“Even though I know you are. Sensible people do.” Antimony said, soothingly.
Annice had apparently learned a few things in just a handful of days. There was a thought tickling at the back of her mind, a combination of what they’d been talking about on and off, and about something Niobe had mentioned in passing. Then Annice pulled it together, holding up her hand to show she had something now.
Griffin immediately nodded at her. “Please?”
“Niobe said something, and you were talking yesterday.” Annice stopped. “This is coming out badly.”
“Antimony’s a friend. And I’m listening. Or we could make Antimony go stand in the hall for a few minutes.” Griffin offered the second, apparently entirely serious, and it made Annice wince.
“No. Just, I don’t have the right words. Let me try.” Annice thought about what she felt from Griffin, how he had been making space for her all along. “You’ve been so thoughtful, making space for me. Checking that things were comfortable, when you knew everything was new and different and I didn’t know what to expect or plan for. And we talked about what you liked about the Abbey, the way the space was made for what it did.”
Annice grimaced. This wasn’t coming out right, then she just let the words come as she could get them out. “This is a courtroom, right? That’s one kind of space, but are there others here? For people waiting, or I don’t know, conversations that aren’t in the courtroom? Besides offices? Or is it all courtrooms and - fancy? What happens if someone from Whitby, or a tiny village, never been to Trellech, never done much with the Guard, is being questioned or helping with something? Or someone who’s upset, like you mentioned with inheritance cases.”
“That is an excellent question. We have some meeting rooms, but they’re not set up to support anything magically, other than privacy.” Griffin said, and his hand shifted his chair for just a second, the way she’d seen him do a few times when someone else might pace. He didn’t move much, just rocked back and forth, almost in place. “There’s a room we could repurpose. Witnesses in complex cases, space when there’s a tough decision in the offing, that sort of thing, yes?”
Annice nodded, bobbing her head several times.
“The Guard has a room or two like that for questioning, but that’s a different purpose. You could use one here. We’ve had more than enough cases where it would have been a help. Or a kindness. Both.” Antimony nodded, more direct. “It’s an excellent idea. And it’s a good scope, to prove yourself. You’d need layers of talisman work, though.”
Griffin’s smile came back, like he’d stopped concentrating as hard on everything in his head. “Good thing I’ve got reason to stop by Niobe’s regularly at the moment. The materia might be a trick, but we could probably work with secondary stones, if we can’t get the primaries. It’s the combination of effects. And I’ll need to consult a couple of other people on the design work. Not my area of particular expertise.”
“It’s barely anyone’s area of specialty,” Antimony pointed out. “Should I put the word around to a couple of people that you have an idea, please make time in their diaries for you in the next week?”
“If you would.” Then Griffin looked up at Annice, smiling warmly. “That’s an excellent thought, and I’m going to be very busy sorting some of it out for a bit. Can we help with your measurements now, before we lose ourselves in that?”
Annice nodded. “Please. This one over here, I’d like to get some distance, and that involves two people to hold the measures, and one to look at them.” That process took them a bit, especially finding angles that worked with the fixed furniture. Then it was time to break for lunch. Annice went off to Niobe’s for the afternoon. She had several dozen questions about the process of selecting and setting stones for this kind of work, relevant to both herself and Griffin.
Chapter35
APRIL 9TH
The next four days went by in a way Griffin hadn’t expected. He and Annice had settled into a comfortable routine with no fuss at all. They shared a bed, companionably but without new forms of intimacy. He’d have been glad enough if they had. It wasn’t the standard Christian practice. But Griffin held that one of the reasons for the prohibition against sex outside of marriage was conception. The other was that it created ties - magical as well as emotional - with the person you were with. Magic tended the first, and he wanted the second, if Annice did too.
The quiet intimacy of having someone there, though, was something he leaned toward more and more. When they woke in the morning, Annice usually put things together for breakfast, and they went off to their separate work. On Wednesday, they’d gone to see the Temple of Healing’s spaces properly.
The night they’d gone, it had been rather quiet, and they’d been able to take their time walking around with one of the guides to the carvings and stained glass and all the individual shrines tucked along the long walls. Annice had relaxed there, in a way that Griffin hadn’t quite expected, and he had been able to just soak in being in a space that was well-designed for purpose. It had given him - or rather one of the shrines had - several new ideas for his current work, too.
