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—The Book of Mortal Law, Tract 90
The afternoon whiled away in a sunlit haze. After eating, Lore made Gabriel give her a tour of the Citadel—somewhat difficult, as he hadn’t spent significant time there in years, but their shared unfamiliarity almost made it better. Two interlopers in a thick fog of luxury they didn’t belong to. When thoughts of Bastian and what he might or might not know loomed in her mind, Lore thrust them out, behind that wall of trees Gabriel had helped her grow. She needed time to make a plan, to frame her possible compromise to August in a way that wouldn’t land her in a cell.
She also needed distraction, and Gabriel obliged. Their wanderings took them through gilded halls with soaring painted ceilings, celestial scenes scabbed with glittering chandeliers. One room was full of nothing but statuary, gleaming marble bodies caught in sword fights and kisses and dances. Another room, circular and made almost entirely of glass, held a reflecting pool with a fountain in the center and rose petals floating on its surface. They didn’t spend long there—a handful of courtiers lazed around the pool’s edges, and more than one was swimming in it, naked as the day they were born. Gabe’s cheeks turned scarlet beneath his eye patch as he turned on his heel and marched back into the hallway. Lore managed to swallow her laughter until they were far enough away from the door that none of the courtiers would hear it.
After that, entirely by accident, they ended up in a library.
The Citadel was a study in opulence, dripping excess in every corner, but this was the room that really made Lore’s jaw drop. The library had three levels, all of them visible from the bottom floor—balconies ringed the walls, accessible by small, polished-wood staircases set into the shelves. All three levels were filled to bursting with books, glowing in the gentle light through the solarium window above. Small chairs upholstered in brocade were grouped in various places on all levels, ready-made reading nooks that held no readers.
“There’s got to be buckets of gold in here,” Lore breathed. “Do you know how expensive books are?”
“I do.” A scowl darkened Gabe’s face. “All that money, and hardly anyone here reads.”
“No one, really? What a waste.”
Gabe shifted uncomfortably. “Bastian used to. When we were children. He read voraciously.”
“That’s surprising.” Lore trailed her hand over the top of the nearest chair. The fabric was down-soft and silky, far too fine for furniture.
“He’s not stupid,” Gabe said. Then cocked his head, amended. “Well. He is, but not in a books way. Just a general-common-sense way.”
Lore chewed the corner of her lip as she wandered over to one of the shelves nearest the door. In true Citadel fashion, it appeared to be full of erotic poetry. “You two seem to know each other well.”
“Better than I’d like.”
“Were you close, when you… when you spent time here?”
Gabe paused before answering. When he did, it was quiet. “We were. Bastian and Alie and I were thick as thieves.”
Were. The past tense had a heft to it. She and the grumpy monk were probably the closest thing to a friend the other had, now. Wasn’t that a kick in the ass to think about.
Lore idly pulled a book from the shelf, flipped through the lurid illustrations. “Were your parents close, too?” Her context for childhood friendships might be skewed, but from what she’d seen of other, more normal childhoods, it seemed like most of them were initially predicated on parents being friends.
Another pause, longer this time. She probably shouldn’t have asked, not when the subject of parents was such a fraught one for Gabe, but she found herself almost insatiably curious about him. Gabriel Remaut was a mess of contradictions, opposites all knotted up into one man, and she wanted to pick the knots apart.
“Our fathers were too busy for friendship, it seemed,” Gabe said. “But our mothers were. Friends, I mean.” He rubbed absently at his eye patch. “Bastian’s mother, Ivanna, grew rather sickly after Bastian was born, and couldn’t often leave her apartments. My mother and Alie’s—her name was Lise—would take us over there to spend time with her, let us run wild with Bastian while they talked and drank wine.”
“That sounds nice,” Lore murmured.
He shrugged. “The three of them were—well, not outcasts, but they didn’t really fit into the court. Alie’s mother was as Auverrani as anyone else, but she had the look of her Malfouran father, and that made some ignorant courtiers treat her differently. My mother wasn’t rich enough to be part of the upper crust—Balgia was such a small duchy, never very profitable, nearly insignificant but for the fact it was a holdout between Auverraine and the Kirythean Empire. And Ivanna was so quiet. People tried to get close to her, since she was the queen, but she didn’t seem interested.” His mouth flattened. “August was not kind to her.”
Gabe turned away abruptly, making a show of perusing the books on a different shelf. Since that one was also erotic poetry, Lore assumed it was more to end the conversation than out of any real interest.
“What was your mother’s name?” she asked after a long stretch of quiet.
“Claire,” Gabe murmured. “Her name was Claire. She died when I was eight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” A pause. Then, softer: “But I’m glad she went before everything happened with my father. I’m glad she didn’t have to see it.”
Lore glanced back at him. Gabe’s shoulders were tight beneath his dark doublet, his hands clasped behind his back. One hand faced palm-out, showing the candle inked across life and heart lines. The wick reached the base of his fingers, the meat before the knuckles covered in a semicircle of lines to imitate light. The candle’s base started right at his wrist, detailed with lumps of melted wax. She wondered how much getting that needled into him had hurt.
Probably not as much as losing his eye.
His hand lifted, rubbed across the one-eyed face she couldn’t see. “By every god buried or bleeding, I’m tired.”
He said it so quietly, she wouldn’t have heard if she wasn’t studying him. Gabe kept his exhaustion and his anger and everything else he felt packed tight and stowed away.
