Once a Hero

Chapter Four

Esmay thought she had outdistanced the last of the newshounds two stops before her homeworld Altiplano. When she came out of the arrival lounge into the main concourse, the bright lights blinded her for a moment. They had figured out where she was going, of course. She set her jaw and kept going. They could have all they liked of her walking from one side of the station to another. They might even get someone on the down shuttle, but once she hit the dirt, they would find themselves blocked. That would be one good to come out of this misconceived homecoming.

“Lieutenant Suiza!” It took a long moment, several strides, for her to realize that one of the yells wasn’t a newshound’s demand for a comment, but her uncle Berthol. She looked around. He wore his dress uniform, and Esmay groaned inwardly, thinking ahead to the reaction of her Fleet acquaintances when they saw the newsclips of this. When he caught her eye, he quit waving and pulled himself rigid. Sighing, Esmay stopped short, bracing against the expected crunch from behind, and saluted. When her father had sent word that he could not meet her at the station, she’d assumed that meant no one would . . . she hadn’t expected Berthol.

“Good to see you, Esmaya,” he said now, opening a path between them with a glance that sent the newshounds scurrying out of the way.

“And you, sir,” Esmay said, very conscious of the scrutiny of the cameras.

“God’s teeth, Esmaya, I’m not a sir to you.” But the twinkle in his eye approved of her formality. The stars on his shoulders glittered as the cameras shifted for better angles, their spotlights crisscrossing. Esmay had told Fleet that her father was one of four regional commanders . . . she had not reminded them what must be in her file, that her uncles Berthol and Gerard were two of the others. “I guess you didn’t starve in Fleet, after all. You know Grandmother is still convinced you can find nothing legal to eat . . .”

Esmay found herself grinning even as she wished he hadn’t brought that up. Grandmother was his grandmother, not hers—well over a hundred, and an influence as potent in her way as Papa Stefan in his. “I’m fine,” she said, and turned, hoping to convince Berthol not to grandstand for the cameras.

“More than fine, Esmaya.” He sobered, and touched her shoulder gently. “You give us pride. We are more than glad to have you home.” Now he turned; his aides, she noticed now, had been scattered in the crowd and now came together at his back. The glaring lights receded behind them despite raised voices. “When we get down, we will celebrate.”

Esmay’s heart sank. What she really wanted was a quiet drive out to the estancia, and a room with windows open to the rose garden . . . and a full night’s sleep, a night that fit her body’s rhythms.

“We can’t waste this,” he said more quietly, as they walked straight past a departure lounge full of people she didn’t know, who were giving her the soft tongue-clicking applause she remembered so well. Berthol ushered her into the waiting shuttle, and into the rear compartment which his aides closed off as they came through.

“What’s going on?” Esmay asked. Tension curdled her stomach; she did not really want to know.

“What’s going on . . . you’ll be fully briefed later,” Berthol said. “We didn’t reserve a full shuttle—we thought it would be too obvious. Natural enough to have a private compartment. And there’s no way out of the welcoming celebration, though I’m sure you’re ready for a vacation at home, eh?”

Esmay nodded. She glanced around at Berthol’s aides. The militia ranks were not those of Fleet, exactly; the insignia, except for stars marking flag rank, were completely different. It came back to her in a rush. Infantry, armor, air, navy—what her Fleet called, somewhat disparagingly, “wet-fleet.” All four branches here, all of them older than she was. The one wearing armor tags had an ear-wire, and now he turned to Berthol.

“General Suiza says it’s all ready, sir.”

“Your father,” Berthol said. “He’s in charge down there, for reasons that will become clear later. In the meantime, there’ll be a formal ceremony at the shuttleport—blessedly brief, if I know your father—then a parade into town, and a formal presentation at the palace.”

“Presentation?” Esmay squeezed that in when Berthol took a breath.

“Ah—” He seemed embarrassed a moment, then lowered his voice. “You see, Esmay, when it was your action that saved an entire planet, and then you don’t even get a token of recognition from your Fleet . . .”

