Casimir comes back the next evening, which I honestly hadn’t fully expected, though I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t a little pleased about it.
He comes through the gate this time, which I take as a small personal victory, dressed down enough that if you didn’t know better you might mistake him for regular palace staff instead of the emperor’s own brother, minus the fact that his posture still reads like someone who’s never once in his life had to apologize for taking up space in a room.
“I’m here to assess the security concerns of this wing,” he announces, with the particular flatness of a man reciting a cover story he came up with about thirty seconds before knocking.
“On behalf of the crown.”
“Sure you are.” I look him up and down, taking in the fact that he’s wearing boots suitable for actual work rather than the fine ones from last night, which tells me more than his official reason does.
Men..in any era, cannot communicate properly..ugh.
“The crown’s security concerns can start with that pile of reeds by the shed.
We’re two panels short on the roof and losing daylight.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me, Your Highness.
Free labor doesn’t get to stand around narrating its own cover story while there’s thatching to do.” I toss him a coil of binding twine, which he catches on reflex, looking at it like it’s a foreign object he’s never had cause to hold before, which, given the fabric of his sleeves, might genuinely be true.
“You want to poke around my wing at midnight, fine, I’m not going to stop a prince from having hobbies.
But if you’re going to keep showing up, you’re paying rent.
Physical labor’s the going rate around here.”
“You want me to thatch a roof.”
“I want you to help me thatch a roof, technically, since I’m already doing it, you’re just supplementing.
Come on.
It’s not complicated, I’ll show you the pattern.”
He stares at the twine, then at me, then at the roof, clearly running some kind of internal calculation about dignity versus curiosity that seems to end, again, in curiosity’s favor, because a moment later he’s following me toward the ladder with the resigned expression of a man who has decided that whatever he’s here for is worth a certain amount of humiliation along the way.
It turns out Casimir is terrible at thatching, in the specific way that very competent people are terrible at unfamiliar tasks, which is to say he’s precise and careful and completely unwilling to just make a mess and learn from it the way I did on my first attempt.
“You’re overthinking it,” I tell him, watching him examine a reed bundle from three different angles before committing to a knot.
“It doesn’t need to be perfect.
It needs to keep rain out.
Different standards entirely.”
“Everything I do gets scrutinized,” he says, not looking up.
“I’ve learned not to leave room for error.”
“Well, nobody’s scrutinizing your roofing technique except me, and my only requirement is that it doesn’t fall on my head in three weeks.” I lean over and adjust his grip on the reed bundle, quick and businesslike.
“Angle it down, not flat.
Water needs somewhere to go or it just pools and rots the whole panel.”
He adjusts.
The next bundle sits better.
He doesn’t say anything, but something in his shoulders loosens by a degree, like being allowed to be bad at something without consequence is a genuinely novel experience for him.
We work in something close to companionable silence for a while, the two of us passing bundles back and forth, the sound of binding twine and settling reeds filling the space where conversation would otherwise go, until curiosity, which has never once in my life known when to stay quiet, gets the better of me.
“The evidence you’re looking for.
Related to whatever’s got the succession all tangled up, I’m guessing.”
He goes still for a second, hands pausing on the reed he’s working.
“Who told you about the succession?”
“Nobody told me anything, Your Highness, I put together two things that happen to be true at the same time.
An unfavored empress gets banished on a scandal that conveniently clears the field for whoever wanted her gone.
A prince starts sneaking around the wing she got banished to, looking for evidence he won’t name.
Doesn’t take a genius to see that those two things might be connected.” I glance at him sideways.
“Am I wrong?”
A long pause.
Then, quietly, “No.”
“Want to fill in the gaps, or are we still doing the thing where you only tell me one true thing per rescue?”
Something that’s almost a laugh escapes him, quick and surprised, like it caught him off guard as much as it did me.
“You’re very direct.”
“I died once already, Your Highness.
