“I just don’t want to mess things up,” she said. “What if we mess things up for him?”
Kit stroked her knuckles with his thumb the way he did when she couldn’t sleep. “We will, though. No one’s perfect. Everyone’s carrying something that their parents would have done differently if they’d known. Or if they’d been better people. Or if things had just been different. That’s all right. It’s normal. Part of why I am what I am is all the bad choices my mom and dad made, and if they’d done differently, they’d still have made some mistakes somewhere along the line, and those would be part of me instead. They weren’t perfect, and we aren’t perfect.”
“He is, though,” Rohi said. “Bakari is.”
“He is, isn’t he?”
They were quiet for a little while. Jandol came out and offered to take their leftovers away. When Kit shook his head, the old man shrugged and puttered back to the kitchen.
Eventually, Rohi hauled in a breath, and when she sighed, she folded forward. When she spoke, her voice had lost its tightness. “All right. Thank you.”
“Don’t say ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I didn’t.”
“You were about to.”
She smiled, and he could see the storm had passed. “I was about to.”
He sucked up a mouthful of noodles and chewed. The lemongrass tasted real, and the noodles were soft and salty. If they’d gone a little cold, he didn’t care. Rohi sighed and relaxed into her chair.
After dinner, they walked home slowly. She took his hand, and he leaned against her. For a while, it was almost like they were courting again, only deeper. Richer. Fuller. This was the life that both of their parental groups had given up, and Kit didn’t understand any of them at all.
At the rooms, Giselle was sitting on the couch, spooling through entertainment newsfeeds on her handheld. As they came in, she lifted a finger to her lips and pointed toward the nursery.
“He fell asleep ten minutes ago,” she said. “Ate well. Shat out his bodyweight. Giggled, played, cried for fifteen seconds, and out.”
“Thank you, Mama,” Kit said, and Giselle stood up and wrapped him in her arms.
“It’s not for you,” she said, quietly enough that only he could hear. “I’m soaking in all the grandbaby I can while I have him. Storing up for winter.”
After she left, Rohi went to her office, walking softly to keep from waking the baby, and he sat at his own desk and pulled up his message queue.
He started the camera.
“Hey, Dad. I love you too. Thank you for coming close enough to send the message. I know how hard that can be. And I love you for it. Having a kid is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I love it. I love having a kid. I love being a dad.
“I know you and Mom didn’t have things go the way you’d have picked. But no matter what happened, I always knew you cared about me. I learned that from you. If that’s the only thing I manage to pass on, it’ll be worth it. It’s a great legacy. Seriously the best.”
He tried to think of something more, but exhaustion was seeping in at the corners of his brain, and he didn’t really know what else there was to say. He reviewed it, sent it, scrubbed his system the way he always did when he’d gotten something from the underground’s network, then showered and got ready for bed.
Rohi wasn’t there. He found her standing over the crib, looking down at the new little life they’d made together. Bakari’s soft, round belly rose and fell as he slept. Kit stood there with her and with him.
“He’s a strong little guy, isn’t he?” Rohi said.
“He is. And his parents love him.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Chapter Ten: Fayez
Planetary geology wasn’t the sort of degree people usually went into looking for a career as a kingmaker. There wasn’t a lot of crossover between freshman analysis of sedimentary patterns and having people vie for your influence over issues of life and death. Add in political sway over a galaxy-spanning empire, and the overlap was pretty narrow.
But without intending to, Fayez had stumbled into it.
He was floating in Lee’s private cabin with a bone-colored bulb of whiskey in one hand. It was a thick, peaty distillation that was too harsh for him when they were under thrust. A couple weeks on the float did something to deaden his taste buds, and so at times like this, it was perfect. Lee, Elvi’s second-in-command, was queuing up a message from home. Or, at least, from Laconia. Which despite having lived there for years, Fayez still didn’t think of as home.