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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | The Fallon Fleet stands poised in between operations of a successful campaign against the Scarlet Onslaught, and another soon-to-be against the kvaldir, and Lady Fallon has a very reasonable preoccupation with the potential for Siamus to die. Again. Luckily, it's Thursday, and that means billiards, and a possible reprieve in the First Footman of Fallon House. 5800~ words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
If there is one thing true of Lady Fallon, it is that she is not, either by nature or by refinement, an ordinarily restless person. She moves deliberately, and she executes her decisions efficiently and without hesitation, and she often stands and sits as though for a portrait, holding herself carefully still.
Except that on the 19th, a bouquet and box arrived with a letter from the Vice Admiral, and since then the Duchess has not stopped moving, as if she has come into some knowledge that she is a machine whose motion powers Siamus' well being.
There were five bouquets on the 19th, assembled with excruciating care, that for some reason seemed to need her to circle each one like a shark herding a school of fish.
On the 20th, the Duchess took down every single past ledger of the House and ran complicated calculus on them — all while pacing relentlessly around the room. She ate little at breakfast, nothing at all for lunch, and so little at dinner that it might have seemed like a rejection of the meal if not for her firm reassurance to Cook that everything was delightful.
When Ralaea arrived on the 21st, some of the restlessness subsided, for at least a day, though she did not entirely come to a complete stop.
On the 22nd, another letter arrived from the Vice Admiral, and the restlessness grew. She kept herself so busy that when she skipped meals, it was almost plausible that it was from distraction of the business at hand. Miss Curran and Finley were repeatedly dispatched and reports sent from whatever business that entailed. But her meals continued to shrink, even as her belly has continued to grow, and there is a touch of something a little worn around the edges to the Duchess, no matter how she has kept her head held high and her shoulders squared off.
On this day, the 25th, one can only assume she has been similarly restless, because aside from leaving her room to take her Daily Walk For Some Reason (perhaps the lady simply takes her exercise very seriously), she has not been out of her room, the door closed, with orders to not be disturbed unless it is by letter from Siamus, or the man himself. She has, as far as anyone knows, eaten nothing.
So it might be that Shine is not expecting the Duchess at all tonight, just an empty billiards table and game room.
But no, the light is on — the door left just barely ajar, and from within the game room is the distinctive clicks of billiard balls hitting each other.
Shine opens the door uncertainly to peer in. After a moment, he steps into the room and draws the door to barely ajar again behind him. He is holding a small silver bowl in one hand. "Lady Fallon?" he inquires.
Lady Fallon looks up from her game, and there's relief there in the settling of her features. She is dressed in her robe, her hair is down, tucked back behind her ears. Around her neck is the gold case she always wears when Siamus is not at home — a pocket watch case, possibly? she would have no need of her own with Siamus there after all — on the gold chain.
Her game appears to not be going well — she has scattered the necessary targets into places that even an advanced player would struggle with, at angles and lengths apart that would stress the exactness of force needed. It's very likely she has been missing her points against herself. So. That's going well.
There is no lemon in the room already. She did not go down into the kitchen for it, perhaps trying to avoid being pressed to eat something.
"Mr. Shine." It's her usual greeting, as if this was just another Thursday Billiards. She straightens up, and starts walking around the table, as if she needs to do this to greet him properly, which is not at all her usual way.
Shine stands, footman-impassive, though his one-eyed gaze is a little wary. "I wasn't certain whether I would find you here this evening." He hesitates, then steps forward and proffers the silver dish in both hands. "Chocolate mousse," he says solemnly.
Avrenne's expression does a small shaky thing — a dip into something vulnerable and a faint tremble around her lips — before she covers it with a smile and a tilt of her chin, stepping forward to accept the dish with both hands herself. She does not have the stronger scent of lotus she usually does on Thursdays.
"Oh. That is very kind of you, thank you." She glances from the mousse, and back up to Shine, a touch of chagrin drawing her brows down. "Cook is not displeased is she? I — there is nothing wrong with the meals. I simply…" She trails off a bit, dropping her eyes from Shine back to the mousse. "I needed other distraction today until I could come here, and I will eat more later." Ah, the Classic Avrenne No Appetite Deflection. Later. Which is technically true.
Later might be also now, because Avrenne might not have much of an appetite, but her body sure does, and there is a soft not-especially-ladylike gurgling rumble as her stomach dings the bell.
