she

was by no means soon enough, but it halted the arm Marilee had raised to slap her son. The tall woman's face was white with blotches as the muscles drew back over her bones, "Will you say I am no Slade, boy?" she whispered. Her right arm slipped forward so that the fingers of her left hand could knead some of the tension out of it. "I was a Slade before you were conceived, Edward. Don't you ever forget it. Ever."
She looked back at the servants. "Get out of here!" she shouted.
The Housemen scattered down the corridor. There were more of them than Marilee had realized, at least a dozen.
"Edward, come in here for a moment," the woman said. Her voice trembled around expended emotion. Mother and son had been standing near the door to the Trophy Room. Now she opened the door and waved the nervous youth within.
The corridor had skylights and, along the baseboards, glow-strips. The Trophy Room's great window was vivid with ambient light and the sun reflected from the facade of the Hall. Marilee could have chosen to polarize the glazed expanse, but she did not. The light bathed her, and the warmth massaged the shuddering from her muscles.
Marilee looked at her son. He braced himself defiantly, but she was no longer angry. She had assumed that Teddy did not know how soon he was going to die, to be killed like his father. Now Marilee realized that the youth was not a fool and not too young to recognize that Beverly Dyson had made murder an instrument of policy. Edward was keeping up the appearances of the world in which his father had raised him to believe. The youth did so for the same reason that a drowning man finally breathes the water that will kill him: there is nothing else to do.
"Edward,"