brand new colony

It's been a long day, and Aloth Lloyd is not in a very good mood. Usually he leaves the care of his children to his wife -- because, as far as he's concerned, they're not really his business until they're old enough for him to impart some lessons, as he's been doing lately with Medraut. But Gadriet has been out and out a disappointment lately, and his patience is wearing thin.

He's in his study, tapping irritably with his stylus on the glassy surface of his console. It's past dinnertime, and his ordinary routine is out of place, which puts him even more into a poor humour. The children aren't allowed to eat until he gets there, but he doesn't move.

Within three months of their marriage, Anna's pregnant. The pregnancy is an easy one, not least because this time around she isn't on her feet fourteen hours a day running a makeshift med center. She spends most of her time either with Medraut or reading, takes dinner with Aloth every evening, and is always smiling and on point during public events that require her presence.

Outwardly, she seems mostly all right. She's functional, she gets along reasonably well with the staff; she's a bit isolated, but that's easy to chalk up to the notion that it's in her nature to be reticent, and besides -- it wouldn't do for her to try to make friends with the help. But Anna knows the truth: she's very carefully working on not feeling much of anything at all, on not thinking about what she no longer has, on avoiding the notion that she is an exile. The worst of it is, she doesn't want to go home. She doesn't want to call home, or send a wave to anyone, or try to find her sister. She just wants to be alone and not have to think, anymore, about anything.

By the time Gwalchmai is born, they're approaching their first wedding anniversary. He's born healthy and sound, and Anna's physical health is good -- but somewhere within her a dam has broken, and everything she's tried to suppress for the last year comes boiling up. A few hours after delivery, she starts to cry; she hates herself for it, but she can't seem to stop it. Anna cries until they sedate her the following day.

Four days later, she's still in bed, awake now but still medicated, though they're tapering those off. They bring her new son to her three times a day, and keep Medraut in the nursery, away from her. At this moment she's alone, lying on her side with the blankets pulled up, gazing out the window.

It's not every day a man is fortunate enough to make so useful a political alliance, and Aloth is feeling fairly pleased with himself when he goes to meet the ship coming in from New Britain. He's dressed in his best suit, more for the ambassadors' benefit than his new wife's, and he waits on the docks with his hands folded behind his back, watching the ships.

He's seen her picture; the Merdhin sent a holograph before Aloth agreed to the marriage, and she's pretty enough to suit him. She looks healthy, and he's optimistic about her ability to bear sons. New Britain is only a small planet, but it has potential, and Aloth has always been willing to invest in potential -- throughout his life, his success has been largely due to his investments.

Now he's waiting. Everything has already been prepared for his wife -- he doesn't know her name -- so all that's left to do is wait.

It's been three days since Medraut Lloyd arrived in Camallate, and Athyr has been unusually quiet and introspective. Usually he's a model of exuberant energy, bounding around the practise yards and conference rooms, greeting his staff cheerfully and laying plans. Recently, however, he's stayed mainly in his office, and he seems subdued when he's out.

Earlier that evening there was a state dinner to welcome Medraut officially. Athyr presided, of course, in his yellow silk, but when it's over and the guests have begun to disperse he makes right for his and Gwenore's rooms. By the time she gets there, he's stripped down to his underclothes, bent over a pile of papers, signing them furiously and with intense concentration.

There comes a point in every celebration when, barring emergencies, it will run itself. The guards know their places and the caterers have handled the food and the music has all be arranged. Cai has tripled checked the amount of wine, and has made himself available to every person that he's spent weeks planning with, but they all have one answer: they'll call if they need him. Go enjoy the party.

Unfortunately, Cai suspects he's lost the ability to enjoy parties. Even his brother's wedding.

In fairness, he doesn't look unhappy, he just looks out of place. There's a reason why Cai has the job he does; take him out of his element, and he's left with a wretched lack of talent for small talk and a decent ability to hold his liquor, both of which conspire to end up with him watching, on the fringes, even if he's mostly pleased with how everything has gone.

He won't leave early, in case anything does go wrong. But Aythr doesn't have eyes for anyone but Gwen tonight, so he's left mainly to his own devices.

[Open to anyone who'd logically be at the wedding.]

