What if she couldn’t?
The Slave Queen stopped on the steps, hand flat against the mosaic on the wall.
What if she couldn’t?
The trip itself was simplicity... certainly compared to the one Vasiht’h was taking. His partner’s sister lived on Tam-ley in Sector Veta, where they made their home at the sector starbase, but Vasiht’h’s parents and the temple were on Anseahla, across the Core. To visit both, his partner would be several days in transit, while the flight carrying Jahir flew direct from Veta’s port to Starbase Alpha in the adjacent sector. Jahir had seen the Glaseah off at the commercial dock the previous day, which had left him to the unwonted silence of their apartment for the night… and fortunately only the night. His flight left early the following morning, and once he stepped out their door he no longer thought of what he was leaving behind.
Jahir spent the trip catching up on medical journals and puzzling at his Chatcaavan lessons, surprised at his ability to concentrate when en route to what amounted to an assignation. He supposed it was an indication of his trust in Lisinthir: all his anxiety had been bound in the decision to go, and now that he was going, he was in his cousin’s hands... or would be soon enough. So he studied and read, tagging this article for further research, that chapter for additional exercises, and was strangely refreshed when the shuttle flashed its lights to indicate final approach.
Half of the shuttle wall was showing the external view, and this was instructive. Starbase Veta was busy as only a military and commercial base in the Core could be, and as the second such base established it had had time to become a nodal point in the sector’s traffic. But Starbase Alpha was in the Pelted’s home system. The Pelted’s first settled worlds, Karaka’A and Seersana, were in Sector Alpha, as well as Selnor, the world from which the Alliance government administrated its enormous federation, including all its military. This was the core of the Core, and the number of ships haloing the base beggared the imagination. Jahir spent the entirety of their approach watching them sail into view, the smartcoat magnifying them on request and tagging them with their names, owners, and docking priorities. Their landing was delayed only half an hour; Jahir couldn’t imagine the workload shouldered by those overseeing the computers assigning the berths.
The activity level in the port’s gates reflected the starbase’s significance. Standing amid the rivers of people flowing to and from their assigned ships, Jahir realized he had not asked Lisinthir where they should meet, and that this was perhaps an oversight of some enormity. He somehow doubted that asking would net him the necessary information; the treaty required the Alliance to wipe information on the whereabouts of Eldritch traveling in it, and even Jahir, who had been on Veta for years, still wasn’t there according to any computer. It was habit that drove him to a place he could consult the starbase directory, so it was a shock to discover his cousin on it, and a location.
Armed with this information, and bemused by its existence, Jahir reshouldered his bag and went forth into the stream of people exiting the dock. They inevitably brushed against him, leaving him with the ephemera of their thoughts and emotions, thin as veils and as easily torn. He was stronger against such casual touches than he had been when he’d first emigrated, but he was glad to leave the press of the port behind.
It was entirely expected that Lisinthir should choose a suite for himself in the part of the base that looked like a base, rather than down in the city where one could forget one wasn’t on a planet. Jahir took the lift the very long way to the floor where his cousin was staying, watching through the clear wall as he ascended through the dock and city levels and up into the inside skin of the hull. The cut-off between the aerated real estate and the base’s airless interior was abrupt and heartwrenching: it exposed the technology, made it seem impossible that it existed. And yet… it did.
The sight wanted more careful observation. Once he left the lift, Jahir stopped at the enormous window in one of the observation portals to look down on the city in its shielded sphere, like a glass bauble. Beyond it, other spheres studded the curved wall of the base: the dim blue aquaculture and green agriculture spheres, other cities with their more variegated palettes gleaming like cabochons. The spindle that ran the center of the starbase’s hollow interior, yoking the poles, was visible in a way the inhabitants of the city sphere never saw: a grand thing of metal lace and lights, twined through with the Fleet ships being refitted, resupplied, or overhauled. It was beautiful, but stripped of the context of the civilian habitations it was a statement of raw martial power. Jahir smiled to see it, thinking Lisinthir would have found it far more pleasing than any more pastoral obfuscation.
