"The Captain," Jahir said. "Are you ready?"
What could he say? That the thought of exposing his own cowardice to the man charged with fighting this ship was petrifying? He gave the only answer that remained true in every situation. "I'm with you."
Jahir smiled and went in, and Vasiht'h followed.
Raynor surprised them by waking in response to their entrance; seeing them, though, he waved vaguely in their direction, turned over, and went back to sleep with the seasoned practice of a veteran soldier. Jahir's amusement tickled the mindline: /At least he has no concerns./
/About us, anyway,/ Vasiht'h muttered. Perhaps he would learn something from Raynor; maybe the dreams of a ship's captain, charged with the safety and wellbeing of all its crew, and distantly the Alliance, would teach him how to care about abstractions deeply enough to understand Jahir's passions. Vasiht'h had to imagine Raynor's burdens were manifold: that being a human among the Pelted must be alienating, that he might have some insight about the anxieties of a man on the cusp of battle. Vasiht'h followed Jahir into the Captain's mind, nurturing the hope that he might be comforted himself in the act of reassuring another.
But Raynor's mind was not poisoned by doubt or fear. Raynor trembled like—visceral feeling now, and one alien to Vasiht'h's memories—an arrow nocked on a string pulled impossibly taut, awaiting launch. He was eager for the release of action because he was a man of action, and the partial peace and unreliable détentes engineered by the Pelted drove him to distraction. Rather than repositories for angst or fear, Raynor's dreams were fantasies of agency: of being free at last to respond to the threats and provocations that troubled the borders and terrorized its denizens. He had transferred into the Alliance Fleet from the Terran Navy specifically to be one of those voices for action over appeasement, only to be held back time and time again.
Appeasement solves nothing, the dreams hissed as they ran with the blood of histories older than the engineering of the first fox child who would become the blueprint for a civilization among the stars. Appeasement gives license to rapists and thieves and murderers.
We are the gun that answers them.
They backed out of Raynor's dreams not long after they'd entered them because Raynor didn't need them.
They paused outside the room to shake off the last scraps of those vivid impressions, of wounds and claxons wailing in corridors choked with the hiss of broken vents. For once it was Vasiht'h who felt colder than the thin-skinned Eldritch who'd companioned him for over a decade. He kept his feelings locked away from the mindline, crushing them into his stomach, his heart, anywhere he could hide them from Jahir. He had gone into Raynor's mind hoping for wisdom and left it feeling completely alone. Was he the only sane person on this ship? Oh, Goddess, but he didn't belong here! He could understand the need for people like Raynor and Lisinthir. He could even make peace with a seed of that aggression existing in Jahir. In his more honest moments, he could admit that there was some link between that aggression and the sensual awareness that was animating his partner, the one Vasiht'h himself wanted so much to see bloom.
But he could never be like that. And he was afraid that his reflexive rejection of that aggression would find a mirror in his partner... in reaction to Vasiht'h's shying from it.
Hadn't Lisinthir called it cowardice? Was he a coward? Was it craven to wish other people would do the fighting so he could stay home, be safe?
He honestly couldn't answer the question... and for once, he was afraid to ask. The one person he usually turned to for answers was the one person he dare not ask.
Jahir glanced at him more than once on their way back to their room, but Vasiht'h shook his head and said, "I'm just anxious." And let some truth leak into the mindline, hating himself for manipulating the conversation: /I'm afraid./
/So am I,/ Jahir answered, the words soft as an embrace. /But it will be over one way or the other soon./
That was exactly what he was afraid of.
The women were still in their rooms, though by now they kept a quieter vigil: Triona leaning against the door looking in on the sleeping Ambassador, her data tablet in hand, and the other two playing cards at the coffee table. Their entrance caused all three to glance toward them: three sets of earnest eyes, affable, competent. The best the Alliance had to offer, Vasiht'h thought. Why wasn't it enough? No, that wasn't the right question. If they were the best the Alliance had to offer, what did that make him?
