[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Shilage[/color][/h3][/center]

Silent until now at his end of the table, Rudolf stiffened. His plate was largely untouched—his thoughts awash over something else besides food. He’d been content to listen for now, as though biding time— but with the flash of worry that crossed his face, it seemed he’d heard something that threw a spanner in those reluctant works.

It wasn’t Izayoi’s surly disdain for the farce she expected that had prompted that shot of current through his spine— the Earl was hardly stranger to a callous guest expecting him to be something he wasn’t, and Izayoi had a surly disdain for anything that wasn’t in some way related to shredding her enemy or to her lost family. Being made to speak with a nobleman of Edren, regardless of how either of them had sworn up and down as to his lack of involvement with the invasion… it would always leave her frosty at best.

His eyes, fighting not to go too wide, flew across the table, finding Miina’s for a moment and clearly blindsided—- not by Izayoi, but by the Earl himself.

A [i]night?[/i] They were already partaking in supper. That wasn’t time at all. Not nearly enough— he’d not intended to have them all overstay their welcome here, but still!

His teeth ground beneath tight lips.

Not more than a week was his thinking. Even two or three days layover would have been fine— ample time to really scour the archives with her, as he’d promised in the depths of Brightlam’s sickbeds. Really dig into research, at least— the events that transpired during the fitting of his newly blackened armor serving to inform their direction, not being a relative waste of the afternoon. But a single evening? They’d be lucky to even compile a reading list.

Really, of all the ways to be made to pay dividends on the luck he’d burned, [i]this[/i] was troubling. A truncated timetable would force him to nix so much of what he had been looking to get done while here. Let alone any of the others, who lacked the familiarity with this place and its’ people that he was privilege to, even after all that had been cleft from him alongside his name. A night was what you took to get [i]used[/i] to a new locale— not to take advantage of the myriad resources that featured in a turbulent, disgraced former beneficiary’s sales pitch.

And what was more…

[color=c0392b]”Why in the war god’s blazes does that [i]’you’[/i] sound like it means [i]me…[/i]”[/color] he murmured in undertone, before swearing under his breath as his gaze flicked over to Galahad, a long way away and in no position to help. He couldn’t interrupt the Knight-Dragoon, interjecting here would just get in the way of the exchange of information.

[i]That[/i] was now the last boon they might have had left to glean from this shortened visit. Everything else on Rudolf’s personal list, at least, would be choked out by the tightness of their schedule. Now it was just this comparing of notes, the afternoon Rudolf had spent upon his armor, and maybe an escort further south from Wulfric. Whatever answers he sought to unravel from the cloud of obscurity…

They basically needed to come here and now, or await the party’s return to Edren at the earliest. A real bind for anyone that had been expecting more room to orient themselves.

A real bind for him, who had been waiting for a moment that felt right.

For the [i]present[/i] moment, he had to continue holding his concerns to a private, half-frustrated hiss beneath his breath.

[i][color=c0392b]“Only [i]tonight[/i] to work with?”[/color][/i]