brand new colony

It's the first night he's spent with Gwenore in more than a month -- they've both been busy, particularly him, and it's been as hard to make time for her as to find a night he doesn't think she's already planned to spend with Lanse. So it's a relief, a pleasure he wasn't expecting. He makes love to her earnestly.

He's thrice grateful when the next morning finds him so dizzy he can hardly stand. Gwen is already up, her duties don't let her linger in bed with him, and he staggers to his feet, focusing hard to get into his clothes.

(It's not so bad but he wishes Marguel were more circumspect. It's hard enough defending her to Cai and Gwen and Lanse every month, swearing up and down that she won't let anything bad happen to him, that it'd be worse to do something about it. He's toyed with the idea that maybe she wants him to do something about it, maybe it's some kind of test, but he can't reconcile himself to punishing her, and maybe he's thinking of Anna, maybe he's just got something to atone for, but that's the way it is.)

He's not entirely sure what time it is, though he hopes it isn't too late. He could ring, he knows -- there's an emergency alarm next to his bed, the same one sewn into the lining of all his street clothes. But he feels strangely anxious, and instead of doing any of the sensible things he slips out of the room, sliding along the wall for support, until he gets to Lanse's room, where he rings the bell and then leans against the door, pressing his sweating forehead to the cool metal.

It's a long shot. Lanse should be out on the parade grounds by now. He concentrates on breathing slowly, trying to wrap his head around the idea of what he'll do if Lanse isn't there.

Gadriet arrives back in Temple Bay as the night is finally starting to give way to the first suggestion of light. His fear of and his urge to defy his mother have been struggling in him ever since he got the call, and the first thing he did when he got out of stasis was to take a shot of general anesthetic; his eyes are cloudy and distant, but he seems relatively steady when he gets off the bullet train at the country estate.

A maid lets him into the house when he knocks, and he goes up to his old room, where everything is as he left it when he went to vetacad. In here it's as if time has been keeping still. He lies down on top of the soft blue coverlet of his bed and stares up at the ceiling.

He's glad he gave himself the shot. If he hadn't, he thinks, he'd be screaming.

Anna keeps to her quarters for the better part of the day following Aloth's death and her subsequent call to her sons. She conducts the business of preparing a funeral and trying to sort the immediate legal issues from her little office -- going into Aloth's space feels strange without him there. A little later in the afternoon, she calls Clarissant in and spends two hours or so going over what will be expected of her and what her brothers will need. Soredamor is in and out, at Anna's request.

Finally, a little before dinnertime -- which will be happening on time, as always, at least for the girls -- Anna straightens her skirt, and heads for Marguel's room, knocking with the sharp insistence that comes from being the lady of the house.

When he signs off it's well past midnight, and even in Til Tomeil it's gotten late. Medraut goes to bed, for what sleep he can manage, and in the morning sends word to Galman that he's going to be late today. Then he takes a deep breath, and sits down with the comm. It's going to be a long day.

It's been nearly five years since Anna saw her sister face to face; it takes work to clear Marguel's schedule, but eventually the trip to Manassah is arranged. She travels on her own, and arrives at the little spaceport early in the afternoon. The driver is there to meet her -- Anna rarely leaves the estate, particularly when they're out at the country house as they almost always are during the summer -- and when Marguel arrives she'll find the sprawling house to be largely silent, except for the noise of staff keeping busy.

Once Marguel's luggage is settled in her quarters, she's shown to a little sitting room off of the cluster of rooms that Anna has claimed as her own. (A small library, an office, a rather austere little bedroom with a single bed -- everything painstakingly in its place.) Someone brings a tray with tea and sweets, and assures her that Mrs. Lloyd is on her way, then leaves her alone to wait.

Anna arrives on New Britain with little fanfare, in security almost as tight as that which surrounded her departure, if considerably less hostile. Three of her sons meet her at the spaceport -- Medraut and Gadriet are still in Bredigan, they say; they're expected within the week -- and conduct her to the Hall. It's been refurbished, built onto, weathered; there's not much trace of the near-derelict Alliance building that it was when Arthur moved his people in. He's there to greet her, late as it is by planetary time, and Gwenore beside him. That interview is mercifully brief.

Medraut turns up the next morning, a little before noon, at the door of the suite allotted to her. He hasn't bothered to tidy up; he's in battered jeans and work shirt, dust on his heavy shoes, his hair too long and windblown, unshaven since yesterday; in which state he only resembles Athyr all the more.

"Mama," he says by way of greeting, mildly.

Gahereth and Lianor have been married for almost a year and a half before they're finally able to make the trip to Manassah. Gahereth actually seems excited about the trip in the weeks leading up to their departure, telling Lianor all about the house and the planet and his sister, talking even more than he usually does (which is a lot) and telling her stories as they lie in bed at night.

They touch down in the big spaceport, and as they make the trip from the Temple Bay docks out into the countryside, Gahereth is busy pointing things out. As they come up to the estate, though, he gets a little quieter -- a lifetime of training kicking in, maybe -- and though he still looks happy enough to be there, it's apparent from the moment they step out of the hired transport that the Lloyd household is one of discipline and rules, and not very much like life with the Sheas.

The beginnings of this visit go just like every other time one of her sons has brought his wife home to meet them: one of the staff gets their luggage in, and Gahereth gets the two of them settled in his old room; they're left to their own devices for several hours, and though the expectation of being dressed and ready for dinner at eight isn't a direction that either Anna or Aloth issue, Gahereth is suddenly weirdly particular about their getting ready and being at the table on time. Dinner goes as most family dinners go, which is to say it's quiet, with polite conversation and a degree of formality that Lianor was probably not expecting.

