Drazeil stayed beneath the water for a long time.
He always did. There was something about complete submersion that the rest of existence didn't offer, a particular kind of silence, pressure on all sides, the world reduced to the sound of his own stillness. He stayed until the water had gone from hot to lukewarm, then emerged, washed properly, and stepped out.
Ulric had already laid out his garments. Drazeil dressed without hurry, the way he did most things, deliberately, without wasting motion.
Then he went to find Thaddeus.
He rarely used his speed for small things. He preferred to walk. To move through his own mansion at a pace that let him see it, the dark stone corridors, the torchlight throwing long shadows across walls that had stood for centuries, the particular quality of the quiet that Vethkara had and nowhere else did. He had built this place to be exactly what it was. He saw no reason not to appreciate it.
He found Thaddeus in the parlour with one leg crossed over the table and a grape suspended between two fingers, examining it with the focused attention of someone who had nothing more pressing to do.
"You know," Thaddeus said, without looking up, "I didn't know you had grapes this good. I would have been coming every week to steal them." He popped it into his mouth. "A Prince of Thaloria and my table cannot compare to this. Deeply humbling."
Thaddeus was, technically, a Prince, the only son of a concubine who was herself the cousin of the King. The King of Thaloria had never been a man of restraint when it came to women. He kept wives, concubines, and various arrangements that defied easy categorisation, and had produced more children than most people could name. Thaddeus was one of them. Not a Crown Prince. Not in the line of succession in any meaningful way. But a Prince nonetheless, with all the title and very little of the obligation.
Which suited him perfectly.
"It's the bodies," Drazeil said, taking a seat. "Used as fertiliser for the trees. That's why the grapes taste the way they do."
Thaddeus smiled broadly, cheeks full.
"Swallow before you speak," Drazeil said.
"Yes, Your Grace," Thaddeus said, muffled by grapes.
"That was not a title. That was a command."
Thaddeus swallowed. Then, in a tone that shifted so cleanly from theatrical to serious that it was almost jarring, he said:
"I have everything on Callinis. Came a few days ago to tell you but Ulric stopped me at the door. Said if I went in I might not come back out." He tilted his head. "I like being alive, so I waited. Sent the letter to Callinis with the Vethkara seal instead, let him know you'd be at the auction tomorrow." He paused. "You're welcome."
Drazeil looked at him.
"At least he knows when to be serious," he thought.
"Tell me what you found," Drazeil said. "All of it. I want detail, not summary."
"And you know Little Thaddeus never disappoints," Thaddeus said, settling back in his chair.
He talked for a long time.
Drazeil listened without interrupting.
When Thaddeus finished, Drazeil sat with everything he'd been told and turned it over carefully in the way he processed things, methodically, without rushing toward a conclusion before it was fully formed.
Callinis was not stupid.
That was the frustrating thing about him. If he were simply stupid, someone would have ended him years ago and the problem would have resolved itself. But Callinis was clever in the specific way that small, ambitious men were clever: carefully, quietly, always just below the threshold of consequences.
He had built his establishment over twelve years. Started with nothing, a borrowed cellar, three guards, a handful of humans acquired through means nobody asked about. Now he ran the largest blood and slave trade in Thaloria, and he had been quietly expanding into the eastern quarter, building connections into noble houses willing to pay for discretion.
Successful, by most measures.
There was just one problem.
His new establishment which he was quietly expanding sat within the outer boundary of Vethkara.
The boundary wasn't marked. Drazeil had never bothered with markers, for centuries, nobody had needed them. Everyone in Thaloria simply knew. The way you knew not to walk into a fire. The way you knew not to look directly at certain things in the dark.
Callinis had known too.
He had built there anyway, reasoning, correctly, for many years, that Drazeil had larger concerns than one establishment operating quietly in a forgotten corner. That as long as nobody made noise, nobody would come looking.
For twelve years, that reasoning had held.
