Two days before Zolani went to the academy.
Vesper appeared in her doorway with the particular expression of someone delivering information they had not requested for with a bit of reluctance.
"The Count has requested the household dine together this evening, my lady." Her fingers fidgeted under Zolani's gaze. She was unable to meet her eyes.
"All members."
Did she report to the Count where she left for that night? After leaving Lady Verya's wing she stumbled upon Vesper. Vesper being smart enough put two and two together. Though she didn't ask her to keep her mouth shut. Zolani assumed she would. Given that she didn't care if the information reached the Count in the end she left things as they were.
It seems that Veyra took that silence as permission to report to the Count.
Though she couldn't account it as betrayal because Vesper's loyalty didn't lie with her. She couldn't help feeling disappointed.
Hmm.
She looked back down to the map she had been studying, earlier.
"All members?" she asked.
"Yes, my lady."
For a second she wondered The Count's intentions on inviting the Countess. Her four children,the third concubine whose name she had not learned yet and whose two children she had momentarily seen at the funeral and forgot to a dinner with her being present. Did he wish to discipline her for those actions she made?
Because she didn't have enough data on him she couldn't make proper assessments.
And for some reason the system has been silent for days.
She dropped the map on the table beside her.
This maybe her last dinner in this house before the academy. She could use the opportunity to find a way to stop the Count from drugging Lady Veyra.
"Tell me what to wear," she ordered Vesper.
________
The dining room was on the ground floor of the main wing.
She had passed it several times in the last seven days without entering — the door closed, the sounds from within was always that of a room being prepared for something rather than used.
She understood now that it had been being prepared for this.
It was — she processed it in the three seconds she came in — a room built for exactly the kind of statement the Count appeared to enjoy making. Long table. Dark wood, the same as the desk in his study, the same weight of intention in the grain. Twelve seats — she counted automatically, arranged with the specific precision of a seating plan that communicated hierarchy before anyone spoke. Candelabras at intervals, tall, the flames very still in a room with no draft. Silver on the table — real silver, the Draveth bridge sigil pressed into the bases of every candlestick, worked into the edges of the serving dishes.
The bridge everywhere.
We go between. We connect. We are present.
That was the message of the bridge as simple as it was.
The walls held portraits. Non of which belonged to Elowen rather... older. The Count's grandfather and father peering down from their frames with the specific expression of men who had built something and were checking in to see if it was holding.
When she entered she found out that she was not indeed the first.
Cael was already there.
He was standing at the far end of the room near the window with the particular quality of stillness. Someone who had arrived early because it was easier.
He had combed his hair. His coat, presentable for a family dinner.
He turned when she entered.
Looked at her.
Did not rearrange his face.
"You look..?" he started.
"Don't," she said pleasantly.
He closed his mouth. Something in his expression that was trying not to be amused. His body gave aware though, it was shaking from concealed laughter.
Yes. Unlike Cael who dressed appropriately for this dinner. She wore a rather simpler outfit. A black dress, a black feathered fan, a black hat. Weary black belonging to a funeral like she was mourning death. The only accessory on her with color was her silver cross earrings.
She crossed the room and stood beside him at the window and they both looked at the garden in the companionable silence. Two people who were comfortable with one another and didn't see a need to perform before each other.
Zolani took a deep breath. Calmness wearing her as a robe.
"He's going to make a speech," Cael said. Quietly. The voice of someone who had attended enough of these to know the architecture.
"Is he?" That was already obvious, but Zolani decided to humor him.
"He always does when he calls a full table. It's never about what he says it's about what he doesn't."
They looked at each other. She needed a drink.
"What is it actually about?"
Cael considered, his slender fingers running his chin. There were traces of a beard forming on his face.
"Last time it was about the wool tax," he recalled.
"He said it was a farewell dinner for Dorian before his court season. It was rather more about the wool tax considering how much every conversation then was based on it. Dorian may have been involved with illegal investment." He chuckles,
"Actually in my opinion, he does this to remind us he is watching us and stumps any ambitions that go against his goals. The farewell dinner for Dorian was probably him keeping Dorian in check."
