Jahir needed no other measure of the changes on the homeworld than that the Queen’s Tams conveyed him directly to his house from orbit, rather than depositing him at the palace’s landing pad and leaving him to make the journey from Ontine on horseback. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the changes; he thought perhaps he might find them good, were he not unsettled in so many other ways. Vasiht’h, who’d departed to collect his sister, was returning by way of Anseahla, and so not destined to arrive soon; Sediryl was on some errand of Liolesa’s, and he felt her absence acutely despite how little time they’d spent together. And Lisinthir, as yet involved with Fleet debriefings and other assorted last-minute business in the Alliance, was some days behind him.
He felt his isolation keenly, and misliked it. He was still too close to the events of the war, and as Lisinthir had noticed while they were on station, he bled yet from those wounds. This healing would need time, and not all his joy in the rejuvenation of his world and his people, and the reprieve won the Alliance, and the astonishing rearrangement of intergalactic politics in peace’s favor would speed it. Particularly not when it was weighted against the deaths and the suffering and the loss from which it had been born.
But then there was this: that he might descend from the ramp of the Alliance vessel and onto his birth soil, and draw in the familiar scent of the air, the faint morning moisture of it, see the colors: the peach and pearl of sunrise, streaked with gray clouds. He paused, staring into that sky. Remembered himself and thanked the Tam-illee who’d brought him. Set off toward the back of the manse, and was not surprised to see a figure emitted from its door. Once upon a time he would have guessed at that figure’s identity; now the mind-talents told him, effortlessly, carried with it the ferocity of relief and adoration, the settled strength of it, so familiar from decades of proximity.
It was in poor taste to run, but he did anyway, and so did she, her skirts gathered in her hands and the sun bright on her braids. In that moment she looked the maiden she must have been years before he was born. She reached him, panting and laughing, and threw herself into his arms, and he discovered that she was a head shorter than he, and that he’d never realized it because Eldritch families did not hug.
“Oh my son!” Jeasa exclaimed, in gold and white and silver. “Oh my son, you are come home!”
“And in one piece, I pledge it.” How astonishing she was, felt so with the talents! He had known, intellectually, that she’d been a strong woman, for she’d raised her sons alone after her husband’s death, and if a husband was often an afterthought in other Eldritch houses, it had not been so for the Seni. They’d been partners, and the amputation of one had left the other bereft. But in his arms, the mind-talent revealed her as a dense fold in the Pattern, with wings stretched into its star-spilled net, and it was the opposite of rootedness. It was an expansiveness, like a bird caught in flight, and it was beautiful.
His mother leaned back and studied him. “Yes,” she said at last, and brushed her fingertips against his scarred cheek. “I see.” Before he could ask or protest, she stepped around him to engage the Tam-illee pilot, and he heard her making pleasantries, and expressing gratitude, and then she was winding her arm through his and steering him back toward the house.
“You see?” he asked.
“We have a great deal to talk about,” she said. “But first, let us see you settled.”
His rooms hadn’t changed, except in one detail: there was now a low corral of pillows in his bedchamber. Jahir crouched alongside it and touched its wooden edge, traced the carvings of birds in flight, and stars. The pillows mounded in it were of the first quality, large and soft in natural colors: the deep green of forest shadows, the slate blue of a winter lake. He leaned back, wondering how long ago she’d commissioned it—had it been after he’d departed the wedding with Vasiht’h? A few years later? How long had it taken for her to describe what she wanted to a craftsperson able to make it? And had they wondered why their lady had wanted what amounted to a giant dogbed? Would she have explained it to them, that it was meant for a recumbent alien with multiple limbs?
Of course she would have. His mother was inimitable, in her gentle way, and she had been done with hiding her allegiances. No more the quiet and loyal partisan… she had decided, with that invitation that had brought Vasiht’h to one of the most explosive betrothals in ages, to make her stand.
Had it worked? He wondered what had become of that wedding. Juzie and her swain couldn’t be much older now. Maybe he would ask.
How strange to care about such things, when lately the galaxy had been coming apart at every seam. He straightened and went to his ablutions, to rinse the weariness of the voyage off if not the dust. For once, there was no dust.
