They spilled out of the receiving room in a loose group, Lena first, Arlott a step behind her, Julian and Lily following with their new assistants hovering uncertainly at the rear, nobody having specifically told them to come and nobody having specifically told them to stay.
The sound grew clearer as they moved through the corridor toward the front of the estate. Still indistinct but gaining texture. Multiple voices, the clipped professional tones of guards and underneath it, steady and unhurried and entirely unbothered, a single voice that was doing most of the talking.
A woman's voice.
They reached the top of the main steps that led down to the estate's front grounds and stopped.
Below them, at the gate, a scene was unfolding that had drawn the attention of no fewer than six guards, two of whom had their hands raised in the universal gesture of people trying to manage a situation that was not cooperating with being managed.
"I have stated this clearly and more than once." The voice said, carrying up to them with effortless calm. "I am Lord Leon's assistant. I am here at his invitation. If you would simply relay that information to someone with the authority to act on it, this would resolve itself very quickly."
"Ma'am." The lead guard said, with the strained patience of someone who had been saying the same thing for several minutes. "We have no record of Lord Leon making any such arrangement. We cannot simply allow—"
"I am not asking you to simply allow anything." The voice said. "I am asking you to pass a message. Those are different requests and one of them is considerably simpler than the other."
Lena leaned forward slightly over the railing, trying to see past the cluster of guards.
Julian appeared at her shoulder. Took one look at the situation below.
"Why are six of our guards being talked in circles by a single woman." He said, mostly to himself.
Then the cluster of guards shifted slightly and they got their first clear look at who was doing the talking.
The woman standing at the gate was not what any of them had been picturing.
She was tall, with long silver hair that caught the morning light cleanly and fell past her shoulders without effort. Her robes were white, simple in their construction but carrying a quality that had nothing to do with ornamentation, the quality of something that simply was what it was without needing to announce it. Her eyes, when they moved across the guards in front of her with patient composure, were a deep and ancient gold.
Behind her, two white tails moved in a slow and unhurried sway.
The silence from the top of the steps lasted approximately three full seconds.
"That's." Lily said.
"A beastfolk." Arlott said quietly.
"She's." Julian started.
"Don't." Lena said, without looking at him.
Julian closed his mouth.
They all sensed it, she was…strong
...
Down at the gate, Yuki was maintaining her composure with the dedication of someone who had decided that composure was the only available option and was committing to it fully.
This was, she was discovering, significantly more difficult than anticipated.
It was not the guards. The guards were manageable. She had centuries of experience navigating hostile parties and these men, while persistent, were not remotely in the category of things she had dealt with before. The difficulty was something she had not accounted for because she had not spent any meaningful time attempting to integrate into human society.
She had been hidden. Her people had been hidden. That had been the entire point.
And now she was standing at the front gate of a human noble estate in the middle of a city, with fox ears and two tails that she could not and had no particular interest in concealing, attempting to explain herself to a rotating series of guards who looked at her with expressions that moved in a consistent order through surprise, suspicion, and then a particular kind of flustered uncertainty that she suspected had more to do with her appearance than her species.
'This.' She thought, maintaining her pleasant expression while the lead guard began his explanation for the fourth time. 'Is considerably more complicated than it seemed last night.'
Last night it had seemed simple. Her master had said come tomorrow. She had come. The logic was straightforward.
She had not accounted for the gate. Or the guards. Or the fact that arriving at a human noble estate as an unannounced beastfolk woman with no documentation and only the word of a seven year old child to explain her presence was, apparently, not a self evidently reasonable situation.
She had also not accounted for her own inexperience.
Centuries of sovereignty had not prepared her for the specific texture of this particular problem. She knew how to command. She knew how to negotiate from a position of overwhelming power.
But this ? She did not know how to convince a skeptical gate guard that she was a legitimate appointment without either revealing abilities that would cause a significantly larger problem or simply removing the gate from the situation entirely, which she suspected her master would classify as not listening and would not appreciate.
She imagined it.
Leon appearing at the gate. Looking at the scene. Looking at her. That calm unbothered expression shading into something flat and dry and deeply unimpressed.
'I said come tomorrow.' He would say. 'Not cause an incident.'
She would have no adequate response to that.
'He would probably send me away.' She thought. And then, with rather more feeling than she expected: 'No. Absolutely not. I have come too far and waited too long and I am not being sent away by a gate.'
She straightened slightly and looked at the lead guard with renewed patience.
"Let us try this differently." She said pleasantly. "Is there a senior member of the household you could notify ? Not to grant me entry. Simply to notify. Whoever that person is can then make the determination themselves and you will have done your job correctly and thoroughly. Does that seem reasonable ?"
The guard opened his mouth.
"Ma'am I really must insist that without prior—"
She felt it then.
The familiar weight of her master's presence, somewhere inside the estate. She had sensed it since she arrived, faint and steady, the particular quality of his mana unmistakable to her now that they were bound. He was inside. Relatively nearby.
And from the depth and stillness of it.
He was asleep.
She pressed her lips together very briefly.
'Of course he is.'
She was on her own.
She looked back at the guard.
And then she sensed something else. Movement. From inside the estate, coming toward the front. Multiple people, one of them carrying a weight she recognized immediately, dense and seasoned and considerably more formidable than anything else in the building.
Her ears angled toward the main steps.
She looked up.
Several figures had appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the front grounds. A tall man with dark hair and crimson eyes stood slightly ahead of the rest with the stillness of someone who was deciding what he was looking at before he reacted to it. Behind him, a girl with raven hair was already leaning forward with wide eyes. Beside her, a boy with dark hair and an expression of blatant disbelief. And beside him, a quieter girl whose sharp eyes had already finished their assessment and were waiting for more information.
Yuki looked at them.
They looked at her.
The guards looked between both parties with the expressions of people hoping very much that someone with more authority than them was about to take over.
Yuki straightened to her full height, composed herself with the ease of four centuries of practice, and inclined her head toward the group at the top of the steps in a single measured gesture.
"Good morning." She said clearly, her golden eyes settling on the man with crimson eyes with the instinctive precision of someone identifying the most significant person in a group.
"I apologize for the disturbance. I am here at Lord Leon's invitation."
"Allow me to introduce myself" A brief pause.
"I am Yuki, his assistant."
The morning was very quiet for a moment.
Then Julian said, at a volume he clearly felt was appropriate for the situation.
"His WHAT ?."