55
Love never presents a true image.
After breakfast on Solayi, I did take some time to write a thank-you note to my parents for the dinner and their thoughtfulness. It was long, at least for me, and I tried to make it warm. I set it on the writing table so that I’d remember to post it on Lundi. Then I took my time in getting ready to call on Seliora.
It was still before one when the hack pulled up outside the private entrance to the NordEste Design building. I didn’t want to stand in the hot sunlight holding full shields, waiting until one, although I was wearing the lighter- weight summer imager’s waistcoat and a thin gray cotton shirt. So I stepped up to the door and lifted and dropped that ancient and well-polished bronze knocker, shaped much like a stylized upholsterer’s hammer, I realized for the first time.
Young Bhenyt opened the door. “Master Rhennthyl, sir. Please come in.”
“Bhenyt . . . did Seliora send you down to act as greeter? Or your sister?” I was curious and couldn’t help wondering.
He grinned at me. “Odelia ordered me to, but Seliora paid me.” Then, abruptly, he gulped. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”
“I won’t let anyone know.” I concealed my own swallow, wondering if he were slightly mal. “Lead on.” I stepped inside and let him close the door, then followed him up the stairs to the second level.
Fortunately, Seliora stood alone in the upstairs entry foyer, wearing flowing black trousers and a cream blouse with a short but filmy red vest. Her entire face lit up as she saw me. Mine probably did as well. I took her hands, and then found my arms going around her.
Hers were around me, but only for a moment, as she whispered in my ear, half laughingly, “These walls have both eyes and ears.”
I did let go of her, if after a brief kiss. She was still smiling. “I have so much to tell you, but it’s warm here, and . . .” Her eyes flicked to one side, then the other.
“I see.” I didn’t see anyone peering into the foyer, but that didn’t mean anything.
“There’s a bit of a breeze on the third-level east terrace . . . and it’s more private. Everyone else is on the north terrace.” She smiled. “I will have to take you there before we slip away.”
I sighed, more for effect than because I had expected anything different.
“It won’t be that bad. Everyone will be glad to see you.” She led me to the side of the foyer and through the archway that led to a narrow staircase.
From the landing at the top of the stairs, we emerged from another archway into a narrower hall or foyer.
“Everyone’s sleeping and personal chambers are up here,” Seliora explained as she turned and led me though an open set of double doors onto the terrace, a tile-floored and covered expanse that ran the entire width of the building, close to twenty-five yards, and extended northward from the doors a good ten yards. Heavy iron grillwork, waist-high, enclosed the terrace, whose roof was supported by square masonry pillars. Exposed as it was to the air on three sides, the terrace was far cooler than the interior foyer or the streets below.
At a glance, I could see the extended family had gathered in groups-Seliora’s parents and aunt around a table near the iron railing on the east; the young adults in wooden chairs around a table holding arrangements of plaques that suggested a game of Regian in progress, and the younger children listening to a story being told by a graying woman too old to be an aunt or cousin, and too young to be Seliora’s grandmother. “I don’t see your grandmama.”
Seliora frowned. “She was here. She might be taking a nap. She did want to meet you.” She shook her head. “Grandmama always does things her way.” There was a mixture of ruefulness and respect in her tone, as she gently guided me to the table where her parents sat.
“Madame,” I began, inclining my head to her mother.
“Betara, please. You make me feel like my mother.”
I offered a smile. “My own mother would give me a very long lecture on being too informal and not showing respect if she ever found out that I used your given name.”
Betara smiled in return. “Then we will make certain she never finds out.”
“She is quite capable of that,” Shelim added, with a fond look at his wife.
“I understand all the women in this family are most formidable.”
Both Betara and Aegina laughed. Shelim offered a wry grin, but his eyes crinkled in amusement.
“I understand you are learning your way around the Council Chateau,” offered Shelim.
“Around is a very good description. There’s a great deal to learn.”
Betara had been studying me. Then she nodded. She wasn’t agreeing with her husband, and I would have liked to know exactly what I’d somehow confirmed for her.
“His eyes are older,” she said abruptly, looking to Aegina.
“He has seen what most never will.”
I hadn’t thought of it quite that way, but it was true. Not many men of any age have looked into the barrel of a gun that will almost kill them, and that was only part of what had happened since they had last seen me.
“You understand, I see,” observed Betara.
I inclined my head. “I suspect so, madame.” I could not make the statement without the honor of the formality.
A faint smile crossed her lips, but not an unpleasant one. I thought there might have been a hint of sadness behind it.
“We’ll be on the east terrace,” Seliora said.
“I’ll bring you something to drink in a while.” Betara looked to me, the somberness gone as if it had never been. “What would you like? We have some cool Sanietra, most wines, or Alusan gold lager, or some naranje juice.”
“The Sanietra sounds very good.”
“I’d like that, too,” said Seliora, “but I could get it . . .”
“Nonsense. You young people have a summer to catch up on.”
“You’re most kind.” I understood the unstated but informal chaperoning involved. “Thank you.”
Seliora turned, and I moved with her.
As we passed the game table, Odelia looked up from the plaques of the game and grinned. “Enjoy yourselves.”
“Concentrate on the game,” returned Seliora, “or Shomyr will take every coin you have.”
Once we left the north terrace, Seliora took my arm, much more possessively, and guided me along the wide hallway until we came to a doorway that looked like all the others. She pressed the door lever, pushed the door back, then used a brass catch to hold it open. A very short hall-less than four yards-ended in another door, which she also opened. The east terrace was much smaller, no more than five yards by four, almost as if it had once been a room and someone had replaced the outer wall with the iron railing and grillwork.
Seliora bent and moved a stone pony to prop the door between the short hallway and the terrace open, then stepped to one side of the door. “It gets too hot and still here if we don’t leave the door open.” I could see that, because there was no other way for the air to flow.
Then, she was in my arms, and there was no hesitation with the embrace and the kiss.
After a long time, she looked up at me. “I missed you. I worried.”
I kissed her again, gently. “I missed you . . . and I’m here.”
After a time longer than I had hoped and shorter than I wished, she eased out of my arms, and we settled in on each side of the circular table on the right side of the terrace, since the terrace had no settees that might accommodate two. Looking eastward, I could see the incline, filled with buildings and houses, that formed the