"Cook is not at all displeased, my lady," Shine assures her gravely, and overlooks the stomach noises because duchesses don't have those. "Naturally, the household understands that in your present circumstances, appetite can be irregular. But we thought, perhaps… chocolate."
He arches an eyebrow, otherwise impassive.
The maids might have Observed evidence.
Her face does the thing again, a rippling over her features as though she's almost making another expression, and trying to fight it back, as her hands close harder around the bowl. It would be easier to conceal if she was wearing her mask, but she isn't entirely, and so it takes her a moment to smooth the ripple out.
Once she does, she lifts her eyes back to his face, holding herself carefully. "Of course. It is most appreciated." She glances over to the billiards table. "I am afraid I have made rather a mess of this one. It would be best to start over."
In the meantime, she could be pacing and eating mousse. Like a very normal person.
Shine produces a spoon — wrapped in a linen napkin — from his sleeve like a magician and offers it to Avrenne. "Shall I reset the table while you sit for a moment, my lady?"
There's a flicker of a smile at the showmanship, a touch of lightening around her eyes.
Oh no, sitting. She does not have a good reason to be pacing and eating. It isn't even good manners. She could push back on it, but she doesn't.
"Yes, of course, thank you." She looks, in direct, exacting lines to the two closest seating options. One of them is a comfortable couch, cozy and a place a lady could put her feet up in her own home. The other is a wooden chair closer to the billiards table.
She chooses the wooden chair that is slightly too tall for her in truth, and it reveals as she sits the current state of her ankles — they're swollen, enough that there is no curve of the line of her calf into them. There's a table for her to put her bowl on.
She sets the bowl on top of her belly, and starts eating in bites that are not especially dainty.
She's doing great.
"Perhaps," Shine suggests as he begins to move around the billiards table to collect the balls, "my lady would be more comfortable on the couch? It would be easier there to elevate one's feet, which I understand to be of benefit to the vascular systems of ladies who are in a maternal way."
Just some information. Fun fact he read somewhere. Little trivia for ya. No judgement.
He does not suggest putting the bowl on a table, because to be perfectly honest, the belly thing looks convenient. Who wouldn't eat chocolate mousse off their own belly-shelf if they could?
Avrenne looks up from her dinner late night dessert snack to regard Shine. Ah, yes, the informational suggestion game. She knows that game; she lives there. It probably says something about Avrenne that it brings out a conspiratorial smile from her, rather than rebuke.
"You have the right of it. The couch might be more comfortable with such accommodations, but it is the elevation of the body as a whole that is undesirable, you see. The seat height of the couch is approximately 20", while the chair here is 34", and the billiards table 30" nearly exactly, if I have estimated them correctly." The phrasing allows for a degree of modesty that may or may not be accurate. "My half height is 30.5" and therefore, to have a view of the table, I require the elevation of the chair. So my feet will need bide for longer, as I would prefer the line of sight."
There is a secret third option, one that the Duchess might not have yet considered, which is that someone might, for example, move another chair across from her, so that she might prop her feet up in a make-shift couch.
But, it is very likely that the Duchess has never put her feet up on a chair in that way before in her life, raised as she was with Manners. Feet can go on beds. But on chairs? That could be illegal maybe. At least, in Company. But she's not with Company, is she? She's with her House. And she can do whatever she wants for her own comfort if she thought of it.
Shine nods blandly. Rather than reply, he sets the billiard balls he's holding down at one end of the table and moves away to collect a second chair. He picks it up easily, one-handed, and carries it to where the Duchess sits in hers.
Turning it sideways, so that the chair-back does not intervene in her view of the table, he sets it down a little distance before her and suggests, "Perhaps my lady would put her feet up here, then."
Avrenne blinks.
"Oh." There might be some overriding of comportment lessons going on in there, but she does, in fact, override them. She holds onto her bowl with her spoon hand, and moves her legs up with her other hand to ensure that her robe falls in correct, modest lines with it. There's a flicker of pain around her eyes, and then something of relief, as she settles back into her chair again. "I had not considered that option. Thank you, Mr. Shine."
He inclines his head gravely, and then returns to the table to consider his rearrangement.
After a time, with his gaze still directed mildly at the table, he observes, "You made a number of bouquets the other day." Just an open-ended observation.
The staff may not be aware of the Language of Flowers, but they do know that Lady Fallon does a lot of both thinking and feelings in flowers.
