His eyes flared open.
“That’s fine,” the medic said. “You needed the time. And yes, everyone who was worried about you or wanted to talk to you right now has been assured you were in no danger and that you’d be in contact with them when you were ready. Now sit up, see how you feel.”
So he pushed himself upright, swinging his feet over the side of the bed, and just… sagged there, frowning, eyes tightly closed. The vagueness that had been clouding his thoughts had faded, leaving the grief and despair naked. Distant, though, because he was here, in this clinical setting that nonetheless afforded him some semblance of dignity; he’d been dressed while he slept in a simple white gown that must close in the back because it hung open down his spine… the way it would have, had he been winged.
“Should I…?”
“Try to Change? I would, yes.”
But what if he failed? The Emperor inhaled, reached… and fell into his own body with an ease that would have felt anticlimactic if he hadn’t choked on the relief. Wings, tail, hide… he ran his hands up his arms, bunching the sleeves of the garment, and could not stop gasping. Even in this body, he was trying to cry, and it was unwonted enough that the Seersa left off his survey of the Karaka’An and came over to consider him.
“I’m fine,” the Emperor managed.
“You’re hyperventilating,” the Seersa said dryly. “Can you sing?”
“What?” the Emperor asked, confounded.
“You people. Do you sing? Chant religious texts? Whistle?”
“I… yes, but…”
“Try that,” the Seersa said. “It’ll order your breathing.”
“I don’t sing,” the Emperor said. “And I don’t pray…”
“I do.”
Andrea was sitting up on her cot, her smile radiant. She pushed the hair from her golden face and slid from the cot, padding to him. How different she looked in Alliance clothing! Right, he thought, though the joy on her countenance was more fitting a garment than the simple shirt and pants she was wearing now. She offered her hands and he gave them, bewildered.
“What do you call God?” she asked him.
“I… we call on the Air,” he said. “The Living Air.”
She nodded. “Repeat after me, then. I praise you, O Living Air, for You have saved me, and succored me from my enemies, who gloated over me.”
Mystified, he repeated. And she continued:
“I cried out for your aid, Living Air, my God,
And You healed me, and kept me from dying.
I was meant for dead,
But You restored my life.
Sing praises to the Living Air,
All those who keep the faith!
Remember all that He has done for us
And give Him every thanks!
His discipline lasts only briefly,
And His goodness for eternity.
Tears may come in the darkness,
But joy in the dawn.
You have led us out of bondage, O Living Air,
Changed our sorrow into rejoicing;
You have swept my sorrows from me
And enrobed me in Your glory.
So I will not be silent;
I will speak Your praises eternally.
Living Air, You are our God;
We give You thanks forever.”
She drew in a breath and finished, “Amen.”
“Amen,” the Emperor repeated, voice rough.
As he trembled, she touched her fingers to the fall of mane framing his face. “There. You have come out the other side. ‘As silver is purified by the fire.’” She smiled. “Yes?”
“Yes.” He swallowed, waited until his voice steadied. “Simone?”
“She’ll live!”
“She’ll probably live,” the Seersa said from behind them, voice a growl. “If we get out of this and I can bring her to a proper Medplex.”
“It’s a crazy thing, a crazy wonderful thing,” Andrea said, breathless with happiness. “Where I worked, in the outskirts of the Alliance, advances in medicine rippled out to us slowly. We got them eventually but it took time. Healer Dellen worked in the Core and they have ways to halt the progression of disease in Beritt’s patients there, even when they’re this far along. She’s in stasis now and Dellen-alet thinks the specialists on a starbase could save her!”
The likelihood of their reaching that starbase in time did not seem high, but… what did he know? That Simone had not died outright, and that her prognosis was not unalterable, was miracle enough. “The others?”
“They’re fine. Happy to be clothed and on their way home! Eventually.” Andrea grinned, eyes sparkling. “Of course, we can’t go anywhere until this ship’s discharged its mission. I’m guessing you have something to do with that.”
“Something,” he said, quiet.
“You look good,” the Seersa interrupted, eyes on the test results that were still populating the graphs and charts on his data tablet. “How do you feel? Head clear? Any lingering confusion, aches and pains? Hungry?”
“I… a little. Perhaps.”
“Good sign.” The Seersa set the tablet aside and folded his arms, ears pricked. “Any questions before I release you?”
The Emperor probed the memories of his captivity gingerly. “There are… gaps… in what I remember. Is that normal?”
“Yes. Particularly with trauma. They might come back… they might not. We still don’t know what makes some people spring back while others don’t.” The Seersa cocked his head in a manner almost draconic. “And that’s just the physical trauma. Everyone comes back from emotional trauma differently. You’re stringing sentences together and you’re acting functional. That might last, or you might find yourself having flashbacks or bad episodes. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you should be acting more upset or less than you feel. Move through your reactions at your own pace and be prepared for setbacks. I’m not certified to handle emotional recovery processes, but one of our refugees is. Dominika, the clouded pardine Harat-Shar. If you’d like to talk to her later, I encourage you to do so.”
