“Do you want your present now or after?” Sanaam said.

She twisted out of his embrace and stood with her hands pressed against the top of the desk, contemplating the incoherent but vaguely Captain-esque painting which was hung on the wall over it. “I am afraid the present and the ‘after’ are going to have to wait indefinitely, Captain. There are matters we must attend.”

He flung himself across the bed. It didn’t even bounce, it merely shuddered in a resigned fashion like a very old horse. They were both fond of riding, but this particular animal was going to break a leg soon and be remorselessly shot.

“Oh, come on!” he said. “You can’t still be that annoyed about the house! He’s obviously going to have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together again and you can watch how he does it then. He didn’t make something so weird you couldn’t understand it on purpose, he just has no idea how he’s supposed to put magic together. It’s not a commentary on your intelligence. You have nothing to fear from the world’s second-best swordsman, but he’s the world’s worst one, so he’s going to mess you up sometimes just as a matter of chance. You can’t sort him out in the analysis. Now leave it alone and I’ll distract you.”

She did not turn. “No. The house is only a further distraction. Due to the fact that we live in a glorified insane asylum, I have been unable to fill you in on certain events that occurred in your absence.”

“There’s MORE?!” Sanaam cried. He sat forward and drew up his legs into the accepted gossip position. All he was missing was a dish of fudge. “We’ve already had a concussion, a broken arm, gang warfare, a giant pink spider, multiple revelations and a visit from Calliope’s weird brother! Don’t you people ever sit down and spend an evening listening to the radio while I’m gone? What else have I missed?”

“Magnificent set Hyacinth on fire but it was my fault.”

Sanaam’s mouth fell open and he closed it with a hand. “Was it a lesson?”

“No. For our daughter, it was more of a cry for help. Will you consent to postponing your welcome home so I may explain the depth of my error?”

He waved a hand as if funny presents and sex were a cloud of smoke he wanted to dissipate. “Yes, yes. I’m more interested in this now anyway. Talk to me, sir.” He patted the bed beside him.

She looked from his hand on the bed to him and then back again. She frowned at him. “You are treating me as if you are already going to forgive me for what I’ve done, and that makes me doubt you are going to take me seriously.”

He sighed. “Look, I know we didn’t go with the standard ‘love, honour and obey’ thing, but I made a really significant promise to stick with you. When you say things like that I start to worry you don’t understand what it means to me.”

“If I thought marriage were intended to override our judgment, I wouldn’t have done it, Captain.”

He stood up and wandered over to the window to have a go at looking outside. He should’ve stared at the painting instead. It made more sense than the world viewed through Hyacinth’s smashed-bottle glasswork.

“Sometimes I get this totally self-destructive urge to bap you on the head with a rolled-up newspaper, sir. I know you’re smarter than this. I married you because I trust you not to do something so awful it makes me want to leave you. And after twelve years I am pretty sure I got it right.

“So I am not letting our marriage override my judgment, sir. No! I am making a logical assumption based on empirical data that whatever you’ve done it won’t be unforgivable. Our daughter is alive, in one piece, and downstairs trying to teach Erik to play Xinese Chequers — how bad could it possibly be?”

The General folded her arms across her chest and regarded him with a queer, slanted expression. “I go back and forth between admiration and frustration with you so many times I begin to feel like a metronome, Captain. I suppose you must feel the same way about me.”

“More often than I’d like,” he said sourly.

She sat on the bed. He heard it creak, but he wasn’t ready to go back yet and he didn’t turn around.

“I am smarter than this,” she said, “but not about everything. I warned you about my difficulties before you made your decision to trust me not to fall beneath your standards for a wife.”

Now he turned, dismayed. “I thought you meant we couldn’t have a dog! What else is the matter?”

She scowled at him. “You don’t always listen, do you?”

“You don’t always say what you mean,” he replied.

“I hope after twelve years you’ve managed to absorb that my mother and I had a horrible relationship. The dogs were secondary.”

“She was a bitch,” Sanaam said. “Obviously. But it seemed like you were more concerned about the dogs.”

The General sighed. “I suppose I tend to focus on the dogs because they were such a perfect example of her behaviour. And I had a better relationship with the dogs,” she added darkly. She shook her head. “But you must understand, Captain, poor parents do not raise extremely competent and well-rounded children. I am trying to do a better job, but I often fail to compensate for my shortcomings. Maggie has once again been suffering because I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong.”

Sanaam sat down on the bed. He put his hand on her shoulder but he didn’t look at her. “I should have explained about the hair. I just never think of it because I don’t have any… On my head, I mean.”