His mother was awaiting him in her favorite room, the solar on the south-facing wall of the manse. A clever room, that one, on the second floor but with a vaulted ceiling that extended to the fourth floor, and the roof, allowing for skylights that curved downward like the windows of a cathedral. Many the memories he had of her in this room with her sewing, and for a time, of ladies-in-waiting, before she’d dispensed with the company and chosen solitude over companionship. He found her thus now, in one of the brocade chairs with the delicate legs, looking out over the garden through the clear panes of those windows.
On the table before her was a selection of small cheeses, fruits, scones, and crackers, and a crystal pitcher of water, to go with the teapot. He sat across from her and glanced at it. “I assume I am to eat, then. Was it the hollows under the cheekbones that gave me away? I pledge you, I am doing my best to amend my health.”
“I know,” his mother said. “But your fiancée came before you and left detailed instructions on your feeding. Which she had designed, she said, with the recommendations of your partner.”
God and Lady, now he would have two of them at hand. Though the thought of Sediryl and Vasiht’h conspiring behind his back about his health was… funny. In the best of ways. “So, she stopped by.”
“To tell me she intended to wed you, and to divine my feelings on the matter,” his mother agreed. She reached for a tea cup, taking it and the saucer. “And about time, I think.”
He glanced up at her. “Did you…”
“Know? That you loved her all these many years?” She shook her head. “Jahir, my dearest. I’m your mother.”
“More power there than any mind-mage,” he murmured.
“Yes,” she said. “And you would know, I think.” At his sharp, surprised look, she said, “You think that it can’t be felt? There is an aura around you, my love. Like a song that makes the world yearn to bend toward you, to hear.” She smiled. “It’s lovely. Or I think. But no, I am not surprised.” She canted her head. “Will you tell me now what you underwent? For it was something significant. That I knew from Sediryl, though she spoke little of it. Save to say that you were involved in the war, and all of you had come back scathed from it.”
Scathed. Yes… that would be a way to put it.
“You need not speak of it,” she said gently. “But I think you wish to.”
And she deserved to know, for the changes coming to their world would need them all. He filled a plate with a little cheese, a slice of peach, a few crackers, and poured himself a cup of tea: floral but strong. The only tea on this world had been tisane; to taste true tea, he’d had to go to the outworld. Which had led, in the end… here. Had Liolesa known? Had she hoped? Had all the Eldritch she’d permitted to go abroad been her entries into the lottery that would eventually win this prize?
He could ask her. She would answer, he thought.
“Then, to begin,” he said, “I must tell you of the Ambassador ad’Chatcaavan Empire. Who was one of ours, a man Liolesa sent to the task at the behest of the Alliance. To war with dragons on the field of diplomacy, and the field of the duel, because for dragons they were the same.” He drew in a breath. “We begin with Lisinthir.”
He spoke then, and told her… everything. Of codetalking for the Alliance at Vasiht’h’s side on Starbase Veta. About the jackal chest he’d asked her to procure for him, and how it had broken in the Empire, never to return to the adventuress from whom Jeasa had had it. Of how the Queen had sent them both to the border to retrieve a man who’d created such a change in the Chatcaavan Emperor that it had sown the seeds of the Empire’s dissolution. Of their flight—of the battle on the border that had seen them nearly killed, and slain so many of the valiant Fleet officers tasked to their escort. He spoke of their meeting on the starbase, eliding their trysting out of respect for Lisinthir’s privacy, and their discovery of, and practice with, their mind-talents, until at last the war had caught them both up, and Vasiht’h as well. His separation from his partner, and Vasiht’h’s travails, which he spoke of only in generalities, for that would be the Glaseah’s tale to tell if ever he chose to do so. Of his own durance on the wall of the Usurper’s study, slowly dying to the roquelaure’s cruelties. Of what he’d done while hanging there, infecting the minds of his enemies and heartening the spirits of his allies. Of Lisinthir’s arrival with the Emperor, and the freeing of the palace, and the discovery that the war was already in progress.
Of the death of Tam-ley, of Selnor’s wreckage, of all the damage that the splinter faction of the Chatcaava had caused while passing through… and of the fact that they were probably now on the other side of the Eldritch, waiting. Building their strength.
