Noonspire set its table the way it sets laws: with quiet intention. The **Hall of Autumn Cedar** glowed with beeswax and bell-bronze; the centerpiece was a shallow bowl of **clear water** that mirrored the ceiling's soft constellation of tea-lamps. At each setting, a thin **chime-fork** lay across folded linen like a patient clause.
Her Majesty sat at **noon** on the round. No crown—just leaf-stitch and the posture that teaches furniture manners. Two places to her right wore our names in glass ink. Aurelia took the seat that let her shield lean against the chair like a polite dog; I sat where the water could keep an eye on my breath.
Before anyone else entered, the Empress's hand brushed my sleeve, straightening what needed no straightening. A thumb found the small bruise under Aurelia's strap and **mended** it as if that were how people say I missed you in rooms that watch. Into my palm, contraband: two lemon-thyme **pastilles**. She looked at the ceiling while committing this crime, which is how queens hide tenderness from architecture.
```
┌──────────── SUPPER STATUS ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 13,170 / 13,180 MP: 410 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 26% Oathbond: Linked (92%) │
│ Buffs: Court Key, Quiet Law │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,450 / 12,460 │
│ Table Rule (Ceremonial Candor): active │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
I set the **house** in place with two strokes. A fine **Sunline** circled the table's rim; a gentle **Peal** went **through water**, not air—tone sliding under porcelain and silver.
"**Ceremonial Candor**," I breathed. "*Speak truly or remain silent; ask before assuming; no loud Novas where bread is broken.*"
The water approved with a ring you feel in your teeth rather than hear with your ears. Aurelia's fingers drummed once on her rim—the exact beat a heart uses to behave.
Footfalls arrived with heraldry attached. The doors unfolded a young woman wearing **Glassmere** on her sleeve—cloak like daylight on a lake, hair pinned with bellglass shards that were beautiful because they had decided to stop cutting. She bowed precisely to our mother and practiced warmth for us.
"**Lady Thalia of Glassmere**," the Master of Attendance intoned, "presenting a claim by old writ: **betrothal** to the **Princess Eirion Luminara—**"
The **chime-forks** on the table trembled as if embarrassed. Aurelia's hand found the exact inch at my back, and I forgot how to be any age except all of them at once.
Lady Thalia smiled a confident map. "My **bride**—"
"I am a **man**," I said, not sharp—**true**. **Ceremonial Candor** caught the air and pinned it neatly between us.
A candle made a small noise like a thought correcting itself. Thalia blinked, eyes cataloguing a pencil-sketched court memory she'd inherited instead of earned. To her credit, she did not double down; to her detriment, her steward did.
"The writ speaks of the **Empress's daughter**—" he began.
"Which," Aurelia said, voice even as a held shield, "is not the person sitting beside me."
The Empress lifted two fingers. The room's **weather** lay down. "We will **read** the paper before we let it read us," she said. "Eirion."
I touched two fingers to the chime-fork and drew a slim **Inquest Halo** around the place where the steward's scroll would touch the table. **Bond Mirror** anchored the Halo to the water's surface with our last **shared Mend**; I breathed **Peal** under the plates so tone wouldn't rattle crockery.
"**Audience Seal—table keyed**," I murmured, **Counter-Signature** stitching the ring to **Ceremonial Candor**. "*No interruption; clauses shown; no harm to bound hearts.*"
The steward set the scroll inside the circle like a man putting his hand near a sleeping cat. The **clauses flowered** in faint script above the parchment:
* *Regency Betrothal (Provisional)*
* *Parties: "Daughter of Luminara" & "Lady Thalia of Glassmere"*
* *Purpose: Treaty-polish; mirror-bell exchange*
* *Consent: **Assumed** (minor)*
The word *assumed* wrinkled the silver like heat would if heat were attitude.
"Regency," the Empress said, as if tasting a flavor the kitchen should never use. "Filed before the Court had **names** to fit."
Thalia's practiced smile faltered. "Your Majesty, I was raised on this piece of paper. I arrived to **honor** it."
"Paper does not outrank **persons**," Aurelia said. The table did not disagree.
I lifted **Lysithea** an inch—not to brandish, to **underline**—and wrote the amendment as small as a heartbeat.
"**Counter-Signature—True Names Clause.**"
*Parties to any vow must be named as they **name themselves**; assent must be **present**, not inherited; no gender may be **presumed**.*
The Halo hummed; the offending line **unwrote** with the satisfied sigh of a mistake becoming an anecdote. The steward flinched as if a cousin had been corrected at dinner. Thalia stared at the vanished word **daughter** as if it had been a step she always thought was part of the staircase.
