A Little Chat [Vasiliev Party]

[Nesrin Aziz]

She wasn’t absolutely certain the Ascendancy would come, at least not in person, until he did. Any anxiety she’d felt at the wait began to ease in the silent moments before he spoke, replaced instead by the promised rush of a plan coalescing in the right way. He remained standing like he did not intend to stay, yet he would not be here at all if he could not credit the accusation with possibility. It was the only hook she needed, whatever happened next. Though any smiling she did at the prospect was purely on the inside.

His first words to her actually cut with a surprising and unexpected sharpness. Nesrin’s mother was a myth, an abstraction, and something she had held singularly close for most of her life. Growing up, Mari Aziz had only ever been mentioned in tones of warning, and young Nesrin had naturally filled in the absent details with the sort of mother she’d needed back then. But he’d known her, the living breathing person that old photograph had once been. Nesrin never had – nor ever would – and it fluttered resentment amidst more fragile emotion, the casual way in which he was able to make the observation and offer it out as a gift. She’d never had to share her mother’s memory with anyone, nor confront her own childish fictionalisation of who the woman might have been. For the first time she realised how jealousy she guarded it, that piece of her, but also how much she wanted to hear what he remembered.

A dangerous power, and one she did not much like that he had over her.

“I see little of you in my features,” she agreed. Her head tilted a little, perhaps rueful, though she seemed unperturbed by the point she presumed to be lurking beneath the compliment. It was a fair one, and indisputable; they looked little alike. Despite the scrutiny, she appeared to have no difficulty in meeting his gaze. Her hands rested in her lap, and she did not quell the small signs of nerves – only a fool would feel nothing, and Nesrin hid best in plain sight.

To the question she shook her head. Identity could be forged – Nesrin herself knew something about just how easily. There was only one definitive evidence he would believe no matter what she offered, and likely only once administered in his own labs; anything less would only present as trickery – an air of manipulation she was keen to avoid. She did not even lean into her power to add honey to her words (would he sense if she did?). Her own trust was built entirely on the Asquith’s investment in her. They believed in her parentage enough to puppet her future, and it was on that belief she took the risk of using the knowledge to her own ends first. Though to what result… well, she supposed she was about to find out.

Truthfully his pleasant formality gave little indication of how he might welcome or reject the idea of a child. Though he sounded curious, and attended in person when he might easily have sent his people, he could easily dismiss her without ever seeking the truth – might only be enquiring to see if she had any evidence that would make denial difficult for him. Whoever her mother had truly been, her life had already been long buried. Rejection, even that of convenience, was a possibility Nesrin was prepared for. But if such were the case, she would not stay buried. “It still doesn’t seem believable to me either, if I’m honest. I was not even born inside the Custody.” She tested to see if there was any emotion to exploit, though it was not entirely artifice. For the Ascendancy’s offspring to have been lost beyond the power of his empire was unthinkable – a point of pride if not of feeling – and a snippet she dropped casually to see if it left any ripples. Neither was Nesrin without emotion herself; revealed when she posed the only question she would regret not asking now that she had the chance. “What was she like?”