CHAPTER 7

Jahir woke in advance of the alarm he'd set, wondering what had pricked him from his restless dreams. Vasiht'h was sleeping alongside him, and heavily from the mindline's quiet: like the sea becalmed, deep and full but with a stillness that made one's gaze skitter over the surface. Some small blessing, that. Jahir sat up, careful of his feet with all the pillows so close to the bunk's edge. The last time they'd slept so close they'd been on Selnor in the tiny apartment he'd been assigned as Mercy Hospital's newest student-resident, and even there they'd had more room to move in the bedroom.

No surprise that Mercy came to mind. The breathlessness, the narrowing of his choices, the urgency of his patients' needs... the drugs... he pressed his thumb to the underside of his brow and wondered if he'd slept enough, to still be so tired. To lie back down did not appeal, though, so he rose and stepped over his partner's body. There was time before he was due to feed his House cousin. He could make a start on the analysis of the hekkret. It would be good to do something productive, something he'd been trained to do, and very definitely something he could do alone.

His interactions with Vasiht'h had always been easy—that ease had been what had intrigued him over a decade ago, when they'd met. Most of their clients they tended to in dreams, but even when he and Vasiht'h engaged them while conscious, it was with the understanding that all the parties involved were seeking the same resolution. It had been a long time since Jahir had come to a conversation with the expectation of a cross purpose. It reminded him unfavorably of all that he'd left behind on the homeworld. A half hour of solitude bent over a console, studying test results, sounded like just what he needed before submitting himself to Lisinthir's untender mercies. One of his strides faltered at the thought, but he ignored it, shook it off. Let himself into the clinic and settled with an exhalation, as in preparation before a vigil. Then he took up a data tablet and began with a visual examination.

When the alarm chirped, it broke him from a fugue that had re-established some semblance of equilibrium.  Jahir did not allow himself to question it, but took up the medical kit and went to see to his patient. He would collect his data, receive the patient's self-reported health status, and return here to resume his investigation. That was all that was required, all, in fact, that had been asked of them, given that Lisinthir had not wanted to continue the therapeutic relationship. Nor, he told himself, was it his responsibility to recall his cousin to proper behavior. That was for Lisinthir's father to do, as the last head of Imthereli... or his mother, or the Queen, as the authorities on the Galare side.

The scope of his duties here were comfortably limited. He stepped into the room when the door opened for him, and stopped.

"I thought it would be pointless to hide it from you, so I'm not," Lisinthir said from the couch where he was smoking. He was reclining on it, and taking the entirety of it—more than the entirety, for as Jahir had noticed himself the couches in these rooms were too short for someone of an Eldritch's average height. His cousin had his ankles crossed on one of the arms. He was the very picture of indolence—no, decadence. The only thing missing was—

"Are you also hiding the alcohol?"

"Believe it or not, I'm not drinking." Lisinthir shifted, eyes closed and smoke curling from his nose as from a dragon's. "And that despite having every provocation."

"Have you," Jahir said, and sat on the coffee table. He woke the wand and the tablet. This was why he was here, and that was all.

"You sound unconvinced, cousin."

Jahir's skin prickled at the name. "I apologize for my distraction, alet." He brought the wand over Lisinthir's torso and watched the readings spill onto the tablet, filling the graphs and bars. His fingers skated over the results as they appeared, hoping for better answers and finding only confirmation of his worst projections. There were anomalous readings, however, things he didn't understand about the reaction of the nervous system... until he realized he was collecting data from a man currently under the influence of the drug. That was serendipity; he requested a new barrage of tests, most of which would take some time to complete. They would be faster and more accurate under a halo-arch, of course....

His cousin was watching him.

"Yes?" he said, when he could speak, because he wasn't sure he liked the way Lisinthir looked at him: far too incisively, as if he was privy to secrets Jahir was not.

"Find something interesting?"

"Can you place this wand near your head, please?"

Lisinthir took it from him. Their fingers never touched, but Jahir noted his cousin was far less careful of the separation than another Eldritch would have been. After wedging it amid the cushions, Lisinthir put his free hand behind his head and drew from the hekkret. "Sufficient for your purposes, I trust?"

"It will do, yes. It would be better done in the clinic, but I have noted that the halo-arches are now off standby. I suspect Hea Borden would prefer me not to wake them unless absolutely necessary."

"So my health is no longer an emergent crisis."

"So long as we can keep you on solutions, no." Jahir paused, then said, "As far as I'm aware." He watched the smoke rising from the cigarette, trying not to react to it. An addiction, yes, but a more complicated situation than the ones he was accustomed to treating. How could he dismantle the belief that Lisinthir's addiction was a survival mechanism when it had literally prevented his murder by foreign nationals?

"You develop a very interesting look in your eye when you're thinking through a problem."

The comment broke him from reverie. His cousin studying him again. "I beg your pardon."

"This is your work, then. Your passion. Medicine."

Surprised by the observation, Jahir said, "To heal is to serve life."

Lisinthir smiled and leaned past him to tap the hekkret roll on the back of a data tablet. Jahir watched the ash crumple from its tip with a fascination that bordered revulsion. "Straight from the catechism."

"There was truth in the catechism," Jahir said. "Shall I ignore it because it was Eldritch?"

Lisinthir glanced at him, then relaxed back onto the couch. "And yet you would back away from a healing."

"If you're speaking of your own, you will note that I am here."

"Certainly. Tending to my body, but not my spirit." Lisinthir held up a hand. "You will protest that I don't want your help, so it is not lawful for you to give it. I won't argue it. But the healing I'm speaking of isn't mine."

"Then I have not the first notion of what you mean."

Lisinthir sighed smoke, shook his head. "This was never going to work, and I should have said so."

Jahir frowned. "Said so... to whom? And about what?"

"It's of no moment. Is your wand finished? It has chirped. What is it with the Alliance and its singing machines? Everything chimes or warbles or hums."

Jahir plucked up the wand and said, "Lisinthir—what was never going to work?"

Lisinthir eyed him, then looked at the ceiling again. The hand with the cigarette was resting against his brow, the fingers casually curled. "My talking to you about carnal matters."

Appalled, Jahir said, "Whatever gave you the idea that you should?"

"Say 'whoever' and ask again."

The earth dropped from beneath his thoughts, scattering them. Jahir fumbled for some semblance of composure and said, "Not..."

"Your beloved? You know better."

"Vasiht'h. Asked you to help me."

Lisinthir nodded without looking at him, and Jahir sat back, his dismay encompassing. Had he driven his partner to that length by attempting to fight Lisinthir for the hekkret? Surely not? He'd been motivated by old frustrations about their work, yes, but Vasiht'h had seen his passions, knew he harbored them. Why on all the worlds would the Glaseah speak to Lisinthir about anything involving their relationship? Lisinthir, who was practically a stranger to them?

The touch on his face shocked him from his thoughts. Lisinthir had sat up and was facing him now with the backs of two fingers against his cheek, and through that touch conveyed concern like a sheath over something hard and lethal as steel. "Stop," Lisinthir said—commanded—and as quiet as the word was, it was explicitly command. "He was worried that he was unequal to helping you. That was the only motivation driving him, and drive him it did with the cruelest of spurs to come to my door to make the request of me."

"But to you?" Jahir managed.

"He perceived I had experience in the matter that he didn't, is all. If he'd known anyone else who could have helped, I have no doubt they would have found him on their doorstep."

"But he chose you."

"Yes."

Jahir tried to fathom what expertise it was that his dearest friend felt himself unequal to wielding and couldn't begin to guess. He'd divulged his fears to Vasiht'h and been comforted. What more was his partner expecting of himself? And why?

There were fingers on his cheek, and they were moving. "You are touching me."

"I like touching you." Lisinthir smiled, lopsided. "I like touching. I have had rather too little of it lately."

It had become a caress: just a little stroke of those two fingers, soothing. "You are touching me. Without permission."

"You needed comfort," Lisinthir said. "You still need comfort. Besides, you don't want me to ask."

It took a moment to think through his confusion at the caress. "As that would be presumptuous in the extreme, no, I don't."

Lisinthir sighed, lifted those fingers and touched them gently to Jahir's lower lip. "No, cousin. It has nothing to do with presumption. You don't want me to ask for permission because you want me to take it."

Everything in him stilled. Even his heart seemed to pause, floating between strokes.

"You are, in fact, waiting for me to do what I please to you." Lisinthir shook his head, the smallest twitch of his chin. "But I don't rape the innocent."

His throat hurt, smoke and stopped up words. But he whispered, "Do you rape the guilty?"

"And if I said I have?" Lisinthir's finger traced his lip, very light, almost imperceptible. "Will you tell me then that you are guilty?"

Jahir pulled away. "The test should be done. May I have the wand?"

Lisinthir smothered the cigarette and rose. "Get it yourself."

So he did, and took himself out of the room before he could try his client's patience. That was the reason he was leaving, and not at all because of how unnerved he was, though he was also unnerved….

When was the last time his feelings had been quite this tangled about anything? Jahir sighed and returned to the clinic. Vasiht'h would wake soon enough and bring with him that enviable equanimity, and maybe then he could relax. And ask, perhaps, what fear had motivated his partner into Lisinthir's rooms, and to what end? Because Jahir could not imagine what any discussion with his cousin would have accomplished, particularly about something so oblique in its relation to their current problems. Carnal matters? Was Vasiht'h so concerned with his reaction to Lisinthir being free with touch? No, that didn't feel right.

Jahir pressed on the spot beneath his brow that usually relieved his headaches, noted that it didn't work, and sat to resume his work on the tests. He had new data. It would keep him occupied.

