by Cari Z.
“You already work very hard,” Ferran said a bit primly before taking a bite of the salmon.
Yes, he did. It felt good to have his husband stick up for him, defending him even to his matriarch. Ferran was in a good mood, so Jason decided now was as good a time as any to bring up what had happened tonight. “Do you remember how I acted toward you when we first met?”
“Very clearly. You were interested in me, but you were very reserved for days and days.”
“I did say it wasn’t about you, though.”
“That is true. But you never told me what it was about.”
“I think I probably should.”
Ferran put his fork down and folded his hands in his lap, his eyes widening with concern. He didn’t say anything, though, just waited.
“You know that Blake and I were only together for a little over a year.” It seemed like a good place to start, neutral territory.
“Yes.”
“We were… happy. I thought we were happy. At first. By the time he ended things, we weren’t so happy, but I didn’t pay very close attention to that. I didn’t pay attention to a lot of things I probably should have, but Blake found other people who were more than willing to pay attention to him. He was a very engaging person.”
Ferran looked a little uncomfortable, slightly flushed through his ears, but Jason felt surprisingly sanguine about the situation. The past was the past, and he really was over Blake. What mattered now was how the past could affect the present.
“The person who definitively ended it between us was a Perel, finishing up his tour before returning here. He and Blake had a fling. Naturally, the news spread, since it was a Perel he was sleeping with, who had no interest in discretion, and that was that.”
“I can see how this would give you reservations about my people,” Ferran said, his voice very serious. “You must have thought I would be the same.”
“I did at first. You taught me better,” Jason assured him, wanting to ease his husband’s look of uncertainty. “The point of me telling you all this is because the Perel who Blake slept with is in my second class, and he doesn’t care for me. He’s probably going to approach you at some point and tell you about this, so I thought I would get it out first.”
“Oh.” Ferran tilted his head in that inquisitive way so many Perels had. “Who is he?”
“His name is Seronn.”
“Oh.” Ferran’s quills immediately sharpened. “Oh. That is possibly a problem for you. I hadn’t thought it would be. I thought he would leave you alone.”
Jason frowned. “Why is that a problem, other than the fact that he isn’t going to be a cooperative student?”
“Because he is the consort of Hrill. She is Matriarch Tlann’s only female pup, her heir, and she is the matriarch I was promised to before I left on my trip. It wasn’t a formalized promise—I made my mother agree not to betroth me—but if I had not met you, that is the family I would have married into. Many matriarchs have so many husbands that it is understood there will be sexual relationships between them when she is otherwise engaged, and Seronn has always been interested in me.”
Jason stared at Ferran, completely taken aback. “So he thinks I stole you from him?”
“It seems so.” Ferran fidgeted in his seat, his mouth working soundlessly for a moment, before he went on. “I was interested in him as well, before. I am not terribly fond of Hrill, but I thought that if Seronn was to be with me, I would become content in her family. He is very….”
“Magnetic?” Jason offered dryly. “Enticing? Attractive?”
“I have upset you.”
“I’m fine.” The silent, hurt accusation in his lover’s eyes made Jason sigh, and he backed up and thought about how to phrase the truth. “I don’t think that you’re still interested in him, even if he is very interesting. I just find him annoying. Having this kind of history with one of my students is going to make it very difficult to teach him, and I can’t kick him out of the class. Your mother would kill me.”
“She would understand.”
“No, she wouldn’t. How many times have we been told that this is bigger than us?” Jason laughed a little, but it didn’t sound like any laugh he’d ever made before. This one was strained and tired and filled with bitterness, bitterness, which hurt, because he didn’t want to feel bitter. He wanted to feel happy and in love. This was the honeymoon period, wasn’t it? When so many hormones were floating around that you were swimming in your delight in the other person, breathing your love for him. Jason knew he loved Ferran. He knew he would continue to love him, because constancy was in his nature and Ferran was easy to love. Still, it would have been nice if the chemical buzz that was the quick reward for love and lust hadn’t been tamped down by too many classes, too many meetings, too many rules and expectations.
“What is that emotion?” Ferran wondered aloud. He looked apprehensive. “I haven’t felt it before.”
“I don’t really know how to explain it,” Jason replied. The closest overall descriptor he could come to was melancholy, and it still wasn’t entirely accurate.
“You are unhappy.”
“No one can be perfectly happy all of the time.” That might have been a little too much honesty for Ferran, who seemed to shrink in a little on himself. Jason reached across their small table and took his husband’s hand, running his thumb in soothing circles over Ferran’s knuckles. “I love you. That hasn’t changed at all. How I feel about you, how much I want you—none of that’s going to change, no matter what gets thrown at us. But I can’t lose myself in you, and I can’t relax, and neither can you, not yet. That’s what makes me unhappy, but I know it’s necessary, and so I don’t want to complain.”
“Oh.” Ferran considered that for a moment. “Humans are very emotionally complex creatures.”
“We certainly are,” Jason agreed. “It’s a pain in the neck, isn’t it?”
