By the end of the twelve hours the Surgeon had allowed, the roquelaure was adamant. Without sight to gauge the change of the light or access to a clock, Jahir couldn’t tell how frequently it reminded him that he was low on reserves, but it felt far, far too often, and it was accompanied by an alarming peak in his cravings. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so hungry, and when the guards unshackled him he fell forward so abruptly they couldn’t catch him in time.
“Pathetic,” the Usurper said. “Astonishing that the former Emperor found him so dangerous. Have his attendant see to him.”
“Yes, Exalted.”
They brought him directly to the bathing chamber without even stripping the blindfold and dropped him on the floor. “Your work,” one of them said. “Find out what’s wrong with it and fix it.”
“Yes, my-betters.”
The scuff of boots, retreating. A pause. And then a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Ambassador?” Oviin said, hushed.
“Oviin-alet,” Jahir whispered. “God and Lady. Please. Food.”
“Food?” Oviin repeated, mystified. “Were you not fed according to the Surgeon’s strictures?”
“Yes, but not enough…!”
“Another meal will be sent for. Hold.” An interminable pause. Then the light steps of the Chatcaavan returned. A few moments later, the blindfold dropped from his face. “They will bring you something shortly. Is that all that’s ailing you? You look… you look unwell.”
Did he? Was the roquelaure set to mimic his true physical state? He would have to query it later. Even without that, he had no doubt he presented a pitiful sight, curled around his middle with his face wrinkled into a grimace. “Just… very hungry. I promise you, that is all I suffer now.”
“Astonishing. One cannot imagine where you put all the energy you derive from the meals you’ve been eating.” The dragon petted along one of his thighs, hesitant, and that touch… that touch was prolonged, enough that Jahir could sense beneath the Chatcaavan’s concern some darker emotion, jagged, fretful.
“What has upset you?” Jahir asked.
Oviin froze, wings pressed tightly together and low, almost out of sight. “Ambassador? Perhaps there was a mishearing?”
“You are frightened.” Jahir forced himself to sit upright, touching a hand to his stomach. He was cold; parting company with the stone floor helped a little, despite the effort it took to sit up. His head swam and he waited for the sensation to pass before speaking. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to discomfit you. But something is troubling you… I couldn’t not notice.”
“Not now.” Oviin indicated the bath. “Please. The temperature has been prepared to your specifications.”
“I’m not sure that would be wise.” Jahir eyed the steam rising from its surface. “I may faint.”
“Faint!”
“I’ll just… lie alongside it?” Jahir edged toward the bath, slumped on the towel Oviin had set beside its lip. The steam drifted onto him, beaded on his skin; that felt good, without risking the lightheadedness of immersion. “Yes. After eating, I can go in. If I have time.”
“You have all night,” the Chatcaavan said. He settled on a stool across the bath from Jahir, staring at him, and no special talent was required to read his unease. The golden wings fidgeted; the male’s stare was too intent, and the whites around his eyes too distinct. “The Surgeon has said your mouth should be checked daily, if the gag was used.”
Jahir tried swallowing, found himself sore but not bleeding. “For now, it has done no harm.”
“For now.”
Jahir only looked at him, then closed his eyes.
“You… accept… cruelties with an equanimity I expected only of a disadvantaged Chatcaavan.” Oviin’s voice was very soft. “That, I did not hear.”
“What did you hear? If I may ask.”
A long pause. Jahir didn’t open his eyes. At last, Oviin replied, “That you have the passions of a male. The ferocity. That you suffer no insult to pass unavenged. That you… are soft-hearted, but only towards those you like.”
That made him laugh, so unexpectedly it hurt his chest on the way out. “What an interesting legend to have accrued. Who has been sharing these tales?”
“Those who clean and cook… we listen. It is something we are good at. The males at supper talk. They talk to one another while we are silently at work in their suites. The males Outside speak of their work, whether it is preparing slaves for the harem or changing shifts in the clinic. The guards. Everyone… everyone talks.” That came out stressed, almost urgent. “So, we listen. Because knowledge keeps us safe.”