The corridor outside the observation portal divided the suites into those facing the interior and those facing open space, and it was enormous, broad enough to ride five horses abreast if one wanted a parade and with vaulted ceilings to boot. But it was also softly carpeted, perfectly lit, and somehow welcoming despite the cathedral-like dimensions. His cousin’s suite was on the interior side; there would be windows, and probably a balcony. He chimed for entrance and waited, wondering what he would say if the directory had been wrong and the door opened on a stranger. He was sorting through his possible responses when it revealed Lisinthir… who gave him no chance to use any greeting. His cousin gripped him by the seam of his tunic, near the throat, and pulled just enough to make him sway forward.
That kiss made the weeks that had passed since they saw one another last evanesce. It lasted too long, it ended too soon, it made him acutely aware of their being visible to anyone passing in the corridor… and made him forget they might not be alone. Like having a draught of wine; when Lisinthir let him breathe, he felt dizzied, and slow.
“Beautiful cousin,” Lisinthir said in their tongue, shading it silver for gladness. And in Universal, his amusement stinging like mint, “And clever as well, to find me.”
“You made it too easy,” Jahir managed.
Lisinthir laughed and tugged him inside.
There was no resisting that look. Combined with the confusion, so sweet and so earnest…. Lisinthir had told his therapists that coercion didn’t please him, and it didn’t. But he thought there was some nuance he’d omitted from that explanation, because he found Jahir’s malleability delicious, and was not at all unwilling to shape him, if shaping he needed. This was his excuse for why he tarried beside the door for another kiss, because there was a wall alongside the door and his cousin was amenable to being pushed up against it: pushed up against it, and trapped.
The Harat-Shar had been right: there was something erotic about someone’s breathing. Perhaps he’d always known it, for how avidly he’d watched for evidence of a gasp, a catch in the throat, a held breath, a sigh. Among the Chatcaava, such signs had kept him alive. Here it was a kinder knife, because leaning hard enough on Jahir’s ribcage made his cousin’s entire body ignite and left Jahir shaking without realizing. Or possibly, Lisinthir thought, caring.
But he was not just Cousin and Imtherili. He was also Ambassador, and Lisinthir. So he traced Jahir’s upper lip, making them both aware of the gap between it and the lower, and gave him a gentler kiss for welcome. “Let me take your bag.”
“I… you…” Jahir stopped, visibly gathered his thoughts, and eyed him. “If you are to continue disordering me thus, then… yes. You may.”
Lisinthir chuckled and took it, keeping the conversation in Universal for its neutrality. “I promise, I shall leave off for a bit. Come and sit. I assume the flight was uneventful. Would you have something to eat or drink?”
“I ate on the shuttle, thank you.” Jahir walked to the window and folded his arms, staring out it. He looked fitting standing there in the yeoman’s clothes of an Alliance tailor, straight-backed and tall, set against the darkness of the interior of the starbase with its star-like lights. Lisinthir paused to appreciate anew that there was at least one Eldritch with whom he could share the pleasures and terrors of the modern world and dropped his cousi
n’s bag in the bedroom before returning.
“You like the view?”
“I’m unsurprised by it.” Jahir tilted his head back. “Though I’m not sure whether I expected you to have chosen a palatial suite, because we have money and are accustomed to the space, or if you would have preferred to remain unremarked in a normal hotel room.”
“The penthouse was large enough for a royal court,” Lisinthir said, and poured them both port from the bar. While the suite wasn’t a penthouse, it was large enough for a bar, and for the window walls. The bar he’d wanted for his cousin, and he’d had it stocked against his future plans. The windows though… those were his, reminding him viscerally of nights spent in the Emperor’s tower by the long fall to the ground. “This seemed a fine compromise.”
“The middle ground.” Jahir shook his head and took the proffered glass, careful not to brush fingertips. “I wouldn’t have thought it.”
“Of the Ambassador, accustomed to compromise?”
