Episode 206: Zero Talk (Rhyss)

Back to Elesara. Rhyss was almost getting used to this travel-by-magic thing, and the idea that his house on the peninsula cliffs might as well have just been attached to the palace. People came and went like it was all one building.

Which was fine, he guessed. Just different.

He was tired of different. He kind of just wanted a day of normal.

Instead he led Annatto into his parents’ apartment.

He still wasn’t used to it; going into a place and having people there who greeted him. Happy to see him, hugging him. Jax ran right up and hugged him.

His son. He had a son, somehow. And a daughter. He looked around for her, but he didn’t see her. She must be around here somewhere though.

“How are you, Rhyss, Annatto?” his dad asked. He offered them a plate with some kind of snacky food that was crackers and white cheese and spinach and a tomato slice.

Rhyss took one. It wasn’t a snack cake, but maybe it was –

He forced himself to swallow.

“Hi,” Annatto said. He took four of the things and ate them in about as many seconds.

“You guys have all the kids?” Rhyss asked his dad. He picked Jax up and introduced him to Annatto, adding, “His twin Ella is around here somewhere.”

“We have a few women in labor,” his dad explained, “So yes, we have all the kids.”

“Talise?”

Talise was in labor.

It would probably be rude to go there and ask if he could be there for that one, since he’d missed his kids’ labor.

Really rude.

He missed her, more than he should.

She wasn’t his. Anymore, ever again. He needed to focus on what was his. “I heard Spence can’t make the dinner tonight.”

“He can’t?” his dad and his mom shared a look between them. Worry for Spence.

He wondered if they ever worried about him. He hoped not. He hoped he was doing okay enough that they didn’t have to.

“Did Spence and Ach drop Cady, Hugh, Orris, and Olida off?”

“Corban did,” she said.

Huh. Rhyss didn’t really know the Corban guy, except he was blonde. He was getting pretty used to how many really blonde people there were around here. The difference about Corban was that he dyed his hair black, but his eyebrows were blonde.

“Are you going to the dinner?” his dad asked him.

“I don’t know.” He watched Annatto walk further into the apartment and sit down on the sofa farthest from the tv. “That king guy, Meldrick, he said to be careful what I said if I go tonight?”

“I should talk to Xander,” Zero decided. “You may want to stay out of this. Sylem’s been on the precipice of war for years. Keeping the peace between classes has been an ongoing struggle, as you know.” Yeah, and until last week he and his dad had been on opposite sides of that struggle. “The elites have too much power to be written off.”

“The dinner is with them,” Rhyss warned.

“Being at war, versus on the precipice of it, may be shifting tonight. Are you sure you want to be in the middle of that?”

No. He was sure he wanted to be alive at the end of today. And tomorrow, and the day after that.

“How do I avoid it?” he asked. “We can’t both miss this.”

They could, if they were giving up.

If a war was about to start, maybe they should give up. They had a safe place to be.

But if he gave up…he knew them. He cared about some of them. He couldn’t just give up and walk away from Sylem, he wanted to find a way to help. If there was a war, there had to be something they could do to help.

“They want to get their way,” his dad said. “We’ve been keeping them calm by keeping the lower classes with a slow rate of improvement, while focusing on borders and protection from outside enemies. Xander knows more about it than I do.”

From across the room, Rhyss heard Annatto suddenly say, “You’re here?”

And a little girl – the one Spence adopted, Olivia or something – started crying. “Please don’t tell them!” She begged. “Daddy burned me.”

Maybe this place was about to go to war too.

Everything was a mess.

“What would you do?” he asked his dad, half-listening while the girl and Annatto talked.

His dad’s attention was on the crying girl, worried. “I don’t know,” he said, distracted. Rhyss wondered if he’d even heard the quesetion.

“How come he knows them?” Rhyss kept his voice quiet enough that the kids wouldn’t be able to hear it unless they were trying to hear it.

“Orris and Olida are his siblings,” Zero said just as softly. The kids were comparing notes on how much better it was here, than wherever they were from. “He was at church two weeks ago, and Olida was found after.”

“I won’t let anyone get you,” Annatto promised the two of them. Protective, like Rhyss would have been if he’d had siblings.

“Do you have your own room too?” Olida asked.

He glanced back at Rhyss, his face stubborn with concern. Whatever he was about to offer, Rhyss got the feeling there would be an impressive argument if Rhyss told him he couldn’t.

“I have my own house,” he told the two kids. “Maybe they’ll let you come.”

“Really? We have to have a sleepover with these people I don’t know. Can I come with you instead?”

“You have to ask,” Annatto told her. Rhyss swallowed back his shock. He’d expected Annatto to just decide on his own.

He was an impressive kid. Rhyss had the feeling he was going to be surprised by Annatto a lot, and he should just get used to it now.

Rhyss wanted to say yes to the girl, if he could manage it. He turned to Zero. “So, if you were in my shoes, would you go or not?”

“What do you plan to achieve at the dinner?”

Originally, trying to figure out why all those rich people thought they were better than everyone else, while hiding behind Spence and looking governor-y.

“Fund-raising,” Rhyss made up. He thought that was what it was about, anyway. Spence knew better than he did.

“Skip. You don’t need their funds, you need the votes of everyone else. Unless you think you can calm them about things. Are you prepared to degrade your own community or make up a reason that select individuals should be chosen from those communities?”

“I want to stay with Annatto, not Yishti,” Olida announced.

“We have to ask your dads,” his mom said.

Right. Dads. Rhyss was used to having a brother. Really used to it, in a way that actually really loved it.

He wasn’t used to words like dads or imagining Spence kissing that pale guy he was with.

“If Rhyss is there, I’m sure it’s fine,” Zero told his mom.

Good. He’d rather hang out with kids anyway. Maybe they could paint or something.

“I’ll stay in, then,” he decided.

“Are you up for four more kids, for one night?” his dad asked.

“Yeah, I don’t mind.” Ella and Jax, please let it be Ella and Jax…

“You two want to stay with your dad?” he asked Jax, who answered by climbing Rhyss. Ella sat on his foot and started sucking her thumb, one arm looped around his leg.

His kids.

“If a war is possible, you should stay in realm,” his dad advised.

“So…here? Or somewhere else?”

Somehow, he’d ended up with all the kids.

He wasn’t very good at saying no, he guessed.

“You can stay here or in an apartment. Talise and Niels’s is empty. And there is a few-bedroom apartment that’s vacant a few doors down. Five or six beds, I think.”

Not Talise’s. He definitely didn’t want to be there. Or here. He wanted to get to know his kids, just him and them plus Spence’s adopted kids, without any other adults watching. “Why don’t I stay there, so I’m close by if I need anything,” he decided. “Just those four or…do you need me to take the others?”

Zero looked at the two lighter-haired wiccan kids Spence had adopted, and Spence’s older two, Fort and Emma. And two other kids he couldn’t remember the names of, Talise’s step-kids.

There were a lot of kids.

“Why don’t you focus on bonding with yours,” he said. Rhyss wondered if he knew he’d mirrored Rhyss’s speech. If it was a coincidence or a father-son thing. “That’s a handful.

Rhyss laughed. “Yeah, okay. We’ll be here, then. There. The empty place.”

Zero kissed Indigo and then walked over towards the apartment door. “Let me show you,” he offered.

This was it: Rhyss’s first time with just his kids. Plus two more, but still. He was dadding, without Talise or Zero.

He had this.

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