Laura left the room and with an immense effort of will Ledaal Kayoba pulled himself together he had babbled at her, she had tried to help, he felt inadequate doubly so in the face of her genuine compassion. He wasn't a man who had ever dealt well with emotion he never had he hid from it behind the mask of the scholar the teacher the stereotypical Ledaal, but things happened which got past all that and he couldn't deal well with those. Two had wounded him deeply the first had been the gang rape of little Mouse at his primary school and now the death of his young son, Kayallis but not just that the casual way that woman had mentioned it in passing as if it had not mattered in a letter which had been mostly about marrying her idiot brother Moraka off to Laura.
Kayoba fumed, the feckless idiot was unmarried because he was so down right self obsessed and foolish and this was so generally known that even the lowest ranked patrician family would baulk at an alliance which would be sure to bankrupt them, besmirch their reputation and still manage look hurt and confused when the matter was mentioned. Why the dragons had exalted him Kayoba had no idea but perhaps even the great dragons have off days. Kayoba smiled at his very heretical joke, even more amazing was that his sister, who was so obsessed with status, should make such allowances for him when her father and the rest of her own patrician family had distanced themselves form him if not actually disowned the fool.
Kayoba found anger helped he would write all this down and when he had got it straight in his head he would go and talk to Laura she would understand and perhaps……
Ginger
