SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 782: Loyal to You

Trafalgar didn't answer the question. He looked at Esmond a moment longer, and turned his head a fraction toward Caelum, and that was answer enough.

Esmond understood at once. What little strength the water had put back into him went into one last, useless surge against the straps, his head twisting away, a raw sound climbing his throat.

"No. No, wait, I told you what you wanted, I answered, I..."

Caelum was already there. He caught the man's jaw with the same practiced ease as before, tipped his head back, and poured a fresh measure of pale liquid past his lips.

Esmond fought it the whole way, and it made no difference at all. The straps held him, the drug did the rest, and within a few breaths the fight drained out of his body by degrees until he lay slack against the bed once more, gone as deep as he'd been for the last two years.

Whatever he'd hoped waking might buy him, it had bought him a handful of minutes and a fresh pour of the same dark. He would go under again with no way of knowing if he'd ever come back up, and that, Trafalgar thought, was an answer of its own to the question the man had asked.

The room went quiet.

Trafalgar looked down at the sleeping man for a moment, the pieces from the mine laid out beside him, and let the whole of it come together in his head.

"Well." He straightened. "That confirms what we thought. Vaelion's got a hand in this, right down to the roots of it. No more guessing." He was quiet a beat. "And Valttair said to wait. As much as it grinds on me, that's the smart play. We don't go off doing anything clever on our own."

"I'm of the same mind, young master." Caelum recapped the vial and slid it away inside his coat. "A Council to lay the blame on Vaelion isn't on the table, not until the Myrrhvale business sorts itself out. Until it does, all we can do is wait, and keep watching how the whole thing unfolds." He folded his hands. "The patriarch told me to hold, and it's the wiser course. There's always the chance someone loses their patience before then and does something foolish, a Vaelion or otherwise, someone who'd like nothing better than to watch the Morgains bleed. Whichever it turns out to be, the answer stays the same. We wait, and we let them make the mistake."

Trafalgar didn't love it. He'd have preferred to move, to reach for the throat of the thing himself, the way he preferred most things done. But Valttair was the strongest ally he had in any of this, cold and calculating and a long way from being on his side in the ways that counted, and even so the strongest hand at the table by a wide margin. So he'd do as the man said.

It sat poorly with him, walking off into training now of all times, with the board only beginning to move. But the board would keep. Valttair would hold it steady. And Trafalgar had reasons of his own for needing to be a great deal stronger than he was before any of this came to a head.

It helped that the old man was no fool, and that for once their aims ran close to the same line. Two people with the same enemy will always find a use for each other, whatever they make of one another underneath it. Trafalgar had no illusions about being anything more to Valttair than a well-placed piece. He simply meant to be a piece that used the board right back.

They left the room, the heavy door drawing shut behind them under its own weight, sealing the sleeping man and his sins back into the dark. They started up the long stair, the lamp throwing their shadows tall against the cold stone.

A few steps up, Trafalgar stopped.

"Caelum." He didn't turn. "Have you told Valttair about him? About Esmond."

"No, young master." Not a shred of hesitation in it. "You told me not to, so I didn't. You know where my loyalty sits. Above anyone else, always. The patriarch included."

"I know." Trafalgar let a breath out. "It'd surprise me if you had, honestly. Which leaves me the harder question." He glanced back down the stair, toward the door. "How did he know? If it wasn't you, how did the old man work out I had him at all?"

"I couldn't tell you for certain." Caelum considered it. "But he could have bought it. Aurevane spilled a great deal before it went quiet, names and records both, and there are people who'll sell what they hear to anyone with the money for it. It would be very like him to have paid for a piece of that."

"It would." Trafalgar turned it over, and found he couldn't argue. Valttair knowing things he had no business knowing was less a mystery than a fact of life by now. "Bought it out of Aurevane. That fits him well enough."

He started up again.

"I'll be out of reach for a while, Caelum. Training. However long it ends up taking." He climbed a few steps without speaking. "If something comes up and you need me, you know how to reach me. Use the Shadowlink."

"Understood, young master. And the same the other way, should you have need of me."

They came up toward the top of the stair, where the air began to warm and the dark gave way to lamplight. Trafalgar paused at the last of it, and said the thing he almost never said to anyone.

"Try not to run yourself into the ground while I'm gone." He looked back at the man who had spent two years of his own strength keeping a prisoner breathing in the dark. "What you do isn't easy. Don't pretend to me that it is."

For a moment Caelum said nothing. Something moved behind that even face of his, small and caught off guard and quietly pleased, the look of a man who is not often thanked for the parts of his work that no one ever sees.

"...Understood, young master."

Trafalgar nodded once, and left him there, and climbed the last of the way up toward the light and the house and everything still waiting to be dealt with before he handed himself over to Dravok and whatever the man had waiting on the other side.