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Hope never did die easily.
That was the only answer Han could give for why he weaseled his way into these university parties, year after year, only to hide away in a dark corner and dream of making conversation with a single academic. Each time he told himself it would be different—he would spend months arming himself with names and reading newly printed manuscripts and practicing his eloquence in front of a mirror—and yet it always ended the same. Visiting luminaries had no interest in the juvenile ramblings of some backwater noble scion without so much as a single published paper, who had never even stepped foot into the capital.
But the Garland Moon was his only chance. Every summer the University of Essar held a round of conferences, providing an escape from the stifling heat down south in Enbarr and taking advantage of the natural enthusiasm of men who wanted an excuse to hear themselves talk. There were dissertations to be defended, challenges from Fhirdiad’s Academy to be met, and so many displays of technologically erudite advances that the roads into the basin were blocked more by caravans than rainwaters for an entire week. It turned the whole of Essar into both carnival and madhouse, and for this one moon a year, Han could disappear into the crowd. He could slip into the halls of the university without dreading his father’s foreboding displeasure around every corner, and all of the brown-nosers would be too busy fawning over the visiting sorcery engineers to worry about tattling to the Viscount about his wastrel son.
Except disappearing into a crowd meant sneaking into lavish parties and, well, moping. But in another life these could have been his peers! Over half the room possessed their own lavish tinge of nobility, and no one told them that governance was the only valid service to the Empire, that a Crest condemned you to lead instead of study.
Not a man in this room had ever been called a damn waste. Not like Han.
They were instead terribly, wonderfully beautiful. Far from wasted minds, they bore not even a wasted thread, decked in their finery and all that shimmering magefloss that had taken the capital by storm. It limned their glasses in gold and their limbs in quicksilver, and everywhere Han looked he thought of brilliant songbirds, so clever they learned to speak the tongue of their betters, reaching ever towards the heavens.
And in the middle of them all stood Waldemar von Hevring, the golden boy who spoke Reason to Faith, whose recent paper on the harmonizing effects of the Saints’ Days upon their respective Crests actually addressed the wyvern in the room and proposed a radical new theory of temporal drift, and whose cheekbones were even sharper than his wit. Every year he reached a new plateau of impossibly dazzling, and Han’s dreams sank deeper beneath his boots.
It didn’t help that the first time they met, Waldemar mistook him for a baggage boy and passed him a shiny gold coin. For your education, he’d said. Six years on, the sting had yet to fade.
Mortification did not stop Han from looking, however. Whoever caught Waldemar’s interest amid the crowd must at least be writing something worth reading, and even if Han was doomed to a life managing the Viscounty’s affairs, nothing could keep him from his books. If all he left with was a renewed to-read list, as least that was better than nothing.
Waldemar was still talking to the man he arrived with, someone so plain and pallid as to disappear into the crowd entirely. His dark hair bore no enchanted circlet, and no bright marigolds of Aegir or sprigs of lavender like House Nuvelle pressed into their apprentices’ hair. He was tall enough to look Waldemar in the eyes, but lithe enough to be eclipsed behind the young bishop’s robes. Every time Han asked his name of a servant, they slipped away like a whisper of evaporating solmenthine.
How could anyone hold Waldemar’s attention longer than ten minutes without bursting into flame? Han squinted down over the banister, trying to make out a cravat pin or the badge of some house, just as the man turned to take a glass of champagne from one of the servants.
Han’s eyes fixed upon a pocket square of blue, and all the bustling hum of the crowd faded away.
Impossible.
He abandoned his vantage point and hurried down into the crush of bodies for a better look. Surely it was a trick of the light. Or it was simply blue, and not eggshell blue at all, not precisely folded so that the white-hemmed edge showed on the left. Men bought rainbows of pocket squares every day, hemmed in every color. It was an accident. Certainly.
But they had come from Enbarr, and everything meant something in Enbarr. And Han, who had made a very careful study of every pamphlet related to a particular social circle that he could get his hands on out, knew what that color, in that hem, in that direction, meant.
An invitation to drop to his knees.
The tips of his ears were burning, and surely his skin had flushed from neck to toe beneath his jacket. Enbarr’s peculiar night life was really only a third, maybe half, of the reason he so desperately wished to visit the capital, and to be so close to someone who might finally understand? His pulse kicked up like some neophyte about to trip his Crest in public, and his palms began to sweat, and all of him shivered and whirled toward destruction, except for his knees which refused to lock, too eager for falling.
He skipped awkwardly around some gremory’s three-foot train and nearly tripped into Waldemar’s back, side-stepping at the last second and crashing into a solid chest of muscle instead. A pair of hands held him fast.
“Steady,” hummed a voice too silken to be anything but a spell.
Han startled to meet a gaze of smoky citrine, and there his powers of observation stalled, unable to weave the parts into their proper whole. Such a striking color. The rules of fashion dictated firmly against him wearing a similarly striking blue. Han’s eyes fell back to the handkerchief like a compass needle craning north.
A slow smile sharpened the edge of the mystery man’s lips.
But then the Vespers bell rang out through the valley, and Han remembered himself in an instant. Without a word, he ducked his head in miserable apology and scurried away.
The fact of the matter was that Han’s own array of chromatic handkerchief expression petered out around the color gray. Essar did not share in the extravagant fashions of the capital, and as the Viscount’s son, Han had no need to jockey for further political capital by means of his attire. He merely needed to appear put together and to squint at his neighbors as little as possible. And, as his mother often reminded him, few shades of the rainbow complemented the dark indigo of his cowlick-ridden hair anyway. Dutiful and dourly was all they needed in a son; that Essar was closer to Faerghus than to Enbarr was quite obvious.
Thankfully, his sister Theophania graciously offered her own jewelry box, and far more graciously did not ask any questions. They sat holding gems to the light as Hanneman tried to craft a message. Too many baubles and he would be displaying his inexperience instead of offerings. Not that there was much to display, exactly, but…he had been thinking of the way those piercing eyes fixed upon him, like a hand catching an arrow in flight, effortless and masterful. It would be much too forward to wear citrine in turn, never mind that its meaning within the Enbarr code would imply a wholly different sort of excitement for aquatic sport.
Theophania suggested a ruby, which turned Han redder than the stone, then an onyx to appeal to his boring sensibilities, which only sent him coughing terribly into his handkerchief. At a loss, she dug for a large brooch of white glass with tiny pinpricks of many other colors within, and Han nearly upended the box in his shock.
Men were so strangely fragile.
They settled, finally, upon a pointed message: a single topaz that matched the bright blue of Han’s eyes. “What suits you perfectly is exactly who you already are,” Theophania told him meaningfully, in complete ignorance of the color’s illicit association with cocksucking. They fitted it upon a tie pin and off he went.
As soon as Han stepped upon the university grounds, he tugged the tie pin so that it would skew a bit to the right. And then he put it squarely out of mind.
The point of visiting the university was to partake of the library and the wisdom of visiting academics, to soak in knowledge! Many of the conference presentations were already underway. The sorcery engineers had assembled a simulation of the way various magical effects could be incorporated into the traditional fire-alignment of defense orbs, but the simulation itself was the ingenious part, structured as a game of shuttlecock that had scholars lined up by the dozens for a chance to play.
Han opted instead to grill the bored apprentice in charge of presenting Waldemar’s research on Crest-effect fluctuations and their connection to the position of the Blue Sea Star. Much of the data had been gathered from one of the Bergliez brood who possessed a Major Crest of Cichol, which could not go unquestioned! The rarity of Major Saints’ Crests dramatically impaired the study’s data as a comparandum; if Waldemar could not be bothered to include his own Minor Crest of Cethleann within his purview, at the very least he should have extended an invitation to that Aegir upstart always boasting of his own Crest of Cichol. (Then perhaps Theophania would stop receiving those utterly repulsive marriage proposals from the damn windbag.)
Unfortunately the apprentice could not provide sufficient rationalization of the data’s clear flaws, so Han was forced to purchase a copy of the manuscript (at a markup!) to eviscerate on his own. He headed at once for the library and picked out one of the reading islands amid the sea of stacks. There were few students this time of day, especially with the conference going on, so little distracted him from beginning his list of inaccuracies and outright fallacies in Waldemar’s work.
“Pardon me,” whispered a fellow scholar as they sat down across from him. Han waved a hand to confirm he had no need for the full table, and furiously continued his critique.
Some time later, a boot brushed against his underneath the table.
“Apologies.”
Han nodded absently. Had Waldemar fudged the timing of the spring solstice of 1148 to present a tidy bow upon his conclusions? He would need to consult that year’s astronomical almanac, but he was quite certain that—
The boot moved upwards with unmistakable intent. Han froze stock still as the toe slowly lifted the hem of his pant leg and caressed the long line of his sock.
When he finally forced his head upwards, Han found his Mystery Man sitting across from him, pinning him down with a smoldering intensity. In the radiant illumination of the library, a bright sanctum at all hours, the man’s immaculately black uniform looked like a piece of sheer darkness carved out of reality. Something tickled at the back of Han’s brain, some rational explanation of miasmic infusion and light diffusion but all that registered was the impossible conclusion of that eggshell blue handkerchief still peeking from his vest pocket.
The man tilted his head. Questioning. Offering.
Han gave the smallest nod. With all his courage, or with his heart beating so wild it set him shaking. One of those.
Either way, it earned him another of those razor-sharp smiles. The man’s eyes flicked towards the stacks, and then he stood and strolled off in search of a…book. Han waited an excruciating sixty seconds before wandering off in the same general direction, his papers left strewn over the table.
Shock alone kept him from screaming when a powerful grip pulled him into a storage closet.
“Maybe this summer won’t be so tedious after all,” growled the man at the precise frequency to turn Han’s knees to gelatin.
Goddess. It was happening. He sank to his knees in a trance, eyes kept captive on a track between two points: the man’s stand bulging in his trousers, and the marble-carved angles of his face, a masterpiece of chiaroscuro in the cramped shadows.
Trembling, Han reached out to smooth his hands down the man’s outer thighs, whimpering at the warmth of another man’s skin beneath the fine fabric. He gazed wide-eyed as the man undid the buttons at the front of his placket.
“Hungry for it, are we?” Teasing, yes, but something in the tone was too dark for humor, and Han groaned at the thought of what threats must sound like in that voice, both easy and brutal.
Wait. Weren’t assignations under the code meant to be conducted in silence? He’d always imagined—oh no. No. He absolutely could not speak. He would ruin it in an instant.
The only solution was to fill his mouth first! Han reached for the waistband of his partner’s smallclothes and leaned in, gulping for it.
The man’s hands settled on Han’s head, gently redirecting, and he threaded his fingers through Han’s unruly hair. “Steady there, bluejay. First time?” Han flushed with bitter embarrassment, but the man’s silk gloves soothed over his cheeks. Then, slowly, he brought Han’s face in to lie flush with his hips, encouraging Han to nuzzle against his cock through his smalls rather than promptly choking himself.
It was nothing like Han expected.
“No excitement to be had for a young man of Essar?”
Not when you are the young man of Essar, Han thought bitterly. But one of the man’s hands had turned to scrape at his scalp with a hint of nail beneath the gloves, almost like a reward, and it was so easy to press his cheek against the swollen heat of that looming cock, to trace at the long line of it with his lips. Han moaned to feel a touch of moisture seeping through the soft linen over the crown.
“…But you knew about the code.”
“I read,” Han explained, feeling strangely inebriated by the easy intimacy.
“What do you read?” asked the man in a low, dangerous voice.
In hindsight, Han would realize this was an attempt to elicit his opinions on the various pornographic purveyors peddling Enbarr’s sexual counter-culture abroad.
In the moment, he answered, “Everything.”
“—And it simply boggles the mind for the Church to prevent such research! If the location of these reliquaries results in a deficiency in the humours for the surrounding populace, then we must investigate to preserve the lives of the very people the Church has entrusted with their protection. We have allowed the fractures of the Southern Church to fester too long. This wall of secrecy between the Empire and her northern neighbors cannot continue. We must have mutual access to the full range of Crests. It is of the utmost importance.“
The man hummed and stroked Han’s bangs back from his forehead. “Enbarr’s labs have a…moderate supply of Heroic samples, let us say. But the trade is perilous and generally confined to the Alliance, and the samples are reserved for the highest level of inquiry.”
Enbarr had samples?! Waldemar had probably been goggling over them with his microscope since he could first stand on his own, damn him.
“Have you never considered studying at the capital?” The man continued, cupping Han’s face by the chin.
Han looked away. “Well. I suppose I did once harbor a dream of running away to join the Sorcery Engineers.”
“Did you now.”
“But it certainly wouldn’t have worked out. My interests lie more in the theory than their application, I fear. Especially in terms of military deployment. Though…well, some might fall within their purview.” Han leaned back on his heels, scratching over his chin where the man’s touch had left a lingering warmth.
He continued, “I have always been fascinated by the potential of Crests as external manifestations, divorced from the Blood-cum-Bone discourses. If they could be manufactured—made reproducible—then it would dramatically reduce the supply and demand pressures bearing down on the aristocracy.”
“Blasphemy.”
Han startled, but when he looked up, his partner was grinning wild.
“Are all magpies quite so brilliant in their heresy?” he asked, his eyes shining as if possessed of an inner light.
“I—Now hold on, your taxonomy is rather lacking, am I to be magpie or bluejay?” Han sputtered the response with more force than intended, anything to keep the game going, the shuttlecock in the air, the pet names flowing.
But he could not be a clever pet at the feet of a handsome scholar forever. Before any answer arrived, the bells of Essar began to ring. Vespers again, damn, damn! He had not finished with—he had not even sucked the man’s cock! What a failure of his first and, at this rate, last assignation. What an absolute waste.
He scrambled for the latch of the closet door, throat closing around his mortified misery. “I’m sorry, I am so sorry.”
“You are to be mine,” his partner said, so deep in his chest that Han could feel it rumble where their bodies pressed together. He leaned down and brushed a burning kiss against Han’s parted lips. “I’ll be in touch.”
Two days of simmering embarrassment later, Han finally slunk back to the library. There were no seductive shadows hiding in the stacks this time. He pretended at productivity for an hour, then switched to a different table on another floor, and finally admitted defeat five hours and five locations later. As he trudged back to the entrance, a librarian flagged him down to hand over the book he’d reserved on…Dagdan ornithology.
Tucked between illustrations of the black-throated magpie-jay was a handwritten invitation. The paper bore no distinctive decoration or signature except for an embossed V in the bottom right corner, and the careful script was so perfectly devoid of personal idiosyncrasy as to feel traced from a pattern book. It listed an address up in the hills overlooking the city center, nowhere near where other visiting academics were crammed into boarding houses like grayfish, and included detailed coordinates for a blind Warp, which Han would absolutely never attempt. Besides a time—noon—no other details marred the paper until Han folded and unfolded and clutched it to his chest eighty-five times over the next nineteen hours.
And then it was noon.
The address had led Han to a lavish set of apartments around a central fountain, composed in the model of the historic villas that once dotted the eastern landscape of Fodlan. The gate itself refused to budge until the precise moment the noon bells began to ring, and then they opened with a well-greased swing from the slightest pressure. A few dark-liveried guards sat conversing in the shade of a truly massive pine tree. They barely glanced at Han as he scurried to the listed door number.
The door, too, opened at the slightest touch. Han no more than lifted his knuckles to knock, and the rooms pulled him right inside.
Or perhaps it was the smell of sulfur that drew him down the hall. The moment its acrid reek hit Han’s nose, he beelined directly through the inner quarters and straight to the source.
His mystery man—V?—stood working in front of a small, portable laboratory setup. Although a basic barrier prevented Han from wandering any further towards the boiling chemicals, he avidly craned toward the strange mix of augmented mythril tools and rune-soaked stoneware. Even the calipers had gilded handles! Yet most wondrous of all was the burner, a small tile box which seemed to hold a flame at whichever temperature V wished, rather than requiring him to use his own Reason for constant adjustment. Right now it heated a beaker of once-clear liquid that darkened to rust before Han’s eyes.
“Is that dimethylsulfoxide?”
“Ah, there you are. Excellent.” V waved a hand in the air, which dispelled enough of the wards for Han to enter. “A demonstration for you on a line of inquiry that has doubtlessly remained in the capital.”
Up close, Han recognized many of the labeled vials from his own chemical supplier. A secondary row of samples bore more cryptic markings with jumbled letters, numbers, symbols, and impossible dates. The vials of blood and plasma were obvious, but the others…he could tentatively identify bone shavings, the stripped and partitioned calumus from a massive bird, and a singular shard of red glass. Another half dozen defied his powers of classification entirely.
“I fear you have reached the limits of my—“
V snorted, and it shocked Han so badly that his mouth dropped ajar.
“You will have grasped it within the next five minutes. Here. Sit.” V ushered him into the chair. “The wall of secrecy between the Empire and the north, as you called it, is further upheld by a lack of preservation techniques for our most valuable samples. No noble will ever volunteer himself as a permanent blood supply. If we can guarantee a single sample to last decades, however, we can make greater use of the scraps we are given. Ice magic is not reliable for long-term storage. Even the engineers lose samples to skipped shifts and inaccurate dating. Human rigor cannot compensate for the whims of reality.”
Han’s eyes swept the desk once more. “So you return to the foundations of science: employ the rules of reality upon itself.”
“Precisely. If preserving temperature is the flaw, then we remove the necessity. Likewise, if a Crest fractures once the blood spoils…”
Except blood did not spoil, per se. The University possessed the pinky toe of a revered founder whose Crest still lit the marrow, and Hanneman had little doubt that this explained the high-security of ancestral vaults in the Kingdom and Empire alike. What remained in the bones had too much and too little life; theologically it was better to quash the issue entirely. If the field could be divorced from the spiritual concerns over Crest perpetuity and studied without reference to remains entirely, then—
“You remove the blood,” Han filled in. Excitement and discovery did not lift his pitch to the heavens; his jaw hung slack in outright shock.
Had they truly already done it? Separated Crest and Bearer with ease and forged on toward Han’s dream without him?
“That is the goal, at least. Thus far we have made strides towards chemically breaking down external structures to preserve a sample in stasis. But those structures vary with the source material; blood and bone do not diminish the same, and while the remaining Crests function, they are not to expectation. You might say we have unlocked a new line of inquiry in the dissonance of genotype and phenotype, which will drive us to deeper understanding over the next few decades.” V gave a single, tight chuckle. “I would say we have hit the dead end of our generation.”
“Nonsense! Why, this is a massive breakthrough, you cannot simply…this throws everything into question, do you understand? Perhaps the first stone does not shatter the window, but the cracks will show!”
Catching himself from further earnest ramblings, Han steeled himself for the inevitable rejection of his every naive comment. But V only smiled in a way that lit up his eyes fever-bright.
“Then let us arm you with the next stone.”
And so he did. With painstaking attention to detail, V led him through a half dozen demonstrations of the new preservation techniques, and then another dozen of his personal failures so that Han would know which ground had already been found wanting. The hours slipped by effortlessly as Han’s mind blossomed in new directions, swam with questions hereto unasked, and he felt very much like a vine set upon a new lattice, primed to overgrow its bounds at any moment. He forgot even the warmth of V behind him, leaning over his shoulder, breath warm against his neck—and then he would remember, and burn with a strange joy, to share space with such a kindred mind. To be worthy.
He put it out of mind once more.
In truth, he had been shown for the neophyte he was. For all that Han had studied the manifold manifestations of Crests within their bearers, he had only ever considered them in terms of intensity upon a singular scale. One set of powers corresponded to a weak variant, and another set to a strong, and the results fluctuated as bloodlines split and converged. That the Crests themselves could show variations upon a theme, or adapt along lines not driven by Major Density, shocked him to the core. Yet another reason for the necessity of greater data sets, if even their core beliefs on the stability of a Crest-line were flawed!
“Jaybird?” V called as they worked.
That was the third avian name, now. Han blushed and lowered his sample back to the table, lest he drop it from his nerves. “Yes?”
“Do you have a curfew today?”
Yes, better to have set it down than broken it in shock. Han whirled to face him with a full frown. “Excuse me?”
V did not so much as lift a brow. He continued to strip the plumage from another of those massive feathers, which he claimed were sourced from some manner of eldritch beast around Ailell. “The bells always send you scurrying along.”
“I am not a child, if that is your concern.”
This time, V’s lip twitched. “I did not think you one. I am simply aware that certain families like to keep their heirs close. Especially when those heirs are Crested and may be overly fond of offering themselves in the name of science.”
Well.
Han had not exactly been trying to hide it, but he felt strangely scolded all the same. What was he meant to have done, given his full genealogy for evaluation before daring to gaze upon another man’s erection?
He cleared his throat. “You are not incorrect, my…dear.” Friend? Lover? Paramour? …Lab partner? “Hanneman von Essar. A pleasure.”
V hummed, all honey. “And your Crest?”
“Minor Indech.”
“The Inexhaustible.” And there was that grin again, ravenous and keen.
Han blushed, unsure if he was snack or blood supply, and wildly thrilled to be either.
“And yours?” he forced out after too long a pause, realizing this was his best chance to learn anything at all about the man aside him.
“Not a one. They are not a requirement in my line of work.”
Crests or names?
Yet Han scarcely minded the man’s clear reluctance to divulge his identity when he was already offering Han the world. Science trumped secrets any day. And besides, the intrigue of it all kept Han’s brain ticking happy as a clockwork doll.
The real question was what sort of work fit a man of V’s intellectual ferocity and single-minded focus. Magic and academia, clearly, but…something more, too, in the way he looked at Han with such scathing hunger.
A falconer, perhaps. Han could picture that easily: V’s exacting gaze fixed upon the heavens as his monstrous birds eclipsed the very sun itself.
Who better to teach Han to fly?
“It isn’t a curfew,” Han clarified at length, after it had become abundantly clear he wouldn’t push V any further. “So much as a preference. As long as I live within the manor walls, I have sworn to my sister that I will not leave her to face a family dinner alone. Father is not…pleasant…to be around.”
A shadow fell across V’s fine features, and he leaned over to cup Han’s cheek. “You are a good brother and a better man,” he purred low. “Do not let me keep you.”
“You could!”
A chuckle. “I shouldn’t.”
Desperate, Han pressed into his hands and followed him across the divide for a lingering kiss. “Please. I want you to.”
“Trading one cage for another, hm?” V’s hand drifted over Han’s shoulder, holding him close as Han thought of all the rowdy ballads he knew about men caging one another in, or the cage of a lover’s legs around one’s waist…
“Keep me,” Han repeated on a growl and tucked all his graceless limbs into V’s lap in eager offering.
And when the Vesper bells rang, he did not hear.
As the Verdant Rain Moon drew to a close, the weather offered Han every opportunity to shelter away in the hills and work on his…research. All his life the torrential downpours of monsoon season kept him captive in the family manor, desperate to keep his father happy lest he start throwing the children’s books off the balcony and into the stormy murk. Now the tempest stripped the fear from him instead, and the darkness outdoors drew in around him like a heavy velvet curtain, tucking him back down into his lover’s nest.
V’s fingers dripped with ice magic as they soothed down Han’s spine bump by bump. Their latest attempt to isolate two distinct registers of a Minor Crest of Daphnel had been a resounding success, and Han could still feel victorious champagne bubbles humming in his blood.
He caught up V’s hand and kissed each of his fingers and all their strange blemishes.
The world roared outside, raindrops pelting the earth and swallowing up the impossible promises that slid from V’s lips. His eyes shuttered against a crack of lightning, and in an instant he had Han pinned to the bed, his mouth pressed against the shell of an ear.
“Come visit me in Enbarr.”
Han never let himself hope there would be an after. It ached to hear it, to know this wild adventure need not end, unless. “My father will never allow it.”
