“Oh, thank Iley.” Meekie exhaled gustily; he could feel her hand trembling still in his. “I was afraid we’d messed it up.”
“Which would have been awful forever,” Kuriel said.
“Amaranth would have killed us,” Persy muttered.
Kuriel nodded. “So dead.”
Vasiht’h laughed. “Somehow I didn’t think the unicorn-lover would have been the dangerous one?”
“Oh, it’s all the sad looks.” Kuriel affected a stricken look with trembling lower lip, ears dipping. “Y-y-you…. you drove the princes away…?? How could you!”
Vasiht’h covered his face, laughing.
“Really, it’s awful,” Kuriel said. “Disappointing her is so, so bad.”
“Worse after Nieve,” Persy said, quieter. “She takes things a lot harder now.”
Jahir thought they all did… himself included. But he only squeezed their hands. “Well, you shall not have to distress her, then.”
“All this talk about us and what we’re going to do,” Meekie said suddenly. “And we never ask about you and what your plans are! Do you have any?”
“Our plans,” Vasiht’h said, “are to keep doing what we’re doing, because we enjoy it and we’re good at it.”
Something about the way the Glaseah delivered this line felt… not glib, and not determined. Portentous. Jahir suppressed the urge to study his friend’s face for clues, finding none in the mindline sufficient to explanation.
“How did you decide to work on a starbase anyway?” Persy asked. “That sounds like an interesting story?”
/Yours to tell,/ Jahir said.
/You know I know you’re foisting all the storytelling off on me because you don’t love to talk…/
/But you do?/ Jahir proffered an abashed feeling through the mindline, where it wouldn’t touch his mouth and give the girls to wonder. /Consider it a gift?/
Vasiht’h laughed aloud. “It is. And actually, the story of how we had to fight to stay there is just as interesting.”
“Oh good!” Meekie said. “I love a story. I’m going to get a refill, anyone else?”
They talked for another half hour, one Jahir found revelatory. In the past, Meekie’s question about their plans would never have occasioned an answer: he and Vasiht’h didn’t discuss their lives with the girls because the context in which they’d met them had made the girls the focus of all their time together. They came to please, to entertain, to comfort, and one did not comfort children with the quotidian details of adult lives they had no context to understand. But the children were no longer children, and if they were not yet adults they were in that tenuous space where every act was preparation for that adult life, or separation from the childish one they were leaving behind. Now they could speak to the girls about their decisions, and the challenges they’d met when first they’d settled on Veta, and it was both appropriate and… pleasant. It was pleasant.
Jahir had never contemplated this particular permutation of his longevity. He had focused so singularly on the tragedies of his companions growing old and dying that he had missed that he could watch children grow into new companions. There was a poignancy in that as well, but it felt hopeful, rather than despairing.
“I can’t believe this guy is now your therapist!” Meekie was saying, stunned. “How does that even work?”
“That’s near-magical levels of people skills right there.” Kuriel shook her head, wide-eyed. “I want to be like that when I grow up.”
Vasiht’h laughed. “The secret is in my…uh… aegis.” He spread his hands. “Baked goods. Everyone agrees on them.”
“So you just give people cookies until they like you?” Persy asked, amused.
“I can get behind that,” Kuriel said. “Cookies for everyone!”
“And with that, it’s time for us to go,” Vasiht’h said. “We have a shuttle to catch.”
“We’ll walk you out!” Meekie said.
It remained a brilliant afternoon, warm with golden light dancing on every awning that rippled in the breeze. As Vasiht’h hugged Kuriel and Persy, Meekie hung back. Looking up at Jahir, she said, quietly, “I’m guessing the money’s going to keep coming?”
He glanced down at her.
“Just… guessing.”
Jahir smiled, wry. “Your guesses are rather unnerving, arii.”
“I just…” She trailed off. “Persy’s good with money and she’s the one who’s driving the ship. Which is great because none of the rest of us like that part or are as good at it. But she’s human, and I think humans don’t necessarily recognize some of the… um…” The Tam-illee tapped her lip nervously with a finger. “The realities of the Alliance.”
