welcome to the occupation

"Hello, Marius." I shouldn't sound so satisfied, I shouldn't.

"You're alive," says the Vega son, and his tone is complex, sober. He meant to sound more humored, I'm sure.

"Yes, so it seems," I say. I called to tell him something, but now I'm not so sure how to say it, whether to say it. There are other things I want to say, other things I need to ask, and I mull my own silence while watching Eurydice out of the corner of my eye. She needs her hair combed.

"Good," is all Marius says, and perhaps he's got someone with him too.

Silence. I can't remember how long it's been since I spoke to him.

"So what is it?" He asks, after a while, and he's waiting to hear me say something he can turn around against me, to be vengeful for my absence, because he can't say I worry him.

"Jill's having a baby," I say.

Beat. And then, "Think I care?"

I don't say anything, and Marius says, "If it was your kid, you wouldn't sound so damn calm," he concludes, a mote of suspicion making its way into his voice.

"It's not mine," I say, as if I'd never been worried about it. "Can't you use a fucking calendar?"

"Hey, you fucking Brande, don't take a fucking tone with me," says Marius.

Darkly, he adds, "If there's something you ought to tell me, I'd suggest you get to the point."

"She said she's naming it August," I tell him.

Marius Augustus Vega has nothing to say. He's using my own strategies against me, and I patiently allow it.

"She looks pretty far along," I add. I've been letting Eurydice wear her moon brooch during the day, but I have to keep an eye on it to make sure she doesn't start trying to injure herself with it.

"It doesn't matter," Marius finally says.

"Aren't you the one always talking about your blood?"

"Blood's not everything," Marius says, and he sounds less like my cousin and more like the magnate of Vega, that philosopher of war. Most people think the story of Augustus Vega's death is just a rumor, but we in the family know better.

"The woman had the chance to have my son," Marius says. "Now, anything that comes out of her is just another bastard."

I don't say anything. Frankly, I thought this was what he'd say. I can't read anything from his tone, though.

"Plenty of women have probably had my kid," Marius says, and his coldness is deliberate, as if Luciphon had brought down the guillotine on him. "That doesn't make me anybody's father. If she wants a check, give her the lawyer's card, or have her call Shin."

"I've got no designs on talking to her," I tell him, washing my hands of the issue. "It has nothing to do with me."

"Then why are you fucking calling me? Your mother was some kind of whore too, you know."

"I wouldn't know. I never met her." Next, I consider telling Marius the way his mother called me by my father's name and kissed my mouth when Eury and I went to see her in the nunnery, but I'll save that one.

"You can be a real son of a bitch," Marius says, as if it was my fault that he knocked the woman up.

"So you're always saying," I tell him, pointedly. Hopefully my cousin's learning a lesson about taking pleasure in my demise.

Silence.

"How does she look?" He asks.

"Like Jill, but pregnant," I say. If El Caesar Vega wants more, he'll have to go and look at her himself.