After dinner, Aloth takes Gahereth back to his office for a debriefing of what things are like on New Britain, and Anna shows Lianor to one of the cozy little parlour rooms she's had done up now that the boys are all away. Waiting for them is a tray of sweets and a tea service; Anna settles into one of the chairs with the same poised, quiet air that she's had all evening.

As she's pouring the tea, she says, "So, Lianor, tell me more about you."

They haven't actually seen much of each other since Peredwr and Danbrann stumbled on the archives, that first time; in the intervening fortnight there's been too much else to demand their attention. But now there's a calm space, a sudden quiet, and Peredwr finds it even more unsettling -- unsettling because the city itself is still so overwhelming, so busy, so full of other people doing things, half of which he can't figure out.

So one warm evening, while Danbrann is absorbed in mending their winter clothes -- she's always done what sewing there was to be done, as neither Peredwr nor their mother was any good at it -- he finds his way back to the library building, and in among the ramshackle stacks like a bird returning to the forest.

It's been a good year for them. The Shea business is flourishing, and the estate is getting bigger as Mr. Shea buys more of the surrounding land parcels from the government in Camallate. Gahereth and Lianor have been living in Shea's house since they're marriage, but for their first anniversary he throws a party for them and announces that he's furnished one of the old barns for them.

So after the party they start moving their things in, and by the time dusk falls on the estate the barn is beginning to look a lot like home.

When the last of the boxes has been unpacked Lianor throws herself down on the sofa, beaming.

"It's so big! Look at all this space we got! Lord, it's nice."

It was easier when they were all children: he told them what to do and they obeyed. Now they're getting increasingly difficult to manage. Gwalchmai, who was always far and away his favourite, and Anna's son Medraut have already left for New Britain, and Gadriet is thankfully away at the VetAcad (Gadriet especially disappoints him; to have gone from so promising and brilliant to the shifty-eyed addict he is now. Aloth has made it clear to Anna several times that he blames her).

That leaves Geffreyn and Gahereth at home. Geffreyn is a trouble-maker, with no sense of proportion, prone to bouts of rage and completely untrainable. By contrast, Gahereth consistently goes out of his way to be kind to people he has no business paying any attention to in the first place.

Aloth has been disappointed in them for years. Five children with Anna, and the only one who's really turned out the way he'd like is Medraut, who isn't even his. The Estrans' children in Arden have done better, but his hold over them gets more tenuous all the time.

He tends to avoid the two at home -- lately he's taken up more and more of his time with business, so as to avoid his family altogether whenever possible -- but Gahereth's tutor sent him a report earlier that's got to be addressed. So this afternoon he's in his office at the house, drumming a staccato with his stylus while he waits for Gahereth to emerge from whatever charitable endeavour he's been wasting his time with now.

He's five minutes late already. The drumming picks up in speed and volume while Aloth frowns at the door.

Every few months, Anna sends a call request to her sister back on New Britain. When the children were small and Anna was busier, they sometimes went nearly a year without talking directly to one another; but now that the boys are gone, Anna's days are considerably emptier, and the calls have taken on a steady, regular pace.

Anna doesn't have friends, not as such, and so she doesn't speak much to anyone outside the household. The calls with Marguel are, therefore, usually a bright spot in her schedule, and Marguel most always finds her cheerful when she answers. (Or what passes for "cheerful" with Anna, anyway.) But this call seems different right off the bat -- for one thing, it's a couple of weeks ahead of schedule, and for another, Anna isn't smiling when the image comes up.

Red is not really the best colour for Lianor's complexion, but she does look radiant to-day, in the crimson gown and headdress, with silk flowers woven into her long hair; Eluned is less striking, but then that's the whole point of the double wedding, to keep Eluned and Gadriet in the background. Given the way Lianor is glowing, it's not terribly difficult.

Mr. Shea weeps openly during the ceremony (both daughters married on the same day -- by Shea standards it's a miracle tailored to the clan). Afterward the monk ties their hands together with red ribbons.

Then it's the reception, and Gahereth and Lianor get to sit through all the toasts, of which there are nearly as many as guests, and then wine and food and dancing and incredibly loud music that goes on until nearly midnight before people start to trail off to their rooms. Gahereth is subjected to a fair number of winks and jabs with elbows and particularly unsubtle comments about deflowering his bride by departing guests, but eventually they manage to escape, and Lianor locks the door behind them with a giggle of relief.

"Oh, my Lord."

The last two weeks she's been cuffed to a pipe in the basement of the shed out in the middle of one of New Britain's wide, dry plains -- she doesn't know which one. The two men who cuffed her and blindfolded her and brought her here were careful, but not gentle, cautious of hurting her badly but not of hurting her.

Eluned will come get her, she tells herself, over and over. Eluned and Papa will come get her free.

But when help finally comes, it isn't her family. The two lawmen from Camallate are the Dragon's nephews, and perhaps she should feel cowed by their importance, but she doesn't. She's too tired for that. They shoot the men who took her, or at least one of them does, she doesn't know, she only saw the end of it when somebody uncuffed her and led her out in the light, blinding after all this time in the darkness.

Half of her is still afraid to trust them. She doesn't know them. One of them is rough, and swears and spits and reminds her too much of her captors. The other is quieter, but no less strange.

They travel as far as they can while the light holds, and then make camp. The men build a small fire and roast chunks of protein and boil coffee. Lianor eats a little, but her stomach is shrunk and cramped. The rough one stretches out in the sandy dirt and sleeps, and the other one stays up, his pistols beside him, watching the fire.

She lies down, but she doesn't sleep. She looks into the fire. She draws circles in the dirt with her fingertips and tries to shake the feeling that they're just waiting to tie her up again and leave her in some other dark hole. Finally she sits up and reaches for the coffee pot.

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.

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.]

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.

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.