It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. -- P. G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

On the day of the festival Shizuki remained blissfully unaware of the dramatic events unfolding in other parts of the capital. He had his own equally dramatic events to contend with, even if they were slightly less likely to result in violence. For the first time in his life he had the opportunity to speak to his biological father.

It was very strange how someone could hope for something for years then discover once they got it that it really wasn't that important to them after all. Shizuki had wondered all his life what his father was like. Now that he had the chance to meet him, he found he was reluctant to find out.

After Ilaran told him about Koyuki's arrival Shizuki went to Siarvin for advice. If anyone would know what to do in a situation like this, surely it would be Siarvin. Like most children Shizuki couldn't quite comprehend the idea of their parent -- even if, as in this case, they weren't actually related -- being faced with anything they didn't know how to handle. Yes, Shizuki knew that Siarvin could be wrong sometimes. He wasn't aware of the full details of how his father had ended up married to someone as vile as Haliran. All he knew was that somehow she'd tricked him. Even so he was used to thinking of Siarvin as someone who could do almost anything he wanted to. So of course he would know the best course of action.

Siarvin just looked confused when he heard Shizuki's -- admittedly not easy to explain -- worries. "But I thought you wanted to meet your real father."

You're my real father, Shizuki wanted to say. This Koyuki person, whoever he was, could never really be his father. He was a stranger who happened to share Shizuki's blood. He hadn't protected him from Haliran or raised him for five hundred years. Siarvin had, so as far as he was concerned Siarvin was his real father.

But how could he put all that into words? It barely made any sense to him when he tried to sort it out in his mind.

"I do want to meet him," he said slowly, "but I... I'm scared."

Until that moment he hadn't fully realised it was fear that made him so uncertain about this meeting.

Siarvin nodded silently. He didn't ask why Shizuki was scared. Which was just as well, because Shizuki couldn't possibly have explained it. "You don't have to meet him, you know. At least not yet. You can wait until you're older."

That wasn't quite as comforting as he meant it to be. Shizuki, like most children, had heard variants of "wait until you're older" or "you can do this when you're older" far too many times to like hearing it again. Usually it was the excuse adults used to get out of awkward situations, like that time Shizuki spent a whole month trying to make the head cook give him dessert before dinner. He recognised that this wasn't exactly the same use of the phrase, but he still disliked hearing it.

"I'm going to see him," he announced with the determination of someone who'd change their mind if they gave themselves a minute to think about it.

Siarvin looked worried. He opened his mouth to say something, but Shizuki left before hearing whatever it was he meant to say.

The city was a mass of people. A small boy would never have been able to get through the streets. Luckily Shizuki's snake form could sense where large groups of people were, and he instinctively avoided them.

On any other day a snake would never have been able to get into a hotel without being spotted. People tended to have strong opinions about reptiles in their rooms, and in the capital at least a hotel's security was usually the most stringent outside of a bank's or the palaces'.

Shizuki couldn't fathom why. It wasn't as if there was anything really important in hotels; only a crowd of rude, noisy tourists. They hardly needed to be guarded. It was just yet another of the oddities of how adults' minds worked.

When he slithered through the gaps in the hotel fence he expected an alarm to sound. When he slipped through the open kitchen window he expected an outburst of screams and panic. Nothing happened. The kitchen was empty. He tasted the air to make sure no one was hidden behind a corner somewhere. If he'd been in his immortal form he would have pouted. The cooks were gone, and they didn't even have the decency to leave food lying around on a convenient worktop.

He shapeshifted back into a young boy to open the kitchen door. After a minute's thought he stayed in that form as he crept upstairs. A boy would cause less panic than a snake.

Even in this form he could sense other people's presence from a good distance away. It wasn't quite smelling them and it was very little like hearing them. He couldn't explain how it worked, but he'd been able to do it all his life. That was one of the most useful things he'd inherited from his biological father. Normally he used it to keep an eye on where Haliran was without having to be in the same building as her. Today he used it for tracking down Koyuki. There were a few other guests in the hotel, but most of them "smelled" like normal immortals. He instinctively recognised which of them was a fellow snake spirit and followed that "scent".

This led him to a door at the end of a hallway at the very back of the hotel. It was one of the most out-of-the-way places in the whole building. Shizuki darted his tongue out make sure his senses hadn't led him astray. One of the more unsettling -- for other people -- parts of his heritage was that he still kept snake-like behaviours while in his immortal form. That included a forked tongue which he could and did use to taste the air just like a real snake.

What he sensed confirmed what he had already thought: another snake spirit was in the room behind this door.

Now that he was here he wanted nothing more than to run away. Instead he slowly raised his hand. Before his courage could desert him he rapped sharply on the door. It swung open so quickly that the room's occupant could only have been waiting to open it.

