Err Apparent (The Tenibrian Affairs #1)

1. The Summons

The Summons

Gabriel

G abriel ran his thumb over the edge of a bolt of heavy, midnight-blue silk—stolen, naturally—and narrowed his eyes at the garment currently hanging on his dress form.

He was officially declaring war. The enemy? Miles Beauchamp’s tragic commitment to looking like a sentient burlap sack.

“Absolute aesthetic terrorism,” Gabriel muttered to the empty room. He jabbed in a pin to experiment with a tuck.

Miles had left an hour ago for a small commission at the miller’s place, wearing that thing .

The Guild-standard caster’s coat. It was boxy, stiff, and shapeless.

It took a man who was built like a siege engine—broad shoulders, thighs thick enough to suffocate a man happily, and a waist that Gabriel loved to wrap his legs around—and turned him into a rectangular box of a person.

It was a crime against humanity, and more importantly, a crime against Gabriel’s fashion sense.

On the dress form was the basis of a new creation: Miles’s old caster’s coat from his Crown Years service in the war.

The wool was scratchy and smelled faintly of old magical ozone and trauma, but the architecture was sound.

It was designed for war casting, not comfort, which meant easy access to component pockets and reinforced stitching.

He knew the layout of the pockets was important for quick casting.

He didn’t mind the utility. He minded the lack of sex appeal. Miles was a mix of dangerous magic and tentative, soft-hearted fumbling, a dichotomy that deserved better than medium-grade wool and an unflattering cut .

He smoothed the stolen silk. It felt like cool water against his skin. Around him was heaped a riot of fabrics. He’d acquired them through methods that were perfectly reasonable if one didn’t ask too many questions. Miles never asked. One of his more endearing qualities.

Was the midnight blue the best choice to convey both his appreciation for this discretion and the depth of his affection?

Yes, Gabriel decided. It would do.

Gabriel visualized the construction. He would keep the internal rig of the old coat but nip in the line where the waist should be and wasn’t.

If you’re going to blow things up, you should look snatched while you do it.

This was one of the few skills from the Before that Gabriel actually enjoyed reclaiming. Making Miles a coat wasn’t a command; it was a gift. A choice.

He picked up his shears, the heavy steel cool in his hand, ready to slice into the silk.

A shadow cut across the diamond-paned window above the sewing table.

Gabriel paused, the shears hovering open. Past the trellis heavy with late-blooming jasmine, a figure was walking up the path. Not a neighbor coming to gossip about the vintner’s daughter. Not a client looking for a charm.

The walker wore a crisp, starched uniform of navy and gold. A leather satchel hung at their hip, stamped with a crest that Gabriel could identify from a hundred yards away.

The shears clattered onto the table.

An Averly Crown Messenger. Here. In the ass-end of nowhere.

Gabriel didn’t panic—he wasn’t an amateur—but a cold, familiar stillness descended over him. The sun seemed to drain out of the room. Messengers didn’t come to a rental cottage in Sunmere, a tiny village in Averly, to deliver happy tidings.

Gabriel peered through the window as the messenger knocked, waited, and knocked again.

Outside, the mid-afternoon sun turned the jasmine yellow against the stone wall, and a few early-fallen leaves skittered across the path.

Autumn in Sunmere smelled like fermenting grapes and wood smoke, soft and drowsy.

The kind of season that invited you to forget the world existed beyond the next hill.

Unless someone decided forgetting wasn’t an option. The messenger’s head began to turn toward the window .

Gabriel slid off the chair, ducking behind the wardrobe between the door and the window. Let them think no one was home. Let them leave their summons on the step like civilized bureaucrats and fuck off back to whatever government hole they’d crawled out of.

The third set of knocks echoed through the cottage.

Gabriel didn’t budge. Let the man stand in the wind. Let the Crown’s lackey get sore feet. What had the Crown ever done for him?

When a fourth knock threatened to bruise the wood, Gabriel sighed. Maybe the messenger had seen him ducking out of the way. If the messenger kept at it—and it seemed he would—the neighbors would wonder, and gossip, and he’d seem a child hiding from the mail carrier.

Fine.

He swung open the door.

The messenger had a pinched face, a uniform stiff enough to stand on its own, and the apparent soul of a dried prune. He held a square, cream-colored envelope like it was a precious treasure.

The messenger cleared his throat. “Delivery for Lord Gabriel Goldmar, resident at Cottage on the Wend, Briarleigh.”

Gabriel’s vision went white at the edges. He made himself breathe.

“No.”

The messenger blinked. “Pardon?”

