Chapter 96: House Rules
A table appeared, as tables do when servants smell a spectacle. So did a forest of glasses and the sort of bottle that would strip varnish.
The ring of observers widened into an eager crescent.
"House rules," Celeste said, sloshing both glasses full to the rim with horrifying generosity. "We drink until one of us forgets their name. If you pass out, you lose. If you cry, you lose. If you apologize to your mother, we’ll call that a neutral event and continue."
Bartram’s lips thinned. "I hardly think..."
"First round," Celeste chirped, and upended hers like a saint drinking sunlight.
He followed, because pride is a terrible bartender.
The liquor hit them both like a hammer wrapped in velvet. Celeste’s eyes shone. Bartram’s did, too, but mostly with tears he pretended were from the breeze.
"Second," Celeste said.
"Second," Bartram echoed, because the audience had expectations and somewhere deep in his soul, an eight-year-old boy could still hear an uncle calling him a coward.
By the fourth, Bartram’s cheeks remembered the existence of gravity and attempted escape.
By the sixth, he had begun telling an elaborate story about a boar he once hunted that, under cross-examination, turned out to be a piglet that fell asleep in a cellar.
Celeste listened with rapt attention and asked devastating follow-ups like a polite executioner.
"Did the piglet snore?" she asked after the seventh. "Did you fear for your life?"
"I.... sniff.... of course not.... hic."
"Brave," Celeste breathed. "Another?"
Jack stood to the side, hands clasped loosely, a host at his ease. He caught Octavia’s eye, she was smiling ear ti ear at the spectacle unfolding before him.
Annabelle had drifted to the fringe of the ring, absentmindedly sketching Bartram’s slow collapse with the reverence of an artist chronicling an eclipse.
"Third... no, eighth!" Celeste corrected cheerfully. "Numbers are a colonial construct! They don’t exist!!!"
Bartram laughed too loudly, which is to say like a man whose laughter had come unmoored from dignity. He raised the glass, tilted, swallowed, blinked.
Thunk!
And then his head thunked to the table with the soft finality of a book closing.
Silence. Then a thundering cheer rolled through the courtyard like theater applause at a very satisfying beheading.
Celeste lifted Bartram’s limp hand and let it drop. "Name?"
"Mnff," said Bartram.
"Incorrect," Celeste declared. "Winner: the people."
Jack stepped forward, swept the heavy purse into his hand, weighed it thoughtfully. He turned, flipped it to Celeste in a clean arc. She caught it one-handed like a promise.
"For your trouble," he said.
"For civic development," she corrected with a wink, tucking the purse into an improbable pocket. "I believe in investing in local culture."
"Do not gamble that entire purse before lunch," Octavia said.
Celeste’s eyes widened with the innocence of a cat sitting beside a broken vase. "Of course not."
She kissed Jack’s cheek. The swift, familial kind that says we’re a problem, and we know it. Celeste grabbed another bottle of wine before she made her exit. She vanished into the milling guests like a fox whose only predators are boredom and sobriety.
A ripple of laughter, then the conversion began.
Men who had arrived to test Sorne’s heir now recalculating their decision.
Women hiding smiles behind fans because humor is currency and Jack had just printed a great deal of it.
Even the skeptical marquis by the fountain conceded a fraction of a nod, which in marquis-speak is essentially an oath of fealty.
Bartram stirred. Lifted his head. Blinked like a man peering through history at his own poor choices. "I... protest."
"You did very well," Jack said kindly, clapping him on the shoulder. "It’s not easy to be part of civic culture."
Bartram squinted. "You... are provincial."
"Undoubtedly," Jack agreed, smiling. "And yet..." He gestured to everything around him. "It seems to work."
Bartram’s mouth opened, then closed. He regarded his empty glass with suspicion, as if it had conspired with gravity to humiliate him.
"Refreshments are inside," Jack added. "Water, bread, citrus. Tell them to send the bill to ’Education.’"
Bartram tottered away with two retainers and a dignity ambulance.
A man in scholar’s grey leaned toward his colleague and murmured, too quietly for most ears but not too faintly for Corvin’s. The raven’s head tilted; Jack felt the soft brush of curiosity along their bond.
