SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 705: Old Blood

The vessel climbed away from Euclid until the city shrank to a scatter of grey roofs behind them, and the world beneath the hull turned white. Trafalgar watched it happen from one of the tall windows near the bow, where the glass ran floor to ceiling and framed the whole of the Morgain territory in a single pane. Snow. Nothing but snow, laid over mountains that had no business standing that tall, their peaks catching the light like rows of broken teeth.He had grown up under those mountains. He had almost died under them more than once. Familiarity did nothing to make them less hostile.

Far off, riding a current between two of the higher summits, a pair of wyverns turned slow circles over a kill. Lower down, where the treeline gave out, other creatures moved through the drifts, too far off to name and big enough to be a problem. The land his family ruled did not forgive carelessness. It never had. That was half the reason the Morgains were what they were.

Alfred had vanished toward the front of the vessel the instant they were airborne, barking at his crew about ballast and wind and a dozen things Trafalgar chose not to retain. The old captain took his flying personally. It left the two siblings the whole length of the deck to themselves.

Lysandra came to stand beside him at the window. She watched the same peaks he watched, one gloved hand resting on the cold frame, and let the quiet run its course before she spoke.

"You really look better than the last time I saw you, Traf."

"Do I?"

"You do. Years ago you carried yourself like a man waiting to be hit. That is gone now."

Trafalgar considered it. She was not wrong, which was the irritating thing about Lysandra. She rarely was.

"Thank you," he said, and meant it. He glanced sideways at her, at the shortened hair and the emerald eyes that were the one warm thing in a family built out of cold. "As I told you back in the garden, you look better yourself. Lighter. So tell me what you have actually been doing these two years, because I doubt it was resting."

A dry sound left her, close enough to a laugh. She turned her attention back to the mountains.

"Running Father's errands, mostly. A little here, a little there. Nothing worth the retelling." Her voice lost its ease on the next breath. "But most of that was cover. What I was really doing was following Rivena."

The name changed the air between them.

"I think she is planning something," Lysandra went on. "I could not learn what. She is careful, and she has always been better than me at hiding her hand. But I am certain of one thing." Her gloved fingers pressed flat against the frame. "She will not be at the meeting."

Trafalgar turned to look at her properly. "She will not be there?"

"No."

"Valttair called everyone back himself. He came out of seclusion for this." He held his voice even, though the news pulled hard at him. Missing that gathering was no small insult. In a house like theirs it was closer to a declaration. "How does someone simply not appear?"

"I do not know whether she will not appear, or cannot." A muscle worked at the corner of her mouth. "I have had no word from Rivena in six months. None. She could walk onto a vessel behind us tomorrow, or she could be on the far side of the continent doing something I will regret not stopping. I truly cannot tell you which."

Trafalgar turned the possibilities over. Not one of them ended well.

"Whatever she is building," he said, "it is bad. You know it is."

"I know Rivena." That was answer enough. Lysandra let out a slow breath and pushed off the frame. "We find out at the castle, or we do not. There is nothing more I can do about it from up here." The weight left her face by force of will. "So talk to me about you instead. Your life has changed a great deal more than mine, from what I can see. You finished the Academy."

"I did." He leaned back against the hull and folded his arms. "I am nineteen now. It went faster than I expected."

"And the Academy? How was it?"

"It was easy. Boring, for the most part. Nothing came close to the Aurevane incident two years ago." He tipped his head. "I did not plan on being aboard a train when it was attacked. That was never on my schedule. It resolved without much damage, all things considered, but I would not call it a fond memory."

"Do not sell yourself short," Lysandra said, and there was a note of pride under the words. "I heard about that one. You were among the people who did the most to stop it. That is not nothing." Something in her softened. "Even so, I am glad you had a few good years. It reminds me of my own time there. Feels like another life now. More than a decade."

"A decade." The corner of Trafalgar's mouth lifted. "So you are nearly thirty."

"I am twenty-nine," Lysandra said, with a clear warning riding the words.

"Nearly thirty."

"You have three wives, Traf." Her tone dropped several degrees. "You, of all people, should have learned by now how to speak to a woman about her age."

"I am only doing the arithmetic."

The temperature around them fell. Frost crawled up the inside of the window frame, and the low hum of the vessel dipped in pitch as Lysandra's mana rolled off her in a pressing, patient wave that had made stronger men than her brother reconsider their choices in life.

"...I was joking," Trafalgar said.

The pressure vanished as fast as it had arrived, the frost stopping mid-crawl. Lysandra smiled at the glass, pleased with herself.

"So was I," she said. "Do not worry."

He let her have the win. "In truth, it has been quiet otherwise," he continued. "I took first place in my second and third years. In the third, Alfons managed to tie me, which I will admit I did not see coming. We shared the top rank." He shrugged. "As for the rest, you have already seen it for yourself. I married Cynthia. A small ceremony, a handful of friends, nothing the family would ever have approved of, only Valttair because he needs me. Everything is holding together, for now."

He looked back through the glass, to the white ridges unrolling beneath the hull and the first grey line of the castle beginning to harden on the far edge of the horizon.

"We will see how this meeting goes," he said, more to himself than to her. "It sounds like a great deal happened in that family while I had my back turned."

Ahead, the castle grew larger with every breath the vessel took, and it did not look like a place with good news waiting inside.