sofo was grinning, like a bastly reflection; he thought he felt a warming in the other man’s field, and a deeper, curious mingling. He didn’t think ada’xa Tsofo could hear the lie on his tongue, though he felt a slight prickle of shame. But he settled more, still grinning with thoughts of swirling red ink, a little easier with the – unexpected – direction the conversation had taken.
He raised his brows when Tsofo spoke. “Ah?” His grin didn’t falter, though he felt another, deeper prickle at the prospect of seeing more of him. Seeing him, he thought quickly, more. At Thul’amat. “Ah,” he said again, sitting up against the warm stone, studying the other man with a new curiosity.
In your youth, he thought, studying the other man skeptically. He uncrossed his aching legs – he’d been sitting that way, he thought, for a half hour now – and then crossed them again the other way, shifting in his seat. He crossed his arms again. Thoughtfully; comfortably.
“Indeed, ada’xa,” he repeated, though he felt by now a pina like he was repeating the invocation of a recipient spell.
He knew, at least, something of opportunities lost. He glanced down once, before he could stop himself, at Tsofo’s well-muscled chest. This time, it was something different he felt; this time, it was something like bitterness. He nodded anyway, trying to look sympathetic with a wistful grin of his own.
He was suddenly conscious of Tsofo’s knee a couple of inches from his, nothing but the air and two layers of thin linen between them.
The travel team. “But – forgive me, ada’xa, I never asked – are you a professor here at Ire’dzosat?” He shifted himself, as if accepting a dare; he didn’t get any closer, but he turned toward the other man, to look at him more fully in the face. He rested his elbow against the stone, propping up his head. “And – assistant clairvoyant coach, for dueling? I’m afraid I don’t know much about clairvoyance and dueling; you don’t see it very often, in Anaxas. You don’t see clairvoyance so often in Anaxas, unfortunately.”
Clairvoyance and dueling. He remembered suddenly what Niccolette’d said of Tsabiyi and Thul’amat, though he knew better than to drop that name here, or voice that particular opinion.
There’d be a Brunnhold-Thul’amat match, he knew; he studied Tsofo, wondering. He’d not a damned clue what a clairvoyant might do in a duel, and he doubted Anatole’s daughter had much experience with it, either. Maybe it’d do to know a man like this.
More than anything, he felt sluggish in the warmth and the thick steam. Tsofo’s caprise was still friendly and curious. He’d the sense of the other man nudging, he thought, at the edges of him. Pleasant enough, but still nudging. Anatole, he thought again, with the same tug of uncertainty. He decided he liked sir better for now.
All the same, he mingled a little deeper into the clairvoyant mona, lifting an eyebrow. Still polite; no more than ada’xa Tsofo had done.