The situation remained entirely ridiculous, and Lisinthir no longer had any desire to wait in his quarters for his psychiatrists to corner him, the one with his unwanted worries, the other with his unbearable desires. Let them comfort one another, which is what they needed. He had other concerns, and they took him to the engine room. Navigating the ship by memorized blueprint proved diverting; even a small Fleet ship was more complex than its exterior suggested, and the technology revealed everywhere, even inset in the floor near the wall, drew him out of his head, which is where he preferred to exist.

He was greeted at the hatch by an exhausted-looking Hinichi, who said, "Ambassador? May I help you?"

"Your captain," Lisinthir said. "Is he available?"

"Yes, sir. He's over at the port nacelle feed tube." The wolfine pointed. "There."

"I see him. Thank you."

Well engines were not small. Walking alongside the housing for one made Lisinthir wonder how anyone had ever invented something so complex. The Alliance had its potency, all the more astonishing for the brevity of the lives that powered it. The Chatcaava consumed themselves and others with their savagery, and the Eldritch dwindled into elegant irrelevance... and ignored by them both, save when it suited them, the Pelted labored on, creating these minor miracles out of spare parts and sheer ingenuity. What had the Emperor said once? The creed of your Alliance: we are born weak, therefore let us make strength from bits of metal and philosophy.

Seeing the sleek metal, Lisinthir thought that it was not "his" Alliance. Perhaps he had always had more in common with dragons than with anything more civilized.

The Captain was himself at work, and excused himself to join Lisinthir. "Ambassador. So far we seem to be lucky. Not a thing's so much as ghosted through passive sensor range."

"Let us hope it will remain so. Tell me, Captain. Is there any other way I might be of service? I'm not used to being idle."

The human wiped his head. "Hell, yes, and I haven't had enough time to come back and talk to you about it, either. If you could, I'd appreciate you getting everything that's trapped in your head about the political and military situation over there into some form I can send out as soon as we're either safe or about to be captured. The intelligence you've got is the most valuable asset you could have bought with your time there. We would prefer you to be attached to it to explain it, but if something happens to us…."

"I understand," Lisinthir said. "And yes, I can do that."

"Good. The faster the better. Use the main computer, tag the results to my attention. I'll get Cory to wrap it in a protocol and encrypt it as you add to it. That should give us the ability to dump it on short notice."

"I'll begin immediately."

The man smiled. "We'll get you out of this, Ambassador. But insurance is always prudent."

Lisinthir inclined his head, ignoring the nascent ache. Would he ever be quit of the damnable symptoms? It would almost be worth it to return to the Alliance proper, if only to put paid to his body's complaints. "No argument here. Good luck on the repairs."

"Thank you."

So then, a useful task. An interesting one, also; what did the Alliance know of the Chatcaava? Very little still, despite their attempts before his assignment. Lisinthir remembered the briefings prepared for him in advance of his departure and snorted. No, they knew almost nothing, and half of that wrong. Even their information on the military ship classes left a great deal to be desired, unsurprisingly since most of the depredations visited on the Alliance at the border or in neutral territories was perpetrated by pirates, not directly by the Chatcaava themselves. They did make forays of their own, but they were rare in compare.

It would be bittersweet to pick through the memories that had granted him that knowledge, but at least he could live in them a little longer that way. He returned to his cabin, woke the data tablet and considered where to begin. The flask was tempting, but he had made a promise. He drummed his fingers lightly on the table, then decided broad political analysis first. Perhaps by the time he reached the details, the nausea would have abated enough for him to contemplate a meal.

Jahir was deep in analysis of chemical receptors when a protein bar appeared beside his elbow. Starting, he looked up and found his partner sitting across from him, arms folded. The mindline brought him whispers of amusement, resignation, affection like a warm blanket, which made him realize he was cold. Was it him or had it grown colder?

"It's not you," Vasiht'h said. "I stopped to talk to Hea Borden on the way here, see how our clients made out. Apparently the climate control on ships like this works on keeping things warm, not cold, so having it at a lower ebb makes the ambient temperature colder."

"I will need a coat before long," Jahir said. "How are our clients?"

"Doing much better, so Borden's asked us to do another set later this afternoon, if we can...?"

"Yes?" Jahir said, mystified at the uncertainty. "Of course. Why wouldn't we?"

"Arii, you've been up most of the night, if I'm not mistaken."

"I've only been here...." He trailed off, noticing the time on the data tablet display. "Ah. Yes, I see why you would worry. I should be fine, so long as I sleep not long after."

Vasiht'h snorted. "Or you could take a nap first. Do you remember—"

"Yes," Jahir said. "Yes, I do recall the time the client's dreams put me to sleep while we were affecting, and I see you will never let me forget it." His mouth twitched. "A nap beforehand sounds pleasant."

"Good. Then you should eat, because you skipped breakfast."

"I'm surprised you did not interrupt me sooner."

Vasiht'h shook his head. "Your head was so thick with numbers I didn't want to disturb you. I figured I'd just take care of the clients and let you get closer to finished. Are you?"

"I wish that I was... but I fear this is a task for a healer-chemist." Jahir sighed and began peeling back the wrapper on the bar: one of Borden's rooderberry variants. "The Ambassador's current health would probably fuel quite a few academic papers. Will probably, once we return."

"'The Ambassador,' is it."

Jahir glanced at him, touched the mindline and found it empty of anything but his partner's warmth. A touch of caution also, maybe, that expressed itself as the ache of a bitten tongue. It made him put the bar down. "Yes. Should I ask now, why..." He stopped, trying to find words that wouldn't scrape the mindline raw. "...why you felt I needed any other aid than yours? You are all the comfort I need."

The mindline colored with Vasiht'h's regret. "Arii..." He sighed, and it felt like defeat in a battle Jahir hadn't known was being fought. "All right. Later, though."

"Because now you will tell me to eat," Jahir said, hoping to restore some normalcy to their interaction.

"Among other things," Vasiht'h agreed, rueful.

Jahir lifted the bar—and stopped. He had gone to Lisinthir's room to run the tests, yes, but also to administer the solution, and he'd left without doing so. And now it was... how many hours since? Providing his cousin hadn't been drinking. That was all he needed: another barbiturate depressing his nervous system, on top of the smoking....

....and the ingestion of poison—regularly? A poison that also depressed the nervous system, but that he was no longer ingesting.

The bar struck the table. Vasiht'h's alarm flooded the mindline, amplified his. "Arii?"

How long had it been since Borden had summoned them because she'd found Lisinthir unconscious? A day? Jahir grabbed the medical kit. "We must go. Now."

Would he be right? But he didn't question it. Everything crystallized so perfectly that when they entered Lisinthir's room, the sight of the Ambassador slumped on the table felt anticlimactic for the whole heart-beat it took for him to realize that he'd guessed correctly. Then the medical kit hit the table, spilling its contents. God and Lady, what could he give that wouldn't react to what was already in the Ambassador's body? Two separate drugs—three preparations—two of which he still didn't know enough about to guess at their interactions—

"What's wrong with him?" Vasiht'h asked, ears flattened.

"I made a mistake," Jahir said. "There's no time—" He took Vasiht'h's hand and reached for Lisinthir with the other… dove into the maelstrom.

The storm was cataclysmic.

/This is just like Mercy!/

/No,/ Jahir said. /But similar. Hold me fast, ariihir./

And then he dove for the center of the chaos and found it resisted him with more agency than any wet victim. The memories that gave edges to the steel were enough to make him blanch and almost back out, but he had precipitated this crisis in his arrogance, and he would force it right. Through the emotional miasma he pushed, doing his best to ignore all that he was seeing and learning; he continued when it bled him, and when everything in him recoiled and howled for him to flee.

But he did not.

Jahir leaned on the frenetic activity in Lisinthir's body and soaked it in calm, spread it with serenity, dripped drop after drop, steady as a drum, until the activity grew ordered, slowed like cold honey, sweet and glassy under his tongue.

And then he was awake.

So was Lisinthir.

Jahir expected the lassitude of someone who'd just had a seizure. Disorientation, maybe even short-term amnesia. But his House cousin blinked once, gleam of low light off pale lashes… and then pushed himself upright and away, frowning. He began to speak, paused when the words came out Chatcaavan, then said in very crisp Universal, "What are you doing here?"

"You had a seizure," Vasiht'h said, his agitation bright as the flashes preceding a migraine. He glanced at Jahir. "Another seizure. Right?"

"Yes. Do you have more of the hekkret?"

"So you can take it away?"

"So you can use it."

Lisinthir eyed him. "You expect me to believe that you now wish me to continue with my addictions."

"What I need," Jahir said, "is to have you continue self-medicating until we can hand you to a treatment center for a controlled withdrawal."

Whatever Lisinthir saw in his face must have been convincing, for the Ambassador said, "In my bag in the other room. The sealed front pocket."

"I'll get it," Vasiht'h said, and vanished into the dark.

"So the hekkret really does keep me alive," Lisinthir said. Not quite a drawl, but close enough.

"This is my fault, I fear," Jahir said. "I didn't realize that you were consistently taking three doses of drugs that have a sedating effect: they have habituated your body to that state. We have already removed one source now that you're not longer being poisoned. I asked you to stop the alcohol, and you appear to have done so and that removed the second source."

"And this is enough to give me seizures."

"This may be enough to kill you, if we're unlucky," Jahir said, quieter. "Is that a side effect of this drug in the Empire?"

Lisinthir snorted. "It is the intended effect. The ingested variety is supposed to kill."

