"Did you see the article, honey? The elder Dagobert went missing after his vanship had a brief encounter with the Sylvana, it says." Heinrich's voice was matter-of-fact and sounded like he was reading a mere curiosity, but it was obvious what he was implying – Emma would have none of it. Let the man squirm.
"So they killed the poor man, what's it to us? We never even knew his given name, you hardly are in mourning, are you?"
"Don't insult me! I know you're smarter than that. He has defected to the Sylvana, we both know it. And we should go too! This is what the Hamilton family has dreamed of – you're an allied family to ours, you know what we need to do!" So Emma realized that Heinrich was not in a squirmy mood today – she had to finish off this neurotic frenzy before it went any further.
"And I thought you remembered that our daughter is eight years old and we are not raising her on a warship!"
"Honey, we cannot miss this chance! Alex Rowe is taking on the Eraclea power like no one ever has before and if the elder Dagobert trusts him, then I'm fairly certain we can too – "
"And now it comes! You never wanted to destroy the guild's power and actually change things! This is some stupid, centuries-old vendetta against another family! As petty and brainless as Hatfield-McCoy and as tragic as Montague-Capulet."
Heinrich's resolve melted in a spectacular, near-panicked moment. He hadn't heard that line since they decided to have children – this was serious, this was Emma's ultimatum… she wasn't going to allow him to advance at all today. It was already damage control time. Shit.
"You know I want to change things. Why can't I have any emotion about this? You think I'm a purely political beast at this point? Well, I'm not. How can I be? You don't even… screw it." He leaned over a table and looked away, willing himself to shut up and understand her correctness, as he had last time.
"Great. You'd follow a stranger's whims even if it meant destroying your daughter's life. Listen to yourself! When Alvis leaves school we can begin to think about this. You promised. I will not move on this. You want to defect, fine, but you're leaving me and Alvis out of this."
Emma stormed out of the room, and Heinrich purposefully walked over to and sat in the nearest chair. There were stories he could never tell his wife, she'd never understand them. He was a Mysterion Responder. Well, that she knew. But she didn't know what it meant. When a family member or noncombative Reciter said a Mysterion with no intent to exercise the power, it was like going under for surgery – nothing at all, you woke a little later disoriented but calm. When a hostile Reciter meant to actually manipulate Exile using you… he had never come up with a good analogy for it. Torture? Seduction? Vertigo? Pure, searing helplessness that makes you know just how useless and small you are? All of those kinda get it right, but miss the mark just a little. And he knew. Oh boy did he know…Once, he was seven at the time, an Eraclea renegade had caught him, tried to win his way back to the Eraclea circle of powerbrokers by showing off his captured Mysterion Responder. Heinrich had had to be rescued by his family en route to Guild HQ, and not everyone in the search party made it back. His aunt, his mother's sister, had been unsuccessfully tortured to give the Hamilton Mysterion to the renegade after she arrived and just barely survived the fighting at all… and then there was Heinrich's father. He was hardly allegiant to the defector families (Heinrich's Hamilton connection was with his mother, whose name he had taken), but that man protected his family, protected his son, even to the point of his own greatest sacrifice. Emma was still a little hazy on the details of her father-in-law's death – she had asked Heinrich, but his hemming and hawing about it having been a "long time ago" had convinced her to let the subject drop.
But now. This was no time to stand still!
Heinrich knew that to wrench the power away from the Eraclea Guild, Alex Rowe, if he was worth as much as Dagobert seemed to think, would have to Recite. He'd have to recite to a Responder, and he would have to manipulate Exile when he did so. Having all four Mysteria recited at once… Heinrich saw the hairs stand up on his arm, and clenched all his muscles to keep from succumbing to a full-body shiver. Four at once might kill someone, or come close. He wanted to take this hit – Hamilton was the only family large enough to have more than one Responder on a regular basis, and Dagobert and Bassianus couldn't be depended upon to have a cooperative one, as far as Heinrich was concerned. And he knew that there were at least two Responders in the Hamilton family. He would pursue this desperately, knowing that if he let it go another generation, the burden would fall on Alvis. If this Sylvana really was the hope of the defected families – if the Guild truly was about to fall and thus eliminate the defectors' hopelessness, their need to hide – then waiting past Heinrich's time would bring this to a head right when Alvis was of age to be the likely Responder of choice.
He would wait until Alvis was out of school and ready to take over the estate. His wife was right. But – Heinrich was well aware of the risks inherent in waiting. The recent sudden death of their neighbor, a man several years' Emma's junior, as well as the onset of winter, reinforced the well-known fact that everyone was susceptible to the quirks of fate. How could Heinrich know that he would be around to aid the Sylvana if it meant a decade of waiting? He'd be fifty. Not everyone in Anatoray made it that far.
Especially not people who have Eraclea renegades (and, who knows, perhaps even powerbrokers) looking for them. And he was very alone in this among the Hamiltons, as far as he could help – Alvis' birth had never been announced even to other Hamiltons, as the family in its entirety was going through a reclusive, secretive phase. So the Eracleas would still target him, and not Alvis. She'd be safe, very likely, just a random girl, not old enough to grab anyone's attention, or get in the way if a physical fight broke out. And certainly no one but he and Emma knew that she was a Responder. Ha! Was it really so easy to think about this, then? Time really does heal all wounds. I can think about fighting with the Eracleas, having Alvis there, a whole family affair, like last time. God, he was only forty-four… I'll have to make it past that age by a good few years before I join you, Captain Rowe. Sorry. I meant to help sooner. Well, he thought grimly, we do what we can.
