Part II — Lessons in Silk and Steel
Summary:
Years pass quietly within the white walls of House Veyne. The boy who once watched candles learns to command rooms without meaning to. Saviik's education in Cyrodiil's manners and politics turns the storm's child into a creature of grace and calculation.
---
By his eighth winter in Cyrodiil, the marble no longer startled him. It was only stone now—clean, precise, obedient to polish. He had learned to walk its corridors like someone who belonged.
Mornings began with ink: a line of script copied until his hand found its own rhythm. Afternoons, with fire contained in glass spheres. Evenings, with Ylva's lessons at the long table where every piece of silverware seemed a test.
"Courtesy," she said once, correcting the angle of his fork, "is the Empire's form of armor. We polish it so the blade glances away."
He listened, as always, and absorbed it until his stillness took on the sheen of poise. Servants slowed their steps when he crossed a hall. Tutors lowered their voices. When he entered a room, even birds in the open gallery rafters paused mid-note before resuming.
Xala noticed it first. "You do that thing again," she whispered during supper one night.
"What thing?"
"Where everyone forgets what they were about to say."
He frowned. "I don't do anything."
"Exactly," she said, as if that proved her point.
---
At nine, Ylva began taking him to gatherings: small salons where minor lords and scholars debated philosophy over sugared wine. He was introduced as the Nord ward with a talent for letters. They expected curiosity, not competition.
On his first evening there, a nobleman twice his height laughed at the mention of Windhelm. "Ah yes, the city where snow walks indoors for warmth."
Saviik waited until the laughter around the table faltered. Then, gently:
"Perhaps. Though it was a man from the snow who built your throne, my lord. If he visits again, I imagine the marble will remember its manners."
The pause that followed was perfect—a chord resolved. Ylva's glass tilted a fraction; she did not smile, but her eyes glittered with a satisfaction as sharp as any sword. The nobleman cleared his throat and changed the subject.
Later, walking home under the colonnade, Rorik murmured, "You won that room. Next time, let them think they won it first."
"How?"
"Silence," Rorik said. "Let them step into it. The clever ones will hear their own noise."
Saviik stored the advice like a spell. The next gathering, he used it: less retort, more pause. The effect was the same. He began to understand how power could be invisible and still felt.
---
Taren Valen, still his tutor in Destruction, observed the change as well. One afternoon, after a flawless recitation of thermal formulas, Valen set aside the scrolls.
"You have the rarest gift," he said. "Control. You make magicka behave as if it were mannerly. That will serve you longer than brilliance."
Saviik's hand flicked over the brazier; the flame folded into a neat spiral, then vanished. "Does control make it weaker?"
"It makes it survivable," Valen said. "The Empire was built by men who understood that fire cannot lead, only illuminate."
He thought of that often, especially when Xala teased him for being too calm. "If you don't shout once in a while," she said, "people will forget you have a voice."
"They don't forget," he replied. "They wait for it."
---
By ten, even Ylva could no longer find fault with his posture or diction. At her request, he read aloud to guests from The Reman Doctrine, his northern vowels softened to near-Imperial roundness. Yet when he recited the line "Obedience is the mirror of order," his reflection in the wineglass looked almost amused.
After the guests left, Ylva studied him for a long moment. "You sound like one of us," she said, "but you think like a Nord."
He considered. "Is that wrong?"
"It is rare," she said, which in her language meant dangerous.
---
Spring brought the Festival of Lights on the lake. Lanterns floated on the water like constellations set loose. Xala and Saviik watched from the terrace, each holding a paper lamp of their own.
"What will you wish for?" she asked.
"I don't know yet."
"Then it won't come true."
"Good," he said. "Some things need time to find the right shape."
She nudged him with her shoulder. "You talk like a book."
"And you listen like one that wants to be written."
Her laughter startled a lantern from her hand; it drifted across the water, turning slow circles until it vanished among hundreds. He watched its path until he couldn't tell which was hers and which was his. For a moment he felt the old northern cold return, a reminder that all warmth has a cost.
---
The next day, Ylva called him to her study. "Do you understand what it means to be admired here?" she asked without preamble.
"It means they notice you."
"It means they weigh you," she corrected. "Cyrodiil crowns prodigies and forgets them in the same breath. You will be useful as long as you are fascinating. Learn to decide when to be dull."
He met her gaze. "And if I can't?"
She closed the ledger in front of her, the sound like a verdict. "Then you'll need to be perfect."
He bowed slightly. "I'll try."
"Trying is what the mediocre call effort," she said, but her voice held pride.
When he left, Rorik was waiting in the corridor. "She only scolds the ones she intends to protect," he said. "Remember that."
Saviik nodded. He did not resent the lesson; he merely understood it. In Windhelm, you survived by bearing the storm. In Cyrodiil, you survived by smiling while it passed.
---
That night he returned to his room and found the candle already lit. The flame bent toward him, a small bow. He whispered to it—not in words, but in the even rhythm of his breathing. It steadied, answering with its own kind of silence.
Down the hall, music from the great chamber faded into stillness. He imagined every note lingering in the air like a memory of movement.
In the polished glass of the window he saw himself: not a Nord child now, but something between marble and fire, learning how to speak the language of both.
Outside, Lake Rumare reflected the city's lanterns, each one an imitation of a star, each one waiting for wind.