Chapter 475: Masaka.
The silence that settled between them was not uncomfortable, exactly, but it had weight to it — the kind that formed whenever something valuable was suddenly placed on a table between two people who were trying very carefully not to look at it.
Arthur’s expression had shifted the moment the words left Nero’s mouth. The warmth that lived around his eyes when he talked about history or noble house scandals had gone somewhere distant, replaced by a measuring look that felt less like curiosity and more like calculation. He picked a stem of dead grass from the ground near his boot and turned it between his fingers without really looking at it.
"You want to learn sorcery," he said, and there was nothing accusatory in his tone — just the flat repetition of a fact being examined from multiple angles.
"I said I was curious about it."
"That’s a generous interpretation of what you said." Arthur dropped the grass stem, folded his hands over one knee, and tilted his head slightly, as though Nero were a piece of text he was in the process of translating. "May I ask why? Most commoners who discover the Church is actively suppressing their education tend to develop an interest in self-preservation first, and academic pursuits considerably later."
"I didn’t say anything about the Church suppressing—"
"You didn’t have to." Arthur’s voice carried no particular sharpness, only the mild patience of someone who had simply already followed a line of reasoning to its end. "A commoner who can read and discuss political literature, who shows disciplined restraint in a combat context where self-promotion would be the natural instinct, who listens more than he speaks in the company of people who outrank him — that is not a man who stumbled into literacy by accident. You sought it out, and someone helped you find it." He glanced sideways at Nero, something flickering briefly in those sharp features. "I am not accusing you of anything. I am observing."
Jacob, still seated on the gnarled root several feet away with his forearms braced across his knees, looked over at the two of them without bothering to mask his expression. "Arthur," he said pleasantly, "you are going to talk this man half to death."
"I’m establishing context."
"You’re stalling because you’re deciding whether to extort him."