SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 702: The Door He Chose

- Trafalgar POV -Trafalgar did not look away from Alfons at first.

The Vaelion heir stood across the courtyard, pretending to read the same notice as though the paper had grown a second meaning since he last checked. He was not bad at pretending, which was the irritating part. The posture was right, the face was arranged, and anyone with less reason to look twice would have walked past without a thought.

Unfortunately for him, Trafalgar had grown up in a house where people could fold a knife into a greeting and call the result good manners.

"Is that so?" Trafalgar said at last. "What did he want from you, if I am allowed to ask?"

Xavier shifted his weight, his eyes trailing Alfons a moment longer before they came back. "You're allowed. It isn't some great secret."

That made Trafalgar pay closer attention, not less. People tended to say that exact thing right before they explained something deeply annoying.

Xavier rubbed the side of his neck, like a man deciding where a story should start. "He threatened me."

Trafalgar's expression held. "Threatened you with what?"

"You remember what happened with Vivi at the Council? Her playing my sister to get close to you, the whole performance?"

"I remember it well."

"Well, apparently he dug it up."

"That does not surprise me in the slightest."

"No, it shouldn't. He wanted to hold it over me. Over my mother as well, and over House Roquefort by extension."

Trafalgar turned his head far enough to look at him properly now.

That was not an empty threat.

The Roquefort name carried weight. Not the weight of the Eight Great Families, but enough to bruise a person badly if it fell from high enough. Althea au Roquefort was one of the Academy's four directors, and her seat gave the house a polished, high place in public view, which was precisely where a reputation went to get cut.

A rumor would not have to be true. It would only have to be ugly, repeated often, and set in the mouths of people who enjoyed sounding concerned. A girl slipped into a Council under a borrowed family name. A powerful director's household tangled up in it. Heirs from the major houses in the room, secrets and wards and political guests all within arm's reach.

Yes. Trafalgar could see the knife Alfons had tried to put in.

And since Xavier was standing here telling him about it, the knife had clearly missed.

"What did you tell him?" Trafalgar asked.

Xavier's face went flat. "I told him to suck my dick."

Trafalgar stopped.

For a breath, his mind handed him nothing at all. He had been ready for any number of answers. Refusal. Anger. A careful, lawyerly explanation. Maybe even a nervous plea to keep the Roquefort name clear of it. He had not been ready for that.

Xavier caught the look on his face and shrugged. "What?"

"You said that," Trafalgar said slowly, "to Alfons au Vaelion."

"I did."

"To his face."

"To his face."

"In those words."

"More or less. I think I added his name at the end, for clarity."

Trafalgar kept staring. Xavier did not appear remotely ashamed of himself.

After a few seconds Trafalgar let out a breath through his nose, somewhere on the border of a laugh, though not far enough across it to make the evening feel any lighter.

"That is certainly one way to answer blackmail."

"It worked."

"Did it, though?"

"He walked off without what he came for."

"That is not always the same thing as winning."

"I know." Some of the flatness left Xavier's face. "Which is exactly why I am telling you now, and not after."

Trafalgar leaned against the platform rail, the slow disc beneath them lifting the upper-floor students away in twos and threes. Evening light lay over the courtyard in a tired gold wash, and Alfons stayed on the far side of it, treating the notice board with an attention that had crossed over into something close to a medical condition.

Xavier went on. "He dressed it up as House Roquefort helping someone infiltrate the Council. That Vivi could have walked out with secrets, or committed some crime, or done who knows what while she was up there. The usual poison. Just enough truth in it to give the lie a skeleton to stand on."

"Tactically, it makes sense," Trafalgar said.

Xavier shot him a look.

"I did not say I approved of it."

"You sounded a step away from it."

"I am admiring the build of the threat, not the man holding it."

"That," Xavier said, "is so very you."

Trafalgar let it pass. "And you told him this would come down to his word against mine."

"I did. You were there. You stood next to her the whole time. If he tried to blow it into a scandal, you could deny the part that actually bites and say nothing happened."

Trafalgar looked back at Alfons.

The Vaelion heir had not left the notice board, only angled his body a few degrees, enough to keep them in view without turning his head. Not clumsy, but not smooth either.

"What is it he actually wanted from me?" Trafalgar asked.

Xavier shook his head. "I couldn't tell you. He never spelled it out."

"Just access, then."

"Something close to it. He said something had happened in Aurevane recently. That his family can buy a report whenever they feel like it, but some things have to be found from closer in than a report can reach."

Trafalgar's eyes narrowed by a fraction.

Aurevane. There it was.

Esmond. The homunculus. Selara, records, the Council, old Vaelion alchemy lying under the floorboards of a disaster everyone involved would rather sweep into a locked drawer and lose the key to.

He had expected House Vaelion to move eventually. He had not expected them to send Alfons.

Actually, no. That was a lie, and he knew it.

Sending Alfons made perfect sense if what they wanted was someone already inside the Academy, already within reach of Selara and of Trafalgar himself, with pride enough to take the job and insecurity enough to loathe every minute of doing it.

"What else?" Trafalgar asked.

"He went home to Vaelion territory for two days," Xavier said. "Came back not long ago. Ever since, he's been on you."

That settled the last piece into place.

A Vaelion heir did not disappear home because he was feeling sentimental. If Alfons had gone back, returned, and started shadowing Trafalgar, the order had come down from above him.

Roderic au Vaelion. Or someone standing close to him.

'Shit.' The thought arrived plain and tired. 'This is going to be a headache.'

Trafalgar looked across the courtyard one more time. Alfons's gaze slid away a beat too slowly to be innocent.

That told him more than any report would have.

"How worried do I need to be?" Xavier asked.

"About Alfons?"

"About whatever it is he's nosing after."

Trafalgar's mouth tightened. "Enough to keep watch. Not enough to lose sleep."

Xavier folded his arms. "You know, most people would thank me for turning down blackmail on their behalf."

"Thank you."

"That genuinely hurt to listen to."

"I put real effort into it."

"Oh, I could tell."

Trafalgar let himself enjoy a short breath of it, and it faded just as fast. His eyes went from Alfons to the Academy towers, and past them to the darker edge of the city beyond the walls.

If Vaelion was moving, Selara would know at least part of it. Not all. Perhaps not even enough to count. But she had been in Aurevane, and she had been bound up with Esmond long before most people in this Academy knew the old man drew breath.

There were too many threads in the air now. And Alfons, of all the people it could have been, had been handed one end of one.

The platform reached its level. Students spilled toward the upper halls, voices rising and thinning around them.

Trafalgar stepped off, Xavier at his shoulder.

"Stay clear of him for now," Trafalgar said.

"Already the plan."

"If he comes at you again, you tell me first."

Xavier nodded. "And you?"

"I need to think."

They halted where the corridor forked toward the dormitory wings.

Trafalgar glanced back one last time. Alfons was gone from the notice board.

It did nothing to ease the feeling under his ribs.

"I'll see you later, Xavier."

"Yeah. Try not to start a war before dinner."

"No promises."

Xavier walked off with a quiet shake of his head.

Trafalgar took the elevator to his room alone. By the time he reached his door, Aurevane had pushed its way back to the front of everything.