"It's fine," he said, and pushed himself off the bed, pouring himself from the dragon body into the one Laniis had taught him. Fur was a relief; the clinic was cold, and he hadn't noticed. Too accustomed, maybe, to ignoring discomfort as a Chatcaavan? Strange thought.
"God above us," Andrea breathed.
"Were you always able to make the change so quickly?" Crosby asked, walking in an arc around the Emperor, who turned obligingly so he could see the back as well as the front.
"No. That was a matter of practice. And willingness, I think. To be subsumed."
"What fascinates me is how closely your physique seems to have been duplicated."
"Other than the color," Andrea said.
Crosby waved that off, irritable. "The color is immaterial. Or rather, it is, but only as a data point for how the shapechange expresses minor traits, like pigmentation. It's the musculature that interests me." He stopped beside the Emperor, eyeing his hips. "Do you tip forward?"
"I find balancing in this shape... challenging."
"You have the thighs and calves of a plantigrade body," Crosby said. He hiked his uniform skirt up and wiggled out of his pants as both Andrea and the Emperor watched, bemused. "Look at my thigh here. See the development? That's from a lifetime of walking on what a humanoid body would perceive to be its toes. You don't have that. Or rather, you have more of it than you did as a dragon, but not as much as you should as an adult Seersa your age."
"Maybe it's a mistake," Andrea said. They both looked at her, so she continued, "Well, it's an action that requires practice, right? From what you've said? Maybe you didn't take enough of the shape? Like you didn't realize the leg muscles mattered so you didn't pay attention to that part?"
The observation struck him powerfully. "I don't perceive any choice when I actually Touch. In what I take."
"But?" Andrea asked, hearing it in his voice.
"But perhaps careful observation of the differences prior to taking the pattern would help inform it better?" The Emperor looked down at himself. "I have also wondered if building my strength in a particular shape will cause that strength to appear in my first body."
Andrea nodded. "The priest at the Source wasn't really clear about that."
"So many questions," Crosby said. "Fascinating ones, though. You're sure there's no medical literature?"
"None that I know of," the Emperor said. "We should probably begin some. If you wish to be involved."
Crosby's ears splayed. "I assumed that was something you wanted to keep in-species."
The Emperor spread his arms and looked from one unfurred palm to the other, then raised his head to meet Crosby's eyes. He lifted his brows.
"Fine, you look like a different species, but you're still a dragon," Crosby said, dryly. "And you knew what I meant. Culture transcends race. Culturally the Change is... what. Forbidden? A religious relic? Unusual?"
"I think it will become something embraced initially by those who are open to amity with other species," the Emperor said. "The males who would wish its secrets withheld from aliens are also the least likely to use it."
"Good point." The Seersa tapped his fingers on his arm. "Fine. I'll make a run at it. Just observational data, mind you. One test subject does not a study make. And I haven't done research in long enough that I wouldn't trust me to put together a real study anyhow."
"Observation is the beginning of anything," the Emperor said. "It will do. Will you meet me in the gym today?"
"Sure. Ping me, I'll come by. Otherwise, you're good to leave. Your health's as good as it's going to get, outside a therapist's couch." The Seersa nodded to him and added to Andrea, "I'm in my office if you need anything."
After the male had vanished into his room, the Emperor said, "Does it make you happy? What you are doing here."
Andrea laughed. "It's certainly the most relaxing job I've had since I graduated from medical school. Right now I'm going through requisitions, checking to see how low our supplies have gotten. The computer indexes all that, but sometimes people don't put things back in the right trays and the count goes off." She offered him his pants. "Do these fit in that shape?"
"No." The Emperor took them anyway.
"You're beautiful," she said, wistfully. "Was it... was it Lieutenant Baker?"
"It was," he said.
Andrea sighed. "What a mess."
"Is it?" he asked, because he honestly no longer knew how to categorize his relationship with Laniis Baker. He only knew that one existed.
