The fifth wedding anniversary arrived on a Tuesday.
Gerffron discovered it was his fifth wedding anniversary the way he discovered most things about the calendar — from the household's behavior rather than from any personal tracking of the date. The kitchen had been producing slightly better food than usual for two days running, which was the estate's low-key acknowledgment of approaching occasions, and Orreth had been moving through the corridors with the specific, contained energy of someone managing a list in her head, which was Orreth's universal tell for an event on the horizon.
He had thought: the king's seasonal review? A noble visit? Lady Elowen's something-or-other?
He had not thought his fifth wedding anniversary.
This was partly because anniversaries had not been a feature of his life in this household in any meaningful sense — the first had passed during the east tower period, the second during the fever recovery, the third and fourth in the specific, complicated domestic arrangement that he and Gorgina had developed, which acknowledged the marriage as a legal and social reality without particularly celebrating it as an emotional one.
The fifth had apparently decided it required attention regardless of anyone's preferences on the matter.
It had recruited Lady Elowen.
"I am planning to host a banquet for your fifth wedding anniversary." Lady Elowen said, at the breakfast table, to her correspondence.
The breakfast table had been proceeding normally up to this point. Gorgina was eating a steak in the focused, efficient way she ate everything, because eating was a function she performed rather than an experience she had. Gerffron was on his second cup of tea and midway through a book he had propped against the toast rack, which was a habit Lady Elowen disapproved of and which he had discovered she disapproved of approximately three months into his house confinement and had continued doing ever since with the mild, private satisfaction of a man who has very few available acts of domestic rebellion and is maximizing the ones he has.
Gorgina choked on her steak.
It was a genuine choke — not a polite social expression of surprise but an actual, physical encounter between a piece of steak and an airway that had not been prepared for the information arriving simultaneously.
Gerffron inhaled his tea.
This produced a different but equally undignified result.
Lady Elowen turned a page.
"Are you quite—" she began.
"No," Gorgina said, when she was capable of saying it. "No. Absolutely not. No banquet. No anniversary."
"The invitations are already drafted."
"Un-draft them then."
"The date has been set for the fourteenth."
"Un-set it then."
"I have discussed the menu with the kitchen."
"Then un-discuss it!" Gorgina's voice had achieved the specific register she used when she was managing something through gritted teeth while maintaining surface coherence. She used it rarely, which meant its appearance was informative. "Mother, I say this with complete respect for your position in this household and your intentions — we do not need a banquet. Nobody needs a banquet. The anniversary does not require a banquet. Anniversaries are observed privately by the people they concern."
Lady Elowen looked at her over the correspondence.
"This anniversary," she said, with the serene composure of a woman for whom the word no was a starting position rather than a conclusion, "is the fifth. The fifth anniversary is a significant occasion in every social tradition of this empire. The household has maintained a reduced social profile for several years and this represents an appropriate and natural occasion to—"
"Spend quietly at home," Gorgina said.
"—re-establish the Wadee estate's presence in the social calendar," Lady Elowen finished, as if Gorgina had not spoken. "I have been patient. The household has been patient. Five years is an appropriate interval."
"You have been waiting five years to throw a party?" Gorgina said flatly.
"I have been waiting five years for an occasion that justified the appropriate scale," Lady Elowen said. "This is that occasion."
"The scale being—"
"A banquet."
Gorgina looked at the ceiling in the manner of a woman appealing to a higher authority that was not present.
Gerffron set down his book.
He had been listening to this exchange with the specific, attentive quality he brought to things that were developing in interesting directions, and the interesting direction this one had been developing in had just accelerated considerably.
"Lady Elowen," he said.
She looked at him.
He looked back at her with the mild, clear-eyed steadiness that he had developed over five years as a social tool — the look that communicated perfect attentiveness without committing to any position yet.
"I would genuinely prefer something smaller," he said. "The anniversary is — it is, as Her Grace says, a private matter. I would find a large occasion—"
"The King and Queen will be attending," Lady Elowen said.
A pause.
"Have you—" Gerffron started.
"I have drafted their invitation. It has not yet been sent. I anticipate sending it tomorrow morning, pending the resolution of this conversation."
Gerffron looked at Gorgina.
Gorgina was looking at Lady Elowen with the expression of a woman who has recognized that she is not going to win this particular argument and is deciding how much energy she wants to spend on it anyway.
"The Crown Prince—" Gerffron tried.
"Is not on the list," Lady Elowen said, with the mild satisfaction of someone delivering precisely aimed information.
"Lady Mallory," she added, with slightly more satisfaction, "is."
The breakfast table absorbed this.
Gerffron looked at his tea.
He thought about the king and queen at a fifth anniversary banquet. He thought about King Zemon and the investigation that had been running for two years and the specific, calculated intelligence of a man who had been paying attention to the right things for a long time.
He thought: The king at this banquet is not nothing. Lady Elowen thinks she is doing one thing and is also doing three others. Usually I do not have any respect for this woman but now.......
"Fine," he said.
Lady Elowen was not smiling.
Her correspondence was receiving the quality of attention that suggested she was not reading it.
