Chapter 45
Later that day at Dinas Emrys
“Mother,” Claudio stood smoothly from the bench he’d been waiting on as his mother opened the door. He had, one way and another, spent a fair bit of time in this hallway over the years. Waiting for Father, waiting for Mother, waiting for both of them. He always had a book.
Today, however, he had not been waiting long.
He’d come through the portal to the keep after leaving Matty at the Ministry.
Then he’d taken himself and a book out through the curtain wall to a spot by the stream that wound around the stones and crags and down toward the bay.
He’d read until about a quarter hour ago, pausing only to get Matty’s note by journal that the conversation with his mother was ongoing, but not currently horrible.
Matty thought he’d be at the pub until closing, which at least gave Claudio a later target.
Now, though, he brought his focus to his mother.
She was wearing a simple purple dress, a sleeveless creamy white ritual robe over it, both of linen rather than silk, her hair pinned up into a low bun.
Not her usual mode at all, though of course he’d seen her like this before.
It meant she had changed before this, that she felt it was something that needed preparation, but not elaborate ritual. “Would it be better if I changed?”
The question took her aback, but then she shook her head slightly. “No, that’s not necessary.” Then, unexpectedly, she added, “That’s what you were wearing on Sunday, more or less. We are going to the same place. Do you need anything before we go up?”
He had suspected that, honestly. If she’d simply wanted to talk to him, they could have done that in any number of locations.
Showing him his office wasn’t necessary today.
There might have been something in the Council’s library or her office, but the Challenge chamber had been the better bet overall.
Now, Claudio made a slight bow, answering the delicate question with a shake of his head.
“I’d like to wash my hands. Otherwise, quite ready, thank you. May I get the door?”
She nodded, and he held it as she went back through, then closed it behind him.
There were not many others here today. He hadn’t seen any of the Council, and he hadn’t felt the faint pulse of the portal other than twice, where the keep’s staff were likely going home for supper.
Mother went up the stairs quietly, one flight, then two.
There was a pause at the washroom off the stairs.
Claudio washed his hands, ritually rinsing them, then drying them carefully.
They climbed the last flight up to the landing and the door.
All of it in silence, other than the sounds of their respective shoes.
There, Mother stopped, turning to face him. “Will you come in with me?” Just those few bare words. It was an undecorated comment, but rather than Mother’s usual terseness and control, it was more like a precise stroke of ink on a brush, deliberately spare and beautiful.
He was going to say, yes, of course, but the realisation made him consider how he would reply.
He had dozens of questions. Why tonight?
What was she hoping for? Was this usual?
He was fairly sure it wasn’t, because Gabe would have said something of the kind.
Or Orion, even though they’d not talked through the Council specifics yet.
Claudio took a deep breath. Everything in his life had prepared him for this.
Nothing had. But the best thing was to go forward, as steadily as he could, paying attention in all the ways that Isembard and Thesan and Gabe had taught him.
Orion and Hypatia and Cammie, too, though from a somewhat different angle of declination.
“Of course.” No ‘Mother’ on the end of this.
They were in a different relationship here, and he’d likely need to figure out what name or title or noun went with that.
She nodded, then turned to the door. “May I ask what colour it is to you? Or what else you know of it, perhaps.” The second part of that was a little hesitant, but the question was clear enough.
He considered it. Mason, even more than Gabe, had drilled the nuances into him.
She was a colourman’s daughter, as well as her own skills with pigments and paints and inks.
She held that someone who understood the variations was two-thirds of the way to being an excellent Penelope.
“May I?” He didn’t explain what he was asking permission for.
After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.
Claudio took two steps forward, putting his hand on the door and feeling the way it sang with magic.
“Welsh oak, Quercus petraea. Brown, weathered out of proportion to its placement with hints of silver showing through, dating back some hundreds of years. I’d not like to put a year on it without testing I certainly wouldn’t do here.
But of an age with the construction of the main keep, I’d think, and possibly the wood is a little older.
