— Caelum POV —
He had three days to decide.
He spent all three of them telling himself he was going to say no.
Day one: No. Absolutely not. He didn't know what she wanted and he didn't trust noble houses and the entire offer smelled like a trap with better furniture.
Day two: No, but also — what exactly was the nature of the trap? Academically speaking. He found himself mapping possible angles at two in the morning and had to physically put his pen down and go to sleep.
Day three: Fine. Yes. Obviously yes. He had known since the roof. He had just needed three days to be annoyed about it.
The scheduling conflict, by the way, had been filed under routine maintenance the morning after the roof conversation. Nobody checked. Nobody noticed. Two professors who had been passive-aggressively canceling each other's classes for a month suddenly had their conflict resolved and probably thought it had sorted itself out.
She had been right. He hated that she had been right. He had been sitting on that fix for weeks because the senior clerks said leave it and he hadn't wanted another complaint filed against him and she had solved the political problem in one sentence.
One sentence.
Who did that.
He wrote his answer on a piece of paper, folded it, and gave it to the same junior clerk who had delivered her note. The junior clerk looked thrilled to be involved in something, which was a reaction Caelum found baffling and a little sad.
The note said: Yes. Terms to be discussed. Don't send intermediaries, it's undignified.
He regretted the last sentence immediately but he had already handed it over.
She appeared at the office window the next morning.
Not in the corridor this time. At the actual window. She knocked on the frame with two knuckles, very lightly, like someone who had decided knocking was technically sufficient and wasn't going to do more than technically sufficient.
He looked up from the equipment requisitions.
She held up two fingers. Second bell. Roof again.
He nodded.
She left.
The junior clerk, who had witnessed this entire exchange, turned to Caelum with an expression of profound excitement.
"That was Lady Valdros," he said, helpfully.
"Yes," Caelum said.
"She came to the window."
"Also yes."
"For you."
"Apparently."
The junior clerk opened his mouth again.
"If you say one more thing," Caelum said pleasantly, "I will redistribute your filing backlog to next month and you will spend the rest of term alphabetizing equipment returns."
The junior clerk closed his mouth.
Silence. Good. Caelum went back to the requisitions.
Internally he was thinking about the knock. Two knuckles, very light. Efficient. No performance. Most nobles performed everything — arrivals, departures, small gestures, breathing probably. She had knocked like someone who was busy and had better things to do but was here anyway.
He filed this away and told himself to stop filing things away about her.
He would stop. Later.
— Seraphine POV —
The terms were as follows, which she had prepared in advance because she was that kind of person and also because showing up to a negotiation without a position was just embarrassing:
He would consult on problems she brought to him. He would have access to the Valdros house library — the real one, not the decorative one — which contained political records going back two hundred years. She would provide formal house protection, which meant anyone who touched him would have paperwork problems. Not violent intervention. Paperwork. Caelum, she suspected, would appreciate the distinction.
The compensation was a stipend, monthly, enough to make the scholarship irrelevant.
She laid all of this out on the roof at second bell while he stood with his arms crossed and his expression doing the assessment thing.
When she finished he was quiet for a moment.
"The library access," he said. "The restricted section, or just the general collection?"
"The restricted section has about three things worth reading," she said. "I'll give you a list."
"I want access to the full political records from the third Duke's era onward."
She considered this. The third Duke's era was when the Valdros house had started making the kind of moves that were interesting if you knew where to look. He was already looking.
Smart. Annoying.
"Fine," she said.
"The protection clause. Define paperwork problems."
"Administrative delays. Missing endorsements. Inexplicable scheduling conflicts." She paused. "I once made a baron's military commission disappear for four months. He was very upset."
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. The corner of his mouth did something that was structurally adjacent to a smile without fully committing.
"Was he."
"He cried at one point. It was a Wednesday."
The almost-smile got slightly worse. Better. Whatever.
"I have conditions," he said.
"I assumed."
