11. The Party
The Party
Miles
M iles sat on the edge of their unmade bed, watching Gabriel dig through their closet.
“Palthor was... Palthor,” Miles said, pulling on the soft tan trousers Gabriel had tossed at him a moment ago.
“He stamped the copy of the name change petition three times. I swear, the man derives sexual gratification from the sound. But it’s filed.
And we’ve confirmed the inventory methodology for the manor.
As long as we itemize down to the silver value, the Crown will accept the ledgers are ready for transfer, although he did remind me the manor is only part of it.
We’ll need to get out to the shipyards, the docks, the offices, the croft, and the district.
But at least we know we won’t have to do it all again if he doesn’t like my bookkeeping. ”
Gabriel didn’t look away from the waistcoat he was evaluating. He grunted in satisfaction and placed it on the bed before diving back into the closet. “Excellent. Bureaucracy satiated. Now, stand up. I need to see if my math works.”
Miles stood, stifling a groan. “You’ve been suspiciously quiet about your day while I was drowning in ink. Did you actually eat the lunch I ordered, or did you just glare at it until it withered?”
“I ate,” Gabriel said, finally turning. He held up a strange contraption of leather straps, reinforced canvas, and buckles. “And I wasn’t quiet. I was industrious. Arms out.”
Miles obeyed, frowning at the object. “Is that... is that the lining of my military coat?”
“I didn’t have the time to finish the new coat I had planned for you, so I needed to improvise.
You weren’t going to be wearing your service coat any time soon, darling,” Gabriel said, stepping in close to thread Miles’s arms through the loops.
He worked the buckles and adjustable straps with nimble, exacting fingers.
“Besides, you can’t exactly stride into Halebourne Hall wearing Guild blues or a Crown coat without looking like you’re there to fight. Which, sadly, we aren’t, yet.”
Miles looked down. The rig settled over his shoulders and crossed his chest, sitting snug against his ribs.
It was an ingenious piece of engineering, a series of slim, angled pockets scavenged from his coat, perfectly sized for vials, illuminated cards, chalks, and gemstone components.
It was a partial caster’s combat rig, but flattened, streamlined, and designed to disappear.
Gabriel finished with his adjustments. “There. It sits flat. Now, the waistcoat.”
He held up a garment of deep plum velvet, embroidered with geometric patterns in gold thread. It was one of the louder pieces in Miles’s wardrobe—a piece Gabriel had chosen for him—although there seemed to be less of it than he remembered.
“I opened the side seams of the coat we’ll pair with this and let them out an inch.
” Gabriel gestured to the features of his creation as Miles shrugged the waistcoat on.
“It absorbs the bulk of the rig. And I’ve largely cut away the waistcoat beyond the bit that shows at the front, to give you access. Button it up and then try the coat.”
Miles did. The velvet smoothed over the hidden bandolier without a wrinkle. He shrugged on the lavender coat. He looked in the mirror and did up the high collar of his crisp white shirt. He looked expensive, slightly soft around the middle, and completely unarmed.
“This is brilliant.” Miles admired himself, turning side to side. “I feel like I’m smuggling contraband.”
“You are smuggling contraband. Namely, yourself in mage mode.” Gabriel moved to the closet, pulling down his own ensemble. “Now, load it up. But be selective. You don’t have the capacity for your full field kit.”
Miles went to his pack, sorting through the meticulously labeled pouches.
“If we’re going for subtle, I’ll take the truth salts.
Listening charms. Maybe the kinetic dampener in case we need to move quietly.
” He slotted a slender vial of silver dust into the new chest pocket.
It fit perfectly. “It begs the question, though. Are we being aggressive? This rig feels less like you’re planning on it. ”
Gabriel was stepping into trousers the color of a stormy sea, a dark, shark-skin gray with a subtle sheen.
“Don’t forget invisibility. And no, not aggressive.
We are gathering intelligence. We are walking into a nest of vipers who think they own me, and we need to know how deep their fangs go.
So, pick the sneaky spy spells.” Gabriel paused, holding up a shirt of sheer, rippling aqua silk.
“But... perhaps pack one solid blasting option? Just as a treat?”
Miles paused, taking a sphere of compressed sulfur in hand. Blasting. That implied a scenario where talking failed spectacularly. “That escalates things significantly, Gabriel.”
“Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and be reduced to throwing hors d’oeuvres at a sadist.”
