SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 691: Aurevane's Debt

Alfons took the nearest empty sofa that kept him well clear of Roderic.That was not an accident.

In a Vaelion room, distance spoke, and a seat could be read as confidence or insult or weakness. Alfons had learned that nonsense before he learned half his spells. He lowered himself onto the pale cushion, crossed one ankle over the other, back straight.

'Wonderful. Not a private lecture, then. We are doing this with an audience.'

Lucard's mouth curved from where he sprawled across the opposite sofa. "Careful with that face, Alfons. Keep it up and someone might think you actually missed us."

Alfons did not bother to look at him. "I missed the furniture more."

"Charming as ever." Lucard's laugh was soft.

Elysette tapped one gloved finger against her knee. "If the two of you are finished demonstrating exactly why Father waited this long to include the younger heirs, perhaps we can begin."

Alfons's eyes cut to her. Younger heirs. Of course she put it that way. With him and Noelia both in the room, it read less like an age and more like a brand stamped across two foreheads.

Noelia stood beside Marielle, quiet enough to vanish if the room had ever granted anyone that mercy. She had not taken a seat. Her red eyes ran from Roderic to Adrien to Elysette, chasing a conversation that had started years before either of them was invited into it.

Roderic laid one hand over the arm of his chair. "Alfons."

Alfons turned at once. "Yes, Father."

"You wanted to know why you were called back."

"I do." He picked his words with care, because honesty in this room was a game that punished bad timing. "The Academy released me because the request came from you, and I was told nothing past 'family affairs.' If it is worth gathering everyone, I would rather know what I have walked into."

"Fair," Adrien said from the window.

Aurelia's pale gold eyes moved over him. "Late, but fair."

Alfons held his tongue.

Roderic did not look amused. He rarely did when amusement might have eased the room. "You are here because of Aurevane."

Alfons frowned. "Aurevane?"

He knew the name. Anyone with sense did. Aurevane was no walled little town; engineers, alchemists, and artificers came from across the world for its exhibitions and its sealed events, the ones that drew gifts in one hand and spies up the other sleeve. Which was the whole problem. Aurevane was not Vaelion territory.

"There was an event there not long ago," Roderic said. "Engineers and alchemists from several nations. People with names, laboratories, patents, old grudges, and pride enough to make them careless."

Celiane smiled faintly beside Aurelia. "A wonderful place for secrets to change owners."

"Or to be sold," Lucard said, "before the seller works out what they were worth."

Alfons glanced from face to face. "You bought information."

"Officials inside Aurevane were willing to talk," Elysette said. "At a price."

"A painful one," Lucard added. "I almost respect them for it."

Aurelia's gaze slid sideways. "Try not to sound charmed by corruption simply because it pays us."

"That is the only time it is easy to enjoy."

Roderic gave them nothing. "The reports we bought name several people. Your director, Selara, among them."

Alfons's fingers tightened on his knee before he caught them.

'Selara. Aurevane.'

The talk at the Academy came back to him. An excursion, ten or so students, something about a train attack. Trafalgar in the middle of it, of course, because the Morgain bastard now surfaced wherever trouble decided to become history. He gave the most, people said.

The thought soured in his mouth. 'If Father drags the ranking into this, I might choke on my own blood right here.'

Roderic's eyes brushed him for half a breath. He had noticed. He always did.

Elowen spoke from the fire, low and clear. "Selara was not the only concern. Records moved. Old ones."

"And a man who should have stayed out of sight," Adrien said, "surfaced again."

Alfons looked at his siblings with new attention. Adrien, unsurprised. Elysette, bored in that polished, superior way she wore as a weapon. Lucard, entertained. Elowen, watching the room as though she had already sorted every fact into a tidy row.

They knew. Every one of them.

"You all knew about this…" he said.

"Enough," Elysette answered.

"Enough." His voice came out thinner than he wanted. He looked to Noelia, whose eyes dropped not fast enough to hide it. "So Noelia and I were the only two left in the dark."

Noelia's head came up. "'She' has a name, brother." Quieter than the rest of them, but the bite was real. "And no. I knew nothing either."

Lucard chuckled. "Good. She has teeth after all."

Marielle's hand came to rest on Noelia's shoulder, not to quiet her, but to hold her steady before the room could swallow the nerve whole.

