A Place at the Table

By the time the meeting ended, the dockyard had become louder.

A foreman shouted at two men carrying a beam in the wrong direction while someone further down the quay argued that the missing grain had become significantly more difficult to inventory now that it was, in fact, missing.

I understood why Gideon liked this place.

The information about Cedric sat folded inside my cloak. I had checked it three times.

Official records were supposed to make things clearer. These had somehow managed to do the opposite.

Gideon fell into step beside me as we crossed the yard.

“Come back to the guild.”

“That sounds like an order.”

“It’s meant to.”

“I have somewhere else to be.”

“Where?”

I considered inventing a location, but Gideon was already looking at me like he knew exactly what I was about to say.

“Fine.”

Isabelle walked on my other side.

“That was easier than expected.”

“Nobody asked you.”

“I’m coming too.”

“Why?”

“Because things are moving faster now,” Gideon said.

“That still doesn’t explain why she needs to come.”

“I need to bring any updates to the guild.”

“You could have just asked for directions.”

Isabelle sighed, pressing her forehead into one hand as she shook her head.

“Alexander needs somebody who can move information between the docks and the guild without me disappearing every other day,” Gideon explained. “I have work at the guild, people expect me there, and if I suddenly spend my life near Rochefort property, someone will eventually ask why.”

I understood before he finished.

“She’ll be acting as liaison for a while.”

Isabelle smiled pleasantly.

I disliked it immediately.

“There’s more,” Gideon said.

“There usually is.”

“You’re not working alone for a while.”

I stopped walking.

“No.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

“You don’t get to assign me a babysitter.”

Isabelle looked offended.

“Babysitter?!”

“I assumed such a prestigious role required the necessary qualifications.”

“Then you should be grateful they found someone who’s overqualified.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so desperate—”

“Enough!” Gideon shouted, turning towards me.

“This isn’t punishment.”

“It certainly feels like a punishment.”

“You chased a man through the capital while injured, disappeared for a night, nearly went off a roof, and only survived because she caught you.”

“When you list things like that, you remove all the important context.”

I folded my arms and waited.

Leave it alone.

Revenge will kill you.

He had given me many versions of those words over the years.

But this time they didn’t come.

Instead, he adjusted the papers folded beneath his arm.

“You’re going to keep investigating him, aren’t you?”

It took me a moment to answer.

“Yes.”

“So you’ll do it with someone beside you.”

Huh?

“You’ve given up trying to stop me?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath.

“I’ve given up pretending I can make the choice for you.”

I looked at him, but he kept his eyes ahead.

“I can at least make sure you’re not alone.”

Isabelle nodded solemnly.

“Exactly.”

Gideon’s mouth twitched.

That was the end of it.

No speech about my heart. No attempt to make me promise I would become someone else. He simply walked beside me towards the guild.

When we arrived, it was busier than I remembered.

I had been gone less than two days. Evidently, that was all it took for everyone to become even more unbearable.

Mercenaries crowded the request board, argued over contracts and occupied every table that was still intact. Someone near the bar was singing badly enough that three separate people had offered him money to stop.

Nobody looked like they were waiting for me.

Then Tessa saw me.

She crossed the room fast enough that several people moved out of her way on instinct.

I braced myself, expecting a punch, but instead she stopped directly in front of me.

Her eyes moved over my face, my arm, and then my side before she finally decided to hit my shoulder.

“Ow. That hurt—”

“Good.”

Marek arrived behind her.

“That was for both of us.”

Tessa grabbed the edge of my sleeve and inspected the bandage.

“Has it been changed yet?”

“Yes.”

“Who did it?”

“...”

Tessa’s eyes narrowed.

“Leon.”

“I did.”

“Are you sure you did it properly?”

“It’s fabric, not surgery.”

Marek looked past me and noticed Isabelle. His expression brightened immediately in the way expressions usually did before my life suddenly became worse.

“And who’s this?”

“Trouble.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Isabelle held out a hand.

“Isabelle.”

“Tessa.”

Tessa shook it.

“Marek.”

Marek did the same.

“I take it you're the one responsible for the window?”

I turned towards him.

“How do you know about the window?”

“Gideon told us.”

Behind me, Gideon continued towards the stairs with the calm pace of a man trying to escape consequences.

“Gideon!”

Isabelle smiled, and Tessa looked delighted.

“I like her.”

“You’ve only just met her.”

Tessa turned towards Isabelle for the rest of the story. I decided remaining downstairs was tactically unsound and, luckily, found Gideon looking back at me from the stairs.

“Office.”

“Gladly.”

I followed him upstairs, and upon entering I noticed that the room looked exactly as it had when I left it.

Same desk, same chair, same small stain on the floor where blood had missed the cloth.

He sat behind the desk and gestured towards the chair opposite. I stood there for a few seconds before sitting.

“How are the ribs?”

“Fine.”

He gave me a look, and I caved.

“Better.”

“That was almost an honest answer.”

Gideon opened a ledger.