How to say that he knew he was broken, and not at all healed? His ability to speak and make sense of the world was a reflection of an upbringing that had emphasized the need to hide one’s wounds. He knew now just how much of a luxury it was, to be able to conceal one’s weaknesses. How lucky he’d been.
Would he ever heal? He didn’t feel at all normal.
Maybe he shouldn’t ever. Or was that thought a sign of this trauma?
“I understand,” he said, because the medic seemed to be waiting for something, and that seemed to suffice.
Dellen dug into his coat pocket, brought out his hand and opened it. Four rings there, gleaming black. “You wanted these, I think.”
“Yes, thank you.” He almost couldn’t take them, but made himself.
“Good. Then if the two of you don’t mind… I’m going to sequester myself in my office for an hour. To nap. The monitor should wake me if something happens, but if it doesn’t… alet?”
Andrea said, “I’ll tell you.”
He nodded and swept off, the adjacent door shutting on him so quickly the Emperor barely glimpsed the small room with its couch and desk. Which left him with Andrea, who was still holding one of his hands and watching him with that little smile on her face.
“And you?” he asked, hesitant. “And Emlyn? Dominika?”
“We’re all very good,” she said. “Emlyn… for once he’s not grouching. None of us recognize him. When we first got here…” She stopped, laughed self-consciously. “We couldn’t even fight over which psalm to recite, even though the words are different. We were so happy. So happy and so overwhelmed. He even said… that I was right, and that I should say I told him so.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Not me, alet, but God. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t lose faith but I won’t pretend it couldn’t happen to any of us. It was just my t
urn for Emlyn… one day it’ll be his for someone else.” She beamed at him. “So, now that you’re no longer the Survivor, will you tell me who you really are?”
He looked down at the fist he had formed around the four rings. “You may not believe.”
“I’m sure whatever you are, it’s important. I’ve never seen so many horns.” She raised a hand, ran her fingers up one of them, and he no longer minded that it was a presumption. It felt good to be touched by a gentle hand—to be touched by a gentle hand not because she was a lover, but because to touch so was normal, even between strangers. He ducked his head as her fingers fell down his mane again, pulling it in front of his shoulders. “So? Who are you?”
“I am…” He steeled himself. “I am the Chatcaavan Emperor.”
Her mouth dropped open. Her hand flew to it, covering it, but still she stared at him, so wide-eyed there was a rim of white almost all the way around her brown irises, like a Chatcaavan’s. “Just like Moses!” she breathed.
“I’m sorry?”
She bleated a laugh. “All right, the parallel’s not perfect, but…” Awed, she stopped to stare at him. “The king who lived the life of a slave, and became one of them!” Hastily, she added, “Our culture is full of such stories. The mighty fall and learn a great deal among the unfortunate, and when they rise again they are changed.”
“As silver is purified by the fire,” he murmured, repeating her words.
She nodded, never looking away, and quoted, “ ‘You led us into a trap and caused us to suffer; but we passed through water and fire, and you brought us to a place of safety.’”
The Emperor shuddered.
“But it’s true,” she said, gently. “You’ve passed through your trial. Now, you are stronger.” She clasped his arms. “You should bathe and eat and rest, though. I’m sure you have a great deal to do.”
“I don’t understand you,” the Emperor said. “I have been revealed as your great enemy and you are kind to me. You were kind to me from the beginning, and I have yet to understand why.”
“Because you are me,” she said. “And what I do unto the least and the worst, I do to God and myself. Besides… I don’t think you are my great enemy anymore. Are you? Or is God not done with you yet?”
“I don’t know,” the Emperor confessed. “I am afraid of either answer.”
“My brother,” she said, reminding him with a powerful pang of the Admiral-Offense calling him the same. “You are well on your path. So. You have a cabin assigned, I guess?”
“With the one you met as the Sword,” the Emperor said. “And… I am afraid to return there as well.”
Her eyes were compassionate. “Because?”
The Emperor opened his hand, looked at the four rings. “I am not who I was. What if he will not like what I am become?”
“If he loves you, and you love him…”
“Always,” the Emperor rasped.
“Then trust him.” She spread his palm further open. “You kept them… will you throw them away yourself?”
Would he? He shifted his hand so that the light glinted on the metal, tried not to quiver. They were symbols of oppression and misery. To dispense with them would be cathartic. But without some tangible proof of his captivity, would he decide to erase those memories? Would he turn his back on what he’d undergone?
He hoped he had more courage than that. But he knew now, intimately, that his strength was not without end.
“I think,” he said slowly, “I should keep them. In a way that makes it impossible for me to forget them, or others.”
“Can I make a suggestion?” she asked. He glanced at her and she traced a finger up one of his most prominent horns. “Black on black would be striking. Surgical glue would keep them there forever. But they’d be visible to someone close enough. People would ask.”
Could he admit to his bondage?
Could he bear not to, knowing that it could happen again, and to anyone?
“Let them,” he said, exhaling. “And… I would welcome your help.”
She nodded and touched his wrist. “Alet. If you want to know… this is how you survive, when you are at the end of your own strength.” She smiled. “With help.”
The Ambassador had had the Slave Queen. Surely he would agree. “I begin to understand. But it is only a beginning.”
