The Serrano Succession by Elizabeth Moon Page B

Miranda thought.
     
    "He's trying." Miranda dropped her voice, mimicking Harlis's. "'Oh, you'll always be welcome, Miranda, of course. You'll always have a place. But it was family property, not Bunny's alone.' As if I would go there to lurk in the apartment he so generously offered, while he strides about pretending to be lord of the manor!"
     
    Cecelia forbore to say that he would be the lord, and no pretense, if he had his way. "And what are you doing about it—I assume you have some plan."
     
    "Yes. But I haven't decided . . . it would mean tearing up much that Bunny built . . . family relationships, friendships, alliances. I can call on my family—" Of the founding Families, Miranda's had been known first for information management, and later for the development and manufacture of a variety of devices that were to the ordinary computer as a top event horse was to a child's pony.
     
    "But it's—it was Bunny's, and it's rightfully yours—" Inheritance had been the one immutable aspect of law; concentration of assets within a Family, the foundation of Family power. Angry as Cecelia had been with her sister for questioning her will, she knew that if she had left her assets within the family, even to a distant relative, the will would not have been challenged.
     
    "Cece—you don't understand how threadbare the fabric has become, since you exposed Kemtre and Lorenza. I suppose it had begun before, but that's when it became obvious." Miranda paused, frowning a bit in thought. "Bunny and I, and Kevil, were holding an alliance of Families by the skin of our teeth. All those years of social connections, business connections, and Kevil's legal skills and intuition. I swear he knew more about the ragged skeletons in Family closets than anyone had ever guessed. Bunny would talk them around, and I would smile and be gracious and work through the wives and mistresses. We were holding it together, just, but the crises kept knocking it out of balance. Kemtre's abdication, that Patchcock mess—the scare about bad rejuvenation drugs, and the Morelline/Conselline Family collapse, and then Brun's abduction . . ." Her voice trailed away.
     
    "And I went back to Rotterdam to play with horses," Cecelia said.
     
    "Yes. I understand it, in a way. Venezia Morrelline had her pottery, and you had horses, and Kata Saenz had her research. Most people do have their private interests, and that, after all, is what a good political system is supposed to do—leave you free to do what you are best at, whatever it is. People want to do the work they love, marry and have children, have some fun. But if too many people do that, Cecelia, it leaves gaps for people who want power for its own sake, and who may use it in ways that later degrade your life."
     
    Like Bunny using Fleet resources as if they were personal, to rescue Brun. She didn't say that; she knew that Miranda knew what people thought. "How is Kevil?" she asked instead.
     
    "Alive." From her tone, Cecelia couldn't tell if Miranda were pleased about that or not. Then she sighed. "I can't wish Kevil dead, only Bunny alive as well. Kevil was badly hurt—days in the regen tank, and then the head injury—he's still not himself. He may never be, the doctors say. And without Bunny—or me, if I could only find a way—he doesn't have the backing to do what he did for us before."
     
    "I should visit him," Cecelia said.
     
    "Yes, you should. You should tell him what you told me, with all the names you know. He might know something useful, something that would give us leverage."
     
    "And Brun?"
     
    "Brun . . . has a crazy notion of changing her identity. Going to the Guernesi and getting a rejuv and biosculpt that will make her a new person from the bones out. I think she got the idea from the prince's clones."
     
    "She doesn't want the children," Cecelia said, not asking.
     
    "Would you?" Miranda shivered, then sighed. "No, she doesn't want them. I don't want them myself,