Chapter 118: Table Manners (Patreon)

The table had grown out of the floor. Its surface ran with the grain of the tree, a single lip of pale wood that curved up at the edges to keep plates from sliding, and a dish of blackberries sat in a hollow the carvers had never cut. Morning came through the leaves above the long window in green patches. Two guards stood by the arch with their spears grounded. A third kept to the balcony, and a fourth had settled behind Cassius's chair.

Lilith broke a roll. The crust split with a dry crack and the inside steamed, soft and faintly sweet, with something in the dough she couldn't name. Rosemary, maybe, or a cousin of it that grew only here. She set half on her plate and kept the other half.

Gaearien sat at the head of the table, her staff propped against the arm of her chair. Across from Lilith, Cassius had his napkin tucked into his collar and his rings turned inward. His robes were pressed. The skin beneath his eyes was not, and it had gone the colour of a bruise three days old.

"You look tired, Sir Draconis." Gaearien poured water for herself from a clay jug. "Are your rooms not to your liking? The guest branch sways more than some visitors expect."

Cassius's hand closed around his knife. The knuckles went white, then the fork got the same treatment, and for a moment he held both upright on either side of his plate with the points toward the ceiling.

"Perfectly adequate, Your Majesty." He set the fork down first. "Quite beyond reproach. I have simply been keeping late hours. The Empress's correspondence does not rest, and neither, I fear, may her servants."

Lilith tore a strip from her roll and chewed. Two weeks of Nyssa. He hadn't slept through a night since the first of the month, and he was going to sit there and blame the post.

"Then I hope you will allow yourself a rest now and then." Gaearien's tone stayed level. "The work matters. It will still be there after a morning in the gardens. Health is harder to recover than a letter is to answer."

A vein stood out on Cassius's forehead, just left of centre, climbing toward his hairline. It pulsed twice. Lilith sipped water, mouth otherwise busy.

"Your Majesty is most gracious." He dabbed his lips with the corner of the napkin. The vein stayed. "I shall hold the counsel close. If I may, though. The invitation arrived rather suddenly this morning. My aide had scarcely time to find my good sash. Might I ask what occasion prompts the honour?"

Gaearien took a blackberry from the dish and turned it between two fingers. "No occasion. I find people speak more honestly across a table than across a council floor. It is difficult to posture with bread in your hand."

Cassius looked at the bread in his own hand. He put it down.

"I'd agree with that." Lilith lifted her half-roll. "Especially when the kitchen's this good. I've eaten at a lot of tables, Your Majesty. Very few made me want to steal the recipe."

The laugh slipped out of Gaearien, quiet and clipped. She covered it with the back of her wrist. The guard at the arch shifted his grip on his spear, his glance cutting toward the head of the table and away. So the Queen didn't laugh often. Not lately, anyway.

"I will tell the cooks," Gaearien said. "They will be insufferable for a month."

"Worth it." Lilith spooned some of the berries onto her plate. They were small and dark and burst sour against her teeth, with the sweetness arriving a beat after. "So. You didn't only bring us here to feed us. What did you want to talk about? Nocturne's offer hasn't changed."

Gaearien ate the blackberry and said nothing, which meant keep going.

"We'd need the Solarian Empire's blessing, of course. Anything crossing their border roads." Lilith held the pause a beat, then turned her head. "Though with our truce so fresh, I can't see it being a problem. Can you, Sir Draconis?"

As Jacob, she'd have rehearsed that line in the shower for a week and fumbled it anyway. Here it simply arrived.

Cassius swallowed. His throat worked above the tucked napkin, and his rings clicked once against the wood as his hand flattened on the table.

"Of course." The words came through his teeth. "The Empire would raise no objection whatsoever."

"Wonderful." Lilith reached for the jug and topped up his water before her own. "That makes this a very easy breakfast."

Gaearien watched the two of them over the rim of her cup. She set it down and gestured to the servant by the side door, who brought a covered dish forward and lifted the lid on trout laid over green shoots, still hissing in its butter.

"Then let us eat while it is hot," the Queen said, "and we can make it harder afterward."

Cassius picked up his knife again, slowly this time, and cut into the fish.

*

Sylrena hooked her boot into the gap between two woven branches and lowered herself another arm's length. Bark scraped her palms. Above her, Seluna swung both legs out over the window ledge, one heel feeling for the knot Sylrena had just let go of.

"I can't believe I agreed to this."

"Come on." Seluna found the knot and put her weight on it without looking down. "It'll be fine."

"Fine for you. You're the princess."

"Which is exactly why you shouldn't worry." Seluna came down hand under hand, a bundle of folded cloth strapped tight across her back. "I'll make sure your sentence is as lenient as I can get it."

Sylrena stopped with her fingers wrapped around a branch. "My what?"

"Don't worry about it."

A gust came through the canopy and set the whole face of the trunk creaking. Sylrena pressed her cheek to the bark until it passed. Somewhere below, a door opened and closed, and two voices crossed a bridge and faded. She looked down at the balcony platform jutting from the level beneath Seluna's chamber. Clay pots of mint and thyme lined its edge, and nobody was on it. She let go.

She landed in a crouch between two pots. The platform bounced once under her and settled. The folded bow at her hip knocked against her thigh, and she put a hand over it until it went still.