But even believing in this, it was hard to return to the Ambassador’s cabin. He’d wrapped the fur throw around the patient gown, feeling the cold far more than he should have in his proper shape. The air on his hide was blunted, but on his wings an incredible caress; the smells in the corridor were more acute and unnervingly alien when compared to the scent of a Chatcaavan vessel. The noises… muffled, and he didn’t know if this represented a delta between his human and his Chatcaavan hearing or if Alliance warships were simply quieter. His balance was off because it was better; he’d lived his entire life with tail and wings, and yet it was strange not to feel he was about to career against a wall. The colors were brighter, but his vision better suited to distances.
He felt wrong in his skin, as if there were too many of him to fit in it. And very calm, because he was finally home in it. Nothing felt real; everything felt too true, too raw. He thought he would never be whole, but that the point might have been to stay broken. Just... like this. Such a metanoia to have fallen to, into, through. Such a journey to have achieved it. He had always longed for knowledge, craved it with a ferocity for which he’d earned endless teasing as a youth. The cache he’d fallen into when he’d crashed over the Worldlord’s wall was beyond anything he’d imagined as that youth, and it was bitter and beyond price.
Marshaling his courage, and more aware of that fear and doubt than he’d ever been in his life, the Emperor stepped through the door into the Ambassador’s quarters.
His Ambassador—Lisinthir, his Perfection—had been seated at the little desk at the back of the room, and on hearing the door had begun rising. At the sight of him… the sight of his gladness… it undid the Emperor, who stopped moving for fear that his knees would no longer hold him up. It hurt him, how cautiously Lisinthir approached him, because he needed the caution. Wanted it, as proof of consideration. But he wanted more the touch of those hands, and he held out his for them. He wanted more the arms that slid around his hips and pulled him close. He wanted to breathe this scent through his real nose… taste this skin behind the ear with his true tongue, find the concern and the stress in the flavor, acrid spice to the Eldritch’s usual musky sweetness.
It was only when he rested his hands on his lover’s back and felt the claws make contact that he flinched, hard enough to scratch.
The Ambassador caught his arm before he could back away. “No. Please. My love, you have given me worse in loveplay, and I enjoyed it.”
“I know,” the Emperor said, husky. “I know, and… I want to be that person again.” He looked up. “I won’t be, will I.”
Lisinthir’s eyes were steady, but too well the Emperor could read the faint crimp in them and sense the other’s sorrow. “You will be more than you were. If you so choose.”
“And the other choices?”
“To become less,” the Ambassador said. “To turn your claws on yourself and cut yourself down before your enemies do. To renege on your responsibilities.”
“My responsibilities.” The words tasted sour in his mouth. “Which I was executing with such skill and ardor. To maintain my own power—to preserve an Empire riddled through with such flaws that it can only exist by playing its warring factions against one another.” He looked up, discovered that he could still feel anger, if only as a dimly burning shard. “That responsibility.”
“You do yourself no credit by denying you sought change,” Lisinthir said, and there was a spark now in his Ambassador’s eyes, warm ember. “That you had changed. That you wanted to address some of the issues you saw before you sent me from your side.”
“I didn’t understand the half of what I needed to fight.” As qu
ickly as it had flared, the anger subsided. “I didn’t understand.”
“And now?” The Ambassador set a hand on his chest, fingertips just touching the collarbone.
“And now...” He paused. “We can do nothing until we escape Apex-East. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then for now...” The path before him—he apprehended its whole at last, and with exhausting clarity. The way was cold and dark, and there was in it a negation that would have horrified him before; the Survivor, who had become Dainty, could only accept it, because there was no alternative. And yet it was the Emperor-who’d-been who saw the political aspects of it clearly enough to know the end. He was, he thought, Changed. He saw now with one eye darkened. Lifting his gaze, he said nothing... only extended a hand to his Perfection’s shoulder, where the edge of the vest dove down toward the buttons that held it fast over the Eldritch’s chest. When the other did not recoil, he carefully undid that first button and began on the next.
Lisinthir held his breath as the Emperor worked his way down the vest’s closures. He’d missed their intimacy so much; had missed the playful aggression of it, the laughter, the contest quenched in ecstasy. He had never imagined that they would find anything more. That the Emperor would become capable of the kind of vulnerability that made the Slave Queen and Jahir so sweet in the arms, in the mouth. But this... this male now was not the stranger he’d feared. The integration of the desolated slave and the haughty king was happening as he watched, and while he yearned to kiss the grimness from that lean face, he knew better. The Emperor had witnessed torture and helplessness and found it heinous. Now he had lived it, and that experience had given weight to what had previously been a solely intellectual understanding.
What would come of it, Lisinthir had no idea. But this lovemaking now... this would see them through the gate. And then....
The Emperor gently drew the vest over one shoulder, then the other. Lisinthir caught it before it could fall to the ground and set it aside before straightening for the dragon to begin on his shirt. This aching contrast to how they’d disrobed one another before—by tearing the clothes from one another—was almost overwhelming, so much so that when the Emperor bent to the skin he’d exposed near Lisinthir’s heart and rested his nose against it, the Eldritch couldn’t help his shaky gasp.
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