Second half of the 1300s, perhaps. Well-tended, but also recently restored, the linseed oil hasn’t yellowed, and the wrought iron hinges show no sign of rust or dust.” He left his palm there for a moment.
The knowledge was one thing, and it mattered.
But the feel of it, the being with it, that was even more important, and he wanted to linger.
It was absolutely not the answer she had expected.
Not in any direction. It was certainly not a mode she had heard him do often, possibly not at all.
It showed, too, in the way she inhaled sharply, letting him see that.
“For me, it is a deep green, painted over the wood, with brass hinges.” She frowned at it for a moment.
“Younger than that, I suppose. It feels younger. Shall we?”
“As you wish.” He added after a moment, “It was a deep green for me, Sunday.” He made a slight bow, then when she moved to one side, he moved his fingers on the handle and drew it open.
It swung easily, perfectly balanced. He’d spent enough time prowling around Schola’s keep with Isembard to understand and appreciate the construction there in the main.
As well as a few lectures from Gil over time, on what it suggested about the history of a house.
His mother went in ahead of him. Claudio closed the door gently behind them, turning and taking a few steps to find they were in the middle of a grand circular stone chamber some thirty feet across.
Light was pouring in through high clerestory windows, too far up to see any detail.
The light matched what should be outside, though.
Once he was ten feet inside, he bowed and said to the space.
“Good evening, my Lady.” Capital firmly in place, and absolutely not meaning his mother.
There was a shift in the light, as if there were a shadow, or rather that the source of the light had moved behind some object.
Mother looked up, tilted her head, and then opened her mouth.
Before she could say something, there was a flashing prismatic burst. Rainbows of colour were coming through the windows riotously, yet in the beautiful crystal order he’d learned to appreciate from Rathna’s discussion of stones.
He knew it immediately, somehow, deep in his heart, or his soul, or his magic.
All three, if he allowed for the existence of a soul. The Star, as the Tarot had it.
Mother took a step back, and for the first time in his life, he saw awe on her face.
It was on his, he was sure. But he couldn’t stop watching her reactions.
Awe, but also delight, a joy in the moment, and he’d certainly never seen that.
He’d never known her to let that kind of thing show, if she’d felt it before.
She didn’t speak. Claudio barely breathed. He just felt the light touch him, like sun on his face, with a weight and warmth. After a moment, he set his satchel down at his feet, shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over his bag. He rolled up his sleeves, wanting more of that.
It felt like forever, but it couldn’t have been.
Eventually, the intensity of the light faded into fainter colours, then into the golden warmth of a summer day again.
Into something that humans could breathe in.
He wondered, somewhere, if that was what Rathna felt when a portal came alive.
He’d have to see if he could figure out how to ask.
When he looked back at his mother, he could see there was a trail of tears— silent, gleaming in the light— running down her cheek.
He rummaged in the pocket of his jacket, bending over, then pulled out a handkerchief, clean and still folded, before offering it to her.
She dabbed at her cheek, then took a breath. “I hadn’t expected that again.”
It was the last word that caught him, of course. “Again?” It was the only possible question.
“My Challenge.” Mother lifted one hand. “That light. What, may I ask, do you make of it?”
Now his mouth twitched up into a smile. “A star. The prism of a star, shining. Not the way we see them in the night sky, but closer.”
Mother inhaled slightly, then she said. “This afternoon, I had a long conversation with Isembard and Thesan.” That was by itself something of a shock, but Mother went on, relentlessly but with a quiet intensity.
“I asked for their help. How to go forward with you. How to understand you. Mabyn suggested it.”
Claudio rocked back on one heel, automatically falling into a better balanced stance.
Otherwise, he could have been knocked over by a feather, the slightest breeze or movement.
He had not expected that. For all she might recognise the need, he’d never have thought she’d ask, to admit it in that bare a framing.
“What did they say?” He had no worries about them. He couldn’t. That was the foundation of the world.