“You’ve lived on your own since the War?” Ah. That would be delicate in multiple directions, then.
Griffin nodded. “Split another cake in half? I should eat something more solid, too, in a bit. I did have lunch. The sandwiches were handy.” Then he considered his answer. “By the time I was back in the Courts, my father was thinking about retiring. It took him several more years, but the house I grew up in was stairs all over. Mum found me my flat, and we refitted it a bit to make it work better for me. As to the more personal...” He shrugged. “I walked out with someone before the War. She married while I was gone. There’s no harm in that. I hope she’s happy.” She had not loved Trellech, particularly, and that might have broken them apart anyway. “And since, there’s been work, and I haven’t...”
He paused, because he certainly hadn’t talked about this with almost anyone. “I won’t live with pity or someone who thinks they’re doing a selfless, noble thing by being my nursemaid. That’s a way to poison whatever love we might have had to start, and quickly. More than that, I work all the time, I haven’t met anyone who might suit. Also, working all the time is in fact bad for romance, unless it’s with someone you work with, and I have more sense. Let that be a caution to you.”
Charlus listened attentively, and Griffin was glad for that skill. He knew Charlus would be analysing this, what he’d heard, but also that he’d remember it. “You’re usually very self-sufficient.” Then his voice caught, as if he’d put two different things together suddenly.
“That would be the gossip, then?” Griffin asked, as gently as he could manage. He broke one of the cakes in half and nudged the other half over to Charlus.
Again, Charlus flushed. Not much, but it was enough of a tell that they should talk about it sometime. Normally, Charlus had quite good control, but this was more personal, something that more directly involved him. “Several pieces of it. Um, sir, I assume you’re aware that Nestor Aplin doesn’t care for you at all. You said, last time we discussed him, you hadn’t heard anything new. Some of this might be?”
“Oh, yes,” Griffin said. “Though I gather from you saying so that I have been reasonably adept at hiding that the feeling is mutual so far.”
It made Charlus chuckle softly. “One of my aunts is married to one of his cousins. She doesn’t like him much, and we got to talking. He’s been talking against you. Not in the Halls of Justice, but in other places. She didn’t know about - or understand - that you’re in consideration for the same thing.”
“Still. And that decidedly annoys Nestor. Harriet’s more even-tempered about it. She thinks it ought to be her, most of the time, but she wouldn’t take it personally if Lamont picked me. Or Nestor, for that matter.” Griffin considered. “Nestor has thought I should give up on it since before I came back. Before he was put in as the third candidate after Horace died in 1919. I do miss Horace.” Griffin sighed a little with it. “What sort of nastiness? I’d rather know the truth.”
Charlus did know, enough that he echoed the last three words, a fraction of a beat behind Griffin. “I couldn’t get all the details out of my aunt, but it sounded unreasonably nasty. Undermining you, professionally, several ways round. That you’re not fit for duty, that you’ve been letting things slip,” Charlus considered. “That you should have fixed the problems years earlier.”
“Ah. That’s an entirely different political problem. You started with me right as Cleon retired. The rub of it is that he ought to have retired three or four years before he did. Enough time for me to get established again, to have a year working in the inheritance courts in specific, and then take over for him. That didn’t happen. And he kept tight hold of his part of things until finally, he had that fall, and eventually agreed that coming into work was too much to do regularly.” Griffin hesitated, then added, “It wasn’t a physical infirmity, though, as much as a mental one. Memory. He’d forget when he was.”
Then Griffin had a horrible thought, and he said it before he could bury it deep. “Now I’m wondering if whatever affected the courtroom, the jet, had to do with that. I don’t think so - surely someone else would have noticed. Or worse, had symptoms. Or one of the diagnostics would have caught something.”
Charlus was open-mouthed. Then he swallowed. “Should I get another round of testing set in motion?”
“Please, though for right now, can you just check on materia for it and see if we’re low on anything? I’ll need to write up a proposal for Lamont and for Gloriana and Christopher. One of the architectural specialists, and someone good with odd magic and ritual workings. I might see privately if Cy - Council Member Smythe-Clive is available for a look. He’s seen some of our other work.” Other people might reasonably ask the Penelopes, but it was complicated since they often had to give evidence in those spaces one way or another.