They used a nervous system depressant to kill aliens? Did the ingested preparation have other properties, or was it simply so concentrated that it stopped the breathing? Jahir frowned. "Without a sample… well, it's neither here nor there." He paused as Vasiht'h arrived, handed a roll to Lisinthir. "What does matter is that keeping you on the alcohol may be less dangerous than having you off it precipitously."

"So you want me to drink also," Lisinthir said, mouth quirking.

"It sounds like our choice is between seizures and liver failure," Vasiht'h said, the mindline carrying his nausea. "Both of which might kill him."

"Who would have thought ceasing to be poisoned could be so dangerous." Lisinthir brought a flame from his coat pocket and lit the roll. "So, then, Healer. Which shall it be? The alcohol or… what would you recommend as the treatment course if we were to go the 'surviving seizure' route?"

Jahir shared a sigh with Vasiht'h. /This will go well./ "Supervision."

Lisinthir lifted his brows. "Somehow I doubt you'd enjoy that."

"It isn't about enjoyment, but your safety."

"And how would your supervision permit you to ensure my safety? Watching me pass out doesn't seem very productive. Unless you administered some medicine to me I was unaware of?" Lisinthir glanced at the medical kit.

"We have a technique that works on certain kind of seizures," Vasiht'h offered.

"A... technique."

Perhaps Jahir was more attuned to the nuances of Eldritch dialogue, or maybe there was some other reason he read that pause as menace. But Vasiht'h was continuing, oblivious to anything more sinister than skepticism. "We developed it while working with drug withdrawal-induced seizures, in fact. We use a variant of the same mental touch that we developed to work on patients' dreams to bring them out."

Lisinthir tapped the ash off the end of the roll onto the table. "You were in my mind." Vasiht'h nodded, and the ambassador lifted his eyes. Just his eyes. And froze them both in place with them. "Without my permission."

"We... c-couldn't let you die," Vasiht'h managed.

Lisinthir looked at Jahir now, and held him as fast as surely as with chains. "What did you see?"

Jahir flushed and couldn't answer. He couldn't even look away.

Conversationally, Lisinthir said, "I would never. Never have permitted either of you into my confidences, much less my thoughts." He set the cigarette down, his eyes resting on it. "Get out."

"I... I'm sorry?" Vasiht'h asked.

The Ambassador's face whipped up, and his eyes then were inhuman and his lips peeled back from his teeth, and the words were cold and lethal. "Get out now."

Vasiht'h's alarm leaped the mindline to him, preparing him for the hand that grabbed his wrist and jerked him from the table. And then they were fleeing, and flight it was, and Jahir had no idea whose adrenaline was fueling it but they didn't stop until they reached their own rooms. Vasiht'h staggered to the couch and dropped his upper body onto it, shaking. "I... I'm pretty sure he wasn't going to kill us, but... 'pretty sure' wasn't enough certainty for me. I'm sorry I took your hand like that—"

Jahir sat beside him and said, his voice trembling, "Ariihir. Oh, ariihir, I am in trouble."

The cold that smashed through the mindline made him shudder. Vasiht'h looked up at him, wide-eyed. "Jahir?"

He rubbed his hands up his arms, wanting warmth, or less warmth. Wanting to be anywhere but here and anywhere but in this body and anywhere but in this room, where he couldn't escape the evidence of his own senses. And the evidence was under his skin and in it, in his racing heart, in the pulse so loud he could hear it in his own ears. "I am... reacting... to violence."

Vasiht'h was silent, from heart to mindline. At last, he said, "A lot of people react to violence by wanting to affirm life afterwards. A celebration of survival."

"Yes," Jahir said. "Perfectly sensible. And would apply if in fact I was reacting to our reprieve. But my interest began before then." The threat in the voice, in the eyes. Especially the eyes, brooking no defiance and promising much, and none of it kind. He looked at Vasiht'h, still trembling, and couldn't help but let some of it leak through the mindline. When had his tendency toward self-sacrifice become a yearning for self-abnegation? Because that was all he could conceive of receiving at the other end of a threat like Lisinthir's.

Vasiht'h hung his head, then covered his face with his hands.

"This... this is why you went to him, then," Jahir said. "You thought this might be underlying my reactions."

Without looking up, the Glaseah nodded his head.

Jahir sighed and slid off the couch so he could embrace his partner. "Sssh, arii. Be not afraid."

"How can I not be?" Vasiht'h said. "This is... this is serious."

"This is of no moment," Jahir said. "I don't need to act on it."

Vasiht'h drew back enough to glare at him, ears flattened. "Don't give me that. Don't you give me that, who should know better. You want to sit on your sex drive? You know yourself what sitting on any need does to someone. How many clients have we had—"

Jahir rested a finger against his partner's nose, willing his gentleness through the mindline until Vasiht'h's agitation began to subside. "Self-discipline is not repression."

"You like to take it that far," Vasiht'h said against his finger.

That made him smile, and then laugh, until at last his partner's mouth curved too. Vasiht'h didn't laugh, but the mindline relaxed, tender as a bruise but no longer throbbing.

"One day," Jahir said, quieter, "I will marry a woman who will bear my children, and if at that time any of this becomes a problem, then it will be something that needs fixing. Until then, my sexual... proclivities... are of no relevance."

Vasiht'h considered that, his eyes resting on Jahir's. Then said, "You don't need to be fixed."

Jahir didn't answer that, and betrayed himself with his silence. But he was not willing to go there—not willing to examine it any further. He did not want to be this person, and perhaps if he ignored what he'd learned, it would fade and take with it all the work he would have to do to learn to live with himself.

He prayed Vasiht'h would let it lie... and the Glaseah did, resting his head tentatively on Jahir's shoulder. The calm of his partner's aura was a balm; for once, touch was a needful thing, swept away unsavory thoughts and desires and replaced them with a Glaseah's tranquility. Jahir drew him closer and they abided.

"So now what?" Vasiht'h said after a moment. "About Lisinthir, I mean. We still have the problem with him having seizures, I'm guessing. How are we going to solve that?"

"We will have to involve Hea Borden if he will not accept our observation. Or take the alcohol, on a schedule..." Jahir trailed off and sighed. "I'm afraid I am not up to even guessing at the right dose of that. He may just die before we get him home."

"And we're so close...."

"'Close' is relative." Jahir closed his eyes, sorted through all the shames he felt to find the one closest to the surface, the healer's horror. "I should also apologize."

Vasiht'h lifted his head.

"What we did was an invasion to which he had not consented."

The Glaseah huffed. "My question still stands. What did he expect us to do? Let him die?"

"There were other methods we could have tried…." Jahir thought of his near paralysis at the prospect of finding some drug that might have stayed the seizure that would not have also had some other catastrophic effect. "We might have taken him to the clinic, put him on the halo-arch—"

"In time?" Vasiht'h scowled. "The things aren't even on standby anymore. By the time we got him there and woke them up, we might have been too late. We knew the intervention would work. So I still want to know if he would have preferred us to let him die."

"Maybe."

That won him a considering expression. "You think he's suicidal?"

"I think…" Jahir tentatively touched the impressions he'd gathered, felt his fingers bloodied by them. "I think it is less to do with suicide and more to do with… what one feels one can honorably bear before dying."

"This is… some soldier thing," Vasiht'h guessed. "You don't allow the enemy to torture you for information."

"Or you don't allow someone to slight your honor without defending it, and if that defense kills you…."

There was between them a memory Jahir had shared, of a man he had accidentally killed in just such a duel. It had led, indirectly, to his taking up the staff at Vasiht'h's insistence.

"Yes. I can see that, maybe. You think he's treating you like that?"

"I think it is inevitable that he must." Jahir sighed. "We are what we are, ariihir."

"Not always. Or you wouldn't be here with me."

Jahir smiled. "Sooth. And now I should nap, I believe, if we are to see to the crew. Will you also?"

"No, I think I'll take a walk." Vasiht'h grimaced and smoothed his palms down his forelegs. "I'm jittery from the adrenaline. If I try to lie down I'll just twitch for two hours."

"Go on then," Jahir said. The mindline stung him, like friction from static electricity, and he petted it down. "I'll be here. And yes, I'll be fine."

"If you're sure—"

"Very much."

Vasiht'h disentangled himself from Jahir's arms and stood, wearing a rueful smile. "We really do get into some of the strangest scrapes."

"A hazard of our work, and I would not trade it for anything."

Would it be enough? Would Vasiht'h be complicit in his need to put this aside? When his partner smiled, Jahir knew he would. The Glaseah let himself out and the mindline attenuated to a vague hum as his thoughts turned elsewhere, until his presence receded to a sense of safety and camaraderie, present but no longer near.

Which is when Jahir finally allowed himself to turn into the couch and press his brow into his folded arms. The memories that tended to cling to him from his excursions into the minds of wet victims were inchoate: fleeting impressions, flickering scenes, single words. Sometimes it could be a very vivid impression, but he rarely brought back enough for those memories to linger.

Lisinthir, though—

Blood running down his sides. Tongues licking it up, tongues cooler than his skin. The taste of it in his mouth while kissing past the spars of carnassial fangs, and the hands that smeared it against his skin and the weight on his back—

—at his side—

—on him—

And over and over, the taste of poison, the exhaustion of starvation, of constant exertion, constant peril, and O, God and Lady, but so much love, love unexpected, love violent and terrible and crucifying and exalting, love that transfigured and condemned. There were hands in his hair and hands on his spine and everywhere, there was need.

"God and Lady," he whispered into his arm, too aware of the drag of fabric against his lips as they moved, too sensitive to every touch, "What happened to you, cousin? And what have you done to me?"

