Chapter Text
The assembled Soltryce faculty eddied in chattering clumps around the meeting table. Essek adjusted his float upward, aware of several pairs of eyes fastened on him. Suspicious or merely curious? No matter.
He scanned the room quickly from a greater height. Ah, there was a flash of red, was that – no. That was a human man with a touch of what the locals called ‘ginger’ to his hair, but he was far too old. Essek concluded with a frown that his quarry was not here. Would he be late? Or absent? It was a mandatory pre-term meeting, but then again Essek had the impression that Caleb Widogast did what he pleased.
The problem with temporarily being one of the tallest people in the room was that it made him easier to spot. Uludan beckoned to him as the faculty began to settle, bent on continuing to play tour guide and babysitter. Headmaster Margolin was, appropriately, at the table’s head. The foot remained vacant, and Essek saw more than one person look at it and then move on to somewhere else.
He pretended not to see Uludan, made a bet, and pulled out the chair next to the vacant seat at the foot. The bustle subsided to quiet murmurs and the shuffling of parchments.
“Ahem,” Margolin said, unnecessarily tapping his water glass. “Let’s get started, shall we?” He flickered a look at the door, frowning.
Still no Widogast. Damn. Essek had plenty of time to run him to ground, but he’d expected to make contact today. He’d even prepared several social gambits alongside his spells that morning.
“Yes,” Margolin continued with a sour set to his mouth. “Let’s not waste any more time. We have several new faces this year.” Almost everyone looked at Essek, though he knew for a fact there were at least two other newcomers. “Let’s have a round of introductions. You all know me.” He smiled unctuously. “So, let’s start with you, Elizabette.”
Essek didn’t give a damn about 99% of the faculty, but composed himself to sober attentiveness. He was rewarded during the fifth introduction – newly-minted professor of enchantment, terrible elocution – with the opening of the door.
The faculty meeting room was a long, rectangular space on the fifth floor of the headmaster’s administrative tower. Both long sides were lined with windows. Essek had chosen the lesser of evils and was sitting in shadow but facing the bright afternoon sun. His dark-adapted eyes began to water as he squinted into the dazzle.
A human came in. All Essek could see for a moment was a person who appeared to blaze, haloed by the sun and a prismatic smear from Essek’s suffering eyes. Then he stepped into shadow and yes, this must be him: the Archmage of Domestic Protection, the Dwendalian Firebrand, Caleb Widogast.
His hair wasn’t just red tinted, as that other human’s had been. It was red, to such a degree that Essek felt obscurely offended by it. Widogast was the paler beige variety of human, with striking blue eyes. The enchantment professor had stumbled to a halt during his introduction; Widogast gestured him on with a flick of the hand, making a visible effort to produce a smile. It didn’t seem to be a natural expression for his face.
His beard was also red. How was that at all reasonable?
Essek’s bet paid off, as Widogast came to the foot of the table. He dropped an unseasonably heavy purple coat on the back of his chair. A waft of sharply cold air seemed to have come in with him; he must have teleported from somewhere with an entirely different climate. Essek looked as long as was polite while Widogast settled himself. Most everyone else was staring outright. Widogast had a book tucked under each arm, secured with leather straps. What an odd affectation.
Introductions stuttered back into motion. It was Essek’s turn after another three people.
“Shadowhand Essek Thelyss,” he said, dipping his chin briefly to the assemblage. “Visiting for the academic year from the Kryn Dynasty.” And what a fortuitous chance that was. It had never occurred to him to try to arrange such a thing, but he’d leapt to volunteer when the idea was tentatively mooted about court. Now here he was, far from home, plagued by sunlight, and sitting mere feet from the man who had murdered Ludinus Da’leth, single-handedly wrecking Essek’s chance to advance the great work of his life.
He passed the social baton to Widogast. Widogast acknowledged him with a brief nod, and said only, “Caleb Widogast. I take the introductory survey course and Topics in Advanced Transmutation,” as if he were merely a professor.
Margolin took the floor again once introductions were done. Most of the matters he brought to the table weren’t relevant to Essek as a guest lecturer. Widogast, to whom they were relevant, listened with all appearance of attentiveness but did not take notes.
He stirred only once, eyes narrowing as Margolin casually referenced some sort of excursion he was planning with selected students in their final year. Widogast cleared his throat, and Margolin paused.
“Yes, Master Widogast?”
“There will be no student trip to your cabin this year,” Widogast said. He had an interesting voice. A little raspy, best suited to quiet speech.
Out of the corner of his eye, Essek saw Uludan shrink down in his chair as if to make a smaller target. Margolin, on the other hand, puffed up in outrage.
“I have conducted this trip every year for decades,” he said. “It is tradition. The students consider it quite the honor.”
Widogast let him speak, blank faced, then simply said, “No.”
Margolin opened his mouth, then gave a barely noticeable flinch, and shut it again. “I see,” he said, through audibly gritted teeth. A flush – of fury or humiliation – rose in his cheeks.
Widogast kept those disconcerting blue eyes on him for several long ticks, apparently waiting to see if further challenge would need to be put down. Then he glanced away, attention snagged by something farther down the table. “Yes?” he asked mildly.
“Um,” said one of the younger human professors. “Sorry . . . does that go for all off-campus trips, or . . .?”
“Ah,” Widogast said, visibly recalling something. “You took small groups to observe and practice component harvesting, ja? I heard the students speak of it.”
“Yes?”
“Come see me about it, please. I see no reason why you should not continue, provided there are adequate measures for student safety. It’s a good idea,” he added.
The professor looked gratified. Margolin, on the other hand, appeared furiously constipated. There would be no invitation to further discuss his plans, apparently. Because they didn’t meet Widogast’s standards of a good idea? Or because Widogast enjoyed humiliating him in public?
“Thank you for your input,” Margolin said, like chewing on broken glass. “Moving on.”
