In due time, the group finds themselves approaching a small, dusty town, with a few buildings making a main street of some sort and a road that crosses it. A number of the buildings have what looks like some kind of rack to tie horse reins to in front of them.
[Assuming the group chooses to stop here]
As they dismount, Red Fox Claws will take charge of the horses, hitching them properly to the post. Tomat will follow the Amberites into the inn.
Vere slips an apple out of his saddlebag and feeds it to his horse, rubbing his neck and murmuring to him, before heading into the building. As soon as he enters it he takes a step to the side, and looks around the room, gauging the inhabitants and fixing in his mind where all the entrances are, as well as analyzing lines of sight. He coughs quietly to judge the acoustic qualities of the room.
The door to the place is made up of two half-length pieces of wood that swing loosely as people pass through them. Vere thinks it must not get cold here very often.
The acoustics are easy to judge. The place has a piano and someone is playing it, not very well in Vere's opinion. The woman who's singing with it has a decent voice. It reminds Vere of Red Mill a little, if Red Mill were cheap and dusty. There are perhaps a dozen tables and a long bar with a mirror behind it.
Signy easily slides down from her horse, handing the reins to Red Fox Claws. "First round's on me," she murmurs to him, giving a pouch on her belt a quick shake so that he can hear the muted clink of coins within. She's not quite sure how she knows, but she's certain that the coins inside will be sufficient to cover the fairly modest expenses they're likely to incur.
She strides in just behind Vere and pauses next to him, letting her eyes become adjusted to the lowered lighting within. "I wish I'd been able to do this when leading the Band," she notes quietly. "A lot nicer than laying on gravel in the rain."
Merlin says quietly, "There is no guarantee you will never have to do that again, but your odds are significantly better.
Vere's lips form a quick smile, then it passes as he continues to observe the room.
The barkeep calls, "What'll it be, strangers?" and Merlin looks to Vere and Signy for leadership. Tomat, still observing, remains at the door.
"We have had a long ride," Vere calls out in answer as he heads for a table near a wall and away from any other patrons. "What have you got to eat? And do you have any hard cider?" He pulls out a chair facing the long mirror, where he can watch everything happening in the bar, but does not sit yet.
"I have decided," Merlin tells Vere and Signy in a low voice, "that it is probable they do." He has come with Vere, but following Vere's example, does not sit yet.
The barkeeps says, "Sure do. Four ciders, coming up!"
Merlin looks smug. Tomat is watching the whole thing with interest.
Vere chuckles ruefully. "I still do not do that instinctively," he admits.
As the bartender starts to get the glasses, Signy signals him to add one more to the round. She follows Vere to the table, but keeps her eyes more on the door, waiting for Red Fox Claws to enter.
She flashes Merlin a look. "Is there no detail too small that you can't do that with? If you wanted to ensure that there were just enough rooms for our party, and none of them taken, could you do that?" For all that her tone is conversational and relaxed, it's pitched low enough that only the party can hear it clearly.
Tomat settles in with Signy, listening avidly to the talk.
"I do not know. Most likely, yes, if I wished it and none of you opposed me in the matter. If I saw a register and some rooms were full, and the number shown, I might not be able to. My father might think of a way around that; he is clever. Perhaps the guests would check out, or some rooms would need repairs. There is a trick to forgetting things, or only paying certain kinds of notice, that I have not yet learned," Merlin explains.
"Now if you or Vere, or one of our cousins or aunts or uncles, opposed me, or had already decided certain things, it would be less probable, if you take my meaning."
While they're talking, Red Fox Claws comes in. It takes his vision a moment to adjust to the indoor light, but he waves and comes toward the table to join them.
Vere frowns slightly, still not sitting. "I do not wish to be rude, Cousin," he says to Signy. "However..." his eyes flick to Tomat and Red Fox Claws, then back to Signy. He tilts his head inquisitively.
Bide.
Signy's hand reflexively flashes an old Band signal towards Red Fox Claws.
She looks at Brother Tomat, her face impassive. "Would you give us a moment?"
Tomat nods and moves to intercept Red Fox Claws. Together they go to the bar, within sight but out of immediate listening distance.
Signy looks back at her cousin. "Tomat and Red Fox Claws were my family, when I had none, if your question is if their trustworthiness."
