Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun shone hot and bright from a clear summer sky, and the horses’ hooves churned the racetrack dirt hard enough to make the stands shake. Or maybe that was the cheering. The standing crowd thundered their appreciation, and those from the penny seats to the boxes were not much better. The entire affair was an overwhelming, contagious flurry of heat and color, the thrill of the race and the veritable orchestra of the spectators’ emotions.

Fourteen-year-old Nikolai Lantsov stifled a yawn.

Beside him, Vasily swore and smashed his fist on the railing. He hid his wince rather less well than Nikolai had hidden his yawn.

“I had money on the bay!”

“Shall we leave?” Nikolai suggested, trying not to sound too hopeful.

He had been excited when Vasily invited him to the races at Caryeva. Vasily rarely had time for has little brother. After hours of sitting in the summer heat, watching Vasily drink and curse, Nikolai struggled to stay still. At the very least, he wished he had a book, but Vasily had sneered when he tried to bring one. Nikolai wished he hadn’t minded so much.

Vasily drank deeply, slugged his brother too hard on the shoulder, and said, “I thought you liked horses.”

Nikolai liked riding horses. Watching others ride horses round a track over and over was somewhat less engaging. Now, down on the ground, he saw another round of horses and riders lining up. It seemed interminable.

How did anyone enjoy this? How did anyone enjoy so much sitting, watching? Nikolai wanted to be in the races! With the bang of the starting gun, he wished he, too, were flying out of the gate! He wished he were Sturmhond, the figure he imagined sometimes, dashing and brave and always finding himself in the heart of the action!

But he wasn’t.

He was sitting in a shaded box, far from any action more than his brother guzzling an endless supply of champagne. One drip too many of melt and the ice resettled, rattling almost as excitingly as the distant action.

Vasily swore and hurled his glass. Nikolai bolted to the railing, but he couldn’t see where it landed. Hopefully no one had been hurt. He turned to his brother, not sure what to say.

“That filthy little—number 17 was a sure thing!”

Apparently not, because he had lost.

“I’ll buy her and sell her meat to the peasants.”

“Vasya!” Nikolai didn’t know if he was asking his brother to be calm or to spare the horse’s life. Maybe both. She had only been a fraction of a second slower than the other horse; she was still one of the fastest on the track.

Vasily scoffed. He drank.

Nikolai slouched and waited for it to be over.

Later, Vasily told his brother to “wait here” in a corridor in a part of the racetrack most never saw. The floors were clean and waxed, unmarred by the unwashed mass of the standing room crowd. Nikolai caught a glimpse of the office into which his brother disappeared and understood Vasily was going to barter for horseflesh—whether to own, to ride, or to slaughter, none could say. His brother was unpredictable that way.

Nikolai wasn’t the only tag-along left to stand outside. There was also a small boy standing quietly against the wall. They looked at one another for a moment. He felt like the boy was asking him for something, but he had no idea what those big blue eyes meant to convey.

“Did you enjoy the races?” Nikolai asked. Maybe it was because these were offices of commerce that he spoke in Kerch without thinking.

The boy gave a solemn nod.

“Yes, I did, as well. My brother’s going to buy himself a horse or seven.”

And, Saints willing, keep them. They were only animals. Nikolai understood that all things died—he was Ravkan, of course he understood. But he struggled to find the wisdom in hastening that inevitable. He knew Vasily was more than capable of having the horses boiled into soup for the First Army or sent into the Fold. It was the why that so vexed him.

The younger boy’s high, quavering voice pulled Nikolai from his thoughts: “I have a horse.”

“Do you,” Nikolai said, admittedly losing interest. He should’ve known this was another nobleman’s son. He was well-dressed, after all, and standing in the corridor while his guardian or brother or other designated adult bargained with the same breeders as Vasily. It wasn’t fair to the child, but Nikolai had no wish to chat with a baby courtier. They were all the same: dull, scheming, deferential…

“You can pet him if you want.”

