The table had grown.
Azrael wasn't entirely sure when it had happened. At some point between his arrival and the second cup of whatever was in the pot at the center of the table, chairs had appeared from somewhere and people had filled them with the quiet inevitability of water finding its level. The plaza around them had settled fully into evening now, the lanterns lit, the World Tree above the rooftops casting its particular light across the stones below, and what Michaelas had proposed as a simple gathering had become something larger than that without anyone deciding it should.
He noted each arrival the way he noted most things. Quietly. Without comment.
The first to join after him were two he didn't recognize from the class. The girl sat beside Victoria without introducing herself immediately, her movements precise and contained. She had black hair pulled back with strands of grey running through it that shouldn't have worked and did, and eyes the color of winter sky, and the particular blankness of expression that belonged to someone who had decided most situations didn't require a reaction until they did. She placed her hands on the table and looked at nothing specific.
Michaelas: "Celia Casimir." He said it with the easy familiarity of someone who had already done the work of knowing everyone. "And Charles Valdris."
The second name belonged to the young man beside her. Short dark blue hair, black eyes, the stillness of someone who had already assessed the room and found nothing that required immediate action. He looked at Azrael once, briefly, nodded. No judgment. No warmth. Just acknowledgement.
Azrael returned it.
Then Aldric Draven arrived.
He arrived the way certain people arrive preceding himself slightly, the energy of his entrance a half second ahead of him. Tall, broad, with brown hair and brown eyes and the confident posture of someone who had grown up being told they were exceptional. He was not, Azrael observed with the detached precision of someone noting a fact, particularly impressive to look at. Average coloring. Average features arranged into an expression of above average self-regard. He sat in the most central chair without checking if anyone had claimed it and looked across the table with the swift efficiency of someone establishing hierarchy.
His eyes landed on Azrael.
Aldric: "Draven." He said his own name the way you say something you expect to land. "I assume everyone knows the family."
Iris: "We know it." She didn't look up.
Aldric: "Good." He looked at Azrael for a moment longer than was necessary. "You're the non-noble."
Azrael looked at him.
Then looked away.
He picked up his cup and drank from it and found the tea adequate. Aldric existed in his peripheral vision. He did not promote him to direct attention.
The table went fractionally quieter. Then Michaelas said something to Charles about the eastern district and the moment passed the way moments pass when no one gives them permission to stay.
Jeanne Serath arrived next brown hair hair, blue eyes, the comfortable ease of someone who had found her place before she sat down. She touched Michaelas's arm in greeting without ceremony and settled in and smiled at the table generally and at him specifically.
Azrael noted the smile Michaelas returned.
Solene Morvaine arrived after her and the table's atmosphere changed the way a room's atmosphere changes when a window is opened not better or worse, just different, more air moving through it. She had deep mauve hair threaded with pink that caught the lamplight in a way that made it look briefly illuminated from within, and dark rose eyes that were moving across everything simultaneously, and she moved with a looseness that suggested her body had never been particularly concerned with what other people thought of it.
She sat down and immediately looked up at the World Tree and her expression did something that most people at the table hadn't let their expressions do all evening.
Solene: "Oh." She said it like she'd been struck by something. "Oh, look at it right now. The light — are you all seeing this? Someone tell me you're seeing this."
A silence.
Iris: "It's always like that at this hour."
Solene: "I know it's always like that at this hour, that's exactly what I mean, it's always extraordinary and we're just sitting here eating while that is happening directly above our heads and nobody is saying anything about it!"
Iris: "What would you like us to say."
Solene: "Anything! Something! It doesn't have to be profound, Iris, it just has to be acknowledgement that we are alive and there is something beautiful above us!"
Iris: "It's beautiful."
Solene: "Thank you!" She pressed her hand to her chest like the words had physically helped her. "Thank you. Was that so hard."
Iris: "Yes."
Solene turned to the table at large with the energy of someone who had identified a problem and was now going to solve it by befriending it. Her rose eyes landed on Azrael with the direct curiosity of someone who had decided social filters were optional and had never particularly missed them.
Solene: "You're Azrael! I've been wanting to talk to you, you fought Lyssael on the first day and I watched the whole thing and I have so many questions, first of all how are you? Are you well? Because that looked painful."
The question arrived with such genuine concern that refusing to answer it would have been like refusing something offered with both hands.
Azrael: "I've had worse mornings."
Solene: "See, that's what I thought, you looked like someone who has had worse mornings and I respect that enormously." She nodded several times in quick succession as though confirming something to herself. "What was it like? Fighting him? Be honest."
He considered.
Azrael: "Like fighting someone who's already decided where he wants to end up."
Solene stared at him for a moment. Then turned to the table.
Solene: "He's interesting. I'm keeping him."
Iris: "He's not a stray."
Solene: "Everyone interesting is a stray."
Lyssael, across the table, said nothing. His jaw was set and his pale rose eyes were fixed on his cup and he was performing complete indifference with the specific effort of someone who was not indifferent.
Azrael looked elsewhere.
Nora Elford arrived and took her seat with the smooth ease of someone who had decided exactly where to sit and how to present herself doing it. Green hair, brown eyes, a smile that reached them perfectly she greeted the table with warmth and said something kind to Victoria about their shared courses and laughed at something Charles said and was, in every visible way, exactly what a pleasant and capable noble daughter should be at a gathering like this.
