Chapter 13: Questions and Answers
Why was Marquis Raeven here?
How could the death of a titular baron draw out the most powerful figure among the Six Great Nobles?
There was a more charitable explanation: maybe the injury to the Aindra heir was what had drawn the Marquis's attention. The Aindra family was nowhere near the top tier of nobility, but they were an established comital house, and when their heir came in wounded, a marquis paying a visit was at least plausible.
But—
No. That didn't hold.
Lucian dismissed it immediately.
Raeven's ability was beyond question. In the original work he was credited as the single greatest reason the Kingdom didn't collapse entirely. But the Raeven standing in this room wasn't yet the "Bat" of later years, the man who balanced carefully between the royalist faction and the noble faction for the sake of his son. The Raeven who had just assumed the marquisate had no heir yet. He was, without question, an ambitious man. A man who wanted to overturn the royal house, only he hid it well, the way a bat hid in the dark.
And the Aindra family's loyalties leaned royalist.
So was Raeven here to use this as an opening against the Aindra family? Or against the royalist faction more broadly?
What a performance, Lucian thought, looking at the warm smile still settled on Raeven's face.
* * *
"That morning, I took my sister and we slipped out..."
Lucian said it and glanced up at his father with the particular furtiveness of a child who knows they've done something wrong: the sideways look of someone caught truanting, caught between dreading the scolding and already wanting to explain themselves.
Count Alvis's brow moved, barely.
But he said nothing.
He stood at the bedside with his hands behind his back, his expression giving nothing away.
Marquis Raeven noticed the exchange. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and something briefly brightened in those narrow blue eyes.
"Slipped out?" He kept his voice low, coaxing, the tone someone used with small children. "Slipped out to do what, young Lucian?"
Lucian looked down. His fingers found the edge of the blanket and began to pull at it absently.
"...To go out and play."
His voice was smaller now, the voice of a child confessing.
"The weather was so nice in the morning, and I... I just wanted to walk around with my sister. I didn't tell Aldred the butler, and I didn't tell Father..."
Marquis Raeven laughed softly.
"Children wanting to play. Perfectly natural." He said it and turned toward Count Alvis. "Don't you think so, Count Alvis?"
The Count didn't answer.
He only watched Lucian, something searching in those deep eyes, along with something else Lucian couldn't quite read.
Lucian kept his eyes down.
But he could feel his father's gaze on him, heavy, like a pressure that said nothing out loud.
"And then?" Raeven's voice brought the focus back. "Young Lucian, you went out to play. What did you run into?"
Lucian's fingers twisted in the blanket edge.
"I... I went with my sister to the market."
He said it slowly, as though recalling while he spoke.
"The market was so lively, lots of people, all kinds of things to see. We looked around for a while, and then Lakyus got tired and went home first. After that I still wanted to keep walking somewhere quieter. I went toward an alley nearby."
He paused.
"And then I heard someone in the alley... kicking a wall."
"Kicking a wall?" Raeven raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Yes." Lucian nodded. "A banging sound, very loud. And someone swearing."
"I was curious, so I... I went to look."
He said it and raised his head, his face carrying that specific expression of a child who has just lived through the consequences of doing something they shouldn't have.
"And what did you see?" A faint urgency had entered Raeven's voice.
"I saw..."
Lucian's eyes went a little distant, as though reaching back for a scene that didn't actually exist.
"There was a man standing there. Dark clothing, very fat. He was swearing, awful words. I couldn't understand all of it, but it was something like..."
He furrowed his brow, making a show of trying to remember.
"Something like 'I'm Baron Livian, and you only give me this much of the cut? My goods are the finest there are.'"
He delivered it in a blustering, indignant voice, completely at odds with the soft child's voice from a moment ago.
Marquis Raeven's expression shifted, just briefly.
But he didn't interrupt.
"Then he kept swearing." Lucian continued. "He said: 'Useless thugs, nothing but a pack of brainless muscle.'"
At this Lucian looked up, his face carrying the genuine confusion children brought to things they didn't understand.
"My lord, what does 'brainless muscle' mean?"
Marquis Raeven's expression did something subtle for a moment.
Then the warm smile was back.
"It means... unpleasant people," he said. "Young Lucian doesn't need to worry about that."
"Oh." Lucian nodded obediently.
"Then what happened?" Raeven continued.
Lucian thought for a moment.
"He seemed... drunk?"
He tilted his head, as though piecing it together.
"His face was very red. He was staggering, could barely stay upright. Just kicking the wall and swearing, then leaning on it to catch his breath, then swearing again."
The drunk detail was Lucian's invention, of course. Baron Livian, currently being cleaned up by stray dogs at the far end of an alley, was in no position to contradict any of it.
Good dogs. They had genuinely earned their keep.
Marquis Raeven's brow creased faintly.
Drunk. That was a plausible explanation.
He knew something of Livian's reputation. That sort of low-level noble, leveraging his Eight Fingers connections to act as he liked in the capital. Getting drunk and going on a rampage was entirely within the range of things Livian would do.
"And then?" Raeven pressed. "He saw you?"
Lucian nodded, something shaken flickering across his face.
"I... I was startled and tried to leave. But he'd already seen me."
He pressed his lips together.
"He looked at me, eyes wide, and then he laughed. That laugh was... frightening. He started walking toward me and said..."
Lucian paused. His voice got smaller.
"That I'd fetch a good price."
Silence spread through the room after that.
All three of them understood exactly what it meant.
"Then I told him my name." Lucian was the one to break it. "I said I was from the Aindra family. I wanted to... I thought if I told him that, he would let me go."
"And when he heard it?"
"He seemed... angry."
Lucian looked down, his hand clenching tight in the blanket.
"He said... 'You great nobles are all the same, taking the lion's share of everything, too greedy to know when to stop.' And then he pulled out a knife and came at me."
Watch me use one story to make Baron Livian an enemy of two factions at once, Lucian thought with some satisfaction.
He raised his head and looked at Marquis Raeven.
Those pale green eyes held the particular innocence of a child's gaze, with just the faintest shimmer of tears still there from the fright of it all.