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  He exited the kitchen, and through the front window, saw the driver of his car courteously opening the door for Solomon. Alaric’s werfle had been missing in action this morning, probably hunting. For a moment, Alaric hesitated. “On time” was late in Alaric’s opinion, but seeing to Alexis’s well-being was probably a matter of Luddeccean security at the moment. His driver shut the door behind the werfle and looked toward the house expectantly. For too long, Alaric stood indecisive, but then instead of leaving, he went up the stairs to say goodbye to Alexis. When he entered the nursery, Alexis looked up sharply, clutching the softly slurping Markus. “Is something wrong?” She glanced at the clock on the mantle, and her eyes got wide. “You’re running late!”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I just came to say goodbye,” he said awkwardly.

  Alexis stared at him as though he’d just said, “Let’s take a trip to the moon, right now.”

  Her lips pursed as though untangling a problem more difficult than an alien language with a ten-thousand-character logographic writing system. And maybe for someone who had been taught to repress all her feelings, it was a more difficult problem. Alaric wasn’t particularly talkative himself, but if he truly felt a need, he knew he’d always have his parents, brothers, sister, or his uncle to burden. For a while he’d had Volka.

  He tapped his hand against his thigh and went over to give her a kiss on the cheek, which seemed safe and proper, but that threw her into a frenzy of clumsily searching the armrest with her free hand. He blinked, and then realized she was reaching for a baby blanket. Her fingers found it, and she threw it over her and Markus as though the sight of his son at her breast would disgust him.

  Leaning down, he whispered, “I really don’t—”

  “Ma’am Darmadi!” said the carer, entering the room with a friendly almost-shout, and signing as she spoke. “How is little Markus today?”

  “Ma’am, you have mail,” said the maid, just on the carer’s heels. The weere woman carried a shoebox of Alexis’s daily letters—women’s auxiliary groups, Daughters of the Founders Clubs, Women for the War Effort, and more—all asking for her to come speak to them. She always politely refused, saying she wasn’t a hero. Though she had been. When the supply ship Manna had been attacked by pirates, without thought to her own safety, she’d pulled a release latch that allowed an emergency shuttle to disembark, carrying with it Markus, a family of civilians, and off-duty Guardsmen. Their testimony had allowed the Luddeccean government to realize very quickly that the ship’s hijacking had been an inside job, and to more quickly quash the conspiracy her family had been launching against the new premier and Archbishop Sato.

  “He is fine, Helen,” Alexis said to the carer, who came over to coo at Markus.

  To the maid, Alexis said, “Do any of the letters look urgent? Has the messenger arrived from the archbishop, yet?”

  “The messenger is downstairs, waiting in the parlor,” the maid replied, stepping close to Alexis, her body between Alaric and his wife. “I’ll look through these and see if there is anything personal, if you like.”

  “Yes, please,” Alexis said.

  The room was crowded. Helen and the maid were in his way, and Alaric left, kiss not performed, feeling incomplete. He wasn’t fighting with Alexis, he reminded himself. She had sat down with him and told him what was wrong…after he’d needled. And at no point had he shouted, “Just say what you mean and mean what you say, Woman!” So. Progress. He headed downstairs, feeling like he had a headache coming on. Did it have to be this hard?

  Of course, it didn’t. His hand flexed at his side and he remembered Volka in his arms.

  Five minutes later than he normally left, he got into the thankfully air-conditioned car next to a sleeping Solomon—thinking he still might not technically be late. But then the driver pulled forward, and then the man realized that he wouldn’t be able to get around the messenger’s motorcycle, still in the driveway, without flattening a flowerbed. The driver got out, tried to move the motorcycle, failed, came back to inform Alaric he was going to get the messenger, and then went to the front door.

  Ten minutes later, they were coasting up the drive in the motorcycle messenger’s wake, well on the way to being truly late. Alaric was stifling irritation when a flash of silver in the woods behind the house caught his eye. “Stop.” He spoke the order on instinct, half thinking he’d only seen a figment of his imagination. The car halted, and out the window Alaric saw Volka walking up the hill behind his uncle’s house. She must have come in the corner gate, as she sometimes had when she’d run errands for his uncle. There was a Guardsman behind her, and for a heartbeat, he thought the man had arrested her, but then he saw her hands were free at her sides. The man was eyeing a green billfold—the type used for identification papers—and was speaking into his radio, his attention clearly not entirely on Volka.

