Persis raised her eyebrows at him in surprise and approval. Her father was doing the same.
“We’ll make up for our earlier lack now,” her father said. “Come this way. We’ve planned a spectacular dinner. You do like tilaprawns, I hope?”
Justen nodded, and Torin dismissed the servants with a wave of his hand. They all started up the path that led back to the house. Justen walked ahead with her parents, chatting casually about the grounds, the meal, and whether or not he’d need a tailor sent over to make him more clothes for his stay. Whatever contempt he’d shown to Persis earlier, or to the Seris back at the court, seemed to have vanished completely. He was pleasant and engaged. Perhaps her little pep talk down on the boat had done some good, after all. Nice to know he’d been listening to her.
Wait, was it nice? She didn’t want him thinking she was smart enough to dispense good advice on anything more complex than matching his shoes to his shirt, after all.
They ascended the wide, shallow steps of the terrace to the main building, where Persis noted that her parents had moved the formal dining table to the outdoor lanai and arrayed it with leis of frangipani and enough orchids to overwhelm a king. She covered her smile with her hand, sure that the more they went out of their way to impress Justen, the more he’d feel out of place.
“What a beautiful table,” was what Justen said as they awaited their first course. He brushed a lei aside to examine the grain of the wood. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Hardwood like this was a rarity on the islands. Most furniture was made of polymer, stone, or bamboo. The majority of floors in Scintillans were composed of polished bamboo or crushed onyx, and the wide terraces that circled the main house like the lip of a mollusk shell were inlaid with stone in vast, undulating waves of black and red.
“It’s called cherry,” said Torin. He took a sip of his wine. “It’s a relic my family has kept from before the Reduction. There isn’t another one like it in all the islands.”
“Beautiful,” said Justen, his voice laced with proper appreciation. “I didn’t realize the aristos could take anything so . . . bulky . . . with them in their escape from the old lands.”
Persis gritted her teeth, but her father merely chuckled. “You are wondering, I suppose, if my ancestors denied a Reduced passage in order to fit the table into their cargo? I often wonder that myself. Sometimes I think it’s a relief that so many of the records of the old time have been lost. I cannot imagine I would like many of my own ancestors. If we let ourselves dwell on it too much, we’ll end up like those Peccants on your island, in a constant state of punishment to atone for humanity’s sins.”
The Peccants were a tiny monastic order on Galatea that believed New Pacificans should not be allowed to live full lives after the dire fate that befell the rest of the world. Persis could understand why the notion hadn’t ever made it to the mainstream.
“However,” her father went on, “I am comforted, some, by an ancient saying: ‘Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors.’”
“That’s Plato,” said Justen. “I’ve read him.”
“Ah!” Torin clapped his hands. “Then you and Persis must have plenty to talk about.”
“Papa,” Persis said lightly, “I just had to read him in school.” No good could come of having Justen think she was up on ancient philosophy.
But Torin Blake wasn’t to be swayed. “But, Persis, you couldn’t stop talking about the classics! You made me take the Blake collection out of cryostorage so you could see them on real paper.”
She rolled her eyes for Justen’s benefit. “Three years ago,” she said, as if Torin might as well be speaking of a time before the wars.
Still, she remembered the occasion fondly. She and her parents had spent hours poring over the stiff, cryoclaimed old volumes, reading the inky words on the dry, crumbly pages. Her mother had never seen real books before, and Persis knew only the few volumes they’d kept in cryostorage at school. Persis’s favorite had been the poem about the clever, seafaring king who’d traveled around magical islands trying to find his way home to his loyal wife after winning a long, long war. Her father’s had been a scary book about an aristo medic who’d gengineered a human out of corpses and lightning and was understandably horrified by the results. Her mother’s had been the sad story about the farmhand with the Reduced brother he’d been forced to kill.
She wondered if her mother even remembered that story now.
“At any rate,” Torin was saying to their guest, “I live in hope that people will judge me for myself and not any evils that may have been wrought by my ancestors.”
Justen nodded solemnly. “I hope to be judged for myself, too, sir. But, as you see, we are both hampered. You by a heritage of aristos stretching back generations, and me by the name of Helo. If I were any simple reg who showed up at your door, I doubt you’d have prepared such a feast.”
For a moment, Lord Blake just stared at Justen, then he threw back his head and guffawed, a sound so loud that his wife startled at it. “I think I like you, young man. There aren’t many who would sit at my table and call out my own hypocrisy.”
“Spend a little more time with Justen, Papa,” said Persis. “You’ll learn needling aristos is his favorite activity.”
Justen looked scandalized. “I don’t think you’re a hypocrite, Lord Blake,” he said quickly. “You and your family have shown me nothing but kindness since my arrival in Albion. Even before. And it’s obvious that, aristo or not, you have no prejudice against regs.”
“Oh no,” said Lady Blake softly and with a wry smile. “We always like regs.”
“I wasn’t speaking solely of you, Lady Blake. All the regs on Scintillans. I met Tero and Andrine Finch at court today, and they told me how your scholarships helped Tero get his gengineering degree. If the estates in Galatea invested in their people like you clearly do, I doubt there would have been a revolution at all.”
How Persis longed to voice a response to that declaration. But her mother was speaking again, and such an occasion had become so rare that neither Persis nor her father dared interrupt.
“I think,” said Lady Blake, “that Plato’s words are apt. The aristos of these islands enslaved the Reduced for generations. They should have been their caretakers, and instead they became their tyrants. And yet, they’re descended from the poorest and most disenfranchised of all in the old lands, which is why they never received the genetic enhancements that caused the Reduction in the first place. And it was the ancestors of the Reduced who began the wars, who destroyed the old lands. No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past. Everyone has saints and sinners. We are not to blame for the actions of our ancestors. We can only try to be the best we can, no matter what our heritage, to strive for a better future for all.”
Even, thought Persis, if we are forced to pay our forefathers’ debts.
Her father laid his hand gently on her mother’s and squeezed. She smiled, but said nothing more for the remainder of the course, as if drained by that effort. Persis, as she had been for months, filled the silence with chatter of her own, tales of the goings-on at court or Slipstream’s antics or news of the twins who had just been born in the Scintillans fishing village. Light, easy topics, suitable both for her mother’s constitution and for the impression of herself she wanted Justen to have.