White Knight Hall, Zaichaer
45th of Searing, Year 124 of Steel
45th of Searing, Year 124 of Steel
Lucrece insisted upon the odd family dinner and Eitan was only too happy to indulge her as he indulged her in everything. Sometimes, though, the best laid plans of mice and men and beautiful wives went awry. Stefan had sent word that he couldn't make it, and Eitan assured him all was well. The man couldn't relax sometimes and he didn't want to rile him up with the sort of joke that Brenner would have taken in stride. They were brothers, yes, but not the same man by any stretch of the imagination. He wondered whether his firstborn son, another Brenner, would grow up to be anything like his namesake. In many ways, Eitan hoped so. In secret ways, he hoped not. He tried not to feel guilty for those ways in which he hoped not. They had Brenner's metallic skeleton in the Windworks, and he imagined someday Stefan would figure out how to bring him back. Indeed, Eitan had Stechpalme, Storlock, and other doctors and Grymalka and necromantic geniuses working on the problem of layering flesh upon those bones and recalling a soul from fell Wraedan's grasp, but...
He took a sip of his drink.
Eitan sat upon the balcony with a view to the entrance to the property. They were on the ground now—no reason to expend energy to be aloft—and he, at least, had made it home early. He had changed out of his uniform and into something civilian, albeit no less sharp for that.
He had his drink. He had everything. He just didn't have a Dornkirk to make him feel as though the world made sense. It was on a small scale, of course. At some point, Stefan would return, and Eitan could rest, knowing the Dornkirks were safe in his home. He was glad Reiner was coming. While he was a newcomer to the Dornkirk-Angevin axis of power, Eitan felt they had some things that weren't necessarily in common but lent themselves to a simpatico.
Reiner hadn't been raised in the class to which his children would be raised. Eitan had been his father's non-human peccadillo, proof that he didn't leave others to deal with his messes, but not his heir, at least until the will had come to light. He was glad the younger Dornkirk had Kämpfer to keep an eye out for him, though he got the vague sense that Kämpfer might be taking a bit of advantage of him, whether for his name or his biddable nature—or both.
Well, Eitan wasn't going to stop trying to befriend him. For Brenner, for Stefan, for his own young son with a Dornkirk name and the Angevin surname. And for himself, too. There were few people he trusted without question, and two of them were Dornkirks—Stefan and Delia. He wanted Reiner to be among them.
When a figure passed the gate and its attendants, Eitan stood and squinted. Indeed, it was Reiner.
"Psst," he stage whispered when Reiner was near enough to hear. He showed him his drink. "Get inside and get up here. There's time for a drink or three before dinner!"