  Why was she here? She was wearing a long, lemon yellow dress—modest enough for Luddeccea, but the multitude of pearlescent buttons down the left front and the asymmetrical neckline and hem was Galactican in style. It was very suitable for the Galactican ambassadorial attaché she was, yet she had come through the corner gate and was headed for the kitchen door, which was how a weere would enter. She should go through the front door.

  Through the glass, his eyes met hers. She drew up short, and her lips parted as though as shocked to see him as he was to see her. And maybe she was shocked, maybe—it entered his thick skull—she wasn’t here to see him. Could she be here to see his uncle? Obviously, she wasn’t here by Alexis’s invitation, but she had been invited, or she wouldn’t have been allowed across the perimeter. His uncle had said nothing to him about it. His jaw got hard. He could guess his uncle’s reasoning. The less was said to Alaric, the less temptation for Alaric to linger, and the less chance Alexis would find out—but Alexis was upstairs and was bound to find out anyway, and what temptation could really occur when his wife was there? And why had his uncle made Volka enter through the back?

  He pulled on the door handle, but Volka threw up a hand, her eyes—the same yellow as the dress—still locked on his. She was nearly thirty meters away, yet the intensity of her gaze made him feel like there was no space between them. He pushed the door open, prepared to take her around to the front of the house. Before he’d stepped out, Volka frantically began shaking her head in the negative. He paused.

  Solomon squeaked for attention, but Alaric remained fixated on Volka. She mouthed the words, “Please” and “No.” He didn’t read lips, but he could read hers. Solomon squeaked again and hopped on the seat.

  Alaric looked pointedly at Volka, to the front door, and back at her. She was an attaché, not staff.

  She shook her head again. No.

  He exhaled, pained that she wouldn’t let him do that simple thing, but was it the right thing if it wasn’t what Volka wanted? He slumped back in his seat. “I hate it,” he mouthed, hand tightening on the door handle.

  She smiled sadly. “I know,” her lips said. She wasn’t close enough for him to hear.

  They understood each other after years apart and with meters between them. He slammed the door shut, turned away, and said, “Drive.”

  Solomon stood on his hind legs. Using a modification to Luddeccean sign language appropriate for tiny paws and no opposable thumbs, he gestured to say, “You did the right thing.”

  Alaric rubbed his temple, but then signed in return, “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  He didn’t look back as they pulled down the drive.

  Volka watched Alaric’s car pull away, feeling better that she had seen him, despite everything. She felt like she had an ally—in spirit, at least.

  “Ma’am?” said the Guardsman beside her.

  “Oh, right,” Volka said. “Lead away.”

  He led her to the back door that Alaric hadn’t wanted her to go through.

  Taking a deep breath, she knocked.

  A strange weere woman in the typical drab tunic and trousers of staff open
ed the door and glared at her. “Yes? What do you want?”

  “Ah—” Volka said, but Mr. Darmadi—Silas—cried from behind the woman, “Volka, what are you doing? Merta, get out of the way!” The weere woman jumped aside, and a moment later, Mr. Darmadi was in the doorframe.

  “You invited me?” Volka said, confused. She’d asked for his permission to come here, and he’d issued the formal invitation she’d needed. What had she done wrong now?

  He scowled down at her from atop the kitchen stoop. “You should come in the front door.”

  “Oh, well.” That was a change. She shrugged. “I’m here now, so—”

  Still scowling, he said, “I think you should go around the front.”

  Behind him, the weere woman’s eyes got wide and her jaw dropped to the floor. What he was suggesting—which Alaric had also suggested—was scandalous.

  “Um, Mr. Darmadi, the neighbors will see,” Volka pointed out.

