FSW Chapter 21

Discomfort

White was a thing he disliked.

A color that vulnerable to contamination surrendered its particular quality in an instant. He looked down at the handkerchief wrapped around his hand and the look in his eyes was without warmth. The white it had been was not there anymore—red had bloomed through it, absorbing the original color entirely.

Loss is this easy.

He swallowed what wanted to come out. What came out instead was irritation.

Today had been a better-than-usual day, up until a point. His head had been busy in a way that made the training yard necessary even outside his regular hours. He had gone. And there he had encountered that young man.

He had known—from the first moment their blades crossed—that this was the apprentice she had chosen as her sword instructor. He had been aware for some time that she had selected a peer rather than a senior knight, and that the peer was young. What he had not known was that the peer's skill placed him beyond most of the official knights. No—beyond all of them, possibly.

The sparring had been unlike his usual careful sessions. Every time he pushed, something pushed back. His breathing had been off-rhythm in a way he didn't often tolerate, and each exchange sent a jolt up through the grip of his sword hand.

Pushing harder was the unreasonable choice. He had kept pushing. Sword work was good because it was the only reliable exit from the grinding texture of everything else.

He had pushed until the skin split.

It had not been unpleasant, exactly. His body had been used in a way it had not been used in some time. It had even, briefly, felt clean.

If he simply hadn't run into her, it would have been a decent enough day.

He had not been intending to replay the conversation. But he had been replaying it.

'I know I have no standing to worry about you, Brother. Even so—please see a physician. You'll need to train again tomorrow.'

He pressed the wound closed with his other hand and opened the door to his office.

The space was unchanged: spare, deliberately bare, functional. It had been a choice, when he moved into the crown prince's residence, to leave it that way. His aide, Oscar, was already at his post. The man looked up, prepared something polished, and then visibly lost the thread.

"You've returned, Your Highness. Your afternoon schedule includes—Your Highness, your hand—"

He had gone white.

"Where is the Count?"

"...In the reception room, Your Highness. Shall I—"

"No."

He dismissed the escort before it could form and walked himself to the far end of the corridor, where the rooms his mother had designated for receiving guests were located. She had insisted the reception room be the grandest available. She had been emphatic on this point. Because of it, the room he used for audiences sat at the opposite end of the palace from where he conducted his work.

The soldiers at the doors straightened and pulled them open. Beyond them, the same spectacle that never became ordinary. Pointlessly overused gold ornaments, pillars packed with embossed carvings, a ceiling filled with paintings. Not a single decorated vessel was anything less than precious. It was the exact opposite of his office, where a wooden desk was everything. Flowers with a fragrance so thick it turned the head—his mother's taste, every particular of it unchanged.

What remained of her was all of it, intact, dragging at him with the grip of something that wouldn't let go.

Ignoring what was dragging along the floor, he stepped inside.

"Your Highness, you've arrived!"

The man who had been occupying the center of the sofa—a span of furniture that could have accommodated a larger man lying flat—sprang to his feet. Count Albans wore his hair precisely oiled and combed back without a displaced strand. He was the head of a house that had been one of the more formidable of the former Empress's allies—which meant, among other things, that he had been among the more formidable of the allies who had decided not to attend the former Empress's funeral.

The mathematics of that decision were simple enough to follow. The Empress was gone; her backing was gone; and the Count had been doing his arithmetic about which of the two children now represented the more viable investment.

That he had arrived here suggested he had reached a conclusion.

He was precisely the kind of person Aiden found most tiresome. He had been most tiresome in his mother's hands as well—she had been fully aware of his limitations, and used them as a feature rather than a drawback. Straightforward appetites made a person manageable.

He did not acknowledge the Count's greeting. He crossed the room and settled into the chair across from him at an angle that indicated nothing hospitable.

The Count colored slightly and returned to his seat. Tea had been poured for Aiden in the interim; he left it where it was.

