SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The door opened on Cynthia, who came in with one hand closed around her brother’s sleeve, hauling him along the last few steps as if he might make a run for it.

”He’s been trying to talk himself out of coming up here since the gate,” she announced. ”Twice.”

”I wasn’t.” Bartholomew’s glasses were sitting crooked already. ”I was saying we should give them warning before we all came piling in at once, which is different.”

”It’s the same thing said politely.”

Behind them came Xavier, with the same scarf wound twice around his neck that he’d worn always Trafalgar had known him, crimson hair full of melting snow and his mismatched eyes going straight past everybody to the bundle in Aubrelle’s arms. Vivienne followed him in, unhurried, blue hair down over one shoulder and her light eyes moving around the room, taking in the corners of it first the way she always did.

”There he is,” Xavier said. ”Trafalgar du Morgain, a father. The world’s gone completely sideways.”

”Good to see you too.”

”It really is.” Xavier crossed the room and gripped his hand hard. ”You look terrible, by the way.”

”I’ve slept eight hours in five days.”

”That’ll do it.”

Mayla was already sitting further up in the bed, pleased for the company, and the room filled with the pleasant noise of people who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Gifts came out. Barth had brought a warming charm for the cradle, small and worked in silver, wrapped in paper he’d folded so many times it had gone soft, and he apologised for it three separate times before Mayla got it open. It was the single most useful thing anyone brought all afternoon. Xavier’s contribution was a practice sword sized for a child of about seven.

Trafalgar looked at it, and then at him. ”He’s four days old.”

”He’ll grow.” Xavier was entirely unashamed. ”You want him getting a feel for the grip early. That’s how it starts.”

”He can’t hold his own head up.”

”So we start with the head, and then the grip.”

Vivienne’s gift was a blanket, and Trafalgar took one look at the weight and the weave of it and knew it had cost more than the sword and the charm together. There was no note with it. She hadn’t asked anybody what the house needed either, which was the part that always left him wondering.

”Right.” Trafalgar took Aaron back off Aubrelle and turned him so the room could see the small furious face. ”Aaron, this is your uncle Barth. He teaches at the Academy, he’s cleverer than everyone else here, and he’ll deny both of those things if you ask him.”

Barth went red to the ears. ”I’m an assistant. I assist.”

”He assists Professor Rhaldrin,” Cynthia said, with enormous pride and no attempt whatsoever to hide it.

Xavier made a noise like something had bitten him. ”I still have dreams about that man’s exams.”

”He’s the finest historian in the world,” Barth said, adjusting his glasses, ”and he treats me like I might be worth something, so I’d appreciate it if nobody laughed at the word assistant.”

”Nobody’s laughing,” Trafalgar said. ”Come here. Hold your nephew.”

Barth stopped dead. ”I’d rather not.”

”You’d rather not?”

”I’ll drop him.”

”You won’t.”

”I dropped a whole tray of glassware in front of forty students last month,” Barth said, with the desperation of a man laying out evidence. ”It’s documented.”

”He isn’t glassware.”

Cynthia took her brother by the shoulders and steered him into the chair by the fire without any further discussion, and Trafalgar put Aaron into his arms and showed him where the head went. Barth sat there afterward with his back rigid and his elbows locked, not breathing, staring down at the small dark head as though it might go off.

Then Aaron’s whole hand closed around his finger, and Bartholomew’s face did something none of them had ever seen it do.

”Oh,” he said quietly.

”There it is,” Xavier said.

”He’s holding on.”

”That’s what they do.”

”No, he’s really holding on.”

Mayla laughed into her hand. Cynthia was watching her brother with an expression she’d have denied under oath.

”So.” Trafalgar dropped into the chair across from them and stretched his legs out, entirely at ease for the first time in days. ”Since you’re all here and comfortable. When’s your turn?”

Xavier choked on nothing at all. Vivienne didn’t so much as blink. ”Ask him again when he can afford a house.”

”I can afford a house.”

”You can afford a house in a district I refuse to live in.”

”Why doesn’t your mother sort that out for you?” Trafalgar asked. ”She’s a director and a Roquefort. She could buy you the whole district before lunch.”

”Because I’m a grown man,” Xavier said, with as much dignity as anyone can manage while red to the ears, ”and I’d like to get there myself. If she pays for it, it isn’t my house. It’s her house and I’m living in it.”

Trafalgar tipped his cup at him. ”Fair enough.”

”Thank you.”

”See, this is why I don’t bring her places.” Xavier jabbed a thumb at Vivienne. ”Also, we’re about to turn twenty. Look at him, he’s got three wives and a son and he’s the same age as me.”

”You’ll get there,” Trafalgar said solemnly.

”I will not.”

While the room went on ribbing Xavier, Vivienne caught Trafalgar’s eye and tipped her head very slightly toward the far window.

He got up and went over. She waited until the noise behind them had swallowed anything they might say, which took about two seconds with Xavier defending himself at that volume, and then she asked it quietly.

”Do you know where my father went?” Her mouth tightened at once. ”Sorry. Dravok.”

Trafalgar let the slip go by without touching it. ”I haven’t been able to reach him for days,” she went on. ”I knew he was training you, so I wasn’t worried about the quiet. But since that finished I’ve had nothing. No word, no way of contacting him, and he doesn’t do that.”

”I honestly don’t know.” He kept his voice low. ”He told me he had something to go and deal with, and that I should wait for him to come back before we start the next part of the training. That was all of it. He didn’t say what, and I didn’t ask, because he isn’t a man who answers that question.” He shook his head. ”I’m sorry. I’d tell you if I had anything.”

Vivienne let out a slow breath and looked at the floor for a moment. ”You know he’ll be fine,” Trafalgar added. ”Whatever it is he’s gone off to do, the God of War isn’t going to have any trouble surviving it. You of all people know that.”

That got her. Her mouth pulled sideways, and something in her shoulders came down about an inch. ”I do know that.” She almost smiled. ”It’s a stupid thing to worry about, isn’t it.”

”It’s not stupid. It’s just wasted.” He tipped his head back toward the room. ”Come on. Xavier’s losing an argument to four women at once.”

”He usually is.”

They went back, and the afternoon turned into the sort that nobody plans. Somebody sent for food. Aaron got passed around the room and was outraged about it every single time, which everyone found hilarious except him. Xavier put the practice sword down beside the cradle anyway, on the grounds that it would still be there in seven years. Barth held his nephew twice more and pretended both times that he’d been talked into it.

Trafalgar sat back in the chair with a cup in his hand and let it all carry on around him. He’d had a great many rooms in his life. Council halls, war camps, fortresses under mountains, a black plain where he’d spent years learning how to kill people better. He’d take this one over every one of them.

Absolute Mana Dominion: All My Talents Are SSS