Lisinthir didn't follow them out of the room, and he counted this a victory, one he observed with incredulity, for as little as a few days ago he would have broken the horns off of anyone who'd even attempted such liberties with his body, much less his mind. He would never have attacked Vasiht'h, of course—he'd spent so long in the Empire that his first instinct was to treat the Pelted as noncombatants (and perhaps, in all honesty, as non-people, at least in the Chatcaavan sense of being capable of giving insult).

But his House cousin? For not only violating his privacy, but for transgressing against the laws he should have been observing? It was as bad as the Emperor's first rape—no, worse, because the Emperor had been acting according to the culture that had raised him, and had known no other way to act. Jahir knew better.

Lisinthir wanted, very badly, to hurt something… and there was nothing here he could hurt but himself. And what did that matter, when the chances were that he might already be dying? The irony of it appealed to him. To have survived all the Empire's attempts to kill him, only to die for the lack of poisoning… the Emperor would laugh.

Well. No. Perhaps he wouldn't.

Lisinthir went to his luggage and pulled out the clothes he'd worn in the Empire, when he'd worn any at all. He discarded the Eldritch garb he'd donned to make the trip away—the last remaining outfit he had, the rest having been shredded long ago by enthusiastic talons—and he no longer wanted to feel the touch of a culture he no longer respected. Then he dropped himself on the bunk, with the hekkret and the flask, and rested his head back on the pillow, one hand on his stomach, the other at his brow where the smoke could drift down. His skin stippled with gooseflesh at the cold in the room, but he left it for the memory of violence. That time with the talon that had skidded in his own blood and gone too deep…he'd been in a poor position to answer, trapped under the Emperor, but he'd reached behind himself and grabbed the male by the horn at his jaw and yanked it down until he could claw at it. Felt his ragged nails catch, break against pebbled skin and then something slick just before the Emperor had jerked his head away, pinned Lisinthir down and snarled an imprecation.

That orgasm had been blinding. After that, though—

Lisinthir pushed the Emperor's head away. "Off. Did I get anything serious?"

The Emperor snorted. "You would like to think so." But his eye was shut on one side, and Lisinthir reached up to turn the face, frown. "It's nothing, Ambassador. Maybe a scratch on the—"

That word he didn't recognize. "The what?"

The Emperor repeated it for him. "The shield over the eye? The thin clear layer."

"You mean not the lid…?" When the dragon nodded, Lisinthir dragged a word from a distant memory of too many physicals administered to an ambassador-in-preparation: "The… cornea."

"I suppose." The Emperor shoved him down, more friendly suggestion than invitation to tussle. "It will heal."

"I scratched your cornea. That sounds serious."

"It isn't. Your nails are sharper than they look."

"My nails are a ragged mess, you mean, and I keep them that way so they do more damage. Otherwise I'd not make a dent in your hides." Lisinthir stared at the ceiling, and a laugh surprised its way out of him. "I know the Chatcaavan word for cornea. I don't even know the Eldritch word for cornea."

From the door, the Slave Queen asked, "Is there one, my lord?"

"I have not the first notion," Lisinthir said. "But I doubt it. Or it probably has a name like 'shield of the eye.'" He shook his head, winced and touched his side. "Ah, you are a bastard. That one hurt."

The Emperor craned his neck around to look at the wound, spread it with his fingers. Hot blood seeped over cold skin, and a cool tongue scraped it up. "Looks worse than it is."

"How would you know, O One-Eyed Exalted?"

"Did something happen? Should I fetch the Surgeon?" the Queen asked, her voice taut with concern.

"We'll be fine. But a bath, my Treasure. That would be welcome."

Lisinthir sat up after she'd left and touched his fingers to the Emperor's nose, turning his face more gently so that the injury faced the light. The lids were closed, and seeping clear fluid—it looked too thick for tears, and he wondered at it. Some adaptation for flight, perhaps. "You're certain? I didn't mean to catch your eye."

"I didn't mean you to catch any part of me, save the one I was using on you." The drake grinned, bright ribbon of teeth against dark flesh. "I mean it, Perfection. I have suffered worse. I will check with the Surgeon tomorrow if it isn't resolving itself." He leaned down and trailed his nose up the claw wounds. "And he can see to these then. If you need it."

"I'll be fine," Lisinthir said, then laughed. "We are cut from the same cloth, we two. Unwilling to admit to pain."

"There is living and there is death," the Emperor said. "Pain is irrelevant unless it leads to the latter." He traced an arabesque of blood up Lisinthir's side to his chest until it petered out. Glanced over his shoulder toward the sound of running water before saying, "But I had a question. Speaking of Surgeons, and pain suffered in silence."

Lisinthir studied his face, wondering at the closed expression in that good eye. Even through their skin, he couldn't tell what the Emperor was thinking, feeling. "Go on."

"Your Alliance surgeons. Could they heal an old wound?"

"Perhaps? It would depend on the wound, I suppose."

"The Queen cannot fly, nor have children. Both those things were taken from her." He canted his head so the light gleamed on that one fluorescent yellow eye, fingers splayed on Lisinthir's ribs. "Could they restore them?"

He lost a breath, sucked in a new one, ignored the lancing pain of the puncture. "You would ask?"

"Should I not? The womb was her sire's doing, on realizing he would lose to me. The wings I did myself. Either way I am responsible for her mutilation. It is mine to fix. If it can be fixed. So tell me, Perfection—Ambassador—can it?"

"I... I am no surgeon, Exalted. But it would surprise me if it could not be addressed."

The Emperor looked again toward the bathroom. When he spoke, his voice was low. "There are obstacles, which is why I don't ask in front of her. The Empire would have to be in a place where I could send my own Slave Queen into it without causing… issues. In the court and in the Alliance. Unless it could be done here?"

"I doubt it. You would need a true hospital. The closest the Alliance has to a mobile one would arrive on the largest of their warship classes."

The Emperor snorted. "That would be a very interesting day." He resumed petting Lisinthir's side, and with the touch came his resignation. "It would not be soon, then. But if it could be done… of course." His smile was very close to a grimace. "Someone once told me that even the wingless need the sky. I didn't understand him then. Perhaps I do now."

Lisinthir cupped the Emperor's jaw, leaned forward and lapped along the edge of the long maw. In that kiss he put all his pride, all his approval, all his wonder… and the Emperor licked him, languorous, accepting.

...and then his fingers skidded on the leaking fluid from the eye and he laughed against the Emperor's mouth. "A fine mess you are, Exalted."

The drake huffed, amused. "It will pass." And added, with all his characteristic curiosity, that could catch on a concept and not forget it until understood, "What is a bastard?" And when Lisinthir explained, "What a strange and useless concept. Tell me, how do your people accomplish anything, Ambassador, if you cannot even claim your own seed properly?"

"Poorly, when at all, I admit."

"My lord," the Queen called from the door. "My master. The bath is ready—oh, Master, your eye!"

Lisinthir felt the sigh through his fingertips and hid his amusement.

The memory clung to him—not just that moment, but the ones that followed in the bath, an almost dreamlike tenderness that brought the flush up his skin and revived him enough to see to his own needs. But it was the Emperor's promise that resounded long after he'd stepped through the Pad to clean himself. In some universe the Emperor could conceive, it was possible that the Slave Queen could journey to the Alliance to regain the gifts that had been stolen from her. And for that universe to be manifested, someone must work toward it on the Empire's side...

...and someone else on the Alliance's.

Lisinthir looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Beyond how it had made him feel, he'd been indifferent to his condition. For months now, he had been surrounded by dragons who could fly, and their bodies were narrow as swords, poured like metal into a shape meant to cleave the air. It had been difficult for him to maintain an image of what he should look like when all the people he saw daily were so unlike. But Jahir's unwanted invasion had given him Eldritch eyes again, enough to look at himself and see just how badly off he was. He could understand now why all three of the healers on the ship were adamant about his frailty. He was nothing but the muscle needed to kill wrapped around a skeleton and stretched over with enough skin to impede a blow.

But he had to survive. If he wanted to help his beloveds at all—if he wanted to see them again—he had work to do on this side of the political equation. And since the alcohol was more likely to kill him off, he would have to accept his House cousin's offer, and accede to the damnable treatment.

He didn't have to like it. But if the alternative was dying alone among the wingless, then he would do it.

Lisinthir sighed, lifting his hands and observing their tremor. That was nothing to the nausea, though he was no longer sure now if that was related to the poison or to the fact that his House cousin had twice forgotten to feed him... had in fact left so precipitously he'd forgotten the medical kit on his table. Lisinthir thought about administering it himself, but decided it was better saved for the inevitable discussion, where the sight of it would keep his would-be Eldritch healer off-balance.

No, he would finish smoking the hekkret and dictating more of his observations of the Empire. Hopefully by the time he finished he would be capable of the trip to the psychiatrists' den, and the request he would have to make there.

The ship was making him claustrophobic.

Vasiht'h knew he had an anxious disposition. One didn't expect it of his race, given its members' phlegmatic natures, and he had inherited the Glaseahn placidity in full. But it didn't stop him from bouts of nervousness, and when stressed that nervousness always found a way out. He'd learned to channel that energy into productive activities, like cooking, baking, cleaning, rather than the fidgeting and chafing he'd been prone to as a youth, but the room they'd been assigned had no kitchen, which suggested none of the rooms did. Somewhere, on this ship, there was a place to make food. Unless they all ate genie-made food, and he couldn't imagine doing something so energy-inefficient as a matter of course.

Looking for the equivalent of a cafeteria kept him moving when he was already feeling restless, too confined by a world that had become far too finite. For someone accustomed to the freedom of a world, and who had moved from a planet to a starbase so large it had an artificial sky of its own, complete with stars, even a large Fleet vessel would have felt frighteningly small. The courier, built to accommodate a maximum of forty people, was positively tiny.

