Chapter 401 - 400: Nine Months
Location:Seven Peaks — Residential Quarter, Diplomatic Office
Date/Time:TC1854.10.15
The boy had learned to pull himself up.
This was, in Kael’s professional assessment, the most dangerous development in the history of Seven Peaks — more strategically significant than the Federation assault, more tactically complex than the shadowspawn incursion, and more personally threatening than anything the Imperial Court had produced in thirty years of political maneuvering.
Tianlei had discovered verticality.
He’d been crawling for weeks — the military-grade crawl of an infant who treated horizontal distance as a personal challenge. Across the room. Under the table. Behind the chair where Kael kept his diplomatic correspondence, which Tianlei had attempted to eat on three separate occasions, and which Kael now stored on a shelf the boy couldn’t reach. Couldn’t reach while crawling.
Standing changed the calculations.
Kael came into the room at 06:00 — his standard time, the prince’s discipline applied to the father’s schedule — and found Tianlei upright, both hands gripping the edge of the low table, legs trembling with the effort of supporting a body that had been horizontal for nine and a half months and was not entirely convinced about this new arrangement. The boy’s face carried the expression of someone who had committed to a course of action and was now processing the consequences: triumph, uncertainty, and a growing awareness that what goes up has limited options for what comes next.
"Ah," Kael said.
Tianlei looked at him. The triumph intensified. I am tall now. Acknowledge this.
"I see you."
Tianlei released one hand from the table to wave. Physics, which had been indulging him, reasserted its jurisdiction. He wobbled. Grabbed the edge again. Looked offended that gravity had opinions about his achievement.