Lord of the realm

Chapter 272: Can I come with you to the office?

The next morning,

The dining room was quiet except for the soft sounds of breakfast being eaten.

Jaenor sat at the table with a plate of food in front of him that he was making a reasonable effort to actually consume. He’d learned over the past few days that eating was one of those social rituals that Martha tracked, and avoiding it created concern that manifested as additional questions he didn’t want to answer.

The house felt different this morning. Heavier somehow, weighted with things unsaid.

He heard footsteps on the stairs. Martha’s pattern, but slower than usual and more hesitant.

She entered the dining room, saw him, and her eyes immediately moved to somewhere over his left shoulder. She crossed to the coffee maker with focused attention and poured a cup with the accuracy of someone performing a task that required all their concentration.

"Good morning," Jaenor said.

"Morning," Martha replied to the coffee maker.

She stood at the counter, holding the cup with both hands, not drinking from it. Her shoulders were tight. Her usual morning ease—the comfortable domesticity he’d observed over the past week—was completely absent.

Kate’s voice carried from upstairs. Something about needing to leave in twenty minutes, a question about whether Martha had seen her tablet.

Martha set down her coffee cup untouched.

"I’m going to the university today. Need to check in with the department, handle some administrative items from the dig."

She said this to the window over the sink.

"I’ll probably be gone most of the day."

She left the room before Jaenor could respond.

Her footsteps moved quickly back up the stairs. The sound of her office door closing was gentle but definitive.

Jaenor returned his attention to his breakfast.

Kate came down fifteen minutes later, dressed for the office in a charcoal suit that fit her tall frame perfectly. She moved with the particular poise of someone running slightly behind schedule but refusing to rush in visible ways.

She poured coffee into a travel mug, grabbed a piece of toast, and was halfway to the garage door when she paused.

"Have you seen Martha this morning?"

"Briefly," Jaenor said.

"Was she acting strange?"

"Yes."

Kate looked at him for a moment. Her gray eyes were sharp, assessing. She’d spent decades reading people in corporate environments where subtext mattered more than text, and she was applying those skills now.

"Did something happen between you two?"

"Nothing. Why do you ask?"

"She seems to be on edge since last night, and she barely talked to me."

"If you don’t know, the woman who married her, then how would I know?"

Kate studied him for another moment.

Then she nodded slowly.

"Fair enough."

She glanced at her watch.

"I need to leave in ten minutes."

She moved toward the garage again, then stopped when Jaenor called her.

"Kate."

"Can I come with you? Martha’s gone for the day, and those two seem to have left. I will get bored to death all day, alone in this house."

Kate looked at him with mild surprise, and she thought for a minute.

"Alright," she said.

*

Kate’s car was newer than Martha’s field vehicle—sleek, efficient, with the kind of integrated technology that made it feel like the future even to Jaenor’s still-adapting perspective.

She drove with the confident competence she brought to most physical tasks, navigating morning traffic with ease. Driving seemed to be something she enjoyed.

Jaenor watched the city through the passenger window. Kharsen in daylight was different than at night. The scale became more apparent. The organization is more visible. Millions of people moving through coordinated systems—transport, commerce, governance—all functioning with the integration that suggested centuries of accumulated refinement.

"What do you like to do?" he asked.

"In your free time when you’re not working."

Kate glanced at him, surprised by the question.

"That’s unexpectedly personal."

"You’re taking me to your workplace. Personal seems appropriate."

She considered this as she navigated through an intersection.

"I read. Historical fiction, mostly, which Martha finds ironic given her profession. I ride horses when I can find time, which isn’t often. I used to paint but haven’t touched a brush in five years." She paused.

"Martha and I travel when we can coordinate our schedules. Usually to archaeological sites, which means I end up reading in hotel rooms while she climbs through ruins, but I enjoy it anyway."

"You sound happy."

"I am," Kate said simply, as a fact rather than a boast.

"I have work that challenges me. A marriage that works. Financial security and a house I love."

She looked at him briefly before returning her attention to traffic.

"I’m aware that makes me fortunate. Most people don’t get this combination of things."

"No," Jaenor agreed.

"They don’t."

Kate was quiet for a moment.

"What about you? What did you like to do?"

He thought about it. Reaching back across three hundred years to a version of himself that had existed in a completely different world.

"I work in the field with my mother and spend time with the people I care about."

He looked at his hands resting on his knees. "I didn’t have much free time. There was always some crisis that needed addressing. Some threat that required a response."

"That sounds exhausting."

"It was."

"Did you come from the countryside? You mentioned working in the field, like farming?"

Jaenor simply nodded.

Kate merged onto the highway heading toward the commercial district. The towers of central Kharsen were visible now, rising against the morning sky like a forest of glass and steel.

"Do you miss it?" she asked.

"That life, those people."

Jaenor was quiet for several moments.

"Yes," he said finally.

"But not in the way you might think. I miss the people. The connections."

He looked at Kate directly. "Some of those connections were... significant. The kind that don’t really end, even when the people are gone."

Kate met his eyes briefly before returning her attention to the road. Something passed between them in that glance. Recognition, though of what neither could fully articulate.

"I understand that," Kate said quietly.

They completed the drive in comfortable silence.