The silence that settled between them was not uncomfortable, exactly, but it had weight to it — the kind that formed whenever something valuable was suddenly placed on a table between two people who were trying very carefully not to look at it.

Arthur’s expression had shifted the moment the words left Nero’s mouth. The warmth that lived around his eyes when he talked about history or noble house scandals had gone somewhere distant, replaced by a measuring look that felt less like curiosity and more like calculation. He picked a stem of dead grass from the ground near his boot and turned it between his fingers without really looking at it.

“You want to learn sorcery,” he said, and there was nothing accusatory in his tone — just the flat repetition of a fact being examined from multiple angles.

“I said I was curious about it.”

“That’s a generous interpretation of what you said.” Arthur dropped the grass stem, folded his hands over one knee, and tilted his head slightly, as though Nero were a piece of text he was in the process of translating. “May I ask why? Most commoners who discover the Church is actively suppressing their education tend to develop an interest in self-preservation first, and academic pursuits considerably later.”

“I didn’t say anything about the Church suppressing—”

“You didn’t have to.” Arthur’s voice carried no particular sharpness, only the mild patience of someone who had simply already followed a line of reasoning to its end. “A commoner who can read and discuss political literature, who shows disciplined restraint in a combat context where self-promotion would be the natural instinct, who listens more than he speaks in the company of people who outrank him — that is not a man who stumbled into literacy by accident. You sought it out, and someone helped you find it.” He glanced sideways at Nero, something flickering briefly in those sharp features. “I am not accusing you of anything. I am observing.”

Jacob, still seated on the gnarled root several feet away with his forearms braced across his knees, looked over at the two of them without bothering to mask his expression. “Arthur,” he said pleasantly, “you are going to talk this man half to death.”

“I’m establishing context.”

“You’re stalling because you’re deciding whether to extort him.”

Arthur did not deny this.

Nero kept his own face steady, though something cold had settled into his chest — not fear, precisely, but the careful wariness of a man who knew he was standing on ice and had only just noticed the sound of cracking. He had let the want show too plainly. He had been careful for the entire hunt, careful in everything, and then Arthur had mentioned sorcery as though it were nothing and Nero had answered honestly before the part of him that managed such things had caught up.

“What would it cost?” he asked, because retreating from the question would only look more suspicious than pressing it forward.

Arthur studied him for a long moment, then said, without inflection: “Come and work for me.”

The words landed with less drama than Nero might have expected. Arthur said it the way he said most things — easily, without any particular edge, as though the suggestion were perfectly reasonable and any discomfort with it belonged entirely to the person hearing it.

“As a servant?” Nero asked.

“As an attendant. There’s a distinction. An attendant handles correspondence, accompanies to engagements, manages certain organizational matters. The position comes with access.” Arthur turned his hands open, a small gesture of reasonableness. “Knowledge is not free. I paid for mine in time, effort, and considerable family political capital. What I’m offering is a different kind of transaction.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re refusing without thinking about it.”

“I’m refusing because Commander Strut has already laid a claim,” Nero said, keeping his voice even, “on whatever I become after the trials. That arrangement existed before this conversation, and I don’t have the freedom to enter another one.”

The name landed. Arthur’s expression did not change in any dramatic fashion, but the calculating look deepened — and then, gradually, something lighter moved through it, something almost like amusement, though it had an edge that didn’t quite reach the word.

“Commander Strut,” he repeated, with a tone that suggested he was deciding whether to find this funny or alarming. After a moment he seemed to settle somewhere between the two. “Well.” He leaned back slightly, resting his weight on both hands behind him, and looked up through the canopy overhead where pale light filtered green and grey between the dark branches. “That is an answer.”

“Is it the right one?”

“There are no right answers where she’s concerned, only unfortunate ones.” He was quiet for another beat, and then he smiled — not the testing kind, but something more genuine, if still not entirely warm. “Forced friendship it is, then. I’m told I make a tolerable one.”

Jacob snorted loudly from across the clearing. “House Koh makes a tolerable headache is what they make,” he said, addressing this to no one in particular. “Bunch of devils in good coats.”

“Jacob’s family,” Arthur said to Nero, with the mild air of a man explaining an old joke, “has harbored a grudge against mine since before either of us was born. He finds it charming to air it at irregular intervals.”

“Your grandfather stole a breeding stallion.”

“My grandfather purchased a breeding stallion, and the paperwork—”

“Was forged.”

“—was disputed.” Arthur gestured at the surrounding forest as though inviting Nero to appreciate the absurdity. Then his expression shifted into something more considered, and he held up his right hand, palm out, fingers slightly spread. “Regardless,” he said, “you want to understand what sorcery looks like in practice. Allow me to demonstrate.”

What happened next was small — it was deliberate in its smallness, Nero thought — but it was enough. A sound like a single drawn breath, a word spoken in a register that sat just below normal hearing, and then a flame no larger than a thumbnail appeared above Arthur’s upturned palm, burning with the clean blue-white color of something much hotter than it appeared. It sat there without consuming anything, trembling slightly in a wind that wasn’t present, and it cast no shadow.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep