Chapter 1215: A Defined Exchange

"I don’t think he wants anything I have to give. That’s the part I can’t place."

Elias had not answered her then. He had learned long ago that a sentence like that wanted keeping, not answering, and he kept it the way other men kept coins, unspent, somewhere he could feel it. It sat there now while Gregor looked at him and the east lane went on clotting without his help.

"Gregor. The east lane. Go and be in it."

"Be in it," Gregor said. "Not fix it."

"Be seen in it. Usually that comes to the same thing."

Gregor weighed whether that was an insult, decided it was a compliment he couldn’t prove, and went, tugging his armband straight as he walked. Sera had already gone to put a pair of eyes on the western tables. That left Elias alone with the sentence and a field that needed him to look busy.

He kept walking. On a Clubs Day a president who stood still was making an announcement, and he had made his for the day. He took the long way round the northern tables, where no one would need him, and let the sentence come apart in his hands.

He knew the record. Everyone on the Council did; it had been a difficult month to be a Council officer. Lucavion had entered as the first-ranked commoner by a margin people still remarked on. In the same weeks he had beaten the commoner everyone had already decided would be the reform’s face, and afterward he had stood in a hall full of the nobility and taken the Crown Prince’s account of an incident apart in front of them. It was not the record of a man who wanted approval. It was the record of a man who had not been told what the currency was, or had been told and declined to carry any.

Elias had spent a good part of his time at the Academy learning what the currency was.

And yet there was Priscilla. Lucavion had turned Selienne down without a word of bargaining, then sat across from the Princess and negotiated terms of his own, and he still wore no one’s colors.

’Not a man who refuses arrangements, then. A man who refuses to be owned by one. Patronage is only ownership with better manners, and most people prefer the manners. Apparently this one doesn’t.’

It did not follow that he was waiting for a better patron. Elias distrusted that thought on sight; it was the one every table on the field was already having. Nor did it follow that he would refuse everything. A no to being owned was not a no to being useful, or to someone being useful to him, on terms that ended.

’Not more, then. More is the same offer, louder. Something smaller. Something with edges, that he could put down again.’

What that would be, Elias did not know. The Council had floor space, calendar slots, and a signature at the foot of every society charter, and there was nothing among them that Lucavion couldn’t get by asking someone else.

"Elias."

Sera was at his elbow with her slate against her ribs. She had come up on his left, which she did when she wanted him to notice her before she spoke.

"Court Two. Both of them have asked for you by name."

She gave him the rest as they walked, in the order he would want it. Court Two was the only warded court that had passed inspection that morning. The Runewrights had been assigned to it, and the Delvers’ drill lane ran along its north wall. Neither society had broken a rule; the wards simply weren’t finished, and one schedule had handed the same ground to both.

’Two parties, both correct. Those are always the expensive ones.’

"Sera. What do we have spare?"

She glanced at him. "Spare."

"On the calendar. Space. Anything nobody has promised yet."

"Two hours in the Mission Hall annex. A quarter of the drill lane after noon. Whatever Gregor hasn’t already spent by then." She waited. "You’ve never asked me that."

"I’m asking now."

"For the dispute?"

"Keep it where I can find it," Elias said, which was not an answer, and Sera, who knew the difference, wrote it down anyway.

He knew both seniors, though not well. House Reyne had sent someone to Selienne’s tables twice and gone home without answering either time. House Brell dined with whoever set a table and sent a small gift to everyone who had. Neither had said anything in public that couldn’t be said at a wedding, and Elias thought each was worth a proper conversation before the term was out, when there was time and nobody had a bell to answer.

He read people by what they would not bend on. It was quicker than asking what they wanted, because wants changed with the audience and refusals seldom did. Reyne, he expected, would not bend on a number. Brell would not bend on time. Both were things a man could work with. It was the other refusal, the one with no shape at all, that he could not put down.

The court was a square of pale flagstone ringed with ward-posts, the wards ticking faintly at the edges like a kettle before it boils. Lady Odalys Reyne stood at the center with a brass tuning rod in one hand and her sleeves already pushed to the elbow. Ser Tavian Brell stood outside the ring with three of his people and a coil of tether line over one shoulder, looking as if he had been standing there longer than he had meant to.

Reyne spoke first, and she did not raise her voice.

"At the third stage the array sheds a tone that carries to the far wall. At this distance it will pull the mana out of any tuned instrument in the Delvers’ lane, and I cannot stop it doing so without making the array fail. I have three first-years on my list who mean to stand in this court. I will not have them standing in it while someone’s compass spins." She tapped the rod on the flagstone. The note wavered, then settled. "Twelve paces. That is the distance, and I am not prepared to—"

"Nobody’s asking you to bend it, Reyne." Brell let the tether line slide off his shoulder without looking where it fell. "I have a queue at my table, and every minute I spend in this square someone with a table nearer the gate is collecting it. Give me a way to keep the lane open and I’ll take it."

Elias looked at neither of them at first. He walked the north wall. The anchor lines were strung along it at shoulder height, and a length of one had already begun to hum against the flagstone, which told him Reyne’s number was not a preference. It was also, he noted, the only number in the square; Brell had not offered one.

’Two things, each right, and a schedule that put them in the same place.’ For one unhelpful moment he was thinking of a man reading terms to the bottom. He set it down.

"Lady Reyne. What is the smallest thing that makes this safe for your first-years?"

"Twelve paces."

"And a schedule. Not a wall. Does it need to run all day?"

Reyne paused. It was the first time she had been asked. "The third stage needs perhaps ten minutes to build and hold," she said slowly. "The earlier stages are quiet. I run them in a loop for the crowd."

"Ser Brell. What is the smallest thing that gets your queue moving?"

"Somewhere to put the racks that isn’t here. And I would like the rest of the hour to be mine."

"Ten minutes on the hour and the half, the Runewrights. The Delvers work their instruments in the gaps and move the racks behind the wall. I’ll lend two damping stones from the Council store for the boundary." Elias turned back to Reyne. "Twelve paces stays."

Reyne considered it for the length of one tap of the rod. "The stones go on the boundary. Not inside it."

"Not inside it."

"Ten minutes." Brell was already turning. "Fine. I’ve lost longer than that to a badly tied knot." He was calling names as he went, and his people scattered in three directions.

Reyne inclined her head, the small nod of someone signing a page. "You walked the wall yourself. Most presidents send someone."

"Most presidents have better luck with their walls," Elias said.

Something in her face moved by a degree; it might have been amusement. She went back to her array.

He had not ruled on anything. He had asked each of them what they could not do without and built the afternoon around those two answers. Both had left with what they needed and neither with what they had only wanted. It was the only kind of arrangement he had ever trusted: small, and with an end to it.

When the ward-posts had settled and both societies were moving, Elias looked back toward the western tables.

The notice-post stood where it had stood. Lucavion did not. The gap the first-years had kept around him had closed over, and the rows beyond the post were three ranks deep. He could have been anywhere in them.

Elias found that his weight had shifted west. He moved it back, on purpose, and noted that he had needed to.

Sera had come up beside him with her slate. "Do you want someone to find him? Or send word that you would like a minute?"

He considered it for as long as it took to find the lower gate, where the queue was already bending back on itself and Gregor stood at the head of it with his hands in the air. An armband crossing the field to a first-year would be watched by half the tables, and a rumor would be made before the walk was done: the Council had made an offer, and he had already turned down a princess. Elias had nothing to say to him yet but that he was interested, which was exactly what Lucavion had refused once already.

’Not with a field to run. Not in front of every table on the grounds. And not with nothing in my hand.’

"Not today," he said.

"Understood." Sera did not ask why. She never asked why; she asked what he needed and left the reasons to him, which was one of the things that made her bearable at eleven in the morning. "I’ll keep the eyes on the western tables."

"The tables. Not the man."

"On a day like this those are the same place."

"Then be polite about it."

Sera almost smiled. She made a note, and went.

He would give it a week. A week was long enough to learn something about Lucavion that was not in a file, and short enough that the something would still be true. In that time he would find a narrow reason to speak to him, one with edges, and choose an hour when neither of them had a field to run.

Down at the lower gate, Gregor had begun waving both arms. Elias went to find out what he had been right about.