“It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life!” 

The Knights' Ball, held once each decade, is no small outfitting conceived of by the crown as a means of not only highlighting the famous, intensely trained, if not vigorously secretive, order of knights under its command, but further, showing off those knights to the nobility and aristocracy that funds them. Ten year intervals meant that the company changes more often than the knights do, and few are able to recall whether or not the faces have aged in the interim. An evening of idle chatter, political alliances, and shows of technological progress, Grayson has seen enough of them for it to become routine. He is no less graceful in conversation than with a gun in his hand, though of yet it remains unclear whether his smile is indeed genuine.

It is a precious moment he hesitates at the side of his protégé, taking a long, surveying look at the party from her vantage point.