By the time I got home, it was late.
Not unreasonably late — not the kind of late that required explanation in most households. But Chelsea ran her household on a schedule that she kept in her head with the precision of a military campaign, and not unreasonably late in the rest of the world translated to unconscionably, insultingly, inexplicably late in the house on Puski Lane.
I knew this before I opened the door.
I opened the door anyway, because there was nowhere else to go.
The entrance hall was lit — lamp on the side table burning full, which meant she was awake. The smell of the house hit me: candle wax, dried herbs from the kitchen, and the faint cedar undertone that came from the wood of the old furniture.
Home, for eighteen years, and it still hit me the same way every time.
I got approximately four steps in before her voice reached me from the direction of the sitting room.
"Jake Rennis Altoras."
The full name. All three of them. In that particular tone — not raised, not shouting, which would have been better, actually. The quiet voice was always worse. The quiet voice was the voice of a woman who had arranged her anger into complete grammatical sentences.
I appeared in the sitting room doorway.
Chelsea was standing near the fireplace, arms crossed, still fully dressed in a day gown of deep blue that made her look precisely as formidable as she intended.
"The mission concluded at sundown," she said. It was not a question. It was a statement presented in the manner of evidence.
"There was a debrief at the guild—"
"Sundown, Jake."
"It ran long—"
"Sundown."
I closed my mouth.
"I had dinner waiting," she said, with the precise calm of a woman who had been mentally rehearsing this for hours.
"I waited. She waited."
It was at the word she that I became aware there was someone else in the room.
She was seated in the wide chair near the window — the good chair, the one Chelsea brought out for guests — and she was watching me with the particular expression of someone who was finding the situation considerably more entertaining than they were letting on.
She was older than Chelsea, perhaps sixty, perhaps a few years beyond — it was hard to tell with the kind of woman who carried herself as though age were simply another thing that happened to other people. Her hair was fully silver, worn in a neat arrangement that managed to look both proper and effortless. Her face was — and I say this as an observation, not a deflection — striking, with the bone structure that explained entirely where Chelsea's looks had come from and the settled, observant eyes of someone who had spent decades watching people and learning to read them at a glance.
Chelsea's mother.
And she became my grandmother, in the way that this life arranged such things.
"Gran Rosalinda," I said, because she had told me years ago to call her that and because formality in this moment would have made things worse.
"I didn't know you were visiting."
"Clearly," said Gran Rosalinda, with a smile that was warm and sharp in equal measure and reminded me forcefully of someone turning a knife over in good light just to admire the edge. "You would have come home at a more reasonable hour."
"The mission—"
"Sit down, Jake," Chelsea said.
I sat.
The fire popped. Someone's clock ticked from the hallway. I sat in the chair across from Gran Rosalinda like a man who had made his peace with circumstances, because there was a particular wisdom in knowing when the verdict was already in and the proceedings were simply a formality.
"Escort mission," Chelsea said, settling herself on the end of the settee, still with her arms crossed, but fractionally — fractionally — less clenched around the voice. The edge of it, at least, had moved from prosecution toward interrogation.
"Eskar's contract?"
"He brought me in as the fifth blade. Class V minimum. It paid twelve silver."
Something moved through Chelsea's expression at the mention of Eskar — so quickly she would have denied it — but Gran Rosalinda caught it from the good chair, and the corner of the older woman's mouth did something small and knowing.
"Twelve silver is reasonable for a single day," Chelsea said, with studied casualness.
"Eskar chose you specifically?"
"He's reliable," I said. Not mentioning the lamb. I hadn't decided yet whether mentioning the lamb was going to help or hurt the overall situation, and until I had more data, I was withholding it.
"He's a good man," Gran Rosalinda said, placidly, from her chair.
"Solid and capable. I remember when he brought those border contracts in two seasons ago — six completed without incident. That's a man with sense."
Chelsea's expression did the thing again. More controlled this time, but Gran Rosalinda had positioned herself at exactly the right angle, in the good chair, to observe it, and I watched the older woman register it and file it with the satisfied efficiency of someone who had been collecting evidence for their own amusement.
"The mission went smoothly?" Chelsea redirected at me in the tone of someone who needed to redirect.
"Completely. The road was clear, delivery was made, and the retinue was intact. Halvur ran a tight formation."
I paused.
"There was a — the contract was for the Solhani house, Lady Ankerita."
"Ankerita Solhani." Chelsea's brow moved. "The third daughter. She's been negotiating some business with Cristfall Barony — something about road rights, I think. What is she like?"
I considered this with what I felt was appropriate casualness.
"Composed," I said.
"Polished. Seemed intelligent."