Page 60 of Brave Truth

“Not too different in age from now. Give or take a year, maybe two?” Claudio added. “You have just a little silver coming in at the temples. There wasn’t too much more.”

“Do I?” Matty blinked. “Really?”

“I do notice things. Anything involving you, particularly.” Now Claudio sounded relaxed and amused again. “Mother is the challenge here, obviously you wouldn’t want to be running into her at odd times the way things are. But I suppose we can posit a world in which— for whatever reasons— that is not the case at Auctoritas. She moves elsewhere. I don’t know. Something.” Claudio wasn’t saying the worse sort of things, like a death. Matty had to admire that.

“You told her you weren’t going to introduce me until she could be decent. I can’t even imagine introducing you to my parents.” Matty admitted that. “They— at least she knows about me? Whatever she thinks, it’s not a shock now.”

“Your choice. If you don’t, I understand. If you ever want to, you let me know what you want from me. You’re dealing with my mother exceedingly well, given everything.” Claudio shrugged. “And my friends.”

“I like your friends,” Matty protested. “That part’s not hard. Not now. It’s a bit much sometimes. But then Orion’s right there explaining something so I don’t feel left out. And Hypatia’s always grand to talk to. She knows her work so well. Cammie’s just endlessly fun.” Matty added after a moment. “All right, Cammie’s just expanded her range of amusements. She was always a bit like that. That part isn’t really as intimidating.”

“And she’s barely threatened to bite you,” Claudio agreed. “All right. We can see what happens there. But a life with you, whatever that looks like.” He shifted again on the bed, and the tone of his voice changed. “The thing about the Challenge is that if I am going there as myself…” As he’d said earlier, Matty nodded. “The self I want to be is one who has been thoroughly had. Taken? What’s the right verb here?”

“Some people might say buggered,” Matty offered, though now he was teasing a bit. “So full up of what you’re not supposed to do that there isn’t room to worry about all the things you’re not doing?” He felt Claudio’s reaction well before there was anything audible, a shiver. “Ah. Just like that, then.” There were a number of parts of him, not just physical, that very much wanted to do that. It was the most glorious challenge to fling himself at and decidedly into. “I don’t know if I can do it right. Not when the timing’s so delicate.”

“Mmm.” Claudio considered, then tugged Matty closer, so that the two of them were tight against each other. Matty was on his side with his cock pressed against Claudio’s hip, and Claudio’s arm around his shoulder and fingers trailing down his back. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll make do. I’ve had lots of practice with things failing. And recovering after.”

“You have?” It did not fit with Matty’s image of him at all.

“Mmm. One thing Isembard hammered home early and often. Also, bohort. The two being related in his way of going at the world.” Claudio made another of those little rumbling noises. “Though I suppose he didn’t spell it out in the general classes. He did explain it to Orion, my fourth year. The thing about bohort is that it’s made of failures. You try something and it doesn’t work. Not that match, anyway, or that practice. And so you go away and you figure out if there’s anything you could do differently, and you try again. But there’s also a space to fail, to not get it right the first time.”

“Also, a lot of pressure,” Matty pointed out.

“With a team, yes. Working on your own? Less. But that’s part of why Orion and I duel regularly. We can try things and get them wrong. Good for both of us. And it keeps us on our toes. He’s a better duellist. I come up with more new tricks.”

Matty chewed on that for a moment, and the way Claudio put that. “You’re not putting yourself down when you say he’s a better duellist. I mean, it just is for you.”

“It’s true.” Claudio sounded amused. “Gabe told me, a while back, that I’m not the best in the room at anything, the sort of company I keep. Which, admittedly, includes a lot of people who are the best in the room at what they do. But he pointed out that I’m often second or third best at everything. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since. And trying to draw on it. Not the best duellist, but I can hold my own. Not the bravest, but I’ll keep doing the brave thing. You see?”

Matty did and didn’t. He understood the concept, and everything he’d seen from and about Claudio suggested that Gabe’s analysis was probably accurate. Or at least, he could agree that Gabe was making that judgement based on sound evidence. But he wasn’t sure what it was like to live like that. Now, he took a breath. “And now you’d like to be thoroughly debauched. Best at being debauched in the room? Most surrendered to the experience?”

“Oh, yes.” Claudio twisted a bit more onto his side, so he could let his left hand run down Matty’s hip. “Want to talk about exactly how we might go about that?”

Matty did. The talking did in fact work them both up, rather quickly, in a way that devolved into hands and oil and Matty working his way in after they’d covered the most necessary parts of the outline.

Chapter 39

Sunday, July 30th

“Good evening, Claudio.” Mother came into the dining room, perfectly dressed. Particularly for a Sunday, where she’d been out in the afternoon, but he thought she’d been home for several hours. “Tiberius is out this evening, isn’t he?”

“He is.” Tiberius was out with Minerva, in fact. He was escorting her to a summer concert in Trellech as a particular treat. It was, he was fairly sure, also partly an excuse for the two of them to talk with no parent or grandparent being too nearby. He came around to push Mother’s chair in as she sat and flicked the charm that would show they were ready for the meal with one finger. He took his seat.

The opening course— a chilled soup— was spent in ordinary conversation about the week. Mother had been at the usual range of meetings, as well as two philanthropic gatherings. She had spoken with Electra. There were plans for a shopping trip for a proper trunk before Minerva went off to tutoring school.

It was not the same school Tiberius had attended. That had closed the previous year. But a cousin of the woman who’d run that had started one, focusing particularly on music and the arts that seemed a good fit for Minerva’s interests. The calendar involved a number of concert outings, as well as practice space for those who played instruments, like Minerva’s piano.

Claudio was pleased it had worked out so smoothly, and grateful to Electra for having done most of the practical work on it. As he’d told her again that afternoon. He continued to be relieved that while they’d never been passionate about each other— for reasons he was coming to understand better now— they continued to work well together when it came to their children. Not like Orion and his first wife, for all Orion had given her a number of chances to do better by their children.

Likewise, the entrée course went simply enough. Mother did not inquire about his work. She never did. But she asked if he’d read two recent articles, one about alchemy, one about a sympathetic magic theory. He’d read both and naturally referenced several pieces of current materia research in the process. He’d read two of the materia pieces because Hypatia had mentioned them, and the third because Matty had passed it along to both Claudio and Hypatia. Who had apparently flung herself upon it with exclamations and red ink queries, which was at least entertaining Orion.

Translating that into something Mother would make sense of, however, was a challenge. Claudio settled for noting that the third one had serious quality concerns, and a synopsis of the most relevant problems. He saw her decide to shift the conversation before she did, as they were both finished with their plates. He was, perhaps in self-defence for the way he’d been raised, particularly attentive to her tells. She didn’t have many, but he had a lifetime of observing them. Definitionally.

“We should talk about a particular matter.” That was unsubtle by her standards. Her voice was even, but he was clear she was being as deliberate about this as she ever had been in her life.

“Yes?” No ‘Mother’ on the end, he wanted to see if he could have this conversation without highlighting that aspect. “Do go ahead.” He was bracing himself now. She had not brought up the gossip since it happened. Not to him. Only barely with Mabyn, from what Cyrus had conveyed in a thoughtful note.

“Others have noticed how you are behaving in the preparations for your Challenge. Obviously, they assume that I have opinions and expect that you have consulted me.” Her lips were tight, but Claudio could not decide, not with the narrow lines of information available to him, whether she was more angry or frustrated. He was not as gifted at reading emotions in conversation as either Gabe or, admittedly, Ursula were. Being her son did not convey any particular benefit here.