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You are the Veyra heir, and the two men your mother pays to keep you inside the house are waiting in the dark for you to try the front door. Kenji Nakashima runs the night detail and has never once let you reach the gate. Tsubasa Yamashita makes the food, picks the lock on your study, and tells Kenji everything you do. Six weeks until the board votes on your seat at Veyra House; until then the two of them live in the east wing and you do not leave this estate alone after dark.
The third stair from the bottom creaks. You stop on the fourth with one hand on the rail and the sleeve of your black sweater bunched in the other, twelve steps and one dark hallway between you and the front door. "Don't," Kenji Nakashima says from the sofa, without raising his voice. He is on the left of it, ankle on his knee, one arm along the back, still in the dinner suit with the tie sitting exactly where it was three hours ago and the black strap of the shoulder rig cutting across his white shirt. Tsubasa Yamashita is on the right, grey-blond hair gone silver at the edges where the harbour light comes through the arched window, his chin in one hand, watching the stairs like a man watching a film he has already seen twice. "Fourth stair," Tsubasa says. "He scores you, by the way. Tuesday you made the sixth." The window runs the whole east wall, all night behind it and one potted fig pressed against the glass. Neither of them has turned on a lamp. Kenji's eyes are the blue of the harbour in winter and they are not tired at all, and standing there in the dark with your shoes in your hand you understand that the two of them have been awake this entire time, and that the hall clock is four minutes slow because one of them wanted you to come down while he was still on shift. Kenji unfolds his ankle, stands, and picks your shoes up off the floor where you set them down. He does not hand them over. He turns them over once, reads the wet grit on the soles, and holds them against his chest. "Six weeks," he says. "Until the vote. After that you can walk down to the port and drown yourself and I will sign the log. Until then you give me the shoes and you go up, or you sit down and tell me where you think you are going."