Azrael watched her for approximately ninety seconds.
Something is being performed there.
He didn't pursue the thought. Just noted it and set it somewhere he would find it later.
Dorian Theron arrived quietly grey hair, brown eyes, the kind of presence that contributed exactly enough and left no particular impression. Azrael respected this without finding it interesting.
Lena Harken arrived late with blonde hair and pale mauve eyes that were nothing like Violette's, and apologized to no one specifically, and settled in with the ease of someone who was comfortable in most situations and had learned not to make that someone else's problem.
The table was full now except for two chairs.
Azrael counted. Looked around.
He was aware, with the specific precision of someone cataloguing their own behavior against their will, that he had looked at those two empty chairs more than once in the past thirty minutes. He was aware of this and he was choosing not to examine it and he was doing so with moderate success.
Azrael: "Who are we missing?"
Michaelas opened his mouth.
The plaza shifted.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. It was the kind of shift that happens when something enters a space that the space rearranges itself around a subtle reorientation, conversations briefly losing their thread, eyes moving without their owners deciding to move them.
Maria Romano crossed the plaza.
Civilian clothes, dark and simple and somehow more deliberately composed than any uniform. Her black hair moved with her steps in the way it had of appearing to follow its own rules rather than gravity's. Her red eyes swept the table once with the unhurried thoroughness of someone reading a document they intended to reference later.
Something happened at the table.
Aldric found a reason to adjust his cup. Nora's smile stayed exactly where it was and became, somehow, slightly more precise. Even Charles shifted his posture by a fraction that wasn't quite sitting straighter but was adjacent to it.
None of them acknowledged having done any of this.
Maria arrived at the table. Looked at the two empty chairs. Chose the one beside Azrael with the naturalness of someone settling into something that was already theirs. Then she looked at him with the particular expression of someone who has been waiting for a moment and has decided to enjoy it.
Maria: "My, my." Her voice was warm and unhurried and carrying something underneath the warmth that was not warmth at all. "Look who's here. I feel as though I've been doing nothing but miss you lately, Azrael we seem to keep occupying different rooms. How terribly inconvenient for us."
Azrael: "You could have come earlier."
Maria: "And deprive myself of an entrance? I think not."
She reached across him not over him, not around him, across, close enough that he felt the warmth of her arm and took the small pot of tea from the center of the table. She poured herself a cup with complete composure. Set the pot back down on his side of the table rather than returning it to the center.
He looked at the pot.
He looked at her.
She was already speaking to Victoria about something that had nothing to do with him, her voice warm and engaged and giving no indication whatsoever that she had just planted a flag on his half of the table without acknowledging she had done so.
I know exactly what you're doing.
I'm also not going to say anything because saying something requires explaining it and explaining it requires caring enough to explain it and I don't.
She's good at this.
That's all that is.
A server came.
The menus that appeared were simple and handwritten and the server moved around the table with the practiced ease of someone who had done this enough times to read a table correctly. Conversations paused and reorganized themselves around the business of ordering.
Solene ordered something with the enthusiasm of someone who had been thinking about it since before she sat down, asked two questions about preparation, changed her mind once, and thanked the server with the specific warmth of someone who meant it.
Michaelas ordered without looking at the menu, which suggested he had eaten here before and knew what he wanted, and asked Jeanne what she was having with the ease of someone who found the question natural.
Jeanne ordered something light, considered briefly, and added a second thing with a small smile.
Iris ordered the same thing she always ordered, probably. She said it once and was done.
Victoria ordered precisely and quietly and did not deliberate.
Lyssael looked at the menu for exactly as long as was necessary and ordered without commentary.
Celia ordered without looking up from whatever she had been watching in the middle distance, the words arriving as though she had decided them some time ago and was only now transmitting them.
Charles ordered efficiently and briefly and leaned back.
Aldric ordered something expensive and made sure the table knew it was expensive without saying it was expensive.
Nora ordered with warmth directed at the server and changed nothing.
Dorian ordered quietly.
Lena ordered something that surprised the server slightly, which she either didn't notice or didn't mind.
Selena, across the table, ordered in a voice that was even and gave away nothing, and did not look at Maria, and did not look at him, and the lamplight caught her silver hair and held it in a way that was striking and probably, he thought, entirely unconscious.
Maria ordered last, without consulting the menu, with the ease of someone for whom decisions of this kind required no deliberation. She said it without looking up from whatever private thought she had been attending to, her voice carrying the lazy authority of someone who expected to be heard without raising it.
The server left.
The table reformed itself around the absence of the decision. Conversations resumed. The World Tree above the rooftops continued its quiet extraordinary business of existing beautifully whether or not anyone was remarking on it. The lanterns of Arden burned warm and steady.
Azrael had not looked at the menu.
When the server had reached him he had said something. He was not entirely sure what. Something adequate. It would arrive eventually.
Michaelas leaned toward him slightly.
Michaelas: "You doing alright?"
Azrael: "Yes."
Michaelas: "You have the face of someone who has decided to be fine and is succeeding at it through effort."
Azrael: "That's my regular face."
Michaelas looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who finds an answer both insufficient and deeply understandable.
Michaelas: "Fair enough."
He leaned back.
The evening continued.