As the meeting ended, Essek braced himself for the ordeal of conversing with a stranger. He turned fully to Widogast, trying not to appear rushed but to engage his attention before anyone else could cut in.
“Hallo,” Widogast said agreeably, looking directly back at him out of those striking eyes. Even his lashes were red, for the Luxon’s sake.
“Shadowhand Essek Thelyss,” Essek said again, extending a hand in imperial style. Widogast took it; his hand was strikingly hot as Essek had discovered was common to humans, and notably rough. No exfoliant soaks and overnight creams under gloves for this one.
“Welcome to Soltryce,” Widogast said, shaking briskly and extricating himself to stand. Essek did as well, so as not to be loomed over quite so much. Widogast did a slight double take as Essek floated around the corner of the table. He’d clearly noticed the invocation of the cantrip, even if he couldn’t see Essek’s feet under his robes.
“I was wondering if I might beg a few minutes of your time,” Essek said, folding his hands together under his mantle. “I have some questions about the running of the school.”
“Hmm.” Widogast glanced briefly over his shoulder. Essek didn’t have to look to know that Uludan was hovering somewhere close. Widogast looked back to Essek, one eyebrow faintly arched, and Essek had the impression that the man was giving him full attention for the first time. “Certainly,” Widogast said. “I am hard to pin down these days, but I have a few minutes right now, if you don’t mind walking with me? Ah –” he stopped himself, glancing at the bank of windows. “My apologies, will the daylight trouble you?”
“Not at all,” Essek lied. The Dark Umbrella spell he’d been so proud of developing was already proving not nearly as perfect a solution as he’d thought. But needs must.
He gestured Widogast on ahead, ignoring Uludan calling his name. Surely Widogast would like to be preferred over the other archmages he seemed to so entirely disdain. Also, Uludan was a pompous fool, and Essek’s patience was flagging after less than a day.
Widogast went down the stairs quickly, at the pace of a man with a hundred places to be. Essek collected Verin from a post against the wall at the base of the tower; Widogast held the door for them, then watched in blatant interest as Essek cast his Dark Umbrella and extended it out to his side for Verin with a gesture like pulling taffy.
“Ah,” he said, squinting at the curved cap of absolute darkness over them. “Clever. Though what do you do about the glare?”
Essek gritted his teeth. That was, in fact, the major weakness in the spell. He had honestly not spent enough time in sunlight to understand the ways it seemed to bounce off even unreflective surfaces, if bright enough.
“Suffer,” Verin said, before Essek could open his mouth.
“I’m working on it,” Essek said repressively, resisting the urge to stomp on his foot.
“Ah.” That seemed to cheer Widogast, for some reason. “Ja, it is always good to have something to noodle on. I’m heading this way, across campus to meet a friend. Have you gotten the full tour?”
Essek fell in step with him, prepared to begin the tedious, delicate work of sounding out whether Widogast was amenable to continuing his predecessor’s transnational espionage efforts, all under Verin’s watchful, patriotic eyes. Difficult, but he’d done more difficult things for lesser stakes.
It did not go well.
Widogast was an attentive, thoughtful conversationalist, or at least Essek suspected he might be from the few sentences they managed to exchange in the course of a fifteen-minute walk. It was difficult to conclude much of anything about him, though, other than the fact that he was ridiculously sought after. They were interrupted no less than six times along the way, with regularity that was nearly comedic by the end.
Students came first. Widogast smiled benignly upon the group of chattering adolescents who wanted to tell him of their summer adventures. “From my introductory course last year,” he confided to Essek once they had moved on. “It was my first time teaching it, good to see I did not entirely scare them off.”
There was no smile for the next young human who stepped into their path, his head ducked and shoulders folded in upon themselves.
“Ach, good,” Widogast said, shaking hands formally with him. “Your parents received my letter? I am glad. Come see me in office hours, ja? We will talk.”
He did not offer any context to Essek, but watched the young man’s retreating back for some time as they walked away, a distinctly pensive turn to his frown.
Next came a human woman with a mass of curly blonde hair twisted messily back off her face and a quill stuck behind her ear. Essek’s sense of human ages was tenuous at best, but he thought she was a bit older than the others had been. She got a grin and a hug, both warm, and an invitation not to office hours, but to dinner two days hence, and then an introduction to Essek, which none of the rest had yet rated.
“Anya is doing some fascinating post graduate research,” Widogast said to him. “Ask her about it sometime when you want your mind bent a bit. And on the side, she is my long-suffering teaching assistant.”
She walked with them briefly, quizzing Widogast about his daughter – a “hellion,” apparently – and whether he had seen any seagoing abominations recently – bafflingly, he had.
“Anyway,” Widogast said as she split off from them. “Sorry about that. Though she is a good one to know. You were saying –” and then their fourth interruption arrived, and his face slammed from friendly to all the receptiveness of a winter cliffside.
“Master Widogast,” said the professor who met them at an intersection of paths. She must have taken another route from the administration tower; Essek recalled her face from the meeting, though not her name or specialty. “May I have a moment?”
“Just one,” Widogast said, his voice so neutral, it was eerie.
She glanced quickly at Essek, and stepped closer. “Your protegee has withdrawn from my advanced seminar,” she said quickly. “Miss Felene. She expressed interest to me at the end of last year, but she is not enrolled.”
“Is that so?” Widogast took a step, clearly not intending to entertain this conversation. “It sounds like you should take that up with her, should you be interested in her welfare.” For some reason, that innocuous statement made the professor flinch where she stood.
“I thought I’d take it up with you first,” she said, visibly rallying herself. “In the event that you had directed her withdrawal.”
“I did not,” Widogast said flatly.
There was a beat of silence, and Essek could see her fighting the urge to retreat. “You wouldn’t have to,” she said rapidly as Widogast took another step. “She would do just about anything, if she thought it’s what you wanted.”
