Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras (13 page)

Sen still isn't much of
an actress yet, though, so when Lohn, Mara and Alay arrived with
their horde, I knew that something was up by the way she behaved
after her usual greeting-the-babies hugs. She wasn't totally
obvious about it, just getting rather subdued, but it was enough to
have Ys and Rye, who know Sen backward and forward, trying to work
out why she was hiding being upset. I simply opened a channel to
all my kids, and asked Sen if this was one of those Sight issues
we'd been talking about, then was all approving about the fact that
Sen had sent for Siame. I could see Mara had picked up on the
atmosphere too, and after a sharp glance at Sen and then me, she
tidied everyone down to the pool, making sure Lohn was along as
supervisor, then came back. I did my part by keeping Alay
distracted, and giving Sen a hug to make her feel
better.

Siame was in her
studio, which we'd built her on the sunniest side of the hill –
south, and kind of 'around the corner of the hill' from the house
on the way to The Wedding Garden. [We've also planned the 'guest
house' for our Setari minders, but it's only just been seeded.] Rye
(with Maze and Kaoren's help) worked out the course of pathways
between our house and the two new buildings, and laid stone paving
and even steps in a few places, so they're both connected but quite
separate from our house. That Siame, still mildly paint-daubed,
suddenly dropped out of the air on our patio rather than walking
told me that Sen must have sounded quite urgent in her
summons.

This was one time I
really appreciated how in-command and self-assured Siame is.
Completely unfussed, she sat down beside Alay, asked if she minded
her checking something, and then when Alay shook her head, bent
down and rested her cheek against Alay's stomach. Then she said in
exactly the same unhurried tone: "No immediate danger, but the
umbilical cord is wrapped around her throat. You'd best visit the
medics."

Alay had gone
completely white, of course, but Siame being so calm and
businesslike helped and Mara very practically said that she'd
borrow our sled and take her straight away. Jeh, Ketz and Lohn
could stay to watch the kids, and of course I would be there and so
were my guards for the day (two from Twelfth Squad) so there were
no problems leaving them. Siame enhanced and levitated herself and
Alay down to our boathouse, and Mara turned and gave Sen a sudden,
fierce hug, squeezing her tightly, then trotted off after them. Sen
waited till we were safely alone and then burst into tears and told
me that the baby was unhappy, as I suppose an unborn baby might be
if something was twisting around her throat.

It hadn't pulled too
tight, thankfully, but was apparently on the more dangerous end of
occurrences. I'm not sure what the solution would have been on
Earth – an emergency Caesarean? – but Taren technology plus
psychics meant that a telekinetic medical technician was able to
carefully untangle everything within a short time and, though they
kept Alay in medical overnight just to be sure, she and the baby
seem to be fine. Not fun for Maze to come back from an Ena mission
to find Alay under observation in medical, and no more fun for Mara
or Ketz or Jeh, all of whom are just starting to show, and all of
whom really really don't want to think about all the things which
can go wrong with babies. Lianz and Kara had spent a pretty
terrible afternoon as well, since they'd immediately noticed that
Alay had left, and no matter how reassuring you try to be, you
can't make kids not worry when you explain things like
that.

It was really good to
see how supportive all the kids were of each other. Of course, they
all really like and care about Maze and Alay, but when the day
stopped being a swimming frolic and became a long and tense wait
around the pool, I could see that a lot of the divisions which had
originally existed had at least relaxed a little, and that Ys and
Rye treated two children which they'd had such huge walls erected
against with a good deal of sympathy and compassion. And no
suggestion from Lianz or Kara that mere servants didn't know their
place or anything like that. Ys and Kara actually had a little
private conversation together, and I suspect that Kara has come to
value Ys' ability to get information out of the
interface.

By mostly living on the
same island, the senior Setari have made sure that they have a
convenient support network set up for themselves – just as the
junior Setari who have reserved all the land on the other islands
will if and when they can take up a permanent Muina residency. Once
we'd had the good news about the detangling, Lohn took Lianz and
Kara over to his and Mara's house for a sleep-over, and Maze's
parents brought them a change of clothes and so forth. It's a very
large extended family.

