The sound of the water filled the space between the stones, muffling footsteps, breaths, and anything else that was not meant to be heard.
Damián crouched behind the vegetation, his body motionless, his breathing controlled. A few steps away, Aster and Mason shared the same shadow. The light from the lanterns barely reached that stretch of the garden, which was exactly why they had chosen it: every leaf, every trunk, every inch of darkness worked in their favor.
They were not simply watching.
They were hiding.
Any employee who passed by and looked in the wrong direction would see three people spying on the security of someone else's property, and no plausible explanation would be enough. All three knew it. That was why no one spoke, no one moved without need, and their hands stayed clear of any branch that might snap.
They waited.
Damián counted the intervals between patrols, memorized the points where the guards crossed paths and the few seconds when the path stood empty. His eyes never left Tetsu.
A man emerged from between the trees.
Tetsu.
He walked with the ease of someone who knew every stone of the grounds. He stopped to speak to one of the guards, checked a piece of information, and pointed in a direction with a short, precise gesture. He passed less than ten meters from the bush where they were hidden. Aster held her breath. Mason, beside her, pressed his fingers to the ground, ready to move if necessary, though both knew there was nowhere to go.
Tetsu walked on.
Damián let out his breath slowly, without a sound.
There was nothing extraordinary about that routine. Tetsu was simply carrying out his duties as head of security. That was precisely what made the situation interesting: his competence did not draw attention, but his way of working was far too familiar.
Aster noticed Damián's focus and asked nothing. Mason also stayed quiet, though his tense jaw betrayed the impatience of someone who preferred to act rather than wait.
At one point, one of the men accompanying Tetsu said something about the organization of the shifts. The conversation reached them fragmented by the distance and the murmur of the water. Damián seized the cue and spoke without moving his lips more than necessary, so softly the sentence nearly vanished into the air.
"I knew a man who organized things like this. George. He had the irritating habit of saying that trust was just a more comfortable form of negligence."
Mason turned his face as little as possible.
"A pleasant fellow, I imagine."
"Not at all."
Aster did not intervene. She only measured the distance between Tetsu and the spot where the sentence might have reached his ears. Too close to be sure it hadn't, too far to be sure it had.
On the other side, Tetsu went on talking with his subordinate. Nothing in his posture suggested he had heard.
Damián did not press.
He didn't need to.
The name had been thrown out without explanation, like a disposable memory. There was no question, no accusation, no obvious connection. If Tetsu had heard, he could simply ignore it. Perhaps that was exactly what he would do.
Even so, Damián watched him for a few moments longer, looking for any crack: a step out of rhythm, a pause in the wrong place, a hand that hesitated.
Nothing that could be called confirmation.
A branch snapped somewhere behind them. All three froze. One second, two, three. A leaf fell into the water and the current carried it away. Only then did Aster tilt her head toward Tetsu and whisper:
"Shall we keep waiting?"
"For now."
Mason shot a glance at the two of them but added nothing.
The vigil continued until Tetsu moved off toward the side wing of the property. Damián committed the route and the times to memory, showing no hurry. Leaving the hiding place too early was the kind of mistake that turned a suspicion into evidence against themselves.
He had not obtained confirmation. Nor had he expected to.
But something about that small experiment interested him: the possibility that a name, seemingly unimportant, might awaken a memory someone would prefer to keep buried.
Perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps Tetsu hadn't even heard.
Damián, however, did not discard the hypothesis. Sometimes a piece of information had to be left in the right place for someone else to find it. And if Tetsu had recognized something, he could not show he believed it without revealing that the name meant more than it should.
He waited a full minute more, until the path was empty, and gave the other two a brief signal. One by one, they left the vegetation, their steps measured, wearing the faces of people who had merely been strolling through the garden.
The tournament went on.
Can-Bey did not consider that anything particularly important had happened.
He had spent some time with Mason. The encounter had not exactly been calm, but it did not strike him as worthy of any real concern.
Mason had his peculiarities. He was provocative, difficult to steer, and at times deliberately unpleasant. Still, he possessed an intelligence that Can-Bey acknowledged with the generosity of someone who never needs to say so aloud. On that occasion, he had done better than expected, answering every provocation with a calm so sharp that it had very nearly drawn a smile from him.