"Any trouble?" Jahir was asking the Seersa.
"None. He smoked one of those drugs of his, played cards with us, and then went to sleep about an hour ago."
"So late?" Jahir murmured.
"He says he's used to being up all night," Triona said. A smile was working on the edges of her mouth. "The impression he gave us was of wild parties. I had no idea the Eldritch had them."
"I am entirely sure that the parties the Ambassador's been invited to are of a caliber far beyond anything to which we might aspire," Jahir said, which was as fine a piece of truth wrapped in misdirection as anything Lisinthir could have said himself. It bothered Vasiht'h, and that distressed him: he'd lived with Jahir long enough to know that those subtle misdirections were the way he dealt with questions he couldn't answer, whether because of the Veil or, in this case, because of the confidentiality expected by clients.
"All right, ladies," Triona said. "Looks like we're for the sack."
Cory yawned. "Sounds good to me. Good night, aletsen."
"Good night," Jahir said for them both. So cheerful the three women... had they really spent the time playing cards? Had Lisinthir charmed them as effortlessly as he did everyone else—when he wasn't terrifying them with the hint of that violence that passed beneath the surface, like Leviathan?
Once they were alone, Jahir studied the room, the door, the pack of cards now tidied and left on the corner of the table. Then he said, low, "You are out of sorts, arii."
"Extremely," Vasiht'h said. "I probably need to sleep." Saying it, he wanted it desperately: not just because he was tired, though he was, and not just because the ration bars weren't really enough to energize him, which they weren't... but because if he slept, he could close his eyes on this whole situation and be free for a little while. In his dreams he could make tea and soup and cookies. He wouldn't be afraid there that the person he was praying Jahir would evolve into wouldn't respect him anymore.
Jahir was still regarding him with those too observant eyes of his. Tensing, Vasiht'h said, "All right. I'm miserable. I hate being here. I'm trying to hold it together, but... I'm not doing a great job."
"I think you're doing a fine job." A very soft touch on his shoulder, and brief... the sorts of touches that had been typical of their life before Lisinthir's influence, and for some reason that comforted Vasiht'h more than a far more demonstrative embrace would have. There was still some of his Jahir left in there, somewhere. And if that remained, maybe the love would too, a love that wouldn't be poisoned by contempt or condescension.
"Thanks," he managed to reply. "I'm trying."
"So are we all. But we'd tell our own clients that there's no shame in breaking down."
"We would, wouldn't we." Vasiht'h managed a smile. "Why is it so easy to advise and so hard to believe?"
"Because we advise from the comfort of our confidence and safety," Jahir said. "And we are asked to believe in our moments of doubt and anguish. But that... that is a pattern, too. An oscillation of the psyche. We move from strength to weakness and come around again to strength, and that movement is a sign of life. Were we always strong, were we always weak, did we never trade roles, we would be souls impervious to the world around us. And then how would we change? How would we grow?"
"It doesn't feel very good," Vasiht'h observed.
"It never does." Jahir smiled, and some of his exhaustion leaked through their link. "We should both rest. But you can have the bathroom first."
Vasiht'h nodded, and managed a smile. "Thank you."
"Always
." Heartfelt. "Anytime."
Why did it break Vasiht'h's heart to think that Jahir meant it?
This was a kind memory, because the Slave Queen's mane was soft in his hands, and the trust that had led her to permit him to untangle it... that was sweeter than wine, and headier. It had become their ritual to tend to one another when the Emperor took his flights, for neither of them could follow him. In truth, Lisinthir was grateful for the respite. Their lover made everything too intense, nearly unbearable: time smeared in his presence, lost cohesion, until most days Lisinthir couldn't remember more than flashes of what had passed before, glints like stars shrouded by clouds. With the Queen he could slow down. Breathe the scent of her beneath the base of one horn... twine fingers with hers and marvel at her dainty, alien hand: such thin, short fingers to have such talons.