Maze dropped over,
after he'd reassured himself that Alay was all right, and swept Sen
up in the hugest hug and thanked her and ended up taking her on a
quick visit to Alay so that Sen could be sure that the baby wasn't
unhappy any more. And her cheerfulness after seeing that was so in
turn reassured Maze and Alay a great deal. She still had tremendous
nightmares for the next couple of days, but Kaoren said to expect
this because of the amount of fear of 'could have been' everyone
was dealing with. He had a nightmare too, and wouldn't talk about
it, but it's pretty easy to guess what it was about.

After all that, the
announcement of the laws the various governments had decided upon
to deal with touchstones was a bit of a non-event. Especially
since, other than having an oversight committee and being stricter
and more transparent about what mission assignments I (and
eventually perhaps Lira) am given, they aren't really changing a
great deal from the way I'm treated now. They've made "touchstones
screwing with people with their powers" illegal in a vague kind of
way, but haven't made it illegal for me to conjure up hot chocolate
or videos. When it boils down to it, they want to leave
flexibility, and don't want to risk ending up being forced to
prosecute me for doing something like conjuring a dragon to fight
off a Cruzatch attack. It's all pretty much what Kaoren and Maze
said we'd probably end up with, back when the whole issue was
raised, but it's nice to have it over.

My workload at the
moment has been ramped up, because KOTIS knows that I won't be
doing any visualisations or projections at all if I can help it, if
I get pregnant. Since they're extremely interested to know if I
have little baby touchstones, they're quite happy for me to get
married and have kids, but they're trying to cram heaps of
visualisation projects in beforehand. Not taking me anywhere near
any of the powerstones, or doing things they consider really risky,
but they're keen to reproduce the teleportation platforms and the
process of creating aether, and though they think they're beginning
to understand, they'd love to have some extremely confusing points
cleared up. Unfortunately they haven't found any convenient books
in the Kalasa library explaining any of this, and have been working
on the office I visualised once before, and other rooms like
that.

Going for a fitting for
my wedding dress tomorrow, and Kaoren and the kids' outfits. I had
to ask Kaoren whether his sights would drive him insane if he
didn't get to see what my wedding dress looked like beforehand, and
he thinks it will be okay, especially if I tell him about it
generally. After the fitting we're going to talk the kids through
what we've decided on for the ceremony, and explain how it's going
to be more than just a wedding, and talk over issues like surnames.
Sen is tremendously excited to see the dresses. So am I.

Another February

Preparations

Just under a month to
go now. I'd feel stressed about setting up a party for what will be
my largest guest list so far, but now that Kaoren's parents are
settled into their new home at Liriath, almost all the wedding
preparations have been taken out of my hands. It's not too bad – if
I'm very definite about the things I do want, Teor does everything
to ensure that I get that. But I had to make very clear that I
particularly want the kids' clothes the way I'd already chosen, and
bits of the ceremony to go a particular way, and especially the
'family-making ceremony' where we formalise the adoption of the
kids. But overall, though she's frustrated me a couple of times,
I'm pretty glad Teor's here and so effortlessly looking after
marquees in case it rains and catering and transport and all that
kind of stuff. She happily makes all the decisions, and some time
later mentions what's going on, and reorganises if there's anything
I want to change, but usually there isn't. She's only added a few
non-relatives I don't know to the guest list.

Kaoren not only has
grandparents, but also great-grandparents still living, though not
all of them are able to make the trip, and also a reasonable swodge
of other relatives, so it's lucky we put quite a few rooms in the
guest/guard house.