They've been in the Hall for weeks now, longer than they've ever stayed at a stretch. It's almost the first time they've had the opportunity -- Bredigan up and functioning after the first long wave of intense development, Lamwell keeping track of things at home -- but they all know that isn't the reason. It's as if they're afraid to look away. Even Melian is tense and subdued, keeping a watchful eye on his parents as if either of them might be the breaking point.

But Melian is in bed, and presumably asleep, in the corner they've screened off as his own, when Medraut comes in toward midnight. The door shuts quietly behind him, shutting out the yellow light from the hallway; he darts a quick look behind the partition, before slipping past into the bedroom.

Lanselos has been out of Camallate for three weeks, seeing to the King's business in one of the little towns out past Bredigan -- a town that's growing somewhat faster than anyone expected it to, and which now needs a peace enforcement presence to ensure that what's orderly stays orderly. When he gets back, the first place he goes, as always, is to Arthur. The second is Gwen. And the following morning, he's up early to go find Galade.

The two of them get along easily enough, these days, but Lanse often feels a little guilty. His son should be more of a priority, but habits are hard to change, and he feels Gwen and Arthur's lack far more keenly than he misses Galade. Which is wrong, he guesses. So he sometimes over compensates; this morning is like that. He plans to take breakfast with his son, and then to see how Galade wants to spend the day. Maybe they can go to the range, or down into the city. Whatever Galade wants, Lanselos will try to give him.

It's well before the regular morning activity gets underway when Lanse knocks on the door of Galade's little room, just down the corridor from his own. He looks only a little sleep rumpled, and his easy smile is convincing enough.

Until he's about thirteen, Gadriet Lloyd is a perfectly ordinary boy -- shy, reserved, studious, but fully capable of laughing like an idiot when he plays with his brothers and sulking in the stables when he gets in trouble. Geffreyn likes to tease him because he's the one who never resists lessons and even likes to learn, but Gadriet shrugs off the teasing fairly well. If he's genuinely hurt, Gwalchmai usually steps in.

Then things change.

He turns oddly jumpy and disconnected, staring into the distance with his head cocked as if he can hear something the rest of them can't hear. Twice Gahereth catches him scraping on the walls of his room with a kitchen knife, muttering furiously to himself, "Come on, where are you? Come on, come on, I know you're there."

At first his tutors try to overlook it as a bad spell, or maybe a subject that doesn't interest him, but finally they're forced to report to Aloth Lloyd that his clever son, the brilliant scholarly one whose potential caught the eye of a visiting Alliance official, is failing miserably in all his lessons. Lloyd has Gadriet whipped, then forced to eat in his room for a week instead of at the family table. It barely makes a difference.

One night he sits out on the front steps of the country estate, smoking the dockhands' brand of cheap, smelly cigarettes, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. He was always skinny, but over the last few weeks he's lost more weight; his sleeveless jacket and trousers seem to big for his small pale body. Without seeming to realise it, he's scratching the skin on his wrists and the undersides of his forearms, scratch scratch, his nails raking steadily.

He hasn't smiled in weeks. He hardly looks like a thirteen-year-old boy; his black eyes are weary and frightened, and he hunches over like an old man when he sits, lifting the cigarette to his lips and taking it away, breathing grey smoke into the night air.

Athyr is still rather drunk, from his conversation with Lanselos, but he manages to find his way back to his own room, hitting the wrong keycode twice before he gets into his and Gwen's quarters. The yellow silk jacket that goes with his official clothes is gone, abandoned over the back of one of Lanse's chairs, and once inside he starts looking for it, mildly bewildered.

He needs to talk to Gwen, and he knows that. He knows what he decided with Lanse. The hard part is changing something he's spent all his life taking for granted. With a small sigh, he goes back to looking for his jacket and hoping Gwen won't get back for a while, so he won't have to deal with it right away.

It's almost sunset when they finally find themselves on their own front porch, overnight bags over their shoulders; neither of them has a vast store of personal effects, and most of their clothing and their scant furniture was sent on ahead; less replaceable things are still in secure storage in the capital. The house itself is mud-brick and timber, like most of the town. Off to the side is the promised outbuilding, constructed of ugly corrugated sheeting.