Nikolai looked back to the child and immediately his attention softened. Yes, he had a horse: a little figurine, its mane tangled thread. Nikolai crouched in front of the boy and gently stroked the toy horse. He avoided the bare patches where the velvet covering had been worn down, doubtless by those same soft fingers.

“May I?” Nikolai asked, reaching for it.

The boy nodded.

Nikolai took the horse and made it run, offering the best hoofbeat impressions he could. The boy replied with a smile, which only encouraged Nikolai, who made the horse rear up—not especially convincingly, but then neither was his ‘neigh’ and the boy giggled anyway.

“Does he have a name?”

“Ships.”

“Your horse’s name is Ships?”

He nodded.

Nikolai laughed. “I like it,” he said. Then, getting an idea, “How would you like to pet a real horse?”

The boy nodded eagerly, then hesitated. “My papa…”

“What’s your name?”

“Wylan Van Eck.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be related to the Van Eck on the Kerch Merchant Council?”

He nodded. “My papa.”

“Well, Wylan Van Eck, I am Nikolai Lantsov. Do you know what that means?”

“You’re the king?”

That shouldn’t have hurt the way it did. Nikolai knew it wasn’t an intended insult. There was no malice in Wylan’s open expression, but there was an echo in his words of too many slights, too many reminders of Nikolai Nothing.

“My father is the king.” Maybe. “I’m a prince. You should always do what princes say, you know.”

He said this seriously and Wylan’s eyes widened. Nikolai had the feeling that if he told the boy to do anything he would—it was a dangerous trait. Nikolai had known enough men who would see that eagerness as an invitation.

“Let’s go see the horses, and you can tell your papa it was my idea—no, I will tell your papa it was my idea.”

Nikolai found that he very much liked being looked at the way Wylan looked at him then. He remembered so many days following after the brother who wanted nothing to do with him, not understanding Vasily’s rejection but feeling the sting of it nonetheless. When Nikolai was grown, he would not make younger people feel so small when. He would be someone to look up to. When Nikolai was grown—

His thoughts were interrupted by a small, warm hand in his. Nikolai gave Wylan’s hand a gentle squeeze.

Fourteen years felt so terribly small sometimes.

But Wylan’s hand felt even smaller as he squeezed back.

Chapter Text

The night prior had been a wild thing. A raging storm sloshing waves in glass bottles. Thunder cracking across off-key songs.

They started after lecture with Kerch street food, little omelets and waffles, but most of the party consisted of drinking and poor attempts at music in the dormitory suite. When he first enrolled, Nikolai was endowed by his parents with a fine apartment of his own. He promptly rented it out and opted for a suite he shared with three other students, two bedrooms and a common room and all the carousing that could accommodate.

That morning, the morning after the tempest of soft people and hard liquor and the intoxicated madness that created, Nikolai stepped over a mess of bodies and bottles and wax paper sticky with juice and sugar from the waffles. He needed a large coffee. And either a large pastry or the greasiest eggs the city had to offer.

He paused to shake the shoulder of a sleeping form.

“Will,” Nikolai said.

Will groaned. He was a ridiculously blond Kerch boy, long hair and still looked bald, held his liquor like a sieve and sang like a goose.

“Willem, you remember last night?” Nikolai asked.

Will groaned.

“I remember… the whiskey.”

“That was about a quarter of the evening, yes.”

“They bring you Ravkan boys up sturdy.”

“They wean us on vodka,” Nikolai said. “I promised to wake you for your appointment.”

Will’s blurry eyes searched Nikolai, searched the room—then a look of green horror overcame him. Nikolai leapt back just in time to avoid the splash of last night’s booze.

Nikolai left Will with a large flask of water and a cake of soap if he felt so inclined as to atone for his own piece of the mess, or at least scrub it from it from his half-existent hair. As his suitemate was in no condition to make his shift that day, Nikolai went in his place.

“Don’t you have lecture?” Will asked.

“I’ve had those assignments finished for weeks and the professor doesn’t bother with attendance. Where’s the session?”

The library, Will said. The quiet reading room, it would be empty but for the Grisha maintaining the moisture in the air, and Will’s student. Wylan. Good kid, quiet, bit dim, spend an hour working on his reading, thanks Nik, I owe you one.