"Every time I come to this room I am struck afresh," the Count began. "Those bookshelves inlaid with spirit stone—and this table! Dryad Forest wood, unless I am mistaken. There cannot be another like it in the—"

"What do you want."

The Count swallowed his commentary. A flicker of wounded dignity crossed his face before he redirected.

"Your Highness, perhaps you are not yet aware: the princess has recently gathered the daughters of the Emperor's most trusted houses. The core of the imperial faction's young generation, assembled at her personal invitation."

He was aware. That had happened in spring. This was not recent information by any stretch.

"The intent behind such a gathering," the Count continued, his voice dropping to the register of a man delivering intelligence, "cannot be innocent. She maintained a low profile for so long—and then, so shortly after the Empress's passing, to make this sort of move—"

He had no patience for wasted time.

"Get to the point."

The Count flushed more fully and pressed on.

"Furthermore—I have confirmed through my own inquiry that she has been maintaining a steady correspondence with the Laurent girl! The Marquis Laurent is among the Emperor's most central supports! And she appears to be making approaches toward House Orsini as well—"

"..."

"She has been presenting herself as though she has no ambitions! But look at this—the moment the Empress is in the ground, she—"

"I said get to it."

The temperature of those words was not quite a question. The Count swallowed. He was perspiring now in a way that had nothing to do with the warmth of the season.

"This summer—before the season turns—I am holding a celebration at my estate in honor of my son's coming of age. I intend to gather certain like-minded individuals on the occasion. If Your Imperial Highness would consent to attend—"

"No."

The refusal arrived before the Count's sentence had properly finished. His mouth stayed open for a moment without producing anything further.

"...I beg your pardon?"

"Do you require it twice?"

There was irritation in his voice; he did not conceal it. No explanation accompanied the refusal. The Count appeared to be genuinely struggling to accommodate the response—he had evidently constructed an expectation in which accepting this sort of overture was the only reasonable course available.

"If I may impose further—this would be genuinely advantageous for Your Highness, I assure you—"

"I think it will be faster if I leave."

He stood.

The Count was immediately on his feet as well, apparently incapable of accepting that the conversation was over.

"Your Highness, please, just once more—"

He stopped.

He turned.

The face he produced as he turned toward the Count had a quality the season provided adequate vocabulary for—the Count's voice did stop, and his color, which had been elevated, went entirely out of his face.

"Do you know the method," he said, "for silencing a barking dog?"

The silence that followed was thorough.

He took one step toward the man. The Count took one step back, which was reflexive—and then pressed one hand to his own throat with an expression of a person who had just identified a possible location of danger.

"Simple enough," he said. "Cut out the vocal cords."

He watched the man clutch his own throat for a moment—the sight was not without a certain quality. Then he left.

His stride, on the way back, was sharper than the situation warranted. There was no irritating sound following him anymore. And still something in his step communicated displeasure that had nowhere particular to go.

Back in his office, he pulled the handkerchief off his hand with more force than he had intended. The blood-soaked cloth was deposited in the bin.

What was making him this unreasonable.

His position—looked down on even by someone like that. The blood-soaked handkerchief. Or the child herself.

'I know I have no standing to worry about you, Brother. Even so—'

He closed his fist. The wound reopened. Blood welled and fell.

"Your Highness!" Oscar's alarm reached him from the doorway. "I'll fetch the physician immediately—"

He heard Oscar's retreating footsteps and did not move.

'You must become a sun without equal—elevated by your singularity. You must never permit that insignificant child to find a foothold.'

His gaze settled on the corner of his desk.

The packet of cookies was still there. He had not eaten them. He had also not thrown them away. It was spoiled now. He couldn't eat it even if he wanted to.

Why had he left it there this long.

He picked them up. He put them in the bin alongside the handkerchief.

There. He cleared things away. He always had. This, too, he had done.

He sat down and picked up his papers.

He had thrown away the thing that needed throwing away. He had done it twice over now, if counting the first time. And still, after each discarding, some adhesive residue of the thing remained.

That was what was still making him sour.