SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

”By recovering what was taken from Aurevane, before someone else makes better use of it,” Roderic said.

Alfons frowned. ”Esmond.”

”Esmond,” Roderic agreed. ”And the homunculus.”

That word changed the room.

Noelia’s fingers tightened on the edge of her sleeve. Marielle noticed and pressed two fingers to her wrist, only warning her not to speak over the others. Noelia swallowed whatever question had climbed her throat.

Alfons saw it and hated that he understood the feeling.

”A homunculus?” he asked. ”That was in the reports?”

”An artificial being tied to Esmond’s work,” Elysette said. ”What we paid Aurevane was steep, but not for nothing.”

Roderic let the quiet pass only as long as it served him. ”The officials who spoke to us did not have everything. Fragments, names, a record of movement, ledgers with the worst pages burned. Enough to know Esmond is missing, and that the homunculus did not vanish by accident.”

Adrien shifted from the window. ”So someone moved them, and with care. Escorts, a route, coin changing hands quietly. That is not flight. That is a man who knew exactly what he carried.”

”Or hid them close,” Elowen said from the fire, ”and is counting on us to look outward first, the way we always do.”

”Both stay open until one of you closes it,” Roderic said. ”Which is why this family will not wait for Aurevane to tidy up its own embarrassment.”

Alfons leaned back, though nothing in him relaxed. ”So this is what you gathered everyone for. A missing alchemist and his creation.”

”Do not shrink it because you dislike arriving late to the conversation,” Aurelia said.

His eyes moved to her. ”I am trying to follow the conversation. Forgive me if the family habit of hiding half the facts makes that slower.”

Aurelia’s mouth hardened. Roderic’s hand lifted from the armrest, and that was enough. Alfons closed his mouth.

Roderic looked to Adrien first. ”You trace the physical trail. Gates, private roads, hired carriages, anyone who left Aurevane with more protection than they came with. If Esmond was moved, someone on that had to see something, the coin, or the fear.”

”A few days to reach the right people,” Adrien said. ”It will be done.”

”Elysette. The money.”

Her gloved hand rested over her knee. ”Who sold to us, who bought before us, who paid to keep their name off the ledgers. All of it, I take it, not the convenient half.”

”All of it.”

”Then give me a week. Careless people are quick. The careful ones leave a prettier trail, and bury it deeper.”

”Lucard. The talk.” Roderic’s gaze moved to him without warming. ”Engineers loosen over a bottle. Alchemists loosen the moment they decide no one in the room is clever enough to rob them. Sit in both and bring me names, not impressions.”

For once Lucard set the easy line aside. ”And the ones worth hearing, who already know to keep quiet?”

”You earn the seat I keep giving you at this table.”

His gaze passed to Elowen. ”Review everything we hold on Esmond’s older work. Bloodline experiments, alchemical vessels, body structures, any mention of a homunculus project. Cross-read all of it.”

”I will need the sealed third archive,” Elowen said. ”The original, not a copy.”

Aurelia’s eyes narrowed. ”That archive is not opened lightly.”

”Nor is this issue light,” Elowen answered, calm enough to sting.

Roderic allowed it with a small movement of his hand. ”Granted.”

Noelia looked between them, pale but attentive. She did not ask for a task. No one trusted the youngest with one yet.

Roderic’s attention came to Alfons last. ”You return to the Academy.”

Alfons blinked. ”The Academy? I thought I was called home because this was urgent.”

”You were called home so you would know your part before you blundered in and made yourself useless by accident. You have what the others lack. Access to Selara, and to the Morgain boy. Both names were in those reports, and both came back from that excursion with more attached to them than anyone meant.”

Alfons’s jaw locked. ”Father. You know what stands between him and me.”

”I do.”

”And you know that keeping close to Trafalgar du Morgain, day after day, and doing nothing about it, is not a simple thing to ask.”

Lucard’s eyes lit. ”Which is exactly why you are perfect for it. You already chase him around inside your own head all day. A few steps behind the real thing should be no trouble at all.”

Alfons turned his head, slow. ”Watch your mouth.”

Lucard came off the arm of the sofa, smiling like he had found the evening’s one amusement. ”I am helping. Keep your nose down, stay near the Morgain boy, bring Father something worth reading, and maybe he pats your head for it. Good hound.”

