Chapter 3
Xander: Afterthoughts and Consequences
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
He watched the workmen with little comment as they went about their tasks, readying dorm rooms and classrooms for his school. An observer might have noticed nothing in his expression. But his thoughts were elsewhere.
“Why so somber, wizard?”
He turned as Aria stepped out of the stairwell. “I would have thought you'd be happy,” she said. “Finally starting your school...and at the expense of my gardens.”
“We've talked about this. You weren't using the floors below yours anyway.”
Her chin jutted. “Well, I could have, if you hadn't gotten them first. We can always use more garden space. Unless you plan to take your students off to distant fields in the summer, to teach them about herbs.”
“I'm sure our students will appreciate your gardens, eventually,” he said. “But to have students, one must have a school.” He glanced sideways at her. “But what do you care? Aren't you going to be spending half of each year in Texas?”
Aria's lips compressed, and he saw he had touched upon a sensitive area. “Having second thoughts?”
“No,” she said. “I'm way past second thoughts about the engagement. I'm more on fourth and fifth thoughts now.”
“Like what? Anything you want to talk about?”
She watched a carpenter putting up a bookshelf before answering. “I feel like I've saved Rado by betraying it. How can I marry the ruler of Texas when I'm supposed to take over for my mother here?”
“It will be complicated,” he agreed.
“And that's just the start. What about the children? If we have a son, his people will want to raise it as the Runt, the next Texan heir. But what about Rado? Are we giving everything away to the Empire just to avoid war?”
“I'm sure you will figure out what to do,” he said.
“Are you even listening? These are not simple problems. Now that I think about it, I don't see how I can be the next Governor and at the same time be Jeffrey's Honchessa.”
“If that's how you feel, then cancel the engagement.”
She scowled. “You know I can't do that. Jeffrey's better than his father, but he won't last long as Honcho if he comes back with nothing to show for the invasion.”
“I was wondering about that,” said Xander. “Why aren't you going back to Dallas with him?”
“I can't. Not until I know this new alliance will hold. If there's a coup and he's replaced I could end up being just a hostage. I can't do that to Mother.”
“No. So how long are you going to make him wait?”
She sighed. “I don't know. Have you heard anything from Lester?”
“Not since he left for Inverness. He must have reached his home town by now. I only hope he can find some potential students on his way back.”
She changed the subject. “Why are you holding your hands in your pockets like that? Are you cold?”
“No. I noticed that every time I wave my hand some worker stops what he's doing and asks what I need. But what I need is what they're already doing.”
She exhaled. “Well, when you do have students, I hope you keep them down here and away from my greenhouses. It took us a long time to get them set up.”
He smiled. “Look on the bright side. Someday you won't have to hunt me down when your glow-tubes need refreshing. If everything works out, you've have a whole school full of troubleshooters on the floors below you.”
Aria tossed her head. “Just make sure they stay away until I need them,” she grumbled, and turned to leave.
After she was gone he pulled his hands out of his pockets and gazed at the blisters again. There was no longer any doubt about it. He'd tuned those everflames way too high when he tossed a handful into one of the Honcho's tanks. In a hurry, and thinking only of doing the most damage in the confined space of the tank's interior, he had pushed the weaving of tonespace around the handful of coins to the limit.
That hastiness had helped win the day. It had also earned him some second-degree burns. Radiation burns.
He thrust the hands back into his pockets. For all my skills, he thought, I still cannot do anything about healing.
He had read that one of the Gifts of the aliens had been something called a tissue regenerator. Like the other Gifts, it had caused upheaval and the collapse of competing human technologies. Antiseptics, antibiotics, and while sections of the health-care industry had been destroyed by it. Unfortunately, it used a property of space he was not familiar with.
From the swizzle he had grown up with on the commune in Wyoming he had learned pathspace. The family's everflame had helped prepare him to learn the weaving of tonespace. And artifacts the General's men had located for him had helped the wizard learn how to handle spinspace.
But the fabled tissue regenerator used still another component of space, one he had never learned. Too bad he had never found one.
Pathspace Page 99
