"Me too," Sediryl said. And grinned back. "Let's make some trouble."
It struck Lisinthir as entirely appropriate that the Queen should summon him again to the presence chamber that she had used to offer him the assignment to the Alliance's need. No doubt she knew this meeting would end what she began then; she had a fine sense of what was fitting, one he respected, and with that respect came an unexpected sense of loss. To appreciate her, knowing that she no longer owned him entire...
But there was no avoiding it. They had both had a hand in what he'd become. And no matter what happened next, some part of his heart would tarry here, where Jahir and Vasiht'h and Sediryl were waiting. Where the people of the Alliance awaited, spread across the worlds. He had claimed them as his to ward, and they had fought at his side, and there was no sundering such bonds no matter the distance and time that separated them.
He dressed to honor his first allegiance, in Galare blue edged in silver, though he wore Imthereli's swords and house ring. Darkling sapphires he threaded through his hair and pinned at the cravat at his throat where once an amulet rampant had rested. He wore his scars beneath his raiment, and those more than any silk or velvet proclaimed him-the one bisecting his brow was hint enough at the ones he'd taken where only his lovers might look.
He was neither solely Eldritch, nor solely Chatcaavan, nor solely a citizen of the Alliance, but a son of all these stars, and as such presented himself to his Queen. She was as alone as a Queen ever was, with guards at her door, and that was a gift. He hadn't wanted anything more dramatic. To the modest throne, he walked, and went to one knee with bowed head, swords scraping against the carpeted floor.
"Lisinthir Nase Galare," she said. "Dancer, dueler, and last son of the House of the striking drake. You have acquitted yourself as I anticipated, with every magnificence."
"My Queen," Lisinthir said, pressing a hand to his heart to quell its tremor. "You honor me."
"You have earned it many times over, and the thanks of three nations." Liolesa rested her hand on the scepter in her lap. "Many the futures that might have unfolded before the known worlds, and many of them dire. That this one has room for all of us to breathe and grow is in large part your doing." She paused. "Does it please you at the last?"
"My lady?" Lisinthir asked, surprised at the intimacy of the question, and its absurdity. "Am I pleased to have rearranged the universe?"
She was smiling, a touch of impishness in her gaze. "I find it rather satisfying myself, when I bring it off."
That startled a laugh out of him. "God and Lady, my Queen. I could not begin to take credit for all that I began. As you probably well know, to begin a thing is simple. To see it to its completion?"
"Yes," Liolesa agreed, leaning back, her amusement palpable. "Rather a different matter. Still, I will not allow you to relegate all the rewards of your wreaking onto other shoulders. You have amply earned any guerdon you might ask of me, and I hope you have some in mind. I have it on excellent authority that left to my own devices, I choose rather terrifying gifts for those who please me."
He rested his folded hands on his knee. "I should begin then with Imthereli, and a fresh family name to renew it."
"You would have it back? Excellent. I look forward to prying it out of undeserving hands. Your father has been a thorn in my side for many a year. But do you tell me that you will remain here to oversee it?"
"That... would be the other matter," Lisinthir said. "The Chatcaavan Emperor and his Queen intend to name me their consort. And I'm told there will be progeny of that union."
"Yours?" Liolesa asked, brows rising.
"She is willing," Lisinthir said, softer. "And so am I."
Liolesa pursed her lips. "They would be born dragons."
"Shapechanging ones, who would learn my shape while still tumbling over their own limbs." The image lanced him with tenderness. "And I should like some of them to return here and see to Imthereli."
"A family out of the royal House... of Chatcaava, born of an Eldritch father." Liolesa laughed, a delighted peal. "Why yes! I should like that above many things. In addition, will you extend to your consort an offer of fosterage? My heir will have children of her own... they can trade."
Jahir and Sediryl's children among his own? "Yes," Lisinthir said fervently. "Yes, that would be very pleasant indeed."
"You'll need a vessel swift enough to convey you back here for your visits," Liolesa said. "You will want it, when the children come and you begin developing your property."