Of Sediryl, and their discussion, and that she was now heir which would make him….
“Prince-consort,” his mother said, setting down her cup. That had been her third. “How does that sit with you, my son? You have never loved power.”
“I do not, no,” Jahir said. “But I love Sediryl. And I love our people, Mother. I could not turn my back on them.”
“No,” she said with a sigh, and her eyes were the eyes of every mother who’d seen a child scarred by life. Regret, and love, and relief, and regret again, that they should suffer at all. “No, that was always one of your best qualities, my love. You are a responsible man. Perhaps, sometimes, too responsible. But better too much than too little.” She tilted her head and added impishly, “I, on the other hand, am delighted to not only gain the firebrand Galare exile as my daughter-in-law, but to see a crown on my son’s head… to the irritation and envy of my peers and enemies.”
That startled a laugh from him. “Mother! Truly?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I have spent too many years suffering their sneers. It will be a great pleasure to arrive to Ontine in the vanguard of a wedding party that will see my son lifted to primacy.” Her eyes twinkled. “Is that horrible of me?”
“If it is, I forgive you it, so long as you do attend and save us from some of the excesses of the court…!”
She laughed. “Ha! You will also have your partner for that. When will he come? And bring his sister and her family? I should like to see him again, and meet her. They will stay here, won’t they? I had the discussion with Sediryl, and her mother has not yet brought her back from her disinheritance. She has no place to live, save that she goes to the Delen. And I will not have that! She is marrying into our family, and so she should consider our home hers. Do you not think so?”
“I admit I hadn’t thought through the implications of her exile. And we will need a place to live. I assumed the heir lived at Ontine….”
“The heir once lived at Ontine because in order to reach Ontine she would have had to ride a horse from whatever goddess-forsaken corner of the kingdom she lived in,” his mother said briskly. “But I will have one of the first Pads on this world, so there is no reason at all you should not live here and commute to work.”
He did laugh then, in delight and surprise. At the mental image, and her obvious pleasure.
“In sooth, my love, look at the size of this manse. It’s ridiculous that for years I have been the only one residing on four floors and three wings—it belongs more to the servants than to the family, for more of them dwell in it…! Even when all four of us lived here, it was still too much. A place like this begs to be an administrative center, not a personal house. Or if it is a personal house, it should have far more persons in it.”
“I’m sure it will seem far more populated with a passel of Glaseahn children romping its corridors,” Jahir said. “And… it would be good to stay here. But I must discuss it with my betrothed, and my partner. And I suppose, the Empress…” He paused, finding that bizarre.
“Never thought you would be so important to the monarch, did you,” his mother guessed, her mischief peeping out through the uplifted corners of her mouth.
“In no way, nor any fashion!” He shook his head. “But then… I did not expect to fight a war on our behalf, either, nor to see the things I have seen.”
Her voice gentled. “Dost need a counselor, my love?”
Did he? No question that all of them would be working through their experiences for years. He didn’t feel compromised, but then, in the past he had been excellent at hiding his own fault lines from himself until they yawned open and swallowed him.
This time, though… he thought not. He had too many people around him watching him for signs of denial and depression. “I am… I am, and will be, aggrieved for a long time,” he said finally, choosing the words carefully. “There is no living through such experiences without pain. But I am not crushed by them. We survived, Mother. We survived and somehow we have come out the other end of this with time to prepare for whatever comes next. As… something must, given the dragons on our doorstep.”
She made a noncommittal sound. “Well, we shall see, I suppose. And hopefully you are correct, and Lord and Lady will grant us time.” And then surprised them both with a tremendous yawn that she hastened to cover with her fingertips. “Oh my. I’m not used to being up so early, I’m afraid!”
“I had wondered,” he admitted, fond. “It is more like you to sleep away the hours this close to dawn.”
“It is, but I could hardly miss your homecoming. I had been waiting for too long.” She beamed at him. “It’s so good to have you home, and to stay, at last.”
“It’s good to be home,” he said, and was astonished that he might mean it. “And we will have many days to enjoy one another’s company. You should nap, and I…”
“You?” she prompted. “The Empress expects you to make your bows, forsooth, but not so soon after your arrival. You have time.”
