He extended his hand; John stared at it in surprise for an instant. That was the greeting among equals. Then he bowed and took it. The impersonal power clamped briefly on his. A servant came forward at Karl’s signal.
“Here,” Karl said. He handed John a cloth-wrapped bundle. Within was a gunbelt and revolver. “This was my father’s. You should have it. This and my name are all that Fate allows me to leave you.”
Thh . . . thank you, sir,” John said.
His eyes prickled, but he fought the feeling down. Why now? Even by Chosen standards, Karl had never been a demonstrative man.
“You are a boy of good character,” Karl said. “If I have ever been less than a father to you, the fault is mine. Your mother and I have parted but for reasons each thinks honorable. Obey your mother; work hard, be disciplined, be brave.”
“Yes sir,” John said.
Karl hesitated for an instant, began to turn away. Then he swallowed and continued: “You will always be welcome among the Chosen, boy, while I live.”
He saluted, fist outstretched. John answered it for the first time—for the last time, he realized, as his father strode away with the same stiff-backed carriage.
“Good-bye, sib,” Gerta Hosten said. She drew him into a brief hug, leaving him speechless at the display of emotion. “Watch your back among the Santies.”
Heinrich clasped hands and thumped him on the shoulder. “The Land’s loss but maybe your gain,” he said. “Come visit sometime, sprout, when you’re rich and famous.”
John watched them leave and took a deep breath. “Good-bye, Maria,” he said to the Protégé nursemaid.
She folded him to her broad bosom. “Good-bye, little master. Call Maria if you ever need her,” she said in her slurred lower-class Landisch.
Her husband bowed and touched John’s hand to his forehead. He was a bear-broad man with grizzled black hair. “I, too, young master. Now, go. Your mother waits for you.”
John did an about-face and began walking towards the gangplank, his face rigid. His mother’s hand took his; he squeezed it for a moment, then freed himself.
No more tears, he thought. That’s for kids. I have to be a man, now.
CHAPTER TWO
1227 A.F.
310 Y.O.
“People are going to think we’re weird,” Jeffrey said, panting.
“Hell, we are weird, Jeff,” John replied.
They fell silent as they raced up the slopes of Signal Hill, past picnicking families and students—it was part of the University Park. The switchbacks were rough enough, but John cut between them whenever there weren’t any flowerbeds on the slopes. At last they stood on the paved summit, amid planters and trees in big pots and sightseers paying twenty-five centimes apiece to look through pivot-mounted binoculars at the famous view over Santander City. Jeffrey threw his hand-weights to a bench and groaned, ducking his head into a fountain and blowing like a grampus before he drank.
John stood, concentrating on ignoring the ache in his right foot, drinking slowly from a water bottle he carried at his waist. Signal Hill was two hundred meters, the highest land in the city and right above a bend in the Santander River. From here he could see most of the capital of the Republic: Capitol Square to the northwest, and the cathedral beyond it; the executive mansion with its pillars and green copper roof off to the east, at the end of embassy row. The Basin District, the ancient beginnings of Santander City, was below the hill in an oxbow curve of the river, and the canal basin was on the south bank, amid the factories and working-class districts. Southward the urban sprawl vanished in haze; northward you could just make out the wooded hills that carried the elite suburbs.
The roar of traffic was muted here, the hissing-spark clatter of streetcars, the underground rumble of the subway, the sound of horses and the increasing number of steamcars, even the burbling roar of the odd gas-engine vehicle. He could smell nothing but hot stone and the cool green smells of the park, also a welcome change from most of the city. The sun was red on the western horizon, still bright up here, but as he watched the streetlights came on. They traced fairy-lantern patterns of light over the rolling cityscape, amidst the mellow golden glow of gaslights and the harsher electric glare along the main streets.