Then three months ago, Callinis had made a mistake.
It had started as a rumour. A small one, passed between buyers over expensive wine at one of his private auctions. Someone had asked, casually, whether the eastern quarter was safe for investment given its proximity to Vethkara. And Callinis, wanting the deal, wanting the coin, wanting to seem like a man with knowledge worth having, had said something he should not have said.
He had said that Vethkara's reach was not what it once was.
He had said the Duke had been quiet for too long. That quiet in a man like Drazeil meant one of two things: he was planning something, or he was losing his grip. And in Callinis's professional opinion, dressed up as intelligence, it was the latter.
The words had travelled the way words always travelled in Thaloria.
Fast.
Three months later, the eastern quarter had changed. Minor lords testing the boundary. Merchants reconsidering routes they had avoided for decades. Three separate establishments had opened within the outer boundary in two months alone, each one citing Callinis's operation as proof that the territory was open.
Drazeil had watched it happen with the particular patience of someone who was not patient at all but had learned, over centuries, that the right moment to act was never the first moment and rarely the second.
The third month was the right moment.
He would go himself. Because some messages needed to be delivered in person. Because some men needed to look at the thing that was going to end them before it ended them, so the lesson, if not for them, then for everyone watching, landed properly.
He would walk into Callinis's establishment at the moment of maximum audience. He would make it clear that the eastern quarter was not open. That Vethkara's reach was exactly what it had always been. That the rumour Callinis had started would end with Callinis, and anyone who had made plans based on that rumour had approximately as long as Drazeil's patience held to reverse them.
Which was not long.
He would deliver his message and then he would leave.
That was the plan. That was the only reason he was going. He had no interest in auctions or in anything being auctioned. He was going to walk in, make his point, and walk out.
"I'm going to the auction tomorrow," Drazeil said.
Thaddeus nodded. "Good. I was starting to think you'd changed your mind and decided to let them play freely on your land." He reached for another grape. "Pity I can't come with you. Would stain the royal image."
"I don't need you with me."
"Of course you don't." Thaddeus stood, brushing his hands together. "Well. I'll take my leave before anyone notices a Prince has gone missing and came to Vethkara of all places." He turned toward the door. "Ulric, pack me some grapes. There's no telling when I'll be back."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Thaddeus stopped.
"Haven't I told you, when I'm here, no titles. Just my name. Say it. Say it now."
Ulric straightened. "I'm sorry, Your —" He caught himself. "I'm sorry. Thaddeus. I will do my best to remember."
"Better," Thaddeus said, satisfied.
Ulric bowed and went to prepare the grapes. The expression on his face, carefully controlled, was the closest he ever came to laughing.
He knew perfectly well that there was a high probability the Prince would be back before evening. He never stayed away from Vethkara for long, whatever he said about the royal image.
Thaddeus returned with the packed grapes, accepted them with genuine warmth, and then turned to Drazeil with the expression of someone who had just remembered something.
"Oh. I almost forgot." He gestured to the attendant standing to the side. "Bring it."
The attendant bowed and retrieved something from near the door, a garment, wrapped and folded.
"A gift," Thaddeus said, before Drazeil could speak. "I had some things customised for my sisters recently and thought of you. Before you say anything: yes, I know you have clothes. This is called giving a gift, Zeil. Just appreciate it."
He teleported before Drazeil could respond.
Drazeil looked at the garment for a moment.
"Your Grace," Ulric said. "Shall I take it to your room? Would you like to see it first?"
"Take it to my room," Drazeil said. "I'll wear it tomorrow."
Ulric bowed and went.
Drazeil turned back to the window.
He didn't know why he kept looking at it. Only that something in him, that same something that had been restless for two weeks, kept pulling his attention outward. Like it was listening for something it hadn't heard yet.
He stared at the dark outline of Vethkara's grounds and said nothing.
Whatever was coming, it would arrive when it arrived.
"Wonder what's about to Face my Wrath"