Episode 110: Breakfast (Indigo)

For most of Indigo’s life, she’d thought weddings were the most dull, trite things ever invented. A public declaration of an often fake love, or a misguided love that would end in tragedy.

Now, she loved weddings. Not just because Zero usually held her hand during them, or because they usually ended in long sleepless nights in Zero’s arms, but also also because she understood them now.

She’d found a love worth celebrating, so when she saw others married she found herself hoping that they found a love as strong as hers for Zero, rather than taking mental bets against herself about how long the marriage would last.

Endy and Eurydice, a girl who had taken a handful of Indigo’s classes over the years, seemed like they would have a rock solid, stable marriage.

Musings about love had resulted in an amazing night and now Indigo was exhausted. Zero had Silas in his left arm, his right arm around her back, and they walked into the breakfast hall together.

“We may have a guest this morning,” he said, looking around. “What’s your guess?”

Her guess was that she would be very disappointed if Aadya’s stranger wasn’t there this morning; what was the point of bothering to dress and come to breakfast with the whole family, if he wasn’t here?

“Unless they’ve argued since the wedding,” she joked. That wasn’t likely, given the way the stranger had his arms wrapped around Aadya when they’d left the wedding last night.

Zero smiled. “Do you know who he is?” he asked. Unnecessary, since they’d already covered this, but maybe someone who did know who he was would overhear and explain.

“Not even his name. Do you?” She filled a plate of foods for herself and a second smaller one for Silas, who had run off with some of the other kids to the fort under the smaller buffet table at the end of the room. Indigo always worried they would bump the table hard enough to knock all the pitchers and machines full of hot water over, but Stetson insisted that the table was solid.

“No, I’ve never seen him before,” Zero said. Again, unnecessary.

But Nell came over. Nell would have more information than anyone else.

He slung his arm around Indigo’s shoulders. “Who are we talking about?” he asked, like he didn’t know.

She remembered years ago, when Nell was still growing up, her dad working with him on social skills. She could recall her father’s patient voice explaining to him that mind-readers made people uncomfortable, and they practiced normal non-pixie social behavior.

She suspected it was part of why Nell wasn’t always around pixies – or, rather, why pixies so rarely socialized with other fairies but Nell was able to. He’d been taught how, it was as simple as that.

“The boyfriend consort,” she teased Nell. She knew the title would amuse him.

“No clue,” he said. “Dancer and Apa helped Calamity attack him. Have yet to get his name or origin. Just showed up.”

She wondered what Nell knew and wasn’t sharing – he always got a coy smile when he had clever secrets.

Mel walked in, with Giana. They’d danced elegantly at the wedding the night before, like something out of an old Babylonian movie, and looked about as tired as Indigo felt. Busy nights all around, then.

Well, Giana looked tired. Mel glanced at Greg and then his skin seemed to sizzle.

Indigo stifled a laugh. “Mel looks thrilled he’s here,” she commented quietly.

“I do?” Nell joked.

Zero walked off in search of Silas, with his own plate and the smaller plastic one she’d made Silas.

“You always look thrilled about fresh fish,” she pointed out. New victims might be a more apt description.

Nell laughed. “Want me to invade his privacy?”

She tossed him an Elesarian apul, which unlike imported apples came in the same blue-green shade as some algaes. “Would it stop you, if I said no?” she asked.

He glanced toward the window. He always looked outside, rather than at the person, when he was reading a mind. “Watch out,” he warned. He raised his eyebrows and said ominously, “He has eyes for your husband.”

“Zero?” Why did he even know Zero? That alarmed her. “Why?”

“No idea,” he shrugged. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he added, before he sauntered off to sit next to Konrad.

Konrad.

Indigo sighed. She was worried about Nell, with Konrad behaving like this. He currently had a crepe held in the air over his face, and was squinting through it with only one eye open, a determined frown on his face.

She joined Zero at the table, ankles crossed with his, and ate in semi-relaxed silence while she observed the elephant-in-the-room phenomenon in all its beauty.