He was brushing through her mane with fingers made supple by the cream he'd just smoothed into her hide, a process he drew out for fascination with the texture, so stiff at their spines to grow so thin over their bellies, their throats. Was it a Chatcaavan thing to wonder if nature had intended to make their necks easy to rip open? Why had the Living Air left them so vulnerable? And yet he was not sorry for it, for the ability to make her gasp and shiver when he breathed on the tender skin just beneath her jaw.
How she distracted him. He lost himself in the feel of her hair, coarser than his but so much more interesting in hue: silvers that seemed to glimmer like metal amid gray strands that concealed them like a veil over treasure. That was what she was: the Emperor's Treasure.
"You do not ornament it," he said suddenly. He felt her attention in the tension of her neck, saw her glancing at him over that narrow shoulder. "Your hair. Do I remember right that you had beads in it when I was first presented at court? My memory is not what it was."
"We decorate our horns," the Queen said. "Our fingers, our arms, our ankles. The wings...." A shiver of distaste, and he kissed her shoulder in apology for having made her feel it. "But no. We do not put things in our hair. You used to, didn't you?"
"It is customary," Lisinthir said, remembering the comb on his lap. He used it to smooth her hair now that he had freed it of the tangles their love-making had put in it. "A sign of wealth and power, to wear long chains of gemstones thus. For males and females both, though the females of our species bind their hair in braids."
"Strange to think that the symbols of wealth and power are worn by both males and females." She sounded perplexed. "Among us, a male decorates his females to demonstrate his power and wealth, but he does not decorate himself."
"Of course he does," Lisinthir replied. At her glance, he reached up and tugged gently at her horn. "These are the male equivalent."
"It's not the same," she said.
"Isn't it? The only difference is that males grow their own jewelry. Everything else is the same: if you have few, then you are weak. If you have many, than you are strong. And if you allow others to take them from you, then you are craven, unfit for your titles."
She remained silent for several strokes of the comb. "I had not thought of it that way."
How he loved this about her: her willingness to broach alien shores, to consider her own culture from a remove. Her Emperor had it too, but she had given herself to that communion first, and that... that was an act of indescribable courage. "I see why you do not adorn yourself, though. Jewelry is a symbol of someone else's power over you. I wouldn't wear it either, given that. Save that you have these...." He ran a gentle finger up her wing arm to the thumb-claw with its jeweled sheath. "Symbolic again, I am guessing."
"They came with the wings," she whispered.
He set aside the comb to turn her and pull her into his arms. Against her brow, he said, "Oh, Beauty. I did not mean to remind you."
She flinched, a Chatcaavan negation muffled against his body. "I know."
But the pain remained in her, sharp as a fresh cut: was it because now she had to watch another Chatcaavan fly so often? In her tower it was customary for visitors to walk up the stairs; to approach through the windows was the height of impropriety, and could be construed as a challenge to the male who owned the harem. For years—revolutions, they called them—she had been protected from the sight. Now she stood with Lisinthir, watching their lover spring from the balcony... silent, always silent.
She, who had never admitted to longing for freedom, still yearned for the sky. And he, who would never fly, who had never expected to be able to, could not imagine her need, and found it unbearable. To distract, he said, gentle, "Do you know how I admire you?"
"W-what?" Confusion, the words slow, as if he dragged her from some internal dream. Always, she found these conversations unbelievable when he broached them. It is why he did so repeatedly, to shore up that confidence, word by word. "Admire me? Why?"
"For your strength." He kissed her between the eyes, smiled to see her try to focus on him as he did so and fail: such enormous orange eyes, such small pupils. How he loved their gemlike clarity.
"I? I am not strong!"
"On the contrary." Lisinthir replied, brushing her hair back over her shoulders and then clasping them. "I think you may be the strongest Chatcaavan I have ever met. Male or female."
She drew her head back on her long neck, eyes narrowing, and he endured her skeptical scrutiny. "Now I know you jest, Ambassador."
"Why?" he asked. "Do you think I would name the Emperor? He was born with a weapon perfectly suited to his needs, Beauty. Armed with ambition, he cut his way to power. But he never suffered the durances you have, and survived them. Imprisonment is a test I don't think he would have weathered with your grace."