Eluned draws a long breath, glancing up at her husband with what might be mistaken for a disapproving look. "I'd say you ought to carry me over the threshold, but I dunno as I trust the floor that far."

Lanselos is just coming off the range; it's early evening, and he's had a full day, but his head is finally clear. Or close to it, anyway. He can't quite get Gwenore out of his thoughts.

It's only happened a few times, and he still thinks it will stop. It has to. No matter what he feels for her, or her for him, or what it's like when they're together. It has to stop, for a hundred reasons. And yet -- he's grinning, now, with just the faintest memory of it. He's never known anything like it; like her.

And a moment later, there comes the bolt of guilt. Lăotiān Yé, if Athyr knew, his heart would break. Lanse would lose everything -- his job would be the least of his worries. He can't stand to entertain the thought; he's suddenly gripped with the urge to make up for this, just a little. But... without saying anything.

He's up the courtyard stairs and into the Hall, still smiling at folks as he passes, on his way to Athyr's office. Lanse knows what he can give him. It's been a long time since they hung out, had drinks, goofing around like they used to. He knocks the way he always does, and makes sure he's grinning for real by the time the door opens.

By the time she leaves to head back down to her own quarters, Gwenore is back in control of herself, although she's not unscathed. She takes the pins out of her hair as she goes, and pushes her fingers through till it's ruffled as ever, and makes her a little more recognizable; the soft blouse and skirt are less uncharacteristic than her expression, distracted and a little pained.

Cai feels, sometimes, that he's built himself from scratch into the person Aythr needs him to be. Some people give him guff for being too rough around the edges, too Britain - people want their leaders to be better than them, not the same. Good thing I'm not leading, he thinks, wry. He wears the right clothes and stands at his brother's shoulder and keeps his mouth shut and quietly makes sure everything runs.

That middle part is important.

But he can't change his nature entirely, and he wouldn't if he could. Aythr's his king, but Aythr also relies on him in ways he doesn't think Cai notices. Or maybe he does; his brother, Cai thinks, has always been stupid in very limited and selective ways that have more to do with being a good man than one without any brains

Part of him wants to keep quiet, because he saw how it was before, with Anna. And he likes Gwen, or did. Grudgingly, maybe, but she kept Aythr in line and pulled him out of the misery his first romance had put him through. Now this. If they were private people living private lives, he might have gone to Gwen, but they aren't, and he doesn't have the luxury.

So he clears part of Aythr's schedule, which is easier when he's in charge of it, and they find themselves alone in a car that Cai's carefully checked for bugs, with a ride that's long but not too long in front of them.

Cai's thoughtful, quiet, and doesn't speak right off.

It isn't long after Mr. Lloyd visits him on Arden that Mrs. Lloyd sends him a message asking him to come back to Manassah to see her. At first, Saigremort wants to feel resentful; it was her husband who tricked him, after all, her husband who came to his home, his safe beautiful home, just to remind him that he could still be bought and paid for.

But Mrs. Lloyd was always kind to him and to Clarie, sometimes kinder than to her own children, and he can't stop himself from feeling he owes it to her. All her children have grown and left home except Gadriet, who works away for nights at a time (Saigremort doesn't remember much about Gadriet, just that he was strange and quiet and made him nervous). Mr. Lloyd, Saigremort knows, will be on Arden for another month on business.

And it's in this way that he convinces himself that he's got to go; so he does, taking his last opportunity for time off before he begins his second year with the diplomatic service. He can always make a little money in Manassah if he needs to. He shows up on the doorstep of the Temple Bay townhouse, looking neat and sophisticated and much more grown-up than he feels at the moment.

The trade convoy to Manassah lands in the docks outside of Temple Bay and deposits wine, beef, and a bleary, wrinkled Marguel, who has never been good with stasis. She makes a face, collects her baggage with several sharp words for the crew, and then finds a cabman to take her to the commuter rail, which in turn takes her out to Aloth Lloyd's country estate, where his family lives most of the time. There she and her suitcases escape the small, dark train and step out into the planet's sunlight, much richer than it is after being filtered through the New Britain dust.

A young man is waiting there to take her things up to the guest quarters, and she herself is shown into the main hallway, where she brushes down her clothes and tries to look presentable.