“It makes you interesting. A Perel’s deepest, most ingrained behaviors are both obedience and combativeness, which can be difficult for individuals to reconcile, but the vast majority of pups manage it. With humans, though, there is constant variety. You are never quite the same—the things that motivate you the most are so often different. There is almost always love and hate and fear and lust, but they are flavored with a thousand different secondary emotions. You are brilliant and complicated. And sometimes you frighten me because you are so complicated I cannot understand you.”
“Just ask me to explain,” Jason said. He brought Ferran’s hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles. “I’ll always try.”
“Good.” Ferran glanced at the fish. “Your dinner is cold now.”
“Salmon is good cold or warm.” And Jason was still far too hungry for familiar food to think of turning it down. He ate the rest quickly and then stood up. Ferran stood with him. “I need to clean up and get some sleep,” Jason sighed.
“I’ll be waiting in the bedroom.”
Jason smiled. “If you wait up, then I won’t be sleeping as much.”
Ferran smiled back. “That is my hope.”
Chapter Ten
LIFE, INCREDIBLY, could settle into a routine, even when there was nothing routine about it. Every day was different in some way, but after a month, Jason was beginning to feel like he was getting the hang of it. The time after breakfast was spent suffering through language lessons and drinking too much tea to keep his throat from getting overly sore. After lunch, he went out with Neyarr and Garrell, going farther and farther afield from the main city every day. Jason met members of every major House, and apart from the strangeness in the teahouse the first day and the difficulties he was having with Seronn, none of them did any worse than ignore him after a curt greeting, which he could definitely handle.
The inner sections of Berenze were heavily populated and very clearly inhabited once you knew what you were looking for. There were long, wide structures whose sole purpose was to redirect the flow of the copious rain so that it wou
ldn’t sink into people’s homes, almost all of which were underground. Outdoors, it was green and mossy, and always, always damp, and despite the contacts and the amount of medication Jason was on, his eyes always stung when he was out in the air for more than a few hours.
The working people did business in the ground. That was where all the stores were, most of them family-run shops, and the vast majority of those families were associated with the seven matriarchs that ran the Council. Only simple things were sold in the general stores. Everything that required more work—anything custom-made or fitted, from tables to clothes—had to be done by special order. Once a Perel married, he—and Jason only ever saw males out and about—was more strictly confined to his home and the service of his matriarch, so most of the people Jason met in his trips around the city were like the twins: young, unmarried, and either working or wealthy enough that they didn’t have to work.
People were very interested in him, that much was clear. As Jason’s language skills became marginally better, he was able to respond to more questions, or at least partially answer them before one of the twins stepped in to save him. Most of the questions were about where he came from. Did you come from Earth? What is it like there? Do all humans look like you? Do all humans travel the universe? Are you all wealthy enough to do that?
Jason had never seen Earth; he had never even been to the home system. Most people hadn’t, these days. Earth had been abandoned generations ago, the last of its holdouts giving up and immigrating to Mars. What could he say about Earth that would make any sense on this world? Jason usually went with, “I was born on a planet far away from Earth. Humans live on many different planets. No, not all humans look like I do. Many of them travel the universe. No, we’re not all wealthy enough to do that.” Some were poor enough to do it instead, people who mined the asteroid belts—who could barely afford to keep their vessels running, much less buy property on a habitable planet. It wasn’t a distinction that Jason felt capable of explaining yet.
The only change Jason knew was headed his way was that pretty soon he was going to lose Neyarr and Garrell as his escorts around the city. He should be able to get around fairly well on his own now, and he was honestly looking forward to the moments of privacy. But increasing his independence wasn’t why he was losing them. Their marriage was approaching, and once that knot was tied, they wouldn’t be free to go out on the town whenever they wanted to.
They didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect. “Ylenn will be a good wife,” Garrell said, one rare evening when the four of them—the twins, Jason, and Ferran—were curled on their couch watching a movie on their holo emitter. “She has four consorts already and eleven pups. One of her consorts is our friend Jennan, and he has never had reason to complain about her guidance. We will probably be the last consorts she takes too.”
“She’s better than Hrill,” Neyarr added with a sidelong glance at Ferran. “No matter what other consorts Hrill sports.”
“And Jason is better than any of them,” Ferran said smugly, cuddling closer to his husband’s side. Jason half smiled and kissed Ferran’s temple.
“You two are disgustingly affectionate.”
“That’s rich,” Jason said with a raised eyebrow.
Neyarr frowned. “How is it wealthy?”
“He means it is laughable,” Garrell informed his brother.
“Well, between consorts and wives, it is unusual,” Neyarr defended himself. “Females are raised to keep an emotional distance from their consorts, although of course they must always be good mates to them. Females are usually older than their consorts, and they are, in some ways, as much of a mother figure as they are a wife.”
“So, you’re comparing me unfavorably to a matriarch?” Jason asked. “That isn’t exactly insulting for me.”
