Folio Two, Page Fifty (svegra mos sjekron)
My mother’s belongings were delayed on the way from Galasu, probably due to the construction on the Canyon Travel Corridor where she had died. Whatever had happened to the train had bottlenecked traffic down to one two-way track, so all of the shipments were routed through Iturja to make way for passenger cars. At least, that’s what the delivery boy stammered when Aunt Nikis interrogated him.
I remember the sweat that beaded on his forehead and the sympathetic looks from the three men hauling crates inside. Deimoa did crunches in the parlor’s corner while Meihannyi and Khatein played dice at one of the tables. Kobeis and Leiset Taltsuya — one of the distant relatives we boarded — had started a movie in the rec room, the volume up high.
Aunt Nikis turned to me. “Eràsis, your mother’s things won’t fit in your room. You will go through them by the end of the week — we will store them in the spare room, and I want it to remain locked at all times. Do you understand?”
Choosing which of my mother’s things to keep seemed easy enough. “Yes.”
Khatein looked up from the game. “I know a few people who’d be willing to buy the castoffs — good people.” He only mouthed the last two words, but my heart rose in my chest.
As an illegitimate, maybe I would need that money.
“Thanks, Kha.” I smiled as broadly as I could.
We led the delivery boy and his crew to one of the spare rooms on the second floor. They unloaded the crates quickly enough, but Nikis kept querying the AI for the time. “Get out of the way, Erà!” She had never shortened my familiar name before. “Come with me to the office and I will set you up with a key.”
Nikis’s calendar remained open on her wall screen, and I tried not to look at it. The family’s business didn’t concern me as much as my mother’s well-being. “How should I — how do I open the crates?”
“I’ve asked the delivery service to do it for you.” She sighed. “Gods — just once …”
I sat down in the chair across from her desk and stared at her busy hands. She needed to clip her nails. “Why didn’t my mother ever get married?”
Nikis stopped and looked up at me. The expression on her face made my stomach churn. How she could still board an orphan girl who asked such stupid things was beyond me. “Any woman would have pounded her forehead into the dirt for a chance to marry your mother. It gave Sekìnteis so much grief to see a daughter shun the marriage bed. Your grandmother was so superstitious.
“She said your mother’s refusal would ruin us, and the years kept creeping by. You’re so young … but when you have a few decades behind you, it becomes so easy to forget lost loves and the horrible things you’ve done in the name of your country and family.” She opened the key drawer and took out the tray of spares. “Salus — she was different. She couldn’t forget. Teinar and I knew. Her fiancée was murdered, and then she fell in love with that terrorist Aneti she was busting. I don’t think she ever recovered from either. She — she said she was fine, and she tried to smile, but sometimes we’d go shopping when she came home. She’d see a young woman in the market and just start crying.”
“Was my mother insane?”
“Your mother was brilliant.” She lifted up one of the keys and set it down in front of me. “You remind me so much of her. She was eleven years older than me, seven older than Teinar. We idolized her.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But you have to be careful, Eràsis. There are people out there who will try to take advantage of you just for being her child.”
“And what should I do about that?”
“Stay focused. Don’t let anyone manipulate you into doing things in her name.” She smiled at me and typed something on the computer. “I need to finish business. Remember not to trouble anyone.”
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