"Yes," she said firmly. And then, sheepish, "You look so huggable like this."
That stopped him short. "What?"
"I think that about all the Seersa and Karaka'A," she confessed, blushing. "I know it's awful, but they all tend to be short and soft and plushly furred and whenever I look at them I have to sit on my reaction to think that they're adorable."
The Emperor stared into space, imagining it. "Even Crosby?"
She started laughing. "Especially Healer Crosby! He's so grumpy. I imagine hugging him and he's wearing that scowl and it gets even cuter somehow." She grinned at him. "I would never suggest it, of course. The last thing any Pelted wants to hear is ‘you're cute and I want to cuddle you because you remind me of a pet dog except better.'" Her smile faded. "I guess that's how we planned it, actually. When we first made them back on Earth. Like a pet dog but better."
"I am not a Seersa," the Emperor observed.
She looked up. "Of course not."
"So you could hug me," the Emperor said, careful of the words. "And not fear offending a real Seersa."
She stared at him. "You... would let me hug you?"
"I let the Ambassador do so."
"Yes, but he's your lover!"
"And you are... my friend. I believe. Yes?" The concept was tender in his head, like a wound. But he couldn't refute the truth of it. He had trusted Andrea with his body and sanity in the Worldlord's harem. He trusted her now with his doubts and questions. That was, by alien standards, the definition of a friend.
It was the Chatcaavan definition as well. No matter how they dismissed it, or denied it.
"I think of you as a friend," she agreed. "I think. I mean, it seems a little disrespectful to say so."
"Because I am the Emperor of the Chatcaavan Empire?" he asked.
"Because you've been through so much," she said. "You deserve the ability to decide whether someone is your friend or not, without them deciding for you, even in their own head."
He tried to work through that, and thought he could understand. "This is about consent, again."
"And agency," she agreed. "If two people don't agree on what they are to one another, that's not good. That's your problem with Lieutenant Baker."
Such an elegant summation. It felt right. How easy these aliens were with concepts that the Chatcaava needed. "It is not our problem, however. I agree with your assessment, Andrea, though I don't know how I have deserved it."
She shrugged, her smile helpless. "Why do we like the people we like? Do we ever really know?"
"Maybe not," he said, and spread his arms again. "But right now I am a Seersa, so you should take advantage of this opportunity."
That made her laugh, as he suspected it might. She also stepped into him, slowly: so that she could stop if he flinched, he thought. When he didn't, she finished her advance, close enough that breathing made her breast brush against his.
And then she buried her head in his shoulder and hugged him tightly with a gleeful sound that tore him open because its happiness was so innocent. When in his life had he ever inspired so clean and uncomplicated an emotion?
He rested his arms around her back, his cheek against her head. It was utterly unlike embracing the Ambassador, whom he loved and wanted. There was no passion driving him. He felt no impetus, save that to savor the moment: its strangeness, its unexpectedness, its perfection.
Stepping back, Andrea sighed with evident happiness. "That was wonderful. Everything I ever imagined."
"Furry?" he suggested, curious how it had seemed to her.
"Fluffy!" She laughed. "But better, because it was like a layer of plush over something you could squeeze and squeeze and it would never break."
Struck, he said, "You thought this?"
"Isn't it true?" she asked. "You haven't broken. And you're not going to. You're the Survivor, alet."
"Arii," he said. "Alet imposes a distance."
She blushed, but she was smiling. "Arii, then."
He slipped back into the dragon's shape, dressed, and took his leave of her, wondering how it was possible that he had acquired a human nestsister. Would she object to the characterization? He doubted it. And yet, how bizarre, to have an alien lover and an alien friend?
He thought of the Knife calling Laniis his huntsister. Well. Perhaps not so strange after all, anymore.