Widogast stopped in his tracks. Essek caught only the edges of the look he gave her. It made the air crackle unpleasantly.
“I apologize, Bren,” she said quickly. “That was poorly expressed of me. I did not mean to imply . . .”
“If you have concerns regarding her choices,” Widogast said, and the mildness of his voice held a scathing undertone now, “I, again, suggest you take them up with her. She deserves to hear your reservations directly, nein? Good day.”
Essek kept in step with him as he strode away.
“My apologies, Master Thelyss,” Widogast said, not looking at him. “Academic politics.”
It had looked like a great deal more than that to Essek, but he said only, “I taught some, at the Marble Tomes.” He tried to inject friendly commiseration in his voice, but either he didn’t succeed or it didn’t land, because Widogast was silent for several more paces before reviving their prior conversation with visible effort.
Less than two minutes after that, a gnome approached them, coming the opposite way on the path at a determined pace. He started to step around them, then glanced up, saw Widogast, and stopped in his tracks to stare. Essek had been schooling himself to become accustomed to the gawking and whispers that had followed him across the campus, but this person did not even look at him.
“Widogast?” he said, in an accent Essek was unfamiliar with.
“Ja?” Essek saw Widogast’s hand slide into his coat at the same moment Verin’s hand dropped to his glaive.
“Good.” The gnome squared up to him. “They said I’d know you by your hair.”
“Can I help you?” Widogast asked. He wasn’t casting, but Essek could tell he was prepared to make a strong showing in any quick draw that might arise.
“Yes. I want a dick. I hear you can help me with that.”
Widogast blinked once. “I, uh,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “I’d say buy me dinner first, but I suppose I also ought to get your name?”
The gnome grinned, flashing white teeth in a dark brown face. “Zev,” he said, sticking out a hand. “And I didn’t mean like that. I mean I want one of my very own. Yussa Errenis said you’re the guy to see about that.”
“Ah!” Widogast looked enlightened, and shook his hand. “That I can do. Did Yussa give you a sense of what’s involved?”
“Some.” He bounced on his toes. “I’ll do whatever I need to. And I can pay.”
Widogast waved this away. “It’s more the components that are tricky,” he said. “And time,” he added ruefully. “Look, I’m about to be late. Do you know where Brenatto’s Alchemicals is?” He gave rapid directions to a shop off campus. “Ask for Veth, tell her I sent you and what you want. She can walk you through it, and she knows how to reach me.”
Zev nodded, rapidly noting down the directions. “Thank you,” he said. “I, uh. Your friend. She has relevant experience?”
Widogast nodded. “Ja. Though not in the same way as you intend. She, ah. Ask her about it, but the short version is, she used to be a goblin. Now she’s a halfling.”
Essek finally caught up to the sense of this conversation, and tried very hard not to let his jaw drop. He knew what this was, how the upper reaches of power in an unfamiliar school of magic could provoke startlement and awe at what was possible. It had happened to him a few times in his life. He had just not expected it here and now.
Zev trotted off determinedly at Widogast’s direction, and Essek grabbed onto this new conversational opening with genuine interest. “What spell does that?” he asked. “Remakes an entire body? I presume permanently?”
“It is permanent, yes.” Widogast continued walking, hooking his hands in his coat pockets with a boyish duck of the head. “And it’s just a little something I noodled up for a friend. There is a higher order spell that can function similarly, but I still prefer mine to True Polymorph for these purposes, for esoteric reasons.”
Essek blinked. “May I ask about the mechanics?”
“Oh, certainly,” Widogast said, untroubled. “I can show it to you, if you like, though if you do not have a deep background in transmutation, it may be somewhat difficult to follow.”
“I don’t,” Essek said truthfully. He generally had no time for any school other than dunamancy and, sometimes, necromancy or divination. “But I am interested in the frontier of arcane research.” He looked directly into Widogast’s eyes for that, hoping the hint would land, but couldn’t tell if it did.
“Aren’t we all,” Widogast said. Before he could continue, yet another woman strode up to them at a rapid clip.
“Yo,” she said, and punched Widogast in the shoulder in what Essek belatedly realized was some sort of violently friendly greeting. “’Sup?” Her eye fell upon Essek and Verin, and she seemed to recognize them immediately. “One of you is a Kryn wizard,” she said, wagging her finger between the two of them. “Gosh, do we think it’s the tiny, stringy one or the big, cut one? So mysterious. If only wizards were more subtle.”
“Beauregard,” Widogast said, in long-suffering tones. Then to Essek, “This is Expositor Lionett, who holds a senior position at the Cobalt Soul. Though it may be hard to tell,” he added pointedly.
“Yeah yeah.” She stuck out her hand to Essek. “Call me Beau. Is this guy showing you a good time?” She jerked her free thumb at Widogast.
“It has certainly been interesting,” Essek said truthfully.
“I apologize,” Widogast said to him, once introductions were complete. “Beauregard and I are on a tight schedule today, but you did not get a chance to ask any of your questions.”
“Indeed,” Essek said, glad Widogast was doing the work for him.
Widogast pondered, squinting as if consulting an internal calendar. “Are you free for dinner on Folsen? It will be a full table, but we can fit two more if you don’t mind a bit of a ruckus.”
“I don’t,” Essek lied.
“Excellent.” Widogast rotated on the spot and pointed unerringly at one of the towers of the Candles, visible from all over the city, probably. “That is me. It’s the one with a tree on top, you can’t miss it. Drinks are at six, but we don’t stand on ceremony.”
“We will see you then, thank you,” Essek said, bowing. Widogast returned it, then acceded to the Expositor’s insistent bouncing on her heels with a put-upon sigh and a wave.
“Right,” Essek said quietly to himself, turning around to walk all the way back across campus. They made it only a quarter of the way before he grew tired of the stares and opted to Teleport them directly into their guest quarters instead.
