Abaddon's Call

Chapter Fifty-Four

Selifer entered the library as several Kaulu left with a librarian between them. He slipped up to the desk as Magi Yole grunted and reached under the desk, producing two glasses and a silver bottle capped in dragon glass. He poured the iridescent liquid into the two glasses and handed one to Selifer before picking up the other.

"You've made it to the halfway point. That is not nothing."

"Not for me," Selifer muttered to his glass. "Jasor was staring at me at the ball, so Theon walked me out."

"If anyone comes, you head directly to bed," Magi Yole said, taping the side of his nose twice as he gave Selifer a look.

Selifer sipped the drink with a sigh and nearly choked it back into the glass. The stuff burned all the way down and then through his nose as if he inhaled it instead of drinking. When he finished coughing, he leaned on the desk and gave Magi Yole an accusing look.

The man smiled and sipped his own with a remarkable lack of choking.

"The Seven arrived," Magi Yole said. "Why?"

"To announce the betrothal of their heir and a Salord bastard dressed in the family's colour."

"Oh, do tell. Did Salord shit himself with rage?"

"No, he didn't seem to care either way," Selifer said with a shrug as he picked up his glass once more. "Which is... odd. Salord and Pan should be foaming at the mouth right now. They should be accusing the other of arranging this all to undermine them. Yet, nothing."

"Lord Pan has spent the last twenty years bringing about a new era, he says," Magi Yole responded. "Murder is down. Hazing results in fewer accidental deaths. Seven suicide has lessened by nearly half. Rape and petty crime have been reduced almost entirely. I suppose, at some point, the shield families and the Seven would follow suit."

"There's been a remarkable lack of torture of new shields."

"Breaking in apparently now means training with words, and perhaps a wet rag twirled to give them a smacked bottom when they step out of line. Kaulu's response to Naena was the harshest. However, it was still lessened compared to what it, perhaps, should have been. Naena made an heirloom vanish, and no one has retrieved it, yet the girl walks about unhindered. Why?"

"Pursuing their normal methods of breaking in a shield wouldn't be appropriate."

"Trild holds control over the representatives, for the moment. The man is, yes, I believe, one who would solve such a problem with his cock. He is not above seducing a body and leaving it high and dry. Or high and wet in this case. Whatever would have stopped him from pursuing her to the edge of the world? Mutual respect for her sword?"

"He's been poking Graydon all year."

Magi Yole was quiet for a moment. In that quiet, Selifer took a very small sip of his drink and swallowed it. He winced at the flavour but didn't choke.

"I have seen this method before," Magi Yole muttered. "Trild is attempting to draw Graydon's ire. Once enraged, an heir activates their coin, steps into a secured room and lays out the offender. Nothing can be spied upon, no matter how strong the magic, because the heir's rage deals with everything else. The Kaulu representative has a private, very secret message that he is attempting to deliver to the Pan heir."

"Why?"

"Trild might throw his weight behind Pan, but Drune still thinks Andle can take the title Lord of the Seven."

They both laughed and shook their heads.

"They also announced—"

"The ladies will be respected as the lords, yes," Magi Yole said, lifting an official notice. "Signed by Lord of the Seven and each of the lords and ladies. For the benefit of the librarians, I suspect. Another has been dismissed, this time for how he has treated the ladies in the past. Quite dismissive. How uncomfortable a conversation for me that I had not known."