“One of which is….”
“That you Eldritch actually are as rich as the princes in fairy tales,” Meekie said. “And what that means, materially, for us. Since you also live a long time.”
Jahir considered this. “Arii? What is it you’re asking me?”
“I just want you to know… that it’s all right to stop giving us money. And all right to keep giving us money. It’s not going to matter to us, because we love you. And discovering how rich you are isn’t going to change anything. I mean… we love you because we love you, and I don’t want you to think because… because we thought of you as some fairy tale prince that we expect you to be that way?” Meekie’s ears fell. “I am so bad at this.”
“On the contrary,” Jahir said gently. “I think you are excellent at it. And only like to grow more so with time.”
“All right.” She blew out a breath, relaxing visibly. “I didn’t mess that up, then. Yay!”
He laughed. “Not at all. And keep in touch, as it pleases you to do so. As you’ve observed, I will be… available… for a long time.”
“Iley willing,” the girl said firmly, and had her hug from him before joining the others. They waved, he waved back, and as he watched they melted into the riotously bright stream of people passing through the shopping district. Vasiht’h padded over to join him. “Did you ever think…?”
That they would see the day that even one of the girls would be freed of their prison to be normal again? “No,” he said. “I hoped, but I did not believe.”
“Me neither, to be honest.” Vasiht’h’s sigh was a happy one. “But it’s so good, isn’t it.”
“Little finer in this life, arii.” At the Glaseah’s glance, he clarified. “To see those one cares about healthy and about their lives, contented.”
“Yes,” Vasiht’h agreed. “And speaking of being about your lives…”
“We are due to be about ours, yes.”
On the way to the nearest Pad station, Vasiht’h added, “You gave them a lot, I’m guessing?”
Jahir paused a heartbeat before replying, “Would it be an issue if I did?”
“No,” Vasiht’h said, and his fierce satisfaction filled the mindline with an anthem he would probably have been appalled to hear himself, given its martial tenor. “No, if I had money, I’d use it for just that sort of thing.”
But not, Jahir thought, on himself, or his partner, or his ‘normal life.’ He suppressed his resignation, and not well enough. Before Vasiht’h could ask, he said, “I will miss them.”
“I will too,” Vasiht’h said. “They’re going to be busy, growing up. But I bet once they settle down, they’ll start sending us mail. Watch. Give them ten years, maybe.”
“We’ll see,” Jahir murmured.
Chapter 7
“What do you mean you haven’t talked to him about it yet?” Sehvi hissed.
“I haven’t found the right time!” Vasiht’h answered.
“It’s been two weeks!” Sehvi leaned into the camera, her face so close he could pick out the darker striations in her brown irises. “Do you even know if they’ve got slots left in the test? They only take a certain number of people per session!”
Vasiht’h winced. “I know. It’s just… things have been busy!”
“Busy or somet
hing else?” She folded her arms and scowled at him.
“You were the one telling me to respect his autonomy!”
“And you’ve put this off so that you could do that?” Sehvi snorted, rolled her eyes. “I highly doubt that. Tell me the real reason you’re stopped up on this, big brother, so I can tell you why you’ve got it wrong again.”
“You love that, don’t you,” Vasiht’h said with a sigh.
“Only because you listen to me when I tell you to stop doing dumb things.” She smiled a little. “It makes me feel useful. So. ‘Fess up.”
“Fine. I like our life the way it is?”
Sehvi sighed. “You’re alone, I take it.”
He nodded. “Jahir’s out swimming.”
“So, go bake something. I can see the kitchen from here. And make it something unusual, all right? No cookies, you can do those in your sleep. Something you have to think about, at least a little.”
“I did just get a bag of local filberts… I wanted to try some kind of muffin with them?”
Sehvi wrinkled her nose. “Make them chocolate?”
“Isn’t that too expected? Chocolate and hazelnut?”
