Lisaykos, the royalty waiting room for the small reception hall, the Palace, Is'syal

The door shut behind me. I looked at my son's eyes and after studying them, remembered they were the same as they were years ago, right down to the little dot in his left eye to the left of the pupil. He was much taller than when he ran away and he had filled out. He took after me more than he did his father, who had been a very muscular man. My daughter, the poor girl, took after her father.

My son studied me, saying nothing, waiting. I think he knew this was coming, sooner or later. Neither of us was ready for it. I pulled up a chair and sat down.

"Every night for the last 19 years, I've stared at the ceiling before I go to sleep and asked myself what I should have done differently to have saved my little boy from whatever terrible end had befallen him. Every night, I would fall asleep not finding an answer because you can't turn back time to mend whatever went wrong. And I would wake in the morning with the certainty that I had failed you as a mother." I fought to keep the tears from forming and failed.

"We share the same talent for empathy. I can feel that knot of anger you have. You had it then. You still have it now. I thought you would grow out of your anger. Until you left, I never imagined that you would see running away as the solution to whatever was going on in your head. I didn't understand it then, which is obvious in the damning clarity of hindsight. I do not understand it now.

"I thought you would bend to what we wanted for you because we thought it was the best thing for you, and we wanted you to have that best thing. What you wanted and what you needed was something different. It was my failure not to know that. I honestly do not know what I could have done back then that would have kept us together as a family because I wasn't as insightful then as I have since become.

"I never really learned much from my many successes, Irhessa; but I learned the deepest lesson of my life from my one huge terrible mistake in losing you. I realize now that you can't fix people and make them into what you want them to be. You have to bend around people and give them their room and let them live their own lives. They will flee otherwise, if not in person then in mind." I got up to go.

"I understand that you may wish to keep me at a distance. I also understand that if your daughter had decided to enroll at some other shrine, we wouldn't even be speaking right now. If not for the accident of Emily's abduction, I would still not know if you were even alive. Your hurt must be deep for you to have acted in this way. I will try not to disturb your life. I would like to have the opportunity to spend time with my grandchildren and to get to know my daughter-in-law if she will tolerate me."

I walked to the door. With my hand on the latch, unable to look at my son again for fear of losing control over myself, I gave him my final words: "I may have been angry with you. I confess that I do not know if I will ever understand you, but please know that I have never stopped loving you."

As I started turning the latch, his hand stopped mine and he turned my shoulder away from the door. He hugged me tight and buried his teary eyes in my shoulder. "Don't go like this, mom. Please, don't. It may be hard between us, but I don't want to lose you a second time because I was too stupid to do something better."

I realized then, in ways that I didn't the evening before, that my son wasn't the 14-year old bundle of rage from almost two decades ago. He was a grown man, mature and successful, with a family he loved and who loved him back, which is better than I can say for my attempt at being a parent.

We managed to dry our tears and exit the royal preparation room behind the dais. I found Imstay doing his best to be his personable welcoming self with all the delicacy and finesse of a lame griffin with a broken wing. Emily seemed to be doing tolerably well with him, which was a huge relief. Imstay could be charming if he put his mind to it, and he was working hard at being friendly but not frightening for Emily's sake.

I'm not sure what they were talking about, but I heard the King say: "If you don't go home today, you could spend another night with that family on Brewers' Row." Then he looked up in mock surprise right at me and my son. "Wow, mention mushrooms and up they pop."

"I won't stop her if she wants to stay another night," my son said. "I see you have found a new Queen," he stated.

"Very little maintenance and a bonus for not needing much food," Imstay grinned. I had the feeling my son and the King were on good enough terms to banter with each other. Imstay had been hiding him from everyone for years. They had to be closer than I had suspected.

"Holy One," Usruldes made a bowing obeisance to me, very proper and very polite, "you are also welcome, and there's a delightful daughter in the house who wants to be a healer and would love to talk with you." He always was one to use perfect polished manners. I at least got that right when raising him.

"That is a tempting offer," I replied, very tempted to have more time with those lovely grandchildren. "I might do that." It was time to get back to the day's business, now that Emily had posed a solution to a water problem I didn't even begin to understand. Life with Emily underfoot was not dull in the least.

"Ready, Emily? The Queen is probably already waiting." She nodded. "Grab my collar, just like before," and I picked her up. She weighed nothing at all, which continued to concern me. I needed to pay more attention to what she ate and when, so I could determine if there was something off-balance with her diet. She had been eating at my shrine for a season and a half, but I could still feel her ribs when I picked her up. This had to be fixed.

I bowed my farewells and exited into the corridor. Just on the other side of the door was Kamagishi, waiting for me and smiling like a fox in a hen yard. "Hello again, Great One," she smiled pleasantly at Emily.