Avrenne pauses in her consumption of the mousse, staring at it for a moment, before she sighs, lifts it off her belly-shelf, and sets it down on the table. Her hand goes to her case, tracing the oval of it over and over, in a way Shine has seen her do many times to her pocket — this, then, is what has been there all this time.
When she speaks, it's obvious that she has thought about it, considered what to say. Her voice is low, softer, and controlled with an iron grip. "I received word from Siamus." A swallow, a tracing of the oval again. "They have commenced the intended action against the stronghold of the kvaldir that took our Nimble." A brief pause. "Lady Kate." That same pause. "Eastern Maid…and the forty-seven irreplaceable lives of our Fleet." Her hand on the case has started to shake, and she grabs onto it to steady herself.
Shine has looked up. He watches Avrenne for a moment, and then moves around the table toward her. He stops beside her chair and, after a hesitation, reaches out to rest a tattooed hand on the chair's back. After a time, he says gently, "They were caught unawares, both times before. The Vice Admiral knows what they'll meet there now, has made its measure and the fleet's. It's one thing to fight off an unexpected threat, and another to launch an attack. He won't gamble men or ships without calculating the odds exactly.
"And when I say that he won't, I mean that. If… for any reason he finds circumstances unfavorable after the Onslaught operation, he will not chance our fleet in those waters. He's a good commander."
Avrenne smiles down at her case, her shoulders squaring off. “He is an extraordinarily good commander,” she agrees. “And an even more exceptional man. He will make his decisions by his conscience. By his honor, if there is any possible way for him to come back, he will. I have absolute faith in him.” It's audible in her voice, a surety and resolution both. “He will write as soon as he is able.”
But first, she has to get through the waiting and not knowing what the cost has been. And while she does not admit it out loud, the signs are there to see that this particular waiting, caught in between the moment of not knowing, is not easy for her.
Shine studies her with concern. His expression softens a little sadly. "I'm afraid you're a true sailor's wife now, my lady." (Look, he doesn't claim average. Just true.) "It's always the waiting and the wondering. I wish I knew of a way to make the time go faster."
"Well, I have tried a generous application of chocolate, as per Priscilla's recommendation through her expertise of long experience," Avrenne says, a ghost of a wit, but it rings too hollow to land as playful. The smile is gone, and she's cradling the case in both hands now — perhaps a reminder of time passing, if there is a watch within it? "And I have…" She trails off, and what she has remains unknown for a little longer. She speaks more to the case than directly to Shine.
"That was one of the worst parts of it all, after the Fall. The waiting, and wondering. I didn't know, you see, that I was the last of us. My father — I knew my father was dead. But the rest, my mother, my sister, my brother, his wife: any one of them could have still been alive. And so I waited. For anything, a sign, a letter, an arrival at the gates. But they were already dead. I simply didn't know it yet." The grief is old, a painful silver thread woven through her voice, but no longer sharp.
"Siamus has told me that I will not go through it again. I know that whatever is happening at least — " She halts, abruptly, like a current has run through her, and her hands shake on the case. There's a moment of indecision, but whatever thought has struck her overrides another of personal privacy, because she opens the case in a sudden jerk of motion, as if she cannot wait another second to see inside it.
Inside is not a pocket watch at all. It's a still blooming blossom of the seastalk, one that must be connected to Siamus. Alongside it is Avrenne's wedding ring, nestled up against the blossom's remaining part of the stem.
At the sight, Avrenne exhales a sigh of heavy relief, a finger moving up to brush with the lightest of touches to the flower petals, and finishes her sentence, "The tides have not taken him."
"Ah," says Shine softly, and is silent for a moment. "He gave ye one, then." He gazes down at the blossom himself. "My mother used to keep one in a glass at the kitchen window for my father.
"Lady Sintha has one for the Captain, but it goes with her, so it will be in the city now. I remember —" He hesitates and clears his throat. "I remember the night of… the night ye were summoned to Wintergarde. When she found your note and went dashing for her room to see to it. The look on her face."
"Oh, Sintha," Avrenne says quietly, that same soft exhalation. She doesn't close the case, looking down at the blossom. "It was the first thing I did when I felt the summons. I was not sure why he — well. You have two minutes before a warlock summons becomes too weak to follow, and I knew time was limited. I still had to know. I know it isn't perfect, that there are a thousand ways for a man to die, and a dozen ways he might be caught in seawater and live, but it is something." She strokes her finger along the outside of the case, and she seems calmer looking at the blossom, as if holding it fixed in her attention holds some fear at bay.