“I think this is rather more severe,” the General said. “I have assigned unwarranted significance to the hair because my mother used to drag me around by mine…”

“What?” Sanaam said.

“…Maggie remembers me apologizing more than she remembers me hurting her,” she went on. “But in this case, I think she is too young to understand the extent of what I have failed to provide her…”

Sanaam flapped a vast gesture as if attempting to take off and fly around the room. The bed shivered and rattled. “I’m sorry, can we go back to your mother dragging you around by the hair? Please?”

She lifted a single brow. “We have already dealt with this concept and you are proficient. My mother was a poor parent and a bitch. Do you require specifics so you can work out a level of bitchiness? I would rate it about a nine. I have no desire for you to grade my behaviour on a curve based on my childhood. I am only repeating my warning that I am not always as smart as I should be in clearer terms.”

“I’m not after context for grading your behaviour!” he snapped. “I love you and this is upsetting!”

“Do you need a moment?” she said, blinking.

He got up and walked into the closet. Her uniform was in there, in a garment bag, and he racked it aside. He had to bend almost double and he still didn’t fit in there. “I guess if I start asking questions like ‘why’ you’re just going to tell me I already knew she was a bad parent and a bitch, right?” he said, somewhat muffled.

“Rather,” she said. “Was there some other information you needed?”

He peeked out at her like he was playing in the garment racks at a department store, but he did not appear to be having any fun. “I’d like you to trust me enough to tell me how hurt you are!”

She approached him with arms folded and stopped in the middle of the room. “I stand before you, an honest woman, and you have been married to me for over twelve years,” she said. She spread her arms and spun around once slowly like a cake in a restaurant display. Her dress was so stiff it acted like fondant icing. “How hurt am I?”

“I have no idea,” he said weakly.

She folded her arms again and turned her head aside. “I suppose I am often surprised by it myself. Such as when our daughter reacts to emotional distress by trying to burn a human being alive and I require a third party to inform me that this is because I have failed to teach her a more constructive response. This is my fault and not yours, Captain. I am her teacher and her primary caregiver.”

“How did it happen?” Sanaam said. “What was distressing her?”

“It was a situation you will no doubt find familiar,” the General said. “She walked in on an evident disaster, but too late to do anything about it and with no idea what happened. Miss Rose and Mordecai had an argument about the brownies with drugs in them and Erik injured his hand. Mr. Zusman was also involved somehow.

“When Magnificent expressed her dismay, I scolded her use of language, and Hyacinth laughed at her. Maggie focused her understandable frustration on the laughter and set the hem of Hyacinth’s skirt on fire. Hyacinth’s clothes are not terribly flammable, no injury resulted, and I doubt this was an attempt at murder. It was, as I said, a cry for help.”

“Who was the third party?” Sanaam said.

The General stiffened. “Mordecai was… present,” she said tightly.

“Ohhh,” Sanaam said. “So the worst possible person who is still alive and lives with us.”

The General made a wry smile. “We cannot rule out that whatever is in Room 101 is either presumed dead and in hiding or some kind of revenant, but the worst likely, yes.” She sighed. “He is not a good parent, Captain. What he is is not good. But he is aware of that and he compensates. I believe he has trained Erik to express in plain language when he needs something because he, Mordecai, does not trust himself to interpret these needs without hand-holding.

“I have seen him supplying Erik with words for difficult concepts. They are writing a book about feelings together.” She frowned. “That child doesn’t understand the function of material inertia but I heard him use the word ‘saudade’ correctly the other day…” She set her teeth in a snarl, “And I had to look it up!”

Sanaam lifted a polite finger to interject, “What does…”

“Profound longing for that which is absent! It is how Hyacinth feels when she observes Calliope’s memorial drawing of her fire-breathing toy monkey that played ‘Send in the Clowns.’”

Sanaam wandered away and sat down on the bed, cradling his head in his hands. “This is my life now. This is normal for me.”

“And?” said the General.

“I’m sorry, sir, it tends to hit me at odd moments.” He drew in a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly. “You’ve suddenly realized our daughter doesn’t understand ‘saudade,’ and if she did, she might express her emotions as words instead of destructive actions.”

“I’ve suddenly realized it is not always appropriate to express our emotions as destructive actions and I have not been providing her with the structure she needs to figure it out when it is,” the General said. “I have let a plethora of teachable moments whiz past me because I apparently expected her to absorb this information from the ether.

“I do not believe in terrorizing her so that whenever I look at her with disapproval she reacts by picking apart her behaviour in a desperate attempt to fix what she has done wrong before I harm her. I have tried to be better than that.

