The basilica held its breath for the Saintess and instead inhaled a new kind of storm. The doors had hardly sealed when the temperature shifted—small flecks of breath where none should have been, the kind of chill that felt like an inspection from within the ribs. Across the round table everyone settled into a silence as taut as a harp-string; fine judgments, practiced faces, the little movements of ages-old protocol.
At the head of the table the Saintess, Silestina, had taken her place in that pale, deliberate way holy women often do: as if the world were a well-sorted library and she the archivist. Her robes were white edged with the light of careful gold. Her eyes, green as fresh leaves in late spring, skimmed each face, cataloging grace, temper, threat. She spoke—the simple, moderate voice of someone who could make an entire hall follow a breath.
"Good morning," she said. "We are gathered."
What followed was not what the basilica had been designed to contain.
Sion had stepped into the doorway like a cut of flame that had learned to wear perfume. Her gait was deliberate; the basilica's air seemed to notice and take a step back. Leather caught light, every stitch a declaration. Her hair—brown-rubied, glossy—fell in a deliberate curtain around a face that knew how to be owned and to own in return. She wore the Rotschy war-leather uniform altered for seduction: white blouse open enough to betray the black lace beneath, a slit skirt of dangerous inevitability, thigh-high combat boots polished like obsidian. The family sigil gleamed on the boots and coat' leather and the long coat flapped behind her like a dark flag.
Silestina's lips moved in quiet displeasure. "Lady Sion," she said, wounded courtesy. "This is a consecrated place—"
Sion shrugged, draping her smile like a weapon. "Sacred spaces are for the devout and the dull," she said. "We are neither." She sauntered to the seat beside Emilia as if it were a stage she intended to claim, and sat with the casual arrogance of someone who loved both the risk and the attention it bought. Her perfumes—heavy and floral and deliciously excessive—offered themselves to the room, almost as if they were another interlocutor.
Eizel's frost-blue gaze latched on to Sion like a predator's recognition of a new scent. The air near her chilled to a clean cut; a single bead of frost gathered on the table rim and refused to fall.
Sion's mouth twitched. "Well then. Is anyone else dying to start, or shall I provide the entertainment?"
Eizel's voice was measured, like slow ice moving under pressure. "You have the gall to walk into a sanctum dressed like a market and call it freedom. Is that the Rotschy message now? Parade your skin and let your house's dignity drown in perfume?"
Sion rolled her eyes and flicked a wrist as if dismissing a fly. "Dignity is a trinket," she said, the words sharp with mockery. "I prefer truth: if you want to insult me for my dress, be quick about it. Nobles have a short attention span for sermons."
Emilia watched the exchange with the pale satisfaction a person feels when a glass is shattered and the shards fly her way. She had always liked the theater of contempt between the houses; to watch two wills strike at each other produced a certain delight she didn't bother to hide. The blood of competition was an old, tidy thing that suited her.
Clara's green eyes moved like a level, trying to tilt the table toward reason. "Please," she said, voice soft but firm. "We must—"
Sion cut her off with a laugh that had no charity. "Dear Clara, you're always so calm—do you teach that? Because honestly, it's a skill." Her gaze danced from Clara to Eizel and then at Emilia with a needle-thin focus. "Tell me, frost-mother: was it Sarafina who tried to get close to Jin? My sources say the former and my sources are rarely this wrong."
Eizel's smile was a blade she did not bother to hide. "Saraphina is a child of intention," she said. "She was testing. She wanted to know whether the heir's claims were as solid as his mother's ledger. my daughter was merely curious. Curiosity is not a crime."
Sion's eyes narrowed. "Curiosity, or provocation? You teach your girl to wander into other people's tables and see what's left on the plates. Then you prance about like virtue forbid. Spare me."
Eizel's tone went icier, which in the basilica felt like a draft through armor. "Better to teach curiosity than to teach how to sleep with possibilities and call it strategy. At least my daughters will know how to think when the tide turns."
