A Seat at the Table

The sudden stillness inside Imperial Suite Seven carried the ring of fine crystal after a strike. Sunlight, unclouded and brilliant, slanted through the bare portholes, painting long amber rectangles across the stripped floorboards.

Klaasje Blaauw pushed herself up from the boards, her bruised ribs protesting with every measured intake of air. The blisters along her forearms smarted where the falcon's fiery plumage had brushed her wool sleeves, but her pulse beat at an even, reassuring sixty-eight counts a minute. Beside her, Lord Joris van der Meer sat back against the bulkhead, his long legs stretched across the oak planks. A dark wool travel blanket was drawn across his bare, bruised shoulders, and his breath came in slow, shuddering drafts.

The avian amber had faded entirely from his dark eyes. What remained was the quiet exhaustion of a man who had flown through his own private furnace and emerged on the other side.

"The air is flat," Joris murmured, resting his head back against the paneled wood. "We cleared the Caldera."

"Ten minutes ago," Klaasje said. She unbuckled her canvas field satchel and retrieved a small earthenware jar of cooling arnica paste and a square of clean cotton. "Your pulse is down to seventy-four. If you hold still, I can dress those thermal burns along your wrists before the tissue tightens."

Joris looked at his hands. Fine golden sparks still drifted from the pores of his knuckles, dying into gray ash before they touched his trousers. Without a word of haughty protest or aristocratic complaint, he extended both arms toward her, palms turned upward.

The complete absence of his usual bristling pride felt louder than any sharp retort. Klaasje knelt before him, dipping two fingers into the pale green salve. The arnica smelled sharply of wintergreen and camphor, cutting through the heavy scent of caramelized feathers. When she spread the cool paste over the angry red patches along his carpal tendons, his breath hitched, but his hands remained perfectly steady in her grip.

"Your skin will shed the scorch by evening," Klaasje observed, wrapping the cotton band snugly around his left wrist. "Sun-falcon metabolism heals fast once the heart rate levels out. The linen shirt you tore through during the shift, however, is a total loss."

A faint, self-deprecating smile touched the corner of Joris's mouth. "My tailor in the capital will weep bitter tears. That shirt was woven from imported reed-flax."

"Then he should have woven it out of wet canvas," she replied, securing the tie with a neat flat knot. "It holds up better against high-altitude panic."

She reached into her coat pocket, withdrew a dark, wrinkled dried plum, and pressed it into his palm. Joris arched one dark brow at the fruit, inspecting the shriveled skin with mock gravity.

"More restorative rations?" he asked dryly.

"Tartaric acid and potassium," Klaasje said, not missing a beat. "You burned half your glycogen reserves thrashing against the bulkhead. Eat it, my lord. Even an envoy cannot conduct continental diplomacy on an empty stomach."

Joris hesitated for a second, then placed the plum in his mouth. A soft huff of air escaped his chest as he chewed. "Sour."

"It sharpens the nerves," she said, rising to her feet.

With the immediate physiological crisis contained, Klaasje turned her attention to the room. The suite remained a disaster of overturned furniture and singed velvet debris. She took a small horsehair hearth brush from the utility nook near the washstand and began sweeping the scattered golden feather quills into a neat pile. If purser staff or Attaché Bram van Vliet peered through the threshold during evening rounds, every stray ember would serve as an indictment of Joris's stability.

Before she had gathered three strokes of the brush, a second pair of hands joined the task.

Joris had knelt beside her on the floorboards, picking up the larger fragments of scorched plumage and depositing them into the zinc coal scuttle. He worked methodically, his long fingers gathering the charred evidence of his vulnerability without hesitation. The high-born envoy, who three hours earlier had threatened her with March law for stepping onto his carpets, was now sweeping hearth ash in his bare stocking feet.

"You should rest," Klaasje said quietly, watching him scoop a handful of brittle gold quills.

"I have spent five years pretending I could outfly every storm on the continent," Joris said, his voice level and low. He did not look up from the floorboards, but the deliberate calm in his tone carried a weight she had not heard before. "The least I can do is help clear the wreckage."

They worked together in companionable silence until the floorboards were swept clean and the singed remnants sealed securely beneath the heavy iron lid of the coal scuttle. The cabin smelled now of bitter soap, arnica, and the crisp, thin air of forty thousand feet.

Klaasje reached into her deep pocket and felt the heavy, chilled brass of the Envoy House signet ring he had shoved into her coat pocket during the plunge. She drew it out, holding the heavy band between thumb and forefinger.

"You will need this back," she said, extending the seal toward him. "The storm has passed. Your cabin authority returns to you."

Joris stood up, securing the dark wool blanket over his shoulders. He looked down at the brass crest in her open palm, but he did not reach to take it. Instead, he folded his hands behind his back, his dark eyes fixing on hers with unclouded intensity.

"Keep it until we drop anchor in Oakhaven," Joris said.

Klaasje frowned slightly. "A dietary secretary carrying the seal of the mainland envoy is bound to draw questions."

"Then let them ask," Joris said. He stepped toward the small drop-leaf dining table near the porthole, pulling out the carved high-backed chair opposite his own. "When the midday dinner bell sounds, the first-class dining salon will seat thirty delegates, five trade attachés, and Bram van Vliet. Until now, I have taken my meals in isolation behind locked doors, under the guise of noble disdain."

He turned back to face her, the haughtiness gone, replaced by an iron resolve. "That pretense ends today. I am requesting your presence at my private table for every meal across the High Skerries."

Klaasje paused, weighing the gravity of the words. "A companion-beast handler does not sit at the envoy's table, Lord van der Meer. The junior diplomats will see it as a breach of protocol."

"They will see it as a statement," Joris corrected softly. "I will not hide the person who kept this gondola in the sky. If Bram wishes to strike at my flank, he will have to look across my table to do it. You have earned that seat, Miss Blaauw. If you will have it."

The invitation was not a contract clause or an emergency measure. It was an open alliance, carrying both the shield of his aristocratic protection and the sharp scrutiny of mainland court politics.

Klaasje looked from the empty chair bathed in mountain sunlight back to the envoy's steady gaze. She closed her fingers around the brass signet ring, slipping it securely into her waistcoat pocket.

"Set a plate for me, my lord," she said evenly. "I believe your attaché will find the dietary conversation quite educational."

A brisk, familiar double tap sounded against the outer oak door, followed by Purser Roorda's sharp voice calling for tea service. Klaasje adjusted her cuffs, stepped over to the latch, and opened the door to the sunny afternoon corridor.