Rathna and Gabe had, after a long conversation with each other and with the rest of the family, decided to wait until the Solstice festivities were over before having the necessary and complicated conversation with their children. For one thing, it had taken until the last week, just before the solstice, for Ferdinand to agree to help with a portal that connected to the Heinrich portal outside Berlin. And Gabe had been doing more research than active engagement with his own concerns.
That was going to change in the coming year, even the coming month. They both knew it. They’d been simultaneously confronting the implications and not really talking about them. Rathna couldn’t blame Gabe for it. She wasn’t talking about it either. They both knew the reality, and until it had got closer, they could just let it sit there. Looming.
Now, though, they were tucked into the library, the heart of the household. Rathna had let everyone know they had an important conversation to have at luncheon. Now, Alysoun was in her usual chair, with Richard beside her, and Rathna had claimed the sofa. Rowena had settled straight and tall on a pillow on the floor, her long dark hair in a gorgeous braid down her back. She looked confident in a way Rathna had never been at that age. She also had her nose in a book, until they were ready to begin, and that was as much like Rathna as any of Gabe’s family.
Rowena had been doing brilliantly at Schola. She had a gift for the Seal House’s liminal magic, and Rathna had vastly enjoyed their conversations now Rowena was home for the holidays. Their eldest daughter had all of their best qualities, mingled. Gabe’s quicksilver mind mixed with some of Rathna’s steadiness. She thought Rowena might have a gift for the portal magic, too, and she hoped, well. She hoped she’d be able to explore that more thoroughly sometime.
Anthony was off by the shelves across the room with Gabe, asking him a question about something in another book. They were peering at something, a diagram or illustration. He was bright, both intellectually and in appearance. He had Gabe’s lighter skin, but it was his eyes that made her come back to that adjective, with their clear sparkling blue. Rathna loved watching him with Gabe.
In truth, she loved watching Gabe with all three of their children. He met them absolutely where they were at the moment. He uniformly treated them like intelligent people who just needed more information about the world. And he had their own childlike glee about discovering something new and sharing it. He wasn’t the adult to go to for steadiness or the daily planning of making sure there were enough clean clothes or a schedule to the day, but that was why Alysoun and the household staff and the nannies and governess had been such gifts.
And Avigail, well. Avigail was on the sofa, nestled in against Rathna’s side, entirely content to be there. She was the quietest of their three, the one who watched most without speaking. It hit Rathna, again, as it had been doing since she first met with Ferdinand, that Avigail was near enough the age Rathna had been when her own mother died. When she’d been left more and more alone, before she’d had that interview with Morah Avigail, her memory always a blessing in her second year at Schola.
Whatever happened to Rathna, Avigail would have family, and not just in distant Bengal. She had Gabe; she had Alysoun and Richard. She had her Aunt Charlotte and her cousins. She had Gabe’s adoptive Uncle Gil and Uncle Magni, though they were both getting on into their eighties now. And there were Aunt Mason and Aunt Witt, the Penelopes, and the larger close circle of the Carillons and their children and the Leftons, and theirs, and all the others.
Rathna had to keep telling herself that, because there was this vast gaping pit inside her, about the terrible risks she’d be taking. She’d woken, more than once, shaking with it. Four times in the past fortnight. She had never been the risk-taker, not in her marriage, not before that. She’d always clung to what was safe, what had been tested and reviewed.
She wasn’t going to be able to do that. She wouldn’t have Gabe with her, so she could borrow his instincts and his absolute gift for timing and when to lean forward. She wouldn’t have Alysoun’s confidence and good sense, or Richard’s honour and stability. And she’d be worrying, all the way, about what it meant for the children.
Gabe caught her eye, and murmured something to Anthony, before they set the book on the table nearby, and came over to join the rest. Anthony settled next to Rowena and spoke up. “Mama, you look worried.”
“We have something serious to talk about, love.” Rathna slipped her fingers into Gabe’s hand as he sat down, his other arm going around her back. She’d cheerfully put up with him fiddling with the end of her braid if he needed to fidget. At least at the moment. He’d needed to fidget a lot, the past months. “Papa and I have both been working on very important projects, and we need to talk about what it means for all of us as a family.”
This was not, perhaps, entirely what Rowena had expected. There was the sharp look up, then down and away, as she calculated. Avigail had gone still against her side. Anthony glanced from one of his sisters to the other. “Can you explain more, please?”
Gabe picked up smoothly enough. “You know we have both been very busy. We make it back for tea with Avigail, much of the time, but we are working very hard on different things.” He glanced up and caught something from his mother’s expression. “We waited to tell you until now, because we wanted to talk about it in person, now we’re through all the holidays. And because we weren’t entirely sure about some of the timing, not until the last week or so.”
Anthony nodded, solemnly. “Are you working on things together?”
“Oh, no, love. Unfortunately, maybe.” Though there would have been no way both of them could go to the Continent. That was too much risk, entirely too much. And Gabe was his father’s Heir, and Anthony was too young to hold the land magic without a regent. Rathna didn’t want to continue that train of thought at all. It was all horrible. “Separately. Your papa is working on a project here in Albion. But I am working on one that, if things don’t change too terribly much in the war, means I will be overseas in the spring. As soon as we can do things outside again.”
“Where, overseas?” Rowena looked up, and she was weighing things, doing the maths.
They’d had had a long talk, several of them, over the past week, about how much detail to give the children. Gabe had argued - cogently, brilliantly - for honesty. But also for telling them that they had to keep it private. It wasn’t as if the children weren’t used to the idea that some information wasn’t to be shared. Richard talked about his cases, sometimes, with both Alysoun in her role as analyst, and Gabe, for his professional opinion. They were careful of that, around the children, but of course some general topics spilled over.
