Alain shrugged. “People are saying you’ve got the Fate’s Whisper behind you, and man is it blowing strong. I won’t repeat all the vastly improbable things you’ve done, but even I don’t believe the half of it.”
Scorio laughed. “You don’t?”
“Not really. No offense. Two years in the Crucible?” Alain peered at him then sat back. “Nah.”
Scorio grinned. “Fine. So they think I’m lucky?”
“You’re Scorio, the Red Lister, you know? Only reborn six times? I meant to ask you about that. Only six? Really?”
“Really,” said Scorio. “Don’t ask me why. Maybe I’ve never cared for Great Soul politics.”
“Nah, it can be kind of fun when you get the hang of it.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. You just need to realize everyone’s half-terrified, half-desperately ambitious. Once you figure that out, it all makes sense and people become practically predictable.”
“Glad you’re intent on being my friend, then.”
Alain winked. “I knew you would be.”
“Fine. So I don’t declare. Should I seek out these Blood Barons?”
“Mmmm,” pondered Alain, waggling his head from side to side. “I think… no? That’d be too desperate. You can’t be obvious. The real trick is to be ambitious without people thinking you’re ambitious. I call it ‘beautiful indifference’.”
“I need to be beautifully indifferent?”
“Like you’re above the fray, but reluctantly, even nobly, willing to get involved. Make people feel like you’re at once too good for the common muck of politics, but sufficiently powerful that they need to get you down in the trenches with them regardless.” Alain pointed his cheroot at Scorio. “You know who was magnificently indifferent? The White Queen.”
“You’re right,” said Scorio. “It made her so…”
“Regal? Pure? Untouchable? Arousing?”
“Arousing?” deadpanned Scorio.
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you didn’t notice that, like, powerful mother-thing she had going on, older but caring, tender but maybe with a dirty edge beneath the whole devoted…” Alain trailed off as Scorio shook his head. “No? You didn’t notice that?”
“I mean, maybe I wasn’t looking for it.”
Alain leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I’ve got this dream, right. I make Blood Baron, and then I’m down in the Scorched Swale, and the White Queen’s in trouble, maybe this big bad guy’s going to kill her, and then I appear and punch him in the back, and save her. And she looks up at me with those blue eyes of hers, and I reach down with my hand to help her up, and she’s just so amazed at how… what?”
Scorio couldn’t help but laugh. “Nothing! It’s a beautiful, uh, dream. The White Queen should be so lucky.”
Alain pretended to throw his cheroot at him. “You’ll see. One day. Blood Baron Alain to the rescue. I’ll marry the White Queen yet, and then I’ll find out what kind of crazy underclothes she wears under those white robes.”
“Good luck with that.” He studied the other man who was tapping his fingers nervously on the tunnel floor. “Thanks, Alain.”
“How close would you say we are to being best friends?” Alain flashed a nervous grin. “I’d say we’re not there yet, but maybe on a scale of one to ten, I’ve climbed to - what - maybe a four? Would you say a six? Not a six. Five. A solid five. Not best friends, but a solid companion. Right?”
Scorio laughed and stood. “We’re moving in the right direction, I’ll give you that. Can you take me back to my room? I want to be there in case Naomi comes looking for me.”
“Yeah, of course.” Alain dropped the cheroot, then changed his mind, picked it up, and placed it in his pocket. “This way. We’ll take a slightly longer route.”
Scorio fell in beside Alain, and for a while they walked in comfortable silence. Too comfortable. Scorio frowned, momentarily losing track of why he was walking down the hallway with Alain; a brief moment of focus, and he remembered that it wasn’t a coincidence that they were walking together.
“Do you know much about the blazeborns?” he asked. “Or Queen Xandera?”
“Bravurn loves talking to her. Spends more time with her than anyone else. Nobody’s allowed close when they talk.”
“That so?”
“I think he loves her.” Alain considered, jogging his head from side to side. “I mean, not love? But maybe… like an obsessive and weirdly sadistic sexual interest? I’ve heard it said he broke some agreements with the other blazeborns when he met Xandera. She convinced him to spare her life.”
“Interesting.” Scorio thought of her regal features, her imperial bearing. “Maybe he thinks she’s the only being on his level.”
“Could be. He doesn’t care for their kind in general, though. He gave permission for all the gems and rare metals to be torn out of the walls so that they could be either harvested for ingredients in pills and used as containers for mana. Oversaw, I’ve heard it said, the slaughtering of thousands upon thousands of their number that survived the initial defeat.”
“He said he’ll return the spire to her when he leaves.”
Alain laughed. “Yeah, he likes to say that to everyone so she’ll believe it herself.”
“You think he’s lying?”
“Of course he is.” Alain glanced him sidelong. “Never forget this about Bravurn: the man’s a narcissistic monster. When the time comes for him to leave? I’ll wager all the mana in the Twilight Cradle that he’ll strangle Xandera in some pseudo-sexual ritual and tear down the Fury Spires behind him.”
Scorio slowed to a stop. “You’re serious?”
Alain walked on a few steps then turned. “Oh, yeah. I’m telling you, the way I’ve heard him talk about her, it’s like a mixture between his favorite mistress, a prized dog, and a beautiful statue. He’s the kind of guy that would rather destroy something he loves than set it free.”
Scorio nodded slowly, Xandera’s burning eyes hovering before him in the dark. Did she know this? Did she suspect, but refuse to believe?
His dull anger at the Iron Tyrant returned, throbbing in his breast.
“Well,” he said huskily, “I’ll have to do something about that before I go.”
“Like what?” asked Alain, smiling as if he couldn’t tell whether Scorio was joking or not. “I mean, she’s impressive, but she’s blazeborn. You know their kind preyed on us Great Souls for centuries.”
“Maybe we deserved it,” muttered Scorio.
Now Alain did laugh. “You’re crazy! I love it.”
Scorio forced a smile. “Ha, right.”
Alain shook his head and resumed walking. “Maybe we deserved it. That’s hilarious. Though.” He considered for a few paces. “I mean, from a fiend’s perspective, we probably did. But we’re not fiends.”
Chapter 17
Naomi was awaiting him in their rooms.
Scorio bid Alain goodbye and entered to find her sitting cross-legged at the back of the common room, hands resting on her knees, thick mane of hair loosed from its braid to hang heavy about her face.
“Hey,” he said, at once thrilled and completely nervous at the sight of her.
Her eyes snapped open, but she didn’t otherwise move. “Hey.”
For a moment they remained thus, him frozen in the mouth of the tunnel, her seated across the room, and then she sighed. “Look, Scorio. What happened… let’s not make a big deal about it.”
“No?”
“No.” She sounded faintly exasperated, world-weary, amused. “It was… I don’t know, a reaction to the intensity of the moment. We’re just friends. Clearly.”
“Clearly,” said Scorio weakly.
She arched a brow and fixed him with her stare. “Right?”
Scorio forced himself to exhale and moved to sit on his edge of the rotunda, feet on the circular seat. She watched him the entire time, a faint blush rising to her cheeks but otherwise giving no outward sign of nervousness.