“And much is said of the Ambassador,” Jahir guessed.
“Knowledge keeps everyone safe,” Oviin said. “It is the coin of power.”
That prompted Jahir to look at him, though he didn’t lift his head. The Chatcaavan was hugging himself, and he looked so pained and vulnerable Jahir wondered suddenly at his age. Whatever else Oviin might have said was interrupted by the arrival of the meal, and the smell of it carried clear across the room, so powerfully it felt like a punch to the gut. Struggling upright, he lunged for it and started on it with his bare fingers without even knowing what it was. Strips of meat, too rare for his taste and yet it was the best thing he’d ever eaten. Pieces of what looked like flatbread, but leathery and heavy. A sauce—he dipped his finger in it, licked it, found it so sweet his teeth ached and it was exactly what he wanted. He ate like a man famished, and would once have found his lack of manners appalling and his appetite gauche and none of that mattered. Only that when it was over, his stomach still hurt because his need had outstripped his stomach’s ability to accommodate it. For a few long, painful moments, he wondered if he would vomit.
When he looked up, Oviin was kneeling alongside him with a basin, and his wide-eyed look was almost comical. “Was… was that wise?”
“No,” Jahir managed. And groaned. “Yes. God and Lady, I hate this.” He rolled carefully onto his back and stared at the ceiling until the nausea vanished—too slowly for comfort, too quickly for his peace of mind. Was his body using up the energy that fast? Surely not. “Thank you, Oviin, but I believe—I hope—that won’t be necessary.”
“You eat like a starved thing!” Oviin breathed. “Will you not make yourself sick?”
“I wonder.” Jahir grimaced, resting a hand on his abdomen. The chiming had ceased, at least. “I beg your pardon, Oviin. That must have been an ugly thing to watch.”
“Only because this one feared you would choke. Or vomit. The bath now?”
Reluctantly, Jahir sat up, tossing his hair out of his eyes. “I need it, I’m afraid. But I would not want to sully the waters before washing my hands and face.”
“The water recirculates. But there is an understanding.” Oviin took up a cloth. “Permit…?”
Jahir hung his head. “Please.”
The Chatcaavan took one of his hands tentatively and began to lave the fingers. He was both meticulous and tender, and through their skins Jahir perceived that dagger-sharp fear, plainer now. He allowed the Chatcaavan to decide when he was done with the first hand, and to reach for the next. The face was harder for them both, which is why Jahir closed his eyes and allowed it, and that touch was almost feather-light, conveyed a tremulous fascination, and worry, and abruptly, very clearly, a thought: She would have helped him.
Jahir opened his eyes.
“Ambassador,” Oviin whispered, haltingly. “There… there was a message.”
“A message?” Jahir repeated. Who would have left him one? The Surgeon? Second?
“Before you came,” Oviin continued, wiping the corner of Jahir’s mouth and staring at it fixedly, “the Queen was given to the Lord of the Twelveworld, who ordered her prepared as a gift for the pirates who harry the Alliance. This one was ordered to tend her-his-better, to bathe and decorate her. During this session, she-his-better told him information she-his-better wished to be conveyed… outside the Empire. To the Emperor’s al
lies.” He lifted his eyes then, and the fear through their skins spiked. “Which this one did.”
“You,” Jahir whispered. “You were her contact in the palace.”
Oviin shuddered, a twitch arrested so hard Jahir flinched in sympathy. “Yes.”
“Brave male,” Jahir murmured. “You did your Queen’s work well.”
“This one tried,” Oviin said. “This morning… this morning, there was a message. A return message through that channel.”
Jahir forgot the lingering discomfort of his stomach, forgot the cold, forgot that he was naked and alone in the stronghold of his enemies.
