Crownless Tyrant

The council hall was lit for a party and arranged for a trial, and Alistair understood the difference the moment he stepped through the doors.

He counted the room the way Aldous had taught him, without ever looking like he was counting anything at all.

Crane stood near the center, back among people after his week away. He was immaculate as always, smiling at everyone and settling into none of it.

Coren Thrace, the Sworn Hand, stood in the far corner with a cup he was not drinking from.

He watched the doors, the windows, and the exits with the flat, unbothered attention of a man whose only purpose was to be standing near Aldous when something finally went wrong.

Idris Hale, the Vow, lingered by the entrance with a slim ledger no one had asked him to carry.

However, Mira Solenne was not present at all, and Alistair found her absence more unsettling than her presence would have been.

The Scrivener of Final Judgment did not attend receptions. She stayed at her desk and waited for other people to walk in and hand her the names.

Aldous Blackwood stood by the far wall with a cup in each hand, grey at the temples, unhurried, speaking to no one, and simply waiting.

’He is not going to pretend he has not seen me. That is not how he works. He is going to let me feel him deciding when.’

Seeing this, Alistair became Tobian Marrow entirely.

He accepted a cup he would not finish.

He let a council woman introduce him to two people who forgot his name at once.

He spoke of dead kingdoms to a man who wished only to speak of himself, and he agreed with every word the man said.

In every way that showed, he was the least important person in a room whose entire purpose was importance.

After a few moments, a council man cornered him near the wine and talked at length about the eastern trade routes.

Alistair listened with the earnest attention of a man who found trade routes fascinating and had nowhere better in the world to be.

"You are the scholar the Wreath keeps," the council man said, not unkindly.

"I am a scholar the Wreath tolerates," said Alistair. "There is a difference, sir, and I feel it keenly every day I stay under his roof."

The council man laughed and moved on into the crowd.

Alistair let his eyes travel the room once more under the cover of that laugh. Coren Thrace had not moved an inch. Idris Hale had opened his ledger, written something, and closed it again. Aldous was still by the far wall, still holding both cups, still speaking to no one.

’He is letting the whole reception happen around him. He does not need to work the room. He already knows the one conversation he came here for, so he is waiting for the hour when interrupting it would look like nothing.’

The reception moved through its first hour like a slow tide going out.

In the second hour, Aldous crossed the room.

He did it without any signal that he was doing it, simply setting down one conversation and beginning to walk. He arrived at Alistair’s shoulder with both cups still in his hands, as though he had been carrying the second one all evening for exactly this.

"Master Marrow," said Aldous.

"High Justicar." Alistair inclined his head the small distance a nervous scholar would. "You honor me. I did not expect to be noticed in company such as this."

"I make a habit of noticing the men no one else does," said Aldous. He held out one of the cups. "They tend to be the ones worth the trouble."

Alistair took it.

"I have been thinking about your father’s journals," Aldous continued, lightly, watching Alistair’s face over the rim of his own cup as he took a slow sip. "You mentioned them once. Field notes, you said. From a man who traveled the eastern reaches and wrote down whatever he saw."

Alistair’s grip tightened around the cup, then loosened again before it could reach his face.

’I never spoke a word about journals to him. I said it to Crane, months ago, in passing, on a night I was certain nobody was listening. Yet he has read Crane’s reports so closely that he can hand me my own sentence back and make it sound like a gift.’

"I did," said Alistair. "Such as they are. My father was not a careful writer, sir. Half of it is weather, and the other half is the price of horses."

"The careless ones are often the honest ones," said Aldous. "A careful man writes down what he wishes he had seen, so I would rather read a fool who told the truth. I would like to see them."

"They are hardly worth a High Justicar’s evening."

Aldous smiled, and the smile was warm, and Alistair trusted it less than anything else in the hall.

"Let me be the judge of that," said Aldous. "Come to my office. The day after tomorrow, the hour after sunset. Bring the journals, or bring none of them, since it makes no difference to me either way. I find I would rather speak with a man somewhere the room is smaller and the wine is a good deal worse."

Alistair let Tobian Marrow hesitate the correct amount, then lower his head.

"I would be honored," he said.

"Good." Aldous drank the last of his wine and set the empty cup on a passing tray without once looking at it. "Be on time, Master Marrow. I have very little time to spend, and I have never cared for a man who could have simply arrived when he said he would, yet chose instead to make me wait on him."

Following that, he walked away, unhurried, back into the party as if nothing at all had passed between them.

Alistair stood with the untouched wine in his hand and did not drink it.

Across the hall, in the far corner, Coren Thrace had finally turned his flat and patient gaze away from the doors and the windows. He settled it, for the first time all evening, on Tobian Marrow, and he did not look away again.

Alistair was honestly unsettled.

Alistair understood the message, since it was the only message the Sworn Hand ever bothered to send. Aldous had made an invitation, and Coren had quietly set the cost of refusing it. A man could say no to the High Justicar’s office and the hour after sunset. The man in the corner was the reason no one ever did.

’He wants me to know the office will not be empty. Even if my eyes find only Aldous across the desk, this one will be somewhere close, and this one does only the single thing he is very good at.’

Alistair raised his untouched cup a small degree, a scholar politely acknowledging a stranger’s notice.

Coren did not raise his back.

He only kept watching, and somewhere beneath the noise of the party, Alistair felt the two days he had left begin to run out.