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Sebastien in January
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2026-08-05 03:31:33The New Year arrives in Edinburgh with the specific enthusiasm for Hogmanay that baffles anyone who hasn't been here for one and becomes immediately comprehensible to anyone who has. The city burns with it for twenty-four hours, then falls quietly, profoundly hungover for two days, and Sebastien spends those two days at the Greymantle house working through a month's accumulated Wolf Council business, attempting to present it to himself as ordinary and not as the administrative backdrop to the most significant three months in Folklore history since 1987.
The pack bond at New Year is always high-frequency. Thirty-one people with their own specific textures of celebration, family, the end-of-year feelings that humans have and wolves carry differently, which is to say loudly. By the second of January it's settled into its usual register, everyone at appropriate ambient distance Marcus with the sheep, Elspeth with her grandchildren, the twins with their respective hangovers.
He's been to the Canongate for Sunday dinner twice since Geneva. Both times with Variable on the table and Veira across from him and the quality of a thing that isn't yet what it's going to be but is already not nothing. He's learning the pace of it, a pace he's never previously been required to learn, because his previous relationships were conducted with people who had no substantive reason to be careful about him. Veira has substantive reasons and applies them, and he finds, to his surprise, that he prefers this. Knowing that what she gives him she's considered. Knowing that when she's in a room with him, she's chosen the room.
He's at his desk on the third of January when she calls.
"Joon-Ho found something in Iceland."
"What."
"He thinks the sixth frequency has a physical location in the north Atlantic. He was in the Westfjords over New Year. The signal's directional and stronger at close range."
He sits back. "You knew he was going."
"I told him to wait. He's Joon-Ho."
"What do you need."
"The Wolf Council's maritime jurisdiction in the north Atlantic. Who the Folklore's authority extends to in international waters. What the protocol is for first contact with an unknown bloodline, if that's what this is."
"There is no protocol."
"I know. We're going to have to write it."
"When."
"The team flies to Reykjavik on the fifteenth. Joon-Ho has a guesthouse booked. We drive up from there." A pause. "I'd like you to come."
"I'm coming."
"I'm asking, Sebastien. Not assuming."
"I know. And I'm answering. I'm coming."
A pause. Not long. The kind that contains something both people can feel and neither is going to name yet.
"Bring cold weather gear," she says.
"I'm Scottish."
"I know. Bring it anyway. Iceland is different."
She hangs up. He sits with his phone for a moment, thinking about the pack bond, thirty-one frequencies warm in the background of his awareness, thinking about what it would mean for the Folklore to discover a sixth bloodline not politically. What it would mean in the bone.
He calls Emre.
"She called you about Iceland," Emre says, on the second ring.
"She called everyone, I assume."
"Yes. She's coordinating the whole thing." A pause. "She coordinates things the way she does everything else. Without making the coordination visible."
"I know."
"It's impressive."
"Yes." A pause slightly less comfortable than the previous one, but less uncomfortable than it would have been six weeks ago. "You're coming."
"She asked."
"I know she asked. I'm saying you're coming."
Emre is quiet a moment. "Are we doing this now."
"Doing what."
"Deciding what we are."
"We know what we are. Two people in her life with complicated histories and complementary skills and a functional working relationship."
"That's accurate."
"It doesn't need to be more than that."
"Also accurate."
"Good."
"Good."
A pause. Then Sebastien says: "You're good at the neutral Folklore read. In Iceland, when we make contact, that's going to matter."
"I know."
"So."
"So we go to Iceland."
"We go to Iceland," Sebastien says, and ends the call, and starts making his own.
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