  She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his scowl intensified—the wrinkles behind his glasses at the bridge of his nose and around his mouth got deeper, and his gaze became sharper and narrower. “I think that is the point, Volka,” he said in a scolding tone that he’d used on her many times before. It was the tone that said, “I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.” It was oddly comforting. In all that changed, some things hadn’t.

  His expression relaxed a fraction. “Also, I told you to call me Silas.”

  “Yes, Mister—”

  He raised an imperious eyebrow.

  “—Silas.”

  “All right.” He squared his shoulders. “I will meet you at the front.”

  The next moment, she was staring at the wood grain of the back door.

  She turned to her Guardsman escort. Nostrils flaring, he said, “I heard. Move.” The disapproval came through loud and clear. Volka’s lips pressed together. No, some things hadn’t changed.

  She walked around the house. Another Guardsman was patrolling there.

  “What is she doing?” he asked the guard escorting Volka.

  “The head of the house told her to come this way,” Volka’s guard replied.

  The new Guardsman shook his head. “That’s going to go over well with the lady of the house.” But he let Volka approach the front entrance. She raised her hand to knock. Before her knuckles connected with the wood, it was opened from the inside by Mr. Darmadi himself.

  “Volka, you made it!” he said, as though he hadn’t just seen her at the back door. “Come in, come in.”

  Ignoring the Guardsman who took that moment to spit disapprovingly, she entered. The ceiling wasn’t as high as she remembered, and it was darker than the Galactican buildings she’d become accustomed to with their enormous windows. The weere maid entered the foyer, and Mr. Darmadi—Silas—asked, “Would you like any refreshments?”

  “That’s all right” was on the tip of her tongue, but her stomach was a bit unsettled, as it always was in the mornings since she’d started taking Galactican birth control to tame her season. Also, it was warm in the house. “A glass of water would be nice, thank you,” she said.

  “And I’d like iced tea, please,” said Mr. Darmadi. “We’ll take it in the library.”

  The maid bowed and headed to the kitchen.

  “Come, come,” said Mr. Darmadi, leading Volka down the hall. “Alexis won’t be down for a few more minutes.”

  Following him, head bowed in habit, Volka’s heart rate picked up. Mr. Darmadi had invited Volka here, but it was Alexis she had to see. She released a breath. It would have been disastrous if Alaric had caused a scene, no matter how his objection to her entering through the back had warmed her. Her eyes lifted to Mr. Darmadi. He’d insisted she come in the front door, too. Certainly, the neighbors would know, despite the garden’s shroud of trees; they’d hear from the maid and the Guardsmen. At least Alexis would know it was Mr. Darmadi’s doing, not Alaric’s.

  She swallowed. Mr. Darmadi’s back had become slightly stooped since she’d been his apprentice, he was thinner, and the joints of his fingers seemed a bit more swollen.

  “Rex came by,” Mr. Darmadi said, referring to a young weere man of considerable artistic talent who’d been Volka’s student.

  “Oh, that’s good,” said Volka as they entered the library. The windows were open, the ceiling fan was on, and there was a comfortable breeze through the room. It smelled of old books, old wood, and the garden with its riot of blooms. Mr. Darmadi turned to her and frowned.

  “It’s not good?” she asked.

  Mr. Darmadi’s shoulders rose and fell. “I think he intends to join the Weere Guard.”

  “He is only sixteen,” Volka replied in dismay.

  Taking a seat in a high-backed chair and gesturing for her to do the same in the chair nearest him, Mr. Darmadi took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes. “Human boys lie about their age to the recruiters all the time. I don’t suppose young weere men are any different.”

  Volka gingerly sat down across from him. Her mind raced with thoughts of Rex—he was almost too small to apply to the Weere Guard. His shoulders were narrow, and his voice still cracked occasionally. He didn’t have a beard to speak of…but they’d take him, she was sure. He was healthy, smart, and literate—and the last two were useful in soldiers, contrary to popular opinion. But would those talents be appreciated in a weere soldier? Some weere could sense the Dark almost as well as The One. Hopefully Rex would be one of those and not given some horrid post that left him as little more than phaser fodder.

  Volka shook her head, still in disbelief. “You pay more, though.”

