47. Silas
Silas
The third knock is the honest one. The first announces, the second insists, the third forgets it is pretending. Wait for the third before you decide who is truly at your door.
Syneca had been in the bath for eighty-seven years.
I knew because I’d stopped pretending to read the paper around year forty and had simply been sitting in the chair since then, doing nothing useful.
Timber was asleep at my feet. The fire had burned down to coals.
The house was quiet in the way it got when Pip was occupied elsewhere and no one was arguing about anything yet.
Eighty-seven years.
In a bath.
I made myself stop right there before the thought went anywhere it had no business going and stood up.
Dez appeared in the doorway with his coat on. “It’s been an hour. Is she still in there?”
“Mind your business.”
“You’ve read that paper four times.”
“I’m thorough.”
He looked at me the way he always looked at me when he’d already won. “Come and see what’s happening in the kitchen before it turns into something we can’t come back from.”
It was worse than I’d expected.
Ramiel stood at the stove holding a wine bottle like he was solving a complex problem. Calder stood beside him watching this happen in real time, his jaw working through some heavy emotions.
“Less,” Calder said.
“More,” Ramiel argued, and tilted the bottle.
“That’s the third time—”
“The dish needs depth.”
“The dish needs to be edible.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.” Ramiel studied the pot, added more wine, and nodded with satisfaction. “There. Now it has depth and complexity.”
“Now it has an entire bottle of wine in it,” Calder grumbled.
“As I said.” Ramiel set the bottle down. “Depth.”
I went to the far end of the kitchen and stayed there.
Dez poured himself a glass from the second bottle.
By the time the pot had been declared a loss, the wine had moved to the sitting room, and Ramiel had announced with considerable energy that he wanted to see a Nexus game, the four of us were already most of the way through a fourth bottle and the evening had taken on its own momentum.
And not one of us were thinking about the naked witch that’d come down in nothing more than a towel to grab the last bottle of wine and saunter back into the bathroom. Not one.
I agreed to go because the arena was loud and crowded and had nothing to do with copper hair or bath water.
Brathen’s arena was smaller than Grimora’s and packed entirely full, which meant the four of us were wedged into the upper tier with our damn knees against the row ahead and Ramiel already leaning forward to examine the floating platforms.
“Explain it,” he said.
“Players guide the veils through the opposing portal,” Calder answered. “Different colors are worth different points. The platforms rotate and shift throughout the match and they can’t touch the veils. They use runes and magic to pass them to their team and hope the other team doesn’t intercept.”
Ramiel studied both teams for ten seconds. “I prefer the purple ones.”
“You’ve been watching for ten seconds. You can’t take the Howling Banshees based on uniform color,” Calder argued.
“Their uniforms are better.”
“The Bolts have won the regionals three of the last five—”
“Purple,” Ramiel said simply, and that was that.
Calder looked at me. I looked at my whiskey. I was here for a distraction, not babysitting. Dez had already started some kind of private betting system that surfaced occasionally as a quiet noise of satisfaction.
The game started and Ramiel was immediately, comprehensively, loudly invested.
He had opinions about every decision made by every player on the field, delivered with the absolute certainty of a man who had understood this sport completely upon first sight.
The man to his left had made the mistake of making eye contact during his first declaration and was now trapped in a tactical consultation he hadn’t agreed to.
“Foul,” Ramiel announced, though it was slightly hard to understand over his newfound slur.
“That wasn’t a foul,” Calder said, popping another handful of Butterscotch Bitzies in his mouth. He’d stopped drinking before we left the house. Which meant, minimally, we’d get half of us home in one piece.
“His hand contacted the veil before the platform completed its rotation.”
“That’s not how the rules work.”
“Then someone should fix the rules.” Ramiel took a long drink. “I’d fix them. It would take an afternoon.”
Calder scoffed. “You’ve known the rules for four minutes.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
A veil shot across the arena and the crowd erupted and Ramiel stood up with enough energy to send his drink sideways into the man to his left, who turned around with an expression that changed the moment he got a proper look at the demon prince looming over him.
Smart man.
“That was magnificent,” Ramiel said.
“Sit down. Also your purple team just lost that veil,” Calder said as he stood and sidled his way down the row.
Ramiel promptly sat and called after him. “I’m aware. I’m appreciating the craft regardless of outcome. It’s called sportsmanship.”
