The last of the books was being set upon the shelf.
Edvard did not know exactly why his lord placed such value on an old book of tales, but he had learned not to despise small things. He had also grown fond of that volume, not for its contents but for what it indicated.
The young man, until recently a commoner with no name worth noting, had arrived full of surprises. One of them was that he knew how to read, another and perhaps more important, was that he had been educated enough to hide part of what he knew. There were gaps, more than Edvard would have liked to admit, even so, the material there was good. Hrafn possessed a kind of venomous intelligence, distrustful and cynical. Had it not been for the obvious faults in his manner, his etiquette and his speech, Edvard might have taken him for a nobleman, for one of the better sort.
"I imagine it is time, Ed," said his lord.
Edvard restrained the small inward twinge that still came to him whenever he heard the abbreviation. He would have to grow accustomed to it. There were graver things in the world than the slow murder of a name.
"I did not think she would come to us."
"She may be playing a game, my lord," Edvard replied. "The nobles turn even the smallest things into one."
"Yes, they do," said Hrafn. "If not for you, I would never even know that who goes to whom matters at all. And the idiots still call it cleverness."
"Thank you, my lord. It is always a pleasure to be of help." He answered with measured pride. Hrafn made praise sound like insult with an almost noble ease.
"But I think she may be trying to lower your guard," Edvard continued. "She probably already knew I would instruct you on that point. She may imagine that you will recognize goodwill in the gesture."
"We shall see how far that goodwill goes," Hrafn replied.
There was little time left before the guests arrived. Edvard had prepared everything in advance, Lady Alva was the daughter of a powerful marque's house; treating her well was not mere courtesy, but prudence. When a maid appeared to inform him that the visitors were already on their way, Edvard felt relief. His young lord was the impatient kind, the sort who tapped his fingers, rolled his shoulder and shifted the weight of his body from one foot to the other whenever he had to wait.
A regrettable habit, worse still because it wrinkled, with criminal regularity, the clothes Edvard prepared with such care.
"Lady Alva," Hrafn declared the moment he saw her. He did not bow or use the proper form of address.
"Brought more people too. Good." He pointed to the maid and the guard accompanying her. Pointing would have been discourteous even in better circumstances, there at the very outset, it struck Edvard as almost an active attempt against the natural order of things.
"Elevated Hrafn," the lady replied, displaying impeccable composure in every gesture. "It is an honor—"
"Yes, yes, I imagine," Hrafn interrupted, to the immediate discomfort of everyone present, and to Edvard's horror. "Come in, i'm hungry."
Before anyone could protest, he had already turned his back and headed toward the prepared meal, walking as quickly as he could without actually running. For an instant, Edvard considered apologizing on his lord's behalf, but had no such right and to do so would imply, before them all, that Hrafn was in the wrong. So he merely followed behind together with the others, in embarrassed silence.
"Come, sit down," said Hrafn when he reached the table. Then he pointed to Edvard with a smile far too broad. "You too, Ed."
The butler did not share the same joy. His lord seemed to enjoy testing how far his old heart would go before finally giving out. "No," he answered.
Under ordinary circumstances he would have been more polite.. But from what he had been learning, any extra delicacy only gave the young wit more room to play some trick on him.
Something along the lines of: A table with six chairs, Ed, and still you insist on standing?
The comment did not come, even so merely imagining it, spoken in that order and before the daughter of a marquess, made Edvard's heart miss a beat.
"With your leave," said Lady Alva, as the maid pulled out her chair, she sat with impeccable elegance. The maid remained behind her and the guard stood one step to the side.
Edvard noticed that Lady Alva was measuring everything in the room, above all she was measuring Hrafn. She did so with the brazenness her position allowed. Edvard measured things as well, of course, but he did so as a man of trade. She did so as a woman accustomed to deciding the value of things before ever touching them. But she would have difficulty there, he suspected, Hrafn was not easy to measure.
"So then, Alva," said his lord, calling her directly by name, making little effort to frustrate the butler's lowest expectations. "What do you want from me?" The question came out with his mouth a little full and to make matters worse, he made a vague gesture with one hand near his ear, something between go on and get on with it.
Lady Alva took a moment before answering, he saw the disgust in her, though well hidden and in the maid as well, even in the guard. "Elevated Hrafn," she began. "First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your swift elevation—"
"Thank you," interrupted what would clearly have been a respectable opening monologue.
"Secondly," Lady Alva insisted, steady enough not to let the interruption steal her balance, "I also came to congratulate you on handling a difficult loss so well, as well as to offer you certain opportunities." Intelligent, thought Edvard. Every compliment sounded sincere, and each carried something more.
Swift elevation and early, then early could sound good, but it could also mean too early, before instruction and form, before proper preparation. The mention of the loss had been placed even better, to the ears of high society it was nearly the same as saying: you have only just begun, and you have already begun wrong.
"And yes, losing the arm was a shitty business," Hrafn cursed, and Edvard had the distinct impression that he still had not discovered the exact limit of his own capacity for horror. "Opportunity is good," his lord continued, without a drop of shame on his face. "But what do you gain from it?"
Lady Alva did not lose her composure, rested her fingers on the arm of the chair, light enough to seem casual "A fair question," she said. "I gain proximity to a promising man. You gain a house with resources, routes, commercial experience, and influence enough to make certain difficulties less... difficult."
Hrafn chewed a little longer, as though weighing the proposal and the food on the same scale. "Influence," he repeated, in the tone of someone tasting something and already suspecting he would not like it.
"It moves things," Alva replied. "Coin does too."
"Coin buys less than people believe." Hrafn wiped his fingers on the cloth with an offensively sincere indifference. It was not exactly calculated rudeness, it was simply the natural way he existed. "I already have money," he said. "The Hird pays well."
Lady Alva held his gaze. "It does not always pay in choice."
Hrafn tilted his head slightly, less brutish and more attentive. "So you want to sell me room to maneuver,"
"I want to offer you partnership."
"A pretty word."
"Pretty words are often necessary."
"To hide ugly things?"
Hrafn let out a short sound through his nose. It was not quite laughter, nor was it pure contempt, Edvard knew that sound, knew it well enough to understand that, against all reason and all good taste, the conversation was perhaps going better than it ought to.
And it was then, as he watched the crooked young voroir, the ambitious lady, the silent maid, and the uncomfortable guard sharing the same table beneath the roof he had prepared with such care, that Edvard began to think that perhaps staying near the hearth, drinking tea, cursing pots, complaining about the weather, and all that sort of thing, did not sound so bad after all.
But it was too late for that.