Chapter 124: Lord of the Mansion

Theo went home that day instead of to the Hall, since he needed all the rest he could get for his body to adapt properly and then see to the wounds itself.

The moment he came up the drive on the galloping horse, Alfred had a hand under his arm before the stirrup was clear, and the gardener, a young man thick through the shoulders with the face of a farmer, took the other side and walked him in.

They put him to bed. The gardener asked whether there was anything else he could bring up, and Theo asked for water, and after that he insisted on nothing at all.

He drank it. Then he lay down, and he had his peace, and he slept.

When Theo woke up he was as good as new.

The cheek had mended. So had the ribs. The pain that had been pressing on him quietly the whole way back was gone, and the body underneath it felt like it could take a harder hit than the one that had put him down. The reins had worn a line across his right palm, and that was still there.

It could, too. Now that it had come this far, it would take something stronger than the Lycan to drop him the same way.

Theo stood, stretched, and a knock came gently on the door.

He glanced over and called out. A woman’s voice came through the wood.

"Lord Sky, breakfast is ready."

"Breakfast?"

He had ridden in late in the evening. That meant he had slept through the whole night and into the morning.

’Wow, that was quite the sleep then.’

And he was smiling about it.

He stepped outside. Alfred stood by the side of the door, and with him a woman with brunette hair and freckles who kept her eyes on the floor.

It was then that Theo felt a little bad. He had not taken the time to get familiar with his maids, not even to learn their names.

’It’s difficult to care when Estea isn’t pestering me to. But I have to make sure they’re not shady before I can bring her here, so I’ll have to talk to them at some point... I guess I’ll do that later.’

He looked at the two of them and answered.

"Show me to the dining."

Alfred moved. Theo spoke before he could get any further.

"Not you, Alfred."

Alfred stopped, and Theo fixed his gaze on the lady.

With her head bowed she missed it entirely at first, and then she raised her head, late, and asked with her composure all over the floor:

"M—Me—eee?"

Theo nodded politely.

"Yes, you... what’s your name?"

"It’s Olivia sir! Olivia Reed is my name."

’Sounds like a main character’s name...’

Theo nudged with his head.

"Lead me to the dining Olivia, and come explain to me what you have prepared for me to eat."

Olivia Reed led him to the dining room at the speed of somebody who had decided to get it over with.

Theo had to lengthen his stride twice to keep up.

’She’s walking like the floor’s on fire. Is it me? It’s me, isn’t it.’

The dining room was ninety feet long and had a table down the middle of it that could seat forty, and there was one setting laid at the end nearest the window, and the morning came in over the lawns in long yellow bars with the dust standing up in them.

Olivia stopped at the chair and put her hands behind her back.

"Uhm."

"Go on."

"There’s — there’s the eggs, sir, three ways, nobody knew which, so Cook did all three."

She was speaking to a point about four inches above his shoulder.

"Then there’s the ham, and the black bread, and the white, and the preserve is quince because the plum went over. And there’s a thing under the cloth I’m not to lift until you sit."

’Right, now I have to sit down.’

Theo sat down.

Olivia lifted the cloth.

It was a fish. A whole one, a good two feet of it, baked in salt with the crust cracked open down the spine and the steam still coming off it, and somebody in that kitchen had been up in the dark over it.

Theo looked at it for a while.

’Odette would lose her mind. She’d take one look at that crust and want to know who did it and how long they soaked the salt.’

He picked up the fork.

Then he put it back down and turned round in the chair.

"Olivia."

"Sir!"

"Who cooked it?"

"...Cook, sir."

"Does this Cook have a name?"

Olivia’s eyes came down off the point above his shoulder and landed on his face for the first time, and she looked completely lost.

"Merren, sir. Merren Hask."

"Right. Go and get Merren Hask and tell her I want to know how long she soaked the salt, and then tell her I’m going to eat the whole thing and I’d like the recipe."

Theo picked the fork back up.

"And bring another plate. For you."

For a moment Olivia did not move, and her hands stayed behind her back.

There were nineteen of them.

Theo had all nineteen names before the morning was out. And Estea’s voice had been sitting at the back of his skull since he woke, saying a sentence she had not actually said yet.

You have put a household of strangers around three women who cannot run.

’She’s going to say it. She’s going to say it in that exact voice, and she’ll be right, and I would very much rather have done it before she gets here.’

So he walked the house.

He kept the Genesis Eyes open the whole way round, and the ache sat behind his sockets for two hours, and he read every single person under that roof.

A kitchen of five. Merren Hask, forty-one, an old burn up the inside of her right forearm, a Rank Potential of F and the flattest, most terrifying calm he had met since Uthed. Two stable hands, brothers. Six guards off the Castle roster, all of them Mundane and all of them bored out of their minds. A gardener with a farmer’s face and shoulders like a door. Olivia Reed, twenty, third of six, sending eleven of her twelve silver a month somewhere that was not here.

And nothing else.

[Note: No foreign Authority detected]

[Note: No listening construct detected]

[Note: 19 persons. 19 accounted for.]

Theo stood at the top of his own stairs, and his shoulders came down for the first time since Alderkeep.

’Clean. The whole house is clean... then I can bring them.’

He thought again for a moment.

’No, not yet. I have to get stronger first.’