A templar shifted. Far too many words had been thrown into the air about children and virtue.
"Ladies," Silestina intoned, like a bell that still hoped for better manners, "control yourselves. The hall is consecrated to peace and deliberation."
Sion tilted her head and smiled with a predator's gentleness. "Saintess, I respect you, but do not ask me to wear the funeral shroud of decorum when a beast is glancing my way."
Emilia felt a companionable smirk form—little pleasure spikes at Sion's brazenness. She was amused but held the amusement inward; she didn't need to humiliate anyone on table unless it was tactical. Still, a small part of her, the part that liked to watch dominoes fall, savored the crackle.
Eizel directed a look to Sion and then, without pause, to Emilia. "And you," she said, bright disdain like a coin flipped, "a military matron making rules and homes? You are a respectable fright. You marry your daughter to a calculated wedge and then complain when the wedge is used. That is either poor planning or delicious irony."
Emilia's retort flowed soft as oil and just as threatening. "I plan precisely. I also prefer instruments that know how to strike. If Sarafina's attempt amounted to a test, then it failed. Jin is not a man who forgives being toyed with. The lesson is on the student. Perhaps Frost should teach them to read the room, not the ledger."
Eizel, hearing the mention of Jin, let a small sound flow—half laugh, half animal. "Ah, Jin. What a rat. I'd prefer rats; they are honest. They flee when bait smells like betrayal. That boy—does he know how to be a prince, or is he a prince because of accounting software?"
Sion's fingers tightened on the rim of her goblet. She let it be known by the smallest of movements: hands that struck silence like a knuckle on a table.
"Do not speak of the Rotschy name lightly," she said quietly, the way a glacier speaks when making a decision.
Sion smirked and folded her arms. "You act as if the Rotschy name is a holy relic. I appreciate it. It's a lovely sculpture of control. But names are wind if actions do not follow. Naoko's silence—her cataloged, dangerous silence—suits some. But it will not shield those who misuse her name for vanity."
Eizel's eyes widened with a flash—anger, calculation, a heat that did not belong to her usual climate. "Your tone is insolent for someone who only breathes at another's table," she said. "You are a servant in diplomacy and a trespasser in ethics."
Sion's mouth curved. "And you are a relic who mistakes frost for virtue. The world doesn't respect virtue without teeth, darling. It respects teeth that come with a good bite."
The hall hummed like a throat aware of a fight. Clara's hands folded in slight, pleading motion. "Enough. There is business to conduct."
Sion laughed, and the laugh grew meaner. "Business? You mean the Council's usual yellowed pages of small betrayals dressed up as protocol? No. I came to see who would have the courage to say what everyone thinks." She leaned forward, voice low enough that it tickled only those near the table. "Tell me, Eizel—why does your daughter posture about Jin? Does she love him? Or does she think love is inventory?"
Eizel's reply came too quickly for politeness; a razor inside velvet. "Saraphina is no whore. She is a child testing a law. If you mistake the testing for solicitation, then you are the one who reads houses like taverns."
"Whore." The word fell from Sion like the last coin from a beggar's fist. It was not a rhetorical flourish—she meant it to cut. Her voice was deliberately low, and the knife of the spoken syllable was meant to be felt under the ribs.
A trap in the air. A gulf that separated girls and houses and years of grudges. Eizel's face folded in that place where frost becomes a fault-line.
Emilia, who had watched many arguments, felt the air go thin in the place where it counted; her satisfaction darkened into something colder: a testing of advantage. She wanted to see how far Sion would go—naïve? bold? suicidal? It was not mentioned of Jin had been cheap, but the way Sion said it—like spit wrapped in silk—meant there were aims beyond insult. Maybe she wanted to poke Eizel; maybe she wanted to draw Eizel'; maybe she wanted to see sparks and ready her nets.
Eizel's voice went cold. "You impute shame to my daughter," she said, slow and slow, like icicles elongating. "Be careful. Names have weight."
