CHAPTER 2

The Knife’s first lectures on the palace, the tower, and the court gave the Slave Queen a great deal to consider. At her request he left her to it, saying that if she was planning to use the computer often he would have to take greater pains with its security. That would entail… something, she was sure, that she did not yet understand, so she trusted him with it in the full expectation that he would return at some point to explain further.

She perched on her windowsill, or paced, and turned over her thoughts.

It was plain there was no purpose to the guarding of the females here, and the children. No court male would think of them as hostages. The guards assigned to tower security were here as a symbol of the Emperor’s power, and the symbol worked precisely because the inhabitants of the tower were dispensable. Of course males guarded things that had value. But having guards on property that served no one, save for occasional entertainment? That was the province solely of males with so many eager followers jobs had to be manufactured to keep them busy.

The Knife’s picture had been cruelly explicit: every female and child in this tower was nothing.

Which is why the Emperor considered it an opportunity. How much of one, though, she didn’t know, and would never know from the computers.

So she would look.

The imperial nursery was not on the same level as either of the harems. The Slave Queen had never understood the reasoning that had seen it installed nearer the base of the tower, suggesting children to be of lesser importance than females. Had someone applied a formula to their weighing? One that found children less significant than the females that spawned them? It seemed an unlikely belief for the Chatcaava, even if the importance of heirs was a more provincial attitude. More probably, children were considered even more disposable than the mothers who’d birthed them. Females could be used to slake desire, or baited as traps, or given as gifts or rewards. Children merely grew up to nurse designs on the throne, if male, and if female… well, another mouth to feed, and one upon which a male could not get another child for fear of begetting something twisted by inbreeding.

She did not expect to see anyone on the nursery level save the males who did a desultory job of guarding it, and the females used to oversee it: all tongueless slaves, those, taken from rival males but not beautiful, young, or significant enough to be placed in the harem. She herself did not come here often. Why would she? When her sire had destroyed her womb to deny it to his enemy, she had lost any link to this place. She would never bear a child. Perhaps she would never have wanted to. But it had been another choice stolen from her, and that had been her life: a series of thefts she was determined, now, to recover.

Having a child would always be a choice denied to her, but she knew now that had she been capable, she would have wanted to give this Emperor, this new Emperor transfigured by an Eldritch lover, a son or daughter. Knowing that made coming here a flagellation. But they were his children, and that made them hers, in a way: hers to ward for him. Tightening the folds of her stiff and useless wings, she swept past the guards and into the room.

And stopped. “What are you doing here?”

Guiltily, the Mother turned to her, and there was a child clinging to her leg, another to her tail, and an infant in her arms. The infant was surely female, since the room closest to the tower’s interior door was reserved for them. But the two children were winged, and that made them male. They should not have been here, but in the exterior room, the one with the windows, where male children were kept separated from their less worthwhile female siblings. Which is where the Mother should have been, had she wanted to see her own child, a male.

Which brought her back to the fact that the Mother was here at all. Harem females who served as the Mother gave up the right to see their infants a month after their birth. That was the point at which the Mother’s jewels were returned to the Slave Queen, to be reserved for the next female to conceive. Had she even received those jewels as scheduled? She had been too distracted with the Ambassador to notice.

The Mother was not wearing them. The Mother was here, when she should have been in the harem.

“A-a-apologies, you-my-better,” the Mother stammered. “I… I cannot excuse or explain my appearance here—”

The Slave Queen exclaimed, appalled, “Stop!”

The other female clapped her mouth shut, her four arms a tangle, with one of the upper and one of the lower clutching the infant, the second lower wrapped around the other child, and the final upper clasping herself in terror.

“I am not your better,” the Slave Queen said, hiding her own fluster. “Do not address me as a male!”

“Apologies,” the Mother whispered, dipping her head. She was trembling visibly, but she hadn’t retreated either.

“I do not need an excuse for your presence,” the Slave Queen continued, the words slow on her tongue. “But an explanation… yes. That I require.”

“Mistress,” the Mother said. “I…”

When she stopped, the Slave Queen prompted, “You?”

The Mother looked down and mumbled, “I like children, Mistress.”

Had she confessed to impure thoughts of aliens, the Slave Queen would have been less astonished. What female liked children? And the females of the imperial harem in particular? None of them were permitted to foster attachments to any of their own get—that would have been parlous, when attachment led to disobedience and rebellion. And they were female. They knew better than to love the evidence of the violence forced on them by males using their bodies to produce a new generation to dominate them.

“You like children,” the Slave Queen repeated.