Everybody was so gloriously polite.

Ella or Ach…one of those two would break the tension, any minute now. 

Someone blonde cleared his throat and looked at the stranger. “Hi,” he said.

She loved Acheron. She gave Zero a small grin; the game was on.

“Hi,” the stranger said. He had a good voice. A lot of men had voices that bit like an edgy violin bow, but his was smooth like a synth violin. “I’m Greg.”

Aadya angled her body – impossibly – more toward strangerman Greg. “Ach is twins with Talise, who is the crown heir. And this is Spence, his fiance.”

Spence offered his hand to shake. Indigo wondered if it was possible to shake so many hands in one week, with campaigning, that he would never want to again.

Probably not. That was the kind of problem someone like Indigo would have, but Spence didn’t seem to mind all the people encounters he’d signed on for when he decided to run for governor.

“Hey,” Spence said to Greg.

Greg shook his hand, and then Ach’s. “Nice to meet you both.”

“Where are you visiting from?” Niels asked. Of everyone in the room, he probably thought the most like Indigo – loved a good time at someone else’s expense, but was compassionate enough to want to help too.

After he laughed.

Greg took a bite of crepe, chewed, and swallowed. “One of the bedrooms,” he answered. “I intend my stay in the dining hall to be about an hour, or less.”

Aadya covered her mouth with her hand, eyes alight.

Indigo glanced at Zero. Aadya brought this guy to breakfast, she was so obviously smitten it hurt…maybe they were looking at the future king consort.

Or maybe it would fall apart and Aadya would be even more crippled than before.

“The one with the blue walls and the ugly statue out front?” Talise guessed, pointedly. It was the guest room Niels had stayed in when he’d first arrived, because it had no secret passages and prevented Talise from sneaking into Niels’s room.

In the family, it was a running joke that the blue room was for people who were at risk for intimate encounters that parents didn’t approve of.

Indigo stifled her own laugh at Greg’s lost expression. “I haven’t seen that one yet,” he told Talise. “Is it worth checking out?”

“It’s the best guest room,” Talise said. She started to blush, and her instant reaction was to stuff too much food into her mouth and focus on Fort.

“I’ll be sure to tell guests about it,” Greg replied, with an emphasis on guests like he wasn’t one. He looked at one of the other strangers at the table. “Is that where you slept?”

She shook her head. “We slept in some burnt orange room. It was nice.”

“You should try the blue room tonight,” Greg told her, his eyes on Talise. Indigo had the feeling he knew Talise’s suggestion wasn’t as well-meaning as it seemed. He added, pointedly, “It sounds great.”

Emma forced her way onto Greg’s lap and announced, “Hi. I’m here to collect taxes.” She pulled a few berries off his plate and ate them.

“Do you have any aluminum?” he asked her.

Aadya laughed, and Mel scowled.

This was good stuff. Indigo was dying to know what aluminum had to do with anything.

“I believe there’s a roll over near the buffet table,” Aadya told him, pointing to one end of the long table, where plastic wrap and aluminum enabled people to take food home with them.

Greg went to retrieve some, and while he was gone Emma took over his chair and Fort went to stand beside her. Together, they dissected the ingredients of Greg’s plate, whispering.

Greg didn’t seem to mind the change – he moved over to the chair on Aadya’s other side and slid his plate toward himself. In its place, he set a piece of aluminum. “You should keep this as part of the taxes,” he told Emma. “It’s very important.”

She looked at it. “But it’s food paper.”

Fort opened his mouth, probably to explain in better detail what aluminum was, but Greg cut him off before he could get started: “The British call it ‘aluminium,’” he said in a haughty voice, “and stick their noses in the air when they say it.

Emma used her finger to squish her nose up into a pig face. “Like this?” she wheezed.

“Yes, just like that,” he affirmed. Now you have to say ‘aluminium’ like you think you’re important.”

Fort did so, repeatedly, and then Emma started too.

