SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The room they were given was smaller than the chamber below the Atrium and far less polished.

A side consultation room, most likely, the sort Aurevane used when officials needed to speak privately without granting anyone enough comfort to linger. A narrow table, two chairs, pale walls, a sealed window, and a ward plate near the door that hummed faintly with privacy restrictions. It was not luxurious. It was practical, and after the black-glass chamber with the elven homunculus standing inside a containment circle, practical almost felt insulting.

Selara waited until the door closed behind them.

Matteo had barely turned before she spoke.

”You lied to me.”

The old scholar’s fingers tightened around the head of his cane. He did not flinch, but the words struck him hard enough to peel the old polish from his face.

”I did not intend to lie to you, Selara.”

”But you did.”

”It came out that way,” Matteo said, voice rougher now. ”I gave you what I knew, and I shaped it badly. That is different from betrayal.”

Selara’s ears were still red from the chamber. The color had not faded, and neither had the pressure behind her calm. ”You gave me smoke. Vague answers. You told me enough to sound concerned, enough to sound wise, and very carefully avoided giving me anything I could use. Now you stand in that room and say my master is the only answer to that creation.”

Matteo’s mouth pulled tight. ”Because now I have seen it with you.”

”You had not seen it before?”

”I had seen the chamber from outside. I had heard the worshipful whispers, the committee language, the little lies men use when they want to feel brave near a locked door. I knew Aurevane was hiding something grand and rotten. I did not know it was him.”

Selara watched him without blinking, her face too controlled for comfort. ”You expect me to believe that?”

”I expect you to remember that I hate that bastard almost as much as you should.”

That cut through the air with more honesty than elegance.

For several breaths, neither of them moved. The privacy ward purred at the edge of the room, soft and expensive, a polite little machine preventing raised voices from becoming gossip. Aurevane had thought of everything except shame.

Selara stepped closer to the table, but did not take the chair. ”If you knew why I am looking for him, you would understand how dangerous your half-answers were.”

Matteo’s attention sharpened. ”Why are you looking for him?”

Selara gave him nothing.

His face hardened. ”Of course. You ask for every truth I have, and when I ask for one in return, you lock your mouth.”

”This is bigger than your guilt and my history with him.”

”That is a useful sentence when one wishes to say nothing.”

”You taught committees for thirty years, Matteo. Do not complain when someone gives you one of your own tricks back.”

A bitter sound left him, almost a laugh and not enough of one to survive. He dragged one hand over his face, old fatigue cutting deeper lines into him. When he lowered it, some of the arrogance had retreated. Not gone. Matteo di Ravelle would likely take arrogance to his grave and argue with the soil on the way down. But something in him had shifted.

”I did not know,” he said. ”I suspected a hidden hand. I suspected Aurevane had found something it wanted to wrap in ribbons before anyone had the sense to call it monstrous. But I did not know he was here. If I had known, Selara, I would have found him before you ever crossed that hall.”

”For what? To stop him?”

”To make sure he could never stand behind another locked door and call it research.”

Selara’s fingers flexed once.

Her master’s voice still lived somewhere in her memory, correcting her calculations, mocking the softness of ethical limits, praising her only when her work became difficult enough to satisfy him. She hated that the chamber had brought him back through technique before his body had even appeared. The asymmetry of the artificial heart. The incomplete bloodline mimicry. The vessel shaped like an elven child with a designation instead of a name. Every piece had spoken in his handwriting.

”You called her a thing,” Selara said.

Matteo’s brow furrowed. ”The homunculus?”

”She has the shape of a child.”

”She has the shape of many things because she was made to have them. That does not make her a person like the races walking this continent. She is an artificial construction, Selara. A vessel grown by alchemy, shaped by bloodline imitation, guided through mana structure. You know the difference better than anyone.”

Selara’s expression did not change. That was what made Matteo stop speaking.

When she answered, her voice was quiet enough to make the privacy ward feel unnecessary.

”That excuse is exactly how he got this far.”

Matteo’s fingers tightened again.

Selara continued, each word measured. ”A vessel. A structure. A body without proper origin. A controlled response. A pain function deemed unnecessary. A designation instead of a name. Do you hear yourself, Matteo? You are speaking his language and pretending disgust makes you innocent of it.”

His face lost color by degrees.

”I am not him.”

”Then stop reaching for his words when something living stands in front of you and makes you uncomfortable.”

The blow did not make him angry this time.

It found something softer. Older. Some place under the pride where the man who hated her master had also admired him once, argued with him, learned from him, excused things because brilliance made excuses fashionable among cowards who liked to call themselves rational.

Matteo looked toward the sealed window, though there was nothing outside worth seeing.

”She did not react,” he said at last.

”No.”

”She did not understand us.”

”We do not know that.”

”She may never understand anything.”

”Perhaps. And perhaps she was made that way because understanding would have made the room harder to praise.”

Matteo closed his mouth.

That one stayed with him.

The old scholar lowered himself into the chair without asking permission. The cane rested across his knees, both hands curled over it. For the first time since Selara had known him, his age reached him faster than his pride could intercept it.

”If he is truly here,” Matteo said, ”I want to find him.”

”So do I.”

”For your secret reason?”

”For several reasons.”

He glanced up. ”Will you tell me any of them?”

”No.”

21:40

”You were always difficult.”

”I learned from the best and corrected the method.”

Matteo pressed his thumb against the cane’s carved head. ”He will not come if you ask. He will not answer a formal summons. If Aurevane is sheltering him, they are either too proud to understand what they have allowed, or too invested to admit it. But there are old routes, old messages, old phrases he would still recognize.” ”Can you reach him?”

”I might.”

Selara leaned over the table. ”Might is not enough.”

”It is all I have before I know how much of the old arrangement remains. If he built that homunculus, he will not be far from it. Men like him do not leave their favorite sins unattended.”

Selara absorbed that. A line from the chamber returned to her: the creator’s conditions. Observation only. The rule had not been caution. It had been possession. Her master was protecting his work. Possessive men could be lured through what they refused to release. Selara straightened.

”Then get me a meeting with him.”

Matteo’s head lifted.

”Selara—”

”You said there are routes he might answer. Use one.” ”If he comes, it will not be somewhere public.”

”I know.”

”If he suspects a trap, he will not come alone.”

”Then make sure he believes it is not a trap.”

Matteo studied her, and for the first time since the chamber, he looked genuinely uncertain of which one of them had become more dangerous with age.

Selara held his attention without softening.

”Get me a meeting with my master, Matteo.” Her voice dropped into something colder than anger. ”And do it before Aurevane puts that child on a stage.”