The Mother lifted her chin and said nothing, but that spark of defiance was astounding. And because of it, the Slave Queen stepped forward, cupped the other female’s elbow, and guided her to one of the benches. Gently.

“Sit. No, you can keep the baby in your arms.”

“What about us?” one of the children asked boldly, a stripling hip-height on her. She had seen too few children to know how many revolutions he might be, and this disquieted her… that she should know so little about something so fundamental.

“You must go with the others for now,” the Slave Queen said. “The Mother and I must talk.”

“And when you’re done?” this bold one asked.

The Slave Queen glanced at the Mother, who was staring fixedly at the opposite wall. To the boy, she said, “We shall see.”

“Is she going to hurt you, Mother?” asked the other child, tremulous.

The Mother flinched, then said, “Go on now. She is another female, isn’t she? There is nothing to fear here.”

“If there was nothing to fear you wouldn’t be acting afraid!” the first said. He spread wings too young to have grown fully opaque and said, “If you hurt her, I will hurt you! I am a male, and you only female! Even if I am young, I can have you punished!”

“Gale!” the Mother yelped. “Do not speak that way to the Slave Queen! She is the Emperor’s own consort!”

“I will speak to her any way I please, if she hurts you.” The youth bared his teeth.

Before the Mother could reprimand him further, the Slave Queen held out a hand. “Enough. I mean no harm to the Mother. What she says is true: we are both female. We share a common cause.”

The boy searched her eyes with his own, artless and fierce. What he saw settled his wings, and he straightened, limbs loosening. Wrapping an arm around the meeker boy’s shoulders, he said, “We’ll be waiting, Mother.”

“Thank you,” the Mother said. “Now you ask the Slave Queen permission to withdraw.”

“She is female!”

“She is female, but even the Emperor walks into her suite out of courtesy to her, rather than flying in. If she is due that courtesy from the most Exalted, she is due it from his children.”

Gale eyed her and said the most shocking thing he’d yet said. “But is she worthy of it?”

Serene, the Mother said, “She is. She saved this one’s life when she was laboring to give birth to her son.”

The boy turned his scrutiny on the Slave Queen again, this time interested rather than bellicose. “Then with her permission—your permission—we will withdraw.”

“You may go,” the Slave Queen said.

The boys left. To her astonishment, they did not exit the female’s room, but joined a game being played with colored sticks by two females near their height. The Mother remained seated, quivering but pliant. Talking with the children had calmed her, the Slave Queen saw. It reminded her of the Ambassador, who had grown strong from the need to be strong for others.

“They have not gone back to the room with their peers,” the Slave Queen observed.

“They are friends with Maazi and Vu,” the Mother said.

“And how did that friendship develop, when the sexes are kept apart?”

The Mother looked down in lieu of replying. Her upper arms were cradling the infant now, but her lower hands were tightly linked in her lap, so tightly the thin webbing between her fingers was showing strain lines.

“You like children,” the Slave Queen mused.

“I know… I know it is perverse.”

“It may be the opposite of perverse, Mother,” the Slave Queen said, studying her. And added, “You did not give back the jewels, did you.”

“I… I did not want to disturb you—”

“And you were kind to Laniis.” The Slave Queen canted her head. “You were always kind, Mother. Now I find you are also a rebel.”

The Mother straightened, wide-eyed. “Mistress! You must not—”

“Think such things? Say them?” The Slave Queen smiled a little. “You forget who I am.”

“You are the Slave Queen, the most exalted and most debased of females in all the Empire….”

“I am the Queen Ransomed,” she said, soft. “Beloved of aliens. Treasure of the Emperor. Shapechanger and soul-changed.”

The Mother fell silent, but she trembled, astonished.

“How long have you been coming here?” the Slave Queen asked, more conversationally. “And what baby is this? Yours?”

“This one is mine, yes, Mistress. Would you like to hold him?”

The Mother was already offering the cloth-wrapped bundle, so the Slave Queen accepted it, awkward. She did not have extra hands a normal female did, and she felt the lack of security acutely when confronted with such a delicate creature. The Mother’s child could not be more than a few months old now—she could not recall time’s passage clearly—and he was still so small, all rounded body and diminutive limbs.

“I have been coming here since he was taken from me,” the Mother said. “And the other children… they were so lonely, Mistress. The slaves who care for them cannot speak. The guards who ward them do not enter their rooms. They have only themselves for company until they are old enough to be put to use.”

“And you talk to them.”

“I… I tell them stories.” The Mother glanced at her, and for a fleeting moment there was challenge there. “The ones I heard from my mother, who heard them from her mother. The ones passed down all these many years in secret. I tell them about the old religion.”

