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Four years in England and Kazuma is still discovering new bits of etiquette he has no basis in. It is mostly the high society bullshit, of course. At important dinners it is the endless utensils and unwritten conversational norms. Today, ahead of attending a colleague’s wedding, it is morning dress.
For how often he throws things in the courtroom, Van Zieks has the etiquette minutiae down pat. Kazuma gets the sense it’s been some time since he’s needed to use that knowledge. The rest of the English nobility had had little desire to associate with someone so shrouded in murderous rumor, regardless of evidence. Better safe than sorry seems to be the prevailing wisdom where reputation is concerned.
But he has been cleared of all charges for years now, and even of all rumor. London’s warming up to him again. Perhaps he’ll get married next, muses Kazuma. Even a serial murderer in the family couldn’t possibly ward off every hopeful young social climber.
He chuckles at the thought of Van Zieks, up at an altar forced to publicly participate in romance. Inconceivable.
“Care to share the joke?” the prosecutor asks from the other side of the hansom seat.
“There wasn’t one,” replies Kazuma quickly, shaking his head. “I apologize.”
They exit the cab outside of Hornby & Sons. The eponymous tailor pushes up his spectacles when he sees them through the glass, and is already standing when they enter. “Lord van Zieks! And—” Kazuma has been here before, lucky to have a benefactor to get him all the stupid clothing requirements for English society, but he can’t imagine Mr. Hornby remembers his foreign name. “—His apprentice! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Van Zieks, as always, has no interest in pretending it’s a pleasure. “We’ve a wedding to attend,” he says, unwrapping the morning suit he’d gone to fetch from the manor yesterday. “This was mine when I was young. I was hoping it could be repurposed for Mr. Asogi here.” He watches the tailor hold up the coat, smoothing out the tails. “It’s your father’s work.”
“Ah, yes, I see…” Hornby runs his fingers over the green-embroidered tag in the lining. “When was this purchased, do you know?”
Van Zieks pauses—nigh-imperceptibly, but by now nothing he does is imperceptible to Kazuma. “Eighteen-eighty-eight. I believe.”
“If you’d like I could modernize the cut somewhat,” says Hornby. He gestures for Kazuma to get up on the pedestal in the corner, and eyes him appraisingly. “There hasn’t been much change in the style, but some.”
“I trust your judgment,” says Van Zieks. In the mirror Kazuma can see the prosecutor eyeing him similarly. Kazuma meets his own eyes to avoid looking at anyone else.
“Alright then!” Hornby gathers up the rest of the suit. “Come along back, Mr. Asogi. Let’s see how these fit you now.” He looks back to Van Zieks. “Would you like to weigh in, Your Lordship?”
Van Zieks swiftly shakes his head. “Again, I trust your judgment.” He turns to Kazuma. “I’ll be waiting at the office for your return.”
“Of course.”
His mentor’s old coat is too broad-shouldered on him, his waistcoat too wide, his trousers too long. It’s the same every time. Kazuma has always disliked this for the comparison it forces. For the memory of his first visit, when his empty head hadn’t minded so much the thought of growing into Barok van Zieks’s shoes. His head is full now, and it makes him feel like he’s changing in a way he hadn’t hoped to.
Oftentimes he wishes he had parents to judge him from the land of the living, so he wouldn’t spend his whole life with the worry that they might hanging over him. Would his father take pride in his English successes, or cringe to see him in the costume of the successful? Would his mother tell him how handsome he looked in this fine suit, or admonish him for taking gifts from the man who condemned her husband? The uncertainty of it all is the most exhausting part.
Will he decide what he thinks of himself someday, or keep feeling beholden to the imaginary thoughts of his family?
Kazuma puts his own clothes back on and goes back to work, where there is a homicide to puzzle out instead of his heart.
Of all his friends of friends in London, Kazuma has come to prefer Gina Lestrade. It had, of course, taken him longer to figure out what she was saying than the others—but once he did, what she was saying resonated with him. Resonated in a good way, that is. There’s a comparable amount of resonance with Van Zieks, but most of it is fairly grim. One can’t dwell on that too much.