“It was… it was in code,” Oviin said, taking obvious comfort from the details. “From the scripture, the scrolls about the ubiquity and power of the Living Air. Its goodness, filling our lungs and wings.” He let his hand drop to lie limp in his lap, the cloth crumpled in his fingers. “The first Emperors of the Chatcaavan Empire were referred to in this manner. And so I can only believe that the Emperor-who-was lives yet. And that my contact hopes for information—from me—that I might use to abet his return to power.”
“Oh, Oviin,” Jahir breathed.
“They do not know about you,” Oviin said. “Four stanzas they sent, two intimating the Emperor’s return and two about obedience to the Living Air and aid to its winds. Aliens… aliens are referred to through other sections of the tract and those were absent.” He lifted his chin, his elegant mane falling away from his eyes, and there was boldness in his mouth, in continuing to claim the unmarked pronouns. “I believe if they knew of you they would want news of you.”
“Yes,” Jahir said, careful not to betray his eagerness. “They would.”
“And I could tell them.”
“You could, yes.”
“And then… perhaps… they would rescue you.” Oviin twisted the cloth in his hands. “Or, more likely, ask you to work against the Usurper.”
“Yes,” Jahir said, grave.
“Then, Ambassador… what am I to do?”
Jahir set a hand on the Chatcaavan’s knee. “Shall I tell you, and deprive you of any agency? I do not command you, Oviin-alet. Nor would I, could I do so, when it involves so much peril for you and so little for me.”
“Just like that?” Oviin said, trembling. “You would tell me that I should do as I wish? That I should not think of your suffering? Or of the suffering of the Chatcaava who do not deserve the Usurper, do not deserve this war the court is inflicting on the Empire? You would tell me my death is more important than those things?”
“No,” Jahir said. “I would tell you that if you already know those reasons, you will answer the message, because you know what is at stake.”
“But I am afraid of dying!” Oviin cried.
“So are we all. But you ask me to believe you craven, Oviin-alet, and I say to you: the male who took the Queen’s words and transmitted them out of the palace behind the backs of his oppressors is no coward.”
Oviin stared at him. And then said, hushed, “I am no male.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes!”
“Then rejoice,” Jahir said, gently. “Because you are free. They cannot cage you in the expectations and games and behaviors of a male. You may make your own choices.”
“Alien!” Oviin exclaimed, covering his face.
“And enslaved,” Jahir agreed. “But also Ambassador, and unbowed.” He forced himself to slide over the lip of the bath and into the water. “There are more ways to power than the ones you were taught. Will you turn from them because they are unexpected?”
Oviin was silent for so long Jahir feared he had misjudged the moment. He gave himself to the water, tasked himself to breathing through the bodily discomfort of the meal, the roquelaure, his own aches now that his joints felt capable of protest. He splashed his face for the coolth it would bring when the water evaporated, wished for the calming teas his partner would have brewed had he been home: Terran chamomile, perhaps, or the odd, anise-like Hinichi herb he should remember the name of, but could not, though he could recall each of the active chemicals responsible for its anti-emetic effect. He did not think he was losing his mind, but he felt unmoored here. How strange to realize now how much he needed people when he’d grown up in a society that disavowed such needs.
“The Emperor-that-was,” Oviin said. “This one watched his behavior for the entirety of your first tenure here. Perhaps you did not realize, as this one was one of the many servants who brought meals to the Field. But I… I saw you kill Third and his Hand. I saw you on the second pillow, eating off the Emperor’s plate. And I saw the Emperor… change.” The Chatcaavan rose, pacing away, one hand clutching his arm. “I also saw him kill Second to renew his mastery over the court.”
The pronouns leaked out at promising moments. Jahir ceased his ablutions to watch his attendant.
“I don’t know if I want that male again as Emperor.”
“But?” Jahir asked, quiet, hearing it in the tone.
