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fear, as I expected, of someone taking over and what it meant for them and the seacity.
    “Nathaniel”—I said, and spared that worthy what I hoped was a withering glance—“can come to me in half an hour.” I wanted to meet with him about as much as I wanted to saw off my head with a rusty saw. But I supposed there was no avoiding it. “I must have some privacy, first. And my mother? Has anyone told her I’m here?” I was surprised she had not come running yet. Perhaps she too could not forgive me. Perhaps even she hated me.
    Nathaniel seemed to go paler, but it was Sam who answered, steadily, “The Lady Isabella passed away, sir. Two years ago.”
    I looked at him and I know my look was disbelieving, even if I didn’t mean it. “What?”
    “An accident, sir. Her flyer caught fire. She didn’t escape in time.”
    And then I did run. I ran, most indecorously, between two flanking rows of retainers, back to the front hall. I pelted up the stairs, as I did when I hurt myself in the garden, when I was little, and ran up the stairs to my mother’s comforting lap.
    Only I ran past the rooms that had been hers, and down the side corridor, to what had been my own bedroom. I went in without even thinking, and then stopped, because this room didn’t look at all like mine.
    It looked like my father’s.

Clothe Him in Silk,
Cover Him in Gold

    Nathaniel charged into my room as soon as I came out of my bath, while I was still mother-naked, and completely vulnerable. My fault.
    It wasn’t just that I hadn’t locked the door—I’d spent so much time locked from the outside, it never occurred to me that someone might want to come in to my room. And besides, I’d grown up with retainers coming in and out of my room to lay out clothes or clean something, more or less at will. The Good Man or even his scapegrace son could never lock the door without interfering with the smooth running of the household.
    But that wasn’t the problem. The main problem was that I had dawdled and not just because I’d cried in the bath, where no one could see me, overcome suddenly by the loss of my mother on top of what felt, irrationally, like the recent loss of Ben.
    It was that I’d also wandered around the room in a daze for a while before bathing. I suppose I should have expected it to have changed. But I didn’t.
    Olympus tradition is different from that of most of the other houses I’ve heard about, where there is a ruler’s room and an heir’s room. Instead, the house has assigned rooms for each person and the person remains in his own room, regardless of his position.
    On the other hand, when I’d left, Max had been in the nursery. And I’d guess they’d moved him into my room when he’d reached the age to leave it, at six or so. No reason why they shouldn’t. I’d certainly not been expected to return.
    But instead of the furniture Mother had picked for me, the warm smooth pine shelves and undecorated bed, the low dressers and the comfortable chairs, I was faced with an ornate, heavy and dark wood bed, curtained in dark blue; with pastoral holos on the walls, with carved, polished trunks and dressers. It made the room look exactly like my father’s when I was little, and I can honestly say if this was Max’s taste, I didn’t think highly of it.
    There was only one piece of art that I didn’t remember as something my father would surround himself with. It was a damn good likeness—I presumed of Max, or perhaps of my father when he was very young, wearing a casual coat and pants, and with a setter dog at his heels. Done in pencil on paper, it had an archaic look and the lines of it were pure and clear in a way that was highly unfashionable in the holo-enhanced art of our day. There was a spareness to the line that didn’t in any way make the work look cartoonish, and which made me think that the artist was a professional. However, it wasn’t signed. I looked. Which was bizarre since having a piece in the Good