“I didn’t mean it to be insulting. I’m just….” Neyarr sighed, and his brother stroked the back of his head. “Part of me never believed we would reach this point. Marriage. We won’t see you for months after the rhezan.”
“Why not?”
“It is a matter of becoming accustomed to our new family,” Garrell said. “Males marry into their wife’s family, and from then on, they must devote themselves to her kin. It can take some time for a new consort to learn the behaviors appropriate to his new household, as well as his duties, the names of his new children… things like that.”
Ferran shivered very slightly, and Jason suddenly became aware that while what the twins were describing might have been normal, his husband, at least, wouldn’t have described it as an enjoyable process.
“What will the rhezan be like?” Jason asked, not just because he wanted to change the subject, but because he was genuinely curious about it.
“Large,” Neyarr replied. “Both of our extended families will attend. The ceremony will only take a few minutes, but there is a feast afterwards. It can go on for a long time.”
“Days,” Garrell agreed.
“It sounds fun.”
“It always is, at least for the guests. Yours will be very exciting,” Neyarr said with an anticipatory grin. “Very strange. I hope we get to attend. Have you chosen a date yet?”
“We have not thought much about it lately,” Ferran told them.
Which was true on his part. Jason had actually been doing a lot of thinking about it, because Grenn had been bringing the subject up with him on a daily basis for the past week and a half.
“It is expected,” she’d told him, imperturbable in the face of his objections. “It is a public recognition of your status. It is a celebration. The rhezan is absolutely essential if you and my son wish to be fully integrated into Perel society.”
“But there’s no rule that says we have to do it right now,” Jason had said, sticking on that point, even though he really didn’t have any problem with ritually marrying Ferran, per se. It just seemed like another layer of bureaucracy to fight through when both of them were already working themselves through the night—or day, as it were—to learn and adapt.
“Every day you wait is a day that could be easier on you, and easier on our people in general.”
“But you validated me!” Jason had exclaimed, exhausted by the never-ending hurdles that presented themselves. “Isn’t that as official as it gets?”
“It is official sanction, but it isn’t official acceptance. That comes with the rhezan.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“This is your life now,” Grenn had told him, and there was no way he could do anything other than look her in the eye when she took that tone. “These steps are as necessary for you as they are for any other citizen of Perelan. You need to understand that and understand it well, and fast. I am tired of having this conversation with you.”
“That makes two of us,” he’d muttered. His meetings with Grenn, while always frank and sometimes helpful, more often left him feeling argumentative and wrung out than anything else. He hated feeling that way, hated day after day of confrontation, but there was no escaping it.
“We’re going into the jungle tomorrow, right?” Jason asked, changing the subject. It was a field trip of sorts, something that the twins had been promising they would do before they were rendered unavailable, and Ferran had managed to get a day’s reprieve from his classes to go with them.
“Yes. Not far,” Neyarr cautioned, “but far enough to give you a feel for it. The House of Grenn and several others have a harvesting operation at the edge of the trees, and there is a central platform with walkways there that we can show you, places where you can go a little ways out into the wild. Not far, though.”
They kept emphasizing that point, but going for a jaunt in the depths of the jungle wasn’t what Jason was looking forward to. “I understand. What do they harvest?”
“Bark,” Ferran said. He shifted his legs beneath him on the couch. “Different trees are used to cultivate different strains of fungi, which have a multitude of uses depending on how they are raised, what they are exposed to,
and so on. It’s a very large operation, part of the biggest industrial center in Berenze.”
“Is this one of the reasons your mother is the most powerful matriarch on the Council?”
“That and the size of our family, primarily.”
“It’s one of the reasons our marrying Ylenn is such a good idea for both Houses,” Garrell added. “Her House is very highly educated. They have scientists who are experts in local biology, and they will be more inclined to work for the House of Grenn if there is an alliance between us.”
“I see.” Arranged marriages like that weren’t unusual on certain human planets, especially the rural ones, but for Jason, who came from parents who had married each other because they had simply fallen in love, the idea of it was anathema. He felt grateful that Ferran had found him and pursued him, and pleased with himself that he’d had the sense to fall in love with him.
“I want to come.”
The twins twisted around where they were lounging and rounded on their younger brother. Corran was standing in the doorway and looking a little bit like he wished he hadn’t spoken up, but he stood his ground.
“You were not invited,” Neyarr told him, “and you are rude as well to be listening in secret to our conversation.”
“I should come,” Corran tried again, his expression stiff and resolved. “Matriarch Grenn agrees. I need to start learning escort techniques, and even at the edge, Jason should be protected.”
Garrell’s eyes narrowed. “Why does the matriarch think you need to learn escort techniques?”
Corran’s quills sharpened and rose with tension. “Because I am going to be the next duelist for the House of Grenn.”
Following this announcement there was a moment of shocked silence, and then all three Perels on the couch reverted to their natural language and began alternately shouting, growling and yipping at Corran, who was so bristly his head resembled that of a cockatoo. They spoke far too fast for Jason to make sense of it, so he sat back, watched the body language play out, and tried to understand what was going on.