Miles slid the sulfur into a kidney pocket. “Fair point.”
He turned to watch Gabriel dress. The transformation was always a weaponized process for Gabriel, but tonight it felt particularly sharp.
The aqua shirt went on, shimmering like water over pearl, followed by a waistcoat of stiff silver brocade that acted as armor for his torso.
The coat he chose was charcoal, cut long and severe, but lined in that same dangerous, icy blue.
He didn’t look like a victim. He looked like beautiful, ruinous violence waiting to happen to someone else.
And Miles was sure there would be many blades hidden in that silk. Well, he couldn’t fault preparedness.
Miles moved to help with the obsidian cufflinks. As he fastened the silver clasps at Gabriel’s wrists, he studied his partner’s face. The panic that had shattered a vase several days ago was gone, replaced by a glittering energy that Miles didn’t entirely trust.
“What is the plan, actually?” Miles asked. “We walk in, we drink their wine, we mingle. Then what?”
Gabriel checked his reflection, adjusting his collar until it framed his jaw just so.
“The plan is to put on a show that will work regardless of if Vellast remembers who I am—was? Whatever—or not. Whether I am some hidden-away heir from the countryside or the surprisingly elevated former slave, he expects to see a helpless young man, overwhelmed by a legacy he doesn’t understand. ”
Gabriel turned to Miles, and his face changed.
The sharpness vanished. His eyes widened, his posture slumped just a fraction, losing its proud grace.
He looked younger, softer, and profoundly out of his depth.
“I don’t know anything about business, my lord.
” Gabriel pitched his voice up, breathless and hesitant.
“I just... the solicitors use such big words, and the estate is such a mess, and I’m so afraid I’ll ruin everything the late Lord Goldmar built. ”
The performance was terrified perfection. It made Miles’s stomach sour, and he swallowed hard.
“He’ll see that,” Gabriel said, dropping the mask, his voice back in its steely register.
“And he will drool. He’ll want to take the reins.
He’ll explain everything—the network, the clients, the ‘business arrangements’—because he thinks he’s guiding a dim-witted puppet who needs a strong hand.
We will know everything he wants by the time I’m done with him. ”
“And then?” Miles asked.
Gabriel smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile of the wyrm breaking the surface of the Aver. “And then we give him absolutely none of it.”
“We let him construct his own trap,” Miles summarized, nodding slowly. “It’s sound. Risky, relying on his ego to override his caution, but historically consistent with men of his type.”
He stepped closer, resting his hands on Gabriel’s waist, on the real Gabriel, the lethal, capable man that Vellast wouldn’t see coming. “I approve. Intellectually.”
“But?” Gabriel asked.
“But you’re enjoying this,” Miles said. “And when you enjoy a con, you tend to improvise.”
“Improvise? Me? I am the soul of discipline.” Gabriel smoothed the lapels of Miles’s plum coat, his fingers lingering over the hidden straps beneath. “Trust me, Miles. I want to know the rules of the game before I flip the board.”
Miles looked down at him, fighting a war between his instincts.
His gut—trained in the muddy battlefields of Lyonnor and the secret schemes of the Order—told him that Gabriel was holding back a card.
There was a manic edge to this confidence, a specific kind of adrenalized focus that usually preceded an explosion.
Part of him wanted to demand the rest of it. To sit Gabriel down and drill him until every contingency was mapped, every variable accounted for, every impulse checked. That was how Miles survived. That was how he kept people alive. Control the variables, control the outcome.
But he thought of the tension in the room yesterday, the accusation that he treated Gabriel like a problem to be solved rather than a partner.
He thought of the way Gabriel had bristled under his protective smothering.
If he pushed now, if he demanded to inspect the architecture of Gabriel’s revenge, he would be just another man telling Gabriel what he was allowed to do with his own trauma.
Miles forced his hands to relax on Gabriel’s waist. He forced the air out of his lungs.
“Your plan is wonderfully devious,” Miles said.
“Isn’t it?” Gabriel looked positively delighted now, a far cry from his initial distress at receiving Vellast’s invitation. “I dreaded seeing him again, but now that the moment has arrived, the opportunity to thoroughly disappoint the man is actually quite appealing.”
“You will look beautiful doing it.”
“I know. And thanks to me, so will you.” Gabriel adjusted Miles’s collar. “You’re the very picture of a distinguished mage accompanying his noble companion.”