I'm very happy with my
dress and the girls' dresses, and highly curious about what Kaoren
and Rye look like in their matching formal robes (Kaoren decided
that we may as well both have a surprise on the day). The girls'
dresses were the defining theme – I had a long talk with Chiane (my
dress designer) about the colours which would best suit Ys and yet
also look good on Lira and Sen, and Chiane basically designed a
dress for Ys which really suited her, and then we worked from
there, although of course that's not how it gets explained to
anyone else. The colours we ended up with were moss green, a sage
and a near-white green. The girls' dresses are these deceptively
simple knee-length sleeveless sheathes of the sage with side-panels
of the moss green and this longer transparent material over the top
which tends to swirl and flirt about their knees and has embroidery
in the moss green and sage of leaves and flowers kind of caught in
the act of drifting down and gathering in little curling piles
about the hem. Sen's version has no overlay and is mostly white and
sage with some ribbony bits, while Kaoren and Rye's robes will be
longer, with sleeves and without the overlay, and with a more
formal and stylised set of leaves around the hems and
cuffs.

My dress is off-white
with a very exactly tailored bodice with a high neck with tiny
little buttons all down the back (something I've always thought the
coolest look for a wedding dress) but no sleeves, so my shoulders
are exposed. The skirt starts low down on the hips and is straight
up and down at the front, just touching my toes, while stretching
out to a tiny little train at the back. It looks very simple and
classic, and is only minimally embroidered (more falling leaves and
flowers done in the same colour as the dress, and mainly on the
train). I decided to go with a veil, not one of those poufy
mosquito-net looking ones, but instead a sort I'd seen in a lot of
old-fashioned photos which is basically a single piece of fine,
transparent material. It's the same ivory off-white, with
embroidered falling leaves and petals just visible, and since it
was a totally non-Taren sort of thing to wear, it took a lot of
discussion back and forth with Chiane to get something I liked and
which would stay on my head. She ended up commissioning a jeweller
to make me a circlet of enamel flowers and leaves. It's basically a
silvery wire curled around three or four times in a circle, with
clever little flowers in white and pale green leaves. I liked the
rough design of that enough to get matching little slides for the
girls, and also earrings for me. The veil fastens over it, falling
to my butt at the back, and to my waist in the front, and just wide
enough to rest across the top of my shoulders at the
side.

The interface allows
for complete body modelling and I'd been scanned at the first
consultation, so I'd been able to spend ages looking at a virtual
image of me wearing a virtual image of the dress, but I was
terribly worried that I would look completely silly when I put the
thing on in real life. Fortunately, I had two very harsh critics
with me, so when Chiane brought them in to check how we looked as a
group, and there was this moment of quiet with no hint of
suppressed scorn or pity, I knew I'd achieved something of the
effect I wanted. It makes me look really tall and grown up, which
is probably a silly way to think of it, but it really made me feel
like The Bride. [Not the one with the sword out to kill
Bill.]

Ys recovered enough to
ask if I'd be able to get about without tripping over, but then
rather shyly joined Sen and Lira in gingerly touching the edge of
the veil, which is incredibly sheer and soft. I could tell Ys had
deeply impressed Sen with the need to not leap on me when I was
wearing my dress – and to be careful of her own – and Sen was so
funny, moving about like everything was made of spun sugar and
making these adorable little peeps and sighs of happiness. She
absolutely adores the sash and ribbons on her own dress as well,
and kept patting and stroking them. We stood in a group to make
sure the dresses worked well together and so Chiane's assistants
could make sure Ys and Lira's hems were even, and the girls put
their matching hair slides in, and lots of little tucks and
adjustments were made and I completely enjoyed watching Ys taking
sidelong glances at herself in the mirror. She'd been so resistant
and long-suffering at the first consultation, enduring and hating
the requirement that she be dressed up, and plainly expecting the
worst. But the colour really suits her, and the cut and the overlay
gives her a suggestion of elegance and also takes tall and skinny
and turns it into long-limbed and leggy, thanks to the skirt of the
under layer ending well above the knees, while the overlay drops
down below. It's not frilly or flouncy or overtly trying to be
sexy, is just girlish enough, and really does suit her and I'm so
pleased.