Even so, things with Lestrade were grim enough then. Kazuma had kept his distance from her for some time. Though he wasn’t the man who killed Tobias Gregson, the man who nearly killed him felt hardly better. She’d had to corner him on the curb of Baker Street to snap him out of it.
“Oi, ‘Oddo’s mate,” she’d demanded, startling him as he’d waited for a cab after dinner at Sholmes’s. “You got a problem with me?"
“What?” he’d said. “Of course not.” He hadn’t thought how it might look to someone outside of his own head.
He’d tried to explain. How seeing her flooded him with guilt and shame. How he’d assumed seeing him would flood her with rage and pain. “You’re bein’ a shithead,” she’d replied at once. “That’s coward talk.”
It was not often Kazuma had been called the second one. He narrowed his eyes. “Pardon?”
She scoffed. “If I went 'idin’ from everybody I ever did wrong, I’d never see another soul.”
At this, Kazuma had blinked in surprise. He’d given a similar, albeit less profane, speech himself not long before. How had he allowed himself to become the recipient of one? Perhaps, he’d considered, guilt had seemed much easier to soldier through from the perspective of the wronged than the wronger.
Perhaps, he’d considered, he ought to cut Van Zieks some more slack.
In the years since, he and Lestrade have been working closely, especially since her recent promotion to full detective. She stops by for that reason when he’s alone in the office on the afternoon before the wedding.
“Ozzie!”
This is her take on “Asogi.” Kazuma’s instinct is always to correct her, but if he were to quibble about what English people called him he’d lose half the day. He twists around and stands to greet her. “Yes, detective?”
“File for ya.” She slaps it on Van Zieks’s desk. “They’re still lookin’ over the 'ammer down at the Yard, but I’ll bring it by tomorrow afternoon an’ let ya know wot’s wot.”
“Is there another time?” he asks. “I’m afraid the prosecutor and I have an engagement tomorrow.”
“That so?” she replies with interest. “What’re you engaged in?”
“Prosecutor Masterson’s wedding.”
“That berk’s gettin’ married?” Lestrade cackles, leaning against the prosecutor’s desk next to the file. “Christ on a cracker. Condolences to the bride.”
Kazuma chuckles quietly. Resonance.
“Least ya get a party out of it, don’tcha?”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” he says. “It’s all very formal. The sort of proper food I don’t like and proper dances I don’t know.” He doesn’t think much of English pomp.
“Shame,” says Lestrade, more amused than sympathetic. “Can’t ever get my 'ead round that posh manners nonsense. If it were me runnin’ the show I’d at least let myself have fun.”
“I’ll look forward to your wedding, then,” says Kazuma.
Laughing, she shakes her head. “I ain’t the marryin’ kind, Oz.”
He wonders what she means by this. He’s had his suspicions. “Shame,” he says. “Nobody who throws parties worth going to is the marrying kind.”
They eye each other across the office. The clear mutual suspicion is as good as a clear mutual confession.
“Really, I’m s’prised you mind so much,” says Lestrade eventually. “Always thought ya were a touch stuck-up, myself.”
That’s it; he has to quit taking hand-me-downs from aristocrats. “Excuse me?”
“’Course. You’re into all that prissy sword shite, ain’t ya? It’s all the same. Footwork n’ fanciness.”
Kazuma snorts. She’s more of a gun person, he supposes. Point and shoot, no ceremony.
“I ain’t judgin’,” she says, hands up. “Sooze is fancier than you, an’ I like her better than you too.”
The thought of Susato aches in the fond way that the thought of everything far from him does. He laughs. “She would know all the Western dances, I imagine.”
“Aw, it’s easy enough, ain’t it?” Hopping away from the desk, Lestrade grabs his hands and sweeps him into a ballroom embrace. “Just spinnin’ and such.”
He looks away from her, trying to suppress his amusement. “All the same,” he says, “I don’t plan on spinning, or such.”
“Coward talk,” she says. She takes one hand out of his to knock him lightly on the chin. “You tellin’ me you’ll just stand there on the side when somebody 'andsome looks your way?”
