"Manufactured or not, it is landing." His head angles by a fraction. "There are houses that would move on that, regardless of its origin."
"There always are. What do you recommend?"
He thinks visibility, controlled demonstration of authority, and the careful management of what information leaves the estate is reasonable. But I have done them before. I listen, agree, and leave him with the distinct impression that I am satisfied with the conversation. I'm not.
It's not anything he said. It's what's underneath, I haven't located it yet, but sits hidden in my awareness the way the grevhault's print had sat. I walk. That helps, sometimes. Moving through my home instead of ruminating.
I stop at Vuldren's door first. The room is sparse, and I go through it efficiently, but find nothing that shouldn't be there.
Malrec's guest chamber is two doors further. He has been housed in the west wing since his arrival. The room is well-appointed and well-used. He keeps a writing desk near the window, which tells me he works regularly, and the surface of it is clean.
I find correspondence inside the second drawer. Not hidden. Placed as though it belongs. Perhaps it does — perhaps he expected no one to look. There are three letters. Two are trade-related and uninteresting. The third is addressed to House Eldren, and it has been drafted but not sealed.
I read it once. The letter's language isn't speculative. That is what stops me in the corridor — not the content itself, but the confidence of it. Malrec is not proposing a theory. He's confirming one. My name appears twice. Not as a lord under threat — as the source of one. The phrasing is settled. The letter does not prove coordination. Not yet. But it proves intent, and intent is enough to make a man dangerous.
I put the letter back, and leave the room. I don't have enough yet to move on it. The outline of what he is building, I can't act on draft accusations.
I turn the corner to find Elowen. She has her satchel over one shoulder, moving toward Nyssara's room, dressed, composed, and slightly rumpled. I don't stop to talk to her. I don't have time right now. She watches me pass, and the weight of her eyes is across my back.
Dinner resolves itself without incident.Mirelle has arranged the settings as she always does — each object placed in a calming order — and everyone eats in the usual arrangement.
Elowen sits near the fire, speaking with Fenra at intervals. Fenra glances between us with a brightness of someone who's noticed something she finds very interesting, and says something that I don't catch it. Elowen's expression doesn't change, but the back of her neck does. Fenra smiles at me, but makes no effort to conceal, and I continue to eat.
The second time Elowen's eyes are on me, it's long enough that I understand she is assembling something. I give her nothing.
She finds me outside the library after, like she was waiting. "You've been elsewhere since this morning."
"I have been managing the estate."
"You've ignored me all day." She waits for me to respond, and when I don't: "Say what you need to. I will receive it better than silence."
The library is behind me. I rest my hand against the doorknob.
"Attachment is exploitable," I reply. "Every betrayal I have survived here — and there have been enough that I know the pattern — began with something that mattered to me becomingvisible. The moment something becomes something you would sacrifice judgment to protect, it becomes a tool that other people can use against you."
Elowen's posture fractures. "And you've decided I'm that thing," she's not really asking, she already knows.
"I've decided that someone else may have reached that conclusion before I did. Which means I need to think carefully before that costs either of us something we cannot recover."
She analyzes me. Not with hurt — with that specific, searching attention she turns on evidence she isn't sure she's reading correctly. "Someone did that to you before," Again, not a question.
I don't answer and she doesn't press. She takes it in thoroughly.
"All right then."
She walks away from me, and I watch her disappear until I can't see her anymore. Inside the library, Malrec's letter comes to the surface of my thinking. Tomorrow I will finish finding what I need to.
Tonight, I'll let the knowledge sit, and move back through the manor to where the maps are, and where I can begin working.
13
ELOWEN
Icome out of the tree line when I see my home. The south wall has given at the base, the wattle split open in a long diagonal tear, and it's settled on its broken side. The thatch over the west corner is gone entirely, and the pale morning sky shows through the gap where the roof used to be.
Inside is worse. The north wall and the main beam are holding, but the jars are across the floor, a mosaic of ceramic shards and dried herbs and rendered fat pooled. The worktable is still upright. The single chair is on its side, and the window above the preparation shelf is gone — frame and all — leaving a ragged-edged hole.
My papers are all over. That's the part that stops me. I have three years worth of notes. Transcribed journal entries, pressed specimens, observations on soil composition, moisture variation, and how certain root systems respond to prolonged wildspont exposure. I keep them in a box beneath the worktable, sealed to avoid them getting damp. But the lid is off, contents out and distributed across the floor like someone has worked through the pile methodically and discarded what they didn'tneed. The earliest notes are furthest away. The most recent — the last two months — are missing.
