Folio Two, Page Thirty-One (svegra mos bietkron tal-itz)
After our last experience alone together, I needed to use what I could to keep her from hurting me. I activated the AI protocols for guests loudly so she could hear before letting her in. She strode in like a princess, hands on her hips and a big, earnest smile on her face. She left soot fingerprints on the door when she closed it, and I realized that she must have been the one tending the fires all night.
She cleared her throat and twisted her hands together, not looking at me but at the wall behind me where the AI Sentry was embedded in the wall. “I take it that you feel awful about what happened with Senet.”
“I thought the Karatha did nice things.”
Anumë sighed. “Our family is too important for that.” She took a necklace out of her pocket and dangled it on her wrist. The elaborate carvings identified it as a spirit guardian, which people sell outside of the temples in Menarka and most other Canyon cities. “One of them would have wiggled its way into our house eventually. Don’t be too hard on yourself. They manipulate everyone.”
“But Aunt Nikis — I saw her today and she looked at me like —”
“You know that I hate you, Eràsis.” She threw the spirit guardian on the floor between us. I winced. “But you must listen to me. Sacrifice that guilt. Pray for forgiveness if you have to.”
“For forgiveness?”
“You are not your mother.” She cleared her throat. “She always said what she meant. Everyone else had to clean up for her because she never understood that living by principles wouldn’t end well. You need to make Senet like you.”
I looked down at the pendant and back up at her, unsure of the correlation. “Why?”
“The Karatha have influence everywhere. Every country, every town — you just can’t escape from things you do to them, and they can communicate with each other as fast as lightning. Keep him close to you. Do it for your family, and if that doesn’t strike your fancy, do it to save Salus.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“No. Nikis is, and she will curse you to the depths of hell if anything bad comes of this.”
“What’s the pendant for?”
She cleared her throat. “The magus said it would help others overlook your social gaffs. It contains an invocation to Yilrega as the bestower of friends. Not that I believe it will work.”
“Why not?”
“Endocrine drugs are my weapons of choice. Almost everyone reacts to them. I’m not sure about the Karatha or the nuamua, and I wouldn’t dare try.” She chuckled and looked down at the floor. “Besides, I thought you’d be a throwback like Aunt Salus. She hated using technology. Hell, she spent a while writing on old-fashioned paper before she got too busy to keep journals.”
“Mom wrote her life down in books?”
“Dozens. I’m not sure where she left them. Maybe they got burned.”
“Why?”
“When you get popular enough, you have to sacrifice the fragments you’ve left behind. Anyone could find them and publish them. Your career and family would be finished.” She looked past me at the open wardrobe. “What were you doing with her clothes?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Just making sure everything was still there.”
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