Jahir snorted. “Of some other ambassador, to some kinder court, mayhap. Of the ambassador to the Chatcaavan Empire? Compromise? No, never.”
Lisinthir laughed and sat on the loveseat arranged on the raised dais abutting the window. “You guess well.”
“Should I say I guess nothing?”
“Only if it’s true?”
Jahir... grimaced. And switched to their tongue, shading the words gray as if apologizing for his inability to choose some more definitive mood. “I am nervous.”
“I know.” Silvered. More gently, Lisinthir said, “Sit, cousin. Drink the wine.” As Jahir took one of the chairs facing him, he continued, “Vasiht’h is well?”
“Very.” Jahir tried the port, eyes on the glass. “He is on his way home to speak with a priestess. About children.”
Lisinthir lifted his brows. “So, the trip shook loose some needful things in your partner, did it.”
“Unavoidably.”
“And you are well with it? I imagine so, other than the obvious.”
“That being?” Jahir asked without lifting his eyes.
“That you are overseeing the next link in a generational chain that can keep pace with you.” Lisinthir set his glass on the end table and folded his hands, watching his cousin…who really was agitated, though hiding it beneath the tranquility of his face. His eyes revealed him, which was why he kept them lowered. “Cousin.”
Jahir looked up.
“You are rather far away.”
“Do we begin this already, then?”
“Do you want to wait?” Lisinthir held out a hand, keeping the language neutral. “We should begin as we mean to continue. Does not the creed so say?”
“And you, the devout and dutiful son?”
Lisinthir laughed, quiet. “Did I not go to the Empire on the orders of my Queen?” Gentler and white-shaded, but distinctly a command, “Come here.”
The pause that interrupted the transfer of the glass to the table was like rust catching metal gears. Lisinthir disliked the gracelessness, having witnessed the musician’s elegance that usually moved his cousin’s body. But Jahir did come, and after another of those hesitations, slipped cold fingers into Lisinthir’s hand. In the touch between them was ambivalence, fear, hope… a request.
Lisinthir tugged him closer, but let him choose where to sit… and was gratified when Jahir collapsed into the space in front of the loveseat. That it was a collapse, he noted but was careful not to acknowledge. He brought his cousin’s hand to his lips and kissed it, then gathered him close until Jahir’s head rested against his chest. They were, he thought, somewhat taller than the average users of a Pelted loveseat… and Jahir, certainly taller than the last person to kneel at his feet. The memory of the Slave Queen was a knife, but he was accustomed to pain sanctifying sacrifice. He put it away in favor of the now, and acquainted himself with the texture of his cousin’s hair, trailing his free hand through it.
“Part of me wants you to take me to the bedroom now and have done with it,” Jahir murmured.
“That would lack something in ceremony, I think.”
“But then I wouldn’t be anticipating the act for hours, and knotting myself up about it.” Jahir looked up at him. “Was it so for you? Did you have time to dread it?”
Lisinthir chuckled and nipped the fingers trapped in his hand. “I am almost offended at the intimation that what I plan for you is something to dread.”
“Cousin—”
“Galare. Hush.”
Obediently, Jahir fell silent, though his embarrassment throbbed in the hand Lisinthir held.
“To answer your question, I suppose I need to better understand the parameters. You’re asking about my virginity, such as it was? Is a man a virgin until he has a woman? Or until he is taken like one? Or until he finds pleasure with another person?”
Now, at last, he could sense the amusement, wry but clear, that meant his cousin was thinking rather than reacting. “I admit I have not considered the distinctions until now. I had assumed that you remained chaste, like the rest of us.”
“Like… the rest of us.” Lisinthir stared at him, astonished. “Did your father… no, of course not. Not as you described him to be.”
Jahir sat up, but though his shock and distress carried in their touch he didn’t pull away. That was, at least, a good sign. “You don’t mean to tell me your father had affairs… or, God and Lady save us, molested the help!”
