Page 42 of The Scent of the Ideal

It wasn’t that he didn’t fully understand the poems. It was more that he didn’t see why the information needed to be conveyed that way.

From what he remembered of the plays he’d seen, the lines had felt more natural. Perhaps there was some poetry in how those things were phrased, but plays made sure that everyone in the audience understood what was being said, not just the other playwrights and scholars in the crowd.

Rafi remarked on that as he put down the volume to rub his eyes. He was also tired, although that was no one’s fault but his own and he wouldn’t change it.

“Maybe Viau can take you to a play,” Laure replied. When Rafi didn’t immediately answer, Laure glanced at him but stayed focused on practicing his flower letters. “Who else occupies your thoughts even if you keep yourself quiet?” He delicately dipped his thin brush into the ink. “Everyone admires him, Rafi. But you know him more intimately than most, and your admiration has only grown.”

“You also know him.” It was a fool’s argument. Rafi made it anyway, then sighed with some anger. “We are friends, and now there is bed-play outside of aedis—bed-play is what he calls it.” He added that because Viau didn’t speak the way most academy students did. “When he must eventually return to court, I’m sure we will stay friends in the way he is friends with nearly everyone.”

“Does he still smell like wildflowers and bees in the spring to you?” Laure punctuated something with a flick of his wrist. He wouldn’t ask that if he didn’t have a reason to.

Rafi flinched to hear those words said back to him. “Some miné smell better to me than others. It matters to nex and to miná when near aedis.”

He was not near aedis. Laure kindly didn’t point that out.

“Katoh and I are going to try to get a placement together.” He said it evenly, his brush movements light because he’d been practicing a lot, probably more than Rafi knew. “That likely means we will not be in the most known or well-paying positions, but we’ll try nonetheless. It’s been done before, although usually it is swersoldi falling in love while already placed together. But some marry and will not be separated.”

It would be good to ask the instructors for advice on that subject. Possibly even Viau, although Rafi didn’t want Viau to think they only wanted things from him.

Anyway, he knew what Viau would say, so he said it. “Swersoldi should be allowed what happiness they can find, be that with sweethearts, or lovers, or spouses, or interests that are not solely protecting nobles.”

Laure paused his practice to look up. “Do you have interests outside of this?”

“My friends,” Rafi answered immediately, still unsure about healing. “If we ever got assigned to opposing houses, we’d be in trouble.”

“You’d hate to have to kill me.” Laure didn’t make it a question.

Rafi scowled at him so severely that Laure was taken aback.

“Sorry.” Rafi shook his head. “No, I am not sorry for showing some temper. No, I don’t think I could kill you. I don’t… I don’t have anything, not even family, not outside of those who share my name. I have all of you, including Cambray, who can be annoying and who smells like toast.”

“Toast?” Laure lost some of his shocked air but was no less serious. “You have Viau too.”

“I said that.” Rafi was fairly certain he had. He had his small circle of friends, and Viau had accepted his place in that and even called Rafi loyal.

“Perhaps you did say that,” Laure allowed. “But my words were not the same as yours. You’d better read more poetry if you want to talk like he does and work with him someday.”

“‘Work with him?’” Rafi was too surprised not to show it. “I don’t expect….” Rafi worked very hard so he could achieve the best placement he could get. He had not considered that would ever be at the palace at Viau’s side. But he thought now that Viau might say Rafi was capable of reaching that level. Viau might even insist that he try.

Rafi put his hand over the book he’d closed but didn’t open it. “I think you could too,” he told Laure and meant it. “And Katoh.”

“Say that to her face,” Laure returned, “and she will go as bashful as anyone who didn’t grow up how she did.”

Rafi would, because Katoh deserved a chance to be at that level too, and because Viau was right to believe that nearly perfect swersoldi would be wanted. She might act bold, but Katoh worried about the future like anyone might and was probably anxious that Laure would be taken from her. She loved him so dearly that despite her generous nature, she would not share.

“Viau would say we should reach,” Rafi revealed after several quiet moments, with Laure once again dipping his brush. “He’d say that the work is real, but nothing else about being a swersoldi is, and the image may get us farther than we think, although what we do then is up to us.” Family or not, Rafi doubted the king would keep Viau around if he weren’t the best as what he did. “We can be the best if we want.”

Laure got ink on his hand, too busy staring at Rafi to notice the fallen droplet yet. “One night and you’re saying that?”

“He knows what the world is,” Rafi answered, strangely vexed about it. “And our place in it. He chooses to be how he is. And with that, he’s… he’s not altogether unhappy.”

“Ah. Shit.” Laure noticed the ink spill and blotted it on a piece of paper. “‘Not altogether unhappy?’” he echoed quietly. “What is he lacking? Ah,” Laure said again, leaving the ink that had already spread over his skin to dry. “Well, I’m glad you’re thinking about it—a future that is not altogether unhappy.”

Rafi felt as if he ought to be vexed again but was too surprised to be. He hadn’t put it in those terms, but it seemed after one clear-headed night with Viau, he was imagining something about the days to come that wasn’t work and duty and hopefully some money for himself to live.

Unfurling, he thought then, and flushed hot under his clothes.

Viau did not exactly attempt discretion, although there was no need for that when the entire academy already knew where Rafi went for aedis and were eager to gossip about anything else. Viau paused by Rafi’s friends’ table at the evening meal to greet them all, informed Rafi that he was riding into the capital the following morning but would be back by evening, and then put a few sachets of plain linen onto the table with the explanation that the petals inside were to be soaked in warm water and applied in a poultice to help ease minor aches and pains, and he had been working with the healers to hopefully make the remedy stronger, as it was related to something in the petals themselves. He added that anyone was free to use them and hoped they’d be kind enough to tell him the results afterward.