her instruments 02 - rose point

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “And speaking of visitors,” Reese said, trailing off.

  “Yes. This way, please.”

  As she followed him, she tried not to think of his kindness. She was not living in one of her stories. In the real world—worlds—poor fatherless girls from Mars didn’t get the princes. She especially didn’t want to ask herself if this particular poor girl wanted this particular prince. Blood in the soil.

  Unsurprisingly, Hirianthial didn’t need an invitation to get them seen by the Queen on a whim; if Reese ever needed proof of the family relation, it was there in the alacrity with which the guards passed them into the Queen’s parlor. Liolesa had been sitting behind her great desk, but as they entered she rose, a query in her cocked brow. Strange how seeing her, Reese didn’t think of how hard it was to describe an individual Eldritch. Liolesa Galare wrote her own description and none of it involved anything as superficial as her skin.

  Hirianthial stepped back with a graceful gesture. “Captain Eddings?”

  So he was going to let her tell the Queen? He hadn’t had to. “Your Majesty—”

  “Liolesa,” the Queen interrupted.

  “Lady Liolesa,” Reese said firmly. “Your enemies appear to have found us out.”

  “Thaniet, I am guessing,” Hirianthial offered. “She was missing from Surela’s side at the court.”

  “Mmm,” said the Queen. She came around her desk. “That should make for an interesting time tomorrow.”

  “That’s it?” Reese asked, surprised. “No worry? No details? Nothing?” She paused and her eyes narrowed. “No, that doesn’t make sense. You planned for this.”

  Liolesa chuckled. “Theresa. There are several hundred people now in residence in this palace. They cannot go outside without hardship given the weather, and so have no way to entertain themselves by walking in gardens or going for rides. They have no data tablets to absorb them. Books are few and precious, and re-read to the point of memorization. What do you suppose such people do, lacking distraction?”

  Thinking of her crew, Reese said, “They talk.”

  “And make new things to talk about, yes,” Liolesa said. “And those who bring news have quite the cachet. So no, I am not surprised. And yes, I was planning it.”

  “But why?” Reese asked.

  “Because my enemies are conniving, and I need them to reveal their methods,” Liolesa said. “So I intend to provoke them.”

  Reese looked up at her, heart pounding. Then said, “So if I told you I had been planning to show up tomorrow as a vassal instead of a retainer, would that help make your provocation more provocative?”

  “Theresa Eddings!” Liolesa exclaimed, delighted. “This is your idea, I presume? And you are willing!”

  “You are?” Hirianthial said, gone still in a way Reese associated with shock.

  “I am.” She lifted her chin. “If that’s all right with you, of course.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Liolesa said, eyes sparkling. “I assume someone has told you of the difference, and since my cousin here is speechless it must have been someone else. Lady Araelis perhaps? Or Felith?”

  “It was Felith,” Reese said. “She told us something of what would be expected. It’s just that... the way she explains it, there’s no way for my crew to be protected unless I accept protection in their name—or you take them all separately as retainers—and it seems easier for me to take responsibility for them. I have before.” She thought of Irine and smiled a little. “They’re fine with it.”

  “So you are prepared to bring me something of value?” Liolesa asked.

  “I figured I have horses. We’d already talked about that.”

  Liolesa’s brows lifted. “So we had. But a vassal doesn’t sell horses to her liege-lady, Theresa. A vassal breeds them for her.”

  The frisson that traveled her spine was heat and shock and hope and terror. “Is... that what it sounds like?”

  “I don’t know,” Liolesa said, voice casual. “What did it sound like?”

  “An offer,” Reese answered.

  The Queen smiled. “You have good ears.”

  Blood and freedom. Was this really happening to her? Was the Queen of the Eldritch—the Eldritch!—offering her... what?

  Power? A title? The chance to stay in one place for long enough to breathe and build something?

  ...a home?