*
That night, after an interminable dinner with Uludan, Verin knocked on Essek’s door with two glasses of wine and a neutral expression. He’d broken into the case of fine plum wine Essek had brought to gift around to best advantage. Essek considered taking him to task for it, but he was too tired.
Verin sat down on the small sofa next to him, glancing briefly over the Lens files spread out on the table. He said nothing, but gave Essek a silent, penetrating look with a raised eyebrow. Essek sighed, cast See Invisibility, and looked carefully around the room for scrying eyes or other intrusions. He’d gone over the whole guest house carefully when they first arrived, but it was good to check again.
“Speak freely,” he said, blinking to clear a dunamantic haze from his eyes.
“You gonna tell me what we’re doing here?” Verin said.
Essek gave him a flat stare. “I’m sure you were paying attention during at least one of the many briefings we had regarding this endeavor.”
Verin rolled his eyes and slumped down inelegantly. “Not that cross-cultural communication, trade routes, scoping out the new powers that be, blah blah blah.” He dismissed all of the Dusk Captain’s intricate reasoning with a lazy wave. “I mean why you’re here.”
“Again,” Essek said wearily. “The briefings. I refer you to them. I took notes, should you require a refresher.”
“Of course you did.” Verin sipped at his wine, then spun the glass dexterously between two fingers. If Essek tried that, wine would go everywhere. “The way I see it,” Verin said, talking to the opposite wall, “you haven’t voluntarily gone anywhere but your tower or the Bastion in nearly fifteen years. And from what I hear, you weren’t tapped for this, you volunteered. So, either you have some angle here that wasn’t in my briefings, or you’re having a massive personal meltdown that you’re trying to fix with a road trip.”
Essek pressed his lips together, weary and irritated. Showed what Verin knew. Essek had, in fact, voluntarily left his tower and the Bastion on multiple occasions in the past few years. He had left the Dynasty, thank you very much, which was more than Verin could say. Of course, Verin never would have met with Ludinus Da’leth in three brief, carefully orchestrated face-to-face conversations to demonstrate their mutual commitment to a shared goal.
“Neither,” Essek said, before the silence could get too long.
“Yeah, okay, sure,” Verin said. He sounded like this conversation was going exactly as he’d thought it would. “Just give me an obvious cue if I’m supposed to be doing something here. I really can’t read your mind these days.”
“I shall be excessively obvious,” Essek said, as insultingly as he could.
Verin, irritatingly, did not take offense. That was one of his best, and worst, qualities. “By the way, am I attending or watching at this dinner of Widogast’s?”
“Attending,” Essek said. Far better to have Verin’s attention divided. He paused, calculating. “And let’s not bring any of the others.”
“You sure? That guy took out four archmages, which I happen to know is like taking out four you’s, since I was paying attention at the briefings.”
“Hmm,” Essek said noncommittally. No harm in letting Verin in on a sliver of the truth. “I am partially here to get a read on him. That is a lot harder to do with somebody hulking over my shoulder.”
“Plus, you really want him to show you his cool trick,” Verin said.
“His – oh.” Essek scowled at him. He actually did want that, was the thing. It wasn’t his area, but the creative application of power was intriguing. “Go away,” Essek said loftily.
“Kay,” Verin said, kicked vaguely at him just to be a nuisance, and wandered off.
Essek returned to his reading. He’d requested and received copies of Lens files on all the sitting Assembly members. It was good information to have, and making the broad request concealed the target of his true interest.
Widogast’s file was frustratingly patchy. It was believed with moderate confidence that he’d been a Soltryce student himself. It seemed like a reasonable assumption to make, though no agent had been able to obtain documentation of the fact. More interestingly, it was believed that he’d been one of Ikithon’s hand-picked protegees, and a highly-placed one. Ikithon had carried on the tradition of deep wizardly paranoia, so surveillance upon him and those around him was generally unsuccessful. Now that Essek had met Widogast, he found it both explicable and amusing that the sturdiest piece of evidence the Lens could provide for Widogast’s association with Ikithon was that damn hair – there were multiple reports of a man kept close in Ikithon’s company with such coloring.
Then the vague information ran out into nothing. Widogast stopped appearing in Ikithon’s company sometime in 829, give or take, when he’d been in his mid-twenties. Likely before the birth of his child, but the Lens was not certain of that. No information was available on his whereabouts or doings until 832, when he popped up in connection with a mercenary group making a name for itself in the Empire and along the Menagerie Coast. Information was readily available on some of the group’s exploits – extricating King Dwendal’s second son from a dangerous entanglement with smugglers, for one – but there were significant gaps.
The Lens had reason to believe that the group maintained ties with senior Augen Trust operatives. Widogast trading on his former position under Ikithon, surely. Had he defected to a rival organization? Either way, the mercenaries and the Trust both had fingerprints all over the wholesale destruction of a crime ring running all the way from Shadycreek Run to Uthodurn.
And then, with no apparent warning, Assembly archmages began dying. DeRogna first – the entire mercenary group was implicated in that, far to the north – and then, in one bloody Rexxentrum night, Ikithon, Iresor, and Da’leth. Widogast was credited with all three kills, but there was no particularly compelling evidence other than gossip about the Dwendalian court.
Widogast was installed in Da’leth’s role within the month. Astrid Becke, the mother of his child, stepped into Ikithon’s place. Iresor’s seat was filled six months later by a half-elf of middling abilities but excellent connections. DeRogna’s position remained vacant.
Some cloud of unsavoriness hung over the whole business but, astoundingly, it did not seem to stick to Widogast, the author of all the violence. He was certainly not universally liked. Indeed, if Essek were any judge, some of his fellow archmages were terrified of him. But he had the king’s ear, for what that was worth, and he appeared to be widely popular amongst imperial common folk.