"He and Sintha had it made specially for me, you know, the case, so I might carry it with me. You can never know when you might never be able to go home again, when you might have nothing but what you are carrying at that exact moment, and there will be no second chance to get something you left behind." And so, she always has it on her, even here, in her nightgown and at home.
Shine's expression remains set in solemn lines, but his eye is sorrowful. "Ye have," he says low-voiced, "my condolences, Lady Fallon. For all that you and your people bore. Not again, aye? We may pray not again."
He pauses and then says, "Some sailors won't carry them. They say it invites back luck, to prepare for ill news like that. But, then, some sailors won't learn to swim, either. The old superstitions." He shrugs.
You gotta stick with the latest in modern superstitions, you know?
That last gets Avrenne to look up at him, and Shine has probably never seen her so deeply and truly startled. It's like he just said that some politicians won't learn to talk. She cannot compute these two things.
Her mouth opens, she makes the start of a sound //I — // and has to stop, pause, and try again. There's almost smoke coming out of her ears as the computations continue. "I do beg your pardon, I mean it with every respect for a difference in belief, but might I ask, if you know, what the precise reasoning of that particular superstition is, for a sailor to not learn to swim?"
Shine's smile is a sour slant. "It's… not a pleasant rationale. The idea was that if your ship's sunk — or even if ye go overboard for some other reason, to be honest — the odds of ye making it safe to rescue are next to nil, and swimming just means ye prolong death and die exhausted. Better to get it over and done quickly."
Avrenne's left hand moves in a reflexive, unconscious way off the seastalk case and onto her right arm, circling around her wrist as if she can feel something there. Her eyes are dark and steady on Shine.
"I see," she says. "I expect it is the mathematician in me that says that so long as the chances are not exactly zero, no matter how small they are, then there is still a chance, and such a non-zero chance is worth fighting for."
"Aye, just so," Shine agrees, still wearing the ghost of that smile. "And Fallon's a mathematician and a strong swimmer besides. If there are still lads out there who believe that's the way, they're none of them serving on a Fallon crew."
"I am glad to know it." Avrenne looks once more to the blossom, and carefully, reverently, closes it once more, pulling the case to her chest to hold it there as something precious. "I have seen him on the edge of death before, and Siamus is the sort of man who would fight against a true zero. He would try, even in defiance of math itself, and he would not let go of the things he has to come back for, not for any reason, not against any odds. I know it, and I love him for it."
The edge of death remarks gives Shine brief pause. He considers her. "Aye, well. He's a blessed man to have such a faithful lady to draw him back. And I know he'll be safe up there because he'd never risk his Lady Blanche." His smile is faint again but warm.
Avrenne's own smile is a wan echo of it. "But he would risk himself, to stand in shelter of those he protects," she says, her voice as soft as a sigh, as she sets the case down against her heart. "Sintha said something like that once about him. How difficult it can be when a thing you admire so deeply about a person is also the thing most likely to get him killed."
She rises to a stand, abandoning the one-third eaten mousse, and drifts to the billiards table like she can no longer stay still. "But he has a priest, a shaman, and a warlock. If there is any way that he could come back from even death itself, he will again."
Okay, that again merits a longer pause. Finally Shine ventures cordially, "Again, Lady Fallon?"
Avrenne skims her hand over the edge of the table, staring at the center. "You are aware, I expect, of Siamus' time aboard his father's warship when he was a child, in the naval action of the Second War?" There's a dark thread of something adjacent to anger in her voice, tightly controlled until it's only a single red thread.
"Aye. It's grown old-fashioned, a lad that young, but still the custom with some of the old salt-blood lines. Not unheard-of." Shine watches her. "I know it's a thing mainlanders don't — do."
"No, as a general rule, most do not take a child into an active warzone," Avrenne says, and it's about as diplomatic as she's going to get on that subject. "In no small part because of the risk of what happened. At Crestfall, during the attack on the Valley's Pride, Siamus was on the mast. It broke, and he fell in the water, caught by the halyard and the lines." Her voice is steady, but it's tightly forced so, and her nails dig into the wood of the table. "He drowned and died. His uncle, Brother Mathis, managed to revive him."
Shine stares at her. There is just a moment when his expression twists with some emotion too fleeting to define, and then the footman's mask is back in place, even more rigidly impassive than usual. "What," he says. It is definitely a statement rather than a question. "He — I beg your pardon?" And then, before she can answer, his gaze fixes on some inner distance and he says, "The halyard scar. I never did understand — it never quite matched. What he said of it."