  Mr. Darmadi sighed. “But a position in the Weere Guard is more honorable.”

  Volka froze; it was possible she forgot to breathe. It was the lizzar in the room. Any weere knowing that Mr. Darmadi was never married would be suspicious of his “inclinations.” Weere were in many ways less tolerant than humans of homosexuality. Mr. Darmadi was a respected member of human society. As long as he kept his affairs out of sight, humans were happy to pretend he was just an unfortunate man unable to have children. They didn’t shun him.

  Weere, on the other hand…it had always been hard to recruit help for the household. Weere men were especially hard to convince. If they took a job with a man who was suspected of favoring men, they’d get ribbed for it constantly. Even Volka’s father had gotten asked questions like, “Does your wife protect you from him?” Maybe the stricter taboo was because few weere men could resist the season, and so even if they might be attracted romantically more to males, they still wound up in male-female couples and the condition was just rarer. Or maybe it was similar to the way the weere looked down on humans for the “monkey human” penchant for infidelity—which Sixty said was more naturally serial monogamy in the Republic—weere just needed to look down on humans for any reason they could.

  None of those musings were particularly helpful to Mr. Darmadi. She tried to think of what to say. The maid saved her by bringing in her water and Mr. Darmadi’s tea. Volka filled the silence with a thank you, which earned her a scowl. Did the maid know about her affair with Alaric so many years ago? Did she think, like Alexis had, that it was still going on?

  As the maid left, Mr. Darmadi said, “But Rex says he’s inherited all his talent from his father...and his father hurt his leg and can’t work on the salvage crew anymore on the edge of the Exclusion Zone. He asked me to interview him…which is why I think Rex came to see me to begin with. I suppose I’ll do it.”

  He didn’t sound particularly hopeful, but Volka’s ears perked. She knew Rex and his widowed father were supporting two younger siblings and a pair of cousins. “I think he’ll accept,” she said. Poor Rex’s father probably didn’t have many options. She hoped he met Mr. Darmadi’s exacting standards. But even if he couldn’t help so much with drawings and underpaintings, stretching and priming canvases, cleaning brushes and the studio would be a big help.

  Sipping his tea, Mr. Darmadi looked toward th
e ceiling. “It’s quiet up there. Alexis is about to come down.” Setting his tea aside, he rose, and Volka rose, too.

  “I better alert her you’re here, so she won’t be surprised.” He shuffled across the room, but stopped by the door and turned back. “I hear…I hear it, the Dark…it is worse than we’re being told.”

  Volka’s hands came together in front of her. “It is. It is much worse.”

  Resting a hand on the doorframe, he looked at her over the edge of his glasses. “And that the treatment is torturous.”

  “It is,” Volka admitted.

  Sighing, he said, “Well…she’s still angry at me anyway—”

  Alexis was angry at him because he had told her that Volka and Alaric weren’t involved—hadn’t been involved—since Alexis’s and Alaric’s engagement.

  Mr. Darmadi continued, “—and I’m a coward and don’t want to face torture.”

  Volka blinked.

  He turned away and stepped out of view, but Volka called out, “Mister—Silas …”

  He poked his head around the door frame.

  Hands together, Volka rolled on her feet. “You faced Galacticans, a robot, and a demon to get Alexis back—” Not that the Galacticans, Sixty, or Carl would have hurt him—well, not Sixty or the Galacticans—but Mr. Darmadi hadn’t known that when he’d come to the Galactic Republic Embassy to beg for their help in saving Alexis. “—and you made me come in the front door. That’s all very brave.”

  He blinked at her a moment and then waved a hand. “Pssish, you’ll swell my head.” He disappeared down the hall, and Volka smiled. She’d missed Luddeccean modesty.

  She heard Mr. Darmadi’s steps on the stairs, and her smile melted. She had not missed Luddeccean prejudice, and she was about to face the most prejudiced of just about any Luddeccean she’d ever met. Prejudice brought on by society but nurtured by personal reasons.

  Upstairs, she heard another set of footsteps, and then Mr. Darmadi’s whispers. Those other footsteps became angry strides through the upper hall and down the stairs.