6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Viau might not ever have been mentioned again by Rafi’s friends in Rafi’s hearing if Viau had not walked into the Arms Room several days later, and Chene, who was Cambray’s friend but not someone Rafi generally spoke to, leaned close to him to whisper, “Your aertotius is here,” and laughed to himself until Katoh pinched his ear.
She wasn’t gentle.
Rafi kept still, his face thankfully turned away from Cambray’s pest of a friend.
The tale of Rafi on his knees in the orchard begging for Viau must have gone around the academy and Rafi’s friends had shielded him from it.
Or maybe Rafi had started countless rumors by plastering himself all over Viau as Viau had tried to get him somewhere private.
“Seems a foolish thing to say.” Laure slapped a hand on Chene’s back. Chene, a slighter nex than Rafi, flinched. “What with Viau who he is and honor at stake. Did you want a duel with Viau?” he asked politely, smiling. “Or with me? Or Rafi?”
That made Rafi start. But before he could remind Laure that he wasn’t one to duel, Chene ducked his head in a pest’s version of an apology and slipped away.
Katoh and Laure exchanged a look. Laure opened his mouth.
Rafi cut him off. “He doesn’t need a silly story like that attached to his name.” Rafi didn’t gesture to Viau but he hoped he was clear.
Laure waved that away. “Viau’s not going to duel a student, for Caia and Astlan’s sake. Everyone knows that. He’s far too mannerly to duel someone beneath his level. Chene needs to learn to watch his mouth. Duels are still a possibility with other people.”
Rafi frowned as he glanced between them.
“I didn’t mean the duel.” Obviously ridiculous; as Laure had said, Viau wouldn’t destroy his own reputation over something so petty.
“I meant the idea of a romantic entanglement with me. Think of the lovers he must have in the capital who would not be amused.” Rafi lost his breath at the thought.
“They might try to duel me.” That possibility had not once occurred to him until now.
“They’d surely understand that it was him doing a favor for the academy. Wouldn’t they?”
There were rumors of Viau with various actors, some high-ranking nobles, and several others of note, even some of the king’s courtesans.
All of them would have put their hands and mouths on Viau for far longer than Rafi had.
If anyone should have a right to upset, it should be Rafi.
Not that anyone would ever see it that way.
“You’re worrying about dueling a legion of his lovers.” Katoh paused to purse her lips. “But not the rest of what Chene said?”
“No.” Rafi turned away from his friends and their inquisitive stares, which put Viau directly in his line of sight, and suddenly Rafi was a naked, quivering, aedis-struck hole, falling from Viau’s bed in order to crawl to Viau and get his cock in his mouth.
A faint noise escaped him but he hoped he clamped down on everything else. Although, after all their practice, Laure could probably see some of Rafi’s stirred-up aer. So would Viau if he turned Rafi’s way.
Rafi spun around to stare at a wall and shove his wild thoughts down until they could be ignored. “The rest of what Chene said was meant to tease me because it’s not true.” People thought Rafi must want it to be. That hurt in the way that weapons did when they struck home.
Aertotius was… sharing aer. Sharing spirit, or having the same spirit to begin with, something like that.
It was those who could breathe each other’s air, and feel the living soul of another who could also feel theirs.
One didn’t even need to be skilled with aer to do it.
The act of sharing might not even be intentional.
Mages and swersoldi and the like might know it was happening, but it could be done by anyone, happen to anyone.
It might not even be rare, and the world could be full of people, even animals, who had the same heart and the same will, who found each other without knowing a thing about their aer.
People who think alike, one of his instructors had said when Rafi had been new to the academy.
Poems on the subject said differently. Audiences wept at plays that featured soulmates forced to separate.
But in reality, the term was used by anyone in the midst of a romance; Cambray had been convinced he’d met his during most of his first year at Trianon.
A few heated encounters with his supposed soulmate and he’d decided that, actually, he’d just been eager to fuck.
Katoh and Laure were suspiciously silent. Rafi glanced back. “Are people talking about it and you haven’t told me?”
Nonsense. It wasn’t impossible that even Rafi might find a spirit like his own someday. But it wasn’t going to be Viau. They weren’t equals in any sense.
Laure cleared his throat but said nothing.
