“More deviousness,” Brun said. “I can do that.”
Shortly after that, Kate arrived for lunch, kicking off her high heels as she stepped onto the patterned carpet of the hall.
“I don’t see why you wear those things if they hurt your feet,” Brun said.
“For the sheer pleasure of taking them off and wiggling my toes in this,” Kate said. She looked triumphant. “I’ve almost got the Foreign Ministry to agree to cancel the trade embargo, and I have appointments with two other ministers this afternoon. When I get those assets unfrozen, then it’s over and done and I can take off for home. With maybe just a bit of sightseeing along the way.”
“Sightseeing?”
“Well, like I told that young man on the ship that brought me here, I wouldn’t mind a bit seeing the famous sights of the Familias. When else am I going to have time?”
“What’s on your list?” Brun asked. “You know it could take a year or more . . .” They discussed tourist destinations over lunch, then Kate put her shoes on and headed out to do battle with the bureaucrats.
Chapter Eighteen
Brun arrived at the offices of Spurling, Taklin, DeVries, and Bolton with what she hoped was a worried scowl. She had considered, and discarded, the idea of a disguise, but she wore another conservative dress.
“Ah . . . Sera Meager,” the receptionist said. “Please come through,” and unlocked the interior door. Brun stepped through, to be met by a glossy young man whom she realized, after a moment, was George Mahoney in formal business attire with an expression so different from his usual that he didn’t look like himself.
“Fooled you, didn’t I?” he said. As he grinned, the old George reappeared. “Passed my exams. I’m here to interview—”
Brun almost asked if he weren’t going to work with his father, but the thought occurred that that was probably the best excuse any of them had.
“Dad had lunch with a senior partner today,” he went on, for the benefit of anyone in any of the small offices they were passing. “They have an opening—he called and said to get myself over here. So here I am, and I think they’re checking out my willingness to do as I’m told by asking me to escort visitors.”
“How were the exams?” Brun asked, the least dangerous of the questions she was thinking.
“I did pretty well,” George said. A flush reddened his cheekbones. “Actually—I did very well, and Dad was pleased, and I think that’s why he wangled a lunch invitation, though he said Ser Spurling had been asking before if they could help.”
“Come tops in the exams?”
The flush deepened. “As a matter of fact, not quite. You know that cousin of yours? Veronica?”
Brun remembered the slightly gawky girl at the Hunt Ball long ago, when the Crown Prince had ridden a horse into the dining hall.
“She came first; I came second. And—we’re getting married.” Before she could say anything, he said, “And here you are, Sera Meager—Ser Spurling’s office.”
Ser Spurling, who looked to be about sixty, led her into his spacious office and suggested to George that he might go downstairs and bring some files which the library clerk would have ready for him. In the office were Kevil, looking far more comfortable now with his new arm, Viktor, and Stepan Barraclough.
“Brun, my dear, how good to see you again.” Stepan stood and came to her. He was an old man, though not so old as Viktor, and looked it, his face furrowed and sagging with age, showing the bones underneath, his eyes sunken beneath heavy lids. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you—you’re quite welcome.”
“You will have wondered why I asked you to come, and you must have heard what Oskar Morrelline’s come up with.”
“Yes to both,” Brun said.
“Good. Brun, I don’t know if you ever heard why I refused rejuvenation—” She shook her head. “It was the price Kostan—my grandfather—demanded for ensuring that I would be in succession for the position I now hold. It was his opinion that in the transitional period, as the scope and effects of rejuvenation spread, the sept must have someone in the power structure who had not rejuvenated. Who would be a reality check for the rest, reminding them of the passage of time, and the needs of the whole.”
“Long life or power, not both,” Viktor put in.
“Exactly.” Stepan grinned. “And also, the experience of longing for long life, and the experience of dealing with those who had it. At twenty, I had no difficulty choosing power. At forty and fifty, moving up the power structure of our sept, I first felt the longing, as my friends rejuvenated, and regained their youth. My wife wanted me to rejuv—she had, and when I wouldn’t join her, she left me. It was hard, then, to stick to the bargain I’d made, but I am nothing if not stubborn.” He chuckled. “Besides, he’d extracted the same promise from one of my uncles, who was then the new head of our sept, so if I’d reneged, my uncle would have found someone else. And I was, as my grandfather had foreseen, good at the kind of work it takes to be a good head of the sept.”
“I chose long life,” Viktor said. “But then I always had too much temper to be a candidate for the job.”
“Ah, but you make a very good stalking horse, Viktor. I can count on you to draw the enemy’s fire and reveal their ambushes.”
“That’s why he’s so good at it,” Viktor said to Brun, grinning. “He always finds a way to flatter you into doing what he wants.”
“Not always. I never found Harlis very cooperative and blessed Bunny for being born first.” Stepan looked at Brun, now. “I know what you were bred for, but not entirely what you’ve made of it,” he said. “I need your talents, my dear. I had hoped to wait another ten years or so, but events turned against me. You are young, but you’ve been through an experience that would mature most people; I’m hoping it’s matured you.”
“I hope so too,” Brun said. She began to have an inkling of where he was going, and the excitement of the possible challenge warred in her mind with the fear that she wasn’t ready.
“I need an heir,” Stepan said. “And I am offering you the same bargain that was offered me.” He paused; Brun said nothing . . . she could not. “The government is at a crisis; even without the Morrelline accusations, the economic problems resulting from this rejuvenation issue, and the threat from the Benignity, would have brought it to the same crossroads. The woman who would have succeeded me first—Carlotta Bellinveau—developed intractible renal failure after treatment for a routine infection. Only rejuvenation would save her life, and she was only forty-five. She opted to risk it, but despite auto-transplants, she died last year. If I were paranoid, I’d suspect the Consellines of doing this by means of the drugs she took for the original infection, but frankly I think it was just one of those things.”
“Was that . . . all? You had just one?”
“Not originally, no. But it’s the combination of leadership talent and a willingness to forego rejuvenation that makes such people hard to find. Back when I was young and repeatable rejuvenation was new, there were plenty of cautious people my age who didn’t rejuv at forty or fifty—but that number dwindled. Now, many of the wealthy are doing their first rejuv at thirty; your own older sister and her husband, Brun, just rejuved and thought nothing of it. They’re in their thirties.”
Brun wondered if he knew that she had wanted to rejuv to change her appearance and identity, to wipe herself out . . . now that seemed a macabre idea, clearly the thought of someone mentally unbalanced.
“So if I agree not to rejuv, you will support me for head of the sept? I thought it was elective . . .”
“It is elective, but like nearly all elections, it’s somewhat rigged,” he said. “And just agreeing not to rejuv is only the first step in the selection process. If you’re going to say yes, please do so, so we can get on with the rest of it.”