"Imprisonment," she murmured, tasting the word.
"Shall we call it aught else? It would be a lie."
She glanced up at him, her head perfectly still. "You would call my apathy strength. Because..." She drew in a breath, inflating her narrow ribcage: how delicate she was! "Because that's what it was, Ambassador. It was apathy. They defiled me and demeaned me and debased me... and they won. I gave up."
"Did you?"
"What else?" she asked, pained. "You saw me. You knew."
"I saw someone who reached to me when she could have pushed me away. Who pledged herself to the aid of strangers and aliens. Who saw the similarities in them past the unimportant externals." He cupped her face in long hands. "I saw you, yes. But someone weak, someone completely defeated, could not have helped me free the Heir, Laniis, the slaves. They called you passive, my lady, but they mistook endurance for passivity. Even you did. But your apathy was only the exhaustion of a soul that had been persevering so long it forgot the name of its own toil."
"How can you say these things!" she exclaimed, wide-eyed. "You call my choicelessness a choice?"
"I don't, because you did have a choice," he said. "You could have thrown yourself from the window." He traced the pierced and useless wings, grieving at the shiver that made their lacquered edges rattle. "But you didn't, did you."
"It was cowardice," she whispered.
"Not to end it?" Lisinthir said. "When ending would have brought surcease from suffering, and living would have condemned you to a life with no hope of freedom or change or happiness? What then the harder course?"
She laughed, covered the tip of her mouth with her fingers, ducking her head. "Oh, my lord," she said at last. "You always bring such crazed thoughts, unthinkable thoughts. You make of my life the deed of a male... but it is not so glorious."
"Courage often goes unrecognized in those who show no obvious fear. But I say, lady, and listen closely now: it is an act of bravery not to die in the circumstances in which you have been living. Your very patience was the face of resistance! And what you resisted was the desire of those around you to negate you! Well, you have not been negated. From almost nothing, you have nevertheless derived the strength to go on... and that strength has seen you here, to a place where you have been fulfilled. Where you have known happiness." He hesitated. "At least, I think I per
ceive happiness in you. Tell me I'm right?"
Her laugh then was easier, and she slid her arms around him, cuddling. "Oh my lord. You would worry about such things." A licking kiss along his chest, near the collarbone. "Yes. Yes, I am happy."
He exhaled, gathered her close, careful of the wings. "I am glad to hear you say so."
"And maybe," she added, thoughtful, "I am interested in this story of a Slave Queen who could have courage."
"Not a story." He nipped her at the edge of her brow where it shadowed one of those great orange eyes. "Truth."
"Maybe," she said, but he could tell the idea was working on her.
Smiling, he said, "And how will you write the ending of this Slave Queen's story?"
Her shudder caught him off guard, as did the talons she dug into his back. "Oh, my lord," she whispered, "I will not write one because I don't want it to end...!"
He kissed her, let her ride him down until he was on his back, and he forgot the bloody scratches as she bowed over him and begged him with body and hands and mouth to make it last. And for a few moments, it lasted forever.
Lisinthir woke to find his cousin stepping over Vasiht'h's body on the way to his narrow nest of pillows on the floor, and something in Jahir's movements woke instincts in him that refused to be silenced. The corner of the wall showed the time—very late—far too late for his cousin to be up. He waited until the other had come near enough and said, "Cousin?"
Jahir paused. "You're awake," he whispered.
"Headache," Lisinthir said, opting for truth. "And dreams. And the noise you made, coming in. You have been up all this time."
"Your latest test results perplex me."
"You mean 'concern me.'"
Jahir paused, then sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. He had changed, but no hair had fallen out of the braid yet... so he had probably just made ready for bed. And this subtle posture made his dejection far too obvious. "Yes. I suppose I do. But I can't tell what any of it means. This is work for healer-specialists. I am just a therapist with a degree in pharmacology."
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