"I will finalize the arrangements," she said. She left the dinning room with a satisfied smile on her face.
Gorgina looked at him with the specific expression she wore when he did something that surprised her by being more pragmatic than she expected.
"It's one evening," he said. "We have survived considerably worse."
"That is," Gorgina said, "genuinely the lowest possible bar you could have set for an anniversary celebration."
"And yet," he said, picking up his book again, "it remains accurate."
The comedy of the morning arrived at the tenth bell.
Wren had installed Oswin at the corner of the reading table with his wooden objects — the small painted shapes the carpenter had made, which Oswin approached with the methodical enthusiasm of a developmental scientist working through a research agenda — and had gone to the upper shelves with the morning's rotation list.
Oswin was soon to be two years old.
He had recently discovered the locomotion concept and was applying it to every available surface with the commitment of someone who has found their calling.
He had also recently developed opinions.
He had very many opinions.
He had an opinion about the wooden cube, which was that its primary purpose was gravitational study. He had an opinion about the wooden sphere, which was identical. He had an opinion about the wooden triangle, which was that it required the same study but with a different landing sound.
He was conducting this research program with the focused, repetitive dedication of a scientist who understood that reproducibility was the cornerstone of reliable results.
Gerffron was attempting, alongside the research program, to conduct a vocabulary lesson.
"Book," he said, holding up the book.
Oswin looked at the book.
He looked at Gerffron.
He looked at the wooden cube.
He picked up the wooden cube.
He conducted the gravitational study.
"That," Gerffron said, "is not the response I was looking for."
Oswin looked at him with the enormous serious eyes.
"We are working on words," Gerffron explained. "This is a book. Books contain words. There is a certain pleasing circularity to this exercise that I think you will appreciate when you are older. Book. Say book."
Oswin said nothing.
He reached for the wooden sphere.
"Book," Gerffron said again, more deliberately, in the tone of someone who is adjusting their pedagogical approach.
"Ba," Oswin said.
Gerffron looked at him.
"Ba," he said, testing it. "Ba. That is — close. That is remarkably close. You are essentially in the same postal code as the word. Ba. Book. Book. Ba."
He held the book up again.
Oswin tracked it.
His eyes followed the book with the focused attention of someone who was interested in the book as a moving object rather than as a concept.
He reached for it.
Gerffron let him take it.
Oswin looked at it carefully.
He looked at it with the complete, unfiltered attention of someone encountering a new specimen.
He opened his mouth.
"Do not," Gerffron said.
He took the book back.
"I have had this book for three years," he said. "It contains an annotation on page ninety-four that I have not finished being right about yet. I need it intact."
Oswin made the sound he made when he disagreed with a decision.
"Your feelings about this are noted," Gerffron said.
He held the book up again.
"Book," he said.
Oswin looked at him with the expression of someone who has been attending to a performance for a while and has formed a settled critical opinion of it.
"Ba," he said.
"Ba is not—" Gerffron stopped. He looked at the baby. The baby looked at him. Something about the quality of the look — too steady, too composed for a person who had been conducting gravitational research thirty seconds ago — made him pause.
"Are you," he said, slowly, "choosing to say ba instead of book?"
Oswin picked up the wooden circle.
He conducted the gravitational study.
"He has been saying it correctly for three weeks," Wren said, from the upper shelves, in the tone of someone who has been waiting for the appropriate moment to deliver information.
Gerffron looked at the shelves.
He looked at Oswin.
He looked at the shelves again.
"He has been — he has known the word for three weeks," he said.
"Yes."
"And he has been saying ba at me for—"
"Three weeks."
"Because—"
"Because you react more interestingly to ba than to book," Wren said. "He's running a study. You're the variable."
Gerffron looked at Oswin.
Oswin looked at Gerffron.
"Bwok," Oswin said, perfectly clearly and completely correctly, with the full, sunny smile of a person who has been sitting on a winning hand for weeks and has chosen this moment to play it.
Gerffron sat back in his chair.
"He's almost two years old," he said.
"Yes," Wren said.
"He has been conducting a deception for three weeks."
"I prefer to call it an experiment," Wren said.
"He's been studying my reactions."
"He's very observant."
"He learned this from you," Gerffron said.
"He learned it from watching you," Wren said, which was a different thing entirely and which produced in Gerffron a brief, startled silence.
Oswin dropped the wooden circle on the floor.
He watched it fall with the expression of a scientist whose experimental results have been satisfyingly consistent across multiple trials.
"Bwook!" he said again, in the sunny voice.
Gerffron looked at the ceiling.
He looked at the baby.
He said, to no one in particular: "I have been outwitted by someone who weighs less than one of my boots."
"Two of your boots," Wren said.
"That's not better."
"No," she agreed.
Oswin held out his hands for the finger.
Gerffron, with the complete and helpless resignation of a man who has understood that certain things were simply going to happen regardless of his preferences, gave him the finger.
Oswin gripped it.
"Bwok!" he said, contentedly, with the grip of someone who has won every available point today and is prepared to be gracious about it.