It would have been bearable if Vasiht'h hadn't felt like everything else was falling in on him.

Jahir wasn't lying to him. But Vasiht'h couldn't imagine things being as easy as 'I'm not interested, so it's not relevant.' And while Vasiht'h never got any of the emotional data from the patients Jahir brought back from seizure or coma, he did receive Jahir's reaction to that data... and the revulsion and shock had been instantaneous.

So had the fascination.

To hear that Lisinthir might die despite their best efforts, and after all that the Ambassador's arrival had triggered in their heads and their relationship, was... just...

It was more than he could handle without moving. Without doing something productive and useful. And if he couldn't cook, then he could at least heal.

The computer directed him to the cafeteria, which it called the mess. There he found Borden, thankfully, along with two others in the crew. He knew the moment he saw them that he'd been right to come; their dejection was palpable.

"Ah, I hope I'm not interrupting?"

"Of course not, alet," Borden said, tired. "What can we help you with?"

"I was wishing for company," Vasiht'h said. "If not a kitchen I could use to cook them food."

That made the other two smile despite their weariness. The Asanii female offered, "Unfortunately the galley's offline so we can conserve power. But you're welcome to sit and share our..." She squinted at the wrapper on her protein bar. "Kalven nut and chenfruit bars."

"Exotic," Vasiht'h said, sitting at the end of the table.

The Tam-illee foxine sitting alongside the other stranger chuckled. "You sound so skeptical."

"It says it has real fruit and nuts in it, and I'm sure they are real," Vasith'h said, accepting Borden's offering and eyeing it. "But it tastes like the inside of the wrapper."

"Mmm, mmm, plastic," the Asanii said. She managed a laugh, touched her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "I am tired, because I can laugh and not care about it."

"Might as well," the foxine said with a shrug. "It's laugh or cry, right?"

"Is it so bad, then?" Vasiht'h ventured.

They glanced at him. The strangers looked at Borden, who flicked her ears back. The healer-assist broke her bar in half and then into quarters, her movements deliberate and not at all masking her agitation. "I'm afraid things don't look very promising, alet. We don't see a way to restore the ability to Well to the ship."

"Not... at all?" Vasiht'h asked, voice small.

"It's well and truly rhacked," the Asanii said, the expletive making her companion flinch. "We're not getting out of here on our own power. Not quickly, anyway. We can use what's left of the in-systems to limp somewhere, but I'm not laying odds we can do it before the dragons catch us again. And then..." She drew a line over her throat, evoking a collar. "We're for slaves."

"Don't scare him, Reya," the foxine said, irritated. To Vasiht'h, "Fleet sends Dusted patrols into this zone all the time. There's a Fleet-secure channel we can use to summon them—"

"—which will bring all the dragons barreling in on our location—"

"There's a good chance they'll get to us first," the foxine finished, voice firm. "We're going to try steering our way into one of their known patrol patterns, which isn't too far from here. If that doesn't work, we'll send the call."

"How long will all this take?" Vasiht'h asked.

"Probably another three or four days, to get to where we might be seen. I don't know how long the Captain will leave us there."

"Could be weeks," the Asanii—Reya—said.

"Doubt it," Borden said. She sighed and shook herself. More clearly, "We don't have the power to wait here for weeks. Once we get there, if we're not found quickly, he'll send the signal." She managed a smile at Vasiht'h. "You can see why I'm hoping for your help. We could use all the morale-boosting we can get."

"Oh, yes!" The Tam-illee's ears pricked up. "I heard about the dream therapy. Kordreigh told me he feels so much better now. I don't suppose I could get it too?"

"You'll all get it," Vasiht'h promised. "The moment you sleep. Hea Borden will take us to everyone in turn."

"Does that mean we'll be able to dream without having nightmares?" For the first time since she started talking, Reya sounded tentative. "Because the things I've heard about what happens to people who get taken by the Chatcaava...."

"At least the women survive," the foxine muttered. "Men they kill outright."

Borden made a sharp motion with a hand, as if to say 'enough.' "The last slaves taken by the Empire came back, remember?"

"Yeah, because the Ambassador got them sent back. But he's not there anymore, is he."

Vasiht'h cleared his throat and put all the reassurance he could muster into the words. "There won't be any nightmares on our watch, alet. I promise you." He smiled. "Think of us as the Fleet patrol for your subconscious."

That made them laugh, and there was hope in that laugh. Not about the situation, but at least about something, and that he had contributed to even the smallest lift in their spirits buoyed Vasiht'h's up considerably. If the kitchen had been operational, he would have baked celebratory cookies and brought some home to Jahir....

Except that they were far, far from home. And it was looking very much like they might not make it back.

They might not make it back.

"Hea Borden," he said. "I should finish preparing for our next few sessions. If you'll excuse me?"

"Of course. Take the bar, though. You'll need the energy. I'll come for you in half an hour."

He nodded his thanks and then excused himself. Halfway down the corridor he was running, the news of their danger driving his feet until he burst into their room. He didn't know if it was his abrupt arrival or the fear in the mindline that jerked his partner's head from his arms... but Jahir's sleep fog dispelled the moment he saw Vasiht'h's face.

"What's wrong?"

"They can't fix it." Vasiht'h dropped down across from him. "They're going to try to put us in the way of some secret patrol, but that patrol might never cross our route… at which point they're going to have to send a distress call."

He'd been expecting alarm, and there was some, enough to make the fur along his sides bristle. But it was subordinated to the mindline growing heavier and more opaque, as it did when his partner was thinking through a puzzle. Some of Jahir's thoughts echoed in Vasiht'h's mind, dream-like and distant, but not enough for him to pick up more than the sense that the Eldritch somehow didn't find the situation as hopeless as he did.

"Arii?"

Jahir's eyes focused on him again. "I don't believe that we will die here."

"You can't be sure of that." But Vasiht'h wondered. Was this a pattern-sense thing? Maybe? He could hope?

"It's not," Jahir answered. "At least, I don't think. But I still believe." He passed a hand over his eyes. "Did I sleep? Is it time?"

"Almost. And you must have, because our mouths taste like cotton."

Jahir managed a chuckle. "I will see to that, then."

This time, Vasiht'h allowed Jahir to lead the sessions Borden had arranged… and it wasn't until they'd dispelled the nightmares of the second that he began to get his feet under him again. But by the fourth and final, Jahir had soothed his nervousness away, better than any walk, better than any kitchen. Vasiht'h followed the Eldritch back to their rooms, tired but feeling whole again. They would live through this, somehow.

"I am very ready for bed," he said once they'd gotten back. "Will you sleep or go back to work on the drug analysis?"

"I think I will stay up," Jahir said. "The nap gave me some energy. But I will be back before you wake."

Vasiht'h grinned. "You mean you won't forget to lie down or eat this time?"

"I will set an alarm," Jahir promised.

"Good. Then I'll see you then."

Jahir sat at the table and read while Vasiht'h arranged his nest of pillows so the Glaseah would have the familiar psychic background noise of his partner's presence while he fell asleep. There was enough to read, with all that he didn't yet understand about the mechanisms of action of the hekkret, so he spent a profitable half hour refreshing himself on the possible chemical causes for the symptoms Lisinthir was displaying. Once he was certain Vasiht'h was asleep, however, he set the tablet down and rested his hands together on the table. He could do what he planned. Moreover, he had to, for the apology was rightfully owed. That there was a hint of some hope for their situation in his borrowed blood-streaked memories only made his errand the more important.

Steeling himself, Jahir went in search of the Ambassador. And this time he requested entrance, and wondered if he would be allowed it.

But Lisinthir let him in. The other Eldritch was sitting at the table, leaning back in the chair. Did he ever sit straight? Jahir wondered now if the habitual slouch had helped inspire his need to take Lisinthir to task. The man's posture, his gestures, his expressions were all completely wrong for an Eldritch peer, and the mask of his face had been the only thing allowing Jahir to fool himself into thinking Lisinthir still held to the mannerisms they both would have learned as youths. Apparently, he thought, dragons also wore masks.

It did not escape Jahir that his cousin appeared to be half-nude. That he must have chosen to change out of the clothing one would have expected of an Eldritch and an ambassador. What he wore now was some sort of dark robe, open on a bare chest. Even in the dim light Jahir could see the evidence of claw marks, gray seams against pale flesh.

"So." Lisinthir was staring at him, and had not ceased to since Jahir stepped inside. The only thing moving in the room was the curl of smoke tumbling from the end of the cigarette. "Have you come to feed me, cousin?"

He had chosen this course, knowing it would begin with a battle. Jahir steadied himself with a long breath and said, "That also."

"That... also?" Lisinthir cocked a brow.

"And first," Jahir said. "If you will permit."

"By all means." Lisinthir indicated the free chair and the medical kit that was still lying on the table before it. "Finish what you've started, Healer."

Dare he trust these elegant courtesies? Had Lisinthir abandoned his rage? He seemed almost cordial, did not move as Jahir drew nigh to take up the discarded AAP and the ampoule he'd failed to load the first time. And yet, something in the tension revealed by the fingers holding the hekkret... the calm was not a façade, but Jahir didn't understand what it might be instead. He sat on the edge of the chair, one foot out for balance and the other tucked beneath, and kept his voice neutral. "Have you drunk?"

"Other than water? Not yet." A thin smile. "You have not yet advanced me a schedule."

"I will," Jahir said, quiet. He set the AAP to Lisinthir's arm, at the brachial artery, and watched the solution begin to glide from the long tube. This was as many seconds as he had to gather his resolve. It did not last long enough.

"Now then. What shall I do with you, cousin?"

