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.

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

Anna's days have a predictable pattern to them, now. She gets up very early and sets the household in motion: Anna sorts Aloth's schedules; she doesn't plan the menus herself but she approves them all personally; Aloth won't let her handle the money yet, but she has to organize all of the invoices for the kitchens. It's boring, but she does everything here with just as much focus and skill as she did everything else before it.

Mid-morning, she usually goes down to the nursery to check on the boys. Sometimes she stays quite a while, reading to them herself or playing. Her tolerance for this varies, however, and today is one of the days when she doesn't quite have enough patience for both Medraut and Gwalchmai.

She's pregnant, again, and her calm comes and goes. Anna has had her sister on her mind for more than a week, now, and at last she decides she'd better just put in the call request. She clears her afternoon, and lets one of the girls know that when the call from New Britain comes in, it's to be routed to her office.

Marguel is thinking about getting married.

Vriens Gore is boring, but he means well, and he's well-off. Physically he's very similar to Antor, even if he's not like him in any other way; it means that when she looks at him she can pretend without too much trouble, especially in bed if she keeps the lights off.

It isn't going to make Antor jealous, or really accomplish anything, which she's known since she began seeing him, but there's nothing to be done about that. And it's something to do in her spare time. She can't just keep spending all night at the Menw working on her poisons -- although sometimes she thinks she might as well. At least that's fun, and it keeps her busy. The cloned white lab rats she goes through at a ridiculous rate, but the results are interesting. Sometimes she thinks about submitting an article on bioengineering to the Alliance medical journal, and then she thinks about what the Alliance might do if they realised what sorts of things she's been playing with, back here where they can't see her, and she changes her mind.

So instead she sends Athyr a microbial disorder, sealed up neatly in an orange, and waits to see what will happen.

Maybe it will cheer her up a little. At least it might take her mind off sitting here in her office wondering if Antor ever thinks about her at all.

If she's being honest, Anna's glad to head home from the Medical Academy over intersession break. She's told her classmates that she wishes she could stay -- they all have plans for the social season that's about to spring up -- and she put off a research internship to give herself time to go home. But she doesn't regret her decision; she misses home, she misses New Britain, and she misses her sister.

Besides, the trip home will allow her to accompany Marguel back to the Academy so she can start her own studies. And then they'll be together, and no end to what they might accomplish.

By the time she reaches Til Tomeil, she's both wound up and half-exhausted, all at once. She drags her own bags in through the back door, and then shouts up the servant stair, just as if she hasn't been away for over a year, "Mèimèi, come make my tea!"

It's the fifth year of his kingship, and Athyr is used to Marguel's attempts to kill him. It's a sort of a game, to be honest, one that he almost enjoys -- she plots, he escapes, the same pattern. Usually the escapes are due to Cai or Gwenore's good sense, although Athyr has caught one or two of them himself.

But this one he missed. In fact, this one was bio-engineered and came in an envelope that he made the mistake of opening himself (honestly, someone else is supposed to open his mail for him, but he thinks this is a stupid idea and tries to steal it first whenever possible), and the next person who comes to his office finds him facedown on the floor.

The first three people the medical staff notify are Gwenore, Cai, and Lanselos. Athyr is in the Menw, in one of the suites, hooked up to an IV and doped up to the ears, humming tunelessly along to the radiator. When the nurse comes in to tell him that Lanse is there, he just grins.

"Yeah, yeah, I want to see him. Send him in."