"You want to buy me a ship," Lisinthir said, amused.
Liolesa's mouth quirked upward. "Unless the Emperor can give you a finer one?"
"I'd be interested in the outcome of this particular competition...."
"Wouldn't you!" She laughed. "Impudent vassal mine. I must name you so now, if you leave the royal House to re-establish your own. These competing responsibilities will not trouble you?"
"So long as you and the Emperor are gentle with me," Lisinthir answered, smiling. "I should hope I have earned that consideration."
"Many times over," she said. "I grieve to lose you, and twice over: once from Galare and again to a marriage of state. But I am content to share you, given how deeply you commit to those to whom you promise yourself. Your cousin the scion of Seni Galare wrote me once that you would suffer no hand on the rein, but would give your heart to anyone who allowed you your head... and as one must expect of a therapist, he saw wisely and truly."
He could not bear to hear any more of this. "Before ever he met me, my Queen, you saw me truly first. Saw that I would die here, fretted in bitterness and anger and blunted ambition. You saved me."
"How appropriate then that you have saved us in turn." Liolesa's smile grew gentle. "You have wrought well, Imthereli. I trust you to continue doing so as you see fit."
To that he could only bow and rise because it was so obviously a dismissal. But as he stood, she spoke again.
"What family name will you choose?"
Lisinthir paused, hand still resting over his breast. Smiled, remembering laughter in a bed, and tenderness, and explanations. "The Chatcaavan Emperor claimed an Eldritch word for his family name. It seems only fitting that I should select a Chatcaavan one. Lauvet, my Queen. If it pleases you."
"A harmonious word, for that language. What does it mean?"
"'Love,'" he answered. "Because Love gives claws to Duty that Duty alone could never don."
Liolesa's smile was just as private as his must have been, and it delighted him. "You understand, then, my vassal." When he raised his brows, she said, "What gives us strength for the fight, and the advantage that allows us to prevail. The future before us, and the empires we must maintain... only love can hold them. Or the war for them will never end."
"Ah," he said softly, dipping his head. Remembered the words from a prophet, arched beneath him, the ones he'd been so certain had belonged to other mouths. "Yes. Just so."
"Go then, Lisinthir Lauvet Imthereli. And return with the seed of your House." Her mouth twitched upward, the smile somehow proud and mischievous both. "I look forward to the day."
Leaving, he found he did as well.
He followed that audience by reclaiming his coat of arms with the Chancellor and the Senior Registrar of the Home Office. The House colors remained abysmal... but he found he could no longer relinquish the white, no matter how impractical or difficult it was for the race to wear. The black, at least, he exchanged for sanguine, for blood enough had been shed for it. The striking drake he kept for emblem, save that he requested the addition of wings. Those seals would be waiting for him when he returned, for he refused to tarry for their completion. His existing ring had borne him far enough. It could accompany him a little longer.
The deeds and the tour through what remained of Imthereli's wealth, kept in trust in the palace vaults, used up the remainder of his afternoon, and a very interesting afternoon it was, seeing the changes in Ontine. There were Pelted in the halls now, and a Glase
ah in an office he was told belonged to the Minister of Science, and renovations in progress to add another office for the Lord of War, whose responsibilities had grown to encompass a new system navy. So many changes... just as he'd hoped when he'd told the Emperor, both their peoples had found freedom and renewal together.
Released from that tour and all its revelations, Lisinthir pulled himself onto the horse he'd borrowed from the royal stables-no longer his family's to command, but a liege gift-and stared up at the sky's smooth, soft blue. So much yet to do, but the Chancellor had made it clear that the estate had lain fallow this long... another few months would not harm it.
Nearing evening, but not yet nightfall. Time enough to attend to the only thing that was keeping him. And they were nigh. He resettled himself in the saddle and set off.
