Thayer paced his office, trying to decide what to do next. He no longer knew what to think of the situation with Becki, but he had determined that, at the least, he should hear her out before giving up entirely. Now the question he pondered was: whether to simply wait for Terra Group to return to Mendellia, and talk to her then, or whether he ought to drop everything and go after her now.
A knock on the door, interrupting his thoughts, only compounded his frustrations--all the more so when, at his call to enter, the door opened to reveal a girl he'd never seen before. Her eyes twinkled green. Her black hair was done up neatly with a green ribbon, to match her verdant dress, something in keeping with the current fashions but, surprisingly, a bit more modest than what his mother's ladies in waiting usually wore around him.
Because, from Thayer's experience, when a girl he'd never seen before showed up at his office door, it was unquestionably one of his mother's ladies.
She was smiling politely, waiting for him to speak. "Good afternoon," he grudgingly obliged, "Miss . . .?"
"Ardna Lerep, sire," she offered with a deferential bow of her head.
"And may I ask what brings you to me today, Miss Lerep?" He paused at the side of his desk, crossing his arms. He had a decent guess already at what brought her there, but one might as well ask.
"Lady Atner sent me, sire. . . ."
Before the girl could say more, Thayer was halfway through punching the number for his mother's suite into the desk telephone.
". . . Actually she didn't much explain why she was sending me. . . ." Ardna went on uncertainly, watching the Dictator's attack on the phone's keypad.
A voice not unlike Ardna's, on the other end of the phone, informed Thayer that he had reached the suite of her royal Highness the Queen Mother and if he would please say who was calling her royal Highness would--
"This is Lord Atner," he cut the speech short. "Get my mother on the phone. Now."
". . . and I'm new here myself, sire," Ardna continued, looking abashed, "so I don't really know what it's about . . ."
"Excuse me?" said Thayer, glancing up as if seeing the girl for the first time.
Ardna curtseyed--a little too broadly; Llessur's training regime seemed to be slipping--and said, "I'm sorry . . . sire . . . I hope I haven't done something untoward. . . ."
Thayer took pity. She seemed terribly young, though he wondered if that were just an impression given by her ingenuous manner--or if she only seemed so naïve because she was so young. "No, Miss Lerep," he said, "that's quite all right. But perhaps you'd better--"
His mother's voice on the telephone interrupted. "Thayer?"
"Llessur Atner," he said, keeping his voice cool and precise, "I require your presence in my office at once. I shall expect to see you here within three minutes. Without," he stressed, "entourage."
He hung up before she had a chance to reply.
Three minutes later, Llessur Atner stood in the center of the room while Thayer once again paced.
"I thought we had reached an agreement," he shot at her.
"We had," she said calmly. "I was most pleased, son, to see you come to your senses. Ending things with that girl was really the only thing you could do."
"Was it?" He glanced at her only briefly, but the look in his eye rattled her.
"It will be for the best," she said, her ominous tone suggesting anything but the positive outlook of her words.
"I'm not certain I agree with you," he said lightly, "but at the moment I do not wish to argue the point. We have discussed this before. At that time, I told you that I would no longer tolerate the games you play. Yet no sooner do you hear the news--how quickly news does travel in this Palace!--than you are at it again, sending me another of your girls."
"You have an objection to Ardna?" Llessur asked sweetly.
"I have an objection to you, Mother!" Thayer roared. And then he caught himself, and stepped back, and shook his head. Llessur's face, a study in rigidity, deliberately showed no reaction, but he read her shock in the sudden motions of her fingers. "No," he said quietly. "I don't mean that. I'm sorry. . . . My objection, Mother, is only to your insistence on continuing to meddle in this matter." He sighed and leaned back against his desk. "I told you before: It was my choice to marry Becki. If that choice is now closed to me, I will choose not to marry at all."
"But there must be a Queen," Llessur pled, the motions of her fingers now spreading to a shaking in her hands. Her voice, too, had lost its sweet smoothness; to Thayer it sounded like glass shattered.
"Not necessarily," he said, gently now, alarmed at the change in his mother. "Dictators have ruled without one before."
"To the country's regret," she said heavily.
Thayer smiled. "I don't mind taking that superstition by the horns. I haven't ruled so badly this year past, have I? I can continue doing as I've done so far, and . . ." his voice trailed off into thought. Maybe ruling in the past year had been tolerable, but if other areas of his life were to continue as they had in recent weeks . . . .
"But Thayer," Llessur's eyes widened, "there must be heirs. . . ."
"Someone to rule after me, yes; but no reason it should be my child."
"You won't break the Atner line?" Llessur gasped.
"I daresay not," Thayer chuckled. "The Atner line does not know how to break. If a daughter inherits the throne, when she marries her consort takes her name so that their heirs will be Atners; if there are no heirs, the nobles work out which among them is closest to being an Atner and from then on he is an Atner. It's a clever system and one bachelor Dictator won't break it." He shrugged. "I cannot say the same, however, for the du Corbeau line."
"Thayer!" Llessur whispered. "Your father would--"
"My father is dead," he reminded her shortly. "I am doing the best I know how to rule in his place. And Mother, frankly, you're not making that task any easier."
But it seemed she had stopped hearing him after the first few words. She blanched; her eyes turned inward and then closed altogether. She was trembling entirely now, and then he thought he heard her whisper his father's name.
"Mother?" he said anxiously, reaching for her.
She gave a little cry, and then turned and fled, leaving him standing alone, and suddenly feeling even more alone than he had since Becki's ring landed at his feet.
A sweet, if timid, voice drew him back to the present. "Sire?"
He looked around to see Ardna Lerep, sitting demurely by the door. It came to him then--the clash with his mother had driven it from his mind--that he had meant to send her away. Too late now. "Ardna," he muttered.
"I'm sorry, sire," she blushed. "I don't think I was supposed to hear . . ."
"No," he sighed. "I forgot you were still there."
". . .but I was wondering," she blinked, "you were talking about the Queen?"
"I was . . .excuse me?" Thayer blinked too.
"You know, the girl from Terra Group?"
"What exactly do you wish to know, Ardna?" Thayer frowned suspiciously.
"It's just . . . aren't you going to marry her?" The girl's expression was all innocence and concern.
Thayer sighed and relented before Ardna's childlike persistence. "I don't know what I shall do, Ardna."
"I'm sorry, sire. We all hope that you'll marry her, you know."
"You what?" Thayer blinked again. "Who's we?"
"My friends and I. It's just such a sweet story, isn't it?"
"It is?"
"Oh yes, like something in a fairy tale. You and she make such a cute couple," she giggled, "sire."
"I see," Thayer said, bemused. "Well . . ."
"I suppose, sire, I should be going," Ardna offered.
"You should've been going about ten minutes ago, but that was my fault," Thayer said. "Here now, wait--I believe I have an errand for you, before you leave."
"Sire?"
"My mother," Thayer said, "is--not well. As one of her ladies, you have an interest in her well-being. So, Ardna Lerep, be so kind as to follow after her and see that she's all right. And see that . . . that she does herself no harm."
"Yes, sire," said the girl solemnly, and left upon her mission.
With the peace of his office, though not his peace of mind, restored for the moment, Thayer gave another minute's thought to the question whose pondering Ardna had first interrupted. And then he went in search of Sci.