Old As The Hills by Celia Lake

Author:Celia Lake [Lake, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 24

May 28th at Dover Castle

“Lord Thanet?” Gabe cleared his throat cautiously. The older man was standing on the top of the Great Tower, looking out over the water, across to Calais. Not that one could actually see either Calais or, more relevantly, Dunkirk at the moment. “Your man told me you were up here. Can I be of help?” He leaned slightly on his cane. His leg was complaining about the number of stairs up to this point.

Lord Vitruvius Thanet was of the generation between Gabe and his parents, but there were ways in which he hearkened to Gabe’s grandmother’s era in attitude. He’d left Isobel down with the car. No need to subject her to this particular conversation. It was delicate enough as it was; he didn’t need to juggle the man’s attitudes toward Isobel herself as well.

Papa and Lord Thanet were civil enough when it came to issues that touched them both. Or, more to the point, issues that touched the land magic. Kent was Kent. It did not care so much where the boundaries of who was responsible for which bit of the land’s magic might be. But it was a touchy sort of civility, with something sharp boiling just under the surface. In older times, they’d probably have had a proper duel and sorted it out and been able to leave it. But Papa was a duellist, and Lord Thanet wasn’t and had the sense to know it, and so it was like a dog that worried at a bone long past any usefulness.

Gabe had an even more tenuous place. Lord and Lady Thanet were civil to Gabe too, but it was a bare and scant sort of civility. No snub direction, but certainly no invitation to even the most general sort of casual conversation, even when they were next in line to each other at some procession or another.

It wasn’t even about Rathna, which Gabe would have hated, but which would have made some sense. Or not sense, but which was common enough that Gabe had a reliable method for how to handle it. They’d been like that since Gabe had apprenticed. Before, a bit. And they weren’t even the ones he’d doused with wine when he flipped a table over, entirely accidentally, when he was eleven.

He’d apologised for that, profusely, not that it had helped. Mama had told Gabe it wasn’t a thing he could mend, he’d just have to work around it. He had, up until this point. Only now he couldn’t leave the man alone. Some things mattered more than old aggravations.

Lord Thanet was also - as he’d learned from talking to Alexander and Cyrus and Mabyn - one of the ones who was being difficult about joining up when it came to shared protections. Kent was at the forefront of the worry there, along with Hampshire and the rest of the lands along the south coast.

Hampshire was fine, Geoffrey was sensible. He’d seen the last War up close, and he knew what they might be facing.

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