Page 61 of Brave Truth

“People do like their gossip.” Claudio said it evenly. “I am confident in my preparations. Of course, what happens in the Challenge will be what it will be. But I am certain that I am approaching it in the proper way for who and what I am and what I might offer.” There, that was a framing he could be proud of when he told Gabe tomorrow. Or maybe later tonight by note. Gabe was busy tomorrow, dawn to after dark, unless at least two of his current investigations went more quickly than expected.

“Who have you consulted, may I ask that?” Mother was watching him now, rather like Cammie watched rabbits before fascinating them with leaps and twists and a sudden death.

“Oh, everyone you expect. Gabe. Orion. Alexander. Cyrus has had a few suggestions, and I had a question for Paul last week he was pleased to help with.” He gave most of the names, but left out Mary. Mary Sprite had no desire to make her considered shifts in affiliation visible to anyone yet, and he respected that. “And of course, my own understandings of the history, patterns, and customs of the Council, as much as can be observed from the outside.”

“You have not asked me. Why not?” Mother’s voice had a sharper edge.

“What would you tell me now that you have not told me before?” He could match her at that. Not that he let himself become sharp, exactly. It was far more like building a wall, sturdy, the way Orion’s magic made protections. Not just solid, but strategically designed to deflect damage away from those it sheltered.

There was a silence, one that grew longer and longer. Claudio waited it out. He could. There were plausibly things she might offer that he would leap at. But they were not, he was fairly sure, things that she would actually put forward. Not unless something changed in her. Those things might change. If their theory was right about her seat and the archetype of the Fool, there were changes there, waiting. The question was whether she’d move forward in some way or not.

But he could not hope for that. He’d hoped before, and nothing had happened. Not from Mother. Not from Father. He’d learned that hoping for anything beyond what he knew from either of them would break his heart. He’d learned to look to other stars for hope, as Thesan would put it. Claudio had to work for a moment to keep himself from smiling at that.

After a good two minutes, she said, her voice just as measured as before, “You find others more forthcoming.”

“Yes.” It was a simple statement of fact. She must have known that already, long since.

“Are they also forthcoming with the fact that there has been gossip? About your personal habits?” Now her lips were pursed, a straight line, unyielding.

“My friends have let me know, yes.” Claudio didn’t specify when, or how, or which friends. Though she’d certainly correctly assume that Orion was one of them. Claudio had privately won a bet with himself about how long it would take her to bring the matter up with him. Up to this point, she had said nothing about it at all, not in their two weekly suppers since or any of the other opportunities she might have arranged.

“I have been asked if it is true. I did not have a suitable answer.” His mother was watching him now, a different sort of look. Not a predator waiting to pounce, exactly, and he would be thinking for a long time about what metaphor might serve. He might need to consult Gabe’s encyclopaedic knowledge of natural history.

Claudio permitted himself one small shrug. “I did mention that I was seeing someone you would not approve of.”

“But not why?” There was the knife-blade, though it did not pierce. They’d need to have a far different relationship for her emotions to have that sort of effect now. She was tense all through her body. He could read that easily.

“In what world do we have a relationship where that’s something I might say to you, Mother? Where that was ever going to be a permitted topic?” Claudio kept his voice absolutely even. Not neutral, he could not be neutral about this. Being neutral would be in direct opposition to the way he was shaping himself for the Challenge. There was so much more he wanted to say, and he didn’t. He would see what she did, he would play out the battle, and he would trust that everything he’d learned from people other than his parents would be enough.

There was silence again, a silence edged around with sharp blades, where any movement had painful consequences. Claudio just waited. He’d learned how to wait, and admitted that was something his parents had taught him well. Finally, she said, each word spaced out precisely, the consonants clipped. “We raised you better than that.”

“Define your terms.” He flung it the way he’d have flung a charm in a fight. Not a duel, a fight. Deliberate, sharp, fast, and aiming where it would connect. “Better?”

“You know what is expected of you.” Now the words had walls around them, as if they were echoing oddly for the size of the room.

“I have done every single thing you expected. I excelled in my classes and in my additional training. I married. I have fathered two children, growing in their own excellence. Which I define not by whether they have met my standards, but by whether they are happy and fulfilled.” That was something he had not been given. “Now, I am choosing to go at the world my own way.”

“Why? What was not enough for you?” Mother gestured, a little sharp twitch of her fingers above the table. “Your marriage was a good one.”

“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.