Chapter Five: Tomás

"You're going to want to see the staff galleries," Tomás said, appearing in the morning room where Maya had retreated after a breakfast where Caspian had not appeared. "Isolde mentioned you were struggling to understand the estate's structure."

Maya knew this was a lie. Isolde had mentioned nothing of the sort. But she followed him anyway.

The staff galleries were nothing like the upper halls. The wood here was functional rather than ornate, the ceilings lower, the windows small and positioned high on the walls—older vampire construction, designed before sunlight became theoretical. What struck her most was the life in these corridors. Not human life, but the sound of it: voices, movement, the clink of glasses being polished, the whisper of papers shuffled.

"We employ perhaps forty staff," Tomás said, leading her past an open doorway where a woman in her apparent fifties was entering wine bottles into a ledger. "Mostly human. Some vampire—the ones you see here."

He gestured to a young man moving past them with an armload of linens, who dipped his head without speaking. "That's Marcus. He's been here nine years. Good boy. Trustworthy."

"Why the hierarchy?" Maya asked. She already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear how Tomás framed it.

"Age," Tomás said, as if this explained everything. When she didn't respond, he continued: "Older vampires have more... restraint. More reason to want the treaty to hold. Younger ones are still learning what they want. It's safer to put trust in stability."

He said it without rancor, as if describing a natural law. And perhaps for vampires it was. They had time in ways that humans never would—time to learn, to change, to become the version of themselves that age demanded. A sixty-year-old human was ancient. A sixty-year-old vampire was still finding his footing.

"So the older vampires are in control," Maya said.

"The older vampires are in positions to be trusted with control," Tomás corrected. "There's a difference."

He led her deeper into the staff wing, and she began to see the pattern. In the administrative offices, the heads of departments were all vampires who appeared to be in their fifties or sixties—though their birth certificates, she suspected, would tell a very different story. Their assistants were younger: mid-thirties, early forties at the oldest. In the kitchens, it was the same. The head cook was a vampire who moved with the precise, economical grace of someone who had spent decades perfecting his craft. His sous chefs were younger, learning, not yet trusted with full autonomy.

"Isolde manages the legal affairs," Tomás said as they passed a closed wooden door marked with a small brass plate. "She's been here longer than Caspian has been alive. She was handling treaties when he was still figuring out what century it was."

The words hung there. Maya understood what he wasn't saying: Isolde has power because she has knowledge. Knowledge is currency here.

"She seems to dislike me," Maya said.

Tomás smiled. "She doesn't dislike you. She's testing you."

"Testing me how?"

"That's the interesting question," Tomás said. "If she wanted you gone, you'd be gone. If Caspian had wanted you gone, Isolde would have managed it before you ever arrived. The fact that you're here, and she's blocking your access at every turn, means she's decided to see what you do when the doors are closed."

Her understanding of Isolde—and the estate itself—reoriented. The restrictions hadn't been about keeping her out—they'd been about containing her. Letting her move, but only in measured ways. Watching.

"That's reassuring," she said dryly.

"It is, actually," Tomás said, and he sounded like he meant it. "It means she takes you seriously."

He led her down a narrow stone staircase that seemed to descend beyond the visible foundation of the house. The walls down here were older—genuine medieval stonework, fitted so precisely that a knife blade couldn't slide between the joints. Torches guttered in iron sconces, and the air smelled of old paper and something else. Preservation. Intention.

"The archives," Tomás said, and pushed open a heavy wooden door.

The room beyond was impossible. It extended back further than the house above could possibly contain, shelves rising into shadow, organized with the precision of a library designed by someone who had had centuries to refine their system. Illuminated manuscripts. Leather-bound ledgers. Documents sealed with wax. A history of the vampire court written in paper and ink, catalogued and preserved.

"Isolde has the master keys," Tomás said. "Caspian, of course. A few others. But I have access to most of this section." He pointed to a series of shelves filled with densely written journals. "These are individual records. Accounts of territories, agreements, disputes resolved. Going back about three hundred years."

Maya understood immediately. This was the real record. Not the official treaties or the current agreements, but the actual history of how decisions had been made, who had been involved, what pressure had been applied. The truth beneath the structure.

"Why are you showing me this?" she asked.

Tomás turned to face her fully. He had been charming in the halls above, helpful and light. Down here, he looked older—which was precisely the point. The estates required trust, and trust required age. Tomás had spent decades learning how to move through these spaces.

"Because," he said, "you're not here for the Council. You came looking for something specific, and you're careful enough to know that what they tell you publicly isn't going to be the whole story."

Maya didn't answer. There wasn't much point. He had already understood.

"The treaty is real," Tomás continued. "But the enforcement mechanisms have their own problems. And there's a separate issue—someone's pushing the younger members toward destabilization. Not Isolde. Not Caspian. But someone with influence."

"How long have you known?" Maya asked.

"Long enough to be careful about who I tell." Tomás moved toward the shelves and pulled down a thick ledger, bound in dark leather. "Isolde knows there's a problem. She's been trying to contain it. Caspian suspects, but his evidence comes through Isolde, and Isolde is... protective of how much trouble she reveals. It makes her look necessary, you see. She's the one holding back the tide."

He handed her the ledger. It was heavy, the pages filled with meticulous handwriting cataloguing disputes, agreements, the small corruptions that accumulated over years.

"There's a difference between the treaty failing," Tomás said, "and the treaty being systematically undermined. One is an accident. One is a plan. I think you came here to figure out which one is happening."

Maya took the ledger. Her hands were steady, but only because she had trained them to be. Five days in this building. Five days of moving through halls, of being aware—always, despite everything—of where Caspian was. Whether he was in the east wing or the gardens. Whether he was awake. Whether he was thinking about her.

She hated that. The involuntary awareness. The way her body had settled into his gravity like she had been placed there deliberately, by design.

"You can take that," Tomás said. "No one checks these rooms as well as they should. Isolde prefers people not to know how much evidence of corruption sits down here."

"Why would she prefer that?" Maya asked.

"Because," Tomás said, "it means she's the only one with the full picture. And that makes her indispensable."

They went back upstairs. The stone passages seemed less impossible in reverse, but not much. By the time they reached the staff galleries again, Maya had begun to separate the pieces. The border incident was one conspiracy. The destabilization was another. They might be connected—probably were—but they weren't identical. One was about breaking the treaty entirely. One was about exploiting it.

They were walking toward the main corridors when Tomás paused and turned to her.

"There's something else you should know," he said. His tone had changed. It was lighter, almost teasing, but there was an edge beneath it. "The documents you're looking for in the archives—the ones about the border authority, the ones that show who gave the orders for what was happening along the boundary—"

He let the sentence drift.

"What?" Maya asked.

Tomás smiled. "He's going to be very angry when he realizes what you've found," he said. Maya stood very still.