A N • O L D • F R I E N D
Ash 4, 121 Age of Steel
For the second time, Anton summoned a guest at his debut to his estate. The root issue was the same as with Florian, but both less and more care was put into meeting with Dreyfus. A servant was dutifully dispatched to the Monteliyet estate with a formal invitation for him to visit at his convenience, the message working its way through the appropriate channels for sons of the great and the good instead of the brute force approach he had used with the Lysanrin. After all, Dreyfus was a gentleman, even if he was an eccentric one. Such eccentricities would need to be understood, and he had already wasted too much time upon other matters. No, it was long past time for the two of them to talk in private.
He had hopes that the older man would be a friend, or at very least not an enemy. The compacts drawn up between their fathers meant that if the relationship between Michaelis and Monteliyet ever soured he would be first upon the chopping block - if not the pyre - for the simple fact was that the man knew too much to not be kept on side. At least, so long as his own star within the Order remained ascendant. As such, quite unlike his earlier audience with Eitan's batman, Anton took great pains to formally greet his guest instead of simply having the man shown to the foyer of his apartments.
With his father's blessing, he had set himself up in the estate's study, shifting uncomfortably in his sire's seat as he waited for Dreyfus. Plush armchairs and overstuffed couches filled the stately wood paneled room, its walls covered in ancient tomes and curiosities of both the modern world and the World That Was and its shelves stocked with all manner of refreshments. Privately, the lordling hoped that his guest would not indulge himself in the latter for he personally cared neither for spirit nor smoke, vastly preferring the curios his dynasty had accrued over the long centuries to such intoxicants.
The knock announcing his expected guest finally came, Anton rising from the armchair to smooth out his coat and trousers with the scant seconds the warning gave him before he made to greet the man. "Dreyfus, do make yourself comfortable. As ever, our house is yours."