“You’re familiar with him, then?” Charlus came from the sort of family that didn’t have a landed title, but had in the past, and would probably marry into one again sooner than later.
“His sister runs the baths at the Temple of Healing, and she arranged for him to help evaluate where my skills were when I was newly back. We’ve kept up a light correspondence since. You know the sort of thing. I’d copy something out of the legal journals and publications, he’d send back an article from outside Albion that might be relevant. Council Member Landry’s also quite skilled at ritual work, but I don’t know him nearly as well. And he was after your time at Schola, so that won’t work, though I could ask Seth to ask his sister.” Griffin waved a hand. “Chains of interconnection. We’ll try the shorter one first. And if Cyrus isn’t willing, he might know who to suggest.”
“I begin to see why you work all the time, sir,” Charlus said after a moment. “You’re always thinking about the consequences. How one thing leads onward.”
“That’s the pursuit of truth and justice for you. Even if they’re not always the same thing.” It was also the infirmity. He always had to think of the possibilities several steps out, to stand a chance of keeping going with what he wanted to get done. But he wasn’t going to mention that now. “Anyway, I will work on that as soon as I can, but to be honest, likely tomorrow.” He flicked his fingers. “The potion does rather horrid things to my ability to write neatly, and I didn’t bring the typewriter. Was there other gossip?”
“A couple of other things. Like there are factions, lines of preference, in the Courts. Which I knew, but perhaps you could lay that out more sometime, sir? Not today, though, if you’d rather not.”
Griffin took a breath, considering it, then thought better of it. “It will almost certainly make more sense if we wait. You were going to go back, yes?”
“If you don’t need me to stay, sir. I’m glad to, of course.” Charlus glanced over at the stairs. “Most of my things are still in my room here.”
“No, I’d rather you go work on getting the materia together. And being around the place, seeing who wants to talk to you when I’m not there. Don’t tell them any details about how things are going. You can say I’ve told you not to, if you like. Or you can say I haven’t told you all of what I’m working on. Both of which are true, of course.”
“Of course,” Charlus said, and now he looked amused. Then he hesitated. “May I ask something, sir? A touch more personal, about how you approach the gossip?”
“Please.” Griffin rearranged himself.
“Why don’t you say something about it? More openly? Mostly, it seems to me you just let them insinuate things.”
“Oh, several reasons. First, perhaps most importantly, I’d rather spend my time on other things. But second, it’s like arguing with the tides or the moon or the sun rising. I’m not going to change their opinions by arguing. Especially Nestor’s, he’s also a solicitor. We both know how arguments are crafted. If he brought it out in the open, I could address it. So he won’t let me get that advantage. Instead, I’m going to do my best work - like I’ve been doing all along. And hopefully, that will speak for itself. It gets tiring, mind. Every time I do make a minor slip, the sort everyone human does, I wonder how much more this one will count against me than it would for someone else. But that’s a known sort of maths these days. And I’m lucky enough to have excellent support and advice. Antimony, a few of the other Guards, various people in the Courts. You.”
Charlus ducked his chin. “Thank you, sir. I suspect I’ll be thinking about that part, when it’s worth arguing and when it isn’t, for some time. Let me go make sure you’ve got things handy, then, and I’ll go off.” He took a moment to finish the half cake in front of him, then Griffin could hear him moving around. A couple of minutes of checking in the kitchen later, Charlus said, “You should be good for milk until Thursday. I’ll plan to come back then? And there are fresh towels out in the bath, all that.”
“You’re very thoughtful, thank you. And I’ll take it easy tonight. I’ve a book.” More to the point, once he’d had supper, he could reasonably retreat to bed and the book, and not have to move much for a bit. Charlus nodded, and then a minute later, he was making his farewells and out the door again. Griffin let out a long breath, because that could have been a great deal more difficult to deal with. And now he had the evening without any expectation of visitors. He could reasonably retire for the night once he’d had a little more food that wasn’t cakes.
Chapter20
MARCH 24TH
