A couple of times, Shria mentioned where ve’d be that day in a way that sounded like an invitation. But of course it was never anywhere with even a modicum of privacy, never mind the rock-solid anti-surveillance of Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions, and Fift didn’t go.

Mother Pip, of course, had not become one of the region’s premiere banker-historians by being oblivious to emotional nuance. Ze knew that Fift was infatuated with Shria.

Had ze suspected how far things had gone, ze would have been appalled, enraged; but ze didn’t. Ze assumed the attraction was one-sided. A Staid’s adolescence was full of crushes—intense, muted, stifled longings—and if the target this time was, inappropriately, a vailchild, well . . . this sort of thing did happen. Ze sympathized. Vails had always captured zir own imagination, even early on, in zir own unusual childhoods.

Father Grobbard, now: had ze suspected Fift of forming such an attachment, ze might have felt it necessary to impose a complete separation, in order to impress upon Fift the importance of propriety for a young Staid of good family. And if Squell or Arevio or Nupolo had suspected, they might have panicked at the thought that Fift was gendering poorly.

Pip took a different view.

Ze had suffered, in zir own childhood, from the intolerance of others. No one could fault zir cool analytical precision; but ze had a boldness—a brashness—even an impatience—that many found unseemly in a Staid. This had not endeared zir to zir age-mates. Even later, in zir Courting Century, Staids tended to avoid zir; Vails found zir boldness endearing, but mildly ridiculous, and zir physical appetites hilarious.

But these trials had forged zir character and honed zir will. Ze could consider disapproved-of things calmly, when others shied away. Pom Politigus was not the only client Pip had taken on as a struggling maverick only to see zir become a star.

Fift, to be sure, was not overly bold. Fift was awkward; a loner; mediocre in school and (worse) in the Long Conversation; plodding as an apprentice. Worst of all, from Pip’s point of view: ze lacked ambition. (Really, ze was already as emotionally impoverished as an elderborn: one might as well just cast the chance-sticks again and have a second child. If only one’s cohort was not so exhaustingly deadlocked in the matter! But then, with seven lovely, infuriating, emotional, fractious Vails and only dear, accommodating old Grobbard to calm them down, what did one expect? They’d barely held together this long. Miskisk, particularly, continued to be a problem. It was all a lesson in the dangers of succumbing too thoroughly to one’s inclinations.)