The next morning Sabrina woke to find Mara curled up on the other side of her bed, with Tristan occupying the space between them, his head pillowed on Mara's arm and his back legs pushed up against Sabrina's hip. Sabrina swallowed a flash of jealousy at how quickly and completely the cat had taken to the Queen and shifted her weight to a more comfortable position. Tristan lifted his head and blinked sleepily at her, then gave a soft, interrogative "Rrr?"
"Social climber," she whispered to him, smiling. She ran a finger along his hind paw, and he reacted immediately, coiling up and springing to his feet to attack her still-moving finger. They played for a while, until Sabrina realized they had awakened Mara.
"I like your latest protégée," Mara yawned. "I will have to see about importing some more of them."
"Marie wants a kitten," Sabrina remarked. "Your household's going to be worried about you."
"No," Mara said, "I often sleep in the nursery when I've been away awhile."
Sabrina chuckled as Mara slid off the far side of the bed. "Well, if I'm to be Ford's little sister, I guess that does make me your adopted daughter."
"I like that," Mara said. "I have a breakfast appointment with Rassir, but if I don't see you today, I'll stop by again tonight. Get some rest, Sabrina. And...please don't fret about anything I said to you last night. I did not intend to reproach you. I must have been more tired than I realized."
"It was good to clear the air," Sabrina said. "I'm sorry if I hurt you with anything I said."
"Truth between friends is always the best course in the long term," Mara replied. "Have a good day, my friend."
"Don't work too hard!" Sabrina called after her.
——————————
The days quickly settled into a pattern. Sabrina saw Mara in the morning, usually for breakfast, then attended to her own business until lunch, which she nearly always ate with one of her other friends. It was usually Aurora after she returned from visiting her parents; they seemed to have a lot to talk about, exchanging stories of their own and Scotty and Ford's youths. Sabrina found herself intrigued by Aurora's view of the years she had been away. It was odd, seeing from the perspective of someone who had only known Mara in the context of an authority figure and wise parent. Sabrina tried to adjust her own perceptions, but the image of the lost girl she'd first met, and all the stages Mara had grown through until the Regency, refused to be supplanted. Still, she thought, she had to keep trying, or she would never be able to build a relationship with the person Mara was now.
Afternoons were devoted to what Sabrina thought of as her re-assimilation. Currently that meant making arrangements for swearing a new Oath of Service and being officially presented to the court. She and Mara had agreed to postpone any celebrations until Scotty's return, or at least until his fate was settled, one way or another. They had also agreed that Sabrina ought to thoroughly familiarize herself with Praxatillus' recent history and current status, so that she would know what she was getting into by entering the Queen's service again.
And that was another point. No one seemed certain what this new service would entail. Sabrina had refused all offers of positions in the government or civil service, and there were no open positions in Her Majesty's Household at the moment. Sabrina had no objections to swearing a generalized oath, since she felt committed to Mara no matter her defined responsibilities at any given time, but Mara was hesitant.
"I don't want you taken advantage of, Sabrina," Mara tried to explain over breakfast, on the fourth day since her return. "I want there to be room in your life for you to have a life. Not like last time."
"Mara, I swore a specific oath last time, if you'll remember," Sabrina pointed out. "As your Mistress of the Private Household. It didn't prevent my being railroaded into accepting the Regency. So I don't see what difference it makes if I have a position or not when I swear the oath again."
"The times are different, Sabrina. Praxatillus and I have no such dire needs now. The era that required martyrs is finished. Now I only want happy, well-adjusted subjects with ample leisure time."
Sabrina chuckled. "I don't know if I can reorient myself so radically, Mara."
"Nonsense," Mara said firmly, with a smile. "I can believe that you might need lessons in how to devote yourself to your own amusement and well-being, but I am confident that Niavar will prove an excellent teacher."
Sabrina's smile faded. "He looked so tired last night, Mara. He says it's going well, but—"
"He said the same to me," Mara said. "We have to believe him, Sabrina."
"Yes, we do, because we don't have a choice," Sabrina said, frustrated. "I hate not being able to have real-time conversations with him, or with Tirqwin! He just says what he wants me to hear, and I can't ask him anything!"
Mara sighed. "Shahina is wasted as a communications relay; that is inarguable. I cannot fault them for wanting to reserve that for emergency situations only. We should be grateful for what contact we are permitted. It can't be much longer, Sabrina. Niavar said they had almost finished testing the alterations they made to Scotty's genome. Next they will focus on trying to restore his memories. And that decision will be yours; Tirqwin promised you that."
