I didn’t expect a reply to that, and never did receive one.

15

Fosyf’s servants spoke quite freely in the presence of my silent and expressionless Kalrs. Raughd had not, in fact, gone immediately to her mother, as she had threatened, but ordered a servant to pack her things and fly her to the elevator that would take her upwell, to a shuttle that would bring her to Athoek Station.

Most of the servants did not like me, and said so outside the house where we were staying, or in the kitchen of the main building, where Five and Six went on various errands. I was arrogant and cold. The humming would drive anyone to distraction, and I was lucky my personal attendants were ancillaries (that always gave Five and Eight a little frisson of satisfaction) who didn’t care about such things. My bringing Sirix Odela here could be nothing but a calculated insult—they knew who she was, knew her history. And I had been cruel to the daughter of the house. None of them knew exactly what had happened, but they understood the outlines of it.

Some of the servants went silent hearing such opinions expressed, their faces nearly masks, the twitch of an eyebrow or the corner of a mouth betraying what they’d have liked to say. A few of the more forthcoming pointed out (very quietly) that Raughd herself had a history of cruelty, of rages when she didn’t get what she wanted. Like her mother that way, muttered one of the dissenters, where only Kalr Five could hear it.

“The nurse left when Raughd was only three,” Five told Eight, while I was out on one of my walks and Sirix still slept. “Couldn’t take the mother any longer.”

“Where were the other parents?” asked Eight.

“Oh, the mother wouldn’t have any other parents. Or they wouldn’t have her. The daughter of the house is a clone. She’s meant to be exactly like the mother. And hears about it when she isn’t, I gather. That’s why they feel so sorry for her, some of them.”

“The mother doesn’t like children very much, does she?” observed Eight, who had noticed that the household’s children were kept well away from Fosyf and her guests.

“I don’t like children very much, to be honest,” replied Five. “Well, no. Children are all sorts of people, aren’t they, and I suppose if I knew more I’d find some I like and some I don’t, just like everyone else. But I’m glad nobody’s depending on me to have any, and I don’t really know what to do with them, if you know what I mean. Still, I know not to do things like that.”