Page 45 of The Scent of the Ideal

“And we’ll find him,” Cambray insisted, trusting that Rafi’s growling wasn’t a threat or maybe misinterpreting what had Rafi upset and wanting to make him feel better.

Rafi had never had a nicer nameday, not even as a child when the housekeeper had made small cakes for him.

“I am glad you’re with me,” he told them all as they neared the river, which smelled of rotted piers even in the soft summer breeze. His nose was tingling. His lips felt like buzzing bees. “But he’s not my sweetheart.”

Laure challenged this in a pleasant tone. “Katoh, do you think you could track my scent through the entire academy to find me if you needed me? At least, if your aedis was near, could you?”

“Yes. Why?” Katoh half stumbled, bringing Rafi in to her side since their arms were linked. “Oh.” She gave Rafi the most obvious wink he’d ever seen.

“That’s….” Rafi fell silent after failing to think up a retort.

The crowds around them grew thicker, music and loud laughter coming from several directions.

They passed a small theater with people slowly leaving its wide entrance as if a play had just ended, and then approached the much larger King’s Theater. Its entrance was dark, the play that had been performed there over some time ago.

Rafi turned to a side street, following the source of the noise and not a particular scent. Not even in aedis could anyone have tracked one scent among so many, especially not with the stench of the river so strong.

His gaze fell on the corner building painted a red vivid enough to be seen at night, with a sign above the door naming it the Post and Lintel. An odd name for an actors’ pub, if it was. But then again, the post drawn on the sign might as well have been a cock, and the lintel cradled it in such a way that Rafi’s lips parted in surprise.

Cambray saw the sign as Rafi did and almost fell over laughing.

“That one?” Katoh prodded Rafi, as if Rafi was interested in the pub for some reason other than its suggestive sign, and started off toward it.

“He said he was supporting a friend. Not that he’d be anywhere around here.” Rafi’s feet continued to lead him toward the pub. Bellai’s plays were performed at the King’s Theater, but Viau could have been anywhere: his room in the palace, in Bellai’s rooms. Bellai and Viau might have been friends as Viau was friends with Rafi; Rafi hadn’t asked. “No one could smell flowers in this,” he continued as they all approached the door, where either their similar dress or the swords at their hips drew some looks. Nobles, soldiers, and swersoldi wore swords. Not most who lived in the city and certainly not the actors once off the stage.

But no one barred their entry, and Rafi slipped in behind Laure’s tall form, taking in all of the first level that he could see. The Post and Lintel had small tables, chairs, and benches like any other pub, and then decorations and seating that looked to be abandoned stage props and scenery. Some patrons sat in the prows of tiny ships, or on faded velvet cushions. Patched curtains, pinned open, separated each room from the others. The walls held wooden swords and painted crowns.

Katoh was delighted and swooped toward an empty table immediately, clearly planning to stay.

“Aw, he’s not here,” Laure remarked, probably about to say something about sweethearts now that he was fairly pissed and enjoying the chance to be romantic.

“I’ll go buy us a bottle,” Rafi insisted before Laure could try, then left in search of a bar before Laure managed an objection.

Once there, he looked over the first floor of the pub again as he waited. He couldn’t see up the stairs. Downstairs, he saw strangers, and his friends, and Cambray’s new friends, who were in a different corner, boisterous and loud. They were only a year or two younger than Rafi but he shook his head before turning away from them. He’d told Katoh searching for Viau was a fool’s errand, but this pub would do as well as any other for the rest of their night.

“That is not a wooden sword.”

The husky-voiced, amused remark came from a stranger who slid into place at Rafi’s right.

A nex, older than Rafi by a dozen or so years, with long dark hair braided at the crown like a farmer set to milk a cow might wear theirs. There were traces of paint on the nex’s cheeks, but not the prettying kind nobles and some courtesan used. These looked like streaks of color accidentally left there and then forgotten. The clothes were jewel-toned but hardly silks. Not a farmer by any means. Possibly an actor.

Rafi shook his head and took his wrist from his sword hilt, where he tended to rest it whenever he wore a weapon. “But I have no intention of using it.”

The other nex smiled in a friendly way. “Maybe if young nobles and swersoldi could show off jewels and velvets instead of swords, there would be less trouble.”

Rafi opened and shut his mouth on his first response, then finally nodded. The nex, the probable actor, used poetry in speech, so Rafi tried to respond as if Viau were there. “My friends and I are here on what they have decided is a mild adventure—to find someone, except we know we won’t find them. We aren’t going to start anything. We aren’t the sort anyway.”

The other nex seemed intrigued, leaning in. “An adventure?”

“A quest, they call it,” Rafi confessed, sober enough from his walk to feel silly for saying it but drunk enough to say it anyway.

The other nex clapped their hands together, grinning. “A quest! Such whimsy. Perhaps you do belong in here, pretty one, you and your friends. This quest is to find someone? Someone in particular?”

“A missing aertotius,” Laure declared, sliding around Rafi to pick up the tray of cups and the bottle Rafi had paid for. Laure must have had more than Rafi had seen him have, because he snorted at his own comment and only then seemed to notice Rafi was talking to someone. He dared to look offended when Rafi frowned at him.

“We were simply hoping to visit someplace new, and thought perhaps we thought we might find a friend of ours here.” Rafi was clear enough that even a starry-eyed Laure should have understood him. “They thought. I didn’t.”

The other nex looked up to Laure, then back to Rafi. “A friend?” The question was so pointedly delicate that the nex must have guessed why anyone would cross a city to look for someone. When Rafi thought of it that way, he supposed it was obvious.