There was a revelation. The happy home on the beach, the white picket fence, the tidy house and the two kidsc
Toby went home to mother. No matter how rough “home” got, home wasn’t with Jill, not the way Toby remembered things now.
It was also true their mother had had a knack for finding the right psychological moment and ratcheting up the emotional pressurec I need you. Oh, I’ll get along. I had palpitations, is all. Well, go to the doctor, Mother. Oh, no, I don’t need the doctor. Smiles and sunbeams. I’m feeling better. You know I always feel better when you’re herec
After he’d flown home from the continent in the middle of some crisis, because she had one of her own; and she’d hover right over the breakfast table and praise him to the skies and tell Toby what a good son his brother was—salt in the wounds. Absolute salt in the wounds. She’d had Toby rushing to her side because he never loved her enough, never could equal the sacrifices brother Bren made for her, oh, it was so good when Bren was there. She just sparkled.
Hell.
“I love you,” he said to Toby, outright. “I love you even when you’re mad at me—which I don’t blame you for being. You can take a swing at me, if you like.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It might clear the air.”
“Clear the air, hell! Your bodyguard would blow me to confetti.”
“Well, they’re actually not here, but if you want to, let’s move away from the antique tea service.”
“Now you arebeing ridiculous. Don’t.”
“Well, but I’ll specifically instruct my bodyguard that if you ever do take a swing at me, they’re to let you. You’ve got one on account.”
“Damn it, Bren.”
“Yeah. Honestly, I know more than I look like I do. I know the things Mum did, playing one of us against the other—she did; you know she did. I winced. I didn’t know how to stop it. I honestly didn’t know. I mediate between nations. I couldn’t figure how to tell Mum not to play one of us against the other. She taught me a lot about politics. I never got the better of her.”
“Me either,” Toby said after a moment.
“Did she ever talk about me, you know, that awful Bren? That son that deserted me?”
“No,” Toby said. “You were always the saint.”
“Worse. A lot worse than I thought. I wish she’d damned me now and again. You deserved to hear her say that.”
“Never did.”
“If you’d been the one absent on the continent, you know you’d have been the saint and I’d have been in your spot.”
That was, maybe, a thought Toby hadn’t entertained before now. Toby gave him an odd look.
“So, well, you and Barb can talk about me. Blame me to hell and back. It’s therapeutic.”
“I don’t. She doesn’t. Honestly. She’s not bitter toward you. You want the truth—she’s mad at you. But it’s hurt feelings. Like you say. Hurt feelings.”
“Barb’s probably scared to death we’re getting together to talk about her. She knew damned well I was manuevering her out the door. But the moment dawned, she got her courage together and went shopping. She let us get together and now she doesn’t even know if we’ll make common cause and if she’ll have a boat to get home on. That’s Barb. She’s upset, so she’ll buy something expensive for herself. But she’s brave. At a certain point she canturn loose and take care of herself. That’s the Barb I loved. Back when I did love her, that is.”
Toby managed a dry laugh. “She’ll want to know what we said. And she won’t believe it wasn’t really about her.”
“Better make up something.”
“Hell, Bren!”
“Funny. When I think about thatBarb that just went shopping, I know I probably did love her. But I don’t get that side of Barb anymore. That Barb’s all yours now. I don’t know how long that’ll be so, but I do know she won’t come my way again. It’s guaranteed Jago would shoot both of us.”
“Hell, Bren!”
“Well, Jago would shoot her. That, in Jago’s way of thinking, would solve all the problem.”
“Are you joking or not?”
“I actually don’t know,” he said, and added, dryly, “but I’m certainly not going to ask Jago.”
Toby actually laughed, however briefly, and shook his head, resigning the argument.
“So—are you and Barb going fishing with us after this? Can we share a boat? Or is there too much freight aboard?”
“Sure,” Toby said. “Sure. I honestly look forward to it.”
“Good,” he said, and because the atmosphere in the study was too heavy, too charged: “Want to have a look at the garden? Not much out there, but I can give you the idea. I actually know what’s usually planted there.”
“Sure,” Toby said, so they went out and talked about vegetables.
He went in after a while, and left Toby in the garden, where Toby said he preferred to sit. Barb was still shopping—that was rarely a quick event. The youngsters were settling in. He had— at least an hour to attend his notes. He went to his study then, and wrote an actual three paragraphs of his argument against wireless phones.
Crack.
Possibly the staff doing some maintenance in the formal garden, he thought, and wrote another paragraph.
No, it was notgood for the social fabric for wireless phones to be in every pocket, the ordinary tenor of formal visitation should not be supplanted—
Crack!
Skip and rattle.
That was a peculiar sound. A disturbing question began to nag at him—exactly where the aiji’s son and his companions might be at the moment.
He put away his computer, got up and went out to the hall.
There was no staff. That was unusual. He went down the hall to the youngsters’ room, and found no one there.
That was downright disturbing.
So was the scarcity of staff.
He went to the inner garden door, and walked out into the sunlightc where, indeed, there were staff.
All the staff.
And Banichi. And Toby, and the Taibeni youngsters, all facing the same direction, into the garden.
Crack. Pottery broke.
A smaller figure, one on Toby’s scale, took a step backward, dismayed, with a very human: “Oops.”
Oops, indeed. Bren walked through the melting crowd of servants, saw Ramaso, saw Cajeiri and Toby, saw Banichi on the left. Then he looked right, at the bottom of the garden, and saw a shattered clay pot, with dirt scattered atop the wall and onto the flagstones.
“One will fetch a broom, nandi,” a servant said in a low voice.
“Nandi,” Ramaso said, turning.
Cajeiri looked at him and hid something, hands behind his back, while Toby just shrugged.
“Sorry about that.” Toby gave a little atevi-style bow, showing proper respect for the master of the house.
Bren was a little puzzled. Just a little. He looked at the broken pot, looked at Cajeiri.
“One did aim away from the great window, nandi!” Cajeiri said with a little bow. And added, diffidently, “It was the ricochet that hit it.”
“The ricochet?” he asked, and Cajeiri brought forth to view a curiously familiar object—if they had been on the Island: a forked branch, a length of tubing, probably from the garden shed, and a little patch of leather.