“But my method of teaching relies upon taking advantage of real life situations and picking them apart with her, and I find I have neglected an entire field of study. Perhaps more of them. I have not given her enough opportunities to educate herself without my interference and she is becoming a carbon copy of my blind spots and biases.”

Sanaam put a cautious hand over his mouth and felt the corners to make sure that what he was doing could not possibly be interpreted as a grin. “You are worried that the person who has screaming arguments with you and blew a hole in the side of the Zephyr when you said she couldn’t take the cat to San Rosille with her is becoming too like you?” he said.

“What were you like as a child, Captain?” the General said. “Do you see yourself in her? Because I was very much like that at her age.”

“I was suicidally curious, relentlessly positive, and prone to sudden ideas when bored,” he said. “And not a little bit stubborn and arrogant.” He grinned. “They did tell me I wasn’t allowed to ride a pushcart down the roof of my house, sir. I found a way! I do see myself in her, but I think she’s got more of your sense.”

“I paid for my sense with a lot of pain and mistakes,” the General said. She sat next to him with a thump and did not look over. “Not cute ones I’d like to tell funny stories about.”

“Hey, I could’ve died!” Sanaam said. “It’s only a funny story because I didn’t.”

“When I make mistakes, other people die,” the General said softly. “I have so little time to prepare her before launching her into that horrible situation alone, and I won’t know if I’ve given her the things she needs until she’s gone, when I can observe her using them from a distance.”

Sanaam’s expression tightened with a pang he could not conceal. He remembered Maggie, kicking her legs back and forth in the space under the cot in the basement, and trying to put into words a question she wasn’t sure if she was even allowed to ask. Dad… What if I want to grow up and make people ice cream sundaes all day?

He didn’t answer her, not really, because he didn’t like the sound of the truth, or the implications. Your mother will never let you do that, Maggie. She’s raising you to replace her. You have an entire country to look after. Ice cream sundaes are treason. That way is closed.

“Sir, what if… when she’s old enough… What if she thinks she doesn’t want to be put in that situation?” It was the gentlest way he could possibly put it and even so he was afraid of an explosion. He guessed he did know his wife was a lot like their daughter.

The General looked up and away. Not at the painting on the opposite wall. Through it. “Then I have failed.”

He smiled weakly but hopefully, “Have you considered lowering your standards? I think Mordecai would be pleased with himself if Erik were reasonably happy and able to hold down a job of some sort.”

“I cannot,” she said. “If Erik were entrusted to my care or if Maggie had experienced a similar…” She had been about to say “setback,” but she caught the word. That wasn’t fair to Erik. “A… a life altering injury due to my negligence, I would not be able to adjust to accommodate it. I am certain Erik would despise me as a parent and a teacher, and if Magnificent were any less brilliant and fortunate she would have long since disintegrated under the constant pressure. And this is the best I can do!”

She wouldn’t look at him and he had an idea she was crying. He opened his mouth and then closed it. I don’t have a name for her. I don’t know what to call my wife when she’s crying.

“Sir…” he said.

“Mordecai said I am keeping my daughter in a box,” she said.

Sanaam politely laced his fingers together and folded his hands in his lap. His expression was frozen and calm. I really am going to drag that man aside and have one or two words with him about saying things that upset my family. If he’s going to do that, I wish he’d wait until I am in the room, so I can twist off his head like a bottle cap.

…But he did not say that aloud, because the last stupid thing Mordecai said had resulted in the ice cream sundae conversation with Maggie, and if his wife ever found out about that it might very well destroy her.

“I grew up in a box myself,” she said. “It was an estate. I had freedom of movement, but I did not have access to other people who would have… I hesitate to say ‘helped me’… Other people who would have provided me with an objective assessment of my situation and given me the opportunity to understand it was less than ideal,” she decided with a nod.

“My mother fired my tutors when she returned from the war and I was not allowed to mingle with the servants. I had nowhere to go. Around us, there was only countryside and other estates which were empty most of the year. I could not play with other children or visit a neighbouring institution of education and compare its methods and philosophy. I was deposited in a military school at age fourteen and left for the actual military two years later, with special permission.”

She sighed.

“It has taken me a ridiculously long time to understand that I am no longer in a box. I still have difficulty with the concept. I tell myself that I become frustrated with a lack of structure, and while this is true, the reason that it happens is that I miss my box. I have confused confinement with security, but that is because of what happened to me.

“Magnificent is not growing up in a box,” she said firmly. “She has exposure to different viewpoints. She has travelled the world! She lives in a house with…” She wavered on the word. “People. There are children available. There is a school within walking distance, and though I discouraged her from attending until recently, I did not prevent her. I would say I have gone so far as to encourage rule-breaking, only providing her with reasonable consequences…”

“You took away her tenth birthday,” Sanaam said.