Dear God. Esmay scrambled through all the possible explanations she could make—that he would not understand—and realized it was no use. They had decided that her Fleet had not sufficiently honored her, and it would do no good to point out that her acquittal was itself acknowledgement and reward. Besides, she knew that someone had put in a recommendation for a medal—which made her skin itch to think of it. She wished they’d just forget it. But this—

“And it’s not like you’re just any shaggy pony out of the back lots,” Berthol went on. “You’re a Suiza. They’re treating you—”

“Very well, Uncle Berthol,” she said, hoping to stop him, if she couldn’t stop the ceremony.

“No—I don’t think so. Nor does the Long Table. They’ve voted to give you the Starmount—”

“No,” Esmay breathed. She was uneasily aware that something deep inside disagreed, and breathed yes.

“And a title of your own. To be converted if you marry on Altiplano.”

Dear God, she thought again. She didn’t deserve this. It was ridiculous. It would cause . . . immense trouble either way. No matter that Fleet would not realize it had been intended as a rebuke—they would find it awkward, and that made her awkward.

“Not much of a steading with it,” Berthol said. “In fact, your father said he’d provide that; it’s that little valley where you used to hide out . . .”

Despite herself, Esmay felt a stab of pleasure at the memory of that little mountain valley, with its facing slopes of poplar and pine, its grassy meadows and clear stream. She had claimed it years before in her mind, but had never thought it would be hers. If it could be . . . she remembered some R.S.S. regulations she was afraid might interfere.

“Don’t worry,” Berthol said, as if he could read her mind. “It’s under the limit—your father ran a new survey, and chopped it short at the upper end. It’s under the glacier there. Anyway, if you need to refresh yourself on the protocol of the award ceremony . . .”

She did, of course. The data cube the major with the armor insignia handed her contained not only the ceremony, but a precis on recent political developments, and her family’s position on all of them. The Minerals Development Commission was still squabbling with the Marine Biological Commission over control of benthic development. Some things never changed, but in the years she’d been gone the focus of the battle had shifted from the Seline Trench, as the colonies of interest to the biologists died, and were mined for their rich ores, to the Plaanid Trench, where new vents nourished new vent communities. That quarrel would have been unimportant on many worlds, but on Altiplano the Minerals Development Commission represented the Secularists, while Old Believers and the Lifehearts controlled the Marine Biological Commission. Which meant that an argument over exactly when a benthic vent community was dead and could be mined might erupt in religious riots around the entire planet.

“Sanni,” Berthol said, when she had clicked off the cube reader, “is involved with the Lifehearts again.”

Esmay remembered vividly the moment when her romantic feelings about the night sky became utter certainty that she would have to leave her home forever. Her aunt Sanni—Sanibel Aresha Livon Suiza—and her uncle Berthol, screaming at each other across the big dining room at the estancia. Sanni, a Lifeheart as rigid in her piety as any Old Believer. Esmay found the Lifeheart philosophy attractive, but Sanni in a rage terrified her. Yet it was Berthol who had thrown the priceless chocolate pot, shattering its painted water lilies and swans, scarring the wide polished table. Her own father had walked in on the end of that, with Sanni scrabbling on the floor for shards and Berthol still yelling. And Papa Stefan, two paces behind him, had shamed them both into apologies and hand-shakings.

Esmay hadn’t believed it. Whatever was wrong between Sanni and Berthol stayed wrong, and was still wrong, and here she was back in the middle of it.

“It’s not my problem now,” she said. “I’m only here for a short leave—”

“She likes you,” Berthol said. His gaze flicked to his aides, who were studiously ignoring this. “She says you’re the one sane member of your generation, and now you’re a hero.”

Esmay felt herself reddening. “I’m not. All I did—”

“Esmay, this is family. You don’t have to pretend. All you did, you babykin, was survive a mutiny, come out on top, and then defeat a warship twice your size.”

Bigger than that, Esmay thought. She didn’t say it; it would only make things worse. “It didn’t know I was there until too late,” she said.

“So you were smarter than its captain. Hero, Esmay. Get used to it. You’re carrying our flag out there, Esmay, and you’re doing very well.”

She was not carrying their flag, but her own. They would not understand that, even if she dared say it to them. And Berthol sounded too much like Major Chapin, too much like Admiral Serrano. She had been a hero by accident—why wasn’t it as obvious to the others as it was to her?

