Liam discovered within the first half hour that neither of his siblings had inherited his preferred approach to social gatherings.
Ayla had vanished into the crowd almost immediately.
Not literally. Liam could still see her from where he stood near one of the tall windows overlooking the illuminated gardens, but she had somehow accumulated four people around her within ten minutes and now appeared to be discussing foreign universities with a young noblewoman from one of Nuria's western houses as though they had known each other for years.
Samuel was worse.
He had begun the evening beside Liam.
Then someone mentioned the reconstruction of Deira's old transit network.
Samuel disappeared.
Liam found him twenty minutes later talking animatedly with two provincial representatives, one engineer, and a parliamentary secretary old enough to be his grandfather about whether modern ether transport had become too dependent on centralized networks.
