The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 043: Seraphine's Eyes

The invitation arrived the next morning on cream paper, sealed in silver wax.

The House of Ward requests the pleasure of the company of Lord Edric Thornwick and his entrant at the Welcome of the Trials, in the Great Hall of the Citadel, at the seventh bell.

"Pleasure," said Edric, reading it aloud from his chair. He dropped the paper on the rug. "A pleasure is what they call a trap when the trap has a good cook."

"We could decline," said Ethan.

"We could not. The Welcome is the one night all the Houses sit under the same roof. If we don't come, it says we're afraid. If we do, it says nothing at all." He grinned, showing three missing teeth. "I enjoy saying nothing. It annoys people."

So at the seventh bell Ethan climbed the long stone stair to the Ward Citadel in a coat he'd never worn and a collar that scratched his neck. Edric leaned on his cane beside him, wheezing with each step. Bram followed three paces behind in a clean tunic, shield left at the inn, his battered face set in the fixed, wooden stare of a bodyguard who has been told not to speak. Rhea had stayed in the loft. She'd said, flatly, that there were limits.

The Great Hall was made of ice.

Not carved, not decorated. Built. The pillars were blue glass, thick as old oaks, rising to a vaulted ceiling hung with chandeliers of crystal that had never been lit and never needed to be. A pale radiance came off the walls. The floor was black stone, polished like a lake. Long tables of white wood ran the length of the room, laid with silver and pale flowers, and a hundred voices rose and fell in the cold, bright air. Everyone's breath hung in front of them in small clouds.

At the far end, on a dais, sat a high table. Ethan's eyes went to it and he looked away at once.

Not yet.

"Thornwick!" boomed a voice, big and rich and genial. "Edric Thornwick, you ancient scoundrel. They said you'd died!"

A broad man in dark green velvet pushed through the crowd with both arms out. He was fifty or so, soft in the middle, with a ruddy, cheerful face and a neatly trimmed beard going to grey. Rings glittered on every finger. He clasped Edric's hand in both of his and shook it as if he meant to wring it dry.

[Maric Dorn. Human. Level 29. True attitude: Genial. Hungry.]

Ethan's blood went cold. He kept his face blank.

"Maric," Edric said, without any warmth at all. "You're looking prosperous."

"The Lord provides. And who's this?" Dorn's pale eyes slid over to Ethan, friendly as a puppy. "A grandson? A nephew? You never said you had family."

"Sister's grandson. Noel. He's entered the Trials."

"Has he, now." Dorn's grin widened. "Rank?"

"F."

"Ah." A long, delighted pause. "How very unusual. I'm told it hasn't been done in forty years. Young man, I admire your pluck." He clapped Ethan on the shoulder with a heavy, warm hand. "We must have dinner. I insist. I collect interesting people."

Ethan's skin crawled.

"I'd be honored," he said, in a small, awkward voice.

"Excellent!" Dorn beamed. "Edric, bring him round. I'll send a card." And he vanished into the crowd, calling to someone else.

Edric watched him go. "That," he murmured, "is the most dangerous man in this room. And he's the one who smiles."

They were seated at a long table midway down the hall. Ethan counted twenty-two entrants at the nearby tables, a loose, glittering mix of nobles' sons and daughters, prodigies, and a few grim, scarred hunters who looked as though they'd been hired. A girl with two white braids sat nursing a goblet and glaring at everyone. A big young man sat with his arms folded. Somewhere in the middle, a lean figure in academy blue lounged against a pillar with a half-eaten roll in his hand, his dark eyebrows grown back in a little too thick.

Ethan's stomach dropped.

Dorian.

He'd known. Of course he'd known, the moment he read the posters. But hearing it and seeing it were different. Dorian Hale stood twenty paces away, in a white doublet, with the amber fire mark glowing at his wrist and a small cluster of admirers around him. He was laughing at something. His eyes drifted across the hall, past the Thornwick table, over Ethan's face.

And stopped.

For one long, silent moment the world was very still.

Dorian's smile didn't change. Not by a hair. He simply looked at Ethan with perfect, pleasant, slightly bored indifference, and then he turned his head and said something to the girl beside him.

I'll pretend I don't.

Ethan let out a breath. He took a sip of water and nearly choked on it, because he'd just seen the corner of Dorian's mouth twitch.

The first course was a clear soup, the second a river fish in pale sauce, and Ethan tasted none of it. He moved the food around and nodded at Edric's gossip and listened. A herald read the names of the Houses. Applause rippled through the hall. Lord Aldric Ward rose at the high table to speak.

He was tall and thin and silver-haired, with a long, severe face and eyes the color of frozen water. He wore a white coat and a single ring of pale blue stone.

[Aldric Ward. Human. Level 38. True attitude: Calculating. Cold. Hidden skill: Frostbound (Rare).]

"My lords and ladies," he said. His voice was soft, and it carried to every corner of the hall. "Welcome to Frostmere. For four centuries my House has hosted the Crown Trials. We take pride in the fairness of the lake, and in the character of those who walk onto it." He raised his goblet. "May the ice be kind to those who deserve it."

A murmur of laughter, polite and nervous.

"And may the unworthy find it thin."

More laughter, thinner. Ethan didn't move.

He's looking at me.

He didn't need to look up. He felt it, a pressure on the side of his face like a draft from an open door. Aldric Ward's gaze passed over the room in a slow arc, and where it touched the Thornwick table it slowed, just for a moment, and moved on.

Then Ethan looked up.

At Aldric's right hand, in a high-backed chair carved with snowflakes, sat a young woman in a gown of white and silver. Her dark hair was pinned up beneath a circlet of frost. A pale blue mark glittered at the base of her throat.

Seraphine.

She was already looking at him.

[Seraphine Ward. Human. Level 26. True attitude: Shaken. Guarded.]

Nothing in her face moved. She sat perfectly upright, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes steady and calm and far too wide. Twenty yards of lamplight lay between them, and he could see the pulse in her throat.

She knows.

Not a flicker. Not a breath out of place. She turned her head a quarter inch and spoke to her father in a low, even voice, and Aldric nodded and went on with his speech. But her hand, resting on the stem of her goblet, tightened.

Frost spread across the glass in a thin, bright spiral.

Ethan watched it climb. White, delicate, silent, crawling up the stem, over the bowl, across the pale wine inside. He watched until the whole goblet was a block of solid ice, glittering in her fingers.

She set it down very carefully.

At the high table, nobody had noticed.

"...and so I declare these Trials," Aldric said, "open."

Applause rolled through the hall like surf. Edric Thornwick clapped with the rest and leaned toward Ethan, his bright black eyes glittering.

"You've gone pale, boy," he whispered.

"It's cold."

"It is not that cold."

Across the hall, a sharp, clear crack rang out as the frozen goblet split in two.