Vere nods slightly. "The Pattern and the manipulation of probability are considered high secrets of the Family," he says. "Although there is some history of allowing some information about them to be shared with highly trusted individuals who are not of the Blood. As always when dealing with our family, there are not rules so much as guidelines." He smiles. "But I did want to bring the matter up before we discussed these things any further in their presence."
Signy listens to Vere's words, thinking.
"So, one thing I don't understand, then. If the only way to do what we do is to walk the Pattern, and only those of the Family are able to walk the Pattern, why does it matter?"
For the moment, she refrains from looking toward the pair at the bar.
"Because of what happened to Martin, and because of what happened in Rebma," Merlin says sharply. He drops his voice and continues, "We may be the only ones who can walk the Pattern, but anyone could potentially damage it if they had access to the Pattern and one of us. So there is a danger in broadcasting our knowledge too widely."
"Exactly so," Vere says. "There are those who want our power, and will do anything to learn the secret of how we walk through worlds and bend reality to our will. If they discover that there is no way that they can gain that power, then they would seek to destroy the source of it. It is a natural response - if you can not share someone's power then it is to your benefit to deny it to them, lest they someday use it against you."
Signy frowns slightly, before composing her face and turning slightly away from Brother Tomat to regard Vere and Merlin. "Would 'those who want our power' include the Klybesian Monks," she quietly asks.
Merlin looks at Vere, glances sideways at Tomat at the bar, and nods slowly. "I would assume so," he says, "Although I cannot personally verify this fact."
Vere frowns. "I have come across a few mentions of them in the Library of Amber," he says. "But I know very little of their actual beliefs or practices." In a slightly apologetic tone he explains, "I was raised in a single Shadow, and only brought to Amber shortly before the Sundering. And I have not had the chance to travel extensively since then."
Signy favors Merlin with a glance. "Can you think of anyone in our Family that would have had more experience with the Order?" She sighs heavily. "My brother, Marius, had some, and he fled with Brother Tomat."
Merlin thinks about it. "I do not know for certain, but I know Martin and Bleys have served our grandfather as confidential agents, and Caine also. They are the ones I would ask about such things."
"Nestor," Vere says. "He was the Librarian of Amber, and moved to Xanadu with most of his staff. If he does not know of them, he will have thoughts on who does."
Merlin nods. "I have found Nestor to be very wise and knowledgeable."
Vere laughs abruptly, a short chuckle rather than a full out laugh, and finally sits down at the table. He shakes his head, still looking amused.
Signy slowly drops down into her chair, a bitter taste in her mouth. "It appears that I'm destined to always have to keep everyone at arms length," she mutters more to herself than the others at her table.
She glances quickly at Tomat and Red Fox Claws at the bar before moving her gaze away again.
Her gaze hardens, and she looks at Merlin and Vere. "What would Madoc's relationship with our family be?" Her voice remains pitched low, but for all its softness in volume the question is hard and sharp.
"He was my tutor, and like me, is descended of the line of Benedict," Merlin says softly. His gaze has fallen on Tomat as well. "I do not know how that one is related to us, though."
Vere's eyes slide briefly to take in Tomat, but he does not turn his head. "He is related to us?" he asks quietly. "I do not think I have ever heard of him."
"He was my tutor, brought in by Weyland," she says, her tone lightening. "After I left, I guess he returned to his order until he met with Marius, who had a ring of my mother's and was looking for help translating an inscription that led him to me." She pauses to take a brief pull on the cider before resuming. "He left with Marius to bring him to the Plain of Towers, which I don't think was viewed kindly by the Order."
She takes another quick pull, thinking about how to ask her next question.
"Is it common for Family members to marry?"
"Our grandfather forbade many marriages, including those between brother and sister," Merlin says, his gaze sliding from Signy to Vere. "I do not know if all the marriages made were recognized by the family. Or whether all the unions were formal marriages. My parents' union was not," he explains. "Although I am told it is what our grandfather wished to happen, and a marriage to proceed from it."
Unlikely as it seems, Merlin is turning a bit pink.