“And Sanni’s very proud of you,” Berthol went on. “She wants to talk to you—ask you all about Fleet, about your life. If you’re meeting anyone eligible, if I know Sanni.” He laughed, but it sounded forced.

She had left for a good reason. She should have stayed away. Yet at the thought of the whole family for once approving, for once seeing her as an asset rather than a very chancy proposition, her heart beat faster. The Starmount . . . when she’d been a little girl, she remembered the first soldier she’d seen awarded the Starmount, a lean, red-haired fellow who walked lopsided. She had stared and stared at the medal on its blue and silver ribbon that dangled around his neck until a disapproving grownup made her apologize and then quit following him. No one from Altiplano could be indifferent to the Starmount . . . and she didn’t have to tell Fleet how she felt.

At the shuttlefield, the only media wore the green and scarlet uniforms of the Altiplano Central News Agency. No one tried to speak to her; no one tried to crowd close. She knew that her walk from the shuttle through the terminal to the waiting car would be only one clip in the finished story, narrated by a senior “analyst.” No one would try to interview her; here that was considered rude and disrespectful.

Her father, backed by a wedge of other officers, gave her the same formal salute Berthol had; she returned it, and he gave her the semiformal hug and kisses, not fatherly, but from commander to junior about to be honored. She was introduced to his senior aide, to the next senior; she was led through a corridor where a solid block of militia provided complete privacy—in their terms, which meant from civilian eyes—for her few moments in the ladies’ retiring room, where she found two tiring maids ready to apply fresh makeup and attempt to do something about her flyaway hair. That ended in a spritz of scented stuff which would leave her scalp itchy for two days—but this once, she didn’t mind. In moments they had whisked off her R.S.S. uniform jacket, pressed it, and after a look at the shirt beneath, insisted on replacing it with a clean one from her luggage.

Refreshed, and to her surprise cheered by these ministrations, Esmay came back out, into the midst of a low-voiced argument between her father and her uncle.

“It’s only one cloud,” her uncle was saying. “And it might not rain—”

“It’s only one bullet,” her father said. “And it might miss. I’m not taking the chance. When her hair gets wet—Oh, there you are, Esmaya. There’s a line of storms moving into the city; we’re going to go by car—”

“It’s not nearly as impressive,” Berthol grumbled. “And it’s not as if you expected her to do any real riding.”

She had assumed by car; she’d forgotten that on Altiplano all ceremony involved horses. She thanked some unknown deity for the gift of a possible rainstorm and her father’s distaste for the frizzy mess her hair became if it got damp. At least no one from Fleet was here, to make a joke about a backwoods military that still used horses.

Of course the parade still had horses, even though she was in a car. From the protection of the car, she watched the perfectly drilled cavalry swing into position before and behind, the horses moving in unison, their glossy haunches bunching and relaxing. The riders, their backs upright, hands quiet, faces set in a neutral expression that would not vary if a horse stood up on its hind legs . . . not that one of those well-trained animals would. Beyond the horses, a crowd on the sidewalks, faces peering from the windows of the taller buildings. Some of them waved the gold and red Altiplano colors.

She had not been home for just over ten standard years. She had left as a gawky teenager, who in memory seemed the very model of adolescent incapacity. Nothing had fit, not her body nor her mind nor her emotions. From not fitting at home to not fitting in the Fleet prep school had been a tiny, natural transition. By the time she had graduated from the Academy, she had expected to be the odd one out, the one whose reactions were not natural.

She had not realized how much those feelings had been due to age and then the real displacement of leaving her home world before her adult identity had solidified. Now, in the light of Altiplano’s sun, with her body held by Altiplano’s gravity, she began to relax, feeling at home in a way she had not since she was a little girl. The colors were right in a way they had not been for years; her very bones knew that this gravity, not one standard G, was the right gravity.

When she stepped out of the car, and walked up the red stone steps of the palace, her feet found the right intervals without effort. These steps were the right height, the right depth; this stone felt solid enough; this doorway welcomed; this air—she took another long breath—this air smelled right, and felt right all the way down to the bottom of her lungs.

