Foundation of Smoke and Steel

Chapter 194

Daniel Daniel wanted to do the world's biggest face palm.

He didn't have time for this. He was tired, his head hurt, and his wife had tried to seduce him this morning, which, setting aside the fact that they were supposed to be in a political marriage, was its own particular problem given that she was the most striking woman he had ever seen in his entire life. What the hell was up with that?? On top of which they had to figure out how to keep demons from invading, how to get the orcs aligned with the Empire, and how to keep Nathan from causing diplomatic incidents before anyone had even sat down at a negotiating table. That was the short list. The full list ran somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand items and growing.

He pressed two fingers against the ache behind his eye.

He was cranky, and he needed to find something to eat. He rolled the stiffness out of his neck, turned what Caleb had said over once, and took his time answering.

He kept his eyes on Ryan, who had stopped trying to reconcile the three competing voices and was simply moving now, the sword finding something honest underneath all the noise. Nathan pushed harder while Gavin and Lucas looked on with something between pride and amusement. Ryan held his own. His little brother might actually be a prodigy.

Caleb cleared his throat.

Daniel kept his expression neutral.

Caleb was still waiting. That was the first thing Daniel filed away. Caleb let the quiet sit. The Caleb he had constructed from everything Ethan remembered would have been talking by now, smoothing the air, managing the moment. This one stood with his arms folded, watching Ryan in the yard with something that looked like patience.

Daniel let it stretch another few seconds. Then he said, without looking at him, "You say you know what's coming and that you want to help. I assume you have some specific insight into future events that you think would be useful."

He made it a statement and let Caleb decide what it was.

Caleb glanced at him. There was a shift behind his eyes, quick and assessing, then it settled. "That's one way to put it."

"It's the way I'm putting it. Because I'm not entirely sure what we're talking about."

Caleb took his time, then said, carefully, "Then let me illuminate it for you. Before long, the Empire, the world, is going to face a very substantial threat. The next twelve months are going to matter more than anything that came before them. And I know enough to know that this family is going to need every advantage it can get."

Ethan observed.

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Daniel couldn't help himself. He rolled his eyes.

Ethan continued.

Daniel watched Ryan attempt a form transition and swing wide enough to send one of Gavin's retainers stumbling back from the edge of the yard. Nathan's correction landed at once, without a scrap of sympathy.

"Build rapport," Daniel said aloud, as though commenting on the training.

Caleb blinked. "Sorry?"

"Nothing." Daniel turned to look at him directly for the first time since the conversation started. "Caleb, if I'm being honest, well, here's my problem."

He let that sit for a moment.

"You want to help. Fine. Let's say I'm willing to entertain that for thirty seconds. Let's even pretend that up until this point most of your decisions weren't completely selfish. That's a fiction, obviously, but I'll play along for the moment." He kept his voice even, unhurried, the way he kept it when he was genuinely irritated and he preferred not to show how much. "Let's say there's something coming. Something significant enough that having someone with particular insight into it would matter. Let's say all of that is true."

Caleb waited.

"How could I ever trust you or anything you're saying?" Daniel said. "You deliberately seduced Claire, preying, I might add, on her own insecurities to get her to marry you. You mocked me at our joint wedding and spent the entire period leading up to it making sure everyone in the room understood exactly how much you looked down on me. You came to the home return and did the same thing. You insulted me, you insulted my wife, and you insulted your own wife by how you behaved toward every other woman in the room. Claire is your legal wife. Someone you claimed to care about. And you treated her as an afterthought."

He paused. "And that's just the stuff in the last year. You have spent basically your entire life treating me like a footnote in a story you considered yourself the main character of."

Something shifted in Caleb's jaw. He clearly wanted to defend himself and visibly forced himself to stop. A stark emotion crossed his face but it was gone in a second. Doubt probably. A flicker of emotion that might have been genuine self-reflection, or might have been vanity rearranging itself. It was hard to tell.

"Let me be clear. I don't hate you. Even if we're getting down to the Brax Tax, you deserve a punch to the face, maybe a couple," Daniel said. "Like, I could literally smack you and not think twice about it. Now. Here is the important part. I have considered it. I'm considering punching you right now, but having considered all that, if you have genuine information that can help, I would be glad to hear it."

Caleb started to say something, but Daniel tilted his head slightly and cut him off. "I want you to stay with our metaphorical situation for a second. Some deed, date, or disaster that actually matters is likely to manifest in the not-too-distant future, enough so that your breaking character, the one we all know and want to punch—"

"That's the second time you've talked about punching me."

"It won't be the last, I assure you," Daniel said, though his words lacked some of their prior heat. "So riddle me this: even if you had some sort of important future information for the sake of this hypothetical, I'm assuming that you do. Why on earth would I believe you'd tell me the correct information? Especially considering your propensity for being a dick. You've shown no capacity to think outside of yourself. Not when it comes to me or really even the people around you. You're selfish and self-serving. You're arrogant and unyielding, and the worst part about that is you don't even have the particular skills to back it up. Don't get me wrong, for your age you're fine, but you're nothing special. So, considering how you've treated me, our family, pretty much everyone around you in the past, how could I possibly trust you to do the right thing just because it's the right thing?"

Out in the yard, steel rang against steel, Nathan kept up his running commentary, and Ryan's responses grew more exasperated by the exchange.

Caleb was quiet for long enough that Daniel thought he might not answer.

Then he said, "You're right."

Daniel raised an eyebrow.

"Everything you just said." Caleb's voice came out flat, stripped of any performative edge or conciliatory softening, just the words. "I treated you that way because it was easier than taking you seriously. Taking you seriously would have meant looking at things I wasn't interested in looking at. Your genius. My own very obvious shortcomings."

He exhaled slowly. "I'm not asking you to forget that. I'm not asking you to trust me. I know what's coming, and I'm pretty sure you do too."

He looked back at Ryan.

"So I'm asking you to consider that the person who treated you that way and the person standing here are not entirely the same. And that the difference between them might be worth something to you, even if it's only to use it to help save the world."

Ethan said quietly,

Daniel said nothing for a moment.

Then he said, "I'll think about it."

An answer that left the door cracked, no wider. Intelligence that might matter was worth keeping in reach. A liar's word was worth nothing on its own. "I'll think about it" sat in the space between.

Caleb nodded once. He didn't push it.

In the yard, Ryan landed a sequence of strikes, imperfect but genuinely good, clean enough that the retainers monitoring his form exchanged a look. If Ryan had anywhere near the natural talent and mana control it appeared he had, he was going to be a complete powerhouse. Daniel watched him and felt a tired amusement. He was getting worn out by genius.

Caleb said nothing further. He just stood there, stuck somewhere inside his own thoughts, and for once did not seem to be performing anything at all.