Then they’d come home. Home. That was the thing about it. Griffin enjoyed having someone about the place. He’d known, since he was in school, that he was someone who enjoyed having other people around, regularly, predictably. Not always right in his space - he got lost in his own work a bit much for that. But when he came out of it, he liked having someone to talk with over a mug of tea or a biscuit, someone to chat books with. And here and now, someone to share the day with.
He hadn’t thought he’d ever get that. There was the chair, though he knew well enough from other people’s lives that finding a partner who was fine with it was possible. But as he’d said to Charlus, what seemed like years ago, he worked a great deal. He could be tedious, and his standards around truth weren’t always entirely comfortable.
Annice seemed to have thrown herself into her learning. As expected, Niobe had sorted out the talisman stones by Wednesday, and she’d written up detailed specifications. The three were indeed designed for protection, though in ways that Annice hadn’t found entirely comfortable. Not that Griffin had pressed her to talk about it. She either would or she wouldn’t. Niobe had promptly presented Annice with a contract for additional work, for as long as it took Annice to properly set the courtroom up. As well as the stones for what Griffin was planning. That was not an instant process. Annice had plans to go up to Whitby on Monday, to search for more jet that would suit. She intended to look not only from the beach, but at her grandad’s workshop and Rob’s and Cliff’s discards.
They’d also made time to be sociable, though. Griffin had arranged for supper out with Mason and Witt on Thursday, letting Annice see how the two of them played off each other. Mason was all odd angles and unexpected connections, while Witt was far more logical. After, a bit to his own surprise, he’d invited them back home for drinks. They’d both stopped by a few times over the years, for a case, but they’d never come in and spent time. Seeing them together - and the way they leaned into that difference rather than it causing friction - always made Griffin feel better.
Annice had enjoyed it, too, though not as much, perhaps, as she’d enjoyed meeting Golshan and Seth and Seth’s engineer friend, Ponyard. That had been Friday afternoon, when Golshan set up at the Field, the Schola club for Horse House. They’d put in a ramp for him, early on, and also hosted a number of the veterans gatherings in Trellech. Griffin didn’t go terribly often - perhaps once a quarter at most - but he somehow needed to know those gatherings and people were there. The Fridays, though, that was just for whoever needed a hand, something outside what the structures and formalities permitted.
On Friday, they’d gone in right as Golshan wrapped that up, and Golshan had lit up to see Griffin. “And this is your friend, then? Mistress Matthewman, I gather you want to know more about how the chairs work?” He showed the various features of his, and let Annice see them side by side. He, of course, didn’t get out of his. His injuries and paralysis made that much more of a production, and not easy to do unless he was sliding onto a bed or bit of furniture of the proper height.
Ponyard and Seth, between them, had been glad to explain what they’d done. It tied into what Annice was learning about stones, rather nicely, though they were doing it mostly in wood, and a bit in metal. Both wheelchairs had copper, more than would normally be used, for the magical conductivity. The woods had been chosen to suit Golshan and Griffin individually, both their magic and their physical needs. Annice had knelt on the ground between the two chairs, asking dozens of questions. She’d asked quite a few Griffin had never thought of, about the wear on the metal and the wood. But of course, she knew a fair bit about fishing vessels and mining machinery, as well as working with gemstones.
Now it was Saturday, and Annice was curled up on the sofa, reading, while Griffin had worked on some notes from a stack of books on his desk. Or rather, while he’d been trying to work on notes. He kept glancing over his shoulder to watch her. After he’d done it, oh, ten or twelve times, she looked up over her book. “You keep doing that? Is something the matter?”
“Something’s very good. Just.” Griffin swivelled the chair around slightly, wheeling slightly back and twisting to the right, so he could face her better. “How much I like you being there. Didn’t mean to interrupt, though.”
“You don’t seem to have been getting much done. Bedroom?” Annice set her book on the side table and stood up.
Griffin chuckled. “Oh, always, if you’re offering.” He let her go first, then followed, doing the various bits of getting ready while she ducked into the loo, then switching places with her. He came back out to find her stretched out on the bed, up on one elbow, watching him. “Yes?”
