It meant that he turned up on Tuesday, unsure what to expect. Thessaly met him at the gate. Then she stopped, one hand on it. “I was wondering, would you like it if I attuned you to the wards?”
Vitus halted, halfway through the gate. “I thought you’d been advised to wait?”
“It’s not that I can’t add people. It’s that while things are settling, it’s tricky. And also, if I’m not adding people, Mother and Father can’t fuss about them not being added. I am not suggesting it to them. I am suggesting it to you.”
Vitus wanted to dance, to swing her around in his arms, to take her to bed. He managed to swallow most of that down. “It means a lot that you trust me like that. I’d like it very much.”
“Well, then. Hand here, if you don’t mind, and I’ll manage the charm.” The attunement took a minute or so, and caused a rather intense buzzing feeling through his hand. “I’ll have to do the house, too. They’re different. Come on!”
Certainly, this wasn’t the Thessaly anyone was gossiping about. She was bright-eyed, her hair was simply put up, but smooth and glossy. And she certainly wasn’t wearing black. This was a sea-green overdress over a pale yellow undergown, like the shade of a white wine or mead. Now, she held out her hand again, after she closed the gate behind them, and tugged him along to the house, repeating the process there.
“Now you can come visit whenever you want.” She tugged him upstairs again, and Vitus followed. Of course he followed.
“Did something make you decide this all of a sudden?” He wasn’t at all sure how to ask, even once she’d nudged him to sit down on the sofa and settled herself right next to him. Distractingly close to him, but that— well, at the moment, distractingly close probably did include the far side of the room, at the very least.
“It feels right.” Thessaly shrugged. “How have you been? And I’m sorry about Saturday. And Sunday. I learned some interesting things, though? And I have the charmed pieces to give back to you. Don’t let me forget.”
“What sort of things?” Vitus considered, then shifted his arm to rest along the top of the sofa, encouraging her closer. She immediately shifted to lean against him, which was even more disruptive to anything like a coherent train of thought.
“Sigbert had a very earnest conversation with me about how he’s not like his brother. He’d treat me much better.” Thessaly wrinkled up her nose. “I think he was telling the truth, honestly. But I was just as honest that his parents are actually rather a lot of the challenge there. Besides the part I wasn’t telling him about preferring you.”
“I am glad to hear you still do.” It came out awkwardly, and a little hollow, and Vitus didn’t like that at all. “I mean.”
“There’s something wrong there. I don’t know what sort of wrong it is, but someone needs to find out. It’s not as if MagistraHereswith can just stroll in and look around. I could. I mean, if we decided it was worth doing.” Thessaly paused. “And it’s not like we can just ask Laudine and Dagobert, though I suspect they know. Some of it, at least, maybe all of it? And even if Magistra Landry knew, I’m sure she wouldn’t tell us.”
“We?” Vitus swallowed harder at that. “Talk, um. More about that? Please?” Though she was, he thought, right on both counts about people who might know more and who wouldn’t say.
She twisted so she could see him, and that meant he could see her face. “I’d much rather make a future with you than with Sigbert. I don’t know what that looks like, and my parents— well, that was Sunday. Mother, directly, and Father indirectly. Again.” She grimaced. “You’d think when the previous tactics didn’t work, they’d at least try something new.”
“Your parents are, erm, not up to your standards in a duel?” Vitus offered it a little uncertainly. But Thessaly lit up, smiling.
“Just like that.” She rearranged herself again, leaning against him. “There’s a short list of people they’d like me to consider. I am firmly refusing to consider anyone, beyond the conversations I’m already having with Sigbert, until at least January. Past the holiday chaos and obligations, not that I’m planning on going to any of that this year.”
“There was some gossip about you hiding away.” Vitus considered, then added. “You don’t look like the gossip suggested. You’re not haunting the place, or tearing your hair out, tear-stained, or whatever.”
She turned back. “Really? That’s what people are saying?”
“Some of them. It wasn’t the kind of thing where my pointing out the problems in their logic was going to help. Wishton’s.”
“Oh, well. I suppose Bourne’s would be worse, even. Sigbert and Childeric were there quite a lot. Sigbert still is, probably.” She waved a hand. “He doesn’t have the luxury of being in deepmourning, even if he wanted to be. Mind, I’m not sure he wants to be, exactly. More like he misses the brother he wishes he had, not the one he actually did.”
Vitus shivered at that. “I keep thinking about Lucas, honestly. What it would be like if we were like that? And I hate the idea.”
“The way you talk about him, it’s always so fond. Sometimes confused, he likes such different things from you? Goes about things differently, too?” The last one was definitely a question.
“He does. I suppose that’s partly the different houses. A lot of the Boar House magics, I gather, are about focus and aim. In a military context, particularly, but it applies to other things too.”
“And Salmon is solving problems?” Thessaly offered it a little uncertainly.
“That. And sometimes they’re the same problems Lucas is tackling, and sometimes not. I do think it’s an advantage to the talisman work, especially if you’re anchoring it in the personal rather than the theoretical.” Vitus hadn’t really ever talked with anyone about that.
“What does Magistra Hall do?” Thessaly asked. “Or what house is she, actually?”
“Horse.” Vitus said, amused. “Which, now you ask, explains some things about her preferred approach. And why certain people won’t come to her. She is not terribly fond of individual ambition in the less pleasant senses.”
“And you?” Thessaly’s voice quivered for a second.
“I am in favour of ambition, but clear-sighted ambition. And ideally with some larger goal in mind. I want to make excellent talismans so that people can do the best they can, at what they care about. I wouldn’t take a commission for the more manipulative ones. That’s both because I disapprove, and that would show in the work, and also because that is not my bestskill set. You, Thessaly, are of Fox House, but your ambitions seem to me to be mostly about learning more, and figuring out what might be useful.” He tilted his head. “Did you ever consider challenging for the Council, perhaps in the future?”
