/I think there is little we can do about events outside our expertise./ Jahir rubbed his face and pushed himself upright. /He's right. We have our work, arii, and we can't do it exhausted./
Vasiht'h followed him to the narrow bunk, trying not to sink his claws into the carpet. They kept flexing out of his toes. /Do you really think you can sleep after... all that?/ The mindline shivered: blood, screams, the stench of burnt flesh, the memory of the clinic door locking on its own as they huddled in it, torn between racing out of it to help the wounded and staying out of a fight they had no training to survive... and barred from making the choice because the clinic door had resolutely ignored any of their requests for exit.
"I think right now we have to try," Jahir said. "But I would very much like it if you would stay close."
"That I can do," Vasiht'h replied, subdued.
Surprisingly, they both managed to sleep—Jahir on his side on the bunk, legs tucked in to keep them from hanging over the end, and Vasiht'h with his lower body stretched on the floor and his upper propped against the bed's edge so he could rest his head on his arms on the mattress, beside his friend's face. He'd spent many an uncomfortable night sleeping this way. By now he figured he had a permanent kink in his upper torso.
Their dreams were uncomfortable, thorned with guilt and dim with breathless fear. But they never rose to the level of nightmares, and that was good enough for Vasiht'h. That they only lasted about an hour also suited him fine, though his headache seemed magnified by the short nap when Jahir finally nudged him.
"We should spell our colleague."
"Right," Vasiht'h murmured, and forced himself to straighten. He rubbed his back as Jahir stepped over him and made his way to the bathroom. The water the Eldritch used on his face braced Vasiht'h as well, though what he really wanted was a proper wash. /I don't guess the bathroom is big enough for me?/
"It is," Jahir said, leaving it. "But I'm not sure what the guidelines are on using it when we should be conserving power. We should ask."
"Great," Vasiht'h muttered.
Jahir smiled, and that emotion softened the spikes in the mindline. "I packed your long-handled brush."
Vasiht'h straightened. "Really?" And then shook his head. He smiled. "Of course you did, knowing I would forget. I am nervy."
"You have chafe marks on the insides of your wrists."
Chagrined, the Glaseah looked at his forepaws. /Not a habit I'm glad to have resurrected./
Wry agreement now, sour as a lemon but fleeting. /You will put it aside again when we are not in mortal danger./
Vasiht'h snorted. "Let's go see the patient."
The patient wasn't in the clinic.
"What... where..." Vasiht'h stopped, digging his toes into the carpet and flexing his legs. Borden was asleep on the second bed, and from the vital signs above her it was a normal sleep, one she'd obviously needed. He couldn't tell how long the first bed had been vacated, though Jahir was at the console, querying it.
"Two hours, about," Jahir said in response to the unspoken question.
"Should we wake her?"
"I think we must."
In response to Vasiht'h's gentle prodding, Borden rolled over and blinked bleary eyes at them. "What? Oh, aletsen. Are you early?"
"Maybe," Vasiht'h said. "The Ambassador is missing."
"He's not missing. I released him."
"Did his medical condition change enough to make that a wise course?" Jahir asked from behind him.
Borden glanced up at him. "He'd had all the fluids he could possibly retain. The tests said he wasn't likely to drop dead soon. He wanted to sleep in a real bed that he could turn in, so I let him. The ship's tagged him with a medical alert, it'll say something if he collapses."
"You could have retracted the halo-arch," Jahir said. "If being able to turn in bed was his primary concern."
"I think he just wanted privacy," Borden said. "And it's not like he can go far." She rubbed her eyes. "Sometimes you need to give people a little autonomy, or they fight you on more important decisions."