Work was awaiting him when he returned, as he expected. The fleet had been practicing in separate task forces, so lining them up for exit from the home system had only required sending the deployment orders. They'd begun accelerating for the system limit: they would be a day in reaching it with so many, and then they'd be able to engage the intersystem drives. The Worldlord's son had readiness reports for him, the Admiral-Offense and the Fleet captain had suggestions for their placement once they reached their planned stop point, and he was still receiving offers of aid from remote corners of the Empire. He took his data tablet to the Ambassador's desk, turned the chair sideways so he could sit without fouling his wings, and began sorting through the administrative tasks that beset the author of a rebellion: oddly like the ones that had beset him as the head of a mostly stable state. The resumption of these duties made him realize how interesting he found them. Battle had been exhilarating, but there was something satisfying about the steady work of maintaining territory.
The Ambassador's hands, sliding over his shoulders, should have surprised him. Instead he found them welcome, and spread his wings so he could lean back into the body he knew would be there to support him.
"The dispatch to the Worldlord?" the Emperor asked.
"On its way, and Meryl and the Admiral-Offense helped me compose it."
The Emperor smiled. "Nicely done."
"We have a great deal to do." The Ambassador's hands moved outward, along the wing-arms. "The more profit we can wring from every act, the better. How goes your work?"
"As well as can be guessed." The Emperor dismissed his projections, set the display to sleep. "Everything is in motion now. Our fleet. Second's. The Twelveworld Lord's. The pirate fleet."
"The Pelted's, perhaps. Meryl has not said anything more about it, though."
"They are waiting to see which way the wind will blow," the Emperor said. "I would counsel them against it, if I could."
"Do you think they are best served by jumping on the opportunity at Apex-East?"
"I don't know," the Emperor answered. He turned, sliding into the body of an Eldritch so he could rise and embrace his lover, draw his complex and fascinating feelings through their skins. "But I doubt timidity will serve them."
"Perhaps it's for the best that you cannot advise them, then. If you were wrong, they would blame you. And if right, resent you."
"Perhaps."
The Ambassador framed his face in long hands, and through those palms the Emperor sensed his resolve, the working of his intellect, the steadiness of his spirit. What would he title the Ambassador in the days to come? ‘Second' had become associated with betrayal and grief. Something new perhaps. Thorn Advisor. Alien Liaison. Minister of Foreign Relations. The Emperor's lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but edging toward one; how much more flexible these alien mouths were.
"I like my name in your mouth best, or the titles you bestowed on me first," Lisinthir said. Beauty. Perfection. "Though these new titles are quite agreeable."
"You hear my thoughts so easily?"
"In this shape, so much so I sometimes grow confused between when you speak aloud and when you think." The Eldritch rested his brow against the Emperor's. "There is not much written on the powers of mind-mages or their training. I am still learning their extent and their control."
"Like the Change that way."
"The metaphor had occurred to me." The Ambassador smiled crookedly. "Too many similarities between our peoples, Exalted. One would almost think a greater power had planned them."
"And our meeting, then."
"And our meeting. An inevitability, that dragons and unicorns should meet."
"Dragons," the Emperor murmured, sensing the shape of that on his tongue. Strange that the aliens should have had stories of winged, horned creatures. And then given them name in legends. It made him think of the unicorn pin the Ambassador had first worn, and the ring with its wingless drake. "I have been thinking about names."
"Names and a great many things, I sense."
"It is all related." The Emperor-was he Kauvauc at this moment? In this alien skin, feeling the play of emotions in his lover's mind, the curiosity, the affection, the flexing steel of his spirit? "Tell me about all of yours."
"Exalted?" Lisinthir asked, surprised at the complexities he felt under his skin. More than curiosity had moved the Emperor, but he didn't know how to name the other feelings he could spy through it, like looking past a stained glass window into a darkened church. "'All' of them?"
"Your names. How are they chosen? Who decided you were Galare and... whatever other names you have? The family, versus the... what is it. House? Where did these names come from? Who decided that your father would be represented by a dragon, but your mother this other beast?"
Lisinthir exhaled. "Not a brief conversation, Exalted. Are you done?"