"I hope," Jahir replied, "you will accept my profound apology."

Lisinthir canted his head. "This should be interesting. Pray, continue."

Even expecting the sarcasm, it stung. Jahir ignored it and said, "I forced myself on you. That my intentions were honorable, that my aim was only your wellbeing, does not elide the harm I did you. And to you, in particular, when our culture makes it twice a wrongness." He lifted his eyes and willed the other man to see his sincerity. "I brought back from my attempt memories that you did not give me. So, yes. I have come to make apology."

Lisinthir extinguished the hekkret with a twist of his fingers. "I do not accept your apology."

He'd already been feeling the relief of having unburdened himself and the anticipation of his absolution. For a heartbeat he heard the words as he'd imagined them said, not as Lisinthir had actually spoken them. And then he froze. "I... am sorry? I did not hear that right?"

"You heard me perfectly well, cousin." Lisinthir watched him. "Your apology is very pretty and I'm sure humbling yourself to offer it made you feel very good. But an apology is empty without acts that prove its speaker's sincerity. Are you really sorry for what you've done? Then you will offer me restitution. Not words."

"Res... restitution," Jahir repeated.

Lisinthir smiled without humor. "Shall I make it more plain?" He switched to their tongue and said it again: "Restitution."

But in their tongue, the word carried with it the burdens of obligation and sacrifice, and Lisinthir shaded it black for violence and endings.

When Jahir could speak again, he said, "And what... would this restitution entail?"

"Well. As I see it, you have exposed my vulnerabilities and now hold them in your hands, to use against me at your leisure." Lisinthir smiled. "You will protest that as a healer you would never do such a thing, but you are only a healer now. You have been an Eldritch noble for much longer, and you know as well as I do that everything that falls into our hands is a thing to be shaped into safety for ourselves and our Houses. So. I want you to grant me a vulnerability in turn."

Jahir offered his hand instantly. This he could give. Did give, every day, not just to Vasiht'h but to every client they saw. His spirit, his thoughts, his heart... all that was good in him. "Take it."

Lisinthir's eyes narrowed. "Do you really know yourself so little, Jahir Seni Galare? Or are you insulting me?"

"I'm doing nothing of the kind—" Jahir halted abruptly, because Lisinthir had touched a finger to his lips.

"Stop talking."

He stopped, wondering why every nerve in his body was now raw, so much that even the shift of his clothes against his frame as he breathed was too much friction.

"You think your thoughts are your weakness?" Lisinthir sighed. "Dying Air, but you'd survive all of a breathpause in the Empire with so little understanding of yourself." He grasped Jahir by the jaw and shook him. "This is your weakness, Healer. Your flesh."

"I won't..."

"What?" Lisinthir asked. His smile was... complicated. Sad, somehow. But his eyes were pitiless. "Won't let me rape you? Have you sorted out what you drew from my memories that much?" He leaned forward and said, low, "Tell me what I told you before."

"You don't rape the innocent."

Lisinthir leaned back, took his hand with him. Folded them on his stomach and watched him with hooded eyes.

"Then what do you want?" Jahir asked, fighting irritation. The touch had been presumptuous and shocking. Its absence left him feeling cold and isolated. It annoyed him that he couldn't tell which state he preferred. "My willingness?"

The smile quirked up, became whimsical. "He can learn."

"You have to know I would never...."

"Consent to anything I might ask of you? And if what I ask is a kiss?"

Jahir eyed him. "That's it."

"I haven't been kissed in far too long."

"You have only been gone from the Empire for a handful of days."

"As I said." The smile went wry. "Consult your stolen memories. Perhaps you'll learn how much kissing I'm now accustomed to."

"It... doesn't work that way," Jahir said, stumbling through the words as the impressions crowded back in on him. Bloodwarm tears. Feverish mouths. "I don't... have memories as such. Not enough to piece together what happened to you. Except to know that it was violent, and painful and...."

"And?" Lisinthir asked, arch.

He almost couldn't answer. "And that you found love there, and passion, such love entwined with passion, and there was no shame." He looked up at the other Eldritch, more alien now than any shapechanger, and whispered, "How? How did you find a love without shame?"

Jahir had expected mockery or withdrawal, not this silence that lasted too long, achingly too long… and ended within seconds. Then Lisinthir gathered his face in one long hand, his thumb resting on Jahir's lips, and said, "Oh, cousin." And sighed before pulling Jahir to him and kissing his brow.

There it was, when they were so close, skin to skin. Deep under the maelstrom of Lisinthir's passions, his open wounds, his rage and grief and restlessness... a core of adamant, the strength that was tenderness, that love had made. And somehow, he'd formed it out of a love that could be carnal as well as platonic, and Jahir could not understand, could not, for the life of him, how it was possible. But he saw it, and he envied it so deeply that every joint in his body ached, every fiber in every muscle, his heart as it stroked, endlessly and without mercy. God and Lady, to be in love and have it not be wrong.

He couldn't even weep. One wept for things that might be, that were real, and for him this would never, could never be so.

It had been Lisinthir's intention to keep his cousin on the defensive, to control the conversation so that when he asked for the seizure intervention treatment, it would be from a position of strength. He couldn't conceive of permitting more psychic intrusion without first claiming that advantage. And he'd been doing well—had in fact found it too easy—when Jahir crumpled. The moment he did, Lisinthir's guardian instincts erupted, pricked forth his gentleness. That his cousin accepted the kiss and the shoulder Lisinthir guided him to with such grace....

Lisinthir rested his cheek on his cousin's hair and suppressed his sigh. Here was a battle he had lost, and his opponent probably hadn't the first clue how he'd secured his victory. But in the face of such naked anguish, Lisinthir couldn't press the attack. He kept the other man close until his sense of Jahir's tumult waned. Then said, very quiet, "Tell me about this would-be lover."

Jahir's shoulders stiffened. As he pushed himself upright, he said, "Sediryl. My cousin."

"Not a far cousin, I'm guessing. So you cannot marry her." Lisinthir considered Jahir's downcast eyes. Vasiht'h had confirmed the man was a virgin...what else, from a noble of their station? "She was the first person you ever wanted. Loved-and-wanted."

"And still the only woman I love and want."

"So. Your first experience of passion arose in response to someone you've been told it would be perverse to love," Lisinthir said. "Someone who invoked the gruesome stories about serial miscarriages and genetic sports we've been warned about since we were old enough to hear. And yet, despite knowing these consequences, you still cherished and longed for your cousin... and so you concluded that your body was traitorous, that it could not even be trusted to fulfill its reproductive function successfully if it could choose to desire that which would result in a fruitless, tragic marriage. You set all thoughts of passion aside and there they have been festering, in the dark, for decades... centuries. And now here you are. A man who can be incited by being called 'cousin' by someone to whom his body responds. And who answers violence with desire because he longs to punish himself for his needs... and who wishes to be forced, so he can finally sate those needs without being to blame."

Jahir was staring at him in horror.

"Did I guess rightly?" Lisinthir offered him a thin smile. "I have no license, I fear. But my ability to grasp psychologies was the only thing that kept me alive for over a year amid sociopaths. The situation was very... incenting."

"How... no. Oh, God." Jahir covered his face with one hand.

"I also have the unfair advantage of having recently walked a similar road."

That won him a shocky look. He didn't like how gray his cousin had gone beneath the pearl-pale skin and rested his fingers on that jaw again, just to steady it. Did the touch help? He thought it only distracted Jahir from his vertigo, but that was something.

"Ask me about my time in the Empire," Lisinthir said, gentle. "I'll answer now."

Jahir's voice was faint. "Will I still need to pay you with a kiss?"

"Do you want one?"

That answer he read through their skins, a need close to pain. Not for him, but for acceptance. How could he not reply? Lisinthir leaned forward, his thumb tracing his cousin's lower lip and then pressing it down, just a little. He took what he wanted, and gave what was needed, and it was a melting sweetness because Jahir yielded to him: his trust, his mouth, his inexperience, and, moments into it, the saltwater taste of the tear that ran over his lip.

When he parted it was only just, still close enough to feel the heat of Jahir's skin against his lips. He let Jahir rein in his breath, then murmured, "Again?" and stole it back. He smiled at the sharp inhale, felt the answer under his fingertips... and waited this time.

Then, strangled, "...yes."

On the second kiss, then, Lisinthir stroked his thumb to the joint near Jahir's ear and began to press on it. He knew the moment the pain broke past the pleasure for the lightning that shot through his cousin's skin, bringing desire behind it like sheets of fire. Jahir made a sound....

Oh, he had heard sounds like that in his own throat. Lisinthir sighed and drew back, pulling at his cousin's lower lip just a little on the way, prolonging the contact. But it was enough, for now, and certainly for this trembling virgin.

His cousin was watching him. Shoulders rising and falling too swiftly, lips swollen, and pupils vast in those honey-colored eyes. But that expression was not desire, and a moment later, Jahir smiled whimsically. "I see. I've gone from adversary to potential victim, and now you want to protect me."

Lisinthir rubbed his thumb in a circle around the hinge of Jahir's jaw, eliciting a shiver. "I think this vulnerability is well and again enough to pay for mine, given that yours is far more dangerous."

Jahir winced. "It is just... lust."

Lisinthir touched a finger to his lips, stilling him. "No. It is the language you use to express your needs. And the needs you express are..." He paused, shook his head minutely. "Very enticing not just to people who would honor them, but to people who would prey on them."

"But I am not your prey."

"No," Lisinthir said. "I am not at all moved by cruelty and sadism. Conquest, yes. The contest. Dominance, when I am fighting against an opponent worth the fight. And I'm moved by sweetness, and yielding, and love. But being tortured doesn't incite me, and neither does torturing. I learned all these things the hard way."