It's Merdhin who points out the need to know what's going on with Aloth Lloyd postwar, where his sympathies lie and whether he's still loyal, and Merdhin who tells Athyr, one heavy hand on his shoulder, that the best way to find out is to use his contact in the Lloyd household. As usual, he explains it all so neatly and forcibly that it doesn't seem reasonable to do things any other way than the way he suggests, and Athyr nods dumbly when he's finished speaking.

He puts off making the call, though, and when he finally does it's with his office door locked, and orders for no one to disturb him for the rest of the afternoon. His hands shake a little as he patches the call through, and the glass of double-strong coffee spiked gently with raw synth liquor has done nothing to steady his nerves.

When the console screen flickers into a connexion, his cow-mild eyes gaze at her in washed-out colours, his face looking weary and grown-up with its new beard and worry lines.

"Anna?"

At the end of the week Medraut takes Saigremort back to the capital, and after the most cursory of check-ins immediately leaves again for Til Tomeil. He's had time, on the flight back, to realize exactly what's just happened; and on the second and longer trip he has more than enough time to figure out what he's going to do about it.

Not that he ever has any real doubt.

It's late afternoon when he reaches, on foot, the little house on the outskirts where he and Lenomie have been based for a year now. He swings lightly up the steps, hesitates a moment, and then lets himself in.

The trial of Lamerok is a disaster.

He knows it very nearly from the beginning, from the moment Dr. Shea brings her husband into Camallate in stasis -- from before that, when he gets the wire from the Bredigan sheriff that Anna Lloyd is dead. But first he's too angry, and then he's too heartbroken, to stop and think, and he doesn't wait for evidence (it doesn't help that Gwalchmai's as angry as he is, in a different kind of way), he just tells the judge they'd damn well better find Lamerok guilty and get him shot as soon as possible. And the judge does as he's ordered by his king.

Two days later Gadriet's stable enough to pull out of stasis, and when he says he's the one who killed her and Athyr realises he's misjudged it that bad --

But they hush it up; Gwen and Lanse help him, like they always do, and even Bedwyr spreads a few unkind rumours among the barracks about Lamerok's conduct, which is a sacrifice Athyr never meant him to make.

In the aftermath, Athyr turns solitary. Between the way he all but murdered Lamerok, and the realisation that he's never going to see Anna again (as if some part of him really believed that if he just waited long enough he'd get the chance to apologise to her, to tell her he was a stupid boy and if he weren't married now, if he didn't love his wife, he'd beg her forgiveness, he'd tell the world Medraut is his son, his own beautiful child -- a thousand fanciful ideas that would never have happened even if she had lived), he doesn't feel fit for the court. He shuts himself in his office and keeps the door locked, and has meals sent up to him.

He can't bear the thought of talking to Gwen. It's as much a betrayal of her. Lanse is even worse, because he's always been honest with Lanse, but he can't be about this. He can't tell anyone. Five years ago he might have confided in Cai, but Cai is dead.

So he shuts himself up and tries to hide from all the responsibilities he owns as king, breathing out the sorrow gingerly: his lungs ache.

Everything aches.

The Queen is likely to turn up almost anywhere in the Hall on a given day, checking on various operations, making sure everything is running smoothly. The library is not one of her more common stops, being both nonessential and outside the main compound, but it's not unheard of for her to drop by to check some record that's not in the main computer, or just to see that things are as they should be.

Today her reasons are not entirely administrative, however. She stops a moment to talk with the staff member on duty -- there's never more than one at a time -- and then goes to lean in the doorway to the hard-copy room. She moves softly, and for a moment she studies the young man at the desk in silence. Then she straightens up a little, scuffing deliberately against the threshold. "Auelon?"

After the long conference in his private office, Athyr heads for Lanselos' quarters; it's late enough that he knows Lanse will be in, and Gwen's got business elsewhere, so he doesn't need to worry about them being together.

He's still dressed in his official robe and tunic, all yellow silk that makes his slightly olive skin look sickly, and there's a pallor about him that worsens the effect. At the same time, the grim set of his mouth gives away that he's angry as much as he's worried. He stops in front of Lanse's door and knocks sharply.

"Lanse. Need to talk," he says through the door.