"So." She straightened and brushed the bark dust off her palms. "What now?"

Seluna dropped beside her without a sound and stepped around the thyme. "Mother usually finishes her breakfast about this time. We only need to get close enough to catch her before anyone catches us."

"And the royal guards? There are four on that corridor alone. More at the stair." Sylrena counted them off on her fingers, then stopped, because she had run out of fingers. "How exactly are you planning to walk past all of them?"

"I picked up a trick or two." Seluna crouched and started untying the bundle. "Watching the Nocturne delegation."

"What kind of trick?"

"The woman who came with Lune. Vespera." Seluna glanced up. "You saw her on the ridge. She stood in the shade under those pines, and I lost her. She was right there. I could have hit her with a pebble, and my eyes kept sliding off."

Sylrena had seen it. She had also seen an entire elk carcass sink into the woman's shadow as though the ground under it had turned to water.

"She wasn't invisible," Seluna went on. "She was just in the dark in a way that made the dark hold her. And it gave me an idea."

"Should I be worried?"

"No." Seluna tugged the last knot loose. "Maybe a little. I haven't actually tested it, so I don't know if it'll work."

"Seluna, wait—"

Seluna's fingers were already moving. She said a word Sylrena half-knew, low and flat, and the air on the platform went cold.

It came over Sylrena's skin from the feet up, a chill that settled into the leather of her boots and climbed her shins. She looked down. Her hands had gone grey. The edges of her fingers blurred against the bark behind them, and when she moved them, the colour lagged a finger's width behind. She slapped at her forearm. Her palm met solid skin, but the grey stayed. She backed up until the railing pressed into her spine and a pot of mint rocked against her heel.

Seluna had gone the same grey, her silver hair now the colour of ash in shade. She was grinning.

Sylrena caught the pot before it tipped and set it upright. "What was that?"

"Remember the shadow zone spell? From ranger bootcamp?"

"The second-circle one?" Sylrena held up a hand and turned it. The grey rippled. "The one that fills a hollow with dark so you can lie up in it?"

Seluna nodded. "I changed it. It sticks to us now instead of to the ground."

"You modified a spell."

"Yes."

"You modified a spell, and you cast it on me first."

"On both of us at once. It should let us slip into shade much more easily." Seluna shook out the bundle. Two grey aprons fell across her knees, cut plain for kitchen work, two linen caps beside them. "It's nowhere near what the shadow demon can do. But she doesn't know these halls, and we do."

Sylrena looked at the aprons. Then at the open archway at the back of the platform, where the light from the corridor made a bright square on the floor. "The guards will still notice us. Shade only goes so far. That corridor has windows the whole way down."

"Which is why we'll be maids." Seluna held out an apron. "Nobody looks at maids."

"Mona would take that personally."

"Mona isn't here." Seluna shook the apron at her. "Take it."

Sylrena took it. She held it by the strings. "I'm still not sure this is a good idea."

"Come on!" Seluna was already pulling a cap over her grey hair. "You said it yourself. We have to tell my parents."

"Yes. Right." Sylrena looped the apron over her head and knotted it at the small of her back, tighter than it needed to be. She kept her eyes on the knot. "Somehow I think you're more excited about the sneaking than about the telling."

Seluna paused with the cap half on. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

*

The last of the bread lay in crumbs on Lilith's plate. A servant lifted the plate away and refilled the pale tea. Gaearien set her own cup on its saucer.

"This has been as pleasant as it has been enlightening." The queen folded her hands on the linen. "The kitchen has prepared something sweet. Will either of you stay for it?"

Cassius had been turning one of his rings with his thumb for most of the meal. The thumb stopped.

Lilith smiled across the table at him. "I'll certainly stay a little longer. After a meal like this, it would be rude not to wait for whatever comes next."

"Then you must forgive me, Your Majesty." Cassius pushed his chair back. The legs scraped the floor, and he gripped the table edge before he rose. "I have letters waiting, and they will not answer themselves."

"Of course," Gaearien said.

He bowed to the queen. His bow to Lilith was shallower, and his goatee jutted forward when he straightened. A vein stood out above his silk collar.

Well done, Nyssa.

He had spent the whole breakfast chewing every bite twice and sniffing his wine before he drank it. A week ago he would have planted himself at this table until the last dessert plate was cleared, only to keep her from a single private word with the queen. Now he was leaving the two of them alone of his own accord. Perhaps he already thought they were working together. If the next few meals went well, he would be right.

Cassius crossed to the door in long strides. His robes snapped at his ankles, and he did not wait for the servant to open it for him.

The door shut behind him. Out in the corridor something thudded against wood, and a tray rang on the floor. A servant stammered an apology. Beneath the apology, too low for any human ear, Cassius spat a word no respectable diplomat should have known.

Lilith lifted her tea.

Gaearien kept her eyes on the door. Then she turned them back to Lilith. "You wouldn't happen to know why Sir Draconis's temper has been so short this past week, would you?"

"Why would I?" Lilith set the cup down. "I've hardly left my terrace. There are a thousand years of books I missed, and your libraries are generous." She let her hands rest open on the tablecloth. "Whatever has been eating at the ambassador, it's beyond my knowledge."

One corner of Gaearien's mouth moved. She said nothing.

It was even true, in a way. Lilith genuinely had no idea what Nyssa had actually done.