"I have heard it said," Vere says, "That a surprising number of important residents of Shadow turn out to have a trace of our blood. There appears to be a natural law that Shadow travel tends to take us to places where our Family has previously travelled, and it is natural that in a Shadow realm those with a touch of our blood would tend to dominate and rule, and thus be the ones that came to the attention of other Family members travelling through that realm. My own parents are wed, although it appears that it was without our grandfather's knowledge." His face clouds. "My mother's health is not good, although I have cause to believe that the reasons are more metaphysical than age-related."
Signy nods slowly. "Though I have a hunch that my father may have had more than a touch -- I doubt that he would have been able to craft the blades otherwise."
"I do not know what your father is, but he is Real. And Ordered. Both--or at least a share in the Ordered Taint--are required to practice Sorcery," Merlin explains. "So if Tomat taught you, Signy, he is descended somehow from our family, even if he himself does not know how."
"Interesting," Vere says. He is silent for a moment, then continues, "In some ways that may be more dangerous for him than having none of our blood."
Signy gets a thoughtful look. "If he has Ordered blood, then he could walk the Pattern?"
Merlin's expression suggests that he didn't know this was news to Vere. "Not necessarily," he says by way of answer to Signy's question. "Some cannot, who are distantly enough of the blood. There was fear that my mother would be unable to do so, and the same fear for me. Have you heard the story of Mirelle?"
Vere turns to Merlin with interest. "I have heard only hints of that story, Cousin," he says. "I had the impression that some believed she was not truly of the blood."
By the blank look on her face, clearly Signy hasn't.
"Mirelle is, was, the daughter of Oberon and Paulette, full sister to Random. She died on the Pattern during her attempt to walk it. Some people believed, as Vere suggests, that this was a sign Paulette had been unfaithful. She committed suicide," Merlin tells Signy.
"It is, naturally, not something that is spoken of openly," Vere adds. "That is a pity, because I think it very important to know whether she was or was not a true daughter of Oberon. If she was, and still died upon the Pattern, then that suggests that the Pattern is even more dangerous than is commonly believed."
Signy pauses, thinking over Merlin's words. "How many have tried to walk, and not survived?"
"Unknown," Merlin says at once. "But more than the one. Huon's brother Pinabello also died that I know of. I believe others have perished on the Pattern in Rebma as well."
Vere nods. "There are rumors that Moire, the deposed Queen, sent many to their deaths on Rebma's Pattern, in an effort to find someone who could master it. I have no strong confirmation for these rumors, other than the fact that she sent her own daughter onto it, and I do not believe Moire understood it well enough to know whether or not her daughter would survive."
Signy nods absently at Merlin's words. "Yes, I think we met him briefly.
"I thought that our blood let us Walk -- do we know if the failures are because too much non-family blood was involved?"
Merlin shakes his head in the negative. "Those who are closer in blood to our common ancestor have failed, where I have survived, and so did my mother. So it's not clear." He glances toward the bar, where Red Fox Claws and Tomat are waiting. "I think we should speak more on this later, but in privacy. And I would not tell Tomat that he is of our line, not without speaking to King Random or my father first."
Vere nods. "That seems wise to me, as well," he says.
Signy nods. "I don't think I know nearly enough to want to try discussing it. If he becomes a pawn, or tries to do something...." her voice slowly trails off.
She glances at Merlin and Vere, and assuming they don't have anything further to add motions for the rest of the party to join them.
Tomat and Red Fox Claws rejoin the table, drinks in hand. Red Fox Claws looks unconcerned, but Tomat is clearly curious.
Vere nods a greeting to the two men as they arrive at the table. He looks at Signy, "I believe that our immediate plans are to head from here to Xandau," he says. "Yours?"
Signy ignores Tomat's questioning look for the moment. "We need to head back to Xanadu and report to the King what we found with the Queen's Chain. We just were taking a bit of a roundabout way to see the Tree."
She takes a pull from her tankard before continuing in a companionable tone. "We could certainly head back together. We wouldn't mind the company."
Dead leaves crunch under Folly's feet as she climbs the hill. She isn't precisely certain where she is -- some place between places, on the verge of a cold winter of the sort Xanadu will rarely if ever see -- but she intuits down to her bones that it is where she is supposed to be.