Essek did not know what all of that added up to yet. Impressive luck or truly impressive deviousness, surely.
Essek hoped, for his own sake, that it was the latter. Widogast had wrecked Essek’s plans, mere weeks before execution of them. Stealing a beacon, let alone two, had not been his first choice, but he had seen the necessity of it. Enjoyed the planning of it, once he’d turned his mind in that direction. If Widogast could slot himself into Da’leth’s place in those plans, well, that was the very least he could do.
*
There was, indeed, a tree on top of Widogast’s tower. It was large enough to see from streets away, and Essek saw multiple people walking with heads tipped far back to gawk. He did not make such a display himself, but it was curious. He found it hard to believe Da’leth had chosen that, so Widogast must be responsible. A strange choice of redecoration. Essek felt he ought to be able to conclude something from that, but couldn’t put it together.
Their knock at his tower door was answered by a human man dressed all in black with a sword at his hip. He eyed the two of them in silence for a long moment, nodded to himself, and beckoned them in.
“Hi,” Verin said cheerfully. “Shoes off, or . . .?”
“Off,” the man said, looking vaguely annoyed at having to speak to them. He took their cloaks, then tapped the hilt of Verin’s blade. “Nope.”
“Aw, come on,” Verin said, trying for charm.
“Nope.”
Verin flickered a look at Essek, who tipped his head in acquiescence. Verin was good with a blade, certainly, but he was also proficient hand-to-hand. And they both knew Essek was the true threat here. Interesting that Widogast’s guard dog was also not demanding that Essek surrender his focus or his components, which Essek would have refused.
They were led up three flights of stairs to a large open space, already occupied by half a dozen people. A child’s voice could be heard even before they made the last turn on the stairs, but Essek saw at a glance that the small, halfling boy wasn’t Widogast’s. Indeed, their host was nowhere in evidence.
No sooner had Essek realized this than a prickle of arcana tickled his fangs and Widogast Teleported directly into the room, arm-in-arm with his Cobalt Soul colleague, and late to his own party, apparently. They were also accompanied by an older, dark-skinned gnome, whose eyes swept the room at once and landed on Essek.
“—keep wading through shit to get there, is all I’m saying,” the Expositor said, stepping away from Widogast. “Baby! Hi.” She crossed the room to engage in a startlingly intimate reunion with a tall woman of striking coloring. Widogast turned on his heel, counting heads, and spotted them at the top of the stairs.
“Hallo,” he said, striding over. “Thanks for coming. Sorry, we got held up. Has Wulf made introductions?”
He conducted them politely around the room. Essek cataloged the guests for further consideration, and watched Widogast out of the corner of his eye. He found himself very quickly struggling to quantify the relationships at play. The man at the door was Eadwulf Grieve, Widogast’s annex. He stayed within a few steps of Widogast, eyes watchful. There was a warmth in Widogast’s smile of greeting to him that was notable. And then a tall – why were all these Empire people so tall? – pink-haired Firbolg wearing an apron ducked in from the next room, and Widogast introduced what Essek initially assumed to be a servant with equal warmth and clear regard. The Lens file made only passing reference to Widogast’s former mercenary companions, and Essek hadn’t known to dig further. He recognized Clay’s name, and Lionett’s, come to that, and made a mental note to Send for more background.
The gnome was Oliver Schreiber himself, whom Widogast referred to only as an advisor to the king, rather than the role Essek knew he held within the intelligence service. Schreiber was apparently not staying for dinner. He seemed on cordial terms with most people present; he shook hands with Widogast upon departing, and suffered a strange fist knocking ritual from Lionett with a tolerant smile. What an interesting trio they made. Their organizations were historically prone to quietly warring with each other, but Essek read the ease between them as genuine.
“Chin up,” Schreiber said to Widogast as he left. That made the corner of Widogast’s mouth tip up approximately two degrees. This was only the second time Essek was meeting him, and he was already sure Widogast’s face defaulted to a sort of tired sorrow.
The teaching assistant they’d previously encountered was there, along with her young man, who looked a bit wide-eyed in the company. Then there was a halfling family. The husband was an alchemist, the wife, when asked, said her occupation was “blowing shit up,” and the child climbed Widogast like a monkey until Widogast plucked him up and dangled him upside down for a solid minute while the adults chatted. Children of that developmental stage would not have been permitted in mixed company in Den Thelyss; Essek hadn’t had occasion to think on it, but he was beginning to see the wisdom in the policy.
Lionett had retreated behind a bar at the end of the room. This reminded Essek to present Widogast with a bottle of plum wine as a host gift. It was interesting to see him squint in apparent incomprehension at the Undercommon label. Da’leth had been fluent, but then again, he had more time for such pursuits than a human would. How humans got anything at all done in the time they were allotted remained something of a mystery.
“Oh, nice,” Lionett said, taking the bottle once Essek translated. “Best served at room temperature, right? I know you want some,” she added to Widogast.
She poured for the five of them, including her partner, who it turned out was Xhorhasian, though not Kryn.
“You get to keep your sword,” Verin said, admiring her enormous blade.
“Go a few rounds with one or both of us at the next pit fight,” Lionett said. “Then you can keep yours.”
That was an interesting approach to personal security. “Pit . . . fight?” Essek asked.
“Yep. It’s what it sounds like. There’s a pit. You fight in it.” She handed a glass to Widogast, and the two of them clinked rims. “To surviving another day of this shitshow,” she said to him, and he saluted her, then sipped.
“Ah,” he said, pleasure suffusing his face. It softened the line between his eyebrows and the smudges of deep tiredness under his eyes.
Essek surveyed the room while Verin gleefully inquired further about this pit fight ordeal – “What rules are in play? Really, none at all? Excellent!” The furnishings were eclectic and colorful; at a quick glance Essek found it all too loud and not to his taste, but he supposed it had a certain homey charm. There was a low shelf of children’s books and toys at the other end of the room, which was where the halflings had retreated, but there was no sign of Widogast’s child herself.
