Chapter 39 #2
“My marriage was a sham when it came to anything like emotion. I respect Electra. She has been an excellent mother in many ways. But a good marriage? No, we were not suited for that. I know that. I’ve seen other marriages, close enough to know the difference.
” Another man— another child, hurting— might have flung accusations here.
Asking whether Mother had ever seen anything like that.
He knew she hadn’t. Not really. He did not want or need to be cruel. “We are better as we are.”
“You are forcing her to deal with unpleasant gossip.” Mother said, though that was almost certainly not the first five things she had thought.
“Mother, stop deflecting your feelings onto her. She is quite capable of telling me her own opinions. I give her regular opportunities, most recently this afternoon. Her current line of conversation is roughly, ‘Well, it explains why he wanted the divorce’, and changing the subject to her current particular project. I do not think it is causing her any substantial distress.” All of that was true enough.
She’d allowed as how it had got her several sympathy donations, and large ones at that.
The Temple of Healing was doing well out of the scandal at the moment.
“And you think you can still walk into the Challenge chamber and not—” Her words stopped.
He could remind her of what Gabe had said in that Council meeting. He’d had a detailed report of it, some of Orion’s best work, supplemented by Gabe’s later read on the emotional state of the people in the room. Tactically speaking, that was not his best choice.
Now, he went on, as steadily as he could.
“I believe I need to take my best self up the stairs to that door. I believe that the world has too many broken pieces not to reach for happiness where I can find it. I believe that I have been tremendously lucky to find partnership and friendship so far in my life, and somehow lucky beyond all reason to find it one more time, in this particular form. I sincerely wish you had more of all those things. But I also know that the Lady chooses who she chooses. I will go there as myself or not at all.”
The last words came out a hair more uneven than he wanted.
He could hear his pulse thudding in his ears now, feel the way his hand in his lap had clenched so the nails bit into his palm.
He made himself uncoil them, so the tension wouldn’t show in his shoulder and neck.
But he’d managed to say it, all of it. To make it real in the world in the way that the important words were.
“You think you are different from everyone who has gone before you?” Mother was entirely focused on him. “You are arrogant enough to think that?”
“No.” Whatever he was, it wasn’t arrogant.
He had a good measure of his skills and his flaws.
Being a Penelope didn’t allow for anything else.
As Gabe had said from the beginning of his training, anyone competent with magic could learn the various skills.
Not everyone could be aware of their own tangles and take them into account in everything they did.
“But I think the perspective I could bring is needed. Or at least, that I wish to make the offer and see if the Lady and the land think it worthwhile.” Now he permitted himself another shrug. “We’ll find out in a fortnight.”
He didn’t know how to put into words— even with Gabe, where this was easiest— what he felt.
He could see the patterns dancing when he closed his eyes, the way different shapes formed and changed.
A dance, like the solstice dances, but nothing like that simple.
It was more like a tapestry, shaped painstakingly from thousands of different threads, so many shades and nuances of colour.
He didn’t understand it, but he knew he could see it clearly if he just had more time and if he could step a little closer.
He certainly didn’t know how to tell Mother what Gabe had made visible.
That she could be brilliant, stunningly so, in a way that brought the world into a new focus.
Mother just watched him, then she stood.
Claudio did as well. Those manners were certainly fully ingrained in him by now.
He’d seen photographs of her, around the time he’d been born, of the elegant, long sweep of the Edwardian dresses and their underpinnings.
She moved like that now, contained and constrained in that particular way.
Before she stepped away from the table, she said, “To be clear, you are seeing Matthew Lawson. Is seeing the correct word?”
“It is certainly a relevant one.” Then Claudio added, “And yes, I am.”
“Will you introduce him to me?” Mother’s voice was quieter now.
Claudio took a breath, suddenly exhausted, but he could not relax until he was on his own.
“Not until I am confident that you will treat him well.” It would be too much to ask for Mother to treat him the way he wanted.
The way Eleanor Sisley had welcomed Hypatia when Orion had brought her home, or that Ibis and Pross Ward had welcomed Duncan when Cammie had done the same. He’d get none of that. He knew it.
Mother’s chin came up and she pursed her lips again, then said, “Good night, Claudio.” She walked away before he could do more than acknowledge it, so that he was murmuring the pleasantry to her back.
He heard her go out through the door to the courtyard and her rooms before he asked for his fruit plate on a tray for pudding upstairs.
That done, he retreated to his rooms. He checked the warding three times, and then settled down to write out a summary for Matty.
It was followed by one for Gabe, then a third for Orion, Hypatia, and Cammie, including Matty so all of them could swap ideas.