She crests the low rise and peers out over a grey-brown landscape ringed with scraggly, barren trees too evenly spaced to have sprung up of their own accord. Below, two -- no, three -- children climb on, under, and around a set of playground equipment that has seen a lot of use and not quite enough upkeep.
Folly makes her way toward the playground, toward the only bright spot on the landscape: a woman -- presumably the children's mother -- sits on a nearby park bench. She is wrapped in a voluminous silver fur that seems more appropriate for a premiere than a play-date. She appears to take no notice of Folly's approach, in that polite suburban way of ignoring one's neighbor's business; her eyes remain fixed on the playground, even as Folly settles carefully onto the other end of the park bench with a soft 'oof'.
As she arranges her own rather less impressive winter wrap around her heavily pregnant form, the woman, without turning her head, says, "I was beginning to wonder whether you would ever get here."
"Well, it wasn't time yet," Folly replies. The woman says nothing, but she doesn't have to; Folly can feel her skepticism.
They watch the children for a while. The two older boys, so closely matched that they could be twins, though they are not identical, throw themselves vigorously from one contest of wit and skill to another: now racing, now wrestling, now trying to keep one another from the top of the slide or a certain bar of the jungle gym. Their younger brother lurks in the shadows, mostly playing by himself but occasionally emerging to dog whichever of his older brothers seems about to best the other. All three seem oblivious to the women watching from the bench.
"Your children are beautiful," Folly says. "You must be very proud."
"Proud," the woman replies, blowing out a frosty breath that is almost a laugh. "They are what they are, and will continue to be, with or without me. You know that."
"Well, but you were a part of their making," Folly counters. "They were born of love. I like to think that counts for something." She regards the boys again, searching for signs of affection in their playground rivalry.
After a moment, she asks, "Is it worth it?"
"More than worth it," the woman replies. "Inevitable. When you hear his laughter on the wind, and feel his heartbeat in the very rhythm of the city you love, how can you make any other choice but to give everything you have, everything you are, to make him happy?"
Folly blinks. "What? No, that's not what I---"
"You speak of love, but here you are, running away." The woman has turned to face Folly now; her green eyes flash with inner fire. "Idiot girl! He made you a universe -- what more do you want? He made you a universe, a realm you know to your very core that you would defend with your dying breath, and you run off and leave it to someone else's keeping -- someone who holds your place only under the falsest of false pretenses---"
"That wasn't her fault!"
"---and how will your baby grow up under a mother who doesn't even know how to love it? Oh, she does her best, but it was never meant for her, and you know it. Who is the blind one now?" She leans in and wraps icy fingers around Folly's wrist; her eyes seem to bore into her soul. "Foolish child, he NEEDS you."
"But... but... it didn't get any better, did it? You loved him, but then you DIED, and everyone fought for years and years---"
"Yes, well, you do have that advantage over me, don't you?" A cold wind swirls around the playground, bringing dead leaves and grey mist. Folly suddenly realizes that beneath her coat, the woman is even more heavily pregnant than she is. In the gathering mist, her skin seems to take on a greyish cast -- as if she is already dying.
She begins to fade from view, as the whole landscape is slowly overtaken by featureless fog.
Folly clutches at the woman's hands, as if she could save her from her fate. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean--- Please, don't go---"
* * *
Folly awakes, shivering and slicked with sweat. She has kicked off the covers again. She slides out of bed with a murmurred "'M alright" -- by now a reflex, to reassure Martin; lately she's been up a half-dozen times a night -- but instead of the loo, she heads to the pitcher and basin on the dresser. With shaking hands, she wets a cloth and begins wiping down her face and upper body.
In the dark, she can still feel the force of those green eyes boring into her.
Martin has always been a light sleeper, a necessity in his various professions, and when he hears the wrong set of noises, he's halfway out of bed before he decides there's no threat--at least none physical. "Hey," he says after a moment, his voice rough with sleep if not fuzzy with it. "You ok? Want a hand?"
In a smaller, higher-pitched voice than she intended, Folly replies, "Could we maybe just... turn on the light a minute...?" ...Although at the moment she can't remember if this place even has lights that turn on.
Hastily, realizing that that may have come out sounding like she's worried something is wrong with her or the baby, she adds, "Weird dreams."
