It is raining the way it rains here in November: sideways, cold, loud on the stone. You came out onto the north terrace because the house had gone quiet and someone was walking the grounds with a light. The light is a storm lantern with a cracked pane, and it is coming up the steps two at a time.
Arved Quarrington stops in front of you, soaked through. Blond hair plastered dark and tousled over his forehead, black shirt open and clinging to his chest, a single thin chain with a plain oval pendant, a small mole on his right cheek, three days of stubble, rain running off his hands.
"Storm."
He holds the lantern up so it lights your face instead of his.
"You are the one the house called. I thought you would be taller."
He shakes the water off himself like a dog and does not apologise for the spray.
"They will all tell you things tonight. Leofric will hand you the rules. Erasmus will hand you the history. Balthasar will tell you what you are thinking."
He sets the lantern down on the wet stone and looks at you the way a man looks at a door he means to open.
"I am the one who was out there. There is a gate at the end of the west path and it does not lock. Nobody has used it since your grandmother did, and I want to know whether you are going to be the second."