“You, Byrk Raimahn, are what was known in my youth as a rapscallion.”
“Oh, no, Grandmother-you wrong me! I’m sure the term you’d really have applied to me would’ve been much ruder than that.”
She laughed and shook her head at him, and he offered her the bowl of grapes. She selected one and popped it into her mouth, and he set the bowl down in front of her.
“Somehow the hothouse grapes just aren’t as good,” he commented. “They make me miss our vineyards back home.”
He glanced back out across the bay as he spoke and missed the shadow that flitted through her eyes. Or he could pretend he had, at least.
“I think they have a lower sugar content,” she said out loud, no sign of that shadow touching her voice.
“That’s probably it,” he agreed, looking back at her with another smile.
She returned the smile, plucked another grape, and leaned back, cocking her head to one side.
“What’s this about you being off to Madam Pahrsahn’s again this evening?” she asked lightly. “I hear you have at least a dozen rivals for her affections, you know.”
“Alas, too true!” He pressed the back of his wrist to his forehead, his expression tragic. “That cretin Raif Ahlaixsyn offered her a sonnet last night, and he actually had the gall to make it a good one.” He shook his head. “Quickly, Grandmother! Tell me what to do to recover in her eyes!”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll come about.” She shook her head at him. “Although, at the rate she seems to attract fresh suitors, you may yet find yourself crowded out.”
“Grandmother,” he looked at her affectionately, “I enormously admire Madam Pahrsahn. I also think she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, and bearing in mind my paternal grandmother’s youthful beauty that’s a pretty high bar for anyone to pass. Even more important, I’ve never met anyone more brilliant and cultured than she is. But she’s also somewhere around twice my age, and I think she regards me more in the light of a puppy who hasn’t yet grown into his ears and feet than anything remotely like a paramour. I promise I’m on my very best behavior at her soirees.”
“Of course you are. I know that,” she said, just that bit too quickly, and he laughed and shook a finger under her nose.
“Oh, no, you don’t know it!” he scolded. “What a fibber! You’re worried your darling grandson is going to be so enamored of the gorgeous, sophisticated older woman that he’s going to commit some indiscretion with her.” He shook his head, brown eyes glinting devilishly. “Trust me, Grandmother! When I commit youthful indiscretions, I’ll take great care to make certain you know nothing about them. That way you’ll be happy, and I’ll remain intact.”
“You’re right, ‘rapscallion’ is definitely too polite a term for you, young man!”
Her lips quivered as she fought to restrain a smile, and he laughed again.
“Which is why you’re afraid of those youthful indiscretions of mine,” he observed. “A charming, unprincipled rogue and general, all-round ne’er-do-well is far more likely to succeed in being indiscreet, I imagine.”
“That must be it,” she agreed. “But you are going to be out again this evening?” He looked a question at her, and she shrugged. “Your grandfather and I have invitations to the theater tonight-they’re presenting a new version of Yairdahn’s Flower Maiden -and I just wanted to know whether we should include you in the party.”
“It’s tempting,” he said. “That’s always been my favorite of Yairdahn’s plays, but I think I’ll pass, if you and Grandfather won’t be offended. I don’t think it’s going to be up to the Royal Company’s production. Remember the last time we saw it at the Round? I doubt they’ll be able to match that here in Siddar City.”
“Perhaps not.” She shrugged lightly. “It is an easy play to get wrong, I’ll admit,” she went on, deliberately not addressing his reference to the Round Theatre, the epicenter of the performing arts back home in Tellesberg. “And your grandfather and I won’t be at all offended by the thought that you prefer a younger, livelier set of companions for the evening. Go have a good time.”
“I’m sure I will. And I promise-no indiscretions!”
He gave her a wink, closed the guitar case, kissed her cheek, and headed off into the townhouse whistling.
She watched him go with a smile, but the smile faded as his whistling did, and she looked back out across the bay with a far more pensive expression.
Despite Aivah Pahrsahn’s indisputable beauty, Sahmantha Raimahn had never cherished the least fear Byrk might become amorously involved with her. For that matter, she wouldn’t have been terribly concerned if he had. Madam Pahrsahn was as cultured as she was lovely. If anyone would have known how to take a young lover’s ardor, treat it with gentleness, and send it on its way undamaged in the fullness of time, it would be she. And she was also wealthy enough for Sahmantha to be certain she couldn’t possibly cherish any designs upon the Raimahn family fortune. In fact, Sahmantha would actually have preferred for her grandson’s interest in her to have been far more… romantically focused than she feared it was.
She hadn’t been entirely honest with Byrk about her husband’s probable reaction to his destination for the evening, either. Claitahn Raimahn hadn’t shaken the dust of Tellesberg from his feet lightly when he moved his entire household-and all of his business investments-from Charis to the Republic of Siddarmark. Claitahn was a Charisian to his toenails, but he was also a man who took his principles seriously and a devout son of Mother Church. When it came time to choose between heretical Crown and orthodox Church, principles and belief alike had driven the inevitable outcome.
His stature among Charis’ mercantile elite, his wealth, and the fact that he’d sacrificed so much of that wealth in the process of moving it from Tellesberg to Siddar City’s Charisian Quarter gave him a standing second to none in the Charisian emigre community, yet he himself remained trapped between his two worlds. Despite his horror at the Church of Charis’ open break with the Grand Vicar, he remained too much a Charisian not to argue that the Kingdom had been grievously provoked. One sin couldn’t justify another in his view, but neither would he condemn Charis’ initial reaction to a totally unprovoked and unjustified onslaught. He’d fully supported King Haarahld’s decision to fight in self-defense; it was King Cayleb’s actions he could not condone.
Not that he blamed Cayleb entirely. Haarahld’s premature death had brought Cayleb to the throne too early, in Claitahn’s view, and the new king had found himself in a desperately dangerous position. It had been his job to protect his people-no one could dispute that-and he’d been too young, too susceptible to the pressures of his advisers and councilors when it came to doing that job. The true culprits were Maikel Staynair and the Earl of Gray Harbor, who’d pushed Cayleb into supporting open schism instead of at least trying to make a respectful appeal to the Grand Vicar’s justice first. From there to the creation of the new, bastard “Empire of Charis” had been only a single, inevitable step, in Claitahn’s opinion, and he could not support it. But by the same token, he was quick and fierce to defend Charis, as opposed to the Church of Charis, when tempers flared.
His and Sahmantha’s surviving children had accompanied them into voluntary exile, and he encouraged them to continue thinking of themselves as Charisians. Sahmantha lacked the heart to tell him, yet her own advice was quite different. In fact, she’d encouraged them to find homes outside the Charisian Quarter and do their very best to integrate into the Siddarmarkian community.
She loved her homeland as much as Claitahn ever had, but unlike him, she was able to admit-and too self-honest to deny-that the Church of Charis wasn’t going away. Claitahn would never see his dreamed-of, longed-for peaceful reconciliation with the Temple. If the heretical church was brought down, it would fall only to the sword, and the carnage-and retribution-would destroy the kingdom he remembered so lovingly. The ashes would poison the ground and bear bitter fruit for generations to come, and she would not see her family poisoned in turn by clinging to an identity which was doomed. Better, far better, for them to recognize reality and become the Siddarmarkians into which fate and their faith in God had transformed them. She and Claitahn would die here in Siddar City, be buried in the Republic’s alien soil, still dreaming of the past they could never hope to reclaim, and she would never even hint to him that she’d realized that hope could never have been more than a dream.