/I don't believe this,/ Vasiht'h said privately, his frown carried on the words like a low drone. /I mean, she's not wrong, but this is a little more serious a matter than 'if we push too hard, the patient might not be willing to talk about his trauma.' Why would she do it? It makes no sense. She's a professional./
/It doesn't, no. So the only answer that does make sense is that he talked her into it./
/The Ambassador. Talked a healer-assist into letting him leave a clinic while obviously still in need of observation./
Jahir looked at him, and if it wasn't precisely a chiding look, there was something in it to inspire chagrin. Vasiht'h flicked his ears back. /Right. The Ambassador just survived about a year with the Chatcaava, probably living by his wits./ He sighed and said to Borden, "Why don't you go back to sleep? It looks like you're still healing up your own ills. We'll go check on the Ambassador."
"Thank you, aletsen. He'll be in the other guest room."
Jahir wasn't sure what he was expecting of his House cousin. Intransigence, surely, because nothing less would have protected Lisinthir in the Empire. Anger he'd observed when shepherding the Ambassador off of the Chatcaavan vessel, though time should have put paid to that particular ailment. What was there left to be angry about? At some point, relief must set in: that Lisinthir was safe, that he need no longer fear the depredations of dragons. He'd undertaken a difficult assignment and had, by all accounts, performed magnificently. He had earned—deserved—reward, time away from duty.
That, at least, was the profile Jahir would have guessed at from what little he'd understood of the situation.
So the scene that confronted them when the door slid open on the Ambassador's quarters left him decidedly off-balance. Lisinthir was not resting, as one would have expected from his condition... or at least, not sleeping. He was lounging in a chair with his feet up on the coffee table, his hands laced over his chest and his head back on the rest. The dim lighting kindly hid the matte finish of his skin—it also obscured his expression.
The room smelled faintly of something acrid, a little sweet. And there was a tumbler on the end table at his elbow.
/Drinking,/ Vasiht'h guessed.
But Jahir thought of the lung damage and narrowed his eyes. /No. Smoking./
/And drinking./
/And drinking./
"My psychiatrists arrive. Please, come in. Have a seat if it pleases you."
/I can see how this is going to go,/ Vasiht'h said with a sigh. /How do you want to handle it?/
Jahir's first instinct was so powerful that the words it inspired almost escaped him. He stopped short at the door alongside his partner, surprised. Lisinthir was one of the few Eldritch who shared Jahir's membership in the royal House, and he was also heir to Imthereli's failing concern. But neither of those things gave Jahir the right to dress him down in this context, where he came not as an Eldritch noble to another behaving out of turn, but as a therapist, intending to heal. He ignored the unease clouding the mindline until he finished composing himself, then took the seat opposite Lisinthir, leaving Vasiht'h to settle alongside the chair. "Thank you."
"So," Lisinthir continued, eyes closing. "Jahir... what? We have somehow failed to have been introduced properly. Fancy that."
Of course, if Lisinthir insisted on dragging that context into the discussion... Jahir tasked himself to calm. Perhaps they could find some common ground in their shared experiences, and the duties and responsibilities that had shaped them both. "Seni Galare."
Lisinthir opened an eye. "Jahir Seni Galare. The northwestern estate. You have a brother."
"Yes," Jahir replied.
Lisinthir nodded, closed his eyes again. "I was sent to the capital to attempt to seduce your mother."
The sound in the mindline felt a lot like Vasiht'h groaning.
"I assume," Jahir said, picking the words carefully past the furor in his head, "this had something to do with Imt
hereli's fiscal and familial troubles."
"It did, yes. Something you never had any trouble with, well-bred and well-received as you were. One of the court's most eligible bachelors, and so much fuss that you'd left the world. No one corralled you with a list of eligible widows and insisted you chase them."
/How did this become about me?/ Jahir asked, half in irritation, half in fascination. This had to be how Lisinthir had secured his release from the clinic so easily. Jahir could understand somehow how Borden had given in.
/I don't know,/ Vasiht'h said. /But it's kind of interesting to listen to./
Jahir eyed him before returning to the discussion. "You should be in the clinic, Ambassador."
"Ambassador, am I. Not seluthiae? Far cousin? A request, then, from one professional to another."
"Just so."
Lisinthir reached for the glass. "And if I don't want to go?"