But unless I want the Sylvana to pass us by, I need to make sure that the other Responder of Hamilton knows about it too. I have to tell her, or we're all going to hell in a handbasket, banking on a good but not perfect chance that I'll be around to pick up the slack in ten long years.
"Mommy!" Heinrich heard Alvis' voice from the entry hall, and jumped a good few inches out of his chair. Jesus, speak of the devil. He felt jumpy – it had been years since his last encounter with Eracleas – three, or was it four? – and he felt like some new issue was overdue. Mostly he and Emma had been able to head off the periodic errant Guild hangers-on who had pursued him by employing simple trickery against the foes, but sometimes it was more difficult. He was antsy. Something had to be done. And soon.
"Mommy, I got into a fight today with Miss Griffith!"
"What happened!" Emma sounded amused and concerned at the same time.
"Well, she said that the Hamilton family were defectors but I put her right!" Emma and Heinrich laughed. That was a safe issue, thankfully, since Hamilton was a common name, and thinking that the defector families were extinct or in deep hiding after an expulsion was a popular theory. A cute Hamilton girl saying the defector families were actually forced out of the Guild would arouse no suspicion.
"Honey, now it isn't good to fight with your teachers!" Heinrich walked over and picked up the backpack from the table Alvis had set it on – he then picked up two priceless knickknacks that had been stationed on that table and started juggling. Alvis laughed and Emma sighed. Carefully setting the tiny sculptures down and handing off the backpack to his daughter, Heinrich conceded, "Yes, your mother is right. It is also not good to juggle the table artifacts. Even though it is a lot of fun." He winked at Alvis and she squeaked happily. Then she turned serious (as serious as an elementary-school child can honestly be, at least).
"Mommy, Daddy – Holly got mad at a teacher today too, but I think she was right. It was really bad what the teacher said."
"What did the teacher say?" Emma helped lead her family into the living room as they talked, taking them back to where she and Heinrich had just finished arguing.
"Well, they said that the Mad Thane was stupid and only there to laugh at. They didn't think we could hear them, but we did."
"Honey, you know what we've always told you about this, right?" Emma knew that her daughter had learned this tidbit well – she could recite it backwards by age four. She and Heinrich awaited the response, and like clockwork:
"We support those who bravely defend Anatoray, and all soldiers deserve our respect."
"Yes," Emma intoned calmly, "We do not want to fight about it, even if your friend is related to one of our brave soldiers. Fighting about it profits no one. There will always be people who don't have that respect for our fighting men, but we will."
Heinrich used to wonder how much of this indoctrination Alvis was liable to understand for herself, and now he was worried again. Though, ultimately, the Hamilton family never really was military, couldn't be. The military background checks might pick up on a defector, so staying out of service was a no-brainer for the three outcast dynasties. So did it matter what Alvis thought of the military? Besides her friend Holly, she'd never get remotely close to military people. Even the Sylvana was civilian – technically. Alvis was always smart, Heinrich reminded himself. She knew that this thing she had to say, about respecting the troops, was just a sound bite; she had to know. She'll be able to think for herself, when the time comes for her to need that. She's a smart kid. But…
A few hours later, after Heinrich had smoothed the conversation over with Emma, he went to Alvis' room to see her reading a book from school.
"Hi, honey, you reading something interesting?"
"Yea! See, it's not for class but I'm done with my homework so I am reading it now."
"Oh, wow, a history of the guild, I'm impressed! Any reason in particular you're reading something like this?" Heinrich eased the book, which was clearly many years ahead of Alvis' reading level, out of his daughter's hands and feigned intense interest. He did not plan on returning the book to her before making sure it didn't have propaganda or downright frightening stuff in it.
"Well, someone told me it was good and I might like it."
"Oh! Well, can I take a peek at it, it looks good!"
"Sure, Daddy!"
Heinrich almost left right then, wishing his previous thought of telling Alvis had never even crossed his mind. Why burden her for a contingency plan that was not really likely to be needed? But then he remembered. Because parents in this family don't always get to raise their children. In centuries where the heat is turned up, this percentage is even lower. So she knows something she didn't have to know. It's not nearly as bad as not knowing when one has to know.
"Honey, I have another question for you."
"Aw, daddy, I wanted to keep looking for a show and tell thing for tomorrow!"
"Well, this will only take a little while. Alvis, after you graduate from school – in about ten years – we may all be going aboard a ship for a little while. But, if for whatever reason, your mother and I aren't able to go, you are going to have to do that yourself."
"Ten years!"
"I know it's a long time from now – I'll remind you about it closer to the time, of course, but I like to let you in on plans right at the beginning!"
"Okay!"
"Now, if something were ever to happen to me and your mother, so that we couldn't go to that ship, you need to go into our study, and take this out of the top drawer." Heinrich produced a seven-star vanship scroll from his jacket pocket. "There's also some instructions there for you. Remember that vanship pilot, Ralph, who lives on the main street?"
"Of course daddy – we pass that place every day on the way to school."
"Well, I just want to make sure! This scroll is for him, so if you ever need to take this yourself, remember to go to him."
"Ok! But, daddy – now I have to look for a show and tell thing. Maybe can I take in one of the table things? I'm not sure what they are, but I think people will like them!"
"Ask your mother, Al."
And for three years, Alvis almost completely forgot about that time when her father told her about the ship.