Chapter 16
Matthew nodded at York, who’d just brought out their food.
Fish and chips for him, he’d been wanting it, and Claudio had chosen the same.
Beer, for Matthew, he felt cider didn’t quite go with fish and chips, but Claudio had kept with the cider.
Now he flicked his fingers to bring up the privacy enchantments again, just as smoothly as last time.
Matthew cleared his throat and asked, “Did you have a good equinox, then?”
“Oh, grand.” Claudio looked up, smiling.
He looked a bit more rested, certainly, though Matthew was fairly sure Claudio didn’t actually know what taking it easy meant.
Not that Matthew could throw stones from glass houses on that one.
But there had been more sleep, and he thought there were signs of some tension uncoiled a bit.
“Being out at Schola always. I— hmm. How to put this. I love being a Penelope. I only wish I’d begun with it much earlier.
” That was an interesting question. Matthew would have to ask about it later.
Claudio continued without a pause. “But being there, I know how I fit in, that there’s a space for me.
That matters a lot. Some visits more than others.
This one just had a lot of companionable doing things and being helpful.
I think I needed that more than I realised.
” Then he looked up, and before Matthew had to figure out what to say, asked, “How was that garden tour?”
“Oh, fascinating. They’re doing another in a month or two.
Perhaps you might want to come? I’m curious what it’s like further into the spring.
This was a lot of talk about the house and the history, and gesturing at the gardens.
But of course, it’s only the earliest bulbs and the various plants that overwinter and such. ”
“Do tell? I’d be curious, absolutely, if I can get the time free.” Claudio waved a chip between his fingers, and Matthew took the encouragement to keep talking.
“Then, to wrap up, they took us through the greenhouses. I rather want to talk to someone— I know a couple of people I could ask— about the stabilisation charms and how they impact the production. There has to be a particular ratio for best benefit, surely?” Matthew finished a couple of minutes later.
Perhaps more minutes than he’d intended, since Claudio had eaten at least two-thirds of his meal.
He’d asked a question or five in the middle of it, though.
It hadn’t just been Matthew going on and on, as his mother would put it.
Now, Claudio certainly still seemed interested.
He was considering something. “If you want another for your list, I’m sure I can get Ursula Fortier to do a private tour of their greenhouses for us sometime.
They’ve tuned them for alchemical plant needs, focused on her uncle’s work, but they have a range of other things growing.
Still some oranges, for example, they started partly as an orangery. ”
Matthew looked up, blinking. “You’d mentioned her. And that she calls you uncle?”
“It means I can prevail on her for an hour or three of her time now and again. Honestly, she enjoys talking through it with knowledgeable people. The cost on your end is probably a little conversation about who best to talk to about a couple of things she and Jim would like to grow that need special permissions. Not to ease that or anything. Just cutting through the red tape to the right person or how to make sure they do the forms right the first time.”
“I can manage that.” Matthew tilted his head.
“You wouldn’t ask me for something that would actually be a problem.
I know that. Legally or in terms of my professional reputation.
” He was certain of it, but he also hadn’t entirely meant to put it quite like that.
It had a bit of suggestion in it somehow.
Claudio raised an eyebrow, then delicately finished the chip he’d been eating.
He chewed and swallowed, then said, entirely conversationally.
“I did also have someone explain to me about the name of this place, and— well.” That was absolutely no help in clarifying anything at all, and Matthew was suddenly terrified that he’d flirted in a way that he couldn’t back away from slowly.
“I’m not keeping you from anyone specific, I hope. ”
“No, not that. I haven’t in ages.” That sounded like he was commenting about reading a particular type of book or something, or a food.
Food, maybe, given rationing, there were certainly plenty of choices.
He hurriedly went on, “The general company, mostly. Knowing there are people who don’t mind.
” That came out before he could stop himself.
“You have an awful influence on my ability to keep my tongue behind my teeth.” It was a family saying, one he kept out of habit.
Claudio’s eyebrow went up at that, then he leaned back a little, deliberately a hair more casual, Matthew thought.
“I think I am entirely justified in blaming Gabe for that. In the good ways, mind. And Orion. Well, Orion rubbed off a lot of my sharp edges and arrogance. Still does. Gabe has encouraged a certain amount more indulgence of my impulses than my upbringing tolerated. Not that it’s hard. ”
There were a dozen different things Matthew wanted to ask. “Your parents— who I mostly know about solely from the papers and such— seem to have had particular ideas about how things should be done. And what you should do? You didn’t start as a Penelope, you’ve said that.”
“I am sure that Father is rolling in his grave about it. And it took me quite a while— a year and some— to get my head around the idea, honestly. To take the offer seriously. Partly because of that. Mother threw fits, but I didn’t give her much of a chance to do it at me.
Gabe asked us to join him to help triage various sites in Germany and France, and made my apprenticing to him part of the arrangement.
I told Mother two days before we left. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t stop me. ”
Matthew considered that for a long moment. “My mother has ideas about what I ought to do with myself. Dad, too. But not quite as, um. Expansive on the ambitions?”
“Two Fox House parents certainly would produce an abundance of ambition. Even without everything else my parents are and were,” Claudio agreed.
He seemed a hair haunted by it, honestly.
“What do your parents want from you?” Matthew made note of that precise choice of words— from, not for. It was telling and accurate, both.
“For me to settle down and marry. I can’t see that happening.
Can’t imagine doing that to some poor woman.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to offer much except a decent, stable job.
” Matthew said it again before he realised that was probably a sore spot for Claudio. “Beg pardon. I know you were married.”
“Actually, I was thinking it’s an excellent example of why following that sort of obligation doesn’t do anyone much good.
I don’t regret my children, not one bit.