She looked around at the people now crowding into the hall around her. Humans were humans, but the shapes of humans varied with their genome and the worlds they lived on. Here the bone structure looked familiar; these were the faces she had known all her life, prominent cheekbones and brows, long jutting chins, eyes set deeply under thick eyebrows. These long arms and legs, big bony hands and feet, boxy joints—these were her people, her look. Here she fit in, at least physically.

“Ezzmaya! S’oort semzz zalaas!” Esmay turned; her ears had already adapted to the Altiplano dialect, even in her family’s less-obvious form, and she had no trouble understanding the welcome she’d just been given. She didn’t immediately recognize the wizened old man in front of her, stiffly upright and wearing the brilliant braid of a former senior NCO, but her father’s senior aide murmured into her earplug. Retired master sergeant Sebastian Coron . . . of course. He had been part of her life as far back in childhood as she could remember, always crisp and correct, but with a twinkle for his commander’s elder daughter.

Her tongue, hearing the familiar speech, curled into the trills without her having to think of it. She thanked him for his congratulations in the formal phrases that brought a broader grin to his face. “And your family—your bodysons and heartdaughters? And don’t I remember that you have grandlings now?”

Before he could answer, her father had extended his own hand to Coron. “You can come visit later,” her father said. “We need to get her upstairs—” Coron nodded, gave Esmay a stiff short bow, and stepped back. As her father led her away, he said “I hope you don’t mind—he’s so proud of you, you’d think he was your father. He wanted to come—”

“Of course I don’t mind.” She glanced up the green-carpeted stairs. She had always loved the stained glass window on the landing, that poured rich gold and blood-colored light onto the carpet. Palace guards in black and gold stood stiff as the banister rails, staring at nothing. As a child, she had wondered whether they would be so stiff if tickled, but she’d never had the chance . . . or the daring . . . to try it. Now she climbed past them, bemused by the mixture of memories and present feelings.

“And he wants to hear about it direct from you—at least some of it . . .”

“That’s fine,” said Esmay. She would rather tell old Coron than any of the fresh-faced young militia officers now surrounding them. Coron had taught her more of the basics than her father probably knew; she had pored over the handbooks on small-unit tactics under his watchful eye all one summer down in Varsimla.

“He does get a bit carried away,” her father went on. “But he saved my skin often enough.” He looked ahead to the upper hall, where a cluster of men in formal dress waited in a semicircle. “Ah . . . there we are. The Long Table advisors—did you have time in the car—?”

She had not, but that’s what the earplugs were for. Most of them were men she had met before, in the way that the children of a household meet distinguished guests. She would not have remembered that Cockerall Mordanz was Advisor on Marine Resources, but she did remember that he’d once fallen off during a polo game and her uncle Berthol’s pony had neatly jumped over him. The current Long Table Host, Ardry Castendas Garland, had once slipped coming into their dining room, and knocked over the little table with the hot towels on it; her great-grandmother had scolded her for staring.

“Esmay—Lieutenant Suiza!” the Host said now, catching himself and returning to the formality appropriate to the ceremony. “It is an honor . . .” His voice trailed away, and Esmay allowed herself an interior smile. Altiplano lacked the right honorific for someone like her: female, a military officer, a hero. She felt conflicting impulses to help him out, and to let him stew in his problem: they, after all, had wanted to make her a hero. Let them come up with something. “My dear,” he said finally. “I’m sorry, but I keep remembering the sweet child you were. It’s hard to grasp what you’ve become.”

Esmay could cheerfully have slapped him. Sweet child! She had been a sulky, awkward teenager, the successor to an awkward child . . . not sweet, but difficult and strange. And what she was now should be simple enough to grasp: a junior officer of the Regular Space Service.

“It’s clear enough,” said another man, one she didn’t recognize. Opposition Leader, her earplug said. Orias Leandros. He smiled at her, but the smile was intended for the Host. He would make political profit of her . . . he thought.

“Host Garland,” Esmay said quickly. She didn’t like either of them, but she knew where her family duty lay. “You can be no more amazed at my present predicament than I am. My father tells me you plan an award—but, you must realize, you do me too much honor.”