“Yes.” No question that he must present himself to his liegelady, particularly after Sediryl’s synopsis of what had transpired on their world in their absence. She had delivered it to them, distracted, on that trip to the pirate depot, and it had alarmed him: an attempted coup? Pirates in the halls of the palace? More mind-mages! “Yes, I shall do so, and as soon as possible. But not fresh off a shuttle.”
“She would not expect it,” his mother agreed. “Tomorrow is soon enough, and perhaps too soon! You will have to apply to her secretary to see where you might enter into her schedule.”
“I will do that, then. After I walk.” Saying it made him realize how much he wanted to. It had been a long time since he’d been so free to do so; the gravity here was kind.
She rose first, and that, too was relaxing… to return to the courtesies bred into him. But as he stood, she rested a hand on the back of her chair and said, “Our embrace did not discomfit you?”
“No,” he replied, reflexively. “Such things no longer trouble me.”
“Does that mean I might have more of them?”
Until she’d posed the question, he hadn’t thought through the implications of his finer control of the mind talents. That he might touch not just in extreme emotion, as he had when they’d seen one another… but casually, as Pelted families might. In truth, the people he wanted such intimacies with were few, even stripped of the emotional load they might once have carried, and so he was glad their society remained, for now, unlikely to change. But his mother?
Jahir opened his arms, and she squealed like a maiden and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his chest. He couldn’t help his laugh. After all he’d been through, and all he had paid, and yet… he had not thought to come into unlooked-for gifts. How had she said it? They were living now in Ordinary Time, the periods of quiet normalcy between high festivals. And, he supposed, high drama. He exhaled, ruffling the hair over the crown of her head.
“Go on, then,” he said gently, releasing her. “I will be here when you wake.”
She smiled up at him. “Yes. Welcome home, my son.”
To walk the grounds in late spring was no hardship, even for one so recently released from convalescence. Jahir packed the heel of a loaf of bread and a small bit of cheese, hearing Vasiht’h’s voice in his head: ‘Are you eating enough, ariihir?’ and went ambling, intending not to return for however many hours pleased him to be abroad. He brought a telegem as well, not knowing when someone might want to call him—all his beloveds were off-planet, and he didn’t know what time it was wherever they were, and so couldn’t guess when they might contact him.
But for the most part, he forgot the Alliance, and his concerns, and indeed, lost his sense of anything but the loveliness of nature, and this nature in particular, familiar and longed for. The area immediately around the estate was manicured, as convention required… but unlike so many other Eldritch nobles, his mother had never felt the need to impress order on the wilderness past the bare minimum necessary to deceive gossips. The forest remained pristine, and its copses and streams, and one never knew when one would stumble onto some sun-dappled glade or dark green pond. It smelled of wildflowers, rather than the cultivated blossoms common to the palace at the capital; and the sound… Jahir paused, head tilted toward the sun and eyes closed. The sound filled him, the rustle of wind through millions of leaves, a hushed white noise like waves on the shore.
He had the bread on an old stone bridge, listening to the trickle of the stream twine with the wind-song, and scattered his crumbs for the birds to find. The thought that this might be his: that he might earn it, and be able to enjoy it rather than find it a guilty pleasure stolen from the injustices that soaked his homeworld and his unfairly privileged upbringing… it filled him with a quiet solemnity. It had been his intention, always, to come home with the fruits of his offworld education. That he’d made it home after a great deal of unintentional education—in war—did not change that he’d returned at last.
And now…?
It was while walking what appeared to be a deer track that his telegem sounded a soft chord in his ear. He paused, resting a hand on the bark of a tree, and hummed the channel open. “Jahir.”
A welcome soprano, in Universal: “Um… it’s me?”
She sounded so charmingly uncertain for a woman about to undertake a coronet… and his wedding cloth. “Sediryl,” he said, letting the warmth shape his voice. “Where are you? I assume the Empress has you on assignment, but you didn’t say.”
“Believe it or not… I’m shopping?”
She sounded so baffled he laughed. “A tedium of herculean proportions.”
