Elara remained seated as Alistair walked in, the lamp still unlit. The kettle on the stove was making that faint ticking sound iron makes when it’s just come off the heat.

Two cups sat on the table between them.

That was the entire extent of her preparation for him.

Alistair sat across from her, slowly.

On the walk back to the door, he had thought he would say nothing when he sat down. He had thought he would let the silence in the room do its work for him.

However, Elara had set out the second cup, and Elara had not gone to bed, and Elara was looking at him across the table with that small, steady patience of someone who had already decided she would not be the one to ask first.

Seeing this, Alistair spoke first.

"I was sixteen," said Alistair, in a low voice.

Elara only watched him, not nodding.

"He came to the Thorne estate," continued Alistair. "Through the front gate, in the middle of the day, which surprised everyone in the household, because nobody was expecting him. He asked my father for me by name."

"And your father?" asked Elara.

"He gave me up that same afternoon, before sundown. He did not even ask for the formal terms."

Alistair was honestly tired, saying it.

Elara did not react. She did not look surprised, and she did not look sorry either, which was the closest thing she had to telling him to keep going.

"He took me to the Upholders," said Alistair, "but not the way you are picturing it. There was no march, no escort, and no carriage. There were the two of us on a road for nineteen days, and at the end of those nineteen days there was a building he had taught me, during the walk, was a building I should not call by any of its public names."

The Upholders of Law and Justice were the only faction in Solnar that openly held the right to bind a child of any clan, even Thorne, with nothing but a writ and a signature.

"What did he teach you on the road?" asked Elara.

"He taught me how to walk."

Alistair clicked his tongue at the memory, his jaw tightening slightly.

"Then how to stand. Then how to sit at a table and listen to a man speak without letting any of the faces my face wanted to make show on it. The Aspects came later. The Aspects came after the walking."

Elara let that sit between them for a long moment, before answering.

"And he taught you all of them," said Elara, eventually.

"He taught me every Aspect I know."

Elara picked up her cup, holding it in both hands, looking at him over the rim in the dark.

’She already knows the rest. She always does.’

"How long were you with him?" asked Elara.

"Four years."

"And when you left the Upholders, what did he do?"

"He did not stop me."

"He did not come with you either."

"No, he did not."

Elara set the cup down carefully. The sound of the porcelain against the wood was small and very clear in the room.

"And tonight," said Elara, "he has come back."

"He has come back."

The silence that followed was a different kind of silence than before. It was not the silence of a question waiting to be asked, but rather the silence of a question that had already been answered without anyone needing to say the answer out loud.

Eventually, Elara was the one to speak again.

"I am not going to ask you," said Elara, "what he was to you."

"That is generous of you."

"It is not generosity, however. I do not have to ask, because I can tell from your face."

Alistair said nothing to that.

However, Elara did not press him, and she did not tilt her head at him in the way some people do when they want to seem softer than they actually are. Elara had no need for any of that, and Alistair was grateful for it, even if he would not have used the word out loud.

Following that, Elara spoke again, slowly.

"There is a thing I want to say to you, before you decide anything."

"Then say it." 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"He was not the only person who taught you how to stand, Alistair. That is the thing."

Alistair took that statement carefully, the way a man takes a cup of something hot he is not sure he is steady enough to hold.

After a few moments, he picked up the tea and drank.

It was strong, and not very hot anymore. Elara had brewed it some time ago and had let it sit. Regardless, he drank it, because it had been set out for him by a person who did not set out cups for people without meaning it, and because his hands needed something to do.

"He was my mentor," said Alistair, eventually. "I owe a debt to him. I do not know yet whether the debt is the kind that is paid in person, or the kind that is paid by refusing to be in the same room as him ever again."

"And which kind is it?" asked Elara.

"I will know once I see him in front of me."

Elara nodded, the first time her head had moved in the entire conversation.

"That is honest," said Elara.

"It is not finished, however. He will not be the same man I knew. He recruited me at sixteen, and he is older now. He is the High Justicar now. I will not be able to read him from a list of titles on a page."

"No."

"I will have to read him in person, when his face is in front of mine."

"Yes."

Alistair set the cup back down, turning it a quarter-turn on the table without lifting it.

"Elara."

"Yes."

"I am going to Caelmar, and I am going to be in Verissan before they finish staging there."

"I know."

"None of this is the kind of plan you can walk into the room and improve, no matter how clever you are about it."

Elara did not answer him at once. The kettle on the stove ticked once more as the iron settled deeper into the cold.

"Regardless," said Elara, simply, "I am going to walk into the room and improve it anyway."

Alistair’s lips twitched, the smallest motion. Elara saw it move, and she chose not to call attention to it.

The lamp had been out the entire time. Alistair had not noticed when. He noticed now.

’This dark is going to be the last quiet thing for a while.’

He stood up, slowly, and reached for the cloak hanging by the door.

Just as his hand closed on the wool, a sound came from outside, faint and steady. The hoofbeats of a single horse, approaching the house at a slow, unhurried walk.

Alistair was unsettled.

Elara stood up as well. The two cups remained on the table, one finished and one barely touched.

"He has not waited until morning," said Alistair, in a low voice.

At that moment, the hoofbeats stopped, somewhere very close to the front door.

Then came the knock, three times, evenly spaced, in the cadence of a man who already knew the door was going to open for him.