Righteous Anger (Okal Rel Saga #2)

1.2: Upholding the Empire

"I bet baby Amel was murdered," said Zrenyl. "I bet Ev'rel got rid of him because he wasn't Pureblood after all and Delm wasn't the sire. A genotyping would have shown it up, so Ev'rel had him murdered. Women do that, don't they Mother?"

Mother gasped. "Not," she exclaimed, "for a reason like that!"

Predictably, Branst took the opposite side from his older brother. "Amel's mother didn't do it," he said. "She was trying to rip the Ava's eyes out!"

Zrenyl shrugged. "Pureblood Ev'rel is a spoiled brat. Even your precious Monatese girlfriend acknowledges that much!"

"Tessitatt is not my girlfriend!" said Branst.

Mother snapped out of the shocked silence inspired by Zrenyl's glib assumption of infanticide on Ev'rel's part, and looked for Branst, who was sitting on a heap of folded gym mats. "Tessitatt?" she asked. "Have you been playing with that Green Hearth nobleborn again, Branst?"

"Not exactly playing," answered Zrenyl. "She was babysitting."

"You take that back!" Branst said, closing his hands in fists.

"Not now, boys!" their mother cried, and collapsed into the armchair where she liked to sit and watch them tend their potted gardens with her indoor greenhouse at her back. Mother required them to make things grow for the spiritual exercise, but only Branst paid much attention. Zrenyl's pots weren't doing so well and Horth's last crop of SanHome bean sprouts had died. Again.

"I don't know how much more I can take of this mad, cruel court, oh my ancestors!" Beryl appealed to empty air, and lowered her face into her hands with a sob.

Horth never knew what to do when Mother cried. He felt it was something Father should look after, even though Father was usually the cause. Horth did not like members of the family crying at all, because it never happened to him. It was another of the ways in which he was different.

Hara said that was nothing to worry about. She said that Vrellish people did not cry. But Horth wasn't sure he wanted to always be the one who was more Vrellish than the rest of the family.

The three boys waited in suspense for their mother to stop crying and look up. When she did, her face was reassuringly composed.

"I suppose we wait," Beryl told her children with a brave smile. "To find out what this latest atrocity is about." She surveyed the state of Horth and Zrenyl's seedlings. "It looks like two of you will be doing some replanting to pass the time. Horth, you have to water seedlings, or they die."

"I forgot to remind him," said Branst.

"That should not have to be your job. Go get us something to eat, will you, Branst, while your brothers put these poor things out of their misery and start over."

"Yes, Mother!" Branst agreed, and scampered off.

"Remember not to let the servants touch what we eat!" Mother called after him, and was answered by a perfunctory one-handed wave.

Zrenyl frowned. He and Horth both knew there was about as much chance of Branst doing his own work in the kitchen as there was of Horth's next batch of seedlings surviving long enough to bear fruit. He always got the servants to do his work for him. But Zrenyl never shared the fact with Mother.

Horth and Zrenyl settled down to work on dumping out their pots and replanting. Branst was back with sandwiches before they were done and helped Horth finish. Then the family picnicked, seated on the coarse brown matting in front of Beryl's greenhouse.

Father joined them as they were finishing their lunch. Usually, he would simply come over and sit down, wordlessly becoming one of them without explanations or any confusing talk. Today, he stopped a short distance from the blanket Mother had spread on the ground, as if waiting to be invited or repulsed.