The realization pleased him.
He had no intention of admitting it, naturally. It was a matter of prudence, not vanity, and Can-Bey took care to keep the two well apart.
Mason had an inconvenient tendency to read any sign of approval as an opening to demand something. A kind word might be mistaken for interest; a compliment, for a promise. Can-Bey did not wish to feed expectations he had no intention of meeting. He regarded this as a form of respect: being clear from the start, even if the other party had not been consulted on the terms.
After all, he knew how to tell things apart.
There were people with whom one could build a relationship, introduce to the family, share responsibilities with, and hold a respectable position before society. Others stirred different interests. That did not mean they lacked qualities. It meant only that they did not belong in the same category, and that the category, as it happened, had been defined by him.
Mason, in his opinion, belonged to the second.
It was a perfectly natural assessment. He did not see it as cruelty, much less as discrimination. He saw merely a difference of position, origin, and convenience, exactly as the world saw it, and Can-Bey considered himself nothing more than an honest observer of what everyone else preferred not to say. Some people were suited to certain relationships; others were not. He saw no reason to pretend that all choices carried the same weight.
Still, Mason had surprised him.
There was in him an uncommon combination of insolence and intelligence. He was not someone who yielded easily to submission, though at times he seemed willing to play dangerously with his own limits. Can-Bey recognized that resistance and, to a certain extent, enjoyed the challenge. He enjoyed it in moderation, of course, the way one enjoys a wine one has no intention of serving to guests.
What he did not intend was to let Mason know how much.
He did not want to see him pleased with himself, much less convinced he had won some special standing. He had pride enough to understand that certain displays of approval would be read as concessions.
And he was not prepared to grant them.
He took a glass from a passing tray and sipped lightly.
The hall remained busy. Guests talked in small groups, servants moved among the tables, and the musicians kept up a discreet performance, almost lost beneath the murmur. The event seemed to run without difficulty, though Can-Bey had noticed changes in the placement of the guards, too small to deserve his attention at the moment. He had more important matters on his mind, such as the fact that the encounter had no importance whatsoever.
His thoughts returned to Mason.
There was something amusing in the way that man tried to preserve his dignity even when he was plainly uncomfortable. Can-Bey almost smiled at the memory of one of his replies. Then, to be fair, he remembered another. And another.
He almost smiled again.
Mason was not someone he needed to win over with compliments. And if he wished to keep that relationship on terms that suited him, it would be best not to create an intimacy that could be mistaken for something greater.
It was a matter of boundaries.
Can-Bey liked to believe his own were quite clear.
An acquaintance approached and struck up a conversation about the guests who had arrived that afternoon. Can-Bey answered with the necessary attention, following the topic while discreetly watching the movement around him. He was not looking for anyone in particular.
That was when he saw her.
A longtime friend was talking with a few guests, at some distance. Her presence brought him a quiet, almost familiar satisfaction. They had known each other for years, and he needed no effort to recognize in her the qualities he judged essential.
Loyalty. Constancy. An upbringing built within a family whose name was respected.
She knew his family, his habits, and the obligations that came with his position. There was no need to explain certain expectations, nor to weigh every word to avoid inconvenient interpretations. Between them lay a familiarity shaped by time, sustained by a trust that did not need to be constantly put to the test. Can-Bey had never wondered whether, on her side, the trust was equally calm. It seemed unnecessary to ask.
He smiled.
She was the kind of person with whom one could imagine a future without rearranging one's own life to accommodate it. Someone who would understand the weight of a surname, the importance of alliances, and the value of a reputation preserved across generations. Curiously, in the whole list of virtues he enumerated, not one concerned what she felt, wanted, or thought.
It was not an unpleasant idea.
In fact, it seemed quite sensible.
His gaze lingered on her a moment longer before returning to his companion.
Mason and that woman occupied very different places in his thoughts, and Can-Bey saw no contradiction in that. One stirred his curiosity and an interest he preferred to keep private; the other embodied the qualities he considered indispensable for a serious relationship. To him, it was merely good sense: everything in its place, and all of it at his disposal.
The distinction was simple.
And he did not intend to let anyone confuse it, not even himself, who had thought about Mason for far too long for someone who considered the matter irrelevant.