There's an audible sigh that might be relief from Martin in the dark. "Let me get a candle," he says after a moment, and then there's the familiar sound of a Zappo lighter striking and some small amount of light from it. When her eyes adjust to the brightness, Folly can see that Martin is ready to brandish the lighter, or the candle, like a weapon if needed, but despite his usual difficult-to-read expression, there's uncertainty in his eyes, as if he's waiting for her to say something so he can decide what to do next.
Her heart is still pounding, but the sight of her husband brandishing a candle against the darkness pushes away some of the gloom and dread from her mind. She is however having a hard time figuring out what to say that doesn't start with, 'Oh, don't worry, I was just having an upsetting conversation with a queen that died in childbirth'.
Instead, in a tone that aims for airy and almost gets there, she says, "I'm sure this is all my mother's fault, somehow." She wipes the cool cloth over her face again, hesitates, then adds, "I should have more faith that your father won't accidentally do something stupid while I'm away."
Martin takes a moment to react. His reaction turns out to be a long breath let out too quickly to be a sigh: more like blowing smoke in someone's face, except without the cigarette. One corner of his mouth quirks up, visible primarily in the way the candle shadows play on his face. "You've got to let the kids out of the nest sometime, Folly." He moves to join her by the sink, watching for any signal that he shouldn't come any closer.
"Yeah, I knooooow," Folly mock-whines, "but, you know, nesting instincts! I've got the universe arranged just how I like it, and I don't want anyone to go screwing it up." She blows out a breath of her own and leans her forehead on Martin's chest.
She's shivering, though the room is not cold.
Without raising her head, she asks, "Did I tell you" -- though she knows she didn't -- "that Mum thinks he and Vialle are going to split up?"
When Folly moves to lean against him, Martin sets down the candle and wraps her in his arms. He doesn't react immediately to the question other than in the long rise and even longer fall of his chest. "Nooooo," he finally says, "but it's nice to see some confirmation that she's smart enough to be your mother. It's pretty obvious when you talk to Dad. I think about you all the time and talk about you a lot. He doesn't talk about Vialle very much, and not just with me."
"Yeah. Even just standing in the middle of Xanadu, you can feel it. I mean...." She looks up at Martin. "If I were gonna make the reality of my desire from scratch, it would be someplace that I was pretty sure you'd be happy, and WE'D be happy, you know?"
She hesitates, frowning, as if she is treading carefully around a dangerous and scary idea or two. What she finally says is, "And I can't even work out which is the lesser of two evils: that they break up, or that they don't break up. And I feel like a shit friend for not being there. And then like kind of a shit wife for obsessing over your father's love life."
Martin closes his eyes with a long exhale and is silent for a long time, long enough that Folly has almost decided that he seems disinclined to answer. Before she says anything, though, he opens his eyes and shrugs. "The thing about negative decisions is that you have to keep making them every day for the rest of your life. Doing something is easy. You just go do it, then it's done. Not doing something means being strong enough to make that decision every time you think about it.
"The problem is that it's better for him if they split, no question, and we both know it. It's just probably not better for me." He doesn't elaborate on what he thinks might be best for Folly.
"YOU are my husband," Folly says with deep conviction; she cradles his cheek in her hand and looks deep into his eyes. "You are my husband and the father of my child, and I love you. Nothing changes that." She intones the words almost like a spell, as if their very truth comes from the force of her will.
She moves her hand up to stroke Martin's short hair. "And if it were just us few we had to worry about, we'd be fine. But it's Xanadu. It's all of your father's brothers and sisters. It's everything. After he's made such a good start of it, I don't want your father to go and make the same mistakes his father made. But I'm still working out the best way to help him. I just wish---"
She hesitates, looking a bit stricken. "I have a lot of faith in your father, but I wish I could be completely, one-hundred-percent certain that he wouldn't do something idiotic like get her pregnant." She doesn't say 'accidentally', but Martin can probably read it in her tone. "But then maybe the rules are different if you're screwing around in the vicinity of your own pattern."