Avrenne nods, and there's something about the way her shoulders curve in for a moment that makes her seem much smaller for a breath. "The memory of it is…less clear than it should be, likely due to the death itself. Those who were there and older could tell you what happened. Brother Eli knows it in full."
Shine moves to the table himself in silence. He picks up a billiard ball. He sets it down again. He stands staring at it. "He never told me," he says.
"Siamus didn't know himself, the truth of it, not until recently, after the Wrathgate. His memories were muddled, and unclear. When he returned to life, he did not know he had been dead. That is, as I understand it, often the way of things. Brother Eli did know, but did not speak of it. The decision by Siamus' father at the time was to not tell Siamus, or Sintha, and so it remained unknown except by those who already knew. Brother Eli will speak of it now, if you ask him." There's something in the tone — it isn't just information presented, there is some sort of force below it, a sense that if Shine wants to know about his friend, that Brother Eli will tell him, and Avrenne will ensure it.
Shine nods at the billiard ball. "So the nightmares, then?" He lifts his gaze to Avrenne briefly. "He never said what they were about. But he's had them all his life. Eighteen years I've known him, and the nightmares all that while. It was barely two months ago he told me what he dreams."
He drops his gaze again, rolls the billiard ball idly back and forth against the baize with his fingertips. "The Admiral," he says, "if ye will pardon me for speaking of the dead, was a stony bastard. And Brother Mathis worse." He shakes his head. "But they were the men that raised Fallon. Hard to believe it, to know the man. He still won't see any wrong in them."
Avrenne forces her hands to relax, and lifts them off the table, to clasp them over her belly. "Sintha hates him, Brother Mathis, that is. I am not certain why, but when she learned who had been responsible for reviving Siamus, she had a particular…reaction to the knowledge. When she told Siamus of it, she said something odd, of how should they be grateful to Brother Mathis, and in such a way that it was clear that he had done…something, or more than one thing, that he has passed beyond a point of forgiveness or grace that even a single deed of this nature could not redeem him." She doesn't ask the question that hangs there, of why or what, and that is likely deliberate.
Shine nods again and continues to address the billiard ball. "The Admiral was one of five sons. It's the eldest, Deacon, who's the present Lord Fallon in Stormsong. Mathis was the second oldest, a powerful tidesage. Traditional, pious — I'd not like to call the man a fanatic, mind. But that doesn't make him not one. " He rolls the billiard ball again. "He served the Fallon ships — his younger brother's ships, the Admiral's — as a tidesage, the most senior among them. He was… not an easy man."
Avrenne turns, shifts her weight on her feet, sways a little. "I had two uncles on my mother's side. They were…warm. Kind men, who cherished both their sister and her children." Now her eyes go to the billiard ball to speak to it as well. "I had another uncle on my father's side, his younger brother. My father was…" A slightly over long pause. "I suppose you could say he was not an easy man." That's a diplomatic way to put it.
"And for some reason — I do not recall the why of it, truly — I was afraid of my Uncle Edouard. I really don't know what the reason was. I'm not sure if there had been things that he had done, or I simply expected him to be like my father," she says, and there is an undercurrent there that she seems to not entirely realize, that implication that Avrenne was afraid of her father, "but he was not so much like him, I don't think. I have one real clear memory of Uncle Edouard, and he was kind to me in it. He died nine months later when Alterac's betrayal permitted the Horde to lay siege to the Capital City." The grief is old, a gray thread.
She sets a hand over her belly, a protective little touch. "I know though that a child's impression can hold strongly, and that a hard, cold, traditional man can be cruel to a child who does not fit the mold he wishes her to. I know the Fallons were cruel to Sintha, and they left a mark on both of them for it."
Shine looks up again to contemplate Avrenne in silence. After a time, he nods. "The Fallons are… a very proud people. Not so grand a line or a House as the Stormsongs themselves, nor the Arkwrights, but you know how people who are humbler in circumstance can be all the stubborner in pride to make up the difference." He rolls the billard ball again absently. "If ye want the honest truth of it, the finest thing the Admiral ever did was marry Saoirse Westry. The Westry side has all the money and the status wi' Tiragarde and the great houses. But the Fallon side has the sea, and naturally there's no prize mightier, to their minds. They'll not brook being looked down on by the likes of the Westrys — which, naturally, they were. And there's none of them prouder or more unbending than Mathis.