“Family only. Aunt Mason and Aunt Witt, Uncle Gil and Uncle Magni. Just them, unless we say otherwise. Not your cousins, or anyone at school, even your teachers. If you get questions, you send them to Papa or to Grandmama and Grandpapa. And use the extra charms for privacy, in the journals, all that.” The cousins were growing up in a different sort of house, with people in and out all the time. While Charlotte and Lewis could be trusted, their children weren’t trained in confidentiality the same way. It was more complicated there.
“Of course, Mama.” Rowena nodded immediately, echoed by Anthony.
Avigail peered up at her, sideways. “Me too, Mama.”
Rathna leaned to kiss her head. “Of course. And you don’t see as many people yet.” Then she took a breath. “I’ll be in the Netherlands, likely.” It was the best option for their choices - an area that didn’t have a portal near, but where they thought they could establish one. There was a whole plain that flooded regularly. Connecting to water would be easy and they could anchor it in the bedrock.
“Do you have to go soon?” That, oh, that was Avigail, and it cracked Rathna’s heart.
“Not just yet, dear one. But in the spring. Maybe the beginning of March, maybe April. It depends on the weather.”
There was silence then, as all three of them thought about it, in their different ways. Anthony leaned back on one hand. “What will you be doing, Mama? Something with a portal?”
She nodded. “We think we might be able to make one, much more quickly than usual, and use it to help people escape.” They had been determined, as parents, to be honest with their children, even if the war had made that incredibly complicated. “You know how people who are Jewish, like Morah Avigail was, and her family, have been leaving Germany and Austria, if they can. How we helped children come here, the kindertransport.”
They’d sponsored a full eighteen children, helping connect them with families who would take them in, and give them homes. Of course, Rathna wasn’t Jewish, and neither was Gabe. They couldn’t exactly offer the children a Jewish household. Nor could they navigate around the challenges of the Pact and the Silence, and being a decidedly magical home. But they could help ease some of the money worries, and make sure they had suitable clothes, and a toy or two, and someone to check on their interests.
Rowena nodded. “So you might help more people be safe.” Something in that had decided her.
“That’s the hope. It is a very big thing to try to do. No one’s done anything like it since the Pact.” Humans had gotten the gift in trade of making portals, of some of the Fatae healing techniques, half a dozen great magics, in exchange for other concessions. It had changed the bedrock under their feet, in ways Rathna thought they were still learning about every day.
“And Papa?” There was Anthony.
Gabe shifted a little against her. “I’m staying in Albion. But we are working on, hmm. How to put this.” He let them see him thinking, saying out loud what at other times might have been a flurry of thoughts through his brain. At the end of which, he’d come out with some extraordinary statement at the end of the process that was simultaneously correct and baffling. “You know that many different people want to help the war effort, with magic and prayer as much as anything else?”
He waited a moment to see them nod. “Isobel and I, and some other people, are trying to figure out all the patterns of what people are doing that’s having an effect. For good and bad. We’re going to have to start meeting up with people. I don’t know when, yet, or how often I’ll be doing that, but I expect - well. It will be often, probably. I’ll sleep here, when I can, and I’ll have my journal. But I might take longer to write back, and I might not be home when you’re awake much, Avigail, love.”
Avigail grimaced at him, and snuggled tighter against Rathna’s side, fingers digging into her stomach a little and the folds of her dress. “You’re gone a lot now.” It was grumpy, but Gabe reached out to brush her fingers.
“I know. And I’ll make a point of seeing you. Or leaving notes. How’s that? But it really is important work, and someone has to do it. That’s me.” The cheerfulness was a bit forced, and they all knew it.
Rowena coughed. “Papa, don’t.” She was old enough and sure enough of herself to call her father on his failures, now. That was a whole stage of parenthood Rathna had not anticipated at all. She’d never dared with Morah Avigail, not remotely.
Gabe folded immediately and spread out his free hand again. “I don’t like that I won’t see you nearly as often as I want, which is always.” There, that was much more honest. “But it’s also a truly interesting challenge. And you know how I like those. Aunt Witt and Aunt Mason don’t think there’s anyone else who could do it as well as I can.”
“And you want them to be right.” Anthony looked up now.
“Life works better that way. We all know that.” It provoked Richard into a chuckle. They’d been very quiet. Gabe nodded at his father. “And Grandmama and Grandpapa will be here, and the others. Plenty of people to teach you things and listen to you, and write letters. And me when I can.”
That was, clearly, a somewhat easier potion for them to swallow than Rathna’s absence. When there were no more immediate questions, Rathna cleared her throat. “Anyway, that’s why we wanted some time, just the immediate family, for the rest of the holidays. We want all the time we can get with you right now, before you go back to school, Rowena, and to your tutoring house, Anthony. And maybe we’ll get some time around equinox, but if we don’t, I don’t want...” She hesitated, then forged forward, feeling Gabe’s hand on her shoulder, steady and certain. “I don’t want to regret it.”
There was a silence again, a weightier one. Finally, there was Avigail’s voice, a bit wavery. “Are there proper prayers and offerings, Mama?”
“Well. We might have a lot of obstacles. I think we should tidy up Ganesha’s shrine, and figure out plenty of sweets for his offerings, don’t you? And clean and tidy the lararium, as well.” They’d had both for all their marriage. “And there are some prayers from Morah Avigail’s people, for all sorts of reasons, and we can look and find what fits best.”
She wasn’t at all sure there was a proper prayer for trying unfathomable acts of magic. She supposed that if anyone had them, the people who had built the great Temple in Jerusalem might have one. And she could ask Morah Avigail’s grandson, now well established as a rabbi, who considered her one of the family.