Chapter 841: The Observer

"You'll want the custom explained," Lyren said. "It's ours, and most people outside the family have never heard of it."

"Then explain it."

"When my house chooses a head, outsiders are invited to stand present. Witnesses. They're there to see that the thing is done the way it's meant to be done." He turned one hand over. "Lucard is one of them. There are two others besides him, invited from other families. None of them is doing anything he shouldn't be."

Trafalgar had already worked out where this was going, and he didn't care for the destination. "Say the rest of it."

"You know the agreement between the Eight as well as I do. No Great House interferes in another house's succession, militarily or politically, unless a recognised authority of that family formally asks for it." Lyren tipped his head. "And there's a gap in the wording, which was left there deliberately a very long time ago. In a disputed succession, an heir with standing may invite an outsider as witness and guarantor. Somebody to confirm that no other Great House is putting a hand on the scales."

"With no vote."

"No vote, no soldiers, no authority of any kind. He stands there and he watches."

"And Corvyn's people invited Lucard?"

"The Tide invited him," Lyren said. "Formally, in writing, through the proper channels, months ago. On paper it is completely correct. That's why nobody in Meraval has raised a word about it. There's nothing to raise."

Trafalgar sat back and let that arrange itself. 'So that's how they did it.' It was elegant, and he hated how elegant it was. 'They didn't sneak anybody in. They walked a Vaelion through the front door with a badge on him and a signature behind him, and now the whole city has spent months getting used to seeing him there. Interference with paperwork.'

"And you want to put me on the other side of the scale," he said. "Because you're an heir with standing, and you can name your own."

"That's exactly what I want." Lyren didn't dress it up. "Trafalgar du Morgain, I'd like you to stand as my observer."

Trafalgar looked at him for a long moment. "An observer, eh." He let the word sit there. "I don't buy that for a second."

"You shouldn't." Lyren's expression didn't shift. "You wouldn't only be an observer. Somebody is already breaking the agreement, and I need help proving it, which is not something I can do from inside my own house without every hand in it turning against me at once." His voice hardened. "I've heard a good deal about what you've done these past years. We know each other, more or less. And my mother helped you once, a long time ago, which you may recall."

"I recall."

"Then there's the other thing." Lyren's tone stayed perfectly pleasant. "I also know you went somewhere you weren't meant to go, years back. The ruins. You wandered off the path, and the story afterward was that you'd gone to the bathroom."

Trafalgar's face did not move at all. 'Shit. That was years ago. We handled the guard, we made sure his account came out the way we needed it, and it was buried.' His mind ran the whole thing back at speed. 'Who noticed? How long has he been sitting on it?'

"I'll take that as confirmation that you were, in fact, wandering around in there," Lyren said.

"You didn't know…"

"A hunch." Lyren allowed himself the smallest curve of the mouth. "The guard's account was strange, so I gambled with it just now. It could cause you a great deal of trouble, that. For all anyone knows, you were spying, and there'd be plenty of people willing to say so out loud."

"You know it wasn't that."

"I do." Lyren said it without apology. "And I still need your help."

Trafalgar looked at the man across from him and understood exactly what he was being handed. He'd been in this chair from the other side often enough to recognise the work. It was polite, it was patient, and it was blackmail all the same.

'I have a son who is nine days old. I've already got a brother buying influence in a Great Family, a barrier coming apart, and a training I can't finish until Dravok turns up again.' He kept his face flat. 'And now I'm expected to go and sit in a castle under the sea for however long this takes. The girls are going to hear about this earlier than I wanted them to.'

He didn't like any of it, which didn't make it any less worth doing. "What do I get out of it?" he asked.

"My help, later, when you need it." Lyren said it as though he'd been waiting for the question. "And before you tell me my word isn't worth much when it's my sister who'll be sitting on the seat, understand that I'll have influence of my own. Practically as much as hers. If you have my word, you have the house."

Trafalgar heard the sentence, and heard what was sitting under it. 'Practically as much as hers.' He turned it over once. 'A brother doesn't say that about a sister. Not unless he already knows exactly how close he'll be standing to that chair, and why nobody will question it.'

He put the thought away where he kept things that were none of his business, and moved on, because it changed the sums considerably. A Great Family that owed him, with a head who listened to a man who owed him more, was worth a great deal more than a favour. He'd learned by now that the Council voted on everything, and that one house behind him meant almost nothing. Two was another proposition entirely.

And past that sat the thing he couldn't talk about in this room. The barrier. What was going to come through it. When that day arrived, he was going to need every ally on that Council he could put his hands on, and he was going to need them before anyone understood why.

'A house for a few days or weeks of my time.' He let a slow breath out. 'That's a trade worth making, and he knows it, which is why he's smiling like that.'

"All right," Trafalgar said. "I'll do it."

Lyren's shoulders came down about half an inch. "There's a condition," Trafalgar went on. "I've just become a father. My son is nine days old and he came early. Before I go anywhere, I go home and tell my wives myself, and I don't do it in a hurry."

"I know." Lyren nodded. "Caelum mentioned the birth when we arranged this. Congratulations, by the way, and I mean that." He rose from his chair. "Take the time. Nothing moves for a few weeks yet. When it does move, it will move quickly, and I'd rather you arrived with your affairs in order than half a day earlier with your head somewhere else."

"Then we understand each other."

"I rather think we do."