Kristos started. “A name? No, not yet—we hadn’t decided on one,” he replied, dazed.
Theodor nodded and trotted off. “Penny is doing well,” I said, “and this little button is grand as anything, but what about you?”
Kristos’s lips twitched into a faint smile. “Me? I hardly know what to do with myself. She’s—she’s real.”
I laughed quietly. The motion jostled the baby and she stirred, then fell asleep again. “Babies do tend to be real, Kristos.”
“I mean, I knew she was coming and I knew she was going to be—real—but…” He sank onto a delicate bench upholstered in pink silk. “But she’s real. And this is real, and I’m a father now. A real father.”
“You’ll be a fine father,” I said.
“I’ve no idea what to do, what to expect.”
“Did you know how to lead a revolution?” I joked. I traced the tiny fingers gripping the edges of her wrapping. There were fingernails—perfect little ovals. Why hadn’t I thought to realize she would have fingernails? I wondered.
“But this is a person, a little human with needs and—oh, hell, someday she’ll have hopes and ideas and dreams—”
“Every man and woman who followed the Red Cap movement did, too,” I said quietly. “And every man and woman out there encamped in the cold. They’re all people and you led all of them. Surely you can be a good father, too.”
“I think that might be what scares me,” Kristos said. “I—I could look at the Red Caps and then the Reformist army and still see the ideas, the concepts, the new ethical government writ large before all of them. I can’t look at her and see that. I just see—her. Her perfect little mouth and—that’s Penny’s chin. I think she’s got your hands, sort of long and square.”
“She has your ears,” I said quietly. “It’s not a bad thing, Kristos, to see people first, before ideas. To love before you think.”
“I know. I—I see that now.” He tucked a loose end of the linen swaddle back in place, but it came undone, and the baby began to cry. “Have you any idea how to wrap one of these?”
“None,” I said. “But I think we can figure it out together.”
48
“A NEW BABY! I THINK THIS DESERVES SOME SORT OF CELEBRATION, don’t you?” Viola said as we gathered on the cold portico of Westland Hall, watching the troops march back to their quarters after evening inspection.
Sianh eyed the petite Galatine noblewoman suspiciously. “A celebration? In the midst of war?”
“Just a simple supper party! We held them all the time during the winter social season in Galitha City. Dinner and polite conversation and maybe a punch if we can manage it.” She paused. “Not too much punch. I know how army officers can be.”
“Trust Viola to think of a party at a time like this,” laughed Theodor. “But I confess I agree. We have welcomed Pellia, rebuilt an army and—sweet mercy!—we finalized a country charter, all without a proper celebration. And now we’ve a new arrival—and everyone will want to know, have they settled on a name yet?”
“Not yet. Kristos is getting all sentimental and wants to wait through the end of the first one hundred days like Pellians do.” I laughed. “I suppose she’s the only baby around, so there shan’t be any confusion.”
Sianh agreed, for once, to raid the finer stores of our army’s provisions, given that a fine dinner could show our diplomatic guests that we were not ready to succumb to starvation. “It never pays to look desperate, even if the ink is dry on the contract,” he muttered to me as I reattached a loose epaulet before the party.
I didn’t have my own closet at my disposal, of course, but Westland Hall still held a sizable portion of Theodor’s mother’s and sister’s wardrobes. Both women were smaller than me, petite Galatine women with dainty builds like songbirds. In the back of a musty closet, I found a dark gold gown of his mother’s in the outdated “flying” style, loose shoulders and an open front. Likely it was set aside to be remade, but a war and fleeing her home had put a stop to any sartorial planning. I looked, and felt, like a dowdy aunt invited last minute to a supper party, but I made the gown fit.
We gathered in the private family dining room of the estate; the formal dining room, a larger and more stately space, had been taken over as part of the field hospital. Even so, candles blazed in sconces and from silver candlesticks on polished cherry sideboards, illuminating full sets of silver and finely painted china. Penny wasn’t ready to be out of bed yet, but Kristos came down with my niece long enough to present her, to a deluge of well wishes. She slept soundly through the entire parade around the room, oblivious to the coos and congratulations.
“And in red and gray!” Dira smiled. “She is a little patriot, is she not?”
“A beautiful child,” said Hysso.
“In Serafan, we say Hya’tin Fia,” said Sianh, “which means ‘due welcome, small stranger.’” He bowed and presented his sword to the slumbering infant, which earned some laughter from the gathered regimental officers, but I saw the glint of a tear in the corner of his eye before Kristos returned the baby to Penny.
Viola had rustled up stewards from the corps of former Rock’s Ford military school students. As nobles’ children, they were used to being served rather than serving at a table, but despite my worries they would appear sullen or reluctant, they were eager to be given even a minor role of honor. A young man with sun-kissed skin and neatly clubbed black hair held my chair for me, and another poured wine.
We passed trays of cheese and stuffed figs, as though this were a perfectly ordinary Galatine dinner party. Kristos returned and engaged Hysso in a lively conversation about historical Pellian philosophy, and its influences on first the Red Caps and now the Republic of Galitha. Dira watched with bright curiosity, tasting each cheese and sipping her wine.
“Do you like the figs?” I asked as she tried one.
“They are surprising—with honey! Rather sweet, are they not?” she said. “Like dessert. But we do not take to sweet foods at home, for the most part.”
“This is your first time in Galitha, then?” I said.
Dira nodded serenely. “It is. I hope to return when the atmosphere is a bit calmer. I find that the scenery is quite interesting.”
“A toast, then!” Theodor cleared his throat and stood, a scanty glass of wine in hand. “To a renewed Republic of Galitha, to our citizens both old and new, and to our friends and allies.” He lifted the glass as a signal for us to join him. The sunset outside the lead glass windows danced through my wineglass, casting a shadow like a smear of blood on the nearest wall. “We hang on the edge of a great—”
The door swung open with a crack like thunder, and the officers serving as stewards put their hands to their swords. Sianh had his sword out and at the ready, and was on his feet and in front of me in one motion. As I peered around him, blocked into my chair by his thick legs, I saw that the intruder was a rail-thin man accompanied by two of our officers, his hair overgrown and disheveled and his clothes marred with old and fresh stains.