Zero leaned over, rubbing Indigo’s calf with his foot. “Maybe Yishti quit,” he suggested.

She laughed. Yishti was the childminder for the royal family and the young kids of anyone who worked at the palace. She had an army of assistants at this point, but she was still most in charge.

“Do you have kids?” Ach asked him, in a less hostile tone than his ‘hi’ had been. 

“Three,” Greg said.

Three kids. Where were they? 

The guy – more adult than kid – that Nim and Soren had brought home from the Tsinganoi base camp, waved his hand through the air. “Hi,” he said, “I’m…one of them.”

He looked at Greg like he didn’t know him, and Greg mirrored his expression.

“And two others in Calseasa,” Greg added.

Jay had been looking for brothers. Somehow, without Zero’s help, Aadya had found his dad. What kind of father was he, though, if he lost all of his sons? She’d have to ask Nell later. He must get some kind of backstory about the kids thing.

“Are you planning on staying in the Dells long?” Talise asked Greg.

“Is that where I am?” he looked to Aadya for that one. So far he’d looked like he was avoiding her gaze, and now Indigo saw why – the minute their eyes locked, both of them began to glow subtly.

It was bad. Indigo grinned at Zero again. This was probably the best breakfast in years. She hoped Niels was enjoying it.

“He seemed to enjoy the wedding last night,” Nell stated. He looked at Greg, with an encouraging expression. “We have plenty of celebrations…harvest, winter…”

Huh.

Nell, who worked in the barn. With the dragons. Wanted him to stay.

She wondered even more what Nell knew but wasn’t sharing.

“Yes,” Talise confirmed. “This kingdom is called the Dells. Where are you from?”

Indigo wondered if he was going to pull the ‘one of the bedrooms’ line again, but this time he swallowed and answered frankly, “San Francisco. It’s in…” he glanced at Aadya again. He must be adjusting to the local terminology. “Babylon?”

“Yeah,” Talise said, more interested. “We’ve done concerts there.”

Acheron put his fork down.

Here we go, Indigo thought. She loved Ach, she really did. Like a son, like a son-in-law, like her best friend’s oldest son, like her ex-brother-in-law’s heir, like the fresh version of his father he didn’t know he was.

She loved him. But really. His knowledge of social mores was far into the realm of severe deficit.

“If you’re planning on staying,” he said at Greg, with all the force of an oncoming tsunami, “you should know that my mom is really unfaithful so if you can’t handle that you should leave before you hurt her.”

There was a silence so deep that the muffled chatter in the kids’ fort was audible. 

“I didn’t realize you felt that way about me,” Aadya said in a voice that was trying not to be fragile.

He blushed. “I don’t.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little. “I suppose it’s true,” she said, before she took a bite. Unlike Talise, she didn’t seem to be hiding behind the bite – more so trying to appear relaxed enough to keep eating.

Meldrick, to Indigo’s surprise, spoke up: “I can recall a few hundred years of it not being an issue for you,” he said.

“I’m not worried,” Greg said. His hand was stretched toward Aadya’s lap under the table, but his eyes were on Mel when he said it, not challenging – thanking, if anything. He turned to Talise. “Did you say concerts?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What kind of concert?” he asked.

Indigo couldn’t decide if he was interested or changing the subject for the sake of protecting Aadya, or both. “Music concerts,” Talise said. Crimson flooded her cheeks. “I should get Emma some more of that stuff.” She picked up a plate – Greg’s plate – and walked off with it in search of stuff.

Zero patted Indigo’s leg, sharing in the quiet laugh.

Emma climbed back onto Greg’s lap. “I’m Emma.”

“It’s like…Sea Punk, with an edge,” Niels started explaining. Greg looked like someone who thought Sea Punk was a fancy term for a headache.

“I’m Greg,” he said. “Do you like being Emma?”

Konrad stood and held his crepe up for everyone to see. “Someone took all the texture out of these waffles,” he announced. He looked around the room, waiting for someone to say something, and when they didn’t he sat down next to Nell again and murmured something too faint to hear.

