The drapes parted with groaning rings, having done their job so diligently that when they were finally parted from the chamber's windows it plunged the entire tower into day.
"Up," Marcel demanded, arms spread, the act of throwing apart Jane's only protection against the wretched day now emblazoned across the General's retinas as an ugly silhouette.
Jane pulled one of those useless pillows with buttons in it over his head. "You are a dead man."
"And we're both late men, but I will not allow you to make us any later. Now get dressed; unlike the latest dozen or so assemblies I have pretended not to notice your absence, this one is actually important."
Jane didn't try to guess how the Spymaster had gotten into his room. Probably picked the lock, bribed a servant for the key or, hell, turned to smoke and slid under the jam for all Jane knew. Bastard was slippery like that. Instead of bothering himself with it, Jane tried to go back to the dream.
It had been so tangible, remembered grass and a place where a jut of land bulged out into a great rushing river. The earth ended in a sudden bank of red clay, dipping down into the water's edge, and Jane's hands picked up fistfuls of it, watching the edocha squelch through his fingers. A castle rose from the mud. They'd been building it, a place where they'd rule together, moats of pebbles and grass as flying-flags, promises that'd it all be theirs…
"Do you remember the bank with the red dirt?" Jane asked, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and interrupting whatever meeting-shmeeting stuff Marcel had been rambling about.
The Spymaster cut him a glare. "Is that some military jargon I'm supposed to be aware of?"
"I remembered something." Jane got to his feet. Marcel had already hung his parade uniform on the outside of his wardrobe. It was white mostly, a tassel on the shoulder and a dozen buttons to pin the left breast in place. Simple. Even for cermony's sake, Jane was practical. "When we were kids, we used to go to the river. It was as far as we were allowed to go."
Even going to a simple assembly, Marcel was decked out in his finest wear; the rounded half cloak, the cavalier hat with its ostrich feather. "I did not know you as a child, Jane," he waved away with impatience.
It felt like he'd heard that before, been told that before, but as Jane looked at the uniform in his hands—thick, calloused, adult hands—he kept trying to push the dream through his ears and back into his head. "We built this castle, and we said we'd-"
" You're thinking of someone else. "
This time it was harsh, and Jane looked over his shoulder just in time to see Marcel flinching with something that might have been regret. Whatever it was, it was over quickly.
"I swear," he said, sinking back into his usual state of irate aloofness. "I do not understand what goes on in that head of yours."
"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. Sun Tzu said that."
Marcel sighed. "Did he say anything about being punctual to a meeting of the king's highest ranked advisors?"
"The value of time, that is of being a little ahead of your opponent, often provides greater advantage than superior numbers or greater resources."
"Wonderful. With this den of vipers, we're going to need every advantage we can get. Get dressed and come along."
Jame grumbled, feeling he'd been handily outplayed. He grabbed his steel helm, rounded on each side until the brim came to a point, its only dormant a blue plume to match Marcel's, and followed him out the door.
There was a small spot of drool on the table when Tavish finally lifted his head, next to a larger spot of wormwood extract that was slowly expanding. Bother. That could have been bad. Tavish shook himself, wiped up the chemical spill, and reminded himself that a careless alchemist was a dead alchemist.
Yet somehow even with his penchant for the inebriated lifestyle he always managed to avoid that particular fate. Lucky him.
The lab had no windows in order to protect the delicate composition of the photosensitive ingredients, but poking his head into the entryway revealed that it was well past noon, and Tavish groaned the groan of a man in Big Trouble. His lady mother would be in a fit, and the cowardly part of him wanted to close the door, go back to synthesizing some gunpowder, and let another day evaporate before him. He might have just, if he didn't know his Mum, and knew that if he kept at this for much longer she'd send her servants crawling over the whole castle. If they did that, sooner or later they'd find the lab that'd supposedly been locked up since Da died. Sighing, he tidied up the remains of his project, and went to go do some damage control.
"Tavish Finnegan DeGroot- "
It was too early for this. Early for him anyway, though when he found Mum it was clear she'd been up for hours, tersely informing him that she didn't plan their breakfasts together for idle chitchat. Nor their lunches. Nor the dozen other meetings and tailor fittings she managed to cram into the scant few hours he was actually awake per day, to the point where he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually had a moment to himself that he hadn't carved out through guile.
"I'm sorry Mum," he said, trying to cut her off before she worked herself into another heart complication. "I slept through the morning."
"I had Erwina check your rooms and she couldn't find hide nor hair!"
"Aye, I was…in the gardens."
He was banking on the fact that Mum wouldn't have thought to send Erwina there of all places, and the lie could go unchallenged. Based on the twitch in her jaw, that seemed to be the case. A gamble not without losses though. His only other place of solitude. He'd have to be more careful when sneaking there for clandestine swordplay in the future.
"Bah," she said, facing the outer curve of the sun-drenched balcony, knowing by the way the wind touched over her face. "Here he is this son of mine, drinking plum wine and sleeping in rosebushes, not a care in his head for the running of a kingdom."
"I don't run the kingdom," Tavish pointed out.
"You will. If you'd come to breakfast, you'd know Redmond declared you his heir last night."
It shouldn't have been surprising. And it wouldn't have, to anyone else—to anyone who hadn't been holding hope like a shield, as though if he just kept his attitude positive enough then suddenly the oncoming blade of fate would simply glance off and land on someone else.
He swallowed. "It's…his health has gotten that bad?"
"Ach, where have you been lad? I swear, head up in the clouds. You didn't always used to be like this."
The memory came back sharp and stinging, not because he hadn't thought about it recently, but because he was used to it being a silent scream inside his own head. Mum caught him off guard, telling him it was a real thing that the whole kingdom had lived through, not a nightmare of his own making. Every Scarlet had shook during that surprise attack on the eastern plains, when a swarm of Cerulean knights had renewed the war in earnest, bowing to treachery and making sure no family hadn't experienced at least some loss that day. It was the day he'd lost his father, the day he'd last seen-
"I dragged the tailor back by his ear," Mum's words shot through his thoughts. "He's rescheduled for later this evening."
"What do I need a tailor for?" Tavish said, still reeling, trying not to show his head was more in the clouds than even she thought.
"Because the Grand Ball is coming up, and it's our best chance to find you a wife. We need that settled before Redmond kicks it."
The acrid taste in his mouth renewed sevenfold. His hands tightened on the banister. "I'm already betrothed."
"Blood and spite Tavish, it's been thirty-two years , you're not bloody betrothed anymore. Now, like I was saying, these measurements should get you in at least a few outfits befitting a crown prince…"
Tavish stood there as his mother spoke, staring at the sweeping bend in the Hale River as it wound silver through the plains, trying not to let bile rise in his throat.