"I just wish I was there," Sabrina said. "It's hard to make decisions based on evidence I have no way to verify, and to know that I won't know the consequences until it's far too late to do anything about them."
"You have to have trust, Sabrina," Mara said. "Tirqwin would never hold anything back from you, not about this. He wants what is best for Scotty, and for you." A faint smile crossed her face as her eyes grew distant, remembering. "As much as he felt responsible for you, he felt more for Scotty, I think. You were always so strong and so wise, and Tirqwin respected and cherished that about you. But Scotty was younger, more impulsive, but just as committed, just as brave. Tirqwin felt that Scotty needed looking after more than you did. Neither of you had much of a sense of self-preservation, but Scotty tended to flirt with more physical, more spectacular dangers than you did. And every time Scotty did something breathtakingly daring, Tirqwin would see himself trying to break the news of his death to you, and flinch away from it."
"I always thought you and Scotty understood each other on some level that Tirqwin and I just weren't capable of," Sabrina mused.
"Perhaps." Mara thought about it. "But it always seemed to me that I simply gave Scotty the chance to be the strong one. You never needed that from him. He always had to stand back and let you fend for yourself, because you insisted on it."
"You make me sound so cold, Mara. Was I so hard to love?"
"Sabrina, you were impossible not to love. You still are. But you have to admit, you have always been proud of your self-sufficiency, of your self-command. I'm thankful for it; your example taught me what I needed to be a monarch. Yours, and Tirqwin's."
"But what you're saying is, if I wanted to get everybody a really nice present, I should simply collapse into a quivering heap of hysterical goo and let them trip over themselves helping me?"
Mara giggled. It was a sound that brought back so many memories for Sabrina, interrupting her quest to update Mara's image in her mind. But at the same time, Sabrina was aware that Mara didn't often have the chance to relax enough to giggle, and that this, too, was a gift. "Please let me know," Mara gasped after a moment, "when you plan to do so."
"Why? So you can sell tickets?"
That set Mara off again, tears of laughter streaming down her face. "Yes! And also to warn Commander Mukryilla, so you aren't shot on sight as an imposter. Oh, Sabrina. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that. Do you know, I had forgotten your sense of humor?"
"Well, it wasn't much in evidence the last few times you saw me," Sabrina pointed out.
"That is true," Mara said. "There wasn't much laughing during the Regency, and even less immediately afterward."
Sabrina nodded, then smiled a little.
"What?" Mara asked.
"I was remembering on Allyria, when Rassir called me to tell me the peace treaty had been signed. Commander Mukryilla wanted to break the news to Scotty, and I wanted him to be surprised, so I just yelled at him to come to the comm. He came running in, in boxers and a towel, still all wet from his shower. I've always wanted to know what her face looked like when she saw that. But he didn't care, he was just so happy about the peace treaty." She shook her head. "He never let stuff like that faze him. I think you could dress him up in a clown suit, big red nose and all, and drop him in the middle of a commando mission, and he'd carry on as serious as you please."
Mara was biting her lip, trying not to laugh again. "I imagine," she said, in a suspiciously unsteady voice, "that would adversely affect the mission's success nonetheless."
"Nah," Sabrina said, grinning. "The Miahns would be so polite they'd pretend not to notice, and the Praxatillians would simply wonder if they were underdressed for the occasion."
"Ouch! A scathing commentary on our society," Mara said, raising an eyebrow.
"I didn't mean it that way. I like the way things are around here now. So much less formal. So much more efficient. So much more...alive."
Mara nodded. Then her comlink chimed, and she sighed. "I'm about to be late for a meeting with the Council of Ministers. I probably won't see you tonight; we're having a state dinner to honor the High Lord of Fiérsai. I wish we could get this presentation over with, Sabrina, so that you could come to dinners like this."
"I'm in no hurry," Sabrina grinned. "I remember them all too clearly."
"Sabrina, they are not that bad."
"Easy for you to say. You never got stabbed by an assassin in the middle of one."
"Well," Mara tossed over her shoulder as she paused in the doorway, "I can't help it if my state dinners are better organized than yours were."
"You're still a brat, you know that?" Sabrina retorted. Mara's laughter floated back to her.