"When Fallon was born, and born powerful, they added that to their stock of pride; that was their blood showing true, and better than anything Lady Saoirse was entitled to. Which Mathis made clear to her in so many words, ye may be sure. The only good thing about Lady Saoirse, as far as he was concerned, was that not even the likes of her could spoil the Fallon blood.
"So when Sintha was born, ye may imagine how he — how the Fallons generally, but Mathis particularly — took that. She and her daughter were a blight on the line, as he also made clear. I can't imagine what it was like for Lady Saoirse to live all that for as long as she did, but I expect we can both imagine what it is to a small child to be told by half her kin that she's a shame and a blot on her family."
Shine is grimly silent for a time, but then he adds, "It poisoned them both, in truth, because Fallon himself heard all the same in the other direction. It's always been plain to him that his value to that lot is a thing he had no real hand in, and that Mathis and Deacon saw him chiefly as a trophy in their feud wi' the Westrys.
"And if I'm honest, the second finest thing the Admiral ever did was in not sending him to the Shrine. I expect that was his solitary rebellion against his brothers for how they treated Lady Saoirse and his daughter."
Avrenne listens with that quiet attentiveness, her eyes steady on Shine. She brushes her hand over the swell of her belly, a sweep that seems instinctual. "He did love her once, if I recall correctly? The Admiral, I mean to say. It was a love match."
Shine is silent for a time. At length he turns away to go to the wall cabinet and collect a stick. "If I'm honest," he allows over his shoulder, "it's possible he never did stop. I don't think it's a common thing for a man to react to divorce by leaving the continent altogether and taking a portrait of the lady with him. And I'm not sure Fallon came by his own bitterness over the whole thing by his own accord. I think he was a shite husband, but there's plenty of men who love their wives and are shite husbands all the same.
"But I couldn't tell ye for sure, as I never knew the Admiral to be a man to have a feeling where anyone might note it." He turns back with a cue in hand. "As I said. A stony bastard. But who knows?"
Avrenne shrugs, a controlled up and down. "One might keep a portrait out of a sense of propriety, or perhaps expectation of sentiment on one's children's behalf. Or perhaps as you say, some of his own." She studies the table like it's a portrait itself, or seeing something imposed on it. "I always thought it strange that my own father forbade any artwork of us in the City townhouse. He commissioned art of us — well, of my mother and sister mostly, not of me — regularly. Always they were hung at the Great House, where he almost never was."
Shine nods. "Aye, that's fair. What ye say, I mean, not how your father was."
He returns to the table. "At any rate, I expect that explains Lady Sintha's unhappiness. That she might have to feel indebted to Mathis for returning her brother to her, and that the man who returned him probably had no thought for the lad himself but only for the family and their prize."
Avrenne clutches at the seastalk case, as if it might be some lifeline to that boy, a reflex, and she brushes her hand along it self-consciously.
There's disgust in her features, not fully concealed. "A stony bastard, indeed, if so." The stronger language is barely given time to land before she continues. "Is he still alive, Mathis?" It does not seem likely with a woman so attentive to details an accident that she has left off, this time, Brother as a title.
"I expect he may be," says Shine. "We've not had word, of course, in… some time. And Lady Sintha was in contact with the isles, but she'd not have been writing with the Fallon side of the family, only the Westry. But he was alive when we… last were there. He's younger than Deacon, and so far as I know, Deacon's still Lord of the House. Not that age has everything to do with it, but if ever there was a bastard who'd refuse to yield to anything but time, it would be Mathis."
"Mm." Avrenne's attention appears to be on something else other than the billiards in front of her. "If he is still alive, he wields some influence then, but that of a younger son of a House." There's an ominous sort of pause after, something filled either by a consideration of a future strategy, or an implied for now, difficult to say.
She comes away from the thought with a visible adjustment. "Shall we try for a two cushion?"
Lady Fallon is most certainly not ready for trying to really play out a full two cushion game against Shine, not in practical application, even if her math is completely solid by now.
"A younger son of a House," Shine concedes. "But a much-respected tidesage. Which, in Stormsong at least, carries a deal of weight. Through both the civilized isles, but Stormsong in particular." He considers the table, and then Avrenne. "And aye, we can try it." His tone suggests he does not anticipate success for the Duchess, but perhaps it will be a Valuable Educational Experience nonetheless.