“Not at all,” Garland said, back in balance again. He shot the briefest glare at his rival. “It’s obvious that your family inheritance of military ability continues down the generations. No doubt your sons—” He stopped, trapped again in the assumptions of Altiplano and the usual phrases. What would have been a fine compliment to a man sounded almost indecent applied to a woman.

“It has been so long,” Esmay said, changing the subject before Orias Leandros could say anything damaging. “Perhaps you would introduce me to the other advisors?”

“Of course.” Garland was sweating a little. How had he ever been elected Host, when he was still as clumsy in word and deed as ever? But he got through the introductions well enough, and Esmay managed to smile with the right intensity at all the right people.

The award ceremony itself felt odd, because Esmay could not feel anything at all. She was too aware of the faint murmur of the earplug, coaching her through the required lines, of the expressions on the faces around her . . . the embarrassment she’d felt when first told of the award could not penetrate the concentration needed to do it right. The Starmount itself, a disk with the blue and black enamel representing a mountain against the sky, the little diamond glittering at the peak, aroused neither pride nor guilt. She bent her head to let the Host put the wide blue—and-gray ribbon around her neck; the medal felt lighter than she’d expected.

Then it was only a matter of standing in the line, saying the ritual greetings and thanks to those who filed past her: pleased, how kind, thank you, how lovely, how kind, thank you so much, very kind, how pleased . . . until the last of the line, a white-haired old lady related to Esmay’s grandmother in some complicated way, had passed from her father to her, and from her to the Host. She had a few minutes to sip the tangy fruit juice and taste the pastries, then her father hurried her into the car again for the trip home.

She would like to have stayed longer; she was still hungry, and some of the faces that had blurred past had been friends once. She would have liked a chance to shop in town, to get herself some new clothes. But she had no more to say about it than when she’d been a schoolgirl. The general said it was time to leave, and they left. She tried not to resent it.

“Papa Stefan,” her father said to her. “He didn’t feel well enough to come in, but he had planned a family reception.”

She could not imagine Papa Stefan anything but well; he had been white-haired even in her childhood, but vigorous, riding and working alongside his sons and grandchildren. Things had changed, then. She had known they would, eventually, but—it was hard to feel the same gravity, breathe the same air, recognize the same smells, and think of change. The buildings they drove past, the substantial stone blocks that housed stores and banks and offices, were the same she had always known.

Outside the city, the grasslands surged up to the mountains, as always. Esmay looked out the window, relaxing into that familiar view. The Black Teeth, between which dark spires lay the legendary lair of the Great Wyrm. As a child, she’d believed the dragon stories were about her own world; she had believed the lair was stuffed with dragon’s treasure. She’d been bitterly disappointed to find out that the Great Wyrm was the code name of the rebel alliance that had (so legend went) massacred the original owner of Altiplano and all his family. A school field trip to the “lair” showed it to be a perfectly ordinary bunker built into the cliff on one side of a canyon.

South of the Black Teeth were other peaks of the Romilo Escarpment, lesser only by contrast to the Teeth. Esmay squinted across the kilometers of shimmering light, looking for the gap in the line, the grassy embayment of her family’s estancia. There—the trees marked it out, the long lines of formal plantings along the road and the drives.

The car slowed, pulling off the road. Her father leaned closer. “I don’t know if you still observe,” he said. “But it’s customary, when someone returns from a long journey . . . and anyway, I’m going to light a candle.”

Esmay felt the heat rise to her face. Bad enough to forget, but to have her father suspect she’d forgotten was worse. “I, too,” she said. She clambered out of the car, stiff and feeling even more awkward than stiffness would explain. She hadn’t thought of the ceremonies since she left home; she wasn’t sure she remembered the words.

The shrine, built into the estancia gate wall, had a row of fresh flower wreaths laid out below the niche. She could smell the faint sweet scent of the wreaths, and the stronger aroma of the great trees that loomed above. Even as an imaginative child, Esmay had never been able to see any meaning in the blurred shape of the statue in the niche. She had once been unwise enough to say it looked like a melted blob. She had never said it again, but she’d thought it often enough. Now, she saw with fresh eyes, and it still looked like a grayish, shiny melted blob, taller than it was wide. Around its base, the candle cups were clean as always, the little white candles in a box to one side.