A servant led him through the Seni townhouse, among candles that perfumed the air and up the carpeted stairs to the sitting room. Lisinthir trailed his fingers along the tree leaves and flowers carved onto the door, then let his hand drop to the handle. As he'd expected, he found both his cousins inside on the chaise longue beside the fire. Jahir had a lute on his lap, a Galare antique from the patina and the ivory inlay, and his fingers were moving with understated confidence over the fretboard as he sang quietly for Sediryl. The tableau was powerful: the song, one of the romantic airs he'd slighted during his musical evening with Jahir, was in Eldritch, and the instrument quintessentially theirs. But the woman receiving this serenade was perched on the chaise with her legs up and feet bare, casual in a way no Eldritch woman should be, and she wore a turtleneck and slacks in a modern style that should have made her elaborate crown braid look outmoded, and yet didn't.
This was the future of his world, sitting in this room. A musician and a farmer, son and daughter of an antiquated homeworld and an advanced civilization.
He could think of no better hands to leave the Eldritch in.
Lisinthir waited, leaning against the doorframe with folded arms, listening to his cousin's clear tenor with pleasure. When the song ended, Jahir lifted his solemn eyes. Seeing it, Sediryl twisted to look over her shoulder, and smiled a welcome. She didn't know.
Jahir did, though. Shadowed and silver: "You're leaving."
"I have been gone too long already," Lisinthir said.
Jahir reached and Lisinthir went to him, going to a knee a second time and finding it painfully appropriate. He, who kneeled never, save for love.
"We shall miss you," Jahir said against his brow, and the shadow and silver danced over the Eldritch words like evening shadows. In Chatcaavan, "O Hunter. How I shall miss you-my-better."
"My Delight," Lisinthir answered in kind before switching back to their tongue, touching the words with carnal red and purest white. "I have not forgotten what you have earned."
"I await the day with gladness, knowing it requires your return." Jahir closed his eyes. "Ah, I only wish you were not sped so quickly."
"I will be back," Lisinthir promised. "The Queen has given me Imthereli, and I have promised to fill it with my shapeshifting children." At their starts, he laughed. "Yes. An Eldritch House of dragons. We shall perturb the orbit of the world with our offenses against tradition."
"Thank the Goddess!" Sediryl said. "We're going to need all the offenses against tradition we can get." She reached for his hand and he gave it. "Don't worry too much about how long you're gone. It'll give me time to convince my fiancé to let me watch the two of you cuddle."
"Sediryl!" Jahir exclaimed, coloring.
"I'd really prefer to watch you kissing. Or more than that," Sediryl finished. "But I might need a few decades to wrangle that one."
Lisinthir laughed, merry. "Take him dancing. I've found it loosens some of his internal constraints."
"Oh really," Sediryl said, giving Jahir a speculative look that put the man to the blush again. "And why do I get the feeling that's not Eldritch dancing you're talking about?"
"You should tell her one day," Lisinthir said, amused. "And show her the mask."
"I shall," Jahir promised, his cheeks still tinted. "But I think I'll wait to don it for your return."
"The few decades I'm going to need are going to be far, far too long," Sediryl said, wistful. "Just... ah... stay out of my head when I start daydreaming, both of you."
"Do we have to?" Lisinthir asked, grinning.
Sediryl raised her chin. "I won't be responsible for the results."
"Wouldn't we like to be, though," Lisinthir murmured, and she laughed, delighted. "Ah, I said you would be good for him, and I was right. Good my cousin... ride him often, and put him away wet."
"God and Lady, save me," Jahir said, but he was laughing on the inside and they both knew it.
"I'll take good care of him," Sediryl said more seriously. "I'll love him."
"That is what he needs best and most," Lisinthir said. "Fortunately, he makes it easy." He smiled at Jahir's blush and touched his cousin's chin, pushing it down far enough for the kiss. He made promises with that kiss that he intended to keep. The one he made with the kiss he deposited on Sediryl's hand was subtler: a partnership in the endeavor to abet their world's evolution, and to adore their cousin-beloved. She knew it too, even without the ability to read his thoughts, and turned her hand in his to cup his face.
"I go," Lisinthir said, voice gone rough and soft. "Ere it becomes too difficult to leave. But I will come again."
"We know it," Jahir said. "Go with our love, Lin."
