Pelli scowled.
Selemei sat beside her. “I love you, Pelli. I promise you can go out, just lie down a bit first.”
“Excuse me, Mistress?” Pelli’s Verrid said softly.
She waved him off. “I’ll take care of it. Please, take a break, Verrid.” The Imbati bowed stiffly and withdrew through a door hidden behind a curtain. Her Grivi remained. When Selemei turned back to Pelli, her daughter’s lip was trembling dangerously. “Pelli, it’s all right, come here, I love you.” She held the girl’s head against her shoulder and rocked her. “Time for sleeping, just a bit of sleeping, nothing to do now, nothing, nothing, Mama’s doing nothing, not going anywhere, nap time for Pelli, Mama loves her Pelli.” She leaned over to deposit Pelli into bed, but Pelli clung, and Selemei had to catch herself with her elbow before she squished her accidentally. “Let go, big girl.”
Pelli squirmed and whined.
“Here, I’ll lie down with you.” It was difficult, because Pelli still wouldn’t let go, and her left hip twinged as she shifted to straighten it, and her gown hitched up above her knees. She grunted, but she’d often told Grivi she’d rather manage such awkwardness without his help, at least when she was alone. “There.” She kissed Pelli’s warm cheek. “Sleepy Mama, sleepy Pelli.”
Pelli sat up.
Selemei tightened her arm across her daughter’s lap. “Lie down, Pelli.”
“Pelli party!”
Gnash it! “You won’t go to the party at all, if you don’t sleep.” Looking up at her from an awkward position on the bed did not convey authority, and her leg was aching, and she didn’t want help. “Pelli, you will lie down right now because I told you so.”
“No!”
“You are a little girl, and little girls do as they’re told.”
“Nooo!”
“Gnash it, I’m your mother and I know what’s best for you. If you don’t think of your health, you’ll ruin your value to the Race!”
Pelli started bawling.
“Lie down!” Selemei heaved up on one elbow and pulled her down. Pelli thrashed. Her head hit Selemei in the cheekbone; her knee jabbed her in the stomach. Gnash it, gnash it… Grunting, Selemei struggled to grab the flailing limbs. Finally she managed to pin part of the bedsheet under her own body and wrap the rest of it over Pelli, to catch the hand that was hitting her in the head and tuck it under, to pin the sheet down with one hand on Pelli’s other side. Pelli roared with rage. Panting, Selemei held her there until fatigue drained the note of anger from Pelli’s cries, and she hiccupped to a stop.
Hitching breaths. But, finally, sleeping breaths.
Selemei carefully let go, even more carefully pulled her arm back.
Oww…
She collapsed facedown on the bed. Breathed, hard, aching everywhere. Her left leg twitched and twinged.
Why did I do that? I wasn’t going to do that again. Not to Pelli. I should have let Verrid handle this, even if it was Imbati coddling.
She turned her head and touched her lips to Pelli’s wet cheek; a hint of salt crept between them.
She’s too much like me.
Selemei sighed her head back down on the bed, and closed her eyes. It was easier just to lie here, not to try to move, just to imagine herself sinking through the mattress toward the stone floor.
Curtains rustled, and a quiet change came to the air of the bedroom. A servant coming in, maybe Pelli’s Verrid. A long silence pulled Selemei toward sleep.
Grivi whispered tensely, “We don’t need your interference.”
Another long silence followed, but Selemei was fully awake now.
Grivi whispered again. “Gentlemen’s servants should stick to politics. They always think everything is their business. I’m charged to safeguard her health.”
And a higher voice answered. “But her health is politics. You know that.”
Ustin’s voice? What was Ustin doing here without Xeref? She shouldn’t let them talk about her in her presence, but she’d never heard servants speak like this, and it was so hard to move. To interrupt Grivi in the midst of more emotion than she’d ever heard an Imbati express aloud? It seemed cruel.
“I took the Mark in her name,” Grivi said. “My vow of service binds us two, alone. Will you compromise that with your selfishness?”
“Such a question,” Ustin said, her voice level, disapproving. “I don’t know.”
“You may be excused, Ustin,” said Grivi.
A swish of curtains suggested Ustin was making a swift departure. Selemei carefully waited more than a minute, then shifted her head, and moaned as if she’d just awakened.
“Grivi…?”
He helped her to turn over. She sneaked a glance at his face, his broad forehead illustrated with the manservant’s lily crestmark, but he wore the same patient, agreeable expression as always.
It felt dishonest not to mention what she’d overheard. But she’d bumped up against Imbati secrets before, and heard that very same toneless I don’t know—if she brought it up, she’d only mortify him to no purpose. Guilty, she lay on her back and stared at the ceiling vaults, with Pelli’s head tucked underneath her right arm. In her sleep, Pelli turned, and her face pressed into the side of Selemei’s breast. Selemei fell into a doze, but woke again when a small warm hand found its sleepy way onto her belly. She patted it gently.
“Mama,” Pelli murmured.
“Sweet Pelli. I’m glad you had a sleep.”
Pelli wriggled herself into a ball, bottom in the air, then lifted her head and placed it beside her hand so all Selemei could see was the fuzz of orange hair. Maybe she could hear tummy gurgles in there.
“Am I your pillow, big girl?” Selemei asked.
“Baby tummy,” said Pelli.
“Yes, you were in there once.”
“Pelli sissy?” Pelli turned her head, pale eyes wide. “Baby more?”
Hurt, incredulity, indignation, flashed her skin hot. But it wasn’t Pelli’s fault. “No, no babies in there,” Selemei answered. Slowly, she sat up and gathered Pelli onto her lap. “Now, how about we get dressed and go to your cousin’s party?”
“Mama party!”
“Yes, I think we should all go together.”
No place was safe from questions.
Even with the help of their Imbati, they were not among the first to arrive. The noise of chattering guests already filtered through their host’s velvet curtains into the vestibule, where the First Houseman greeted them. No sooner had their arrival been announced when the six-year-old guest of honor burst through the curtain and barreled into Aven, Corrim, and Pelli, shouting, “I’m real! I’m real I’m real I’m real!”
Selemei caught Aven with one hand before she could be entirely bowled over; with the other, she gripped tightly onto Imbati Grivi’s supporting arm. “Gently, Pyaras.”
“Of course you’re real, young Pyaras,” Xeref chuckled, and ruffled the little boy’s dark hair. “Congratulations on your birthday.”
“I’m real!” Pyaras’ waving arm had an odd smudge of red on it.
“What are you saying?” asked Aven. “What’s on your arm? Blood?”
“I’m not going to DIE like my mother!” Pyaras crowed. “I’ve been STAMPED! I’m real!”
“Pyaras, will you cut it out!” said Corrim, trying to avoid being pummeled.
Pelli jumped up and down and joined in the shouting. “Real! Real! Real!”
“Go play,” said Selemei, and gave them a shove as the First Houseman pulled the curtain aside. “Corrim, if you want quiet, look for Tagaret and your older cousins in the private areas of the suite.” Pyaras and Pelli ran off together hand in hand; Corrim and Aven more slowly followed.