“It’s expected because it’s delicious.”
“Good point.” He padded back toward the kitchen, leaving his sister’s image projected on the wall of the den. He could see her from the island where he usually mixed his doughs, partially because her image was so large he could practically count the whiskers on her muzzle. “Look, it’s complicated.”
“Isn’t everything.” She leaned back with her cheek in a palm, watching him. “Go on. Tell me.”
He eyed her as he took down the jar of filberts. “When you and Kovihs start having relationship issues…”
“I’ll be the first one to listen patiently when you say you told me so,” she answered. “So far you’re out of luck there, though. Kovihs and I work things out because we, you know, communicate.”
“It’s how much we communicate that’s the problem, though,” Vasiht’h said. At her expression, he lifted his hands. “It’s just… I can tell what he’s feeling. Through the mindline. And it’s…”
Complicated. Vasiht’h made a face at the bowl he’d brought down for the batter, seeing his reflection in it grimacing back at him. Not bad, no. But they’d gotten home and resumed seeing their clients and everything had seemed fine on the outside, but he knew the Eldritch was… busy… with something. That it troubled him a little. Not a great deal, but Vasiht’h hadn’t liked the feel of it. Like… demission. “He’s working through something.”
“Isn’t he always?”
Vasiht’h brought up the recipe and eyed it. Not really different from most of his muffin mixes. Putting chocolate in it still felt like cheating. What would work with filberts? He brought one to his nose and rubbed it, sniffing the oils. Setting it down, he went for the genie.
“You should at least put chocolate chips in that,” Sehvi called.
“I’ll put chocolate chips in one of them. On the top.” Vasiht’h requested some espresso and inhaled the fragrance rising off it. Ah, yes. “I think he’s…”
“Working through something.”
“Yes.”
“So why leave him stewing?” Sehvi asked. “Pull him out of his head before he drowns there.”
Vasiht’h set the espresso cup down, startled.
“Right?” she said. “Two weeks is more than enough time to ruminate about something. Your job as his best friend is to help him work through it before he stops being functional. Also… what on the worlds are you doing?”
“Making coffee hazelnut muffins,” Vasiht’h said. “They’ll be amazing. You’ll see.”
“No, I won’t,” she said. “But I regret that. I could eat the one with chocolate chips on it.”
“I’ll eat that one for you in spirit.”
“Meaning you’ll just eat it.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Sehvi laughed. “Will you talk to him?”
“Only if you promise to tell me about the first fight you have with Kovihs.”
“You haven’t had a fight yet with your Eldritch, you know.” At his skeptical look, she laughed. “Seriously, you’re a therapist. You know what real relationship fights look like.”
“I guess I do,” he said. “We just… we have the mindline. You know? It’s hard to get to the point of complete dysfunction everyone else does.”
Sehvi snorted. “Thinking like a mindblind race. You should know as well as I do that the things in our heads we don’t say out loud are far more likely to start fights—really awful ones—than the things we share out loud. Or don’t. No, you’ll just have to face it. The two of you are as sappy a couple as anything written by one of my romance authors.”
“Right. And you and Kovihs have two kits now and have had no enormous fights?”
“Unlike you, I have no problems owning my happiness.” She leaned toward him. “So… you’ll do something about this?”
“I guess I will.” He smiled at her. “Thanks, ariishir.”
“What I’m here for.”
After she’d disconnected, Vasiht’h brought out a second bowl for the wet ingredients, ignoring the sound of her voice repeating in her head in time with his pulse. No problems owning my happiness. Unlike you. Unlike you.
Was that what it was? Was he waiting for some other shoe to drop? And what a horrible metaphor that was, since he had no less than three other shoes that could fall out of the sky and smack him on the head. Vasiht’h sighed. But maybe it wasn’t fair. He would be happy if he thought Jahir was happy, but he had the nagging feeling that Jahir wasn’t. Hopefully that wasn’t him projecting.