Dez leaned over to me. “He’s been saying that every time his team loses possession.”
“I noticed.”
“Do you want to know what I’ve won so far?” Dez asked, showing me his small notebook full of random tally marks.
“No.”
“Fourteen buttons. Ramiel owes me eight of them and doesn’t know it yet.”
“You’re using sprite currency.”
He grinned. “Of course I am.”
The demon prince stilled. I was confident there’d be a drunken fistfight to explain to Pip by the time we made it home, but instead, he turned toward me, not quite sober, but coherent.
He jutted his chin toward a group of people near the Nexus portal to our left.
“See that guy in the middle with the beard?”
I squinted across the arena following his line of sight and nodded.
“At first I thought I was just drunk. Then I thought he was using glamour magic like mine. But it’s something different.”
“Just looks like a shifter to me. Could be a scorched, hard to see from here.”
Ramiel shook his head, listing slightly sideways before he caught himself. “Look away from him for a few seconds and before you look back, tell me what he looks like.”
I closed my eyes, wondering how the fuck I got myself into these… The details were gone. “I remember you said he had a beard but, now that I think about it, I think he was clean shaven. Purple scarf, no green, he’s sitting with the other team.”
Ramiel huffed a laugh. “Now, look back at him.”
“Beard, gray coat, no scarf.”
“The magic in this world is strange.” He settled back into his seat and refocused on the game.
“If you wanted cheap entertainment, we could have just gone to the pleasure house.”
“Wait! That was an option?”
The look I gave him was the only response he got.
“You are such a moody asshole, Silas.” He took a long pull of his drink and grinned. “You need to go hash some things out with that witch of yours and save us all the suffering.”
Calder had procured more food from somewhere, and was working his way back to the seat beside me.
He’d clearly decided to stop engaging and simply survive the evening.
Within a few more minutes, Ramiel had fully adopted the man beside him as a tactical advisor and the two of them were bent together in consultation about a play that had happened three minutes ago.
I drank.
And drank.
And thought about the game. Watched the Bolts striker work the left platform, reading the veils before they completely formed. He was disciplined. I could respect that.
What I could not do, apparently, was stop thinking about the fact that Syneca was back at the house and had probably finished that bottle of wine by now and was sitting somewhere doing something that I would walk back into later and have to not react to, which was becoming a full time occupation.
I drained my whiskey.
Dez materialized at my shoulder as if he’d been waiting for exactly this moment. “You went somewhere.”
“I’m watching the game.”
“The Bolts just took the lead and you didn’t react.”
“I reacted internally.”
He nudged me. “That’s not a thing. How many drinks is that?”
“Not enough.” I held up the empty cup at a passing vendor. “Not nearly enough.”
Dez grinned so wide I wanted to deck him. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
On the other side of Calder, Ramiel had just stood up again for the third time in minutes, both arms raised, bellowing something at a referee who was forty feet below us and absolutely could not hear him.
The man he’d adopted as his advisor was standing beside him, having apparently committed entirely to the drunken cause.
Calder was eating with the thousand-yard stare of a man who had made peace with his circumstances.
“SIT DOWN,” said approximately every fucking person surrounding us.
Ramiel sat and looked around at the crowd with genuine surprise. “They’re very passionate here.”
“You’ve been standing up every three minutes,” Calder said.
He took another drink out of an empty cup without realizing it and slurred. “I stand when the moment calls for it.”
“The moment has called for it eleven times.”
“It’s been a very eventful game.” Ramiel straightened his coat, his fingers stumbling over the buttons. “I’m getting another drink. Does anyone want anything?”
“How are you going to get another drink?” Dez asked with a laugh. “You said you were out of money from this world.”
Ramiel looked at him, swaying backward. “I have consider… con cider… considibuble charm.” He stood, stumbled past four people with the grace of a man who genuinely believed the world rearranged itself for his convenience, and disappeared into the crowd.
Calder watched him go. “He’s going to cause a fight.”
“He’s going to come back with free drinks,” Dez said. “I’d bet on it.”
I sighed. “Don’t.”
“Too late.” Dez settled back in his seat. “Eight buttons says he comes back with drinks and at least one new friend.”
Calder rubbed his face. “I’m not taking that bet.”