Essek had taken some pains with his dress and grooming. It was his opinion that it was impossible to be overdressed for a dinner party, and he knew he looked good in an asymmetrical dark teal silk tunic over a white high-necked shirt. Verin had, without being asked, dressed several notches down from him in black. The only other person in the room who appeared to have made a similar effort was the teaching assistant’s date. Who, Essek suspected, was also new. Widogast himself may have been smartly turned out that morning, but whatever he’d done all day had crumpled his white shirt and left chalk dust on his knuckles.
Widogast excused himself briefly, taking his glass and his annex with him. When he returned a few minutes later, he had changed out of his creased clothes and into trousers and a dark blue sweater, with that ridiculous hair clipped up off his face but left loose down the back of his neck. He was in the process of coming across the room to Essek when the Firbolg called the company in to dinner.
There were no seating cards. Essek secured the seat at Widogast’s right after a tense half minute of maneuvering. Lionett ended up on Essek’s right, and Veth Brenatto across from him. Her child stayed in his chair for only the first five minutes of dinner, at which point he slithered out of sight under the table. Essek glanced down with some alarm at the feeling of swift passage by his knees , but Widogast didn’t miss a beat when the child popped triumphantly up into his lap. He just tucked the unpredictable creature in the crook of his arm and proceeded to share his dinner.
The food was unexpectedly excellent. Essek tended to dislike the fussy minimalism of formal dinners, but either the Empire did it differently or Widogast did. The mushroom soup was notably pleasing, and the dark bread had a complex bitter undertone he’d never experienced. Widogast, when complimented, merely shook his head and pointed down the table to his Firbolg companion. Cook? Housekeeper?
“It’s all him,” he said warmly.
“There’s extra of everything,” Clay said, sending the bowl of grain salad down the table.
“We’re missing three,” Widogast explained to Essek. “They ran into some trouble last minute.”
“Jess said they’ll be here next time,” Lionett chimed in. “We do this every two weeks,” she added for Essek’s benefit. “Keeps this guy from becoming too much of a sad sack when his kid isn’t here.”
“Why do you float?” the halfling child said abruptly, staring at Essek.
That topic, somehow, lasted nearly ten minutes, though Essek was not entirely sure how or why. It had been a very long time since he’d needed to explain that to anybody, and Verin’s interjection of, “it’s because he’s short,” was supremely unhelpful.
“Don’t mind them,” Widogast murmured to him. “They haze everybody. It’s harmless.”
Essek sincerely doubted that – pit fights? – but he smiled politely and asked Mrs. Brenatto to pass the wine.
The table was what the Umavi would have called “lively,” in that backhanded way of hers. Conversation flew thick and fast, with little consideration to seating arrangements and absolutely none to social hierarchy. Essek still couldn’t get a handle on that. Widogast sat at the head of the table, but his teaching assistant’s date had ended up at the foot, so did that signify? And no one deferred to him, nor did he seem to expect them to. Indeed, Lionett made it her habit to cheerfully insult him to his face. Widogast bore that with good grace, and occasionally flicked a dry comment back her way with a little spark of mischief in his eyes. Grieve did not speak at all, but Essek thought that was per his own preference, not an interdiction from his master. And he had relaxed his close watch of the newcomers to sit halfway down the table and eat with everyone. Essek was doubly glad he didn’t have Verin looming silently over his shoulder. That would have been a definite misstep, he could see now.
He and Verin were both corrected several times, with varying degrees of courtesy, to use first names. Essek wished he was a little more familiar with Empire customs. Da’leth had extended the offer of his first name years into their correspondence, during their second face-to-face meeting. Did this easy permission mean anything, other than a general lack of regard for formality?
Dessert was a lush coconut cake with a chocolate ganache and, delightfully, a bowl of candied manta bugs. Essek had resigned himself to missing some of his favorite indulgences not to be found this side of the Ashkeepers. He couldn’t do anything about the longing for his personal library, but the crunchy sweet-umami bugs were a delightful surprise.
“I get them for Yasha, I know a guy,” Beauregard confided. “It’s nice she’s not the only one who likes them this time.”
“I don’t mind them,” Widogast -- Caleb said, and took one to crunch. Essek strongly suspected he did it purely to provoke the awed and horrified reaction he got out of the young halfling. So much excitement over a bug.
They retreated to the great room after dinner. It turned out that Caleb was correct, Anya Brexen’s research topic was delightful and mind-bending. Essek spent half an hour asking her increasingly complicated questions about the subtle but strange effects she could measure on the weave as the result of increased electromagnetism. He had no idea what it would be good for, but interesting all the same. Unfortunately, she and her date had to depart early due to planned travel in the morning, which left Essek briefly at loose ends.
When he glanced around, it was to see the halfling child sound asleep on the rug, a three-dimensional wooden puzzle of a horse partly assembled beside him.
“Ah,” Essek said, and drew Caleb’s attention with a gesture. “Is that . . . expected?”
“Entirely.” Caleb made eye contact with the child’s mother, and the two exchanged hand gestures across the room. “He always does this. I’ll tuck him upstairs until they’re all ready to go home.”
He did that, and the party noticeably changed tone upon his return. Beauregard rather aggressively interrogated the newcomers on their preferences in mixed drinks, then retreated behind the bar to make everyone a custom cocktail. Essek ended up with a lovely grapefruit concoction with heavy Campari flavors.
“Good?” she demanded.
Essek was not sure what would have happened to him had he said no. Luckily, he did not have to lie.
He ended up sitting on a bright blue sofa, talking to Veth’s husband about alchemy.
Caleb wandered over and sat on the rug at their feet, interjecting the occasional comment and sipping on something dark that smelled strongly of bourbon.