That might have alarmed Shizuki more if he wasn't so taken aback by the man's appearance. This couldn't be his father! Why, he was at least a millennia younger[1] than Ilaran! And he looked... well, normal. Shizuki had always expected his biological father to look as distinctly snake-like as he himself did. Logically he knew shapeshifters like him eventually learnt to look fully immortal without any animal traits. Siarvin had told him once that both he and Ilaran were eagle immortals, yet neither of them had feathers in their everyday appearances. There should have been nothing surprising about this man's lack of scales, yet somehow Shizuki felt disappointed and bewildered.

Silence reigned for several long, uncomfortable moments. At last the man spoke. "Are you... Shizuki? Is that you?"

No, Saoridhlém is full of half-snake spirits. I'm a random stranger who decided to visit, Shizuki thought. He stopped himself before actually saying it. Instead he nodded mutely. What was there to say? How was he supposed to act in a situation like this?

There was another long and awkward silence. Shizuki broke it this time. "Are you Mr. Koyuki?"

In hindsight perhaps he should have used a less formal form of address. But Ilaran hadn't told him what Koyuki's surname was, and it seemed rude to only use his first name.

When Koyuki nodded Shizuki said, "I thought you were older."

His father (what a very strange thought) winced. "Er, yes. I suppose you would think that."

Years of life in Haliran's house had taught Shizuki how to tell when he was skirting dangerously close to an unpleasant topic. He couldn't quite see how his biological father's age was one of the things to avoid, but he wasn't going to ask.

"Come in," Koyuki said, apparently only just realising they were still standing at the door. Adults. Shizuki had been well aware of that the whole time, and had been starting to wonder if his father intended to let him in at all. "I suppose you've started school now?"

Shizuki shook his head. "Father teaches me at home." He realised that might sound tactless given the present company and amended it to, "My adopted father."

An odd look, somewhere between guilty and embarrassed, crossed Koyuki's face. "...That's good," he said, obviously more for the sake of saying something than because he wanted to answer. "You've never been to Seroyawa, have you?"

Shizuki shook his head. "Haliran won't let me leave the house."

He left out the fact he never paid any attention to what she wanted. Him being here at all showed that. Koyuki scowled.

"I see she hasn't changed," he said with surprising bitterness. Shizuki had always assumed he had worked for Haliran willingly. "Has she ever tried to harm you?"

This would probably not be a good time to say she had once planned to kill him. "Father stops her."

There was that strange look again. Every word of this conversation seemed to stray close to dangerous territory. In an attempt to find something safer to talk about, Shizuki said, "What's Seroyawa like?"

Finally, a subject that wouldn't involve dodging things that mustn't be spoken about or even mentioned. Koyuki happily answered Shizuki's questions about his home, his village, and his job as a librarian. The rest of the visit passed much less stressfully than Shizuki had expected.

It was late afternoon when Shizuki left. He had some errands to run for one of his half-sisters before returning home. It took him almost three hours to find a shop that wasn't closed for the festival and still had some of her favourite moyin[2] sweets. By the time he got home it was night. Most people were at their chosen place to watch the comets. Why they bothered was a mystery. Shizuki could see the flashes of light darting through the sky without having to fight dozens of other people over a seat on a roof.

Haliran was supposed to still be at the palace. Shizuki's half-siblings were at their friends' houses. Only Siarvin and the servants should be at home. That was why it was such a horrible shock when he rounded the street corner and saw Haliran walk out of the manor gates.

Shizuki shifted back into his snake form and flung himself under the hedge beside the pavement. He lay there until he was sure Haliran wasn't coming his way. He raised his head to watch her leave. Strange. She was heading back towards the palace. He knew she'd already been there. Why had she come back?

He slithered along until he reached the metal fence separating his mother's manor from the street. In a trice he dived between the bars and raced towards Siarvin's house.

He found Siarvin sorting through documents he'd "borrowed" from Haliran's records over the years. The grim look on his face and the way his hands shook showed something had gone wrong somewhere.

Shizuki changed back into his normal appearance. When he was with Koyuki he'd used his non-snake-like immortal form. He'd needed to be understood then, even though it gave him a headache and left him feeling tired. Now he had no need of that form and went back to his default appearance. Siarvin could understand him even with his fangs and forked tongue.

"I saw her now," he said, knowing there was no need to say who he meant.

His father nodded. "Something happened at the palace. She was gloating about blackmailing Princess Abihira."

It took Shizuki a minute to make the connection. "So Ilaran can't report her?"

"He can," Siarvin said grimly, "but now Haliran can force Abihira to give false evidence in her favour."