Her father took one, set it in the green glass cup, and lit it. Esmay took another, lit it from her father’s flame, and got it into a cup without burning her fingers. Her father said nothing, and neither did she; they stood side by side, watching the flames writhe in the breeze. Then he plucked a needle from one of the trees, and laid it in the flame. Blue smoke swirled up. Esmay remembered to stoop and find a pebble to lay in the wax of her candle.

Back in the car, with the windows now open to the steady breeze, her father still said nothing. Esmay leaned back, enjoying the many shades of green and gold. The drive, bordered with rows of narrow conifers, ran straight for a kilometer. On the right were the orchards, past blooming now. She could just see knots of green fruit on some limbs . . . on the far side, the first plums should be ripening. On the left, the family polo fields, mown in crisscross patterns . . . someone was out there, stooping, stamping divots back in. Nearer the house, flower gardens burst into riotous color. The car swept around the front, into the wide gravelled space large enough to review a mounted troop. It had been used for that, years back. A broad portico, shaded by tangled vines thick as trees at the root . . . two steps up to the wide double-door . . . home.

Not home now.

Nothing had changed . . . at least on the surface. Her room, with its narrow white bed, its shelves full of old books, its cube racks full of familiar cubes. Her old clothes had been removed, but by the time she came upstairs, someone had unpacked her luggage. She knew, without asking, what would be in each drawer. She undressed, hanging her uniform on the left end of the pole: it would be taken away and cleaned, returned to the right end of the pole. Presently the right end of the pole had two outfits she did not own—someone’s suggestion of what to wear to the family dinner. She had to admit they looked more comfortable than anything she had bought off-planet. Down the familiar hall to the big square bathroom, with its two shower stalls and its vast tub . . . after shipboard accommodations, it seemed impossibly large. But just this once . . . she slid the door marker to “long bath” and grinned to herself. She did like long hot baths.

When she came downstairs, in the long cream-colored tunic over soft loose brown slacks, her father and step-mother were waiting. Her stepmother, born elegant, gave an approving nod, which for some reason made Esmay furious. No doubt she had chosen that tunic, had it put in Esmay’s closet . . . for a moment Esmay thought of ripping it off and throwing it . . . but R.S.S. officers did not behave like that. And her half-brothers were watching, and others coming into the hall. She smiled at her step-mother, and shook the offered hand.

“Welcome home, Esmaya,” her stepmother said. “I hope you will like dinner . . .”

“Of course she will,” her father said.

Dinner was in the informal dining hall, its wide windows opening on a tiled courtyard with a pool . . . Esmay could hear the gentle splash of the fountain even over the murmur of voices, the scraping of feet on the tiled floor.

She started toward her old place out of habit, but someone sat there already—a cousin no doubt—and her father was leading her up the table, to sit at Papa Stefan’s left hand. Great-grandmother was not at the table; she would be waiting to receive Esmay afterwards, in her own parlor.

“Here she is, at last,” her father said.

Papa Stefan had aged; he was thinner, the skin looser over his bones. But his eyes were still sharp; his mouth, even as he smiled at her, still firm.

“Your father tells me you remembered the proper offering for return,” he said. “Do you also remember the proper blessing of food?”

Esmay blinked. Once away from Altiplano, she had shed all concern about clean and unclean foods, blessings and cursings, as happily as she’d shed the traditional undergarments considered appropriate for a virtuous daughter. She had not expected this honor . . . as much test as honor, as everyone knew. Ordinarily only sons and sons of sons asked blessings on the food at dinner; daughters and daughters of daughters asked the morning grace at the breaking of the night’s fast, and at the noon meal everyone held silence.

She looked down the table to see what was on the great platters . . . it made a difference . . . and was even more surprised to see the five platters that meant a whole calf had been butchered in her honor.

She had never heard of a woman speaking at such a time, but she knew the words.