Nikolai had time enough for the stop he needed. A little café, just past the Speakers’ Bridge, a place to have the coffee he needed to shake off the last of the rust. He compromised between his two desires for food and opted for oliebollen—dough to soak up the last of the drink, oil to ease its passage, dusted with icing sugar because a man needed joy in his life.

He didn’t particularly enjoy university. The courses were… fine. Adequate. Nikolai took little joy in being smarter than everyone around him. What was his intellect if he used it for nothing? So the education this university was meant to afford him, he near resented how little help it actually offered, how little good he could actually do.

He enjoyed his friendships, though.

Nikolai might not be a good prince today. He was a good friend, though. He was a 19-year-old young man who, for the first time in his life, could simply be that. Nineteen. A little young, a little wild, excused—even just by himself—for a few months.

He made his way to the quiet reading room. His student—his suitemate’s student—was waiting when Nikolai arrived. He sat at one of the tables bent over a sketchbook. A suit jacket was folded over the back of the chair and Nikolai noticed a dark smudge low on the sleeve of the boy’s white shirt. Wealthy, no question about that—shirts and jackets could be forgiving but a waistcoat that well-fitted was a detail only the upper classes particularly cared about. So the smudge endeared him to Nikolai: a little artist, regardless of his origins.

“Good morning! You must be Wylan. Willem’s not feeling well, so I’ll be working with you today. My name’s Nikolai.”

Wylan raised his head.

All the Saints, Nikolai had seen that face before! It had been years and Wylan had probably forgotten, but Nikolai remembered very well. This was Wylan Van Eck. Little Wylan, with his toy horse and his gentle hand, only he had grown some. He was a teenager now. The puppy fat had melted off, replaced with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, a smatter of breakouts.

Part of Nikolai wanted to leave.

The years had not been kind to him. It had been the manipulations of court, the cruelty from his brother, Ravkan blood in Ravkan mud. Nikolai had his friendship with Dominik and a handful of good memories, and one of those few shimmers was the boy who had been so excited to see a real horse. Nikolai didn’t want to learn that sweet boy was… a teenager.

Worse, a Kerch teenager. All thoughts on money and girls.

“Good morning, Nikolai,” Wylan said. “I hope Willem feels better soon.”

“I’m sure he will.” Nikolai pulled out a seat beside Wylan. Not so bad, if Willem was his first thought! (Even if it was rather Willem’s fault.) “This happened quite last minute, why don’t you tell me what you two are studying?”

“Um. Reading—maybe I should go, I usually work with Willem.”

That was an unexpected level of anxiety for someone meeting with a new reading tutor.

“It's okay.” Nikolai didn’t want him to go. He wanted to know where that kind child disappeared to the moment he mentioned reading.

He suspected he knew half the answer already. He learned it five years ago, in a barn that smelled clean and bright, with a little boy who grinned and laughed when Nikolai settled him on the back of a racehorse far too big for such a tiny boy. Wylan had been so happy. That made Nikolai happy: that he could bring that sort of joy to someone.

But…

“Yes, of course, but Willem is my tutor. My father approved.”

Which was… baffling, actually.

“Do you remember me?” Nikolai asked. “Think back. Caryeva? Ships and horses?”

Wylan looked briefly confused. Then his eyes widened.

“Nikolai!” Briefly, he grinned with all the joy of an eight-year-old on a racehorse—then he asked, “You’re here? In Ketterdam? I mean, yes, I can see that you are, but…”

“Ravka can’t boast any universities equal to this one.” Centuries of warfare would do that to a country. “How are you? How have you been? I hope the years have been kind.”

Wylan smiled like a man facing the firing squad.

“They have,” he lied. He didn’t owe Nikolai the truth, not someone he met only once, several years prior—and for all Nikolai tried to protect Wylan that day, he didn’t know what happened once the Van Ecks were out of his sight.

“What were you drawing there?”

“Oh—not much,” but Wylan showed Nikolai his sketch of a scruffy-looking cat. “She’s a stray I see sometimes. I was trying to get the texture of her fur…”

They didn’t get to Wylan’s reading in the next hour.

