We might not have been close. Not quite ten years younger than I am, the blood ties are not really that near. After his grandmother’s mother died, his great grandfather married again to a younger woman – my grandmother. He is thus my half-aunt’s grandson. But cousin really is easier to say.
However, chance had other things in mind, it seems. We both arrived in Lithmore about the same time, Jei and I. Myself as the new Grand Magnate, and he only recently Count of Endridge after the death of his father. I had met him before when he visited family in Vavard, but the age difference really seems to matter more when it puts your cousin as a less than ten year old boy. So many years later, we fell into an easy friendship, each glad to know someone else in the big city.
I thought it only right to speak of my cousin now, this early in my tale, because of all of my relationships in Lithmore, it has been a constant. So many others have come and gone, but he was my first friend in the new city and counts among them still. With ups and downs, but generally towards the stronger.
In truth, it really needs make sense to no one but us. I buy him tea and cake and, in return, he allows me to buy him tea and cake. We tease one another mercilessly. I grant as little concern to loaning him great amounts of coin as I do to putting my life in his hands. We don’t keep secrets from one another on any great scale. No one else seems to understand it, but it works for us.
That is perhaps the crux of Jei. He is a good man. Accept that he is not any other man and you can appreciate what he is. Those who say he has no sense of humor simply do not understand it – and I cannot blame them, for I often do not. His methods are often not expected or appreciated, but behind them is just what he thinks right and necessary. His wedding- my goodness, his wedding. It seemed a farce. Nagaita and he were trading insults- I don’t know how many times he mentioned burying her in the flower gardens now that all her gold was his. But it wasn’t my wedding and they were happy. And he did love her; losing her to bandits was nearly the end of him. How any of it seemed to me or anyone else never mattered. Jei is Jei and, I can only assume, will continue to be so.
And I value him and his friendship I think more than he realises.