The Slave Queen lifted her gaze from the baby to regard the Mother.

“You named your bodyslave ‘Khaska,’” the Mother said.

“I did,” the Slave Queen said. She hadn’t realized that act would reveal her, but then she hadn’t known that there were females who’d kept secrets and passed them across generations of daughters. Who spoke of the Living Air anymore, or knew its rites and beliefs? Much less that children had been used to call the celebrants to worship. Laniis had been white, like the robes those children wore in the few pictures the Slave Queen had seen on her borrowed computer, long ago, when she had been her sire’s daughter.

Her mother had never told her these stories. Perhaps her cage had been more complete than she’d realized.

“Will you punish me?” the Mother asked at last.

“I will not,” the Slave Queen replied, looking down into the face of the child again, with his blunt little nose and weak eyes. Had she wondered how to begin the Emperor’s task? And here she was. “What I do instead may seem like punishment, however.”

The Mother glanced at her, frowning.

“We will speak later,” the Slave Queen said, handing the infant back. “I’ll send for you.”

The Mother accepted the bundle. Quiet, she said, “Shall I bring back the jewels?”

The Slave Queen laughed. “No. You remain the Mother.” Looking at the room, at the children watching them, or trying to seem as if they weren’t, she said, “You may be the only Mother this tower has seen in its history.” Rising, she said, “Gale.”

The boy jumped to his feet immediately and walked to her, head high. Behind him came the meek boy, and the two girls as well, though more timidly.

“I give the Mother back to you just as I promised,” the Slave Queen said. “Do not do anything that will draw attention to her.”

“No!” Gale said, eyes round. “Never! We always disperse to our room when males come into the nursery.”

“Disperse when you see females you don’t recognize as well,” the Slave Queen said. “They can speak of your disobedience.”

“It’s not—”

“It is disobedience so long as it can land your Mother in trouble. Do you understand?”

Gale deflated. The other boy stepped up alongside him and said, soft, “We understand, Mistress. This place is perilous. We won’t forget.”

“Good.” She turned to the Mother. “We are not done, you and I.”

“I know,” the Mother said. “I won’t forget.”

The Slave Queen dipped her head and started for the door. She had almost reached it when she caught the eye of one of the females assigned to the nursery. And she thought then: could they be her allies also? The female met her eyes, neither insolent nor timorous. A mask, she thought immediately, and was intrigued. On her way back to her room, she pondered. The tongueless could not speak, of course, and they would not have been allowed to learn to read or write. But she was the Slave Queen, and there was a way she could learn their thoughts that no one had anticipated.

The Mother a rebel, born of a line of rebels. She would never have suspected. And all these children… so much to work with. Her heart seized with the force of understanding just how much of the future the females and children here represented. What they could become…! But how was she to see them to that end? And how could she protect them on the journey?

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 cousin’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 fatigue 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.”

“No,” Jahir said, low.

“Then the answer to that,” Lisinthir said, winding a finger through Jahir’s hair, “is that I don’t know that any warning would have been enough. Not for how I did it. Which...” He tugged Jahir’s head back and kissed the corner of his mouth until he heard the other man’s breath quicken. Relenting, he finished, “…is not how I plan things for you.”

“Because how it was done for you was not ideal.”

“Because what we were doing when I lost my innocence was not lovemaking, cousin. It wasn’t even properly rape. It was a physical contest, in the way a duel is a physical contest. A duel as Eldritch see it, mind you. Which is that one might die in the contest. Not a game, but a war.”

Now, if the contraction of his pupils was any indication, his cousin was thinking again rather than drifting in fever, or fighting anxiety. “I find that hard to believe. In our practice we saw survivors of both kinds of violence, and they leave different wounds.”

“Ah, but you would be the first to tell me that people are individuals... wouldn’t you?” Jahir narrowed his eyes, and Lisinthir laughed. “Not allowed to turn your words on you, am I.”

“It’s in poor taste,” Jahir said, pretending to primness.

“I concede the point. About taste, anyroad.” Lisinthir tipped up his chin. “And speaking of taste, I am not going to tumble you not half an hour after you’ve stepped off the shuttle, so you will have to resign yourself to waiting. We can go out for a while, if you wish. I’ve two weeks or so, if that span suits you.”

“It does. If I may ask about the delay that kept you from sending for me sooner?”

“You may,” Lisinthir said, switching to their tongue and shadowing the words. “Though as much as possible I would prefer not to speak of what I’m about.”

“You fear someone might be listening?”

Did he? Lisinthir supposed someone must be. But, “No. Rather I admit to paranoia on your behalf, cousin. I would not want you to know things my enemies might want to pry out of you.” He paused, waiting for the protestation, found it curious not to receive it. He quirked a brow. “No reminders that you are not planning to become involved?”