’Mark him,’ Jack thought.
Corvin’s attention pinned the scholar like a map pin.
"Successful spectacle," Octavia murmured. "Next stunt?"
"I’d prefer diplomacy," Jack said. "Possibly cake."
"Hmm." Octavia flicked a page. "House Veyra seeks bathhouse licensing in two coastal ports. The Merchant Consortium wants a ten-year exclusivity on your shampoo in Cordelia."
"No exclusivity," Jack said again. "We don’t bottleneck our own prosperity."
"and the envoy from Sanctorium keeps asking whether Father Caelen blessed the water with rites of his patron."
"Tell them Caelen blessed it with clean pipes and a filter bed," Jack said. "If they require incense, we can sell them ash. Five silver a handful."
Octavia’s mouth almost smiled. "You’re enjoying yourself."
"Only because I haven’t signed anything."
He took the next cluster of introductions.
Smiles, bows, and names.
He made a point of asking each visitor about their journey, their trade conditions, and the state of roads in their own territories.
People will tell you who they are if you ask about what they love. They’ll tell you what they want if you ask about what hurts.
"Your bathhouse," said a woman in cobalt silk, voice like polished steel. "Is it truly... open to all?"
"It is," Jack said. "There are hours reserved for privacy by rank, but the water flows for everyone."
"And the nobles accept this?"
"They bathe faster," Jack said pleasantly. "They have more plans to make."
The woman’s mouth quirked. "Pragmatic heresy."
"I prefer effective heresy."
A youth in an embroidered doublet piped up from the back, cheeks pink, courage trembling in his throat.
"My lord, is it true that you once killed a dragon?"
Jack’s smile thinned for a heartbeat. "It is true that a dragon died while I was present."
"Did you..."
"I was not alone," Jack said, and the boy wisely heard the end of that conversation.
A page pressed in at his elbow, bowing low. "My lord, the kitchens ask about the... ah.... unexpected egg deliveries."
"Send them to the public hall," Jack said without missing a beat. "First come, first served. Label it a civic gift. And don’t ask questions."
"Yes, my lord."
’You’re enjoying this,’ Jack told the System as he moved to greet another caravan just rolling through the gate.
[Positive feedback loop detected. Title synergy with agricultural reforms is improving public sentiment.]
’And my poultry Q-rating.’
[Maxed.]
He felt someone’s stare like a pinprick between the shoulder blades. The prickle of intent, not curiosity.
He pivoted, letting the motion be a courteous sweep to introduce a merchant to a noble, and in the same spin found the source.
A lean man in servant’s grey near the far wall, gaze cataloging the courtyard’s vantage points, the line of sight to the estate’s study windows, the junctions where pipes entered stone. He wasn’t admiring, he was counting.
Jack looked at him deeper this time.
Annabelle had slipped nearer, a small, quiet satellite. "Your hands are shaking," she murmured.
He looked down. His fingers were steady. "I don’t shake."
"You do inside," she said, as if reporting the weather. "You’re holding too many conversations at once."
"Just two," Jack said lightly. "Theirs and yours."
"And the other one," she added, tapping gently at her own temple in the vague place where system messages tend to live.
He glanced at her. She wasn’t wrong. He had learned to keep thirty pieces of himself spinning.
One for each guest, one for the city, one for the soft voice that told him where the cliffs were. He wondered what it cost. He wondered if it mattered.
"You did well," Annabelle said after a breath. "With the rude man. You chose something funny instead of something cruel." She paused. "Mother would be proud."
He swallowed once against a throat that had abruptly decided it was made of old rope. "I’ll settle for father not sighing."
"Mm." Annabelle considered this, then brightened. "Would you like a sketch of Celeste beating that man? To hang in the hall?"
"Yes," Jack said immediately. "Large. With angels."
"Angels are extra," she said, deadpan.
"Put it on Bartram’s account."
Annabelle giggled, small and silver.
The hour brightened; the courtyard swelled. Word of the contest had flown faster than any pigeon and returned with friends.
People wanted a story, and nothing feeds a story like a city that looks like it knows what it’s doing.