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The Marquis of Cladd's villa in Ezrest is a beautiful thing, far smaller by necessity than his home in Cladd but with gardens just as graciously appointed. Nobles from all five kingdoms of the peninsula chatter and laugh, backed by a quartet of musicians with roundlutes and high viols. Servers circulate with bottles and decanters. Warm points of light hang on the row of trellises like grapes, ripe and waiting to be plucked. If he could get away with it, Olruggio would be climbing them to check the spellwork.
"Done with your rounds?"
"Just about," says Hiehart at his side; "I know Mudrock's third duke is around somewhere, but I haven't caught him yet."
Olruggio pops up onto his toes for a moment, peering around the crowd fruitlessly. Everyone in Ezrest is too tall. "Ah, he'll turn up eventually."
Hiehart grins down at Olruggio. Nice of him not to laugh; Hiehart would have a good view of the top of everyone's heads even if he were slouching, and Hiehart's posture is never less than perfect.
"What's Jujy up to tonight? Surprised she's not here with a checklist of client names."
This time Hiehart does laugh. "She gave me one in advance! She's having a good time with some apprentice friends. Exciting for her to see the city when she isn't on a job for once."
"Same with Qifrey's girls. Usually the most thrilling city they get to see is Kalhn." Olruggio takes an appreciative sip of his drink (sweet vinewhisky, well aged, not within his usual budget). "You two should come by the shop when you have a moment—might be fun for Jujy to talk shop."
They pause to shuffle aside, letting an elderly marchioness pass with a lady-in-waiting at her elbow.
Once they're no longer blocking anyone's cane with their feet, Olruggio adds, "Richeh's got a real eye for light and crystal. She's approaching my specialty from the other side, kind of."
"We'll definitely visit. Remind me which one's Richeh again?"
"She's the short one."
"Predis Olruggio," Hiehart says seriously, "all of them are short."
"The shortest one. Long hair. Makes a face like this a lot."
He mimics Richeh's puffed-cheek scowl: the face she makes when she has to wake up early, or Qifrey's nudging her to learn something too far out of her comfort zone, or they run out of peameal bacon.
Hiehart laughs. "Oh, her; I should've known."
His gaze keeps dropping to Olruggio's mouth as they talk. Does he look that funny without the beard? The girls hated it too. Maybe the makeover mask is a bust.
"She going to start joining you for commission work?"
"Qifrey and I mean to get them some practice with regular folk before we sic them on nobles. Jujy's great with the clients—you've taught her well."
"All her own good qualities! I don't know how I managed without her!" He managed very well; Hiehart doesn't need Olruggio there to show him the ropes with public spellwork or client appeasement these days.
But it is nice to have the company on a big job.
Somewhere hidden by the crowd, the band ends one song and strikes up another, this one livelier. There's no room to dance, but some people in the crowd start tapping their toes.
"So what are you doing after this?"
"Getting some sleep. You should too. There's a long week ahead of us."
"Would you like to join me?"
"What, is there an afters planned?" Olruggio frowns down at the dregs of his vinewhisky. He's been nursing this one drink all evening and it's gone tepid in the cup. "Not this time, thanks. Qifrey bugged me about getting some proper rest, and, well, guess he wasn't wrong. I'm getting old."
"We're all as young as the night," Hiehart declares. "We could bail now."
"Don't you have networking to do?" Olruggio squints around the garden, but he still can't see anyone in Mudrock bronzecloth.
Hiehart sighs, the eternal light in his eyes briefly dimmed. "Guess I do. Guess I'll go handle that. I think I see the man I need. See you around, predis Olruggio?"
"Not your predis, but yes. Will you be at the merchants' guild thing tomorrow?"
"Definitely!" Hiehart salutes him with a quick clasp of his hands to his left side and darts away in the crowd, chasing after his unseen quarry.
For all Hiehart's stature, Olruggio quickly loses sight of him among all the partygoers.
It is a little early to make his escape, but it's no fun to hang around here peoplewatching all alone. Maybe Olruggio should do his own last round of old clients and get back to Nolnoa's tent, too.
When he turns to set down his empty cup, there's a witch behind him.
"Oh," Olruggio says involuntarily, and takes a step away right into someone else's instep. It's crowded here. The witch is very close. They're very tall. "Didn't see you there."
"I hadn't thought you did," they say, voice light and musical. "I'm very pleased to see you again, Olruggio of the Torch."
"Have we met? Sorry, it's been a long day, you know how it is."
The witch's cap is crowned with a long knotted tassel dangling like a tail behind them. There's a large oval panel at the base of the cap, with more tassels swinging freely from the oval's top to brush the witch's forehead. Their dark cloak with its mantle of feathers gives them a hunched, birdlike look, like a night-flying grackle puffed up against the cold.
Cap designs run in familial and scholastic lines; Qifrey wears a variant of Beldaruit's cap, and his apprentices wear a variant of Qifrey's. Even though he studied under a different master in the Great Hall, Olruggio still wears a variant of his father's. There's nothing about this witch's cap, its smoke colour and gold-accented tassels, that signals anything to Olruggio about their identity at all.
Well: not so odd to want to make your own mark, is it? Tetia's plenty loud about her future plans for a unique cap.
"We've met but only briefly, to my regret," the witch says, with a sing-song brightness. "Iguin, at your service."
"Iguin. I'll definitely remember this time."
Olruggio offers his hand, polite without being intimate; Iguin leans in to clasp his arm. An action reserved for friends, intimates, long-time colleagues. Olruggio's wearing his sleeves loose tonight, and Iguin's hand is too warm on the skin of his forearm.
