Profession

Married!

"It was pretty intimidating," I said to Jon the next day. We were staying in New Babylon a few days, in a hotel room with a terrace that overlooked the city. "He looks quite like the sculpture of him--strong nose, curly hair and beard. He was shorter than I'd expected, around the height of Grandpa Damian, but maybe I expected him to literally live up to his reputation. Nobody's that big."

"What happened?" Jon asked, making a face as we tried the local date wine for the first time. I wasn't thrilled either. It was better on the island.

"I declared my bracelet, but they couldn't have been less interested. They actually said that they would kill me, armor or not, if I made a hostile move, and I completely believed them. I had no intention of doing that anyway, but I took it off anyway. I'm so glad Uncle Tony fixed it again. We waited, but not long, about five minutes. Just enough time for us to be impressed, not to get restless. He came in, wearing a version of the clothes he would have worn in his first life, and a crown that is a shorter version of the current emperor's. He's the only Returned king to get that honor; even Darius the Great doesn't get one. He sat on the throne, we were introduced, and he gave us permission to start the presentation. It took about a half hour, then we spent the next four hours answering his questions. He had an advisor with him, a modern woman, who opened lines of questioning that he explored. It was tough. He's very thorough and has an excellent grasp of modern buildings. Some things we didn't know and had to quickly research. Some things we were open to adjusting to his specifications or looking into his suggestions. But in the end, he gave us the permission we need to purchase the land for both of the buildings I want and to start lining up the contractors." I passed over my authority to do business. The pups leaned in to look, too.

"What's this, honey?" he asked.

"It's my brand new seal ring. Gold setting, the cylinder is carved agate. On official documents, I run it across a special ink pad and then roll it over the document, signing over part of the image. They don't do official business electronically."

"Wow. What's the image?"

"It has Cyrus' name and titles in cuneiform as the grantor of the seal, and a winged lion between two palm trees. He has a whole box of them, all different images on the seals. Everybody who is chosen to work outside the grounds of the ancient complex gets one from him. If you work on part of the palace complex, you get one from the emperor you're working for; Grandma Alex has one. I got to roll it through clay in the traditional manner to register it officially. It's more symbolic than anything; I signed the contracts with it and got a copy that we can show everybody we need to to get this thing going."

"Wait. I thought you were just going to build one building, like in London."

"I was, but I've always wanted to have two. One close by Uncle Tony's facility, like in London, then a second tower farther away. Taller and heavier, to provide a counterbalance to the larger installation. Cyrus really liked the idea and changed the allotments for Tony's project to accommodate it all. The smaller tower will be just slightly off center and about a half mile away from the gate to the imperial complex. Then there will be Uncle Tony's R & D center, then a substantial green belt, then my bigger tower. Like my other residential projects, the first couple of floors will have useful businesses, like a grocery, which helps the whole area out. It's good to have choices. Then residences for the rest of the tower. We didn't even have to make any aesthetic changes! And the distance from the imperial complex means that he gave us the ok to make it even a little bigger and taller than I'd hoped for."

This really was a triumph for me, and Jon took me and the pups out to dinner at a wonderful restaurant he'd heard about (having had the concierge at the hotel check with them to make sure they understood about the pups' special nature), and we spent the evening in the souk, sampling sweets and Jon bought two beautiful small brooches, a well-crafted though plain dagger, and a pot of a rare type of lavender, gifts for my grandmother, great aunt, and Menalippe, respectively. The next day we sailed for Athens.