Mana flared off Alfons before thought could catch it. Red light ran down his fingers, the air bending with the heat, the sofa creaking under the pressure. His temper had always answered faster than his pride, and Lucard knew exactly where to set the knife.

”Say that again.”

Lucard’s smile widened, and the space around him split into layered reflections, each a half-step out of true, illusion mana running through the room like glass under moonlight. ”Which part stung more? Hound, or useful?”

Alfons rose. Lucard straightened to meet him.

Noelia stepped back before she could stop herself, and Marielle drew her clear of the space between them. Elysette exhaled like someone watching children spill ink on imported carpet.

”Enough. Both of you.” Aurelia did not raise her voice, but it carried a floor underneath.

Neither stood down. The mana held, and for one hot, ugly breath the family room narrowed to a strip of floor between two heirs, waiting on a word that would let them off the leash.

The word never came.

Adrien’s eyes lifted to the ceiling, and Alfons followed them.

Above them an octagon of crimson-gold light hung near the rafters, thin as glass, wide enough to drop over them both, its inner lines locked through one another, each holding a spell wound so tight the air beneath it trembled. It had been there the whole time. Roderic had cast it without either of them feeling a thing.

The heat drained out of Alfons. Lucard’s reflections folded back into one body.

Roderic had not moved from his chair, and his face had not changed. That was the part that put the cold through Alfons’s chest.

”Do not mistake my patience for permission.”

Alfons let the light die off his hand. ”Yes, Father.”

Lucard’s smile had lost its shine. ”Understood.”

”Good.” Roderic let the seal hang a breath longer than he needed, because the breath was the lesson. ”Now that you both remember which room you are standing in, we continue.”

The seal dissolved into red sparks. No one remarked on it.

Roderic returned to Alfons as if nothing worth the interruption had happened. ”Watch Selara, carefully. Watch the Morgain boy, quietly. You will not bait him, corner him, or turn any of this into another display of wounded pride.”

Alfons’s throat tightened. ”And if he notices?”

”Do not be obvious. Listen for Esmond’s name, the homunculus, any word of records out of Aurevane. If Selara holds them, I want it. If the Morgain boy has even read them, I want it. And the moment anyone at that Academy asks after old Vaelion alchemy, I want their name before they finish asking.”

Alfons did not look away. ”And if Esmond is found?”

The answer came with nothing behind it. ”He is put to sleep, and he does not wake.”

Noelia’s face tightened. Marielle’s hand stayed on her shoulder.

Adrien took the words without a flicker. Elysette wore the face of someone who had expected nothing else. Elowen lowered her eyes to her cup. Lucard, for once, had no joke ready.

Alfons felt nothing for Esmond, and saw no reason he should. A man who opened Vaelion blood on a table and lived a century under this roof for it had earned whatever hunted him now. And yet the weight in his father’s voice made it more than one runaway prisoner.

”And the homunculus?”

”Found,” Roderic said. ”Recovered if useful. Destroyed if recovery risks exposure.”

Noelia spoke, small but clear. ”Is it alive?”

Several heads turned to her. She shrank a little, but did not take the question back.

Roderic looked at his youngest. ”That depends on who is answering.”

Noelia pressed her lips together and let it lie.

Alfons looked at her and, for the first time that evening, came near to pitying someone who was not himself. The feeling was brief, and unwelcome.

Roderic rose, and the room came up straight with him.

”You have your parts. Esmond is found, the homunculus is found, and what was taken is bought back, stolen back, or buried so deep no one can finish the sentence. If Esmond reaches the wrong hands, he sleeps. If the homunculus leads back here, we cut the thread.” His eyes went down the row of them. ”House Vaelion does not bleed because an old man forgot his place.”

The room held under the weight of it.

Alfons knew he should have let the evening end there. But the question had been swelling in him since Esmond’s name first entered the room, and it no longer fit behind his teeth.

”Father.” Roderic’s eyes returned to him. Alfons kept his back straight. ”You told us what Esmond is. What he did to this family. What you want done with him when we find him.” Every sibling turned his way. ”You have not said one word about what he actually knows.”

Roderic did not answer at once.

Lucard’s smile was gone. Elysette’s fingers went idle over her glove. Noelia looked up at their father with a fear she had never learned to hide.

Roderic’s red eyes rested on Alfons, cold and giving back nothing.

”No,” he said at last. ”I have not.”

The breath went thin in Alfons’s chest. His father’s voice dropped, low and even.

”Because that is the part of the story that can still ruin us.”