Indigo made eye contact with Nell across the table. Yesterday, he’d mentioned a theory. It was looking more likely that he was right, given that Konrad had been drinking clarity potion all breakfast and still thought there was a waffle conspiracy.

It would be difficult for Nell, to do what needed to be done, but she’d offered to be one of the five on the other side. Now that she’d seen it done, bringing people back from death seemed almost easy.

She rested her hand inadvertently on her stomach, where baby Elliot grew. 

If Zero was right, he’d be bringing her back soon, potentially without Elliot.

She took a determined breath. If she was going to die at some point, she was going to do it with class. No panicking first, no trying to squirm her way out of it.

Coming back without Elliot would be a different challenge. She had no idea how to get through that one.

Zero saw her movement and rested his hand on hers, holding baby Elliot with her. She leaned against him. He was her home, in every possible way. Alone, she would struggle with the loss of a child. She hadn’t forgotten her panic when Spence had died. But with Zero to hold her up, she knew she could get through it. The anguish would be intense, but Zero would be intense too.

The next time she tuned into the breakfast conversation, after several minutes lost in her own thoughts and anxieties, Giana had just stated, “Chainskull Death.”

That was the name of Niels’s band, which Talise had joined once she and Niels had finally admitted that they were in love.

“Niels is the lead singer,” Talise added. “Sometimes I help with lighting.”

Indigo laughed out loud this time. Sometimes Talise helped with lighting. That was like Spaden saying sometimes he bought bandages for Zero to use. Talise was fully involved with the band and sang in more than half the songs on their latest album.

“Do you make good money doing that, or do you struggle?” Greg asked them.

He had a Nell look on his face.

Indigo sat up, interested.

“We struggle,” Niels lied. “Our income is pitiable.”

“That’s because of the soup kitchens,” Talise defended. “He puts all of his income into running soup kitchens in New York and Detroit.”

“But his soup is gross, like socks in water,” Niels’s oldest, Jo, complained.

It wasn’t actually bad. Indigo had gone a few times, over the years, to help out and volunteer, and sometimes they ate if the crowd wasn’t big enough. She hated wasting food, and why come home and make Zero cook a meal after doing all that serving, if they could just eat leftover soup kitchen soup?

“That’s how it should be,” Greg explained to Jo. “If it tasted good, the whole city would be there asking for free food. This keeps the fake homeless away and makes everyone else make their own food.”

Jo looked at Niels. “Why would someone make food for themselves?”

It was Greg’s turn for surprised silence. When he answered, all he said was, “It’s a mystery.”

“Zero likes to cook,” Indigo reminded Jo. 

“Yeah,” Niels added. “And Ach made eggshells that time. They were really crunchy.”

Niels, for all his virtues, could be a jerk sometimes, especially to Ach.

Every adult in the family had seen that disaster coming way before any of the three kids involved. Niels had come in after the fact, with his protectiveness and his opinions, and any chance of mending fences was ruined. He meant well, but the result was a perpetual amplification of Ach’s anxiety about Talise.

“Do you cook?” Zero asked. 

Indigo tensed, waiting for some sign that Greg was unusually interested in Zero, but he gave him a vague look, polite but disinterested. “Not recently. What do you enjoy about it?”

“The technicality of certain recipes and the way flavors blend, for the most part,” he answered.

“You enjoy the precision?” Greg asked him. 

Konrad threw a crepe into the air and caught it on the end of a butter knife. Indigo thought she heard him mutter something like “thin and flimsy” while he glowered at the offending crepe. She wondered if he’d actually eaten anything. She wondered how soon Nell would act.

“Yes,” Zero confirmed to Greg. “I’m a doctor. What was your career before moving here?”

“Funding allocations,” Greg said.

Like hell he was. Maybe he ate people in funding allocations and took their money, but there was no way he did a job so boring. He was no Stetson. He was more the knife Stetson used to open packages Nell delivered.