Jahir rose, stepped across the short distance and plucked the glass up before Lisinthir could take it. "This is not a matter of liking or misliking. This is a matter of a toxic body failing on you if you don't take the appropriate steps. Which include abstaining."
The look Lisinthir awarded him then was so brief Jahir almost missed it—
—but he hadn't. And the assessment, the interest, and the cold in them stiffened every muscle in his body.
But the other Eldritch didn't show any of that metal in his voice: he'd hidden it so completely that Jahir stopped short, wondering if he'd imagined it, and if not, how Lisinthir had concealed it so completely.
Lisinthir re-threaded his fingers on his chest and said, "So. How exactly is this going to go?"
"What 'this' do you mean?" Vasiht'h ventured when Jahir didn't answer.
"You were sent to attend to me," Lisinthir said. "Presumably you have some goal in mind to accomplish. As you are not physicians, it must be something else. What is it?"
"We're here to see to your mental health." Vasiht'h was using his most professional voice, which was also one of the friendliest. It had soothed many skeptical patients before. Jahir wasn't sure it would work this time. "Try to see it from our perspective, Ambassador... you just returned from the Empire and... well, your physical state isn't typical of people who've been treated well."
"Is it."
"You are addicted to two drugs that we know of, there's evidence of at least one session in a regenerative tank, you've been scarred on the chest, flank, back, torso and arms—and not by blades—and you're starved. Literally, as in you've been so long without healthful food that your body has wicked itself to the marrow." Jahir set the drink on the coffee table between them. "And those are the injuries the halo-arch could see." He folded his arms. "When we spoke via comm, Ambassador, you requested food because you couldn't trust the food that was prepared for you not to be poisoned. The ambassadors who came before you spoke of the violence of the Chatcaavan court, but none of them had been literally scarred by it. Traumatized, certainly. Or mysteriously dead by circumstances deemed natural by autopsy. None of them, however, marked.
"You have been marked."
Lisinthir was watching him with a gaze more akin to a raptor's than a person's: a predatory hyper-focus that made Jahir long for his staff or even a sword at his side. "We are all," the Ambassador said at last, "marked by our experiences."
"That's why we're here," Vasiht'h interjected.
"I don't want your help."
"You don't want the halo-arch, either, but you will need to return to it," Jahir said, giving up his fight against culture and habit. Did his cousin want to fight using their shared background? Then he would meet him on the field. When Lisinthir glanced at him, he finished, "And don't think you can maneuver your way out of it the way you did with Hea Borden. I know what you're doing, and it won't work on me."
/It won't?/
"And what exactly am I doing?" Lisinthir asked. He'd begun stroking his thumb up the side of his hand, an idle gesture that was, for no reason Jahir could fathom, appallingly sensual.
Jahir switched to their native tongue, shading the words black for stark violence. "Who attacks, controls the fight."
Lisinthir chuckled. "Very good, son of the Seni. I am impressed." He rested his head back again. "A compromise then. I'll let you bring your equipment here. This is a courier... most of its equipment will be portable since they don't have a full-sized Medplex."
"You know Fleet ship classes?" Vasiht'h asked, bemused.
Lisinthir opened one eye. "I was the ambassador to a political state with which we are almost at war."
/At least he used the right tense,/ Vasiht'h muttered.
Jahir sent wordless agreement before continuing. "And you'll submit to treatment?"
The reaction was instantaneous, and yet so subtle neither of them could tell exactly how they'd formed the impression... but within a heartbeat, their client had gone from relaxed to the cusp of violence.
"For your physical state," Vasiht'h hastened to add, and the anger seeped from Lisinthir's frame.
"Yes." Brusque.
"No more drinking either," Jahir said.
"Fine. But now I believe it's time for me to... 'rest.'" Said with a sneer that could be amusement or mockery or challenge, and was probably all of those things. As a response to a therapist it was appalling… but as a response to a dragon, Jahir suddenly understood its utility. That Lisinthir was using it on them didn't necessarily mean anything more than he was no longer used to dealing with civilized people.