"What then must you think of me?" Jahir asked, quiet.

"Mostly that I want to put my sword between you and anyone who would abuse you." Lisinthir smiled wryly. "The torment of Eldritch is something I feel should be reserved to other Eldritch. Not to outsiders."

Jahir managed a laugh. A hoarse one, but real.

"Better," Lisinthir said, gentle. He tipped his cousin's face up with a crooked finger beneath the chin. "Yes?"

"Maybe," Jahir answered, but Lisinthir liked the way his cousin met his eyes, despite his obvious awareness of his vulnerability. And when Lisinthir cupped his face in a hand, Jahir leaned into it. "I don't want these things from Sediryl."

"Of course you don't. She's the girl you love with the purity of your heart and body. You still want her with a youth's innocent love. And if you decide to approach her—" He ignored Jahir's flinch and the reflexive revulsion that stained their contact, "—then you'll find in her bed everything you thought lovemaking would be. Unless, of course, she's been twisted by our culture as well."

"She's already had two human lovers," Jahir said. "One male, one female."

Lisinthir laughed, surprised. "Has she! I like her already. By all means, you must court her. She'll be good for you."

"Lisinthir—"

"Don't say it. Don't make vows you'll use to bind yourself. If it's pain you want, I'll give it to you. Then you can blame me for it rather than use it to make new whips to lash yourself with."

Jahir stopped breathing, then gasped in and said, "That... you mean that."

"Yes?" Lisinthir lit the hekkret again, wishing for the alcohol. "Given that what I'm now accustomed to is far rougher than you'd probably be comfortable receiving. I could force you to find pleasure in my bed. It would be safer than anything you could do to yourself, even; I have much more experience with how far you can push flesh before you court serious injury." He sucked in the smoke and let it trail out between his teeth. "If it would ease the fretwork binding in your head, I'll do it."

"But why?" Jahir folded his arms, spine rigid and head lowered, as if he wanted to guard himself but couldn't find the aggression to challenge with his eyes as well as his posture. "You have given me nothing but condescension and attack since we met. I know very well what you think of Eldritch from the difference between how you treat the Pelted and how you treat me."

"You took my tumbler."

Jahir frowned, looked up at him in puzzlement. "I beg your pardon?"

"Our first real meeting," Lisinthir said, flexing his fingers against the hekkret. "Not counting a fire-fight in a Chatcaavan vessel. You took my tumbler. You fought me."

"That was not...."

Lisinthir lifted his brows, and Jahir made an exasperated sound and looked away. "I couldn't leave it with you."

"Cousin. You knew I could have risen the moment you left and gotten a second from the genie. You didn't take the tumbler to prevent me from poisoning myself. You took it to send me a message about how far you were willing to let me push you."

Jahir began to speak, then subsided. And said, "Yes."

"And in every conversation since, you've refused to back down, save when you thought yourself in error." Lisinthir considered, then said, "Well, and the one time I told you to leave. And you were right to go. I was... not in control of my anger."

"So not only am I a potential victim in need of protection, I'm also an adversary worth honoring?" Jahir asked, but he was testing the concept in his own mind. Lisinthir could almost see him tasting the words and thought his cousin had a sensual streak, no matter how ruthlessly it had been suppressed. "Yes, I can see that. But you mean to tell me that on that basis, you'll sleep with me?"

"No," Lisinthir admitted. "I'll sleep with you because of how you yield to me, and because I miss holding someone in my arms. And perhaps, a little, because I could see myself becoming fond of you."

Jahir eyed him, and that look was so skeptical Lisinthir started laughing. When he had his breath back, he said, "Think of it this way. If you pay for the story of my time in the Empire solely in kisses, you will chafe your lips to bleeding long before we're done. Letting me tumble you will win you the whole thing with far less pain. Unless, of course, you'd rather the pain."

Jahir flushed but didn't look away. "I think you'll tell me the story now, with or without kisses."

"Perhaps. It won't change that the story is a long one." Lisinthir drew on the hekkret, looked at what remained of it. "Should I begin? If so, I want another roll. And where is your beloved?"

"Sleeping," Jahir said. "We have been helping the crew with their concerns. It wears on us." He looked at Lisinthir. "This reminds me of a question I must ask."

"Go on, then."

"From the impressions I brought back with me...." Jahir hesitated, cheeks coloring, but he continued as if unaffected, "I have the sense that you would be missed if something were to happen to you."

Would he be? When he'd been sent away to keep from undermining his lover's authority? An authority that was holding in check the Alliance's greatest enemy? "I would like to think so, yes."

"Then would you be rescued if you asked for aid from the Chatcaava? From these others who would kill us."

Immediately he straightened. "What's happened?"

Jahir paused, surprised. Then he marshaled himself and said, "They don't think they can fix the damage. They have a plan to use their remaining power to drift into the patrol zone of some of the Fleet sorties into the border—you'll recall them? We sent one to meet your shipment of slaves that once."

"I recall, yes. Continue."

"Once they reach one of those zones, they plan to drift there until they can wait no longer, then send a distress call and hope that Fleet arrives before the Chatcaava do. So I was hoping... perhaps you would have another option."

"Living Air, but do they all think like prey?" Lisinthir said, irritated. And then shook himself, as if the contempt could be flung from him like water, and it couldn't. He was still too much Chatcaavan and, he thought, would always be. "To answer your question... the likelihood of one of my allies in the Empire arriving to succor us are slim indeed. But I may have a suggestion for your Captain to consider."

"My Captain," Jahir repeated. "Because you cannot possibly be associated with such craven species as humans and Pelted and certainly Eldritch peers?"

Lisinthir stared at him, then laughed again. He caught his cousin by the hair and held him in place for that third kiss, and smiled at how quickly startlement became yearning and softness and offering. Touching Jahir on the lips with a finger, he said, "You see? You can't resist asserting yourself against me. And then you wonder why you keep drawing my attention."

Jahir growled, but there was no real menace in it.

"Let's go find Raynor," Lisinthir said. "After that, you and I will talk of the Empire."

The Captain was on the bridge. Exhaustion had marked him physically, leaving greasy smudges beneath his eyes and slowing his movements, but there was no sign of it in his gaze, in his squared shoulders or in his bearing. It made Lisinthir trust him: here was a man who knew better than to show weakness, particularly when he had subordinates to lead.

"Ambassador, Hea. What can I do for you?"

"If you have a moment?" Lisinthir asked. "There's a matter I would put forth to you."

Raynor studied him, eyes narrowed, then nodded.

In a compartment off the bridge, the human had a seat and gestured for them to sit facing him. Lisinthir grasped the back of the chair rather than use it, too agitated to settle anywhere. Was this warning of an on-coming seizure? He could collapse here, in the middle of his exhortation to the Captain not to lie down and offer his throat to the Chatcaava. Wouldn't that be diverting. At least his cousin would be there to resuscitate him.

"I'm told you have reached a point of decision, Captain."

"We have some time before it becomes an issue, Ambassador. But yes, our options have become more limited."

"May I make a suggestion, then?"

Raynor leaned back in his chair, hands folded in his lap. "Go ahead."

Had the man written the words across his forehead, he couldn't have made his thoughts more clear. 'The civilian wants to give advice. This should be good.' Lisinthir didn't blame him for his skepticism, but only because he knew the difference between being a predator and a soldier. Tactics for the one couldn't be used for the other.

That was the problem. Fleet was composed of soldiers. The Chatcaavan Navy wasn't.

"I think you know that the moment you send a call of any kind, you'll be found by our enemies." Lisinthir couldn't call them Chatcaava. Not all Chatcaava were his enemies. Or even the Alliance's.

"We're hoping that sending on the Fleet encrypted channel will minimize our risk," Raynor said. "It's a very specific band, and they won't be able to read it. With any luck they'll think we're rejoining a squadron after reconnaissance and steer clear."

They really had no idea, none at all, how the Chatcaava operated. "They'll think nothing of the sort, I'm afraid. Our attackers know we've been wounded and that we can't be far from where we were lamed. They'll be looking for us. If they hear any transmission, particularly one wrapped in Fleet ciphers, they'll come. Immediately."

"Maybe," Raynor said. "But I don't see how we can avoid taking that risk."

"Given that the risk can't be avoided, why lie here and wait for them to find us?" Lisinthir asked. "Send an enticing enough distress call, Captain, one that makes us sound like a defenseless prize, and they'll come to us."

"And then what?" Raynor asked. "We can't power any of our weapons systems."

"And then," Lisinthir said, struggling for patience despite the headache that was beginning to gnaw at his temples. "You cross over and take their ship, Captain. And use it to tow our derelict home with us to the Alliance."

"You want us to ambush them?"

These were his Emperor's enemies, whom he'd thought sped from his reach. A second chance at them might give him a prisoner he could interrogate... and a crew he could punish for daring to lift their talons against the Exalted, and the Alliance. The growl that was struggling to win free of his throat rasped at the edges of the words. "I want you to entrap them, destroy them, and sail home with an Alliance flag at their mast."

Lisinthir could feel his cousin's incredulity without turning to look at him. Raynor, though… he only frowned, tapping his fingers on the table. "How would that work? We only have twenty people, none of them trained for that kind of mission."

Lisinthir smiled. "You find a handful of volunteers among your female crew and put them on the bridge to record a distress call emphasizing their defenselessness and need for help. You give out false information about how many people remain conscious and able to work. You report that your sensors are malfunctioning and your engines are useless—they'll know what that implies about your weaponry—and then you transmit those lies out as loud and as long as possible, followed by updates wherein the crew reports more and more dire circumstance."