“Not the same sort of evening you had with Uludan, I’d hazard to say,” he said to Essek, demonstrating that he was keeping an eye on Essek’s doings. Or Uludan’s?
It was an excellent opportunity. Most people liked nothing more than to hear you disliked the people they disliked. “This evening is far more convivial,” he said. It was even true, in its way. “I find him somewhat . . . tiresome, I’m sorry to say.”
“Ah,” Caleb said, and toasted him with his glass. “A man of good sense.”
“He doesn’t hold you in high regard, either,” Essek said, tipping his head and fibbing a bit. Uludan had been deeply cagey upon the topic of his fellow archmage, even when pressed. “I wouldn’t gossip, but I imagine this is no surprise to you.”
“Ha, no.” The expression that crossed Caleb’s face then was startling. Grim, rather wolfish. “He lived because he is generally too interested in hedonism to be useful for any work of substance,” he said conversationally. “Knowing that has rather upset his comfortable little worldview.”
“I see,” Essek said faintly. The calm talk of murder should not surprise him, and yet it did. He cleared his throat, deciding rapidly not to pursue that topic. Not yet. “You and I seem to have similar tastes, then. I wonder, who would you recommend to me as a dining companion?”
“You’re looking at them,” Widogast said frankly. “Though, if you mean on the faculty? Yes, there are some good minds there. Let’s see. There’s an illusionist – Barnier. It’s not at all my field, but she’s a favorite of the students for a reason, she makes it come alive.”
Essek was able, with only gentle promptings, to extract what sounded like frank assessments of several more faculty members. He had no real intentions of pursuing others socially – what would be the point? – but the insight into Caleb’s thinking was helpful. He seemed to admire pedagogical skill quite a bit, which was not something Essek had ever given thought to. If you knew, then surely you could teach? The rest of the party wandered over, chipping in a few opinions here and there.
“And there’s the new one,” Beauregard said. “Divination, you said?”
“Ja, I don’t know much about him,” Caleb said. “Well, aside from the fact that he has beautiful cheekbones.”
“Oh, my gods, stop being a giant skank,” Beauregard said. Essek did not know that word.
“He is not,” Grieve put in, startling the entire party by speaking for the first time in over two hours. “He’s an incorrigible slut.” He knew that one, though.
This made Veth cackle, Beauregard say “Ugh!” and Caleb shrug unconcernedly. “That is one of my better qualities, ja,” he said.
“Hang on.” Beauregard poked at him with her toe. “Did Margolin not consult you on the hiring?”
“He did. I vetted resumes, but I wasn’t available for interviews.” He gave her a significant look. “That was in Unndilar, when we were fucking off to Pearlbow every five minutes.”
“Oh, right. Well, as long as he’s not putting a toe out of line.”
Essek saw an opening and took the risk. “Margolin being another archmage who lives on your sufferance?” he asked lightly.
This got him the interested attention of most of the room. Caleb tilted a hand in the air and said, “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” at the same time Veth said, “Fuckin’ right he is.”
Caleb opened his mouth to say something else, and Essek was quite interested to hear what it was going to be. But then he paused and tapped his temple, holding up the other hand. He listened for the length of a Sending, inhaled to reply, then let his breath out on a quiet laugh and listened again. “Good to hear, my friend,” he said after a moment. His voice was soft, his smile softer. “You were all missed tonight. I assume you would have said if anyone was injured. Be well, see you soon.”
“When are we getting the band back together to deal with that whole thing?” Veth said, as if carrying on a conversation with Caleb’s absent interlocutor. She came over and leaned on Caleb’s back, hooking her arms over his shoulders and planting an absent kiss on his temple.
Looks were exchanged around the circle; it took Essek a moment to realize that it was specifically the present members of this Mighty Nein group who seemed to be silently communicating something.
“You’ve all been waiting for me, I know,” Caleb said, sounding regretful.
“We are not going without you,” Veth said at once. “You don’t go, I don’t go.”
“She’s right,” Beauregard said, briskly cutting off Caleb’s response. “We’re down major firepower without you. We’re gonna need Big Blue for this, probably. And it’s not like you’re sitting on your thumb over here – we’re fucking busy, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Caduceus came back into the room just then. Essek didn’t know what it was, but there was something about him that made him appear to be meandering whenever he went anywhere.
“Hot tub’ll be ready in a minute,” he announced.
“Ooh.” Veth swiped Caleb’s drink and downed the dregs of it. “Good call. There’s room for everyone,” she added, looking to Essek.
“Ah, I didn’t bring any swimwear,” Essek said.
“Nah, just strip down, everyone does it.” Beauregard bounced to her feet.
Absolutely not. “I think this is where I bid you goodnight,” Essek said, to a chorus of groans. He endured the teasing that followed. He was almost getting used to it.
“I do owe you a spell, though,” Caleb said to him, pushing to his feet. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“And I have one to offer in exchange,” Essek said. He’d brought a copy of Fortune’s Favor folded up in his wristpocket, thinking perhaps the two of them could indulge his favored dinner party strategy and sneak off to the nearest library. But it just hadn’t happened.
“Oh?” Caleb looked pleasingly intrigued.
“Something you’ve never seen before,” Essek said confidently. And if he had, well, wouldn’t that be an interesting tidbit. Da’leth had known it, after all.
Caleb looked genuinely torn between new spellwork and naked cavorting with his friends and colleagues. It was baffling, honestly.
“Perhaps we could make some time this coming week?” Caleb said. “I can do after bedtime on Miresen. Around 8 or so,” he added off Essek’s blank expression.
“I look forward to it,” Essek said, and bowed. “Thank you for your hospitality, Archmage.”
“It was my pleasure, Shadowhand.” Caleb’s return bow was precise and angular, in Empire style.