Martin gestures Folly back toward the bed. Apparently if they're going to have this discussion, he thinks they ought to be lying down. "If he gets her pregnant, he gets her pregnant. Same for anybody else he might be getting pregnant. Grandfather did that, too: it's how come Llewella's older than Brand." The slight hesitation before he says his uncle's name may never go away. "And it was why Eric hated Llewella, because he was a bastard the same way she was in the Amber succession, and Grandfather legitimized her but never got around to him.
"But that's beside the point. You can't control what Dad does. Nobody can control what Dad does but Dad. He might get Vialle pregnant, he might get Garrett's mom pregnant again, shit, he might even get Paige pregnant if she flashes her knickers too often in his direction." He makes the last suggestion with resigned exasperation, as if he thinks that's possibly the dumbest thing he's heard of. A moment's reconsideration, and he says, "Or he might even get Silhouette pregnant, since I'm pretty sure she was trying to conduct some horizontal diplomacy and he's probably amenable to the horizontal part.
"And if he does," Martin says with a shrug, "we live with it. And so does he."
He takes the candle and moves it back to the bedside table, a further encouragement to get back in bed. "And just to be clear about the other thing: yeah, I am your husband. But Vialle is Dad's wife. The upside, though, is that you definitely aren't Vialle and I'm definitely not Dad. We're not going to fuck up the way they have; we'll find our own exciting new ways to fuck up."
"And Xanadu is not Amber," Folly adds, and nods as if she has worked something out, or come to some sort of decision.
Rather than come straight back to bed, though, she holds up one finger and gestures toward the loo; as long as she's up, she may as well take care of the other thing, or else she'll just be up again in five minutes.
When she returns, she does come back to bed, and lets Martin help her get situated. Although it takes a few minutes, they eventually find a comfortable position for her that still allows her to pet his hair as they talk. Martin can tell she's almost completely recovered from whatever she dreamed that alarmed her so, but she still finds it reassuring to be able to touch him.
"You're right, of course," she says when they're settled. "Whatever comes, we'll make it through. After all, improvisation means never having to make someone else's mistakes. Second verse, not really very much like the first verse at all, actually." She pauses, thinking, then adds, "And I suppose the whole succession crisis that plagued the last generation becomes rather moot now that we know how succession really works."
"Yeah, it works out for me since I don't want to inherit either of the ones I'm nominally in line for--excuse me, any of the three I'm nominally in line for now. I admit it makes the showy stage bullshit even less tolerable." Folly doesn't need to see Martin's face to know he's rolling his eyes. "Not to mention the politicking around our daughter. But even so, she's the daughter of two successful Patternwalkers and that counts for a lot in a place like Rebma with its track record of Queens dying. I'm hoping whatever ceremony Dad thinks he need can be wrung out of a baby.
"You know," he says, clearly thinking back to the earlier part of the conversation, "it's not like him getting tired of Vialle means it has to be you. Dad has a history, and making a Pattern has got to change a man. So maybe he's going to find someone completely new." There's a long beat and he adds, "And I don't think it'll be Silhouette, either, even if she manages to get in his bed. Dad's easy to get. Keeping him seems to be the difficult part."
Folly's wistful smile is difficult to see in the dark, but it's clearly audible in her voice. "In Texorami there's this plant that grows everywhere -- up through the cracks of sidewalks, along the sides of freeways, in the spaces at the foundations of buildings -- and most people think it's a terrible nuisance and go to great lengths to try to get rid of it, but in the spring it puts out these gorgeous little purple-and-yellow flowers, so bright they make everything glow. So when I got my first place on my own, I tried to transplant some of it from the sidewalk outside to a pot that would live on my windowsill. Turns out it can tolerate just about anything except captivity.
"I would think that making your own universe would make it even harder to try to live on someone else's terms. You know?"
"I don't think Dad did a great job at living on someone else's terms before he put down roots in Xanadu, so yeah." Folly can feel the shrug Martin gives at that even though she can't see it well in the dark, particularly given their positions. "Dad's gotten more responsible but it doesn't mean faithful, except maybe to Xanadu. And he's got a whole universe to explore now. Maybe he needs us to be the model couple and that's what all this fuss about the wedding was over. If that's our job in the brave new word, I guess it's a good thing that I'm me and not him. Probably we should have stayed there for the birth, but you can't have everything."
"...Oh." Folly's voice is small and quiet. "Maybe that's what she was trying to tell me." She falls silent, thinking.
