What happened to your leg?" he asked.
"Nothing," Gerffron said.
"You're limping."
"I'm walking."
"You're walking with a pronounced preference for one side."
"That's a personal stylistic choice."
Styrmir looked at him with the expression he wore when he was doing something kind and had decided to dress it in amusement rather than concern.
"Get in the carriage," he said.
"I was about to."
"Your stylistic choice is going to get worse on cobblestones."
"Thank you for the architectural assessment."
"The market district has approximately forty percent cobblestone coverage."
"You've been studying the market district."
"I'm thorough," Styrmir said.
Caelith appeared at the carriage door.
"Are you two coming?" she asked, pleasantly.
She had the expression of a woman who had just made a plan.
Gerffron did not notice this.
Styrmir noticed it immediately and filed it for later assessment.
They got in the carriage.
"The physician," the princess said, as soon as the door closed and the carriage began moving.
Gerffron looked at her.
"Your leg," she said. "Have you seen a physician?"
"It's a minor—"
"It is not minor, from the way you're distributing your weight," she said, with the direct, practical quality of a woman who had been riding horses since she was four and could read a body's weight distribution the way other people read text. "It's a recurring injury, I think. You're favouring it in the specific way of something that has been managed rather than resolved."
"Your Highness, I'm fine."
"You're managing," she said. "Which is not the same as fine."
"The distinction is one of degree—"
"The distinction," Styrmir said from across the carriage, in the completely level tone of someone stating a fact, "is one of direction. Managing is moving away from fine. Fine is fine."
Gerffron looked at him.
Styrmir looked back at him with the winter-pale eyes and the expression that was both warm and infuriating simultaneously.
"I'm going to be fine," Gerffron said.
"Yes," Styrmir said. "Once you've seen a physician."
"We have a market tour—"
"There are nineteen other people on this tour," the princess said. "The market will survive without you leading every portion of it. What won't survive is you on cobblestones for three hours on an ankle that is clearly—"
"Your Highness," Gerffron said, with the pleasant firmness of a man who has had enough of a conversation, "I appreciate the concern. I am going to complete my professional function today. The ankle is an inconvenience, not an impediment, and I would rather we move the conversation—"
"To what?" Styrmir asked.
"To anything else," Gerffron said.
"All right," Styrmir said, agreeably. "How are you sleeping?"
Gerffron looked at the carriage window.
"The market tour," he said.
"You introduced the topic change," Styrmir pointed out.
"I introduced a topic change, not that specific topic."
"The ankle or the sleep," the princess said, pleasantly. "Those appear to be the available options."
Gerffron looked at the carriage window.
Outside, the city moved past in the specific, layered quality of a capital city's morning — the commerce, the movement, the particular energy of a place that had been awake for hours before he arrived and would be awake for hours after he left.
"The ankle," he said finally, "is a recurring issue. I am managing it. The management is sufficient."
"I know a physician in the market district," the princess said, in the specific, careful tone of someone offering information that is not a suggestion.
"Your Highness—"
"He's very good," she said. "We could stop there. Very briefly. It wouldn't take long."
She said it with the pleasant, unhurried quality of someone who has made a plan and is introducing it gradually enough that its nature doesn't become visible until it's already in motion.
Styrmir was looking at her.
She was looking at Gerffron.
Gerffron was looking at the window.
"We'll see," he said.
The princess smiled.
Styrmir, looking at the princess's smile, thought: I know what that smile means.
He thought: I approve.