The music shifted — still strings, still the formal quality that was apparently this century's default for events of this kind, but with a different tempo. Livelier. The room rearranging itself around the cleared floor, couples forming at the edges, the particular social architecture of who asked whom and in what order beginning to express itself.
She watched it for approximately ten minutes.
Then Emric appeared.
"My lady." A small bow. Correct depth. The form of it executed with the ease of someone who had done it many times. "Would you honor me?"
She had been waiting for him since tonight, while actively rejecting other male nobles who asked for a dance much to Lady Voss's disapproval. The ball room was clustered with a lot of nobles so she couldn't find him the crowd, it was a good thing he kept to his promise.
She placed her hand on his arm.
They moved to the floor.
The dance was a pattern — she had it from Elowen's memory, the footwork specifically, the turns, the way partners moved in relation to each other across the measure. Her body executed it with the specific confidence of muscle memory she hadn't built but had inherited, which was strange in the particular way that everything about this body was strange and which she was getting better at accepting.
Emric danced well. Not showily — with the competence of someone who had learned it as a tool rather than an art form. His large hand respectful on her back and the other hold her hand, the difference between their hand sizes was insane. She was somewhat jealous. She always wanted to be tall but in this life and her last she remained average in height. Her luck was worse. Him towering her only fueled her jealous.
He was quiet for one full measure. Then a smile surfaced again.
She waited.
"House Caldris," he said. The name arriving low, under the music, in the space between them.
She kept her face at the expression of someone dancing pleasantly. Feeling more nobles watching them than dancing. He twirled her.
"What about them?" she asked.
"They sent someone to your assessment at the academy." He turned her through the pattern. Smooth. Easy. "Not the official guild representative. An observer. Unofficial." A pause. "They've had interest in you since before the funeral, my lady."
"Since before the funeral," she said. Flat.
"There's a letter," he said. "In the Caldris records. Written approximately seven months ago. Before your — illness." His voice did something careful around illness. The specific care of someone acknowledging a word's inadequacy without replacing it. "It describes you in terms that suggest they had been made aware of something specific about you. Something they wanted to — assess. Personally."
Seven months ago. Before the dungeon. Before the poison.
Before Dorian.
She turned through the pattern and thought about Caldris and the recovery gift sent to a dead girl and the observer at her assessment and what it meant that a house at Duke level had been watching a dismissed Count's daughter for seven months before she died.
"Who told them?" she said.
"That," Emric said, "is the question."
They moved through the final measure.
He brought her back to the edge of the floor with the same smooth ease, released her with a correct bow.
"Why are you telling me this?" she said. It was odd that he was offering information without receiving.
He looked at her with those dark eyes, his hand sliding down to her waist gripping it and raised her up when the tempo of the music was reaching it's peak.
"Because," he said, "I find people who are being watched without knowing it tend to make decisions that are — less precise than they would otherwise make." A pause. The smile. "You seem like someone who prefers precision."
She rolled his eyes in front of him when he brought her down.The sight made him deeply chuckle.
"Lies. Now what is the real reason."
He looked at her from beneath his dark lashes.
"You owe me a favor, I would use later in the future."
He bowed, signalling the dance was over when the song ended and moved away without waiting for her response.
She stood at the edge of the floor and felt the information settle into the architecture of everything she already knew.
Caldris. Seven months. Someone told them.
Someone in the house. Or close enough to it.
The Count? Unlikely. Dorian? It's possible but he is not the kind of person who likes to receive orders.
She thought about the sealed Caldris letter still in her room and decided to check it's content when she got back, it always escaped her mind. Emric was dangerous and an unknown variable, now she owed him a favor.
The second dance she did not choose.
Lord Fenton — the man from earlier, the one who had suggested theological concerns about her recovery — reappeared with the specific confidence of someone who had recalibrated and decided the first approach had simply been poorly executed.
He asked. She accepted. The form of refusal in this context was more complicated than it was worth. She wasn't ready for the rumors that would follow.
He danced less well than Emric and spoke more.
"One must admit," he said, in the tone of someone building toward a point, "that the circumstances of your — return have raised certain questions in some of the more discerning circles."
She looked at him pleasantly.
This again? Disgust and annoyance bubbling underneath her skin. Feeling his meaty hand straying.
"Discerning?" she said.
"The guild has protocols," he said. "For events of this — nature. Naturally one wouldn't suggest—"
"What is it you're suggesting, Lord Fenton?" she said. Still pleasant. Still the exact temperature of someone engaged in polite conversation.
He did the thing where he began to answer and then heard the question again.
"I merely mean—"
"Because from here it sounds as though you're suggesting that my being alive is a matter requiring guild approval." She tilted her head. Unable to withhold her disdain. Whatever he saw on her face stopped his straying hands. She was already thinking of amputating it.
"Which would be an interesting position. Given that the guild's protocols are, as I understand it, relevant to ascendant manifestation — not to recovery from severe illness." A pause. "Unless you're suggesting I've manifested an ascendant ability. Which would be quite the compliment."
He opened his mouth.
"In which case," she continued, still at the same pleasant temperature, "I'm sure the guild representative at my academy assessment will note any relevant findings. And House Draveth's guild connection will ensure appropriate handling." A pause. "Or were you suggesting the guild should operate outside proper channels? That would be an interesting opinion to hold publicly."
The music ended.
Lord Fenton was standing in the middle of the floor looking like a man who had picked up something expecting it to be one weight and discovered it was another. The snickers from the people around made him red in anger.
She curtsied correctly. Returned to the edge of the floor, disinterested by his rage.
Such a pig.
Around her — she felt rather than heard it — the specific attention of people who had been watching and had received their information and were now revising their assessments for the second time this evening.
She heard a woman somewhere behind her say, very quietly, to the person beside her:
She's nothing like what I expected.
No, she thought. I'm not.
Isadora found her by the window at the tenth hour.