Aislin is standing at the far end of the group's cluster, slightly removed even from them, which is her architecture — always thelast body in the line, always the one with the view of everything. Her arms are crossed. Her chin is up at an angle that manages to communicate active hostility to an open-air gathering ceremony she has not technically been recruited into yet. Her dark hair is half-loose in the way it always is by mid-morning, pulled by whatever she'd done with it in the dark and never renegotiated, and she is looking at Drogath's attendants and then at the fire and then at the assembled clan with the expression of someone who was told this would be brief.
She looks like she was brought here against her will by a force she couldn't directly oppose, has identified every exit, and has decided to be magnificent about it anyway.
"You look like a man who's just seen something he can't stop looking at."
Kai. He's appeared at my left shoulder with a cup of something and the flat assessing expression he puts on when he's found something worth observing, which means he's already found it and I'm the something.
"I'm doing a perimeter check," I say.
"Of the east side of the gathering."
"That's part of the perimeter."
"It's one spot," Kai says. "Who are you staring at?"
"That's Aislin." Ressa, materializing on my right from absolutely nowhere in the way she does, which I have never gotten used to and will not be getting used to. She has a cup as well, the same as Kai's, and she is looking at the same spot I was looking at and smiling the smile she uses when she's privately delighted about something she's going to be mature about. "The one on the end. That specifically is Aislin."
"I know who it is."
"You were staring quite hard for someone who knows who it is."
I look at Falla, who has arrived from the direction of the fire and is standing with us now because apparently this is where everyone has decided to gather. He is watching the same slice of the eastern edge with the moderate interest of a man doing an attendance check.
"You told them about this," I say.
Falla takes a drink. "I may have mentioned, in the course of describing what the clan does and how it functions, that we observe certain festivals based on Drogath's research."
"You told them about the Valentine Rites and the Padraig's events." I look at the cluster of women, who are demonstrably here of their own interested volition. "How much detail?"
"Enough detail that Wren and Pell asked if they could come."
"And Aislin."
A brief pause.
"Aislin," Falla says, with the precision of a man who treats words like instruments and selects the right one, "was informed of the gathering. She was not specifically discouraged."
Ressa makes a small sound into her cup.
"What?" I say.
"Nothing." She is not quite hiding the smile now. "She came, didn't she?"
She did come. She came and she's standing there looking at the assembled clan of the Frostfang like they're a weather event she's decided to document rather than flee from, and her arms are crossed and her jaw is set and she ishere,at the edge of the lunar gathering, on this cold spring morning, because she decided to be. Because something in the calculus of the last two weeks landed somewhere that let her decide that. I know what I've put into those two weeks and I'm not going to be stupid about what that means, but I'm also not going to pretend it means nothing.
Saela has drifted over to the group's edge and is standing near Aislin in the way Saela stands near people she's decided to stand near, which is without announcement, which works on Aislin in the same way it works on everyone because Saela figured that out instinctively. Shae is with Wren and Pell and she's saying something that makes Pell lean forward, eyebrows up. Shae gestures at the ceremony table. Pell turns back to Wren and the lean doubles.
Aislin watches this. Her expression doesn't shift exactly, but there's a quality change in it — the hostility drops one register, and for one moment what's there instead is just watchful. Just taking in the information.
I am definitely still looking at her. This is definitely still a thing that is happening.
"Your competitiveness is going to make this complicated," Kai says, in the tone he uses when he's being helpful.
"I'm not being competitive."
"You're already calculating something. I can hear it."
I turn my head. He looks back at me. He has the expression he gets when he's been paying attention to more than he mentioned, which is constant, which is exhausting.
