Weather at such a height was cold, but he caused the air about the Palace and in the Garden to be warm, as before. The Forest just outside the Garden gate he too made warm and pleasant in all seasons, so that its creeks did not freeze, but flowed together into a river that plunged off the precipice in a long waterfall. Spring’s abode remained as it had been before, and there she remained, rarely venturing outside of her grove, as she gestated the new souls that she and Egdod had conceived.

Then a semblance of calm returned to the Palace and the Land as summer ended and fall began, and the leaves and the apples alike began to turn red, and all of the souls whom Egdod had invited began winging toward the Palace to enjoy the feast.

There was a reason Zula wasn’t a lawyer. At some point around the two-hour mark she zoned out. This was because she had been seduced by Sinjin Kerr. Not in a sexual way, of course. More in an emotional way. Everything he was saying was so reasonable. He was such an intelligent guy. So witty. But not in a self-congratulatory way. More like he was forever surprising himself with his own ability to stumble on the occasional nugget of wry humor inherent in all proceedings that involved humans. How could any intelligent person argue against his basic point that a lot of stuff had changed and it was time to do some housekeeping? The third hour was a lot of detail about where the money had been going. Huge flows of virtual cash, all denominated in modern digital currencies, chundering back and forth between Forthrast and Waterhouse and Mr. Shepherd’s enterprises, both for- and nonprofit. The transfers observable by humans who held the requisite tokens and who actually bothered to kick through the numbers but frequently occurring in the dark since the details were too complex for any one person to wrap their mind around them. Even in her zoned-out state Zula had a sense of where Sinjin was going with this: he was going to assert some claim that money had ended up in the wrong place. Probably just an oversight. Understandable. But important to get it fixed. Maybe a lot of money.

She did not snap out of it until ten minutes before noon, when she heard her daughter’s name being mentioned. An observer sitting across the table from her would have seen little change in her expression, but she felt her heart beating faster and her face get warm. The latter was simple embarrassment. She hadn’t been following. She’d lost the thread of the argument just at the critical moment. She knew that Sinjin had mentioned Sophia but she was lagging behind him, playing catch-up, not really sure what he’d said.

But it wasn’t difficult to guess.