Poking, reading, and digging.
If Shaw knew half the rooms she’d been in during Father’s Week, if he knew half the codes she’d stolen, he wouldn’t be so blasé about inviting her into the compound.
Even her father didn’t know that she could get into his and the governor’s offices any time she damn well pleased, even without forcing the lock. She could even break into the holding cells and knew her way around the tunnels underneath the compound.
That was before she turned fourteen, before her mother gave her Our Lady of Light. Running the hospital and meeting with her advisors had taken up much of her time. When she wasn’t busy with the hospital or attending school, she’d been accompanying her mother to Saxony High Council meetings and her Aunt Georgina to New Bristol High Council meetings. She had to learn as much as she could before taking Georgina’s spot at sixteen.
It had angered her father that she was too busy to spend more than a day or two with him during Father’s Week. He could hardly complain, though. When her mother was fourteen, she’d assumed responsibility for the entire Randolph family, for Lila’s grandmother had passed suddenly during childbirth, leaving all responsibility on her mother’s shoulders.
He’d gritted his teeth every time Lila sent a hurried message to her advisors, always working to shape the direction of the hospital. He wasn’t angry that she was distracted. He’d been proud of her work, but he frequently despaired that she was missing her youth. It was likely the only reason why he allowed her to penetrate Bullstow so often. It was the only chance she got to be a stupid, reckless child.
Lila wandered away from her father toward a mass of brightly colored netting, strung out across a ring of trees and sunk posts nearly thirty meters in diameter at the edge of the park. It was as if an egg sac full of spiders had burst apart in the center, making a series of horizontal webs with thick, velvety strands, weaving holes in the middle. A mass of children already climbed upon them, using the holes to climb up to a higher level, sometimes slipping through a higher hole to fall on the netting below, crouching and bouncing as though it were some sort of trampoline. Some used the netting to climb up to the top branches of the trees, then jumped and rolled down the top layers of netting, toppling their friends.
Lila crept near and grabbed the netting, examining it, a bit jealous that she didn’t have something similar in her militia’s gym. Perhaps she’d send someone out to copy it.
“I don’t mean to be biased, but I don’t think any group will ever top Shiloh’s creation,” her father said. “Did you know he came up with the winning proposal? The kids were getting into trouble for climbing the trees, and now they can do it safely. They’d also studied spiders in their science classes and had become obsessed with the horrid things.”
“Yes, I know he came up with the idea.” She chuckled. “You haven’t shut up about it all summer.”
“The boys had quite a bit of fun learning how to weave the nets. They must have made a dozen prototypes. Shiloh even taught me how to do it.” He crouched down and pointed to the two bottom layers. “Those are his. He weaved the strongest nets, so they put his on the bottom. Even the Massons have even been in for a look. They’ve gotten permission to use the idea for a new line of playground equipment.”
“Any of that money going to Shiloh?”
“You think like a chairwoman too much,” he chided. “The seniors decided their portion of the profits should go toward funding swings and slides for the poorer classes. The local senates even agreed to install the equipment during Volunteer Month, and the Massons are giving it to us at cost. It’s too bad the poorer children can’t have something like this in their playgrounds, but it requires a level of supervision that the poorer classes don’t enjoy.”
Lila turned and eyed the senators underneath the shade trees, watching the children play, Senator Dubois among them.
Lila nudged her father, and the pair strolled toward him. The senator inclined his head in greeting, barely taking his eyes off the raw-faced two-year-old on his lap, rubbing the little boy’s back as he hiccupped at the end of his crying fit. Dubois had always had a penchant for distraught toddlers, able to set them to rights before they entered into a full-blown meltdown. Other senators constantly bugged him for tips or, in their frustration, simply handed off their children and watched him work.
He’d be an amazing father once he and Jewel finally conceived.
“What happened to this little one?” her father asked.
“He smooshed his finger in the swing set chain.” Dubois wrapped his hand around the boy’s fist and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Gabriel will be okay. It’s not broken, and he likes the swings too much to stay away. Don’t you?”
Gabriel nodded and buried his face in Dubois’s neck, turning shy.
“Whose is he?”
“I’m actually related to this one. Gabriel is my cousin’s boy. Unfortunately, Bilsby is delayed in Beaulac. He’ll be here tomorrow morning. I get to play the favorite uncle until then.” A happy smile lit up Dubois’s face.
“You’ll have your own soon enough. Jewel is too enamored of you to stop trying so easily. She’ll go to the doctors soon and do what she must.”
Dubois nodded, a forced smile on his face.
Lila knew what he would not say. Even though he’d been fertility tested and cleared before his appointment as a senate intern, he feared that he was the reason for the couple’s childless state. Randolph women were known to conceive quickly and easily when they wanted, as were the women of the Hardwicke clan, Jewel’s family on her father’s side.
It was likely why he hadn’t taken other lovers. He feared he’d be found out.
“After my hands heal up, you should borrow Jewel’s Firefly,” Lila suggested. “We could go on a ride somewhere.”
Dubois’s face lit up again. “Gods, it’s been months since we’ve done that.”
Lila and her father chatted with Dubois for a few more moments, then drifted among the children. Lila managed to catch up with a few of her half-siblings, and she even saw Shiloh in the mix, wrangling a four-year-old over his shoulder before tossing him back into the netting.
He’d grown bigger since she saw him last, and begun filling out his clothes. He wasn’t nearly as large as Pax, but taller than most. Unlike Pax, he’d started spending more and more time in the gym, widening his shoulders and thickening his legs with rep after rep. It was a pastime of Bullstow senate interns, and a religion to those ambitious enough to enter the heir carousel early.
Clearly, Shiloh hoped to make his first match when the season began next month.