Aurelia did not soften. "You were not kept in the dark. You were kept uninvolved."

Alfons's eyes moved to her. "That is a prettier word for it. It means the same thing, dear mother."

The room cooled. Aurelia's gaze hardened until even Lucard shut his mouth.

"Do not call me that," she said. "You are not my child."

Alfons smiled, all teeth and no warmth. "Trust me. I know very well."

"Enough."

Roderic did not raise his voice. The word fell across the room and killed the exchange where it stood. Alfons dropped his eyes, not from regret but from arithmetic; he had pushed one beat too far, and survival in this house ran on rhythm.

Roderic let the quiet hold under his hand a moment before he went on. "The real reason you were called back is a man named Esmond."

Alfons looked up. "Who is he?"

Noelia's lips parted and closed again. She had nearly asked the same thing.

Roderic's gaze stayed on Alfons. "You will not know the name, my son. Esmond has been under this family for the better part of a century."

Alfons's brow drew down. "Under this family?"

Elysette leaned back, silver hair sliding against the sofa. "Held. Watched. Used when he was useful. A great deal happens in this house, dear little brother, because Father decided you did not need to know. That, apparently, has changed."

"Stop enjoying it," Adrien said.

"I am not enjoying it."

Lucard raised a finger. "You are enjoying it a little."

"And you," Elysette told him, "contribute nothing."

"I contribute to the atmosphere, it is very lovely thanks to that, right?"

Alfons let them run and kept his eyes on Roderic. "So the house held a man prisoner for a century. A slave? A captive? What did he do to earn it?"

Roderic answered as though the question carried no weight at all. "He experimented with our bloodline, long ago. Esmond is a renowned alchemist, one of the few names that outlive the century that made them."

Alfons stared. "He experimented on Vaelion blood. And you kept him breathing."

"'Prisoner' is an ugly word for something that can still be of use."

It was so perfectly Roderic that Alfons nearly laughed. Nearly.

Elowen turned the crystal cup in her fingers. "He was tied to Selara, before she became a director."

Alfons looked at her. "Tied how?"

Elysette's look made his teeth grind. "Use the head on your shoulders, Alfons. They call your director the legendary alchemist. Even legends learn the craft from someone."

It clicked. "Her master."

Lucard snapped his fingers. "Bingo."

"Why are we hearing this now?" Noelia asked, smaller this time.

No one mocked the question. That, more than anything, told Alfons how serious it was.

Roderic looked to her, and his voice lost none of its cold, though it found a thread of patience. "Because Esmond has become a problem. And every name in this family needs to understand what kind."

Alfons leaned in. "So why? If the older heirs already knew, if Aurelia and the rest already knew, I am not here for a history lesson. You want something. From me, or from us. Someone in this family has to act."

For the first time since he walked in, something in Roderic's face came close to approval.

"Good," he said. "You were listening."

Alfons did not feel praised.

"Careful, Alfons," Lucard murmured. "Keep that up and Father might start expecting it."

Alfons gave him a single look and let it lie.

"Aurevane pulled too many threads into the light," Roderic went on. "Selara. Esmond. The Morgain boy. Records that should have stayed buried. People outside these walls are holding pieces of a history that was never meant to leave our hands."

The Morgain boy. He did not say Trafalgar. Alfons felt the name in his throat regardless, bitter and worn smooth from use. Again. Always him. Pull any thread tight enough and Trafalgar du Morgain turned up somewhere near the knot.

Roderic saw it cross his face and chose to leave it alone, which was worse than mockery.

Alfons made himself ask the question underneath all the rest. "And Esmond. What is he to us now?"

Roderic rested both hands on the arms of his chair. "A man who spent a century beneath this family and has drifted past the lines we drew for him."

"Loose ends do not turn harmless just because they are old," Aurelia said.

"No." Roderic's voice did not change. "Old ones only remember better where the bodies went."

No one in the room laughed.

"Esmond is missing," he continued. "We do not know where, and we do not know how much of what he carries he has already handed off. With what he holds, about this family, our blood, the work done under our name, the wrong hands closing on him first would put House Vaelion in a very poor position."

His red eyes came back to Alfons.

"So we will see to this ourselves, before it makes us pay for ever leaving him alive."

Alfons's pulse knocked once, heavy and sour. He held his father's gaze. "And how, exactly, do you mean to do that, Father?"