Gives you a certain relationship with wasted time.” I settle back against the roof beam, realizing this is the first time i am saying it out loud..
giving him room to talk or not talk, whichever he decides.
He does not say much, so i continue.
“But if it helps, I’m not asking because I want to use it against anyone.
I’m asking because whoever framed the woman whose life I woke up in clearly isn’t done, and I’d rather understand the board before someone moves another piece I don’t see coming.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, working another reed bundle into place with more care than the task strictly requires, buying himself time the way people do when they’re deciding how much of something true they’re willing to hand over.
“My brother is the Emperor,” he says finally, “but his position is not as secure as the throne would suggest.
There are factions at court who believe the succession should have gone differently.
Some of them are patient.
Some of them are not.
The woman who held your position before you woke into it, Empress Liora, had uncovered something that threatened one of those factions.
Before she could act on it, she was accused of a crime I don’t believe she committed, and removed from the board entirely.”
“And you think whatever she found is still out there somewhere.
Probably in this wing, since that’s where they shipped both her and, presumably, whatever she’d been keeping close.”
“That’s the theory, yes.”
I think about the locked chest sitting in the corner of the main room, patient and unopened, with its worn engraving and its rusted clasp, and decide, for now, not to mention it. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Not because I don’t trust him, exactly, though I’m not entirely sure yet that I do, but because information’s the only leverage I’ve got in a palace full of people who’d very much like to see me quietly disappear, and I’ve never been the type to hand over my only leverage before I understand the whole shape of the game.
“That’s a lot of very serious court politics for someone who just spent the last hour losing an argument with a reed bundle,” I say instead, lightly, watching him for the reaction.
He looks over at me, something in his expression easing slightly, like he was braced for a very different response and got surprised again.
“You’re taking this remarkably well.”
“I’ve survived an avalanche, a canyon fall, and several extremely aggressive geese in my old life, Your Highness.
A palace conspiracy’s just a different flavor of terrain.
I’ll manage.” I hand him another reed bundle.
“Besides.
Whoever’s behind this clearly wanted me gone quietly.
I’m not particularly interested in doing them that favor.”
For the first time since he showed up tonight, something like genuine amusement crosses his face, brief but real.
“No,” he says.
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
By the time full dark settles in, we’ve got the second thatch panel finished and lifted into place, which leaves just one more gap before the roof stops actively inviting the sky indoors, and I stand back to admire our handiwork with the particular satisfaction of someone who’s spent the day doing something with visible, tangible results.
“Same time tomorrow?” I ask, mostly joking, mostly not.
Casimir considers this with more seriousness than the question probably warranted, brushing reed dust off his sleeves in a way that suggests he’s already resigned himself to ruining several more outfits before this arrangement runs its course.
“I have court obligations in the morning,” he says.
“But I could return in the evening.
If the labor arrangement still stands.”
“The labor arrangement definitely still stands.
I’ve got a whole third panel and a fence that’s basically a suggestion at this point.”
“You’re going to work me to death, Empress.”
“Wren,” I correct.
“And only if you keep dangling from my traps instead of using the gate like a reasonable person.”
He almost smiles again, that same careful, surprised half smile that seems to catch him off guard every time it happens, like he’s not used to letting it out and isn’t entirely sure what to do with it once it’s there.
“Wren,” he repeats, testing the shape of it the same way Mei did on the first day, and something about hearing it in his voice lands differently than it did with her, though I decide, firmly, not to examine that thought any further tonight.
This is complicated enough without me having a crush.
“Get some sleep, Your Highness,” I say instead.
“Court obligations wait for no one, apparently.”
He nods, turns to go, and pauses at the gate, glancing back at the garden, the mended roof, the whole stubborn little life I’ve built out of scraps and spite over five short days.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I don’t think whoever did this to you expected you to survive it.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking around at all of it too, feeling something settle warm and satisfied in my chest despite the conspiracy, despite the danger, despite everything.
“That’s sort of becoming my whole thing.”