  But she’d have to give up the Earthrise, and trading. And she had no idea if her crew would want to stay, and she’d become attached to them. It was hard to think of them leaving her here by herself. And Hirianthial... she glanced at him. But he had family here, and other duties. She couldn’t expect him to stay with them if they did. Even wondering about that was presumptuous, wasn’t it?

  And would she want to stay on a world if she couldn’t leave it for the Alliance? She hadn’t just fled Mars. She’d gone out, to meet the Pelted and the aliens they’d gathered together. Her enterprise might be on the perpetual brink of financial disaster, but could she give up the exhilaration of knowing she could go anywhere?

  “That’s... not a decision I could make without thinking about it,” Reese said finally, trembling.

  “Then by all means,” the Queen replied, her voice gentler. “Go and think about it.” A hint of mischief again. “You have all of an evening for it.”

  Reese couldn’t help it; she laughed. “All of an entire evening! You’re so generous.”

  “Consider it a warning of what it’s like to work for me,” Liolesa said, grinning.

  Reese shook her head. “You people. You’re even more everything than your press said.”

  “More everything?” the Queen asked.

  “More exasperating, more beautiful, more impossible, more interesting, more frustrating,” Reese said. “You know. More everything.” She paused, then said, glancing at Hirianthial, “More real.”

  “Now that is a fine compliment,” the Queen said. “Go on, Captain Eddings. Consider your choice. Consult with your people.”

  “I will.”

  “Do you need help back?” Hirianthial asked.

  His expression had returned to a typical Eldritch inscrutability. What was he thinking? She hoped he wasn’t dismayed over the talk. “No, I can find my way back. Thank you.”

  “I will call on you tomorrow,” he said. “To bring you to the presentation, if you wish.”

  She smiled. “I’d like that, thanks.” She nodded to them both. “Good evening.”

  Once she was outside the room she wanted very much to hyperventilate... but the watchful guards kept her from falling apart. She hurried down the cavernous halls, her skin pebbling from the cold. If she did decide to move into some Eldritch town, the first thing she’d do would be to get Taylor Goodfix to install proper heating. She liked cold, but only when she could turn it off at will.

  By the time she reached their suite she was almost running. It was Felith who opened the door and she burst through it, and thought nothing of the fact that everyone was gathered around one of the chairs by the fire.

  “Ariisen, you wouldn’t believe the offer I think I’ve gotten—”

  They all looked up at her.

  “This should be good,” Sascha said to Kis’eh’t.

  Kis’eh’t said, “Well, all the other not-quite-offers and not-really-contracts have made her dour and grumpy. We haven’t seen one that’s gotten her excited yet.”

  Reese mimed throwing something at them. Sascha lifted his arms to block. “Ow, ow, we’ll stop!”

  “What’s the offer?” Irine asked, ears perked.

  “I think the Queen wants us to stay,” Reese said.

  “Stay like ‘hang around in her palace whenever we want’ stay?” Irine asked. “Or stay like ‘make a nest and have kits’ stay?”

  “I told her I was planning to present as a vassal,” Reese said. “And she thought it was a good idea. She said she’ll accept.”

  A very long pause.

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” Kis’eh’t s
aid. “Given my understanding of feudal cultures...”

  Everyone glanced at Felith, who said, stunned. “Did she truly say she would keep that troth?”

  “Unless you can breed horses in outer space...” Reese said.

  “Well!” Irine said. “I guess that means you have to wear the dress.”

  “The what?”

  “The dress,” Irine said, pointing at the chair.

  Reese looked down at it and stopped thinking.

  Irine grinned and said, “It even comes with a corset.”

  Tearing her eyes away, Reese said, “We can talk about the dress later. There are more important things to discuss first.”

  “Like...” Sascha folded his arms, waiting.

  “Like deciding if you want to be tied down here if I stay,” Reese replied. “Assuming, of course, I can stay.”

  “Wait, why wouldn’t you want to stay? If you can, I mean?” Irine asked, ears sagging.

  “Why would she?” Kis’eh’t asked. “Not that it’s not a nice world—maybe, the weather hasn’t been all that pleasant and the people seem hit or miss, pardon me, Felith-alet—but staying here would be mean settling somewhere she has no roots.”

