Aurelian turned his head at last and looked at him properly.
"I didn’t expect you to get comfortable with me that fast." He seemed genuinely pleased about it. "That makes this quicker."
Adrien had no idea what the man wanted, and that was the whole problem.
What he did have was a warning from the prince’s own sister, delivered in the middle of a dance floor about an hour ago. Aurelian has more than one face. If he approaches you, he wants something.
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"I think you already know roughly where you’re standing." Aurelian went back to leaning on the rail. "You can’t leave. You worked that out in about two seconds, you skipped the ceremony, and you used my name. So I’m going to take you for an intelligent man, and an intelligent man knows that if the two of us are alone out here, it’s because I have something to say to him."
"Fine." Adrien put his own hands on the stone. "Then I’d like to know what you want from someone like me. My family lost nearly everything a few weeks ago, and it lost it because of your father. With all respect, I’m not sure why I’d trust you after that."
"And I’m glad you’re cautious, because I couldn’t forgive it either." Aurelian said it without any weight on it. "If somebody had done that to my house I’d not have slept since. That’s simply who I am."
"So?"
"We’re not out here to go over bad memories, though. I only wanted to tell you one thing about it, and that’s that my father is a weak man and he was manipulated into what he did."
"And you’d like me to forgive the Crown for it."
"No." Aurelian shook his head. "That would be heartless, and I’d think less of you if you did."
He let a moment go by.
"I don’t think you know what I’m actually doing yet." He looked out at the city. "I intend to take the throne. Soon."
Adrien turned to look at him.
"You’re planning to kill your own father?"
Aurelian laughed. It was a real laugh, and it made him look about five years younger.
"Nothing of the sort. The old man has suffered enough on his own account." He shook his head again. "I’m going to remove him from the political side of it entirely. That’s all."
"Why?"
"Because of what’s happening while he sits there." Aurelian tapped one knuckle against the stone. "You know there are ten great houses in this kingdom. A good number of them have noticed that my father is weak, and they have been helping themselves. Arrangements nobody approved. Money moving where it has no business moving. Things done on their own authority and reported afterwards, when they’re reported at all."
"And outside the kingdom?"
"The situation is worse. Our relations with two of our neighbours are somewhere between poor and finished." He said it the way a man reads a number off a page. "If nobody does anything, this kingdom comes apart in under two years. That’s roughly where my arithmetic lands."
Adrien let that sit.
"And why tell me all of it?"
"Because of who you are." Aurelian looked over. "The Clairmonts have stood beside the Crown for generations. Your father, your grandfather, and back and back before either of them. Whatever else has been true in this kingdom at any given moment, a Clairmont was always there."
He straightened off the rail.
"So I wanted a good relationship with the current head of that house. Nothing more complicated than that."
Adrien did not answer straight away.
He genuinely could not tell what the man was building. Aurelian talked about taking a throne the way other people talked about moving house, and when he did it he clearly expected everything under him to change afterward.
’People like this are dangerous.’
But the rest of it added up, whether Adrien liked the source or not. If Aurelian knew which houses were helping themselves and intended to do something about it, then he was pointing at the same people Adrien was going to be pointing at eventually.
’The enemy of my enemy. And I’d rather have him where I can see him than find out about him later.’
Aurelian put his hand out.
"I hope we can work well together, Adrien Clairmont."
Adrien looked at it for about a second, and took it.
’I still don’t trust you.’
Behind him the two guards opened the door, and the noise of the ballroom came back onto the balcony, and Adrien went inside without saying anything else.
Aurelian stayed where he was.
He turned back to the rail and looked past the rooftops, past the wall, past the lamps on the far side of the river, at a sky with no moon in it.
He stood out there a good while.
’I need to be ready sooner than this.’
He was not thinking about the ten houses. He had the ten houses solved on paper already, down to the order and roughly the cost, and none of it kept him awake.
What kept him awake was further up.
’Two years for the kingdom.’ Aurelian’s hands tightened on the stone. ’And I have no idea how long for the other thing.’
...
AN: Add the novel to collections and send (power stones and golden tickets) support if like it ;)