“All right, it’s not as bad as that. I just… I don’t know what I was expecting when I signed up for this, but to be shipped straight back into the Core wasn’t it.” A sigh, heartfelt. “Not that I hate being abroad, but I wanted to be home when you got there, and Vasiht’h too. Not to mention I should be riding herd on my Faulfenza—are they all right, do you know? Qora’s responses to my messages are cryptic. On purpose, I suspect, to make me crazy.”
“They’re fine,” Jahir said, smiling. “Last I checked, exploring the capital.”
“Goddess, getting into who knows what trouble, I’m sure.” She sighed. “Well, hopefully I’ll be home soon. Though I don’t know that we’re even half done out here.”
“What are you shopping for?”
“You should see my list. Not just hers, either, but your mother’s, and my great-aunt’s, and a handful of other people who are jumping on the chance to trade freely with the Alliance. Most of them want electronics, though it’s going to be a while before we’ll have the infrastructure to make it all work. Some things, though, we’ll be able to manage, although… have you ever bought a single-person Pad? I had no idea they cost so much!”
“I can imagine,” he said. “It is not minor technology.”
“Tell me about it. My teeth still hurt; apparently I was clenching them while buying. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t hand out this much money for anything. Partly for fear that I was being gouged, because when have I ever bought anything like this? Fortunately, Liolesa sent me help in the form of the Lord of War’s wife.”
Jahir had resumed walking, ducking his head to avoid the low-hanging branches. “That would be the human woman you mentioned on the Jerisa?”
“That’s right. She’s good company, and she’s been bargain hunting since she bought a business license. She’s been helping with the electronics piece. Which has left me my head on the rest of it, which involves… seeds!”
He halted again. “Seeds!”
Sediryl sounded happier now. “Yes. Liolesa wants me buying farming supplies and equipment. And I’m supposed to bring back a contractor who specializes in terraforming failures. That’s ‘terraforming failures’, as in ‘a failure of the terraforming process’, not ‘terraforming failures’ as in ‘we are going to terraform a failed planet’. Though I guess either would apply. Anyway, I told her about this particular specialist… Goddess, ages ago when I went to the Alliance for the first time. She said it wasn’t the right time then, but apparently it is now. And I get to oversee his experiments! We’re going to see if we can get something to grow on-world.”
“How amazing that would be,” he said, meaning it.
“You never saw Nuera, not really. Not the crops and the tenants and the fields. But…” He could hear her sigh. “Oh, Jahir. Some of the happiest times in my life involved taking care of Nuera. My father would tell you.” A pause and she made a noise. “I wish I’d been able to see him before I left, but he’s got some sort of flu.”
And a flu here could be deadly… though not likely to a healthy adult. Jahir frowned. “You spoke to him?”
“I did, yes. He sounded weak but in good spirits. Hopefully he’ll be on the mend by the time I get back. Hopefully. I don’t know anything about the flu—how long does it take? Recovering from something like that?”
“It could be several weeks, depending on the strain. Would you like me to check on him?”
“No… no, I think he’ll be fine.” Another sigh. “Thank Goddess and Lord we’ve got that new hospital, though. Have you seen it yet?”
“No, but I intend to.”
“Good.” Her voice softened… he could imagine the expression on her face, gentle and wonderstruck. “Who would have thought that both of us would be able to belong somewhere on our homeworld? With the specialties we chose?”
“I know,” he answered, soft. “I know, love.”
Her blush was audible too. “I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. I just wanted to make sure you got home safely. You know.”
He did, yes. He suspected it would be many years before any of them took that safety for granted. “I do. And it was good to hear your voice. Next time we speak I’ll be sure to have a tablet with me so we can see one another as well.”
“I’d like that. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Jahir continued wending along the deer track, smiling to himself. Regardless of Sediryl’s beliefs about what she wanted, being out and about the Empress’s errands was what she actually needed. To be acting on their behalf, finally, rather than trapped in the wait. Nor was she the only one done with waiting: his world itself was finally free, and now they would see what it could become absent the strangling yoke of its isolationism.
The deer track opened onto a broad meadow, poured full of buttery spring sunlight. He bent to touch the flowers stitching their way through the knee-high grasses, trying to imagine more people living near the manor. What would it be like, when modern medicine allowed the Eldritch to bring more of their children to term successfully? He would finally see the answer. Maybe these meadows would be filled with cottages and laughter. How splendid that would be.