  “There’s Hirianthial,” Irine said.

  “Hirianthial isn’t enough,” Kis’eh’t said. “How do we know he’d be around, anyway? Doesn’t he have responsibilities here? And this place... it’s got no culture. Not real culture, with more than one species. You’d have to give up all that—”

  “But how much of that did we really see?” Sascha said. “It’s hard to enjoy the wonders of the galaxy when you barely have two fin to rub together. No offense, Captain.”

  “None taken?” Reese said, bemused at their arguments.

  “When we dock at a starbase we see quite a bit,” Kis’eh’t said.

  “But that’s the thing.” Irine leaned toward them, earnest. “We can only see it. We can’t be part of it. We can’t make anything. We never have enough money for that, we only have enough to get by. If we stayed here, we could be here, really be here, be part of things.”

  “Assuming the Eldritch let us,” Kis’eh’t said, ears flattening. “Xenophobes, remember?”

  Felith cleared her throat and said, “Not all of us, if you will permit me to say so. And those of us who are not would welcome you.”

  “Come on, Kis’eh’t,” Sascha said. “You like a challenge, don’t you?”

  Kis’eh’t frowned, then glanced at Bryer. “What do you say?”

  Bryer opened an eye, looked toward the window, mantled his feathers and sank back into them. “Good place for a garden. Can fly here.”

  The words rang in Reese’s heart like a bell.

  Kis’eh’t smiled and shook her head. “The Goddess does say we should not shy from creation, even when making is difficult.”

  “There, see? It’s settled. Even Allacazam seems happy with the sun here,” Sascha said. “So we’re with you, Boss. What next?”

  “Next,” Reese said, “we think about offerings.”

  The door shut on Reese, and the room seemed far emptier for it than her presence alone should have warranted.

  “Now there goes a woman I shall be proud to take into the family,” Liolesa said with relish. She grinned at Hirianthial. “I had thought she would be a good investment when I bought her ship back from her creditors, but I had no idea how high the dividends would be.”

  “She is remarkable,” Hirianthial said, folding his hands behind his back. He tilted his head. “You truly mean to make her a vassal?”

  “If she accedes?” Liolesa huffed. “I had always planned to open the world to some number of aliens and have spent some small time in the cultivation of likely prospects. To have found one who cleaves to our ways as readily as she appears to, who wants to be here… I would be a fool not to.”

  “She swore to the Veil, you know,” he said, quiet.

  “Did she now?”

  “And her people with her,” Hirianthial said. “On the Galare unicorn.”

  “Did she!” Liolesa laughed. “And I am guessing you explained the ramifications of such a promise, and they made it anyway?”

  Hirianthial looked away, eyes closing. “I told them about the Tams and Lesandurel, yes.”

  “And now you will have your own multigenerational household,” Liolesa said, going to the fire.

  “Me!” He suppressed his revulsion with difficulty. “They swore on your seal, not mine.”

  “But it is you they fell in love with, cousin, no mistake.” She looked up at him as she sank onto a chair and sighed. “Hiran. Sit, please. You make my joints ache standing thus so rigidly.”

  “They do not—“ He stopped because he could not continue, could not lie. He knew how much they cared for him.

  “They do, and well you know it.”

  “They’ll die,” he said, low.

  She was quiet a moment. Then she said, “So did Laiselin, and she should have lived fifteen hundred years.”

  God and Lady, how that could still hurt. “Then you know why I must not.”

  “Must not what? Must not care?” She shook her head. “It’s too late for that. You do already, and so do they. All that remains is to decide what you will do about it.”

  “As if there is something to be done!” he said. “Lia, in less than a hundred years they’ll all be dead!”

  “So?” she said.

  “So?” He stared at her, could not believe the settled pool of her aura. “You would have me enter into something, knowing the loss I court?”

  “Why not?” she said. “I have.”

  The truth of it shone through her calm like sun through water, a dazzling radiance.