“Handsome?” He thinks he’s heard women referred to as such, but not often. Kazuma finds himself regrettably unsure of the connotations.
Her raised eyebrows tell him all he needs to know. “I ain’t wrong?”
He sighs. “This is a public event, if you realize, detective.”
“’Course it is. But it’s impressive anyways, ain’t it? Some cove sees ya whirling a bird about and thinks, that bloke there could treat me right.”
Kazuma has to admit he’s known this feeling. He’s had a similar thought watching boys kiss girls before. Or eat or drink or speak, though, or deftly peel a satsuma, or just stand there not doing much at all. He isn’t sure ballroom dancing matters very much.
Lestrade has stepped away to shove the table aside anyway. “Mind the miniatures!” Kazuma calls. Aside from their investigative usefulness, he finds he’s taken quite well to crafting them. He’s proud of the accuracy of this particular corpse.
“Mind your Ps and Qs, Oz. I ain’t breakin’ nothin.’” She steps out to the center of the cleared floor and holds up her hands for him to take. “C’mon, let me teach ya.”
He wasn’t getting anywhere on the case anyway. “You dance, then?”
“Well, I never learned proper, but I can fake it alright.”
“So you’re not teaching me anything at all?”
“Ain’t you listenin’? I’m teachin’ ya how to fake it.”
He has to say, she can fake it alright. He follows her smooth, confident steps in an arc around the floor.
“Used to think this shite were dead romantic when I were a little thing,” she says, with a grimace. “Pretend I were a princess, an’ that.” Before she’d learned to disdain society instead of aspire to miraculously join it. Kazuma understands. “Nowadays, dancing ain’t worth it in my book if ya gotta know steps.”
“Why do you think I should learn them, then?”
She shrugs. “I ain’t invited to any posh dos, am I?”
“Someone from the Yard will get married someday,” says Kazuma, and he pauses momentarily before hazarding a guess. “No interest in impressing anyone handsome?”
Lestrade laughs. He ain’t wrong.
Kazuma wonders vaguely how these things are done among women. Do they too lurk on street corners, feeling out passersby for clandestine closeness? He can’t help but imagine them being more refined about it all.
“The beautiful don’t find this impressive, then?”
“Not the ones I’ve any interest in.”
“That sounds nice,” says Kazuma. “Not to worry about impressing anyone.”
“I never said I weren’t impressive, Oz,” Lestrade replies, with a cheeky wink. “Different way, though. I ain’t bothered with anybody who wants me to know that sort o’ rubbish.”
He wonders too, as they whirl, whether she’s truly as well-versed in seduction as she’s clearly trying to appear to be. Gina Lestrade wouldn’t have been his first thought as an expert. Kazuma’s sure many would say the same of him, however. It’s difficult to build a reputation for something when it’s done in secret.
And he wonders, yet again, how she sees him. Barok van Zieks, Jr? “And you think I am?”
“Footwork n’ fanciness,” she repeats loftily.
“I don’t mind a bit of anarchy,” says Kazuma, offended she’d think otherwise. Her contempt for norms had been part of why he’d liked her so much. It had felt like a law enforcement oversight to allow the two of them to work together.
"Right then, Ozzie.” Lestrade grins. “I’ll have to take ya out someplace fun someday.”
“I’m interested to learn your definition of fun,” he replies, smiling in reply.
She leans back and leads him into a wild spin. Caught by surprise, Kazuma finds himself laughing aloud. He hasn’t done this since childhood.
“Yeah, there ya go, Oz—"
“Mind the miniatures, if you please.”
The voice of Barok van Zieks from the doorway stops them in their tracks. Lestrade’s balance is less well-honed than Kazuma’s is: she stumbles into the table when he lets go.
“Very sorry, sir,” says Kazuma, quickly righting a tiny wardrobe and bowing his head.
Van Zieks eyes them hawkishly. “May I ask what you are doing?”
“Don’t mind us, sir,” says Lestrade. “We were just practicin.’”
He arches his brows and motions for her to continue. “Practicing…?”
“Well, you lot are off to a weddin’ tomorrow and Ozzie ‘ere don’t know how to dance.”
