In the wake of a morning rainfall, Lerran walked along the path behind the manor with Tass holding his arm. It was calming, though Lerran had spent most of the last few weeks feeling anxious. The meeting in Squora had been a storm, and the payday on the horizon was the inevitable sunlight after the thunder. For now, he was in a strange limbo, waiting for peace to come again—as though his life without the Lo Mallago trade had been anything peaceful.
Gadra had not heard that news—the strings of her lute drifted through an open window and down into the orchard.
“Is she… is she singing?” Lerran asked, chuckling.
Tass shrugged. “Why?”
Lerran shook his head. His sister had a beautiful voice he soon realized, but he began to feel bitter. Tass picked up on it; she patted his arm and looked at him with a smile and raised, inquisitive eyebrows. “Our lives are chaos, but she finds time and state of mind for that?”
Tass lowered her head and they kept walking. Gadra’s music grew steadily more faint over the next several moments. “What if our child wants to play music?” his wife asked, softly.
Lerran paused his pace and looked at her for a moment. They were in the shadow of a pecan tree, where sunlight streamed through the humid air and the pluck of lute strings or sparring swords creating an ambience he could never have in his stifling carpeted office. “If our child wants to play music, he’ll have the safety to do it,” he said. “Gadra does not.”
“How will he be more safe than her? Will you keep him from serving in the Family?” Tass asked.
“No, of course not. Our child, be he daughter or son, will be free to work the trade and free not to.” Lerran blinked as they kept walking through errant rays of sunlight and shade. “But we must make his position more secure than mine. The last year has been full of dangers I will not let my heir inherit.”
His wife smiled. “Said like the true Prince of Sheld.”
“Stop with that,” Lerran said.
“I’m sorry.” Tassina only smiled though, and they kept walking, arm-in-arm, in silence. “Regardless of your title, you’ll soon be far wealthier.”
“And a lot more public, because of it,” Lerran said. Power breeds danger, wealth breeds danger. I pray we were not fools to breed a child in the midst of it all, he thought. The thought felt sour though; Lerran prayed to no gods. His enemies did.
Tass squeezed his arm again and they walked on in silence. Waiting to see what weather was on the horizon.