  “You have… what?” he asked, carefully.

  “I have loved a human,” she said, her hands folded on her lap. “And in the fullness of time he died.”

  “You… did what?” he said, stunned. “When? I have been your fast companion all your life—“ He stopped. “No. Not when you were newly heir.”

  “And went off-world on behalf of our aunt?” she said. “Yes, that was when it happened. And then I stole away whenever I could, and said I was—“

  “In the convent!” Hirianthial exclaimed. “God and Lady, Lia! I guarded the doors to Saint Wilthelmissa all those times!”

  “And every time you did, I was far, far from there,” she said, her eyes grave. “I couldn’t bring you, Hiran. How could I? I was going to an assignation that would have seen me twice disgraced.”

  Now at last he sought the chair she’d asked him to use. Sagging into it, he rested a hand on his knee and leaned toward her. “You visited that convent for a good two hundred years.”

  “Of course I did,” Liolesa said. “I had to give people a chance to discover me there, did I want the story to hold.”

  He had always known his cousin for a rebel. Not without forethought—she broke only rules that failed to fit in with her plans for the world and her rule—but this was not in her character. If her tryst had been discovered she would have been set aside: for consorting with humans, and for having risked the possibility of begetting a bastard, for it could be done, with humans.

  “Who was he?” he asked, quiet.

  She smiled. “A geneticist, if you will believe. Not someone I was formally to consult when Maraesa sent me to renegotiate the treaty terms with the Alliance… but Fassiana had been having trouble conceiving, do you recall? And she begged me to bring her some hope from the Alliance. And when I met him…” She trailed off, eyes distant and aura warm and intimate as candle-glow. “He was young, of course, and so was I. And he was passionate about his work, about helping those who wanted children.” She pulled herself from the past with a sigh. “It was not inevitable. But all my life I had turned every moment and every act toward my goals for us as a species, Hiran. Pieter was something I did for myself.”

  “And this you did, knowing you would outlive him by some fifteen hundred years?” he asked.

  �
�That I did not even knowing if I would ever see him again,” she said. “And oh, yes. I gave myself to it wholeheartedly, and for a time I knew a very selfish sort of happiness. Even when he grew old…” Her smile somehow held her heartbreak, and the peace she’d made with it. “I watched him die and even then the only thing I regretted was that it was over. Not that I had done it.” She looked up at him. “Do you understand the distinction?”

  “I do,” he said, low. “But I am not like you, cousin.”

  “Aren’t you?” she said. She lifted her hand. “No, don’t answer that. Not yet, anyway. Tell me instead your impressions of the court opening. I assume that was your reason for coming.”

  “Your enemies are far too pleased with themselves,” he said. “And they are poised for something. If I hadn’t learned that Thaniet only just discovered the presence of Reese and her people, I would have wondered if they’d already known.”

  She said, “Or perhaps there is something else they have been waiting on, and it is near fruition.”

  Liolesa’s abilities were modest; she needed touch to sense feelings, like most Eldritch. But she had one talent he had never heard of in any other person: the ability to sense patterns around her, sometimes so acutely they bordered on precognition. He glanced at her sharply. “You feel something?”

  “I would not be pushing if I did not,” she said. “But it’s less that I feel something about what they know, cousin. What I feel…” She searched for words, eyes gone distant. When they grew focused again, he liked not at all the smog that suffused her aura. “What I feel is that if I don’t catalyze something now, we might not survive.” She shook her head. “We can’t afford to wait, so pray they react to the provocation tomorrow.”

  “God and Lady, Lia,” he said softly.

  “Chin up, cousin,” she said. “If we get past this, our world will be the least of our worries.” She glanced at the windows. “Something is moving out there and we are only the smallest part of it. But we are a part, and we shall have a role to play.”

  The instances in which her talent surfaced were rare, and he had always found her uncanny during them. What he had not expected was to be able to now sense it: less a color and more a powerful taste, a smell, a reaching that washed over his skin and past it, seeking. His skin prickled.