Or it might mean that he'd decided they were his newest enemies.
Jahir rose, taking the glass with him. "Sleep well, Ambassador."
Lisinthir said, "You really will take the brandy with you."
"I will, yes."
The other man said, lazily, "You don't trust me?"
"I trust you to act in accordance with your priorities," Jahir said. "When you demonstrate that your own health is one of them, I won't feel the need."
Lisinthir laughed. "Fine. Good. Well said. Get out."
Outside the cabin, Vasiht'h said, "Goddess Unmaking, ariihir."
"I know," Jahir said, struggling to hide his unsettlement. He hadn't realized until that battle how much he'd expected Lisinthir to act like every other noble heir of the Eldritch—and every other Galare, at that. They were one of a very select elite, with shared experiences no one outside their cloistered world's miniscule crop of nobles could even imagine. He'd gone into the room expecting that background to work for him... not for it to be turned into a weapon, one tailored to his weaknesses.
"You realize he can just order a new brandy from the genie in the room?" Vasiht'h said, interrupting his thoughts.
"Not if we ask the ship's personnel to disable the unit."
Vasiht'h paused, looked up at him. "Entirely?"
Jahir walked past him, exhausted as if he'd just come from a long staff practice. "It's evident there's an issue there with his relationship with food, himself, his own body, and the alcohol. Until we've unraveled it, it would be best if he had to get his meals from us, or Hea Borden."
"And if he just chooses not to eat?"
"Then we'll bring the 'portable equipment' and do it the difficult way."
Vasiht'h sighed and jogged up alongside him, matching his shorter strides to Jahir's longer ones. "I guess we shouldn't be surprised that he might resent the implication that he's broken in some way. After all he's done, it's not unreasonable for him to expect a hero's welcome, not delivery to psychiatric care."
"He needs it," Jahir said, knowing the tone was too curt.
"Yes. Yes, he does."
CHAPTER 4
The man had carried off his tumbler.
Lisinthir had not moved after the therapists had taken their leave; he was comfortable, for once, with the hekkret a familiar burn down his throat and a softness in his limbs. The headache seemed distant, and his heartrate and breathing more measured. It allowed him the leisure to contemplate the unlikeliness of his visitors.
The last Eldritch he'd had congress with—true Eldritch, not his draconic lovers in their stolen guises—had been the heir to the throne, the Princess Bethsaida. He'd not met her prior to her incarceration among dragons, so perhaps she'd once been more like the typical women produced by their culture: assertive and very poor at delegation of authority. With power passing through the matrilineal line and men of their class mostly relegated to the duty of dying for honor or to protect their estates, it was an inevitability. He could even be somewhat proud of it, he supposed, that his race bred strong women, for who would want to lie with a weak one? It is what he'd loved about the Slave Queen: the purity of the strength distilled into that gentle spirit, so close and quiet and deep.
But Bethsaida had been broken by her captivity. He didn't blame her for it; the Seersa operative had been very close to broken herself, and God knew he had only survived because he'd manipulated the Emperor into an epiphany that had spared them both the inevitable outcome of their constant clashes. It did mean, however, that his last good memory of any Eldritch was one of weeping and cringing, and how frustrated and frightened he'd been that he had to find a way to protect someone who could not be counted on to help in any way.
Lisinthir, not fond of lying to himself, even about his addictions and his mounting depression, was forced to admit that experience had colored his expectation of his own kind, one he'd already been predisposed toward given his parents and the court his father had flung him to, where he'd earned his name on the dueling fields because he refused to back down from the insults thrown at him for being the scion of a failing House. The male scion of a failing House, because one assumed that a man took after his father.
But this Eldritch... Lisinthir half-lidded his eyes. This Eldritch had a proper spine and fire in his spirit. Fear in response to blood and swordwork, yes: that was inevitable amid the pacific Alliance, which saw conflict only at its troubled borders, and even among his own people where combat was relegated to the formalities of the dueling ground, or to the atavism of the hunt. But this Eldritch had actually carried off the tumbler.
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