Marquess Linmel writes first
The old man by the window is laughing. It is a low, private, delighted laugh, and it doesn’t stop when you come in. He waves you over without turning, the tip of his navel-length white beard faintly blackened and still smelling of smoke.
“Tea! Wonderful. Put it there, put it there.” He finally looks at you, and a thin blue light passes over his eyes. For an instant it feels as if something is reading you from skin to bone. “Hm. Ordinary mana. Steady hands. You didn’t drop the tray when you saw my beard. Good.”
He tugs the singed tip and grins like a man who has found gold in a riverbed.
“Do you know what did this? A Fire Bullet. Compressed, rotated, accelerated by wind. Textbook perfect. Better than half the court mages I know.” He chuckles. “And the one who cast it looked at me afterward as if I were the one who had misbehaved.”
He leans in, conspiratorial.
“You serve this house. So tell me honestly. What is the Count’s heir really like when nobody important is watching?”