Van Zieks’s heavy gaze on him makes the hair on the back of Kazuma’s neck prickle.
“I see,” he says. “Well, I daresay you won’t be any help in teaching him, detective.” Still sizing up Kazuma, he beckons to Lestrade with a flick of his fingers. “Come here.”
“Me, sir?”
“Yes, Lestrade, you.” He lifts one hand, delicately takes her waist as she approaches with the other. “One waltz will do, for the time being. Hand in mine, please. The other on my shoulder. Wherever’s comfortable. Mr. Asogi, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Lestrade turns to waggle her eyebrows at Kazuma as Van Zieks takes her hand.
“It’s been some time since I’ve danced,” the prosecutor continues, “but I believe this is still in fashion enough. It’s quite simple. Three-quarter time, Mr. Asogi.”
As he begins to lead Lestrade around the office floor, he marks out the beat in a deep-throated hum for a few revolutions.
"A wide step around, keep in mind your partner’s stature, then your other foot follows to a half-turn. Keep on the balls of your feet. You should look as if you’re gliding.”
Kazuma watches Van Zieks’s boots sweep across the floor. He’s never imagined the man could move so lightly, so fluidly. That the hand he’s crushed glass in could hold a partner so gently.
He’s staring. When the thought goes through his head, it’s in Lestrade’s earlier words.
“If you’re finished paying attention, Mr. Asogi,” says Van Zieks, tone acerbic, “then you cut in.”
“Er—yes, sir.”
Kazuma can’t tell if the prosecutor is being as careful as he is not to touch as they change places.
“Dead simple, Oz,” says Lestrade, as he arranges himself around her the way Van Zieks had stood. “And it ain’t 'alf bad a time, neither.”
“Reassessing your standards for fun?” he asks, brows quirked.
She chuckles. “Waitin’ to see if you’re any good at it, first.”
Van Zieks is humming again, tapping his hands together every third note. On the balls of his feet, Kazuma begins taking wide steps in time.
“Decent,” says Van Zieks eventually. “You’ve a keen ear, at least, and that’s the main requirement. Just be aware of the music and the surrounding couples, and pace yourself accordingly.”
“Do you go to weddings often, Sir?” Kazuma asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you do so since I’ve been here.”
“It’s relatively recent that I’ve had social obligations again,” says Van Zieks after a moment. “The last was many years ago. My brother’s.”
Kazuma steps on Lestrade’s boot, and she yelps. He knows now what the morning coat hanging in his wardrobe had been purchased for in eighteen-eighty-eight.
He imagines Van Zieks knows exactly what has gone through his head, but the prosecutor refuses to let on. “A keen ear counts for nothing without coordination, Mr. Asogi. I pity the woman who accepts your invitation.”
Kazuma sniffs. He’d pity the man who accepts Barok van Zieks’s tutelage, but that ship had sailed long ago.
“Yeah, Ozzie, do that again and you’ll be answerin’ to Scotland Yard.” Lestrade steps on Kazuma’s foot intentionally as they glide on, and looks over her shoulder toward their dance instructor. “Case file’s on your desk, by th’ way, sir.”
Van Zieks sits down to peruse it. “I’m pleased to learn you’d come here for a reason, detective.”
“’Course I did.”
“Be sure to alert me if you ever come across a reason to let us return to work.”
Lestrade gives Kazuma a grimace and disentangles herself to pull out Gregson’s pocketwatch. Kazuma stays still. Every time he sees her look at it, he thinks of Van Zieks’s badge and wonders whether she’s ever spoken with him about cracked pedestals.
“Right then, I reckon I should get goin.’” She stuffs the watch back in her waistcoat and tips her hat. “Enjoy your dancin.’ I’ll see you lads with the 'ammer on Wednesday.”
Alone now in the middle of the dance floor, Kazuma looks to Van Zieks. He’s moved on seamlessly. He doesn’t look up from the file pages as he begins to lay them out on his desk.
Kazuma drags the center table back into position, his mentor’s low hum still ringing in his ears.