The name cut deep as a wound, and more joyfully. He bowed to them both and took himself away, and felt Jahir's silent caress, benediction, farewell, and vow.
It was hard, hard to ride away. Hard to return to the palace and cross the Pad there to the new orbital station. Hard to walk its corridors, seeing the energy of the people at work building and expanding, and not want to stay and partake of the renaissance of the Eldritch.
But he knew, in his heart, that the bulk of that work was not his. He belonged to war, to the sword that guarded the innocent, and to an Empire bracing itself against the enemies on its borders and the lords inside it who balked at their yokes. Love was both a gentle hand... and the sword that guarded. As he presented himself to the Queen's Tam waiting to take him aboard his ride back to the Empire, he felt his regrets falling away.
Ambassador, has there ever been something you wanted more than anything?
Lisinthir ducked through the hatch. It had taken all his life, but he was going home.
"It is not right yet," the Queen Ransomed said, walking in a slow circle around the room that had once circumscribed her life. She trailed her hand along the sill of one of the narrow lancet windows. "Without him here."
The Emperor was watching her from the stairwell. "He won't be long. We will use the time to good effect, my Treasure, preparing for him. We have a court to rearrange."
She laughed, haltingly. "And so many other things." She paused before the window through which she'd espied the Ambassador's shuttle, so very long ago... shivered. "So many days I spent sitting here, looking. Not caring that I might fall. Each day so like the day before...."
When she didn't speak again, the Emperor said, quiet, "I can raze it for you, if you like."
Startled, she looked past his shoulder. He was smiling, but from the look in his luminous eye, he meant it. She pressed her hand to her mouth. "You wouldn't!"
"I would, if it pleased my Queen Ransomed." He drew abreast of her to gaze through the window at the clouds that streaked the firmament. "If the memories of this place are so fell, in a breath, I would do it. We could put a garden in its place. A pool. A dungeon for our enemies."
Now she did laugh. "A dungeon for our enemies! No, Beloved. I think I am done with dungeons. And I would be sad to see this tower destroyed."
"Ah? What shall you use it for?" When she glanced at him, wide-eyed, he said, "It is the Queen's tower. You should decide."
"Then... maybe an office? A study? A retreat?" She shook her head a little, trying to
imagine it. "I suppose the Breath of the Living Air would need a space of her own to conduct business while on the throneworld."
"You suppose correctly, and you should redecorate however you wish."
The Queen turned from the window, casting her gaze over the walls, the depression in the floor, the arch to the bathing pools. "I think I will change it very little. It was my prison... until it was the place that saw me transformed. I find I wish to keep those memories close."
He touched the base of the horn to which he'd sealed his four rings.
"Yes," she said, solemn. "But my memories are less cruel." She stepped into him, tucking her head under his, and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, stroking up into her mane. His hand gentled over the ridge on the back of her neck, once hidden beneath her collar-the follicles had been destroyed by the imperial jeweler, many revolutions ago, and hair no longer sprouted there.
"Will you have the Surgeon address it?" he asked, finger playing along that ridge. "Grow your mane entirely, as when you were new?"
"But then I could not wear a collar again," she said. "And I would miss it. You should gift me a new one. One I can take off when I choose."
He licked her cheek. "Whatever my Queen desires."
She laughed softly. How far they had come to arrive here! And they had suffered. Leaning back to look at him, she thought she could find many reasons for gratitude despite the difficulty of the journey.
"So," the Emperor said. "The Breath's new audience chamber."
"Something like," she said. "But nothing more. I would prefer to sleep with you."
"I would prefer that myself." He took her hand. "Let us go."
Together they walked down the harem tower's broad stairs, past the mosaics that had survived the insurrection, and the rooms that once again supported the Emperor's females... though they had spent more than a little time discussing the fates of those females, particularly once the Priestess and the Mother made it clear how much their short visit in the Alliance had changed their opinions on the lot of women. The Queen could easily imagine a day when these rooms were empty of concubines, though the transition, like so many transitions, would be challenging to fly.
From Ruins Page 43
