Until Again by Lou Aronica Read Free Book Online

her eyes, looked at her dad – who seemed completely confused by what was happening – and then looked away from him.
    “The Thorns are ruining everything, Dad,” she said.
    And then another sob caught in her throat.

8
    Plenium spent several seconds simply watching his daughter’s face. He realized of course that she could see him as well and that she might easily notice he wasn’t entirely paying attention to what she was saying, but right at this moment, he felt a strong need to look at her. He always noticed the combination of wisdom and innocence in her eyes. He always noticed the vibrancy and sense of possibility in the timbre of her voice. For just a few seconds though, he wanted to absorb all of it, to remind himself how important it was to do this. He needed to remember that capturing the essence of his daughter was a vital thing to do whenever the opportunity arose.
    He snapped from his reverie when he noticed Miea was no longer speaking.
    “It’s worse than even I thought,” she said when he made eye contact on the screen with her again.
    “I’m sorry, my dear, I just got distracted.”
    Miea frowned. “You don’t get distracted, Dad. The only thing that would distract you is if you were thinking about an enormous state problem.”
    “That wasn’t what I was thinking about. I was thinking about how remarkable you are.”
    Miea rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time. “You’re going to need to do better than that, Dad.”
    Plenium grinned. “You don’t believe I think you’re remarkable?”
    Miea tipped her head forward. “You know that isn’t what I’m saying.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “What I was telling you, when you weren’t paying attention to me, is that there was a great deal of conversation on campus today about the mission now that you’ve officially announced it. Of course everyone thinks you and Mom are geniuses for making this overture. You’re going to have to teach me that trick. How do you get the entire kingdom to believe that every move you make is the right one?”
    “You weren’t at this week’s Kingdom Congress. If you’d heard the accusations the representatives from the Pinzon Merchant Association were making, you wouldn’t believe the feelings about your mother and me are so unanimous.”
    “Okay, so not everyone thinks you’re flawless. There have been quite a few rumors, though.”
    “What kind of rumors?”
    “About what’s happening down south. Some people are claiming that there have been many more incidents than have been reported. I keep telling them I would know about this if there were, and that you wouldn’t be going on a diplomatic mission to Gunnthorn if things were that bad. Of course they respond by saying that this is precisely what I would say if things were that bad.”
    Suppressing the media had never been a policy of Plenium’s governance. However, because so much of Tamarisk was agrarian and by nature less connected to what was happening in Tamarisk City, it was possible to keep local incidents local by simply revealing less about them. There had been long conversations about how to treat the spate of recent acts of sabotage, and Plenium, Folium, and their advisors ultimately decided that if there were to be any chance of diplomatic accord with the Thorns, it was essential not to enflame the Tamariskian citizenry. He knew that increasing the wariness the people of Tamarisk had for the Thorns would make it exponentially harder for them to accept harmony between the kingdoms should Folium and he be able to negotiate it.
    That wasn’t the reason he hadn’t shared the worst of this with Miea, though. That reason was far simpler and entirely unmotivated by politics: he didn’t want her to worry. At some point in her life, Miea was going to assume the burdens he currently carried. Even once she set foot off campus permanently, she would be responsible for a certain amount of statesmanship along with her