SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Caelum held his ground where he stood, unmoving. ”On which subject in particular, my lord?”

”Hm.” Valttair let the pause breathe. ”Let us begin with Trafalgar and Moses, and their little errand.”

”It is plain enough what you want from it. You mean to measure how far Trafalgar has come.” Caelum inclined his head a fraction. ”And it is no small errand, if I am honest with you. Rivena is the one who ought to be handling it, given she carries the heavier core of the two.”

”You are so certain Rivena is the stronger of them?” A dry edge crept into the patriarch’s voice. ”Talent, items, the whole arsenal a man carries into a fight, all of it can weigh far more than the size of a mana core alone.”

”That is true.” Caelum conceded it without argument. ”But the core remains our principal strength all the same, the engine that drives everything else a man brings to bear. Though I suspect I already know why you truly sent him.” A knowing pause. ”You have seen it as well as I have. The boy stands on the very edge of Ascend. You want him to break through on this mission.”

”A dangerous way to force the issue, if you will allow me the observation.” The shadow tilted his head. ”Other men climb to their next core in a training hall, cushioned on every side, with the whole world arranged to their advantage. You are posting yours into a mountain that has already eaten two thousand seasoned men.”

”A core taken in comfort is a core half earned.” Valttair’s answer came without hesitation. ”Pressure is the only honest forge there is. He will climb faster with a blade at his throat than he ever would inside a hall.” A dry beat. ”You are the man who knows me best, Caelum. You have never once disappointed me.” The half-warmth vanished as fast as it had come. ”As for Rivena, do not forget you are to keep her under watch from here on. I am aware you have been carrying out tasks Trafalgar set you as well. You told me so yourself. Trafalgar comes first, as he always has. But do not lose sight of the fact that this family cannot fall, and whatever unfolded beyond my reach these past months was nothing good.”

Caelum’s eyes lifted to his lord. ”Do you believe it ties back to Aurevane?”

”I do.” Valttair did not hesitate. ”You passed me the account through Trafalgar’s message, but I know full well the boy held things back from me. On my own I have pieced together that a great deal more took place than he cared to say. The Vaelion have been busy, far busier than any of this warrants. By every sign they wanted to bury something, or silence someone. And the fact that they have set foot in the Dead Meridian on top of it is not to my liking.” His eyes narrowed a fraction. ”A house does not spend coin and effort like that to erase its own tracks unless it is guarding something it cannot afford to lose. Whatever Trafalgar walked into out there, they wanted it buried badly enough to move against a Great Family to see it done.”

”Did you not tell me it was only a possibility they were behind it?” Caelum asked.

”Negative, Caelum. It is them, beyond any doubt.” Valttair’s grey eyes hardened. ”Yet I do not extend my trust even to my own children, for any one of them could be conspiring with any of the Great Families. It appears our house is passing through a delicate stretch. What I did not foresee, I confess, is being made to watch my own back around the people I raised and the women I wed.”

”It is a thing every patriarch of a Great Family must hold in mind, as you know better than most.” Caelum’s tone held even. ”You have only to look to the Myrrhvale. A conspiracy took root among them, and now no one can say what becomes of the house. Until it is untangled, no Council can be called at all, for they have no one left fit to send to it.”

”Correct.” Valttair drew the word out. ”Which is precisely why I cannot lay the Vaelion question before the other families as proof of anything. And beyond that, I would sooner hold to a cautious course for the present. There is a great deal I must plan for what is coming, and I need time to do it.”

”Understood.” Caelum dipped his head. ”Is there something you would have me begin now?”

”There is. We will be busy from this point on, Caelum. Exceedingly busy.” A grim note entered his voice. ”You are going to have to drive those clones of yours harder than you have in a good while, in all honesty. Rivena is not to leave the castle. And I need you watching every last member of this family, the four wives and the eight heirs alike, though I am well aware you shadow Trafalgar nearly everywhere he goes as it is.” He allowed a beat. ”Keep at that. In all the time I was away he did nothing to betray my faith, which is why, of all of them, he is the heir I trust most.”

”It is a great deal of ground for one man to cover,” Caelum noted, ”even a man with my particular gifts.”

”Which is why I said you would have to push.” The patriarch’s mouth barely moved. ”I did not say it would be comfortable.”

”Trafalgar is a rare one, my lord. Singular, I would go so far as to say, and not for his talent alone.” A quiet consideration crossed the shadow’s face. ”And his father, Magnus, was a rare one in his own right.”

Something flickered behind Valttair’s expression and was gone. ”Yes. My brother was a man, all right.” He let the memory pass without lingering on it. ”There are days I think that, were he alive now, he would be the one choking down the mess I am left to swallow in his place. I cannot recall the last time I was granted any rest, though I suppose two years walled up in seclusion might pass for a holiday, of a sort.” His voice cooled another degree. ”But there it is. The good part is over.”

”He would have been proud of the boy, I think.” Caelum let the thought rest a beat. ”In his own way.”

”Perhaps. Or he would have seen in him exactly what I see, and slept as poorly for it.” Valttair caught the offer that had come before. ”You watched them all in the gathering. Who, in your reckoning, warrants the most caution?”

”Caution.” Caelum weighed the word. ”In truth I doubt any of them could touch him now, not with the strength he carries. But Rivena. Maeron. The first and second wives.” He named them without heat. ”Those are the ones I hold hardest in my sights. And perhaps Helgar, given the ground he has gained these past few years.” He paused. ”The wives trouble me less for their own hands than for whose hands they might guide. Seraphine has never forgiven the boy his mere existence, and Verena will forgive nothing done to her daughter now.”

”True enough.” Valttair considered it. ”I owe Helgar a fitting reward as well, for all he has accomplished. He does not come close to Trafalgar, but he acquitted himself well.” He surfaced from the thought with a small gesture. ”Send him to me when you go. I will see him.”

”Understood. I will take my leave, in that case.”

And with that, Caelum was gone, folded back into nothing the way he always went.

Valttair, expressionless as ever, remained in his chair and turned it all over in the cold quiet of his own head. His family’s footing had grown far more treacherous than he had let the room believe. The cracks he had come home to ran deeper than a slap or a confinement would ever mend, and what lay ahead of him now would call for decisions of a harder make. He had never been a man to flinch from those. If the house had to be cut back to the wood to spare the root, he would do the cutting with his own hand, and lose no sleep the night after.

Somewhere across the castle, far from that cold room and its colder occupant, Trafalgar had barely begun turning the coming mission over in his mind when the shadowlink dropped into his palm out of empty air, the way it always did.

His fingers closed around it ready to deliver a message to Caelum.

For a moment he simply stared at the object in his hand, the cold surface resting against his palm like a second thought given shape. Valttair had barely handed him the mission, and already the pieces were moving around him.

He had no time to return to Euclid himself.

So Caelum would go in his place.

Mayla, Cynthia, and Aubrelle had to hear it from someone he trusted before rumor reached them first.