"Huh?" It takes Martin a moment to figure out who, or what, Folly might be talking about. "Is this your mother or people in your dreams? Because unless you think there was a reason the dream was special, I'm going to vote that that's guilt talking. Dreams are funny like that." Which Martin, who has had more than a few bad ones of his own, should know.
"Well," Folly says slowly, "I don't think it was an actual ghost or a sending or anything, if that's what you mean. On the other hand, I do tend to trust my dreams like I trust the cards, to point out the things I don't know that I know. So, call it equal parts 'guilt' and 'intuition'."
She pauses, and chews her bottom lip. "Well, okay, maybe not quite equal parts." She lets out a soft chuckle, a bit sheepishly, and attempts to snuggle closer to Martin. "But it does give me another thing or two to ask Benedict, if he's amenable."
The occasion on which Martin refuses a chance for Folly snuggles will only happen after the end of the universe. After the next end of the universe, anyway. "What are you going to ask him? And before or after he chews us out for the pregnancy?"
"More like 'dependent on how badly he chews us out for the pregnancy'," Folly says, "because what I really want to ask him may require more sensitivity, diplomacy, and tact than even I can muster. I'm pretty sure 'Sorry we broke the universe, and by the way, could you tell me about that time your dad was an ass to your mom?' isn't gonna cut it. Not that that's exactly what I want to ask him, but." She blows out a sigh. "It's kind of in that vein."
Martin makes a bit of a face. "Maybe you better run that question by me so I can gauge how pissed off he's going to be before you ask it."
There is a brief, befuddled sort of silence, and then Folly laughs. "You know, that's almost like asking me to run through that solo I'm gonna improvise with the band next week. I don't know exactly what I'm gonna ask until I know how the conversation is going. But the gist of it is this: How much of Oberon's actions around divorcing Benedict's mother and taking up with Faella were motivated purely by politics, and how much -- if any -- by metaphysics? I mean, Benedict's brothers had to 'die for the good of Amber', and now we hear that it might be dangerous for there to be too many of us. Were those things linked -- in Benedict's mind if not in his father's? And there's a related question, which is: is there some metaphysical reason that the rulers of pattern realms have to be manipulative lying bastards, or does it just work out that way? If Oberon knew that he was the only one who could really rule Amber, why did he string all his children along for lifetimes and lifetimes over questions of succession? And then there's the part about if your father's siblings were willing to swear fealty because they thought his marriage meant he'd somehow suddenly matured, will they still stand by him if he suddenly ends it?"
She shakes her head. "None of those are really an opening converational gambit, though. Mostly I want to understand what Benedict knows about transitions. There could be a lot of different ways to get there."
Martin spends some time considering all that before he answers.
"Nobody understands what Grandfather thought except Grandfather. Ben's been around since almost the beginning--he is now the guy who defines the time whereof memory runneth not, as they say--so he has some clue about perspectives. But the only way he's going to be able to answer the question about why people with Patterns turn out that way is if he has one himself, in which case he's going to be exactly the kind of lying bastard who wouldn't answer that question." Martin says this with something like resigned disappointment. "But I suppose going and unofficially asking 'hey, you're still going to back dad even if he ditches Vialle' isn't going to be too bad. The rest of it--maybe it has to be asked but I don't know what kind of answer you're going to get and how useful it'll be, even if it's not personally offensive."
"Yes, that's about what I figured," Folly says. "Ben is a man of many layers -- so it's difficult to know what would be useful to ask without just going ahead and trying to ask. But even a non-answer can be its own kind of answer. We'll see how it goes."
She falls silent for a long moment and then asks, "Have you ever seen him laugh?"
"Yeah," Martin answers easily; he apparently doesn't have to search for that memory. "But not recently." He pauses, considers, comes up with: "You know, you don't have to ask about his mother. You could ask about Clarissa and that might be less offensive. Might even be more to the point, too."
"Indeed, although given the stories I've heard about Clarissa, I feel I've already got a pretty good idea what was going through Oberon's head when that marriage ended." Folly can't quite suppress a grim smile. "Still, that's when he took up with Moins, so there's plenty there that bears examining. And I'm sure Benedict's perspective on it will be most interesting. If he's willing to share it, that is."