And Electra did her part, more than. But we lived very separate lives even before the war.
Other than the parts about actually making the children happen, or the necessary parenting bits.
We’re both much happier to be divorced. She can spend her time in philanthropy without worrying about whether I’ll be around.
Neither of us has to pretend to feel things we don’t.
” He glanced at Matthew, then considered before adding a little more, quietly.
“It was all arranged while I was still an apprentice. Father was desperate to make sure the family line continued. You’ve certainly read the comments about his marriages. ”
“And that your mother had you. After your father’s first two wives were set aside for a lack of children.
” Certain things were in fact quite easy to find, especially for someone who knew how to find the gossipy bits of the profiles after Hesperidon Warren’s death.
“Mum will get used to disappointment eventually, I suppose. I don’t come from the sort of family where marriage has dynastic obligations.
” Claudio snorted, and that sound made Matthew brave enough to ask.
“What was it like growing up with that?”
“Oh, gods.” Claudio shook his head. “People assume, almost no one asks. Orion mostly doesn’t need to.
His father was on the Council before him.
It’s an odd perspective, growing up near that sort of power and the decisions people make.
But not having all the information or, of course, any actual say in any of it. No one wanted my opinion either.”
Matthew opened his mouth, closed it, then cocked his head. “But you have opinions.”
“Oh, yes.” Then Claudio laughed, a bit of open delight at something that Matthew was sure he didn’t show the world often.
At least not outside a small and select group that might just be coming to include Matthew himself.
Possibly. “The actual topic isn’t something I can get into here, but while we were in Germany, Gabe asked me a question that— well.
All my opinions came pouring out. All night, we were up until dawn and Orion knocking, worried because I’d never come to bed.
We were sharing a room. You know how it was, not much space, and he and I’ve never minded sharing. We don’t get on each other’s nerves.”
Matthew did, in fact, have questions about that, and how they’d figured that out.
He was fairly sure that there wasn't any subtext there, but he didn’t actually know.
It wasn’t like it was possible to ask if there were other sorts of intimacies.
And for that matter, it wasn’t like Matthew knew how to measure different kinds of intimacies.
Claudio and Lord Orion Sisley were clearly the kind of tangled close that Matthew had always wanted and never had.
But was there a difference between best friends, brothers, people who’d fought together against some great evil wrong with the world, or twined magic, and something like sex?
He had no idea. No one talked about that kind of thing, not anywhere Matthew had ever heard it.
Even here, in Urania’s Apples, people went off together, or took one of the upstairs rooms without a fuss, but they didn’t talk about what it was like after.
Now he considered what he could ask about.
“Because you’d had a sense of how things worked, even if you weren’t on the Council?
” Claudio nodded. “The history’s got to be something interesting, now you put it like that.
The patterns behind decisions?” He felt like he was flailing in the dark, but Claudio’s face lit up.
“Oh, yes. Let’s see if I can think of an example that’s public enough to talk about.
Something where I could confirm bits independently.
” He tapped his fingers on the table several times, another glimpse at what he was like when he wasn’t perfectly controlled.
“Ah, here’s one. 1927. Lancashire. Now, my father had— this is one of his more reasonable takes, mind— an extreme distaste for anything like factories spewing pollution.
Didn’t matter the kind of factory, didn’t matter what it made.
That year saw the opening of the last cotton mills in Lancashire, but do you remember the winter? ”
“A big storm at the end of October, my second year.” He did remember it. There’d been worries about flooding in the caves and lower reaches of the Keep. Then they’d heard about the damage all along the west coast of Wales and up into northern England and Scotland.
That got Claudio off on a five-minute description of exactly how many things that had disarranged, how much damage to various of the magical communities.
He didn’t ever quite specify, but Matthew was clear he was talking broadly about the ecology and communities involved somehow, far beyond what might appear on an ordinary census.
What fascinated him— well, one of the things— the more he listened was how precisely Claudio was laying out the various relevant factors.
Not just the flooding, or the impact on key materia sources, but also the way different people on the Council had reacted to it.
There were telling little details there, about one person’s reaction or priority, even though Claudio had, in fact, been busy with his apprenticeship the entire time.
At the end, Claudio blinked, visibly realised he’d been talking for an age, and then flushed. “Pardon. You should have stopped me ages ago.”
“No, I shouldn’t have. I enjoyed listening to how you laid it all out.
The different pieces.” Then, unfortunately, his tongue got away from his teeth again.
“Have you ever considered Challenging for a Council seat? You must have.” He could see immediately that it was the wrong question.
Everything about Claudio’s expression froze.
He put his hands up. “Sorry. You must hate that question.”
Claudio let out a long breath. “Most people don’t even ask it, actually. They just assume.” He looked away, over Matthew’s shoulder. “Mother assumes I will, sometime.”
Matthew noticed this did not actually answer the question at all, but he certainly wasn’t going to prod at it.
Instead, he tried for some other change of topic.
“Um. That book you recommended last week? I haven’t started it yet, but maybe tomorrow.
Could you give me a rundown on the bit of history that’ll help me appreciate it better? ”
That at least got Claudio relaxing a bit again.
It was something relating to the Wars of the Roses, and Claudio drew on explanations— cited to Orion and conversations over the years— about the various personalities.
That made sense, since he’d recommended it in part because he found the descriptions there of how to get a number of strong-willed people with their own ambitions and ideas of how to do things roughly pointed in the same direction.
Certainly, that seemed relevant to Matthew’s professional life, even more than it was to Claudio’s.
By the time they wrapped up, fifteen minutes later, the pub was getting crowded. They parted ways on the street, Claudio offering an amiable wave as he set off for Portal Square.