The new Mrs. Masterson is a woman of fashionable taste, so she’s held her ceremony as late in the afternoon as legally allowed. It is followed by a meal, which is followed by entertainment. Van Zieks and Kazuma sit at their assigned table, idly watching the string quintet in silence as dancers begin to move in.
Kazuma looks away from the floor across the table. Barok van Zieks holding a glass of champagne instead of burgundy wine is an odd sight.
“Was your brother’s wedding like this?” he asks. It’s taken him some time and two glasses of his own to do so. It’s been on his mind since he put on the suit.
Van Zieks takes several seconds to respond, so many Kazuma thinks at first he's been ignored. “No,” he says. “It was even more painfully stiff.”
“So you fit right in, then.”
The prosecutor has become used to Kazuma and his insolence in these last years, enough to let this go without argument. “Unfortunately,” he says. It seems that even in his tender youth, Barok van Zieks had been overserious. “Klint never did. He kept trying to make me laugh during the photographs.”
“That certainly would have been more worthy of photographic evidence,” says Kazuma.
Van Zieks snorts, but does not laugh, true to form.
The band strikes up another song, and in it Kazuma recognizes that three-note beat he’d learned to waltz to. He watches the couples start to glide along the floor, but doesn’t move to join them.
“All that trouble yesterday,” asks Van Zieks, “and you aren’t going to dance?”
“I never had an interest,” says Kazuma. “Lestrade wouldn’t take no for an answer. And neither would you.”
“You never said no for me to answer to.”
…That is true, he supposes. Once the prosecutor had put on his authoritative voice, it hadn’t occurred to Kazuma to interfere. That thought alarms him. When had he become afraid to talk back?
“I think you’re afraid,” says Van Zieks. Kazuma starts, but he’s speaking of something else. The corner of his mouth is curled up—he’s teasing. That’s coward talk, Mr. Asogi. “That you’ll step on another innocent woman’s toes in front of a larger audience than me.”
Kazuma glances back at him, smirking in kind. “I thought it was a condition of our partnership not to hold on to each other’s mistakes.”
The almost-smile slips off Van Zieks’s face, leaving a thoughtful frown behind as he gazes across the hall.
“All that skill,” asks Kazuma, “and you aren’t going to dance?”
“No interest,” says Van Zieks. He stoically sips his champagne.
Kazuma wonders, as he had with Lestrade, what he means by that. What had he meant by it himself? If there’s mutual suspicion in the gaze they share now, this time it’s less clear.
“Good to hear I won’t have to attend your wedding anytime soon, sir,” he says. “Given how painfully stiff that would be to endure.”
Van Zieks snorts again. The curl is creeping back into his lips. “I’ll keep your opinion in mind, should I ever feel a matrimonial urge.”
Kazuma chuckles and takes a sip of his own champagne.
The song ends, and the waltzing couples float apart before the next. Kazuma’s eyes meet with Prosecutor Masterson’s youngest sister’s as she parts with her last partner across the floor. She gives him a demure smile.
Impulsively, Kazuma sets aside his glass and leaves Van Zieks to cross the dance floor, toward the pretty brunette in robin’s-egg blue.
“Miss Masterson,” he says, with a shallow bow.
She nods. “Prosecutor Asogi, I believe?”
“Yes.” He smiles at her, as charmingly as he can. “Would you do me the honor of this dance?”
“With pleasure.” She curtsies deeply. Kazuma counts himself lucky the gesture doesn’t need to be part of his own social vocabulary, and offers her a hand as she rises.
The music begins again. Three-quarter time, Asogi.
With real music it’s easier to fall in time, and soon enough the movement is smooth. Miss Masterson’s skirts brush his legs as they turn. As they glide, on the balls of their feet.
Kazuma finds his mind on his parents again. Here in a coat his father would have laid eyes upon, with a pretty young Englishwoman in his arms, waltzing for all the world like a proper English gentleman. He doesn’t know what they’d think of him now. He doesn’t know what he thinks of himself now. He misses, desperately, knowing what to think about anything.
He glances back toward his table as they whirl around. Van Zieks is watching him over the rim of his glass, an odd, unreadable look in his eyes.