"I think he's more likely to share what he thinks about that than about his own mother. With her and Grandfather both dead, even if you're looking at the metaphysics--well. I can tell you from personal experience that that's touchy stuff," Martin reminds her. "And I think Ben's more prickly now than I am."
Folly nods. "I shall endeavor to proceed delicately, and keep an ear on the mood. And improve it, if at all possible."
She's silent for a long moment. "He lost his arm fighting against forces out of Chaos, right?" She hesitates, carefully considering her words. "Is that the sort of thing from which they might... draw power? I mean, is it possible they took a piece of him in more than just a physical sense?"
Martin says, well, actually and the words come out as "Uhhhh."
He shifts a little for a better position. "My take on that, honestly, is that Lintra bit it off and ate it. And that's why he killed her later." The tone is apologetic, as if he's sorry he had to say that.
Folly muses on that for a moment. "Killed her, but couldn't take back what she took from him." She pauses. "It's strange to think he might actually have stored his laughter in his funny bone, isn't it?" The statement might easily have been facetious, but Folly's tone is rueful.
"Is that where their offspring came from, then? Not from the, ah, Ordered way of doing things" -- her inflection of that phrase is a quite serviceable imitation of Merlin, right down to the mock undercurrent of nostril-flaring discomfort -- "but rather because she bit him and he killed her and the bits turned into something else?"
There's another one of those _uhhhh_ pauses. "What I heard was that he parlayed with her, and bluntly, 'parlay' in this instance is shorthand for fucking, so could be both. But I think there was a child conceived in the Ordered way, or at least that's the impression that the third-hand stories I have through Merlin give me. I don't know what happened to the bits of Lintra that were left after Ben killed her."
"Hmm." The pause that comes after is long enough to suggest that Folly is finally starting to get drowsy again; but she is still alert enough to add, "I keep thinking about Merlin's Patternwalk. Did Benedict ever hear that story, do you know?"
"I don't think so. Merlin didn't want to tell him, and who else is going to?" Martin is, of course, not at all sleepy sounding, but he could go for days without sleeping if he needed to and Folly did wake him up.
"Should w--" Folly begins, but cuts herself off; there's another question or two to ask first.
"Have your thoughts about what actually happened there solidified at all? Particularly in light of things we know now that we didn't know then?"
"I'm not seeing which thing we didn't know then that we know now changes the 'don't piss off Ben' calculus," Martin says slowly. "What are you thinking has changed? Because if we didn't tell him when we knew Dara was out there and she could shapeshift into his form--which I still don't think is how that went down--it's going to have to be pretty big." He sounds sleepy, which may be interfering with his cogitation.
"Well, now we know that there are weird effects related to Tir and the Moonriders being unstuck in time," Folly says. "If the appearance of a hale and whole Benedict isn't some shapeshifter -- Dara, or maybe that Cleph person, who we also didn't know about yet at the time -- then it could have been a vision of some past or future Benedict, uninjured or fully recovered. But..." -- she lets out a sigh that is almost a yawn -- "...perhaps that's more a conversation for Corwin than Benedict. It is Corwin's Pattern they seemed to be fighting over, after all. And I suppose ideally it should be a conversation for Merle to have with Corwin, if he hasn't yet. Either way, though... yeah, let's not piss of Ben."
Although she does not say it out loud, Martin can almost hear the continuation of her train of thought: ...so that Future Ben doesn't get all ragey and attack his brother over a Pattern.
"But we knew about the weird-shit time effect before. I saw it, Folly, with the arm, and that before Grandfather died. And Ben and Corwin knew about the Moonrider connection, because they'd seen it at Jones Falls. So yeah, I'm still not sure what changed, but if you want to talk to Corwin about it, let's. And let's not piss off Ben. And let's go back to sleep." Martin shifts to get more comfortable again.
There's a pause as Folly lets all that settle into her brain, and then she says, drowsily, "Yeah." It might not all be sorted, but it's sorted enough for one night. Tomorrow they'll work their way toward Benedict, and hopefully toward more answers.
Beneath the covers, she finds Martin's hand and brings their entwined fingers to rest against her belly as she settles into sleep.
Last modified: 31 March 2012