Instead, they looked at his sketches: cats, hands, buildings he could see from his bedroom window. Both asked about the past few years and neither said much. Nikolai had no wish to share stories of how he joined the First Army, fled his family, dreamed of becoming a pirate. Whatever Wylan’s story, he seemed reluctant to share and Nikolai wouldn’t pry. He saw hints of it in Wylan’s reluctance. Nikolai had known for years that Jan Van Eck was a bully and it seemed that hadn’t changed.

And yet—it came so easily.

Wylan was a talented artist. Nikolai, who could appreciate the craft but had little experience with it himself, asked a few questions, pointed out what little detail he did know. The shading. The shadows.

And the walls started to crack. So easily, Nikolai saw that same little boy who had held his hand and trusted him. If only his ornery nation were so tidily persuaded!

All too soon, Wylan checked his watch and started tidying his things.

“I have to go. I’m expected home.”

“Why not stay?” Nikolai asked. “Tell your father you were enjoying your tutoring session too much to leave.”

Wylan looked away, a tinge to his cheeks.

“He’ll never believe that,” he muttered. “Thank you, Nikolai.”

And Nikolai realized there was nothing he could say. The little boy was once more bottled up and hidden away.

“Take care of yourself, Wylan.”

Chapter Text

After half a semester at Ketterdam University, Nikolai had found precisely one thing that mattered. Oh, he had found friendships, the sort with future moderate successes he might foster–he knew his drinking buddies had sturdy careers ahead. He had found vendors selling delightful morsels at streetcarts, though poffertjes truly were the oladi of a morally bankrupt nation.

None of it mattered. Not enough, not to Nikolai, not to a man who grew up in a country at war, aware of the hemorrhaging blood of his nation and barely able to lift a finger to staunch it. He almost missed his infantry days. At least he did everything he could.

"So explain this again," Will said, licking a spot of oil and sugar from his fingertips.

Nikolai snagged an oliebol from Will's paper cone. The pair headed for the harbor, trading the faint scents of industry for the fish-ripened fresh air off the True Sea.

"You want to take on my dimmest student. And I saw that," Will added, taking one of Nikolai's poffertjes. He could have the lot as far as Nikolai was concerned!

Ah, all right, they weren't bad. They were tasty–even if they did make him a touch maudlin and homesick.

Nikolai shook his head, buying himself a moment to enjoy the snack. The two walked close together, dodging pedestrians on the busy street, just a couple of university students enjoying what passed for a sunny afternoon. Nikolai and Will weren't the only people falling victim to street cart vendors, either.

"Wylan isn't dim. And that's not the point."

"Then what–"

"Brothers!" cried a man offering no snacks, only pamphlets.

Nikolai and Will moved as one to go around.

"My brothers in Djel," he insisted, moving before them, "please, a moment of this beautiful day."

The two traded glances. The man before them had typical Fjerdan looks, blond and pale with ice chips of eyes, though he was rather more… civilian, than Nikolai's stereotype. He supposed he ought to update his assumptions. They were not all druskelle.

"I'm Ravkan," Nikolai said.

Though his looks favored his Fjerdan half, which well may have been why the man stopped them.

Nikolai looked past the man, down the wider walkway to the busier berths at the harbor. The day was clear enough that he saw dots of sails past the harbor, where ships waited at anchor for their turn to dock and unload their cargos, but it wasn't the bolts of silk and crates of oranges that interested Nikolai. It was the ships themselves. They followed a careful order in this busy port, but he knew that beyond his gaze, past the brick walls and to the left of his line of sight, there were less orderly spaces, smaller ships slicing into harbor and out again and only following the orders they chose to take. He knew the Kerch with their rules and standards and measures had tamed these great beasts of oak and canvas, but only by their concession to it.

There was freedom out there. A man might define himself on the open water.

"The Wellsprings flows through all waters of the world," insisted the Fjerdan. "Borders mean nothing to the love of Djel. Please. All of his children need to be aware of the danger of drusje, what you call–"

"We know what it means," Nikolai said, taking Will's elbow to guide him forward, toward the harbor, the ships, the sea.