“What I mean to tell you, cousin, is that all men have affairs and molest the help,” Lisinthir said dryly. “Your father was apparently a paragon. The rest of us were told not to impregnate the girls we tumbled. Mostly.”
“Mostly!”
“Among the less fertile families, it was not uncommon to hear the opposite. Proof of a man’s virility is useful when a woman wants a divorce on account of his inability to provide her with an heir. As women hold all the property and wealth, one can imagine the utility of such a refutation. And it goes not amiss, having an heir in pocket if in fact one’s wife is barren.”
“Your mother—”
“Was certainly not barren, no. But she refused my father after my birth. To her mind, a spare invited strife. If I had died, she would no doubt have demanded my father perform his duty, but having gotten what she needed of him she was done.” Lisinthir rested his head back on the cushion. “In retrospect, I wonder if she had a lover of her own. Female, perhaps—it would have been easier to hide.”
His cousin was aghast, if his skin told truth. “You cannot mean to tell me there’s an entire underworld of licentiousness and adultery to which I am not privy!”
“Even if that is how it appears?” Lisinthir looked down at him, found him beautiful in his purity. It would have taken two people in love to have created such virtue in their children. There was strength in it, and that strength would abide when naiveté had drained away. “Jahir. Your situation was… shall we say… extraordinary. The truth is that most of the people of our station do not marry for love, or if they do, it does not survive our radically extended lifespans. My father dallied with servants and with lovers, and he would have been pleased to get one with a child he could dangle in front of my mother as a threat to the combined estate. I imagine the only reason he didn’t beget those bastards was the very real possibility that my mother would cut him off from his own land if he succeeded. So yes, he encouraged me to make free with whatever woman would have me. The only thing that would have pleased him better than a bastard was knowing that the single legitimate son my mother settled for was a wastrel and a rake she would blush to own.”
“And did you?” Jahir demanded.
“Make free with women beneath my station?” Lisinthir lifted his brows. “What have I told you about my inclinations?”
“It hardly matters if they said yes, if you were the heir to their lady,” Jahir said, words bleak with shadows. “There are coercions that need not be spoken.”
“I didn’t coerce, cousin,” Lisinthir said, torn between fa
tigue and amusement. “I was chased. And I allowed myself to be caught, once or twice, by women who wanted to use me. That I had through their skin when they kissed me, so I trust it was no lie.”
“Use you!”
It would take a shock of this magnitude to disorder Jahir to the point of no longer thinking clearly, when his intellect was usually so powerful. Lisinthir sighed, smiled. He let the conversation slide back into Universal to loosen it from the grip of their world, as much as possible. “And why would a woman connive into the bed of the heir of great estate?”
“You tell me they wanted money,” Jahir said with obvious distaste.
“In two cases, yes. In the other… she wanted a baby, and her husband had not managed the deed in several decades of trying.”
“And you… were able…”
“Not entirely, no,” Lisinthir said, and brushed his fingers over Jahir’s at the relief that flooded him through their touch. “The first two… there was fondling, but no. I had too much pride to be anyone’s prey. The last was rather more of a temptation, but I was barely done with the shears when she made her proposition and my youth betrayed me.” He smiled ruefully at the memory. “I was quite proud of myself for pleasing a woman successfully, which was not a simple task for a youth to master. It didn’t occur to me that she might be disappointed when I found my own release too early, and outside her body.”
“Oh!” Jahir winced. “Embarrassing, I imagine.”
“Not for me!” Lisinthir laughed. “I was quite pleased. I had brought her some joy and without possibility of a dishonor that would have given my parents another reason for contention. Since they enjoyed fighting with one another, depriving them of the opportunity was a rare delight. It wasn’t until later that I realized why she’d come to me, and then…” He paused, sorting the memories from the years and experiences that had diluted them. “Even then, I’m glad we didn’t succeed. I would not have wanted to become a father that way. To a child I couldn’t claim.” He glanced down at his cousin. “I imagine that’s not the virginity you’re asking after, however.”
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