"I don't report to your house. I consult. The distinction matters — I'll tell you what I think and you can do what you like with it. I'm not your retainer."
Fair. She had expected this. She nodded.
"Second. I keep the clerk position."
She raised an eyebrow. Of everything he could ask for, he wanted to keep the job that was grinding him down.
"The position gives me access to records," he said, reading her expression correctly. "Administrative systems. Scheduling. I'd lose the access if I left."
Right. Of course. He wasn't keeping it because he liked filing. He was keeping it because it was a surveillance post disguised as a menial job. She felt a distant professional respect.
"Fine," she said. "Anything else?"
He looked at her for a long moment.
"Why me," he said.
Not a challenge. A real question. She could tell the difference — he asked real questions the same flat way he asked everything, but there was a quality of actually waiting for the answer.
She could have said: because you're clever. She could have said: because I need someone who thinks laterally. Both were true and neither was the whole truth.
The whole truth was that she had watched him stand in that alcove with his arms pinned and look at Aldric like a person quietly opening an account, and something in her that had been asleep for two years had woken up and said: that one.
She was not going to say that.
"Because you planned a three-week operation with no resources, no backing, and no margin for error," she said. "And it worked until someone with a magic spell decided the rules didn't apply to them. I want to know what you do when the people with magic spells are working for you instead of against you."
He looked at her.
She looked back.
"Okay," he said.
Just that. Okay.
She nodded. Extended her hand. He looked at it for a half second — the very specific look of someone who didn't shake hands often, who had learned the motion academically rather than socially — and then shook it. His grip was firm. Slightly too deliberate, like he was concentrating.
She let go first.
"Saturday morning," she said. "Library. First bell."
"I have filing due Saturday morning."
"Then do it Friday night."
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"Fine," he said.
He left.
Seraphine stood on the roof and looked at the city and tried to remember the last time she had felt this awake.
She couldn't, particularly.
That was fine. That was just fine.
— Nessa POV —
She found out about the arrangement on a Thursday, from the junior clerk's cousin, who was a laundry maid, who told another laundry maid, who told the kitchen boy, who mentioned it while Nessa was picking up Lady Seraphine's evening tea.
The clerk boy. Caelum Ashveil. Lady Seraphine had hired him as a consultant.
Nessa carried the tea tray upstairs and set it on the side table and waited while Lady Seraphine finished her reading.
"My lady," she said, at an appropriate pause. "I hear you've taken on a consultant."
"News travels fast."
"The junior clerk told the laundry maid."
Lady Seraphine set her book down and picked up her tea. She looked serene. She always looked serene. Nessa had learned to read the quality of the serenity. Right now it was the kind that meant her lady was thinking about something and had decided it was going well.
That was the most alarming kind.
"He's useful," Lady Seraphine said simply.
"He's an orphan clerk with no magical ability and three noble enemies."
"I'm aware."
"Your father will have questions."
"My father can have questions. I have answers." She sipped her tea. "The answers are that he's a consultant and it's my business."
Nessa thought about the schedule changes. The corridor window. The five mornings of sitting with an unread book.
She thought about the careful, deliberate way Lady Seraphine had said he's useful. The way useful, in her lady's voice, had slightly too much weight for what it was.
She thought about the disaster contingency plan she had promised herself she'd start.
She decided she would start it tonight.
"Very good, my lady," she said.
She picked up the empty tray and left.
In the corridor she paused and stared at the wall for a moment.
Two years of following the plot like a schedule. And now a clerk.
She started drafting the contingency plan in her head. Step one: figure out if the clerk was going to be a problem. Step two: figure out what kind of problem.
Step three, if necessary: deal with it.
She hoped it wouldn't get to step three. She genuinely liked Lady Seraphine.
She also knew, with the certainty of someone who had been paying close attention for two years, that like was probably already the wrong word for what Lady Seraphine felt.
The wrong word by quite a lot.
* * *
End of Chapter Three