Besides, he wasn't in Kerch to argue with Fjerdan bigots. The Saints knew Nikolai bore his own grudges, but he wasn't about to blame all Grisha just because one had turned the head of the only father he ever met.

"They should do something about those Northmen clogging up our streets," commented Will, brushing at his coat and only smearing the sugar from his oliebollen.

"Fjerdans use Djel, is it so different from the Kerch troops in Eames Chin?"

"Of course it is."

Nikolai wasn't sure he saw how. And he knew full well his own country did the same, just as unforgivably.

"About the boy," he said. He didn't want to argue this with Will, not now, not here. What good would it do? What was that point? It only made Nikolai's collar feel tighter while the open sea air tugged to loosen it.

"You want him," said Will, slugging Nikolai playfully on the shoulder, "well then, my brother in Djel, he's all yours. Just one more obstacle."

"All right, he's mine if I can jump over the ledge of that planter."

"No," Will said, laughing, "as much as I would enjoy watching you plant your nose in the lilies, it's not my decision, Nik. You'll need the father to approve."

Ah.

Nikolai raked a hand through his hair.

He remembered Jan Van Eck, a face like stormclouds for his little son–not so little anymore–a veneer of decorum for a Ravkan prince.

He took a step back.

"Hold my poffertjes. I may as well jump into the planter."

By the time Nikolai and Wylan reached the stable, the stands were empty, the racetrack eerily heady with the quiet of night even in midafternoon. The sun burned hot and the air smelled of hay, horse, and baked dust.

But the stables were dim and cool as the boys waited for their vision to adjust.

"Where are you kids supposed to be?" asked a stablehand. His tone was careful. They were well-dressed: spectators. But they were young and out of place, overstepping into his domain.

Wylan took half a step back, but Nikolai didn't flinch.

"A Lantsov in Ravkan is supposed to be wherever he likes. We'd like to see the horses," Nikolai said.

"Of course, moi tsarevich." The stablehand offered a messy bow. "Forgive me. I didn't recognize you."

"Not to worry. But…" He glanced at Wylan, who was still clutching little Ships in his even littler hand. "Tell me, are there any particularly docile animals?"

When Nikolai and Wylan approached the indicated creature, Nikolai grinned. He was an appaloosa, white coat that faded to light brown hindquarters, red-brown spots.

"He looks like you with those freckles," Nikolai said.

Wylan grinned. "No!"

"Yes!"

"He does not!"

"He does so!"

Nikolai raised his hand to stroke the horse's nose, then scratched under his forelock. He had no idea when this one had run. The races were… uninteresting, to him.

"Do you want to pet him? It's okay. See how nice he is?"

Wylan reached up. The horse sniffed his fingers, then huffed at him, making Wylan giggle.

"Good pony," Nikolai said, stroking his neck. He unlatched the gate and stepped into the stall. As he petted the horse's back, he asked Wylan, "Do you want to mount up?"

"Is that allowed?" he asked. Saints, the boy had eyes as wide and deep as his madraya's favorite gilded samovar.

Nikolai could drink that joy. When was the last time someone smiled for him like that?  The last time he caused something so simple and wonderful as that joy? The last time someone beamed that approval at him?

"It is if I say it is! Come on." Nikolai laced his fingers together into a stirrup, and with a huge, gappy grin, Wylan stepped up. Nikolai boosted him up onto the horse.

Sitting there astride the appaloosa, Wylan was pure sunshine. All smiles and giggles. Nikolai smiled back at him, but he did so with a stab of envy that Wylan had been so lucky: protected, privileged with safety and comfort of a kind Nikolai had never been permitted.

"Rostje," Wylan said, patting the animal's neck. Horsie. "Goed rostje."

"Wylan," snapped a voice that sluiced ice water down Nikolai's spine. Saints, that tone! "What are you doing up there? Get down at once!"