Jahir met his eyes, unwavering. “I try not to make promises unless I know I will keep them.”

Both his brows rose. “Well,” he said at last, and kissed his cousin gently on the brow. “Thank you, then. Though I hope you will remain off the field. Part of the delay was physical, I admit. Yon doctors did fine work on me, thanks to your timely intervention, but I was not in the best of condition. There were logistical issues as well, which is how I am here rather than back on Selnor. I await the mustering of the Alliance’s official spies and saboteurs. They will accompany me to the border, where I will be seeking intelligence on how the war proceeds on the Chatcaavan side.”

“Because there is already war there.”

“Indubitably,” Lisinthir said, his stomach clenching. Anger, perhaps. Hunger. Frustration to be trapped here. “Prior to this Emperor’s ascension, the system lords held primacy, and there was little consensus on foreign policy, save that to raid one another was as profitable—sometimes more so—than to turn their attention outward. To wrest power from them required the Emperor to play the Navy against them, a Navy he gave unprecedented power through democratization of its ranks. He maintained that allegiance, and it was what allowed him to hold the Empire united; with it, he was too strong to challenge. But the Navy has fragmented—someone in its ranks, someone high enough to matter, has betrayed him and allied with the system defense forces.”

Jahir’s frown accompanied the withdrawal of his awareness from their skins, something Lisinthir felt as a coolth. “When we transferred to the second vessel. It was carrying more crew than it could support. Were those Naval observers on a defense force ship? Or vice versa? Partisans working together to attack you?”

How relaxing it was to work with an agile mind! Lisinthir rested a thumb on Jahir’s lower lip. “Precisely. You perceive then the importance of the knowledge I seek.”

Jahir kissed his finger, and Lisinthir lost himself there for a moment, in warm breath and dry skin. Soon enough they would play. But the Harat-Shar had not needed to explain to him the importance of transitions. He would not have from Jahir what he needed—what they both needed—if they leaped to the matter without a transition out of the roles they were accustomed to playing. “So,” Lisinthir said. “Two weeks or so, and then I will report to my confederates, and we will learn what there is to learn.”

“The border isn’t far,” Jahir murmured.

“No.” Lisinthir smiled, pulled at him. “We should go walking. There are things to be seen, things to do. And eventually, we should have dinner.”

Jahir grimaced. “So long as it is a light one.”

“A light one. With a little wine. And then we will return here and—” Lisinthir touched his cousin’s nose, trailed the finger down to its tip. “There will be kissing and touching, but no deflowering.”

Despite his agitation, Jahir’s mouth twitched upward. “Deflowering.”

“As if you were the gentlest bred of maidens,” Lisinthir said airily, dashing the words with silver and gold like flowers in spring. “Nothing less.”

Rising, Jahir said, “I suppose this is better than your earlier metaphor of me as stud to be ridden and put away wet.”

“The new one makes up in elegance what it lacks in accuracy,” Lisinthir replied, and grinned at the look that won him: so quelling, to also be accompanied by that peach flush over the cheekbones. “Cousin. You are too delicious. Do you know it?”

Resigned but smiling, Jahir said, “Only because you say so...!”

“Excellent. My word in the matter is all you need.” Lisinthir stood, stretched. “Let me show you some of Alpha’s more unusual features. You’ll find them an intriguing contrast from your Veta, I believe.”

“Will I?” Jahir asked, distracted by the thought.

Lisinthir smiled and took up a coat. The sight of it drew his cousin’s eye again, as he knew it would.

“Do you go conspicuous, then, the Eldritch heir?”

“An I do, when I do not I am not remarked.” Lisinthir shrugged into the new coat, cinnamon edged in black, dark blue, and copper, its lines antique by Alliance standards though it had been made new by Pelted hands. He’d restored his wardrobe using the one outfit Jahir had left with him in the hospital as a model, in all the colors he’d favored when he’d gone to the Empire, plus one… in Imtherili white. “Ambassador Nase Galare, the Eldritch prince, wears a court coat and swords and is quite noticeable when he goes abroad. Lisinthir, however, can go dancing in a bodysuit and a mask, and no one thinks ‘Oh, there is the Ambassador.’”

“Except the hair,” Jahir observed, mouth curving.

Lisinthir grinned. “No one will notice once I remove it from the context of my race. After you, cousin.”

Jahir started for the door, then halted abruptly. “Do you mean to tell me you were serious about the dancing?”

Lisinthir met his eyes, amused. “Absolutely.”