65 -- WHAT ARE YOU, FOUR?

Ky watched, eyes growing more and more round, as the clay golem he recognized as Zon Elemfias stopped next to Ilax.  “YOU THINK ABOUT HIM EVERY DAY?”  As exhausted as she was she reached out and with one finger poke put Ilax on his rear, then stood over him and said things at a much lower volume, but just as intensely.  Kyrus had made it over to them and tried to say something but she tapped him in the gut with her heel without looking at him until she’d finished what she said to Ilax.  Then she turned to Kyrus sitting next to Ilax.  “AND YOU!  WHAT DID YOU THINK?  DID YOU THINK I WOULDN’T MOURN YOU? DID I JUST NOT MATTER ENOUGH THAT YOU’VE LIED TO ME FOR MORE THAN TEN YEARS?

People were looking up from where they sat, exhausted. They looked up from where they hugged or cradled threatened family, saved from the mud. One woman, whose house had been inundated near the school, cuddled her husband’s body to her breast, their infant curled on his chest where he’d died trying to protect her – so futily-- from the ultimate owner, the Final Shareholder, death.

Ky didn’t take his eyes off his father and Uncle Ilax just sitting on the ground getting yelled at by the Warschool Master.  “WHAT ARE YOU, FOUR?  YOU DIDN’T THINK I’D MIND, BECAUSE YOU WERE A BLOODSUCKING LAINZ?  KYRUS, GIVE ME SOME CREDIT FOR HAVING A MIND!”

“Um,” Haraklez said in Ky’s ear.  “I guess she knows who that is.”

“I suppose I can tell you.  It’s my da... my father.  He never died.”

He heard her draw breath, but even though he flinched away her “WHAT?” still deafened him. 

“Sorry I didn’t tell you, your pa asked me not to tell, they’ve been inamour this whole time...” He was talking to her back as she stormed over to the little tableau.

“Zon,” she said, not yelling but certainly in a carrying voice.   “Should I get your stick from the school to show my father what we think of his being so secretive about his inamour?” 

I guess it’s the Milar equivalent of ‘let me hold your veil while you beat the shit out of him’.  

Werfas was looking injured.“Aren’t I enough your wing-brother that you might have told me?”

Ky jumped up, felt his muscles quivering from the overexertion and just stopped, stood panting.  There was no where to run away to.  He was committed to staying here and to staying with his father.  Even though he’d run away all his life there came a time when it became impossible to run any longer.  

 “I’m sorry.  I promised them both I wouldn’t tell anybody alive, okay?  I keep my word, even if I think the grownups who I’m supposed to venerate and nearly worship are doing something stupid.  Okay?” His hands worked but he had nothing to create, no enemy to face other than human frailty.

Werfas held up a calming hand.  “Sit, okay?  We’re wiped out and everyone is too tired to really get going with the shouting and the hand waving and, as you’d say, the veil flapping.  And they’ll remember he was a Dee mander when everyone thought there was no such thing in Lainz anymore."

“A Dee?  I thought... I thought he was just a Beemander?”

“From what I saw him doing before their high and mightinesses over there got started he’s improved.”  He paused.  “I’m glad, Kyrus.  I’m so glad for you that he’s not dead.”

That stopped anything extraneous flapping through Ky’s head.  “That’s true.  People have died here today for real.  He helped without thinking, even when he thought that people would want him dead the way they wanted him dead before...”

“—really?”  Werfas looked grim.  “You really think they’d want his life this long after the war?”

I'm just not going to mention the boys who thought I should be dead this long after the war. “He thought so.  He figured he’d live the rest of his life in hiding.”

“You know, for a really smart adult he was working on some really stupid premises.”

Ky felt himself blush, hearing his best friend be so blunt about his father.  “Well... yeah.  He’s pretty stubborn if Ilax couldn’t convince him.”

“And now this landslide and digging out everybody who was killed by it is going to take everybody’s energy for a while.”

“As well as the rebuilding afterwards,” Ky said, hopefully.   

“He’ll just be part of things by the time everybody gets up enough energy to be mad about it.”

Werfas jerked a thumb at Elemfias, even as Ky sank down to sit next to him again.  “Except for her.  She’ll make sure they know how dumb they’ve been keeping secret this long.”

“I... think I’ll just stay over here for now.  I can let my da handle the mess he made... he doesn’t need me messin’ in his soup.”  Werfas grinned at the slang creeping into his friend’s language and then wiped a hand over his face as Haraklez threw a glare over her shoulder at them.

“You’ll need to explain to her, though.  And them.”

Ky froze as Elemfias and Haraklez and a handful of other people gathered around Kyrus and Ilax looked over at him.   

“Oh, shit.”