"Lady Thalia," I said, keeping **Candor**'s lane, "I am **Eirion**. He/him. I am not your bride. I am not opposed to **you** by design. I am opposed to **assumption**."
Something behind her gaze relaxed by a notch. "Then I must begin with an **apology**," she said, and because the table required truth, it came out clean. "I have been **taught** you my whole life. No one taught me to ask **you**."
Aurelia's weight eased by one breath. The Empress allowed warmth into one eye—the non-scepter one—then shuttered it for the room. "Glassmere may petition for a **conversation**," she said, "not a **consumation**."
Laughter almost escaped my throat and hid in my cup instead.
Thalia looked from me to Aurelia to the Empress, then did the single bravest thing a noble can do in public: **changed her plan**. She took the steward's hand and set it on the revised clause. "We file a **rescission** of presumption," she said. "In exchange, High Court grants… a **walk**."
"That is a unit of Court time," Aurelia observed, wary.
"A walk," Thalia repeated, meeting my eyes. "No writ. No press. In the **Mirror Garden**. We will ask **names** until the bells approve." She hesitated, then added, with a crookedness that made me like her as a person even if I never loved her as a promise, "If your **Lord Caelion** glares at me, I will consider it a helpful test."
Aurelia's mouth twitched. The Empress did **not** smile. She reached toward the scroll with the scepter and touched the margin just enough to make ink remember who writes it. "Filed," she said. "**Treaty-polish** may be achieved by **walking**."
The table let go of its breath. Servants who had been pretending to be smoke became people again and poured fen soup as if none of this had been a negotiation with ghosts.
We ate. We practiced **quiet law** with spoons. When Thalia's chime-fork chimed too brightly against her bowl (nerves, a noble disease), I laid a **Bell Suture** across the lip with **Thread** and a breath of **Peal** so subsequent nerves would register as **manners** instead of **music**.
Aurelia made conversation in her native language—*utility*. "Glassmere's bellglass is brittle if quenched too fast," she said.
Thalia nodded gratefully at a topic with edges. "We've begun **wax-quenching**—Candlecross habits. It hums instead of squealing."
"Good," Aurelia said, which in her dialect is **garlands**. Across the table, a junior councillor fainted politely at hearing Aurelia praise a person who wasn't a shield.
When the bell course (which is what we call dessert that tries to teach you something) arrived, the Empress reached beneath the table with one hand and **squeezed** my knee for exactly one heartbeat. It was the kind of touch that says **I saw** you and **I kept you** without making a parade.
We adjourned without fanfare. Thalia bowed to the Empress, to Aurelia with respect sharpened into admiration, and to me as if newly introduced to the idea of **asking**. "Tomorrow, at fourth bell?" she asked. "Garden."
"If the library doesn't kidnap me," I said. "Yes."
She left a hair different than she had entered, which is all a dinner can claim on a good night.
The Hall exhaled; guards became walls again. I erased the **Audience Seal** and folded **Ceremonial Candor** down to a polite hum the wood could keep.
```
┌──────────── POST-SUPPER ───────────┐
│ Contract: Regency Betrothal — rescinded │
│ New: **Walk Writ** (consent-only; no presumption) │
│ Social Injuries: none │
│ HP — Eirion: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,460 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 360 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 29% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 95% │
│ Skills: Ceremonial Candor (table keyed) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
The **System** slid a tidy coin onto whatever ledger notices dinners.
```
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ COURT EVENT — CANDOR & CONTRACT │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Presumption annulled; consent formalized │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +18,500 │
│ ▸ Court Scrip +90 │
│ ▸ Relic: Glassmere Chime-Fork (tuned) │
│ ▸ Mastery: Counter-Signature +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
```
After, in the **little corridor** where law stops watching and wood remembers it is wood, our mother adjusted Aurelia's strap by **one** hole as if it were the only thing keeping the city from falling over, then touched my jaw with two fingers like a bell rope she did not pull.
"You spoke **clearly**," she said. "Men who sing will always be asked to be other things. Keep being **this** one."
"Yes, Mother," I said, the lozenge in my mouth suddenly the sweetness of not having to perform for a page.
Aurelia bumped my shoulder with her rim, which in her liturgy means *proud* and *don't make me say it*. "Still guarding my six?" I asked, because light words keep law supple.
"In a palace where **paper** thinks it can name **people**," she said, dry as good bread, "**especially**."
We left a small **Sunline bow** on the lintel—*Ask; don't assume. Names first; contracts after.* The water in the central bowl rang once to itself and kept the note like a house keeps a secret it's proud to have overheard.