“I said no. There’s no lord here.” His voice climbed higher, the way it always did when fury overrode control. “And there’s definitely no Goldmar .”

“Sir, if you’d just—”

“I’m not a lord. I’m not whoever you think—”

“Are you Gabriel?”

That was the unimportant bit, but...

“...Yes.”

“Then this is for you.” The messenger thrust the envelope forward with the enthusiasm of someone who’d heard this routine before and found it tedious.

“I’m clearly not that Gabriel. Wrong person. Try the next village over.”

“Sir, you are Gabriel, residing at this address, and this document is for you.” The man’s tone suggested he’d rather be anywhere else. “Sign here.”

He produced a ledger and a pen and rested the envelope on top of an open page with the air of a man who would stand on this doorstep until the sun died .

Gabriel didn’t take it. He stared at the envelope and its seal, his own hands tucked safely in his pockets. The Office of Unclaimed Holdings and Stewardship. The grave robbers of the bureaucracy. Nothing good ever came from the people who counted the spoons of dead men.

“You need to take this,” the messenger said, his arm dropping an inch.

Gabriel looked at the pen. He looked at the envelope. The air in the doorway felt thin, stealing the warmth from the afternoon. Taking that letter felt like agreeing to a contract he hadn’t read. It felt like inviting a vampire across the threshold.

He’d had quite enough of vampires, thank you very much.

“If I don’t?”

“Then I fetch the local magistrate to witness the refusal, and you get fined for obstructing Crown business,” the messenger recited, clearly bored with this script.

Gabriel snatched the pen. He scribbled his signature and flung the pen back down. He grabbed the envelope, not waiting for the man to turn away before he slammed the heavy oak door. The latch clicked, a solid, mechanical sound that usually made him feel safe.

He threw the lock for good measure. Pointless. The poison was already in the room. But it felt necessary.

He tossed the envelope on the entry table, looking innocuous against the black lacquer.

Gabriel glared at it, then spun on his heel and marched back to his sewing table.

He picked up his shears. He would finish cutting the material for Miles’s coat.

He would focus on the midnight-blue silk, the geometry of the pattern, the crisp slide of metal through fabric.

He made one cut. It was crooked.

Damn it.

He slapped the shears down. The silence of the cottage, normally a comfort, now felt heavy.

Miles wouldn’t be back for hours.

He could wait. He should wait. Miles would brew tea, probably something with calming herbs, and they would open it together. Miles would analyze the words while Gabriel panicked, and then Miles would offer a logical, twelve-point plan to deal with whatever nonsense this was .

But Gabriel hated not knowing. Ignorance wasn’t bliss; ignorance was a bruise waiting to happen.

He stalked back to the entry table.

“Fine,” he hissed at the stationery. “Do your worst.”

He hooked a fingernail under the wax seal—a set of scales balanced on a ledger—and popped it open. The paper inside was thick, expensive vellum. The kind that cost more per sheet than a commoner made in a month.

He unfolded it. The script was a soulless march of letters.

To Lord Gabriel Goldmar of Rookgate,

Head of House Goldmar,

Pursuant to the death of Lord Madaze Goldmar and the absence of any contesting claims, the Office of Unclaimed Holdings and Stewardship hereby acknowledges your succession...

The world pitched sideways. Gabriel grabbed the edge of the table, his knuckles turning the color of old milk.

Lord Gabriel Goldmar.

For fuck’s sake, the messenger had been serious. The name sat on the page like a bloodstain.

It was a joke. It had to be a joke. A hysterical laugh bubbled in his chest, sharp and jaggy.

It must be a clerical error. Or a very bad, very stupid joke.

He wasn’t Madaze’s son or heir. Madaze hadn’t claimed him in any way other than as his master.

And, notably, Gabriel had killed him.

How does a slave inherit his master’s house? Especially when the slave killed the master, no matter how good and how high-up the cover-up had been. That wasn’t how the story went.

Gabriel hunted for a lie in the ink. A smudge. A wrong seal. He knew documents. He’d forged enough passes during his years as Madaze’s spy to spot a hustle from across the room.

But when held up to the light, the watermark mocked him with its perfection. The signature belonged to Palthor Quillmane, a bureaucrat he knew to be real. The stamps were real too.

You are hereby summoned to the Office of Unclaimed Holdings and Stewardship in Averdon within seven days of receipt to catalog the assets and assume the responsibilities of the title. Failure to appear will result in the seizure of assets and a warrant for...

He dropped the letter. It fluttered to the floor, landing face up.