Chapter 2 Briar
Chapter Two: Briar
Everything is performance. Even the way I hold the glass is designed to look offhand, almost bored, when in reality I haven’t moved a muscle in the last five minutes.
The ballroom is the kind of cliché a lesser mind would call a fairy tale—crystal chandeliers dripping light, strings of silvered garlands spun across the ceiling, waiters gliding with an efficiency that suggests hours of practice.
The crowd pulses below, a tide of black tuxedos and blood-red gowns, every face half-cloaked in velvet or leather or painted porcelain.
The night smells of money and champagne and the barest undercurrent of unease. All of it familiar, all of it useless.
The Silent never waste an opportunity to showcase their wealth while pretending to help the less fortunate.
Almost all of the Custodians have a representative here tonight.
I am here on behalf of House Harrington, trying to regain favor in the eyes of the others after the poorly handled incident at Westpoint Academy and the failure of Mr. Harrington, my uncle, to secure Eve.
Ever since the failures, our House has been cast into a shadow, of which, I aim to release. My role within one of The Silent’s many divisions, is to ensure compliance through psychological study. The Ministry of Design is one cog in the wheel, but it’s my playhouse.
I stand on a small dais at the far end of the room, nominally here as an “honored guest,” in reality to watch and be watched.
There’s power in being seen; there’s more in watching without being noticed.
My fingers curl around the stem of a crystal flute, the chill of the glass a rare honest sensation.
I swirl the bubbles, not taking a sip, content to watch the guests below as they plot and flirt and try not to let their masks slip.
The entrance doors slide open on silent hinges, and the pulse of the room shifts by a single beat. Someone new. I clock him at once, because he doesn’t belong not just in the way he stands, but in the way he moves, a half-second off the rhythm everyone else has been practicing since birth.
His suit is a size too big, jacket shoulders rolling instead of resting, and the trousers break oddly at his shoes.
The mask is homemade, the kind of thing a child might cut from craft foam and elastic, painted a flat midnight blue with no attempt at flourish.
His hair is a battle between curly and unmanageable, and his glasses—actual prescription, not the decorative kind—fog a little with each breath behind the mask.
He hesitates a fraction of a second at the threshold, taking in the room not with the predatory sweep of the other guests, but with an open, almost disarming interest. It’s as if he’s mapping the exits before the threats.
He scans the chandeliers, the flower arrangements, the clusters of high-tier guests, then quickly finds a vantage by the wall.
His hands don’t know what to do: he tries them folded, then in his pockets, then by his sides. I watch the progression, amused.
A server offers him champagne, and he declines with a polite, apologetic smile.
Real, not practiced. Most people in this room couldn’t muster sincerity if you threatened them.
I watch him slide along the wall, picking up details—table numbers, security rotations, the staff comms earpieces—before anyone else registers his presence.
I shift my attention from the new arrival to the guests around me, recalibrating.
A few heads turn his way, the way lions sense an unfamiliar movement at the edge of their field.
He doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. Instead he fixates on the display of silent auction items set up in the corner: rare first editions, a set of chess pieces carved from meteorite, a bottle of wine older than most of the attendees.
I check my phone, which I have concealed in the inside breast pocket of my jacket, for the summary dossier sent by the Ministry.
The photo is a little out of date, but it’s him.
Landon Thompson. Born twenty-seven years ago in a part of the city everyone pretends doesn’t exist. State-school educated, debt-laden, hired as an accountant for the charity front my family is laundering through.
Recently flagged for flagrant curiosity and “imprudent pattern detection.” I scroll further.
Lives alone. No significant other. No priors, no vices except an overuse of caffeine and a pathological need to be the smartest person in the room.
He doesn’t know he’s being watched. He’s not stupid; he’s just not used to being seen by the kind of eyes that matter.
A voice beside me: “He’s the one.” The words are pitched low, intended only for me. The speaker is a man with the kind of face you forget as soon as he turns away, which is why he’s been in this job for so long. His mask is the Society’s standard—plain black, a single gold line down the center.
I answer without moving my head. “You’re sure?”