“But this Usurper…” Oviin shivered. “He is so, so much worse. He seems less dangerous because he does not rage. But he looks at everything, and everything is a legitimate target to him. And when he decides to remove it, he does so without the ceremony that attends such removals. We are… we are like parasites he has decided need extermination.” Lifting his face, the drake finished, “There is no beauty in it, and no honor, and no… no Fittingness. Do you understand that word, Ambassador?”
“I have not heard it,” Jahir said cautiously.
“The ideal of all that is and was and will be exists in the Living Air,” Oviin said. “And it is Perfect. We are the manifestation of one of those ideals: that which can know Perfection. To see that Perfection clearly we must act in ways that befit our status, as people, as souls incarnate. We cannot devolve to the status of animals.”
“And acts that lift you above that nadir are Fitting,” Jahir guessed.
“You understand.” Oviin dipped his head nervously. “It was said of you, that you understand our souls. The Usurper does not act in ways that are Fitting. He treats us like meat, and so we become meat. Undeserving of our status as that which can perceive the ideal. You are an alien, Ambassador, but do you understand?”
“I do,” Jahir said. “Fittingness… it is like Beauty.”
“You know our words,” Oviin said, soft.
They seeped through memories of skin against skin, of words whispered in rapture and trust. Hunter—my Delight. “Not as many as I wish. But enough to know why the Usurper is poison.”
Oviin returned to the lip of the tub and crouched there, golden tail held out for balance and wings tucked soft as a mantle against his back. “Ambassador. What shall I tell my contact?”
“Oviin—”
The Chatcaavan’s gaze had steadied. Jahir saw the future in them, the bright and bloody and possible future. “Tell me exactly, Ambassador. I remember everything I hear, Perfectly.”
“This is interesting.”
Lisinthir reached for a fresh shirt and pulled it on. “Go on, Exalted.”
The Chatcaavan didn’t flinch at the title, which made the information on the data tablet interesting indeed. As they’d crept toward the border of the Apex system, Lisinthir had left most of the work of data sifting to his lover—to distract him, and for the unique perspective that only the Emperor could provide after his years of managing the competing factions of the Empire. He limited himself to listening instead, and asking impertinent and oblique questions.
“As an adjunct to the main body of Uuvek’s cache,” the Emperor said, tapping a talon on the tablet’s surface, “there are news feeds. Military news feeds. And among them, consistently, a request for your capture.”
“Mine specifically, yes,” Lisinthir said. “I had heard.”
“That request has vanished. The most recent news no longer mentions it, nor asks for Eldritch captives.”
Lisinthir frowned. “Vanished?”
“Yes.” The Em
peror shook his mane back. “So, I went looking, and I have found a mention of your capture.” He looked over his shoulder. “Did you spend a few days in captivity and escape?”
“Not at all,” Lisinthir said.
The Emperor’s eyes narrowed. “So, they are lying.”
Lisinthir set a hand on the desk to steady himself. For a moment, it was all he could do, swamped by memories. The Hinichi’s elegant hands accepting the card, so unassuming to carry such tremendous import. The sight of the secret rampant resting in the cleft between Jahir’s collarbones. The shudder of prophecy, conveyed through a body stiffened by rapture.
“You know something,” the Emperor guessed, studying his face.
Lisinthir resumed dressing. “It is possible they are not lying… and that the captive they have secured and believe to be me is, in fact, my cousin.”
“Your cousin,” the Emperor repeated, a faint frown marring his brow. “That is… the get of your sire or dam’s sibling.”
“Just so. Fleet has a technology that can make people look like someone else.”
The Emperor put the tablet down and faced him. “How you became the Sword.”
Lisinthir inclined his head.
“A projection.” The Emperor squinted. “One good enough to mimic you? There will be visual records, if anyone cares to compare them.”
“Oh, it will fool them.”
“Setting aside the possibility that they are lying, which is in itself interesting,” the Emperor said. “Why would they care? Me they needed killed to secure the throne. But if they think me dead, what use you to them?”
In Extremis Page 16