Sion smiled, bright and ugly. "Then weigh me," she said. "Weigh my words—if they sink, then you shall have the last laugh. If they float, count them as a warning."
Eizel stood, the sound of fabric that never warmed as she moved. "If you insult a woman's child in front of the mother," she said, voice darkening to a pitch where the basilica felt smaller, "there are consequences. I will not have my family's honor cracked for the sake of your show."
Sion rose as well, their faces inches apart, a tableau of two continents with no plan of meeting. "You will do what?" she said. "Have your ice-cutters carve me into a statue? Please. Your theatrics are for court—here we prefer nonsense with sharper teeth."
Emilia's mind drifted to the arithmetic that underlay threats. This was a war of pronouncements, and every snarl could be converted into advantage. "Ladies—" she said, soft and unhurried, "we are not in the academy yard. We are in the basilica. If you wish to settle your disagreements with fists and blades, then do it in a place dedicated for it. If you wish to have this meeting progress, then we will progress. Otherwise, perhaps leave this table and take your quarrels into the open, where they belong."
Her words carried authority—an implicit claim that she had both the means and the will to enforce them. It was an offer to be reasonable that implied a willingness to be ruthless if rebuffed.
Sion's chest rose—fast, with excitement. She was not the type who forgot a fight; she was the type who photographed it with her eyes and saved it like wine. "Oh, we will do this properly," she said, voice low with heat. "But not now, and not in a house of prayer. Frost will not be allowed to make a spectacle and leave without commentary."
Eizel, breathing like ice under strain, did not lower herself to further insults. She exited instead, gliding with a dignity that arrested the breath of everyone in the room. The frost on the floor faded away like ink washed by water.
For a moment the basilica existed between storms, a hush that was nearly reverence.
Sion sat again, the faint smile of a victor crossing her face, small and unreadable. She had stoked more than she had roared; she had thrown a match. Now she watched the table with the look of someone waiting to see whether the room decided to dance or to die.
Emilia exhaled. Her pulse had quickened—unexpectedly pleased. She watched Sion; upon Sion's face she saw the faintest trace of triumph. Good, Emilia thought. They will test one another and clarify their borders. That clears the air about who's dangerous, and who is only loud.
Clara called the meeting back to order with the gentleness of a woman whose entire life had been practice at not breaking the things she needed. The agenda resumed; the knights stood with the rigid kindness of men who understood that order sometimes meant pretending cruelty had not been invited.
The morning went on—coastal security plans folded, spiritual tithe allocations debated, and a resolution proposed for river-lane tariffs. Nods, signatures, the soft producing of parchments and the quiet of pens. The houses performed their duties like actors in a play who had practiced the same lines for a thousand restarts.
Through it all, fragments of the earlier exchange lingered like cigarette smoke in an otherwise clean room. Words had been said. Alliances were altered by inches. The basilica, white and patient, took it in like a ledger: entry, remark, footnote. Outside, the dome of blue mana shimmered as if amused.
When the meeting adjourned, the small group dispersed in polite knots. Some left under the nave's stained light; others vanished like men with the purpose of moving chess pieces back into their sleeves.
Sion walked beneath the vaulted dome with measured steps. She sent a brief look to Emilia—one that was half salute and half threat—and then she swanned away with the kind of graceful arrogance that promised the world a problem she knew how to solve.
Emilia watched her go and smiled, the kind of smile that knows lessons can be wielded as weapons. She rose, folded her cloak, and stepped into the basilica's long colonnade, where she would be seen but not compelled to speak. Above her the sky was cathedral-bright; below, the city hummed with the habits of those not invited to these conversations.
Somewhere in the hallways, Eizel's footsteps echoed like a warning bell that had been struck and left to ring.
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Heat: Thank you very much for reading. Another chapter will be up soon. Now I am taking a lot of time because the chapters are very long.
Note: sion looked at Amelia angrily because Amelia prevented her from fighting with Eizel.