Katoh scoffed. “He’s well-known. That’s all.” But she didn’t meet Rafi’s eye for several moments. “And you two were a pretty sight. Inspiring, I imagine, to many a first-year.”
Rafi didn’t ask what that meant or what exactly they had done that had been pretty.
“I doubt he even remembers my name.” Rafi’s voice was metal scraped against stone. He was suddenly much too aware of every other person in the Arms Room and how many of them were milling around the general area where Viau stood.
He frowned as if Viau’s, “Perfect. Perfect Rafi,” didn’t echo in his ears at night, and reconsidered the crowd waiting to see why Viau was there.
He assumed that was why the crowd had formed, at least. No one spoke to Viau as he stretched.
Viau was again in a fine shirt, though he hadn’t bothered to tuck it in, and his hair was slightly wild, as if he’d ridden to the Academy with no hat and then come straight to the Arms Room.
He must intend to get some practice in, perhaps with a dummy, although Rafi didn’t see why that would be urgent. It wasn’t as if Viau had raced from the palace to the academy and then sought peace through exhaustion in the Arms Room.
Training like that was something Rafi often did when he thought of home, or his family, or whatever his future might be. Viau might do it too. Anyone might. Perhaps even in the palace there were annoyances and wounding words to make someone like Viau long to stab something with a practice sword.
Instructor Guen’s voice carried through the space. “Viau? Back already? I thought you were at the palace for another week at least!”
Viau straightened with a fixed, pleasant smile and scanned the room until he found Instructor Guen. “My cousin still has not decided on his summer plans, and there was little for me to do there, in any case, so I returned early.”
It took Rafi several moments to remember that the di Chartre were kin to the di Ruzé, and that Viau was cousin to the king. A distant cousin, but nonetheless one who had known him since childhood.
“Summer is when the nobles all visit each other,” Laure remarked behind him to Katoh or possibly someone else. Maybe a younger student who didn’t yet know that.
“I don’t suppose anyone here would be willing to fence with me?
” Viau called out, slow and easy with the offer, as if he didn’t know it would send a ripple through the students.
Rafi watched excitement light up dozens of faces and opened his mouth to say—what, exactly, he didn’t know.
But a bunch of first-and-second years were no match for Viau.
A final-year would likely still be nothing to Viau’s experience.
Viau was a smiling beast to make such an offer.
Polite or no, he knew his skill and he could guess theirs.
Of course, the others would be happy to fall under his sword. They’d be happy being near him. That was the sort of worship Viau must be used to.
Rafi felt the words in his throat become a growl. Then Laure—it had to be Laure—put a hand in the middle of Rafi’s back and shoved him forward, and as Rafi stumbled away from the small group, Viau’s gaze settled on him as surely as his aer once had.
Rafi was not in or even near aedis, but his insides quivered and his aer churned and rose as if ready to spill over.
“Rafi,” Viau greeted him, lights in his eyes.
A tiny shock went through Rafi at hearing his name and knowing how it had last been said.
He tensed and then tried not to appear tense with seemingly half of the academy watching them.
Viau gave no sign that he noticed the attention, but he didn’t speak again until Rafi was in front of him, and he lowered his voice to do it.
The lights left his eyes, or so Rafi imagined with his thoughts lingering over his time in Viau’s bed. “Are you well?”
Mannerly, as Laure had said.
Rafi nodded with too much energy, his face increasingly warm.
“I wasn’t sure, since I didn’t see you,” Viau continued, polite, and yet Rafi found it difficult to look him in the eye with those words between them.
“Were you worried?” The question slipped out before Rafi could stop it, so he sucked in a breath and tried again.
“I’m well. I’m very well.” He went to sleep at night trying not to remember sliding his hands over soiled linen sheets, seeking something to hold to as he’d been plundered or panting into a pillow with Viau’s tongue inside him.
He growled now when he hadn’t before, and imagined things he shouldn’t.
“You did—” his rising voice as he came, the cries for more.
He shouldn’t think of it, “—very well. Thank you. I… didn’t want to inconvenience you more than I already had. ”
He didn’t know what to make of Viau’s expression. While at court, Viau had learned to conceal his thoughts as well as his aer. Rafi ought to do the same, or at least try.
Viau didn’t respond to the inadequate compliment or acknowledge Rafi’s explanation for his sneaky exit. He looked around the room and then back at Rafi. “Were you interested in sparring with me?”