It took Benjamin a beat to realize that she was toying with him. Her shock had been pretended and a jab at his poor manners. She was correct about that. In a different situation, perhaps one without masks, a strange benefactor, and cramped quarters, he’d had more tact. Instead, he’d called her out. Honestly, she looked like she could hold her own in this sort of setting. Her costume was elaborate and seemed skewed to what she looked like underneath—again, he assumed, he was at a disadvantage without his spectacles. While, all he wore was a mask and a tasteful suit. Well, not that he had the sort of presence that could easily be discerned. Unless one lurked about the scholarly circles, his identity would be hard pressed to be discovered.

All that said, she graciously expelled her thoughts on the evening. He nodded in cadence with her statement. Some of those names he was familiar with, public people with public faces, and some of them caused him to pause. He’d either not thought them the sort to host a party of this style, or he’d never heard of them. There was a dance with words she was playing here, and on his mother’s assured lack of a grave, he had no idea the point she was stabbing at. Yet, who she didn’t say was the thought that rattled in his head. It had to be at least [i]one[/i] of the Masters. Or… he paused at her words and the intentness of which others listened… was she truly saying that? Oh. Benjamin thought himself a prodigy of the scholarly arts, but he knew himself to be a dunce at the Great Game. 

It was then that she drew all attention to him. The circle of people tightened around him. Immediately, his collar became suffocating, and his breath hitched in his lungs. [i]Breathe,[/i] he told himself. He’d given dozens upon dozens of speeches to a group far larger than this. He’d educated the upper echelon on the Fourth City. He’d traveled across the zee. He’d interviewed Tomb Colonists. One time he even gotten into a scholarly debate with a higher-ranking professor than himself and fluently argued his case. Being surrounded by people who were an enigma on both sides, he didn’t know them and they didn’t know who he was, shouldn’t have provided a complication. Yet, being put on the spot by a woman—who he assumed from the aesthetically pleasing curve of her amorphous form—was handsome, and more importantly well learned, shouldn’t have been something to seize him like it did. He'd always presented himself as shrewd and calculating, why should he suddenly turn into a pile of idiotic babbling?

He cleared his throat. Feeling suddenly parched, he took a sip of his drink only to be reminded it was a cutting liquor. He choked a bit before attempting to recoup his dignity. “Well, Madame,” he said, trying to take the safe title, “I feel as if it is overly obvious who is one of the benefactors of this—” he trailed off, waving his free hand around him. The circle of people around the woman leaned in closer. They wanted him to say it. He could feel that pressure build all around him just like drowning in the zee. Music, dancing music to be precise, cut the air. Benjamin was a horrible dancer, unskilled and unpracticed. [i]You’re distracting yourself,[/i] he thought. Yet, he couldn’t quite tastefully get around his opinion like those around him had managed. So, he committed what he viewed a social sin. “Without a fragment of a doubt, given the evidence and the obvious ambiance, it is a Master.” He didn’t give a pause. “Obviously, Mister Wine has something to do with this unless one is daft enough to assume such a soirée was thrown without his hand. That's my opinion, anyway.” Was it too early to leave and still seem grateful?

[@Hekazu]