Grieverkland

"You two go on ahead," Reiner said, waving them off as they rose. "I've got a business partner coming through tonight, of all inconvenient hours, and I'd rather not keep the man waiting on top of everything else."

"At this hour?" Ilsa raised an eyebrow.

"Southern trade doesn't run on a civilised schedule, unfortunately." Reiner shrugged, already reaching for another drink. "Go on. Sleep in something other than a brothel sofa, unlike me tonight, apparently."

"Good night, Reiner." Dorian clapped him once on the shoulder as they passed. "Try not to sign anything you haven't read twice."

"No promises," Reiner called after them, already grinning, already halfway back into the easy contentment of a man who genuinely didn't mind staying behind.

---

Outside, the mood at the gate had gone considerably looser than it had started the evening.

"—and so he says, no, officer, that's not my horse, I'm just standing next to it very intimately," Simon was saying, and the other three broke into real laughter, the kind that came easy after an hour and a half of standing around with nothing better to do than trade stories.

"That's not even a good joke," the driver said, still laughing anyway.

"It's not the joke, it's the delivery." Simon grinned, clearly pleased with himself. "You've got to imagine the officer's face."

"I'm imagining your face right now, and it's not helping the joke either." The broad man shook his head, though the corner of his mouth was fighting a smile of its own.

The substitute guard, loosened up properly by now, laughed along with the rest of them, and it was in the small lull after that — the four of them still chuckling, wiping at eyes, catching their breath — that he said, almost idly, not thinking much of it: "Funny thing, though. He'd looked off the last few nights before tonight. Pale. Slower getting up when his relief came. Didn't think much of it at the time."

Nobody responded immediately. The laughter didn't quite die, but it thinned, each of them registering the comment in their own private way and, for reasons none of them examined closely, choosing to let it pass rather than follow it anywhere. Simon's smile stayed on his face a beat longer than it needed to. The driver glanced briefly toward the door. Then someone said something else entirely, and the moment folded itself back into the general warmth of the evening, unremarked.

It was another few minutes before the doors opened properly and Dorian and Ilsa came through them, and the four guards straightened as one, the loose banter of the last hour tucking itself away behind the practiced composure the job required. "Evening, all," Dorian said, easy, unbothered by the shift.

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"Evening, sir. My lady." The substitute guard offered his farewell with a genial little smile, standing straighter now, and the four escorts said their own quick goodbyes on the way past him, already falling into step toward the cars.

The lead car bore the house crest freshly polished along its door — a tiger caught mid-leap, a slim blade driven clean through its shoulder, old iconography rendered new in chrome and paint — and Dorian and Ilsa settled into its rear seat while the guards split off into the two accompanying Maybachs behind it. The engines turned over with barely a sound, and the convoy pulled away from the gate at its usual unhurried pace, beginning the long smooth drive back out toward the estate.

Ilsa settled into the seat, relaxing into the leather the way she always did once the night's obligations were finally behind her, and it was a few minutes into the drive, watching the last of the city lights slide past the window, that something made her sit up slightly.

"He wasn't there tonight," she said.

Dorian glanced over. "Who?"

"The tall one. At the gate. The one who never says anything." She frowned faintly, turning it over. "There was someone else standing there instead."

"Probably sick," Dorian said, already half-ready to let it go the way most small observations got let go on a night this long. But he caught himself, because he'd learned, over the years, that Ilsa's small observations had a way of turning out to matter considerably more often than his own did, and instead he leaned forward and rapped once on the divider.

It slid down enough for Simon's face to appear, half-turned from the front seat. "Sir?"

"The gate," Dorian said. "The usual guard. Do you know why he wasn't on tonight?"

Simon hesitated, a fraction of a second too long, some private calculation crossing his face before he answered. "Substitute said he'd been looking rough the last few nights, sir. Pale. Slow getting up." He paused. "Didn't think much of it when he said it. Might be worth thinking about now, though."

Ilsa's frown deepened, something sharpening behind her eyes. "Rough, how?"

"Couldn't say exactly. Wasn't there to see it myself." Simon glanced between the two of them, and something in his voice shifted, hesitant now in a way it hadn't been all evening. "There was one more thing he mentioned, actually. Almost forgot it, with everything else — "

The divider buzzed faintly, some interference from the road cutting the last of his sentence into static, and Simon's mouth kept moving for a moment before either of them managed to make out a single further word of it.