“It’s not the sort of thing I can ask Uncle Cadmus. Or Lena.” Farran was sitting on the sofa in his rooms, feet up. In a little, they’d pile into a cab and go along to the Crystal Cave. Vega had arranged a table for them, after Farran had learned that Tony and his next oldest sister were going to be in London for a day or two. Talking about this with Tony was odd too, but Tony had been his best friend for a long time. And if not Tony, who? It was near enough written as a law that this was a thing a best friend was for.
“Well, that sounds mysterious.” Tony shrugged and glanced at Maddie. “If you want to read, Maddie, that’s fine.”
“Oh, I might have thoughts!” Maddie looked positively eager to hear the details, even though Farran had barely sketched anything out. She was working on a research project for a private employer, which involved looking at books in libraries. As well as, apparently, a tour of every bookseller she could find, or at least all the ones she could visit in two days. Tony had come along to carry the books, or so he kept joking.
“I told you I’m working on this private project. That’s why I have the tickets to the club.” Farran shrugged. “I will not get intoall of it, because the work’s not the part I want to talk about. And client privacy.”
“Client privacy.” The other two echoed it. They’d grown up with that near enough. Their eldest sister, Eleanor, had married young and been widowed not too long after, right around the time their parents had died. She’d raised her younger siblings to adulthood, with a string of sensible but clear rules.
Farran and Tony had found themselves somewhat at loose ends at Schola, not quite fitting in with other people. Not posh enough, and certainly not rich enough, for the snotty sorts. Not outright brilliant enough to make a name for themselves doing something else. They’d both been good students. Now they were building solid careers. But they, all three, had an odd view of the world sometimes, compared to the people they worked with and for.
Tony shrugged. “So, what can you tell us?”
“I want to be all moony and go on about how I just like being with her. I mentioned we spent the day at Greenwich, and it was just—” Farran considered. “I mean, you heard all about my first apprenticeship. How every time I turned around, it felt awful. Gummed up, not even just dammed.” It was sticky and messy and felt awful, even just in memory. “This was the opposite of that. Cool clear water in a stream. Or not cold, I mean, also warm, friendly.” He was babbling now, and he closed his mouth rather than keep going with it.
“So.” Tony considered. “What’s she like with you? Besides continuing to make time to see you. What’s the rest of her life like, other than the club?”
Farran considered that. Or rather, came back to considering it, because it wasn’t like he hadn’t been poring over their conversations in his head the last day or two. Or before that. “She talks fondly about her family. A large family, aunts and uncles, not just her parents. This is something she’s doing forthe family, but she doesn’t seem to grudge that. They’re giving her a fair amount of freedom in how it gets done, from some things she’s said. They’re not being grasping or anything.”
“How would you tell the difference?” Maddie tucked one of her feet under her other leg, obviously interested in this part.
“Oh, we see that with art often enough. Someone feels they need to sell a piece, and the family disapproves. Or they need to get an appraisal and there’s difficulty with that. ‘How could you dare question what Grandmama said about it’, you know?”
The tone he gave the quote made both Tony and Maddie laugh. “All right, so that’s like researchers. Or the people we do research for, anyway.” Maddie considered. “Do you have professional ethics about that sort of thing? I mean, there’s a certain sort of novel where one person doing work for the other ends up with the two of them in the library doing things that mess with the proper arrangement of books.”
“Can’t have that.” Now Farran was laughing. “Also, our locations have not been the most promising. The cave was private, but desperately needed a good cleaning, and we weren’t entirely certain about the ceiling staying put. Tuesday, we were out and walking around, and it is March. Well, before I got her back to her flat.” He said it and then realised how that sounded. “Not like that. She was...” He stopped. “I could maybe talk about this part. You might have some ideas.”
“Go on.” Tony leaned forward. “Now I’m curious.”
“You’re always curious.” Farran pointed out. It was part of what made them good friends, finding the world endlessly interesting. Tony had gone into a line of materia work, finding specific items on request from a small set of clients, and he was excellent at it. It also brought him into a wide range of sometimes unexpected situations. “All right. She had an odd experience, someone talking to her by chance on a bridge.”
“In London? I thought that sort of thing was forbidden here. Speaking to strangers without significant encouragement.”
Farran snorted. “You see the initial piece, yes. An American, mind you, and they tend to be more extroverted about talking to strangers, statistically.” Farran considered how to put the rest of it. “He was polite enough, at least overtly. But it struck her as odd. She didn’t know then that he was magical, but he turned up at the club a couple of days later. Tuesday, we were out walking through a few spots, and he turned up again on the Embankment. I don’t know if he spotted us, but she felt quite queer after, cold and… you know, that sort of cold.”
Tony winced. “Yes. Hence going to her rooms, and tea or whatever.” He chewed on his lip, which meant he was thinking hard. “Does she seem to be level-headed about other people?”
Farran raised an eyebrow. “Tony, do you really think I’d be interested in her if she were all fluttery nerves over every little thing? Actually, I’d been thinking about how skilled she was at evaluating a situation. It must come up a lot as a singer, both the people she’s working with and the audience. Getting a sense of the mood quickly, being able to collaborate. You’ll see what I mean.”
“No, I can’t see you being interested in someone who was flighty. Or...” Tony tilted his head. “How much have you talked about Thebes so far?”
“A bit. Fairly sure she’s got a sense of how I feel about the place. But it’s— I mean, I’m not living there full time as it is. And Uncle Cadmus is thrilled being there and keeping things running. I don’t know. There’s no point even having that conversation until there’s a reason to.”
“And yet, if you are actually on different ends of it, if she can’t abide Oxfordshire, for some reason, you’d want to know that before getting serious.” Tony held up a finger. “Don’t say you’d see each other without being serious. You don’t know howto do that. You’ve never done it yet, and I don’t think you’re going to change all of a sudden.”
“How could anyone not abide Oxfordshire, in particular?” Farran said, leaning into being mock-offended. It got Maddie grinning. “A month ago, you’d have said I wasn’t the sort of person to go to a nightclub either, but here we are.”
“There we’ll be, you mean.” Tony waved a hand, fingers inscribing a circle in the air. “Honestly, you should just find a time you can talk privately and see what she says. Maybe she’s not interested, then you’ll know. Maybe she is in the future, but not while you’re working on this project together. Or maybe she has some secret swain she’s seeing, I don’t know, at three in the morning, when she’s done at the club.”
“Don’t think it’s the last one.” Farran felt he needed to be loyal here, and that was something he’d have to think about more, how he immediately wanted to stand beside her. Not protect her, exactly. She didn’t need his protection. But be her company in the truth. Now he was coming up with entirely overwrought and rather Victorian metaphors. That wasn’t a help. “Anyway. You’re right that talking’s probably the sensible thing. Do you want to wash up and we can go along?”
“Sure.” Both Tony and Maddie tidied themselves. Farran went and found one of his better jackets and a pocket square to go with his tie, then made sure his hair was behaving. The cabbie dropped them off just a few feet from the club, and they piled out.
One of the men at the door nodded. “You expected, sir?”
“Miss Beaumont arranged a table for us. Michaels.” Farran tried to say it as if it were the sort of thing he did all the time, never mind that it wasn’t. And to do it in the way that didn’t sound odd if someone non-magical went by on the pavement.
He knew that a good two-thirds of this sort of social challenge was simply acting as if he had every right to be there.He’d done it in auction rooms and museums and art galleries more than often enough. Dressing right, talking right, and acting the way people expected, anyone could get away with a great deal.