“Theft of an Imperial Medal of Honour would ordinarily be punishable by imprisonment or, in the recent past, hanging,” the General said. “I said she wasn’t allowed a birthday party and permitted you to give her one anyway. I have not even attempted to reclaim my property.”

“Well, I mean, Erik didn’t steal it from you and he needs it to see…”

“My point,” the General said, “is that while Maggie’s situation is not my own, I nevertheless find her behaving as if she exists in a box like I did. It appears that with the best of intentions I have drawn the lines of a box around her, and though she could step over them easily, for some reason she does not.”

Sanaam blinked. “Um. She loves you and respects you, sir. Didn’t you notice?”

She turned and stared at him. “I have boxed up my daughter with love and respect?”

“It’s more like it makes her happy when you’re proud of her and sad when you’re not, so she tries to…” He trailed off. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? You only tried to make your mother happy so she wouldn’t hurt you.”

“I would say it leaned more towards outdoing her to spite her as I got older, but it was about fifty-fifty altogether, I suppose.”

“It’s probably fifty-fifty with Maggie too,” Sanaam said. “But with her the other half is she thinks you’re awesome and she values your opinion of her awesomeness. And everything else, which is why I’m guessing she didn’t try to check out the school, in light of your bad reviews.”

The General considered this. “For instance, if I had friends, she would value friendship more, and might have a wider social circle than Erik and that boy with the bow tie who teaches her petty larceny. She is modelling my behaviour not out of fear of punishment, or even because I have explicitly asked her to do so, but because she has judged it worthwhile based on observable data?”

Sanaam shrugged. “I think she’s old enough to pick and choose. She’s not necessarily going to copy everything you do, but she’ll take it under consideration.”

“Love and respect,” said the General. “Mr. Zusman may have been attempting to explain to me that this is how he operates his school, but I put him in a coma before he could finish. It is just as well she decided to investigate the school on Master Rinaldi’s recommendation. Mr. Zusman was conventionally trained as an educator and he is aware of mechanics that I have failed to divine through observation. We have already come to an agreement that she will further her education by attending his classes twice a week.”

If Sanaam were participating in a musical comedy, this would’ve been a fine time for him to execute a spit take. Since the gods had not seen fit to provide him with a glass of water, he merely choked and said, “You’re outsourcing to the guy with no textbooks or walls?”

“The world is a classroom,” the General said dryly.

“He teaches people to read! Isn’t that boring for her?” A bored Mag-Pirate was a ticking time bomb, in Sanaam’s opinion. He wouldn’t wish that on the school.

“She says he is teaching her to teach. …Which is another thing I expected her to pick up without explicit lessons,” the General muttered aside. She cleared her throat. “I understand she finds his method quite challenging, but he is being supportive. I am dying to observe them, but it will need to wait until she won’t notice a distant eagle or some optical magic in the weeds. She is suspicious of me,” the General said proudly.

“Couldn’t you just ask her if you could go with her?”

“That would change the results,” said the General.

He sighed. “So you’ve already figured out what the problem is and you’re trying to solve it. Do you need me on this, sir?”

“I…” said the General, blinking. “I made a mess and it is appropriate that I clean it up. I thought you might have something to say about the depth of my error… at least some disapproval. Don’t you want to check my corrections?”

“You know how Maggie set Hyacinth on fire because something bad happened and she didn’t find out about it until it was too late for her to do anything?” Sanaam said. “She’s not used to it like I am.”

He placed his hands on the bed and sat back with a smile that was somewhat pained. “Sometimes I think I would feel better about myself as a father if you didn’t clean up your messes… Or couldn’t. Couldn’t. I wouldn’t like you to pretend.”

“I don’t know if I can clean this one up, Captain,” she said. “Perhaps I sound more sure than I am.”

“Perhaps I don’t always listen,” Sanaam said. “You’re not telling me you’ve solved it, you’re asking me if what you’re doing is enough?”

She nodded.

“I tend to assume it must be,” he said. “Again, our daughter is downstairs, in one piece and playing Xinese Chequers. And Hyacinth lives. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to hear it from someone, with citations. Like I need to hear that you need me.”

“Have you not noticed my constant anxiety and approval-seeking behaviour in your direction, Captain?”

“Uh…” Sanaam said. “Are you being serious right now?”

The General nodded.

“Ah, yes then. I seem to have missed that. That seems to have whizzed right past me, sir. Has it been going on for some time?”

“Only since right around the time I began to respect you, Captain,” said the General. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve only had… thirteen years or so. If — heaven forfend — the peace holds, we ought to have a few decades more.”

