Free Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

since there was no threat in her words, but something in her tone, her smile, spoke of my parole, how now she could shatter it any instant with just three words to the Commissioner General: “Only the packaging.”
    I shuddered, and the Chief Director seemed contented by my fear. 「 Then you may go begin. 」
    ã€Œ Thank you, Chief Director. 」 I scrambled up and bowed, but felt my failure as the couple turned away, the new leash around my neck called blackmail. I could not leave myself, or those who depended on me, so deeply in their power. There was no resort but French. «Do you know who else came to the bash’house today, Princesse? Apart from Martin?»
    Both turned, and the princess relaxed at the music of her birth bash’ tongue, returning slow French syllables which flowed from her lips like kisses. «There was someone else?»
    I could not guess whether her ignorance was feigned or real. «There was a certain sensayer.» I scanned the back room to confirm that Michi Mitsubishi—the one adopted child interning with Europe and likely to know French—was absent. It was safe to press on. «A foster child. Dark blond. Blue eyes.» I searched Danaë’s face, but the illusion of eternal youth which masks the matron’s decades masks fear lines also. «A Gag-gene,» I added. «Twenty-eight years old.»
    A statue of cream-white marble seemed to stand before me in that instant, so rigid she became. I felt my hands twitch with the impulse to catch her should she faint. «What a marvelous world.» She whispered it, less to me than to the world itself, and her lashes fluttered, fighting back a tear.
    Â«You did not know? I have to ask, Princesse, I’m sorry.»
    Danaë stepped toward me, away from her husband, who frowned but backed away, respectful of his bride’s right to her separate tongue, and separate sphere. «I have never known him.» She brought her alabaster hands up to her breast, as if cradling an infant, real again in her fingers’ memory.
    I glanced back to the inner chamber, where her many adopted children sprawled and stared, all so different: Hiroaki Mitsubishi with Thai features, Jun European pale and freckled, Ran with Middle Eastern tints like Martin, but none like their mother. No one had been surprised when Andō—proud of his pure Japanese breeding—and Danaë—just as proudly French—had adopted instead of mixing their blood. But still, to have held a child of her body for a day and never again, even imagining it made me ache.
    Â«You must at least have asked where he was taken to be raised?» I asked. «What Hive he joined?»
    Another tear-gilded blink. «No, nothing. It was judged kindest that way.»
    Â«Who took the child away? His Grace your brother? Your honored husband?» I avoided the French for ‘Chief Director,’ since even Andō could recognize that.
    Â«He was handed to the doctor.» The ghost of a smile softened her sadness. «He didn’t cry. Brave little one.»
    Â«I told him nothing. I’m sure he doesn’t know.» It was the best comfort I could offer.
    Â«Thank you.»
    Her thanks warmed me, made me bold. «I found it hard to believe that he, of all sensayers in the world, would be sent to that bash’ by chance. Can you think of anyone who might have traced him? Any reason anyone could have to dredge this up after so long? To embroil him in this mess with the theft and the device?»
    Three times she parted her lips, a different syllable shaped each time, but only the third time did she voice it. «Is he happy?»
    I lowered my eyes. It was the right question, the only real question a loving heart would ask. And had she had a different upbringing it might have been hard to answer. «The Patriarch wrote that the halfwit is always happier than the philosopher, but the philosopher would not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for