"What's it about this time?"
He looked at her again. Those dark grey eyes with the specific weight in them.
"You," he said. Simply.
She had suspected.
The door opened.
They came in the order she predicted.
The Countess first, because it was in her character to choose to always be first in any room she decides to be in.
She entered with Sera and Dorian flanking her, which was not an accident, the three of them a visual statement of the house's primary line before anyone had sat down.
Sera in dark blue.. Zolani noted it automatically, the color, the cut, the specific elegance of a woman who had dressed for this dinner as she dressed for all things, with intention. Dorian in his good coat, his warm smile already deployed.
Zolani's eyes slit in glee when she watched the Countess withheld a gasp on seeing her attire and Sera who visibly grimaced. Dorian rolling his eyes rather too quickly.
Then Liss.
She came in alone — slightly behind the others, separated, in the way she was always was from the Countess's formation. She had her mother's coloring and something in her eyes tonight that was different from her usual frank curiosity. Something that had been paying attention.
She found Zolani across the room immediately. Noticing her attire and the smile donning Zolani lips she was unable to withhold a chuckle.
Cael laughed under his breath. Zolani couldn't help herself from smiling either.
A noble woman followed suite.
The third concubine.
She came through the door with the composed unhurried quality of a woman who had learned that being neither first nor last was its own statement. She was — Zolani processed her properly for the first time, having only glimpsed her at the funeral and across the party and through corridors in the last seven days — perhaps thirty. Dark hair, worn simply. A face that was not conventionally striking but had the kind of arrangement that rewarded looking — everything balanced, nothing wasted. She moved through a room like someone who knew where everything was without having to check. With natural grace.
Beside her, a girl of twelve.
The girl had her mother's composed quality and was directing it, currently, entirely at Zolani. Not hostility. Wariness. The wariness of a child who had been paying attention to adult conversations for long enough to understand that this strange woman was a variable in the household's stability and was therefore worth watching.
Beside the girl, a boy of five.
He had the Count's jaw and his mother's eyes and the specific quality of a child who had not yet learned that rooms required composure. He looked around the dining room with the frank delight of someone for whom a formally set table was still interesting rather than obligatory.
He saw Zolani.
Stopped walking.
Stared.
She returned the gaze.
He walked across the room to her — entirely without self-consciousness, his wobbly movement was adorable so was his lack of social distance.. and looked up at her face with the focused attention of a child conducting a sincere assessment.
"Your eyes are red," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Like berries," he said.
"Something like that."
He considered this. Then held up his arms.
She looked at him for a moment, feeling Cael's gaze on her.
Then she picked him up.
He was the weight of a five-year-old, which was heavier than it looked and warmer than she expected, and he grabbed her silver earring with one hand with the cheerful destructive instinct of small children near shiny things and she detached it from his grip before it became a hazard and he showed no remorse whatsoever.
Such a cheeky child.
He patted her cheek. She couldn't help but fondle his chubby cheeks to. They looked so pinchable.
Somewhere in her chest she had been keeping carefully managed for sometime now, she felt her heart squeeze.
Elowen must have liked the child.
Behind him, his mother watched with a composed expression, observing, and underneath her gaze Zolani noted she was deciding what she was.
"Fen," his mother said. The name quiet, the tone not scolding — Of someone calling a child back from an adventure they had decided to have. "Come back."
"I like her," Fen announced, to the room.
Cael made a sound. He seemed to be enjoying himself under her expense for sometime now.
She set the boy down.
His mother took his hand with the smooth efficiency formed from the experience of caretaking her son for five years and had found her rhythm. She met Zolani's eyes briefly over his head.
"I apologize," she said. The voice neutral. Not cold — neutral. It was evident that she decided to withhold judgment rather than issuing it.
"Don't," Zolani said. "He's fine."
Something moved in the woman's expression. Small but enough for Zolani to notice.
The twelve-year-old beside her had watched this entire exchange with the focused attention.
Then the Count entered, interrupting them.
And behind him —
Zolani saw Veyra.