Chapter 2

Lucia, having finished feeding the boys, lifted them out of their chairs, placed them on the floor, and shooed them to their bedroom. Dani placed a plate in front of me along with a glass of orange juice.

“Alone at last,” I said.

“Enjoy it while you can.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Want to tell me what kept you up last night?”

“As I may have told you over dinner, I had a pretty rotten day at the hospital.”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said, “but you’ve had rotten days before.”

“Then I had to sit in on a Council session.”

“So?” he said.

“There were a lot of very long discussions.”

“So?”

“Babe, they don’t just discuss things, they talk them to death. They talk about a topic until they’ve driven it into the ground, run a stake through its heart, and decapitated it. Then they start talking about it all over again.”

“Surely it can’t be that bad,” he said

“Believe me, it is. I don’t know how Father stands it, and he’s been sitting in those meetings longer than I care to think about.”

“What were they talking about?” he said.

“The main subject on the agenda last night revolved around whether or not to issue more residency visas to foreigners.”

“That doesn’t sound too complicated.”

“One would think! Of the twelve members of the Council, about a third think the more people we have living and working here in the Duchy the better, another third see new residents as taking jobs and food away from existing residents, and the rest of them either don’t care or would prefer to maintain the status quo simply because it isthe status quo.”

“So, what happened?” he said. “Did they make a decision?”

“Are you kidding? After an hour of circular discussions and positing the same arguments over and over again, they finally agreed to table the proposal until a later meeting.”

“No shit!”

“No shit. Anyway, you know Father expects me to stand in for him while he’s on his honeymoon, and I have no doubt that he expects me to do so on a permanent basis when he decides that it’s time for him to retire from the scene. Knowing that, I lay in bed last night picturing endless decades of interminable meetings…. It was a very depressing thought, and, unlike counting sheep, it was notan inducement to sleep.”

That made him chuckle.

“Babe,” I said, “it isn’t funny.”

“Of course it is, Marco, and self-pity doesn’t become you. In fact, it’s not even like you, so snap out of it.”

“I guess.”

“No question about it, it just ain’t you. Besides which, you’ve got a full plate today. Your father, who just happens to be il Duca d’Aragoni, is throwing a birthday bash for his three youngest grandchildren.”

“Dani,” I said, “in a little over twenty-four-hundred years, my father has sired several hundred children, who have in turn produced thousands of descendants of their own. Three more aren’t that big of a deal to him.”

“You’d never know that to hear him tell it. Besides, the triplets are the sons of his youngest son.”

“Youngest for now… but not for long. Remember, he and Angelina are getting married in June.”

“True, but they may not be able to have children right away. Don’t forget the five-year gap between active phases.”

That was true. Father and his long-lived direct male descendants, myself included, might well represent the next step in human evolution, but Mother Nature gives and Mother Nature takes away. In simple terms, we only have normal fertility for about six months every five years. Angelina, we had determined, represented the female side of that next step, in that she only became fertile in a similar time frame.

“Yeah,” I said, “and time will tell.”

“In any case, the boys will get a kick out of it.”

“Speaking of the boys,” I said, “are you ever gonna give some serious thought to having offspring of your own?”

“Babe, we’ve had this conversation countless times. My brothers are breeding like rabbits, so the Rosati name isn’t gonna die out any time soon. Besides which, I just don’t feel that particular urge. As far as I’m concerned, the triplets are as much mine as they are yours.”

“No argument there. Tell me again when we’re expected in the park?”

The complex of buildings in which we lived were adjacent to il Castello d’Aragoniand were collectively referred to asil Castello, even though they were several hundred years newer than the nearby medieval castle, which tourists paid a modest fee to tour. The castle complex sat in several acres of parkland and was in turn surrounded by walls, with the city of Aragoni spread out beyond the walls on all sides.