He gives a small, efficient nod. “Confirmed by three independent traces. He’s been into every archive we have. Last night he made a copy of the off-books donation flow.”
“Did he share it?”
“Not yet.” A pause, not quite nervous, but aware. “We thought you’d want to deal with him before the clean-up crew.”
That amuses me. I let it show in the set of my mouth, nothing more. “I’ll take care of it.”
I sense the man retreat, his deference as practiced as the rest of him. I shift my position on the dais, so I can track Landon more directly.
He’s found the silent auction, and he’s actually reading the description cards.
Not pretending, not playing for time. The only other person at the table is a woman old enough to be his mother, but in this room age is a currency, not a defect.
She wears a mask of cut steel, a delicate thing that flashes with each tilt of her head.
She’s a Custodian matriarch, which means she’s dangerous.
Landon looks up, sees her, and nods in greeting.
She says something I can’t hear, and he smiles, uncertain.
He’s not sure of the etiquette here; he’s not even sure he’s supposed to answer.
She leans in, says something softer, and Landon’s smile shifts—less guarded, more real.
He shakes her hand, then bows his head and drifts away, as if that’s the end of the script.
He’s trying to blend, but everything about him stands out. The way he moves, the way he looks at people instead of over them, even the way he breathes. He doesn’t know how to be invisible in a room full of monsters. Which is probably why he’s alive.
It doesn’t help that he’s tall and lanky, a bit clumsy in his gait, but there’s something endearing about the way he looks like a disheveled nerd. Not usually my type, but he walked into the lion’s den with no sense of self preservation and I find that rather…
Cute.
I drain the glass, though I haven’t tasted a thing.
I consider how best to approach: I could have Security intercept him at the coat check and disappear him into the sub-basement for the usual interrogation.
I could invite him up to the mezzanine and see if he’s brave enough to have a conversation with me.
Or I could simply watch, see what he does when left to his own devices, like a rat in a new maze.
I prefer the last option. I’ve always liked seeing how people behave when they think no one is recording.
He circles the room, not like a vulture, but like someone trying to memorize every detail before he’s kicked out.
He stops once at the buffet, considers a truffled amuse-bouche, then sets it back on the tray untouched.
There’s nothing performative about it. He checks his phone, types a quick note, then pockets it.
I decide to test him.
I slip from the dais, gliding into the crowd.
My movements are calculated to draw attention without seeming to: a hand laid gently on a shoulder, a lingering look at someone’s mask, a compliment here, a promise there.
The current shifts around me, and within a minute Landon is aware of me.
I see it in the way his spine straightens, in the way he tries to move perpendicular to my path instead of away. Smart.
I close the distance and stand beside him at the silent auction table.
Up close, he smells like generic drugstore soap and anxiety.
His tie is the wrong shade of blue, but it makes his eyes pop.
I reach past him, pick up the description card for the first-edition Dostoevsky, and say, “It’s not actually a first printing, you know.
The paper’s too clean. Probably a restoration. ”
He glances at me, surprised. “Oh. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never even touched a first edition before.”
I watch him process the interaction, cataloguing every angle of the mask, the way the eyeholes cut sharp around my lashes, the dark curled hair visible above the brow. He recognizes me, or at least recognizes I’m not a regular attendee.
He says, “Do you work here?”
It almost makes me laugh. “No. You?”
He smiles, small and crooked. “Got an invite, not sure why. This isn’t my usual jaunt.”
I glance at his hands, which are perfectly clean but ink-stained near the cuticle of his left thumb. “Do you like puzzles?”
He looks at the chess set, then back at me. “I like solving them. I hate the part where you realize you’re just a piece on someone else’s board.”
He’s sharper than I expected. I enjoy it. “A dangerous philosophy.”
He shrugs, awkward. “Probably why I don’t get invited to places like this very often.”
He doesn’t know how true that is. I tilt my head, watching him. “What would you do if you found out you were on the wrong side of the puzzle?”
He says, “I guess I’d hope the person holding the box is at least a little honest.” Then he glances away, as if embarrassed at his own earnestness.
There is nothing in this room as genuine as that. It’s almost unsettling.