It made Nikolai feel cold through and through, he felt his smile fading. But that was nothing compared to what he saw from Wylan. It was like watching half the boy disappear: watching the smile sink, his body language change, his face pale. It was like watching a boy become a porcelain doll.

Nikolai stepped forward.

"I put him on the horse. Nikolai Lantsov. And you are?"

"Ah–Your Highness," said the man. He had a voice like oil. "Forgive my tone. I am Jan Van Eck. Wylan, my son, is all I have. I can be protective. Clearly such a large animal would be a danger to a small and vulnerable boy."

"I'm sorry, Papa."

"Don't be sorry," Nikolai said. "You're doing just what I said. Here."

He reached up to help Wylan off the horse, steadied him on his feet, and patted him on the shoulder. He hadn't expected to see such a glimpse into anyone's life that day, let alone to be warmed by a child's glee, sharpened by envy, frozen by proximity to hate… to see a boy he believed had too much, had everything, and realized it wasn't what he had that mattered. It was who he was. That bright joy came from Wylan. Not his circumstances. Certainly not his father.

Jan Van Eck gripped his son by the arm and walked him out of Nikolai's life.

Forever.

Or at least, for a few years.

Chapter Text

Wylan wanted to do everything in his power to make tonight’s dinner go perfectly. He wanted Nikolai to impress his father, he wanted his father to decide maybe this one truly could help—that just maybe his son could be fixed. And that Wylan could see Nikolai again.

Wylan wanted to take every action available to him.

Only—what was there to do?

He kept his flute practice to the time his father spent out of the house, though it kept him from any true harmony. Jan rarely disclosed his comings and goings to his defective offspring. Rather than allow the music to shimmer through his veins, Wylan restrained himself to scales and simple tunes, pausing at intervals to listen for the moment his father arrived.

Jan did not care for music and it might put him in a foul mood.

Well, no, he must care for some music. He had loved his wife, a talented pianist. As Wylan cleaned his flute, he reflected that perhaps it made his father sad. Perhaps the music… Wylan’s music, Wylan himself… he cast a forlorn look at the silver flute nestled snug in the blue velvet lining of its case. Would Jan forgive some of Wylan’s inadequacies if he were more than a constant reminder of his mother?

Footsteps and a creaking floorboard drew Wylan’s attention to the doorway. Jan took in the sight of his son standing there, flute case open.

“Practicing?” Jan asked.

“Just finished, Father.”

Jan nodded. A hint of smile—just a hint, a twitch at the left corner of his straight-set lips beneath his stringently tidy mustache—confirmed this had been the preferred answer. A moment passed between them, a silence of a few beats too long.

Was Wylan meant to say something?

He hastily closed and latched his flute case, ignoring the twinge he felt at dismissing his instrument with such an abject restraint of passion, as if it were a chore rather than a ritual. But… maybe, just maybe, if he directed his father’s attention away from the music…

“How was your meeting today?”

Jan raised his eyebrows. Then, on a broad sigh, he said, “Worthless, if you truly wish to know, Wylan.”

What was it about those two words in the same sentence?

“Dorenkamp has the beginnings of ideas. They’re nowhere near applicable, the man needs another ten years or a genius engineer. As to tonight, do you understand who our dinner guest is?”

“Yes, Father.”

He was nice. He had held Wylan’s hand when he was small, he asked how he was and about his drawings. He was the one man, maybe in the world, who did not care who Wylan’s father was.

“Then you understand that you are to be on your best behavior?”

But… wasn’t Wylan always? He touched his flute case, just with his fingertips, as he opened his mouth to… agree? Protest? The truth was, Wylan understood that was not the son his father wanted. A broken, stupid boy. He couldn’t help that, and he never blamed his father because it wasn’t Jan’s fault, was it, Jan loved his son. Jan prepared him for the realities he would face by never softening the corners of the world because he knew he needed to make Wylan strong enough to navigate them for himself.

Wylan didn’t fault his father. Jan did the best he could with what passed for his son, and Wylan, he accepted the limitations of what he was. He knew he was wrong, but he didn’t think he was misbehaved, usually.

