CHAPTER 32
POV - Azra'il
Turning up to breakfast with an agenda took a certain amount of skill.
It wasn't about what you said once you sat down. It was about how you sat. The angle of your shoulders. How you picked up your cup. The calculated silence of the first thirty seconds told anyone paying attention that this particular breakfast had a purpose beyond just breakfast.
Paul was a swordsman. Swordsmen read a room for a living.
He looked at us as we sat. Then at Rudeus gripping his spoon with the tension of someone rehearsing a speech in his head. Then at me.
"What are the two of you plotting?" he asked.
Rudeus opened his mouth.
"Let me start," I said.
Rudeus closed it, with the expression of someone who'd expected to be spokesman and got replaced before the first line. He looked at me. Nodded with the resignation of someone who'd worked out my version would be more efficient.
It was.
Lilia was at the table in her usual posture, serving bread with the precision of someone who'd learned to exist around family conversations without officially taking part in them. Her eyes, though, kept drifting to me with the particular attention of someone who knows something is about to happen.
"We want to talk about Sylphiette," I said, with the flat objectivity of someone laying out a case. "She has real talent in magic. Advanced in some areas, no incantation needed, learning speed well above average for her age. By the standards Roxy described to us for Ranoa Academy, she'd get in without any trouble."
"Roxy said the academy's the best place for anyone who wants to develop their magic," Rudeus added, seizing the opening. "She said herself she'd have gone sooner if she'd had the chance."
Paul was listening with the attention of someone who'd recognised the shape of the argument and was waiting for the difficult part.
"Sylphy's family can't afford it," I continued. "So we're asking you to consider helping with the cost."
The silence that followed had that quality of someone weighing several answers at once and deciding which to lead with.
Paul picked the one I hadn't fully anticipated.
"Money isn't my first worry," he said.
I looked at him.
"It's the dependency," said Paul, in the tone of someone who'd watched that dynamic long enough to have formed an opinion. "Sylphy relies on the two of you in a way that isn't healthy. And you, Rudeus—" He looked at his son. "You're building the same thing. The two of you together every day, and you already feel responsible for her in ways that shouldn't be a seven-year-old's job."
Rudeus opened his mouth with the look of someone about to argue.
"He's right," I said.
Rudeus looked at me. "You're agreeing with Father?"
"I'm agreeing with the argument. Those are different things."
"They're the same—"
"Rudeus."
He shut his mouth.
"The dependency is real," I said, turning back to Paul. "Which is exactly why the academy makes sense." I picked up my cup. "New environment. New people. Challenges that don't run through the two of us. If Sylphy goes to the academy, she'll meet classmates, teachers, situations that need her to sort things out without Rudeus or me at the centre of it. She'll come out more independent than she went in." I took a sip. "The same goes for Rudeus. The dependency runs both ways, as you said yourself. Pulling them out of the environment that created this dynamic is the fix, not the problem."
Paul was watching me with that expression. The one worn by a man who'd made an argument and got it handed straight back to him, reshaped into the reason for doing exactly what he'd been trying to question.
Rudeus was looking at me with a quiet admiration he was trying, and failing, to pass off as a neutral expression.
"That makes sense," said Rudeus, remembering he had a voice. "And it's not just Sylphy who'd grow up. I would too. The academy will show me things Vila Buena doesn't have. Mages from other countries, different techniques, perspectives I don't even know I'm missing yet."
Paul looked at his son with that expression.
"You rehearsed that," said Paul.
"I reflected on it," Rudeus corrected. "It's different."
"It's the same thing."
"It's an important distinction."
Lilia had stopped serving the bread. She wore the expression of someone watching something and still deciding how she felt about it.
"Financially," said Paul, falling back on his second argument with the air of someone who'd lost the first and knew it, "keeping two children at the academy is already a considerable cost. A third child with no family tie—"
"We'll work to make up the difference," said Rudeus. "The adventurers' guild—"
"No."
Zenith had appeared in the kitchen doorway with that skill of hers for being present in a conversation without being visibly present in it.
"I can bear the distance," she said, in the voice of someone who'd thought it through before saying it. "I can accept that you two need a bigger environment. I can support Sylphy going along too." She looked at me and at Rudeus. "But adventuring out in the wild, risking your lives, at seven years old?" Her voice had gone very quiet. "That isn't happening."
"Mother, we're already capable of—" Rudeus began.
"Rudeus." Zenith used the tone that didn't argue. "I can bear the distance knowing you're at an academy, studying somewhere safe. I cannot bear knowing you're facing monsters for money."
Rudeus went quiet.
[Zenith appears immovable on this point.]
〈I'd calculated a 40% chance of a veto. I was on the wrong side of that 40%.〉
[Bad luck.]
〈Precision.〉
"It isn't that I'm against you working," Zenith continued, gentler now. "It's that I want it to be safe. The two of you are clever enough to find income without putting yourselves at risk."
Rudeus nodded with the expression of someone settling for a compromise he'd expected to fight harder for.
Then Zenith looked at Rudeus with that smile. The one she wore right before saying something she knew would turn him bright red on the spot.
"Besides," she said, with the sort of studied casualness that wasn't casual at all, "I already thought of Sylphy as a future daughter-in-law anyway. So it makes sense to make sure she gets a good education."
Rudeus went red.
At the speed of someone hit from several directions at once with no warning.
"Mother—"
"I'm only saying what I've observed."
"I don't—she doesn't—we're just friends—"
"Call it whatever you like."
"That isn't—"
"Rudeus."
He stopped.
"Eat your porridge," said Zenith.
Lilia wore a very small smile she was clearly trying, and only partly managing, to hold back.
Paul had the look of a man who'd started breakfast with a clear position and ended up at a point where his wife was discussing a future daughter-in-law while his son died of embarrassment and his daughter drank tea with the calm of a neutral bystander.
[Paul is about to give in, in a way that still carries some appearance of authority.]
〈I know. It's the only move left available to him.〉
"Very well," Paul said, in the tone of someone who'd made a decision and wanted it understood that it was his to make. "I'll find work for the two of you. Something that pays and teaches real responsibility." He looked at me with that paternal quality of someone giving ground, but not entirely. "So you prove you actually want this, and not just when it's convenient."
"Fair," I said.
Paul looked at me. He'd expected some negotiation. My immediate agreement had arrived at the wrong point for the script he'd prepared.
"As for what's left of Sylphy's costs," I continued, "whatever the work doesn't cover, we'll discuss once we've seen the real numbers."
"You're seven and you're negotiating in instalments," said Paul.
"I have practice."
"In negotiation?"
"In general."
He looked at me with that expression. The one worn by someone who'd asked a simple question and received an answer that technically responded to it while saying nothing at all.
Rudeus had gone red-faced for long enough that he was ready to go back to his porridge. "So it's settled, then?" he asked, in the careful tone of someone checking the coast was clear.
"It's on its way," said Paul. "Settled comes after I find the work and you two prove you can hold it."
"I can hold it."
"You've still got a face like a tomato over one comment from your mother."
Rudeus turned red again.
Lilia stood up quietly to fetch more bread for no apparent reason beyond needing a moment away from the table.
[Lilia was smiling.]
〈I saw. Good to see her smiling.〉
Zenith stood in the kitchen doorway with that smile she had when things landed exactly where she'd expected them to. The look of someone who'd waited patiently for a result she already knew was coming.
I finished my tea.
It was a productive morning.