"I won't hold it against you when you don't." Iguin leans down into Olruggio's space, tassels on their cap swinging with their motion. "Someone's been crying over you, Olruggio of the Torch."
Olruggio rears back. His shoulder hits the post of a trellis. "Excuse me?"
Iguin smiles broadly. Wisps of pale hair flutter around their ears. The party lights, bright and omnipresent, fail to light Iguin's left eye.
"Our old experiment has his roots sunk deeply into you, doesn't he? I'm glad I saw. I've wanted to meet you properly for some time, you know." Iguin tilts their head side to side, adding to the birdlike effect of their cloak. Their tassels sway, hiding and then revealing the concentric pattern worked in gold on the oval panel of their cap.
"I'm not sure what you mean," Olruggio says stiffly, arm in Iguin's loose but unshakable grip. Best find a polite excuse to step away. If only there was a familiar cap visible in the crowd right now.
"No, you wouldn't. I came to see what sort of convictions a witch like you possesses. You are trapped between yours, I think; they are twin fires, Olruggio of the Torch, and you'll burn up between them soon enough."
Olruggio is frozen, trapped in place by Iguin's hand. There doesn't seem to be any way to leave. To back off. To throw Iguin's hand off. To shout for Hiehart, even. The noise of the crowd has receded. Is the band still playing? It's like Iguin has worked a bubble around them.
Iguin brushes the back of one long hand against his cheek. Their knuckles slide over the smooth ceramic of the Olruggio's mask, and he's suddenly grateful for his vanity in making it.
"Ah," Iguin says, half-sighing. They run their fingers down the mask's ties, to the back of Olruggio's neck, and his free hand finally comes up defensively. "I've done you the honour of coming to meet you without my mask. It's only fair and right that you should do the same."
"Hey—"
With one motion, Iguin pulls out the makeover mask's knot and pulls the mask away. Olruggio's hands curl against Iguin's arm and their mantle.
"It's clever work, but it's a lie. Just like all the others, you've taught yourself to value lies so much you've forgotten to esteem the truth."
Iguin dips closer, and Olruggio is frozen again, a sparrel locked in place on a pine branch lest a hunting owlcat catch sight of its twitching tail.
They press their lips to his, a kiss warm and chaste. One hand holds him in place by the nape of his neck, long fingers firm and unyielding for a moment that goes on forever.
They step back. Olruggio heaves for breath, wild-eyed.
"I can see the appeal—but what a shame to keep you at his side with shackles, when you'd soar so high in open air."
Iguin detaches Olruggio's hands from their cloak. "It would be a victory to see you adorned with a different cap, but I think it unlikely for now. Until we meet again, Olruggio of the Torch. We'll see if you remember me—or if you get sick of forgetting."
They drop the mask into Olruggio's limp, unresisting hand, and give a theatrical bow.
And they're gone in the crowd, the end of their long tassel disappearing between two dukes' fur-trimmed robes with a flick.
It's a long time before it feels like he's got enough air in his lungs again. Till the party reasserts itself, leaking back into his awareness one sensation at a time. The ceramic mask between his hands, spinsilk cords slithering between his fingers. Cool air in a sudden breeze against the hollow of this throat, reminding him of the heat in the garden, of all the people talking and breathing and moving en masse. Then a laugh, trailing the rumble of conversation behind it. The weight of his cloak and the sweat down his back.
A hand claps onto his shoulder.
Olruggio lurches.
"Predis Olruggio, you're still here!" Hiehart is tall, vivid, alive. A solid part of the known world. His eyes are bright and brightly lit.
"I—yeah. Hi." Olruggio fumbles for a better grip on his mask.
"I saw your cap and thought I'd swing by around, try one more time," Hiehart says, warm and eager, "because, well, I wanted to ask—oh!"
"What?"
"You look terr—uh, tired. I thought you shaved?"
Oh. Hah. Olruggio breathes in deep, lowering his tensed shoulders. "Just a party trick. Say—did you see a witch in a cap the colour of smoke around anywhere? With fabric tassels hanging in their eyes?"
"Hanging in their eyes? Risky look. Lala's by the buffet, if that's who you meant...?"
Lalarissa is an expert in windowways they consult with sometimes; her cap and robe are draped in fluttering layers of smoke-grey and water-green, the colours of her atelier perched high in the branches of Mistcall's mangroves. She's also a full head shorter than Olruggio.
"Not her, thanks. Appreciate it." Olruggio tucks his makeover mask away in his cloak. Maybe this was just a chance encounter. Alarming but meaningless, like the illusion of a scalework cast onto smoke by a frightened child.
Hiehart peers down at Olruggio with shining earnestness. "I wanted to ask—properly, without misunderstandings—do you want to get a drink? Just you and me?"
Olruggio musters up a smile. "Sorry, Hiehart, I'm really not up to anything tonight. I think I'm just gonna dip without making that last round after all. Thanks, though. You're a good friend."
"Oh, I do my best," says Hiehart, oddly gloomy.
Their parting arm-clasp is a weak thing. It's strange to see Hiehart so downcast. Maybe he wanted advice on his contraption for the procession? It's only his third year participating, and Olruggio's been presenting his contraptions in public since well before his formal graduation.
That almost makes Olruggio turn back, but—no. He needs to see that Qifrey and the girls are alright, and he needs to sleep.
Tonight will look much different from the vantage of tomorrow morning. Not the first time Olruggio's dealt with over-familiar strangers. Won't be the last.
All the same, Olruggio sticks to the well-lit skies above Ezrest's busiest streets on his way back to Nolnoa's tent, clutching his cloak around him against the night's chill.