Quatre was overjoyed, and he told me so on the vidcom later that night as the festivities faded. "I'm so glad," he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners, shimmering with happiness for me. I knew he meant it. He was right to be relieved; a man so grave he cannot smile is as badly off as a woman so strong she cannot cry.
"What about you?" I asked quietly. The question wasn't random. He had married Dorothy Catalonia in a coup of connections -- political for him, business for her, mutually advantageous -- a year ago. I worried, I couldn't help it. His wife had put a rapier through his thigh not so long ago.
Quatre's face softened. "Of course I'm happy," he said.
"And Jacey?"
About the first thing Quatre and Dorothy had done, apparently, was head to the bedroom, because ten months after the wedding, a healthy baby boy was born to the couple. James Cillian Winner. Quatre had sent pictures. Catherine, leaning over my shoulder, went into transports over the infant's fair skin and blue-gray eyes. I saw Quatre in the sweet curve of the child's smile, and Dorothy in his grasping hands.
Quatre grinned. "He's fine. You should come see him yourself, you know."
I shook my head. "I'm bad with children--"
"Don't be silly. Animals and children are closely related, you know. You're a circus clown, for goodness' sake! Besides, if you can tame a howling lion, Jacey should be no match. And I..." Quatre hesitated, glancing up at me through his lashes a bit wryly. "I thought... that maybe you would be willing to stand as godfather to him."
I sat back in my chair, stunned. Quatre tracked my reaction closely, as if he could span across the thousands of kilometers of empty space between our colonies and pluck my feelings from my heart. He probably could. I said, "Thank you," and this time when Quatre smiled I steeled myself not to shut my eyes against his brilliance. "I will... try."
"I can get you a ticket and a private shuttle if you just name the time," Quatre said instantly. A week later, at the shuttleport, I looked at the gleaming white lines of the Winner Corporation spacecraft and imagined another mask set gently aside.