“Back from the waste . . .” she began, and continued through the whole, stumbling only momentarily over the nested clauses where the prayer expected a male speaker and she had either to speak of herself in the masculine or change the words. “From father to son it came to me, and so I send it on . . .” She had not thought about her own culture in any detailed way after the first year or so in the Fleet prep schools; she had not noticed how confining the language really was. Fleet had shocked her at first, with its assumption of easy relationships between the sexes, with “sir” used for both men and women. In Fleet, the important terms for parents distinguished between gene-parents and life-parents, not between mothers and fathers. On Altiplano, they had no word for “parents,” and while they knew of modern methods of reproduction, very few would ever use them.

She finished the blessing, still thinking of the differences, and Papa Stefan sighed. Esmay glanced at him; his eyes twinkled.

“You didn’t forget . . . you always had a good memory, Esmaya.” He nodded. The servants stepped forward; the great platters were shifted to the sideboards for carving, while bowls of soup were offered.

Fleet food had been good enough, but this was the food of her childhood. The thick blue bowl with the creamy corn soup, garnished with green and red . . . Esmay’s stomach rumbled at the familiar aroma. The spoon she lifted had her family’s crest on it; it fit her fingers as if it had grown there.

The first salad followed the corn soup, and by then the meat had been sliced and layered on blue platters swirled with white. Esmay accepted three slices, a mound of the little yellow potatoes that were a family specialty, a scoopful of carrots. It was worth the long wait to have food like this.

Around her, the family carried on soft-voiced conversations; she didn’t listen. Right now all she wanted was the food, the food she had not let herself realize she missed. Puffy rolls that could have floated up into the sky as clouds . . . butter molded into the shapes of heraldic beasts. She remembered those molds, hanging in a row in the kitchen. She remembered the rolls, too—no use letting them get cold, when they were dry and tasteless. They deserved to be soaked in new butter or drenched in honey.

When she came up for air, no one seemed to be paying attention to her anyway. They had finished eating; servants were taking the plates away.

“It’s a matter of pride,” Papa Stefan was saying to her cousin Luci. “Esmaya would not fail in anything that touched the family honor.” Esmay blinked; Papa Stefan’s notion of family honor had wildernesses no one had ever explored fully. She hoped he wasn’t hatching up one of his plots with her assigned the role of heroine.

Luci, the age Esmay had been when she left, looked much as Esmay remembered herself. Tall, gangling, soft brown hair pulled back severely, with escaping wisps that ruined the intended effect, clothes that were obviously intended for a special occasion, but looked rumpled and dowdy instead. Luci looked up, met Esmay’s eyes, and flushed. That made her look sulky as well as unkempt.

“Hi, Luci,” Esmay said. She had already greeted Papa Stefan and the elders; the cousins were far down the list of obligatory greetings. She wanted to say something helpful, but after ten years she had no idea what Luci’s enthusiasms were—and a very clear memory of how embarrassing it was when elders assumed you still liked the dolls you’d played with at five or seven.

Papa Stefan grinned at her and patted Luci’s arm. “Esmaya, you will not know that Luci is the best polo player in her class.”

“I’m not that good,” Luci muttered. Her ears looked even redder.

“You probably are,” Esmay said. “I’m sure you’re better than I am.” She had never seen the point of milling about chasing a ball on horseback. A horse was mobility, a way to get off by herself, into places vehicles couldn’t go, faster than anyone could follow on foot. “Are you playing on the school team, or the family team?”

“Both,” Papa Stefan said. “We’re looking for championships this year.”

“If we’re lucky,” Luci said. “And speaking of that, I wanted to ask about that mare Olin showed me.”

“Ask Esmay. Her father bought a string for her to put out on the grant, and that mare was one of them.”

A flash of anger from Luci’s eyes; Esmay was startled both by the gift of horses, and her cousin’s unexpected reaction.

“I didn’t know about that,” Esmay said. “He hadn’t mentioned anything.” She looked at Luci. “If there’s one you wanted in particular, I’m sure—”

“Never mind,” Luci said, standing up. “I wouldn’t want to deprive the returning hero of her loot.” She tried to say it lightly, but the underlying bitterness cut through.

“Luci!” Papa Stefan glared, but Luci was already out the door. She didn’t reappear that evening. No one commented, but they were already drifting from the table . . . she remembered from her own adolescence that such a thing would not be spoken of in company. She did not envy Luci the rough side of Sanni’s tongue that would no doubt work her over in private very shortly.