The hand Vasiht’h wanted to smack his brow with he kept firmly on the spatula.
Jahir was not, in fact, concerned about his relationship at all. Returning to Veta had felt like coming home, and while he’d experienced a pang of guilt over how gladly he embraced it over the world he’d abandoned, it had not been sufficient to flagellate himself for it. Or at least, not much. He hadn’t even spared much thought for KindlesFlame’s suggestion about his potential license as he’d settled back into his routine with Vasiht’h.
No, it was a letter from his mother that had been occupying all his thoughts.
I have been mulling on my last visit to Ontine, during which I gave to the Queen our promises and allegiance, and all that went as expected. What puzzles me were some of the interactions I had in the drawing rooms. Do you find it strange that I was approached by Lady Filiana on the matter of how I make do with neither husband nor sons at my side? She has lost yet another grandchild, alas, and her sole child is now once again without issue. She fears for the succession. Well and again, I hardly blame her in such a situation. What startles me is that I have become somehow a symbol of a woman alone! How ridiculous, do you not agree? I am the least alone of any woman I know on the world. I have no less than two sons to my name, and within the same generation! Such riches have not been often seen since Landing!
But we are not so fruitful as we were. Perhaps it is for the best, given our longevity. I am selfishly glad to have the both of you, however. You and your brother are the light of my life, and I do not fear to write it.
It was a completely routine sort of letter, and yet he was still deliberating on its contents away from the tablet, in the water. He’d gone to this swim in order to escape, because nothing soothed him like water. And yet, his feelings about his people, his duties to them, his eventual return… they distressed him with their knotted mingling of grief and guilt, regret and love, so much that even exercise did not soothe them. The tangle was enough to turn him from thoughts of the license, solely by association, for he knew he would one day return to be the doctor who prevented the death of Lady Filiana’s grandchildren. Perhaps literally, for barring disease or accident, Lady Filiana and her grieving daughter would still be alive and almost certainly still be trying to bring forth the needful heir.
Who was he to decide
that now was not that time? He could finish his education, return immediately, and go to that work, and yet he wasn’t. Why? What made his comfortable life here a moral choice when weighed against the good he could be doing for those who were suffering far more?
And yet, he didn’t want to give up this life.
He and Vasiht’h had resumed meeting with their existing clients and seeing new ones, and these people he knew they materially aided, which made him wonder what made their problems less important than his people’s. Was the good he did here sufficient payment for the good he wasn’t doing at home?
Jahir knew these questions to be imponderables. There were no right answers. But he had to be satisfied with himself, and he was afraid that he wasn’t. That he was reneging on some point of honor to which he was irrevocably committed as part of his own self-definition. He could read the statements from his investment manager about the use of his money by all the charities to which he donated, and still it wouldn’t pay for the loss of another Eldritch child, perished for want of medical care because he had decided to tarry here.
That KindlesFlame had made it clear there was a deadline should have clarified his decision. It didn’t.
Packing from his swim, Jahir headed back to the apartment. The starbase had seasons wherein the temperature changed a few degrees. It was late summer by Veta’s standards, so the breeze was freshening across his shoulders. Around him the Pelted wandered toward cafes and shops: the byway was broader than the ones in Seersana’s shopping district, so it didn’t feel as crowded while still being dense with the Alliance’s staggering visual diversity. In the beginning, he’d been overwhelmed by the number of species… now, he thought his fascination was more basic even than that. The Eldritch were, to the last man, woman, or child, tall, elongated, and white. Their hair, at most, had a wave—otherwise it was uniformly straight, and only the most well-to-do of noblewomen had someone to curl a tress or two artistically around her face. His people grew to around the same height, and very close to the same density of muscle and fat. Even their faces had a certain homogeneity, since there were so few of them and breeding was necessarily close and tangled. A Galare would probably recognize another Galare, even before being introduced, and having one’s mother’s eyes meant, very probably, having one’s cousin’s, aunt’s, grandmother’s, and great-grandmother’s.
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