Carnival-SA Read Online Free

provided a supremely adequate excuse for a midafternoon siesta. During more than two-thirds of the year, it was followed by the afternoon rains, which signaled the city’s reawakening for the evening round of business.
    Lesa cheated and let Julian stay with her while she napped. Walter, the big khir that usually slept in her rooms, was nowhere in evidence—probably off with Katya—and Julian at six and a half local years was of the age when naps were an abomination before the god of men. He sat up at Lesa’s terminal while she flopped across the bed and closed her eyes. She’d seen the problem he was working. He said it was a minor modification of House’s program, though Lesa didn’t have the skills to even read it, let alone solve it, but Julian was so thoroughly engaged that she let him keep tapping away as she dozed, lulled by the ticking of the interface.
    That sound blended into the patter of the rain on her balcony so that she didn’t rouse until House pinged her. She opened her eyes on yellow walls shifting with violent sunlight—entirely unlike the gray skies outside—and winced. “House, dial it down, please.”
    The light dimmed, the walls and ceiling filling with the images of wind-rustled leaves and vines. She stretched and rubbed her eyes. “Hello, Mom,” Julian said without looking up from the monitors. “Did you sleep well?”
    She rubbed at her eyes and padded across the carpetplant to the wardrobe. “Too well,” she said. “I’m late. Save your work, Julian, and go eat.”
    “Mom—”
    She paused, a fistful of patterned sylk drawn out into the light, and turned to stare at the back of his head.
    “You know you can’t stay down here while I’m gone.”
    His shoulders drooped, but his hand passed quickly over the save light, and he powered the terminal down before sliding, monkeylike, out of the chair. It was a little too tall for him, so he had hooked his toes over a brace while he worked, and the disentangling turned him into a study in conflicted angles. “All right,” he said, and came to hug her before vanishing through the door, gone before it had entirely irised open.
    Lesa dressed for business in the warmth of the evening; the rain would be over before she left. She chose a tailored wrap skirt and the sylk blouse, and belted her honor over the skirt. Claude could take offense at anything, even if Lesa were of a mind to show up anywhere public unarmed. And the skirt would be cool enough; she couldn’t face trousers after the rain, with the hottest part of the year beginning. Downstairs, she passed Xavier in the foyer, coming in from the decorating. Lesa had taken her own turn earlier in the day. At least it was better than pulling the flowers down, which was the part she truly hated. She told House she was leaving, and asked it to summon a car. The vehicle was waiting by the time she reached the end of the alley that fronted Pretoria house; a diplomatic groundcar with a male driver, his street license prominently displayed on his shoulder—marking a gentle male, rather than a stud like Xavier. He smiled as she slid in. “Government center?”
    “Singapore house,” she said. “I have a dinner invitation.”
    He drove carefully, politely, through the rain-flooded streets. Water peeled away under the groundcar’s tires on long plumes, but the only people outside during cloudover were one or two employed stud males with street licenses hurrying back to their households or dormitories for dinner, and the householders on their porches under umbrella-covered tables, sipping drinks and enjoying the brief cooling. The household Claude Singapore shared with her wife, Maiju Montevideo, was on the seaward side of the city, overlooking the broad, smooth bay. By the time Lesa arrived, the clouds had peeled back from the tops of Penthesilea’s storied towers. The rays of the westering sun penetrated, sparking color off the ocean, brightening it from gray to the usual ideal blue.
    Lesa