“There is a conference in the fall.” V’s mouth moved lower, to his throat, to his heart. “Rumor has it even the young Emperor will attend. Say you wish to broaden your alliances through a shared interest. How will he deny Essar’s bid for imperial attention?”
To the dark waves of V’s hair, Han whispered, “Sometimes I think you a madman. But then Reality and Reason bend all their rules, just so no one can call you a liar.”
His shoulder’s shook with mirth as he traced a path down to Han’s bare hipbones, teeth dragging over the soft skin stretched taut upon the ridge. “And the other times?”
“I think I must be mad instead.”
To dream you. To have this.
Han swallowed, feeling suddenly ragged. In a small voice, he asked, “How would I even find you?”
He was long past asking his mystery lover’s name. He knew there were of similar age, although V’s body bore another three lifetimes of scars, and V always kept two knives on his person that Han could find, and at least one more he always missed. He was the cleverest man Han had ever met, but preferred to soak in knowledge from the people around him rather than flaunt his own—no wonder he had no reputation as a scholar! He listened with rapt attention when Han trailed off on hour-long tangents in the middle of being fingered open, and once made him finish his line of thought during a ferocious fucking because it interested V more than the impending orgasm did. Pleasure was fleeting; knowledge was forever.
“My brilliant darling,” V rasped at the crux of his thighs, “How could you escape me?”
By the end of his first week in Enbarr, Han had scarcely made it through eighty percent of the Dietrich Library’s ground floor, let alone extended his survey to the modern annex and the rival Friedrich Archives to the southeast. There was simply so much. To see, to learn, to be! The common folk always said Essar was drowning in books, but even her depths could not compare with the teeming seas of knowledge here at the Empire’s heart.
The conference overwhelmed him to an equal extent, for on all sides he was buffeted about by a mess of names and faces he could not hope to remember even with copious notes. Unlike the gilded elitism of Essar’s circles, here the academics greeted each other by first name and traded calling cards with all the ease of platitudes, and more than one new acquaintance made him write out Hanneman in full, unwilling to trim him down to a manageable monosyllable. He felt some way about that, but hadn’t the chance to dwell upon the ironically nameless emotion just yet. In less than a week the Emperor would be sitting in on a theory-driven symposium, and Han had signed up to present. He had no topic. No cutting-edge technology to demonstrate. Just his fool courage and a determination not to look like a backwater amateur crestology fanatic.
Every time his ear caught a distant whisper, Han’s hackles went up in dread certainty they were talking about him. But this wasn’t Essar. He hadn’t yet made a name for himself, positive or…otherwise. What he truly needed to do was learn to tune them all out as distractions; let people talk, as long as they left him to his work!
But this round of whispers only seemed to swell. Han glanced up to see the librarians and other patrons scurrying over to the banisters to gaze into the entrance hall below.
Curiosity was a matter of knowledge acquisition, entirely dissimilar to dread distraction. Han slipped over to see what had caused all the fuss—or to squint, rather, until he hurriedly slipped on the new monocle that Theophania gave him as a parting gift.
A pair of imperial guards had stepped in through the doorway, and a second pair stood holding the broad cedar doors open for their charges to pass. In strolled a man bedecked in the finest red silk robes with a pile of three books under one arm, chatting animatedly with a young woman whose every inch dripped with gold and rubies. The grim, perfectly austere chaperone following in their wake began to scan the audience with palpable wariness.
Han’s heart caught in his throat.
“Who is…”
One of the clerks took pity on him, seemingly used to newcomers. “You gaze upon His Imperial Majesty Ionius IX and Lady Beatrice von Fenja, his newest consort.”
The Emperor. Simply dropping by the library like any other.
The clerk arched onto his toes for a better look. “Oh! And Tio’s finally back. He’s the one to watch, if you’re here for the magic conference. Marquis Achatius von Vestra, Minister of the Imperial Household and youngest Major General of the Sorcery Engineers in all of history.”
Achatius, Han mouthed to himself as those piercing eyes swept up to the second floor and fell heavily upon him.
A subtle smile curled into the man’s lips.
And his eyes flickered meaningfully towards the stacks.