“Have fun in the hot tub,” Verin said, patently wistful. They headed down the stairs together, hearing a rush of footsteps and laughter retreating above.
Grieve saw them out, returning Verin’s glaive in silence. Was he invited for the naked hot tub cavorting, too? It seemed likely.
Essek waited until they were several hundred feet down the road before he quietly said, “Impressions?”
“First impression: you’re a buzzkill,” Verin said promptly.
“I shall take it under advisement,” Essek lied. “Anything else?”
Verin walked in silence for a moment. “He’s dangerous,” he said eventually.
“Let me rephrase,” Essek said. “Do you have anything useful?”
It was this, for some reason, that actually got under Verin’s skin, like most things didn’t. He gave Essek a cool look and said, “He is very loved. I don’t know how useful that is to you, but there you have it.”
Essek swallowed. A feeling he didn’t understand sat heavily in his throat. Verin was correct. Widogast was many things, some of which remained mysterious. But Verin’s description encapsulated everything Essek had found particularly puzzling or unexpected throughout the evening. That had not been a political dinner, that had been a gathering of friends who loved each other fiercely, often rather meanly.
“Don’t come with me on Miresen,” Essek said.
Verin’s look cooled several more degrees. “Speaking of not being useful,” he said. “That is specifically what the Dusk Captain instructed I am not to do.”
Essek looked back levelly. “I’m here. She’s in Rosohna,” he said.
Verin visibly thought about defying him for half a block, then gave in all at once. “Fine,” he said. “But if you end up getting murdered and causing an international incident, I’ll go home and fuck up every single book in your library. I’ll draw in them,” he added, with vicious relish.
*
After the lesbians and the Brenattos were gone, Caleb puttered around the kitchen and the great room for a while, tidying up with the aid of an unseen servant. He needed staff, this was not a surprise. At least one live-in housekeeper and cook, according to Beauregard, who would know how rich people did such things. He’d put her off so far by claiming that not having help was an excuse for why he didn’t entertain lavishly and often like the de facto head of the Cerberus Assembly was supposed to. In reality, the thought of bringing a stranger into this home, such as it was, made his skin crawl.
When a minimum standard of order had been achieved, he went all the way up the spiral stairs, past the single other floor that had been converted for his use, past eight additional floors of Da’leth’s laboratories and guest quarters and his startlingly ascetic master bedroom, and out onto the roof. It was 1:29 in the morning, and the moons were both waxing. Caduceus stood at the base of the tree, smiling gently to it or to himself, both hands planted on the bark. Wulf sat nearby, a book open in his lap but his eyes on the sky. Caleb had found the two of them in similar circumstances many times. He knew for a fact that they mutually considered each other quite good friends by now, which was remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that he had never, not even once, observed them speaking a word to each other.
Wulf let him pace the border of the roof all the way around twice, and then met him on his third circuit. “How was Vergesson?” he asked, speaking Zemnian the way he always did in private.
Caleb shrugged. Vergesson had been quiet, and orderly, and a hellhole from start to finish.
The surviving Volstrucker were, for the most part, accepting of the change in management. Less so of the change in goals and methods, but it continued to be true that if he and Astrid pulled in the same direction, they would follow. The potential failure points in that system were numerous and catastrophic.
The rest of the Volstrucker, those of his former siblings in arms who were not so accepting of change, well. Most of them were accounted for now, one way or another. Not all, yet. For the ones who still lived, there was Vergesson, and an ever-expanding decision tree of the sort of awful ethical questions that Bren had, once upon a time, never needed to consider. Caleb, considering them now for well over a year, regularly made himself nauseous to the point of vomiting over them.
Nine floors below him, Leni’s empty room ached in his consciousness like a missing tooth.
“The Shadowhand is interesting,” he said to Wulf, who nodded. Beautiful, too, in his fine clothes and artfully applied cosmetics. Something about him reminded Caleb of Abeah, a Volstrucker who had vanished on an assassination job in Port Damli six years ago. She was extraordinarily beautiful. And she knew it, of course, and harbored a quiet, profound disdain for anyone who noticed. Which was to say, everyone. Caleb’s instincts sensed something of that disdain in Essek, though he hoped it sprang from different sources. He’d looked so appalled at the prospect of taking his clothes off, it had made Caleb want to lean in and nibble on the lobe of his pretty plum-colored ear until he shivered and sighed and acquiesced.
That was one way of figuring out his angle. Bren’s way, certainly. The problem was, it was sometimes Caleb’s way, too.
There was a chasm inside him, with the wreckage of a person on each side. Caduceus did not like it when Caleb conceived of his inner landscape that way, but no other metaphor had ever wrung as true.
He thought, some days, that he was getting pretty good at being Caleb Widogast, at least most of the time. Caleb Widogast was incomprehensibly rich in friends; Caleb Widogast had a daughter, a fact that could still make him reel like he had the moment Wulf had told him nearly two years ago. Caleb Widogast had voluntarily installed himself atop a black powder keg and had been juggling fire for over a year, because someone had to do it.
Caleb Widogast was clumsy in loving and being loved, in parenting his daughter, in juggling fire atop a powder keg. Caleb Widogast regularly vomited for no reason, or didn’t sleep for days, and occasionally fell back into the blank gray void in his mind. But nothing unsettled him quite like the places where Caleb Widogast and Bren Aldric Ermendrud were the same person.
He glanced over at Wulf. Tempted, for the hundredth time. He could say, come to bed with me, just to sleep. You know I hate sleeping alone. And Wulf would. Wulf had done everything Caleb had asked of him and then some. Wulf, too, hated sleeping alone.
But no.
Quitting Astrid and Eadwulf did not feel like he’d assumed a breakup would feel. It felt more like what Veth did when she stopped drinking.
“Vergesson again tomorrow,” he said to Wulf, and stepped away to wish Caduceus a good night.