“Although,” Greg added, his eyes on Niels and Talise, “I took a year off recently. Someone made a very generous donation to my family about a year ago.”

Niels and Talise shared a look.

“Why?” Talise asked. “What happened?”

Greg shrugged his shoulders. “I assume they arranged it with whoever manages their finances. I didn’t ask for the details on that part.”

“No, I mean…” Talise trailed off, a blush gracing her cheeks for the umteenth time that meal. “Never mind.”

Greg took a sip of his drink and leaned towards Talise. “You’re asking because you already know, and if you already know do you really need to ask?”

His tone of voice would have crushed Ach, but Talise met his eyes, firm just like Indigo had taught her. “I’m asking because you didn’t say you had a dead son, and I’m trying not to be…annoying about asking.”

Good girl, Indigo thought. Negotiations training was very nice in practice, but seeing Talise put it effectively to use filled Indigo with pride. She was going to be a fierce negotiator when it was her turn to rule.

Greg leaned back, more casual. “I have a short list of people who get that story.”

“I’m sorry,” Talise said, as yet another blush colored her face.

Bad girl, Indigo thought. She wasn’t supposed to apologize as soon as she made gains!

Sure enough, Greg was strategically back on top: “Don’t be,” he said in a lofty tone that could have rivaled Drey at his most obnoxious. “I have some evidence that he isn’t dead, and right now I’m choosing to believe that over the alternative.”

“What do you think happened?” Talise asked him. “You think he’s with the same people that took Emily?”

Greg looked up at her, interested, hungry in a more intense way. “Who is Emily?”

“No one,” Rhyss said in a tone of voice that promised dark alleys and angry fists to any Gregs who asked again.

Indigo was struggling to reconcile that tentative, tender, Rhyss she’d seen talking to Talise last night, with the surly public face he wore this morning at breakfast. He was either like a dog whose bark was worse than his bite, or he was one of those dogs that turned on its handlers and killed them on a whim one day.

“Some people took his girlfriend,” Niels explained. He sounded protective of Rhyss, and Indigo’s eyes flicked toward Ella and Jax, curious. Between the conversation last night and Niels’s seemingly-immediate acceptance of Rhyss…

“We think they have one of Jay’s brothers too, maybe,” Niels finished.

“Two of,” Talise corrected. “So you’re here to find them? Did my mom tell you she likes to build apartments?”

Giana, Indigo noted with amusement, looked down at her plate when Talise said this. So she wanted an apartment, but she was intimidated about asking.

“I went,” Greg said, shifting in his seat. “To Hong Kong, to find them. And then got attacked by dragons.”

“The dragons don’t like you?” Konrad asked. He had a crepe covering his face, like a facial peel, and he’d cut holes out for his eyes and mouth.

Greg’s eyes took in Konrad’s situation without any sign of humor. He gave Aadya a worried look before he said to Talise, “I hadn’t heard about the apartment-building.” He turned back to Konrad and addressed him as a person and not as a lunatic, which Indigo thought said a lot about the integrity of Greg’s character. “I wanted to get a closer look at the dragon eggs,” he explained.

“He’s interested in procurements, I think,” Nell commented. “We should put him to work.”

Ha. So Indigo was right: Greg wasn’t in funding allocations, he was in creative funding re-allocations.

“You want me to steal for you?” Greg asked him with a laugh. “Is that what you’re saying?” He looked at Aadya and again their skin had the effect of instantaneous glowing when they looked at each other.

They were as bad as teenagers. Indigo would’ve been jealous a few decades ago, the way she occasionally was with Drey and Nell, but it only made her feel warm and fuzzy about Zero, and happy for Aadya. She’d never seen Aadya look at anyone the way she looked at Greg, and that included the Drey months.

She’d never seen Aadya with Mel before the war, though, or with her other lover, Ravi, before the war. It was possible this wasn’t a new thing.

And yet, for Aadya, it was new; with her memories gone, she may as well have been about Greg’s age. 

Maybe this was exactly what she needed – someone for her to be equal to, and not centuries behind.