“I am thinking of your future. You are a boy of limited prospects. If Nikolai Lantsov sees something in you, that is a relationship of use. We will need every connection we can find, do you understand that?”

Wylan nodded.

“Yes, Father. Best behavior.”

“Good.”

Despite the roiling deep in his belly that Wylan always felt at the spoken reminder of his inadequacies, he felt almost warm.

We will need every connection we can find.

His father had said “we”.

When Nikolai arrived that evening, he offered a broad smile and shook Jan’s hand. He gave Wylan the same greeting though somewhat more perfunctorily. Wylan hardly minded. The whole business felt disingenuous. He had seen Nikolai smile, and it looked nothing like that flash of shark’s teeth.

Instead, Wylan did as his father wanted: he stayed on his best behavior. He stayed quiet and attentive.

He noticed that Nikolai had impeccable table manners and clean, square nails.

He noticed that Nikolai kept up an easy conversation with Jan. From the moment the door opened, Nikolai maintained a merry chatter: about Kerch, about the harbors, he seemed particularly interested in the staadwatch and the keeping of the peace. Nikolai made a few allusions to that—to peace.

He talked about the wine at dinner. It was from Eames Chin, and Nikolai even estimated the year it had been bottled.

“The peak of a lengthy period of warmer temperatures,” Nikolai explained to Wylan, holding up his glass to admire the etchings in the light.

Wylan generally held little interest in wine. He appreciated the artistry, though. Etching manipulated shadow and light to emphasize the rich color of a dark wine. Working art on glass left no room for mistakes.

“With a warmer climate, the grapes ripen darker and sweeter. I’ve heard you’re quite the chemist.” Nikolai offered a genuine, slightly wicked grin. “So you’ll know the end product of a particular anaerobic process of yeast breaking down glucose.”

Of course he knew. The yeast got its energy from the glucose, and that produced--

“Oh!” Wylan realized. “Then—a darker wine is more alcoholic?”

“No, Wylan, that is irrelevant,” his father said with a warning look.

Wylan caught himself leaning forward, engaging with the conversation. Wine meant nothing to him, but the grapes, them chemistry: he understood these things! He had been eager. Too much so. He settled back, his posture upright, attentive but reserved.

“But a sweeter grape does usually lead to a stronger wine,” Nikolai said, “you were on the right path there, even if you took a turn too soon. I would almost suspect you had an ulterior motive, Mister Van Eck!”

“Not at all,” Jan assured Nikolai. Just as Nikolai had come into the house with a false smile, Jan offered him one now.

Wylan didn’t remember when he had last seen his father smile genuinely.

“I acquired a case of them some years ago, and I save them for guests who can appreciate a rare vintage. Have you tried…”

And then they were discussing alcohol in detail. Wylan tried to follow along, but mostly paid mind to the dinner in front of him. He suspected there were two whole mackerel put into this meal, a fillet and half a head on each plate, and that being half a skull made him even less comfortable with the eyeball staring back at him. It looked so judgmental. In a way, Wylan understood: he would be judgmental, too, served up on someone’s plate. But in a more practical way, it was not only dead but literally brainless.

Who decided including the head in a plated meal was a good idea, anyway?

He speared a potato on his fork instead. Mackerel was… fine. But at least this potato’s eye held no judgment.

“What is it you’re studying?” Jan asked.

“Engineering and Fjerdan.”

“Fjerdan. A strange choice for a man of your background.”

“Not at all,” Nikolai said, “Fjerda and Ravka need to make our amends with one another. I see it as investment in my country’s future. Our alphabets even have similar origins—though, of course, I read Kerch as well.”

Wylan swallowed and wiped his mouth on his napkin, hurriedly preparing to jump in and lend his voice, just in case he might help convince his father.

“No, you won’t be helping my son with his reading.”

Wylan flinched back. Why? Hadn’t he been on his best behavior, just as his father asked?

Nikolai’s smile went still, though not quite faded.

“Mister Van Eck—”

“Wylan struggles with his reading, I have a rather detailed plan of attack for this particular challenge. However, if you might have the time to teach him a bit of Fjerdan…”

Wylan restrained a grin.