Masquerade [Kuskovo Estate]

[Nesrin Aziz]

He barely reacted. It wasn’t a surprising insult, or even an imaginative one, just elitist ignorance at its finest. In fact the very way he overlooked her presence just because she was holding a drinks tray was something Nesrin used to her advantage, usually. But she’d wanted to hear the accent, just to see if it helped her place him before she decided whether it was a game worth playing. After a moment he looked back at her with the brief, irritated surprise of one who'd just witnessed an inanimate object speak to him.

"What?"

Nesrin wasn’t playing a persona tonight, and she did not think her anonymity would be compromised by the natural smirk which twitched her lips in response. Because she might be wrong, but by the way he cast his eyes about she was willing to take the gamble that he just didn’t belong. So she leaned a little, voice low. One brow rose.

“Do you even know whose party this is?”

Another guest touched her arm, then, and Nesrin let the matter drop with only that sly accusation, in part because the small, sultry woman now in front of her for a moment looked as though she were about to faint. Behind her dainty mask, her eyes had flared wide. 

“Are you okay?” The reaction seemed a little extreme, given Nesrin sensed nothing which suggested they had any similar qualities in common. Which begged the question of just what the woman saw in a member of the waitstaff dressed identically to all the others. She’d considered what might happen if anyone here recognised her as a channeler, and she didn’t like the variable, but it was an unavoidable risk until she figured out how to hide that part of herself.

Nesrin couldn’t remember this woman’s name, but she did know whose arm she’d arrived on. Not that she could refuse the request without being obtusely bad at her job, and that wasn’t attention she wanted. The Ascendancy still had people flurrying around him, Scion Marveet included, and distraction would not serve her intentions well considering she probably only had one shot tonight. But neither would being escorted out because she hadn’t declared her gifts on the job application. The security detail was tight. After months of prep, she wasn’t prepared to take the risk.

So she only nodded and followed.

She knew the steel magnate of course; tipped to replace Sulteev in the Sphere as he was. If Scion Marveet dabbled in underworld things, Nesrin had not discovered it yet, but she doubted he was clean. None of them were. She held the tray out for the guests to partake, watching the bubbles in the liquid as the conversation continued on around her. Konstantin Vasiliev would deliver his welcome speech soon. They were on a schedule to deliver out the flutes of champagne for the toast he would make to his wife of forty years. Then the band would begin.

When she glanced up, it was to finally look at the Ascendancy. A foolish title, really, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to see an ordinary man beneath it. Though he had to have been once, to make an ordinary man’s mistake. Presuming it hadn’t been simple callousness. Nesrin was surprised at her own internal reaction – surprised that she even had one, but there was a strange knotted feeling in her chest. Her eyes skated his features for truth, like flesh might reveal more than a photograph, but saw nothing she recognised. She didn’t expect to see a reaction from him, though maybe she hoped for one. His nights had been plagued with recent reminders. Nesrin greatly resembled her mother.

Do you believe what they say? she’d asked Helena. But evidence or not, Nesrin of all people knew how easy it was to fake things. And she also knew what the Asquiths wanted.

[[Carter moded with permission]]