“I was going to be an economist,” Greg countered with an unexpected, scheming smile. 

Indigo glanced at Konrad and Nell to see if they’d caught it. Nell might have, but Konrad was busy with his crepe fixation. Indigo sighed. After breakfast, probably. She could see the resignation settling on Nell’s face.

“We have a field of employment called procurements,” Aadya explained to Greg. “He has a job,” she told Nell. Then she turned to Spence. “And he would like a tour. I thought you should give it.”

Spence nodded his head, the only outward sign that he’d heard. Usually he was more polite to adults, Aadya especially, but he seemed tired this morning.

The campaign and the apprenticeship to Konrad were too much for him, she thought.

“What job?” Konrad asked Aadya. “And who ruined the waffles?”

“These crepes,” Landyn pointed out, in his toddler voice. He climbed onto Konrad’s lap, oblivious to his dad’s mental state. “Mommy loves crepes.”

“He’s my assistant,” Aadya told Konrad, without further explanation.

Indigo was certain she would have been blushing if her skin weren’t so dark.

“Assistant what?” Mel prodded, amused.

Now Aadya mimicked Drey’s lofty tone, even more of an I-should-be-blushing element to her voice: “I have too many projects,” she said, with a shrug. “I needed some assistance.”

“What about Bruno?” Mel asked. 

He had a smirk. Indigo covered her laugh, hand on Zero’s thigh. Mel was messing with Aadya.

“Bruno isn’t losing his position,” Aadya defended. “This is for other things.”

“What other things?” Mel pressed, leaning back in his chair. Indigo leaned back, too, happy to watch this play out.

Mel was one of those people who never acted until he was sure he had the advantage, and then pressed his way to victory, strategically and without any missteps along the way.

He knew he’d cornered Aadya, and he was relaxed enough about Greg that it amused him instead of bothering him.

Which was a change, since the start of the meal when he’d sizzled. She wondered what had brought the change on.

“What other things?” Mel asked Aadya.

“Aluminum trading, for some buildings,” she invented.

Greg nodded his head, fully on board with Aadya’s lie. “It’s very valuable, aluminum. Especially in Britain.”

Giana giggled and almost spilled her drink.

“Any other questions?” Aadya asked, like the topic was closed. Or, at least, like she hoped it was. If Mel wasn’t going to ask more, Indigo would. This was too good to let go.

“What buildings?” Mel asked, deadpan.

Aadya laughed, caving to her embarrassment, and most of the table joined her.

Mel had his victory. He offered his hand to Greg. “Welcome to the Dells, I suppose.”

Greg shook his hand and joked, “I suppose I should thank you for kidnapping me.”

“No!” Ella bellowed.

The only thing left was for Acheron to spill his drink – a habit he had whenever things got tense at a meal, but he’d missed his chance this time.

“It’s a joke,” Talise assured Ella.

“No,” Ella said again, more emphatic. 

Yes, Indigo could see that Ella might be Rhyss’s daughter, not Spence’s. She glanced at Spence, worried. If he didn’t know, if he found out this week with everything else going on…

Zero squeezed her hand. He must be thinking along the same lines.

“No kid nap. I am not napping,” Ella stated. She folded her arms for emphasis.

Talise laughed. “Good. You aren’t allowed to nap. Greg has to.”

“Good,” Ella said, with a firm nod of her head.

Indigo leaned into Zero. The tension with Greg was gone, he obviously wasn’t after Zero like Nell implied, everything was good except for that ominous premonition of Bentley and Shea’s.

“He doesn’t seem that interested in you,” she commented to Zero, disappointed. “Nell…” she sighed, amused.

“Nell likes to torment you,” Zero agreed. He ran his fingers across her upper back and neck. “But someday he may not be joking. It’s good that you listen.”

“I should have Sawyer tar his stall doors shut,” she muttered. She glanced at Nell and made sure he got that mental image loud and clear.

“Very funny, Indy,” he said, but his eyes were on Konrad and the task ahead of him.

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