“No, no,” Sanaam said. “With the lives we lead, I’m not even certain we’ll have peace until dinner. Best to get it done now.” He stretched out on the bed and patted the space beside him. “Come here and lay out anything you think needs my stamp of approval and I’ll try to pretend it matters…”

She stiffened and scowled. “It matters to me.”

He quieted. He nodded. “All right, then it matters to me too. But can I hold you? I miss you.”

“Very well.”

She was hard like a sack of flour and she did not soften, but he had never been able to get comfortable without firm support. And she was cold, but he was able to warm her after a while.

◈◈◈

An hour later, most of the household downstairs had been drawn into Xinese Chequers, which could accept six players — or anyone who was willing to sit on the dining room floor.

Sanaam crept downstairs with his shirt buttoned wrong and tried to divine if there was any room for him, or if he’d have to call dibs on playing the winner. It looked like they were playing a four-person game, and Calliope was offering strategic advice while trying to distract Lucy from the tantalizing choking hazard.

“Mag-Pirate,” he said, and he laughed. He’d never had to ask before, but he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity: “How was school?”

Maggie dropped a varnished wooden marble and it rolled onto the carpet. “Uh. Mom told you about that?”

“Yup,” Sanaam said. He sat down on the step and collected Maggie’s marble for her.

She squinted suspiciously at it, then at him. “Did she tell you why?”

“Yup.” He put it back on the board. He thought that was approximately the move she’d been trying to make.

“Are you mad at me?” she said.

“Don’t be, I’m not,” said Hyacinth, sorting her marbles.

“I’m not,” Sanaam said. “I would’ve been at the time, but I missed it.” He laughed weakly. “So I get how frustrating it is, Maggie. We both do. We’re not mad.”

Maggie grinned at him. “Okay. School is okay, but it’s hard. Seth says I haven’t internalized that when other people aren’t as smart as me, it’s not on purpose. As… as educated as me,” she corrected herself. “‘Smart’ is different.”

“Can I come with you next time?” Sanaam said, smiling.

Maggie’s grin dissolved into a wince. “Ah, geez, Dad. I like you and everything, but… I’m not good at school yet. I’m embarrassed. Could you wait until fall? I’ll feel better about it then.”

“Oh, I suppose.” He fingered the ring of sending on his left hand. He might just have the General wire him a report after she visited. If she would agree to indulge his curiosity.

“Could you tell Mom to lay off for a little while too?” Maggie said. “I know she wants to, but I don’t want her to do it when I’d notice her. She’d make me nervous and I’d screw up.”

“Your mother already knows,” Sanaam said. “I think you probably won’t catch her, not yet, but if you do, try not to let on.”

“I guess it would annoy her if I just said I could see her,” Maggie allowed. She grinned again. “What was her present?”

Sanaam stood up. “Damn it, I’ve forgotten to give it to her! It’s a coconut monkey head.”

“Those three words do not go together in any way that makes sense,” Hyacinth noted.

“Yes they do!” He was wandering back towards the stairs, and he paused before he hit the invisible baby gate. “Well, no, they don’t, but if I show it to you, you’ll see what I mean. It holds thirty-two ounces and you’re supposed to drink fancy drinks out of it. The kind with fifteen different kinds of fruit and a bird of paradise impaled on a cocktail sword. You can make lots of things out of coconut. I bought some new salad bowls for the house, and a tea set…”

“Isn’t my lovely new makeup box with the hibiscus painted on it a coconut?” Ann said.

“Your ears must be burning, Lu,” Calliope said. Erik snickered.

“Indeed it is!” Sanaam said. “They’re an extremely versatile and environmentally friendly resource!”

Hyacinth smirked. “This is the coffee mugs all over again, isn’t it?”

Sanaam’s expression twisted. “See here, Miss Hyacinth! The coconut woman is very friendly, she makes everything by hand, and she’s putting her daughter through college in the ILV! Do you not want a non-metal tea set, new salad bowls or a Xinese Chequerboard just because I got them all in the same place?”

“The… board?” Erik managed, staring at it. It was either magic or a coconut three feet wide and two inches thick!

“The board is palm wood, the marbles are coconut, and they are all handmade with the proceeds going to a worthy cause!” Sanaam said.

“…Annoying Mom,” Maggie said.

“In part, in part,” Sanaam said. “Now hush.” He stepped over the baby gate. “If I’m careful, maybe I can sneak her present out of there and show you all without waking her…”

He couldn’t, and it was another hour before he came down again.

“Hyacinth, ah, we need a new bed frame,” he said.