The Emperor glanced at the desk. "For now. Concentrating on something else would help while I wait for the next steps."
Lisinthir caught up the pale hand and tugged, bringing the Emperor to the couch. He draped himself on it and waited; the Emperor slid onto him, resting his head on Lisinthir's shoulder in an attitude that would have struck some as far too passive for the male who had stolen the Thorn Throne. But oh, how he relished this sign of trust. That the Emperor might find rest here, after all his trials. He kissed the top of the other man's head and said, "So. Names. How do Chatcaava trace heredity? If at all? To decide to whom they leave their property."
"Customs vary," the Emperor said. "Among the court, you are known as ‘Such-Title's-Heir.' So my sons might call themselves Empire's Heir, or since there are more than one, Empire's First Heir. Elsewhere, it is part of the introduction but not made explicit. You might say, ‘I am First Division Captain, heir to the Lord of the Far Marches.' Where I was born, no one cared, save to say ‘I was this person's name's get.' It is that way with the poor. Where there is nothing worth bequeathing, there are few titles, and no impetus to fight for them."
"Then property is not necessarily passed to one's children," Lisinthir said.
"No," the Emperor said. "Even on my birthworld, a male with power or property might decide some other youth is more worthy of one's legacy, and settle one's belongings on him accordingly. The court might have taken this to an extreme, in letting everyone fight to claim anything one wanted, but it is a reflection of a belief we took with us when we left the Source."
"'The weak belong to the strong,'" Lisinthir quoted, remembering.
The Emperor said, "Exactly."
"Well, then," Lisinthir said, stroking through the long white hair of his lover's Eldritch shape. "We have names in order to track who belongs to whose family, and therefore, who is most eligible for the property, privileges, and wealth of the previous generation when it is passed on. This is considered the best possible method for what I assume to be several reasons. First, that one has the training of one's children, and so it is likely one will inculcate the proper values in them. And second, that it prevents needless bloodshed and disorder when the previous generation dies."
"Assume," the Emperor murmured. "You don't know?"
&n
bsp; "None of this is made explicit," Lisinthir answered. "Like most cultural habits, the reasons for its initial instigation are lost to history, and we are left only with what we presume to be the rationale." He twirled some of the Emperor's hair between two fingers. "So then. I have a family name, which tells you directly who my mother was-heredity is traced through the mother's line among the Eldritch, because it is easier to know who the mother was than the father-and I have a House name, which tells you about the political and familial group that my ancestors sprung from. I had the name ‘Nase' from my mother. But ‘Galare' is a lineage, specific to bloodline, and goes back to the first queen of the planet, Jerisa. All our houses are thus: links back to the founders who settled our world."
"And you must be born into these families and houses," the Emperor murmured.
"Or marry into them."
The Emperor sat up then. "How does that work? Who takes whose name?"
Lisinthir chuckled. "One takes the name of the female, unless the male is from a more powerful family group."
"Ah! Something I understand at last." Straddling him, the Emperor leaned forward. "So, you have this house name, with the delicate four-footed creature for symbol, because it links you to the ruler of your planet."
"Correct. Also because my father's house is debased. He lost it to an encroacher who annexed his territory when his family could no longer support its population. There is no House Imthereli anymore."
The Emperor's hand brushed against his chest, tracing down the collarbone to land over his heart. "Why do you feel this way, saying that?"
"What is it you feel, Exalted?" Lisinthir asked, soft.
"Angry. Confused. Resolved. Affectionate. Angry I understand... if I expected to inherit my sire's title and he lost it before I could claim it, I would be angry. But the rest of it perplexes."
"A mystery," Lisinthir suggested, unable to resist his amusement. "How you love them, my Greatness."
That sent a ripple of unease through the Emperor, who leaned down to kiss him lightly. "Kauvauc now."
"Kauvauc, then," Lisinthir answered against his lips.
From Ruins Page 5
