[narrative] you'll see a light where before no light had been
As a rule, Martel works too much and too hard. He prefers it to the alternatives (as he sees them); they say the devil finds work for idle hands and for all the dark little jokes about what trouble he could find himself in unsupervised that make Candice fuss, there's more truth to it than he likes to make plain. (So it stays a jest, and he stays occupied.)
He says give me thirty years and we'll see if I've got my thumb on it all and means that, too. For the time being, the passel of students passing through his castle have his direct attention. So do the locked and semi-hidden work rooms that he devotes mainly to sorcery. So does the library. So does Aphrael's chapel. So do his language studies, his personal training, his arrangements with Koleika, his study of Arum and the surrounding nations, his refresher course in Elenic history, his caves beneath the castle, his assembling of his family history (one day there will be children wanting to know where they came from, and he will give them something more than blood and shame)-
And, more than anything, his wife. Yet, between his work and Candice's own, it's more often than not that he'll sit on details until he's worked more out about them before he brings it up with her, and it usually results in having a few things he needs to tell her before it gets long enough for her to be annoyed with him. He's going to her from his conversation with Doul when Ewar falls in step next to him.
It'd hurt more if Kurik had been closer to him, he tells himself, and picks up conversation without missing a beat. "He has a month to start. Did you see Eirene?"
"Briefly. Is there a problem?"
"Possibly. I'm going to have to speak with her. Ideally she won't bean me with a spoon into the bargain. Did you need something in particular, or is this an exercise in nosiness?"
"Nosiness, sir." Ewar's smile is quick and short; he knows what he can get away with.
"I'll indulge your curiosity later. If you'll excuse me-"
by request ♪ after this and before this.