"Sister Lisaykos," she beamed at me, hands clasped behind her back and a spring in her step. Kamagishi was going to be trouble. I just knew it.

"Sister, I noticed that when you were chatting with General Bobbo that you mentioned you and the Blessed Emily spent yesterday evening with your grandchildren."

"Yes. What of it?"

"The only grandchildren you have that I know about live in Gunndit," she grinned. "I think I would know if Lord Gunndit was here in the city, and I know that she is not. So the only possible deduction is that you have grandchildren here in Is'syal, and they are not your daughter's children."

She was enjoying this way too much. "Your point, sister?"

"You have found your missing son! That's the only possible outcome here. How long have you known? Why did you hide it from us?"

I sighed. Kamagishi on a roll was unstoppable and unquenchable. "I found him the evening after the trial of Lord Kushamar. My son works for the King. He was injured the night the King's forces took Emily back from her kidnappers. Then, yesterday, after your priestesses chased me out of the shrine..."

"And rightfully so since you had not slept in more than a day," Kamagishi chided me.

"...I decided I would go and knock on the door to see what my daughter-in-law and grandchildren were like."

Kamagishi's golden-yellow eyes lit up with glee, "No? You crashed your son's house uninvited?"

"Yes," I said nothing more just because I knew it would rile her up.

"Details, woman! I wanna know the details!" She was so predictable. I kept myself from smiling.

"My son works directly for the King. He is sufficiently well placed at court to have the social standing to marry the woman who runs Kas'syo Brewery."

"No! He's married to Craftmaster Oyyuth Kay'syo?"

"Yes. He is married to Oyyuth Kay'syo and she is delightful, perfectly delightful. And smart and talented with business acumen. She's a halfhair, but I've never been stuck up about that sort of thing. My oldest granddaughter has been tested and accepted for the Healing Shrine of Mugash. She's 12, very 12, a completely and totally overeager earnest 12-year old and wonderful and cute and a little too loud for my taste but that will be taken care of with time and training. Her hair is already going white.

"I have a very quiet grandson who is seven. He has some magic already, but he's young enough that it's too soon to tell how much. He doesn't say much but when he does, he is very witty which leaves me with the impression that he is as smart as his mother. And there is a little girl who is one and a half. She got scared the first time she saw me, but I think that's because I'm just a bit on the tall side. There, gossipmonger of the shrines, you know everything I know myself about my grandchildren."

"Lisaykos, that's wonderful!" Kamagishi gushed as only Kamagishi can. "This must make you very happy to find your son and find he has a family you like at the same time. It could have turned out a lot worse."

"Yes, I know," I said truthfully.

"I don't mean to pry but..."

"Oh yes, you do," I shook my finger at her like she was an erring priestess in training.

"...Alright, I do mean to pry," she didn't even pause. "How are things with your son? I mean, he ran away from home. That has got to be awkward."

She didn't even guess half of it. "It is a bit awkward, but my son is not an angry mixed-up 14-year old boy anymore. He's a fine person doing something he likes doing. He's a good husband and a good father. He's also kind, and he is supremely thoughtful, as Emily might tell you if she could talk." Emily nodded at Kamagishi on cue.

Kamagishi took a measuring look at Emily and turned back to me, "they know each other?"

"Emily borrowed my son from the King so she could fulfill a dream command. They got caught out in the storm together."

"Dream command? You haven't reported anything like that," she frowned.

"It happened after the examination of Emily, that afternoon right after everyone left. It was a dream command from Mueb."

"Emily, you are full of surprises," Kamagishi said.

"It's worse than that," I remarked apologetically. "Emily had another last night, this time with Vassu in her aspect as a shark."

"Gods!" Kamagishi studied Emily. "I am so sorry, Emily, but it looks like the gods consider you a good conduit. Given records of previous incidences of this kind, it might get worse before it gets better."

Emily gave Kamagishi a look that said: "please drown me and put me out of my misery."

"So back to your son," Kamagishi returned to her main line of interrogation. "What's he like?"

"Didn't I just tell you that?"

"What does he do? What is he like?"

"Kamagishi, please understand that I just met him for the first time in two decades. He's not the boy I remember. In some ways, I don't know him at all. How can I tell you what he is like when I don't know myself?"

"Fair enough. So what does he do for the King?"

"Royal courier," I stuck to the cover story. There are some things I won't share with the other high priestesses. "The King sends him all over, including out to the coast. I'm under the impression that the King gives him the really difficult missions."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"He has a very fast eagle. Remember the father and child on an eagle who rescued all those people near Decorat? It was my son and Emily on that eagle."

"So he takes after you," Kamagishi decided.

"We share the same gift for empathy. His clairvoyance is good enough that he could have been a priest of Tiki. That being said, he looks like me," I said honestly, "except the eyebrows, which thankfully he did not inherit. Poor boy, he got my nose."

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