Talon Pryce

Beside Corin Ashby, "as always", and the one of the pair who keeps looking.

The introduction

Ch. 258, across a courtyard, with no dialogue at all.

Corin's glance at Arthur's table is "the particular practiced disinterest of someone who wanted it clearly understood that he had noticed something and equally clearly understood that he did not care to comment on it".

Talon's is different, and the chapter spends more words on it:

Talon, beside him, held the look a moment longer. There was something in his expression that Arthur couldn't quite place, not quite curiosity and not quite judgment, something closer to simple observation, the particular attention of someone cataloging information without yet deciding what to do with it.

Then he says something to Corin "that made the other boy's mouth curve into a thin, unreadable smile".

That is the entirety of his first appearance. He watches, and he is not hostile, and the chapter declines to say what he is.

He recalculates too

Ch. 260, after the duel. Corin leaves the yard and Talon looks back once.

something in his expression that had not been there before the duel began, a small, private recalculation quietly taking place behind otherwise unreadable features.

He said nothing. He simply looked, and then followed Corin from the yard.

His one line in the chapter is to Corin, before it starts:

TLN: That should be interesting.

Two appearances, two long looks, three words of dialogue. The saga is deliberately withholding him.

He forfeits rather than hit Mira

Ch. 263. Sutton pairs him against Mira, who holds a practice sword "with the particular loose, uncertain grip of someone who had spent considerably more time reading about combat than practicing it".

Elsie calls it before it starts:

ELS: Talon's never once looked at her without going slightly soft in the face. Watch.

He does not move at all.

MRA: You're supposed to attack. TLN: I know. MRA: Then why aren't you. TLN: I can't. [...] I don't want to hit you.

TLN: You can win. I concede.

He does not hedge it when pressed:

MRA: You're supposed to try. TLN: I did try. I tried very hard, for about four seconds, to imagine swinging a sword at you, and I found I simply couldn't manage it.

MRA: You could at least pretend. TLN: I'm not very good at pretending. It's rather a flaw of mine.

And he takes the grade for it:

SUT: Pryce. This is a graded exercise. TLN: I understand, sir. I accept whatever grade that earns me. I still can't do it.

Mira walks past him "with her cheeks faintly, unmistakably pink, and did not look back to see the small, helpless smile Talon wore as he watched her go".

This is the first time he says anything of substance, and it is a refusal.

Why he stands beside Corin

Ch. 272, on the rooftop, is the first time he explains himself.

TLN: I've spent most of my life standing beside Corin. Watching people look at him first, always, the way people look at anyone born into something enormous. I don't resent it. I chose it, in a way, choosing to stay close to someone who was always going to be looked at before I was.

And why Mira:

TLN: You're the first person here who didn't look at either of us first. You looked past both of us, mostly, the way you look past most things, and I found I didn't mind it. I found I rather liked it, actually, being someone you had to be coaxed into noticing rather than someone noticed automatically because of who I stand beside.

His full answer for the ch. 263 concession:

TLN: I think, somewhere in the middle of that duel, I understood that hurting you, even in play, even with a padded blade, would have meant treating you like everyone else treats you. Like something to be handled carefully from a distance, or overcome, or managed. I didn't want to be one more person who approached you that way.

He admits the following without apology:

TLN: I followed you. Twice. [...] I got tired of pretending I didn't know where you disappeared to most evenings. MRA: You could have just asked. TLN: Would you have said yes? MRA: Probably not. TLN: There you go, then.

He waits

Ch. 297. He takes Mira to a cat cafe, admits he has been twice alone, and does not explain why she is the person he wanted to bring.

He never asks her what she is. When she tells him anyway, he says why:

TLN: I've been deliberately not asking for a while now, actually. [...] Because you'd tell me when you wanted to. And you did. That seemed considerably better than pressing for it earlier and getting something you'd rather not have given.

Her reaction is the same one she had on the rooftop:

the particular disorienting sensation of being handled correctly by someone who seemed to require no instruction on how to do it.

And he asks for the chess game:

MRA: I sacrificed a rook. On the twenty-fourth move. TLN: Is that impressive? MRA: Extremely. TLN: Then tell me about it properly. I'd like to hear it.

Later, from the author's notes

He is one of the core group of eight who travel to Beckwith. Nothing else in the notes describes him. See ../volumes/09-the-scholar.md.