For the next several minutes, he talked to me about ordinary things.

Jobs I had missed. A client who had returned to complain that Marek had insulted his horse. Marek kept insisting that the horse had started it. Tessa taking a contract west next week unless the road conditions worsened.

Among several other mundane statements.

I kept waiting for the conversation to turn, but it didn’t.

Eventually, Gideon fell quiet.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“What?”

“No lecture.”

“Do you want one?”

“No.”

“Then this seems efficient.”

I stared at him as he returned to the ledger.

“You’re still angry.”

“Yes.”

“At me?”

“Partly.”

Gideon closed the ledger.

“I meant what I said at the docks. I don’t like what revenge has done to you. I’m probably never going to like it. But you know that.”

“Yes.”

“And repeating it until you stop speaking to me doesn’t help either of us.”

His fingers rested on the cover.

“So eat. Sleep. Change your bandages. Work with Isabelle. Find your answers.”

“And then?”

“Come back alive.”

The simplicity of it unsettled me.

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“No.”

Gideon looked at me properly.

“I say it like I care whether you do.”

I looked away first.

After a moment, he returned to practical matters.

“Isabelle will be here most days for the foreseeable future. She’ll carry information to Alexander and bring anything we need from the docks. If something involving Cedric comes through, both of you see it.”

“Both.”

“Yes.”

“I work better alone.”

“You work alone more often. That is not the same statement.”

That answer came far too quickly.

“You planned that.”

“I’ve had thirteen years.”

He opened the ledger again.

“Go downstairs.”

“Why? I was enjoying the peace.”

“That’s why I’m ending it.”

When I reached the door, Gideon spoke again.

“Leon.”

I looked back.

“I’m glad you came back.”

I almost corrected him.

You brought me back.

The excuse reached my mouth and stopped there.

I nodded instead and went downstairs to discover that the guild had been stolen.

Not by Imperial Knights.

But Isabelle.

She sat at the largest table with cards in one hand and a drink beside the other, surrounded not just by Marek and Tessa but by what appeared to be every mercenary with nothing better to do.

Someone had pulled extra chairs over. Another man leaned against the table. And Isabelle was halfway through a story.

“—and then he went straight through it.”

Marek slapped the table.

“The whole window?”

“The whole window.”

“That is not what happened.”

Several heads turned towards the stairs, including Isabelle. Her expression was entirely too innocent.

“There he is.”

Tessa pointed at me.

“Settle this. Was it really a closed window?”

I stopped on the final step.

I had been upstairs perhaps twenty minutes. In that time, Isabelle had apparently lived here for several years.

She was not sitting politely at the edge of the group.

She was in it.

Someone reached across her for the deck without an apology. She moved her elbow without breaking the story. Marek was already arguing with her over whether the kick counted as a fair fighting technique. Tessa had given her a cup. And a mercenary I barely spoke to was laughing hard enough to wipe tears from his eyes.

Isabelle looked completely normal among them.

Natural.

More natural, perhaps, than I did standing on the stairs.

“I feel several relevant details are being omitted.”

“So it’s true then?” Marek asked.

“That is not the point.”

The table erupted in laughter.

I crossed towards them while Isabelle smiled into her cards.

“I’m beginning to regret bringing you here.”

“You didn’t.”

Someone kicked an empty chair away from the table towards me.

“You playing, Carnage?”

The chair stopped against my boot.

Nobody waited for an answer; Marek was already dealing the next hand. Tessa was accusing Isabelle of hiding cards, and Isabelle denied it with the confidence of someone who was almost certainly guilty.

For a moment, I simply stood there.

This was supposed to be temporary. Isabelle was here because of the revolution, because of Cedric. When it ended, she would leave. When I found what I needed, I could leave too.

Nothing had changed.

Then Isabelle laughed at something Marek said. Not the sharp little laugh she usually gave when I said something stupid.

A real one.

I realised I had never heard it before.

Tessa shoved the chair closer with her foot.

“Sit down, Leon.”

I should have refused, but I sat instead.

The game continued as though that had always been the obvious outcome.

Isabelle dealt me two cards and immediately returned to arguing with Marek over the last hand.

No comment on the fact that I had actually sat down. She simply dealt me in as though I had always been there.

Hours later, when the crowd had thinned, and the worst singer had finally been convinced to sleep, I found Isabelle near the front door fastening her cloak.

She looked back towards the tables.

“You really left this?”

I knew what she meant.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For their sake.”

“You make it sound like something you decided for them.”

My jaw tightened.

“You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it.”

“I just did.”

“No.”

She looked at the half-empty room, then back at me.

“For their sake?”

I said nothing.

“Why did you really leave?” she asked softly.

I had answers.

Danger. Revenge. Protection.

Every one of them had sounded convincing yesterday.

Standing there now, with Marek asleep over a table and Tessa arguing quietly with someone behind the bar, they felt thinner.

I had spent years calling it protection.

So why couldn’t I answer her now?

I opened my mouth.