"And then, presumably, they come in assuming we're as wounded as we say we are...." Raynor trailed off, then smirked. "That would work? You're serious? Are they that credulous?"

"We really are that wounded, Captain," Lisinthir said. "Or we wouldn't be drifting. We are defenseless, save for our people. They know they hurt us. They'll be able to see that we are powerless and damaged. Why would they assume we were lying? Only a wounded predator would set a trap like this for another predator. They do not think of us as predators."

"I assume they'll board us again," Raynor said. He was drumming his fingers on the table now. "That would give us a chance to split them up, winnow their numbers. Especially if they see what they expect to see?" He glanced at Lisinthir.

"Helpless females?" Lisinthir offered. "They'll move to capture first, not kill. If, in fact, they are not distracted by the need to locate me."

"So we take care of the boarding party. And then?"

"They'll bring their own Pads," Lisinthir said. "Since the ship is already crippled, they won't bother launching fighters against it. So long as our halo and skin shields are down, they'll cross over the normal way."

"So we use their own Pads to get back to their ship." Raynor shook his head. "This is where the plan gets less tenable."

Not untenable, Lisinthir noted. Just less tenable. He liked the way the human was leaning forward in his chair now, liked the interest in his voice. There was fire here. He could work with fire. "I think you'll be surprised how minimal the average warship crew is among the Chatcaava. They automate a great deal of their processes precisely to keep crews small. It makes for less tension onboard. And we will have the element of surprise—very much surprise—along with someone who knows the ship layout."

Raynor considered him, glanced at his hands on the chair. Lisinthir wondered if he could tell they were shaking. "I thought you were unwell. You want to lead a raid?"

"I don't need to lead," Lisinthir said. "But I do need to come with you." He smiled. "Give me a fight, Captain, and I'll stay upright for it."

"If we lose you—"

"They won't kill me," Lisinthir said. "If you lose me, it will be because I've been captured. And I will find a way to free myself. They can't hold me, alet."

Raynor stared at him. "You know, I believe it." He grinned, a lopsided expression. "It's an interesting suggestion, Ambassador. I'll consider it. I presume if I decide to act on it, you'll help with the planning?"

"In any capacity you require."

Raynor nodded. "Good. I'll let you know either way."

In the corridor leading from the bridge, Jahir said, low, "You are mad."

"Am I?" Lisinthir asked, feeling cheered despite the clamminess of his skin. "Is this your professional evaluation?"

Jahir made a noise. "Stop."

Lisinthir paused, faced him. His healer swept his complexion with his gaze, dropped to the trembling hands. Jahir took his wrist, felt for the pulse. "How bad is the headache?"

"I've had worse."

Jahir shot him an irritated look. "Stop dismissing your symptoms and give me a useful report of them."

"Have I mentioned how attractive you are when you're acting the physician?" Lisinthir asked, and received an absolutely fulminating look. He maintained his air of innocence until Jahir relented and sighed, shaking his head. Only then did he say, "The headache is making it difficult to concentrate, but I don't remember it preceding any of my other... episodes. The gut cramps seem more predictive."

"And do you have any of these?"

"No. Nausea, perhaps."

"What time is it? No, it's been at least twenty-four hours. I can give you another painkiller?"

"That would be welcome."

Jahir nodded. "I'll go to the clinic for it, check on Vasiht'h, and then come by with it." He paused, then said, "Do you think the Captain will enact your idea?"

"He will," Lisinthir said. "He has no choice."

What to leave in the note? Jahir leaned against the doorframe, watching Vasiht'h sleep. Over the years he had left many notes for his partner, a habit he'd begun by accident, because when new to the Alliance he'd been more comfortable with pen and paper. He'd kept to it because his handwriting delighted Vasiht'h, and because... it was who they were. Vasiht'h had made a place in their lives for his anachronisms, made them feel less like the burdens of his deficient culture and more a delightful indication of their identity.

He wanted very much to put into this particular note some of his inner tumult. An apology also, for not having understood himself well enough to head off this particular mess. A thank you, for Vasiht'h's attempt to fix it by asking Lisinthir's help. A plea for more help, because he had no idea what he was falling into and entirely sure he wasn't going to be able to stop it. He touched his lips, found them tender to the touch, remembered desire close to pain and knew it was his, not his cousin's. He rested his brow against the frame, closing his eyes.

At least he'd succeeded in obtaining Lisinthir's consent for therapy? Surely unburdening himself of his time there would have some therapeutic effect. Jahir couldn't help the twitch of a smile. If winter was to claim the milch stock, one could at least make a feast of the carcasses.

He went to his pack and brought out the pad of paper and pen. So much he could say.

 

All is well. Am with my cousin. Call for me when you wake.

     —J

 

After a moment, he added across the bottom: You were right.

Then he took up the analgesic and went to find his cousin. No retreating, he thought as the door opened for him. If potential victim he had become to Lisinthir, then he was in no danger.

"Cousin?"

"In bed."

"I hope that was not an invitation," Jahir said, hesitant. He paused at the hatch into the narrow bedroom and found Lisinthir sitting cross-legged on the bunk, hands on his knees and head hung. A trail of smoke curled up from the new hekkret roll poised between two of his fingers.

"I fear not, unless your tastes run to lovers irritated by their failing bodies."

"Your body's not failing," Jahir said. He loaded the painkiller and crossed the short distance to crouch in front of the bunk. This time Lisinthir turned his face for it willingly, and sighed when the pump hissed against his neck.

"It is entirely ridiculous for me to have achieved a position of relative safety and now be dying."

"This is safety?" Jahir asked, incredulous.

Lisinthir snorted. "Consult your stolen impressions and tell me what safety I have had for the past year." He shook his hair back. "Or I can save you the trouble. My only surety was in the bed of the Emperor, and I paid for that with injuries and near constant poisoning by his rivals at court."

"Now you will tell me how you wound up in the bed of a head of state?" Jahir asked, low.

Lisinthir mmmed. "No revulsion? I am pleasantly surprised."

"I am too confused to be revolted," Jahir replied. He sat on the floor facing his cousin. "I know you found love in the Empire. I know you have come back... changed. I know what you accomplished. But I know very little else, save...."

"Save?" Lisinthir asked when he didn't fill in the pause.

Jahir looked down at his folded hands, trying to ignore the taste of blood in his mouth and the raking pain of phantom talons up his very real back. "The rest of it is sensual detail. Not... very informative."

Lisinthir smiled faintly. "I imagine it's very informative. Just not in ways you want." He waved his free hand. "No, don't protest. I didn't mean to prick you, it's just hard for me to stop positioning myself to attack. You probably see me doing it, yes?"

"Yes. I assume this behavior was rewarded in the Empire."

"Rewarded!" Lisinthir laughed. "It was the only thing that kept me alive. I do mean that exactly. The Emperor's enemies tried to kill me continuously." He rolled his shoulders. "So, then. The Chatcaava... females are chattel. Slaves also. This is not a society that feels for the plight of the Other, the unlike, the not-self. You gathered this?"

"I had some notion," Jahir said, watching his cousin. The tremor had faded and taken with it the clammy gleam of Lisinthir's skin, and there was measurably less tension in the jaw muscles, something easy to gauge because of his cousin's fleshlessness. Unfettered by pain, Lisinthir's movements had a dangerous precision, like a duelist's.

"The males advance in court by fighting one another," Lisinthir said. "Since duels end in death and death is a waste, they choose to humiliate one another into submission in order to make their ascent in power."

Flash of a pillow crushed against his cheek and the shock of sweat brought forth by pain, cold and sour. Jahir shuddered and touched his arm, smoothing down the gooseflesh. "They abuse one another." He looked up at Lisinthir and stopped. "You... they..."

"No less than the Exalted Emperor himself." Lisinthir pulled from the roll and exhaled in a long sigh. "It suited my purposes. I was there to serve the Alliance's need. When the Emperor showed an interest...." He smiled faintly. "Many a woman has allowed her own use for political expedience. It seemed craven to do any less."

"You let a Chatcaavan rape you," Jahir said.

Lisinthir huffed, smiled, eyes hooded. "They have barbs." When Jahir stared at him, shocked, he finished, "Their healers use suppositories. It's a common injury."

"So you... slept with—"

"Was raped by," Lisinthir corrected. "And lest you think me a sympathetic victim, I gave him the same when I could best him."

"You raped a head of state," Jahir said, unsure whether to be aghast or fascinated. A grotesque fascination, but still. "The Alliance's ambassador to the Empire... raped its Emperor."

Lisinthir started laughing. "Oh, your expression, cousin. I could kiss it off you. But this is important. The answer to that question is 'yes.' The source of your memories of blood and sex... is the Emperor. Most of them, anyway. There was some violence without sex—I killed Third, whom you could call a minister of state—and some sex without violence, because of the Slave Queen. But where you remember heated kisses that taste like blood and seed... that was him."

"So then," Jahir said carefully. "The love... that was this Slave Queen?"

"In part." Lisinthir paused and closed his eyes, and his expression then: regret and yearning. He turned his cheek aside, a flinch like moving from a blow, then sighed again and opened his eyes. "The other part would be the Emperor." And he smiled. "Now. Be dismayed."

Jahir stared up at him, and when he could think again, evaluated the smile, the look in Lisinthir's eyes. "No—there is more left, some explanation you are holding back because you enjoy pushing me off-balance."

"It's not personal—"

"I know. You push everyone to see if they'll tip," Jahir said, impatient now. "You need to know you can trust the people around you, so that if you can't, you won't lean on them and find them crumpling when you most need their support. Consider me pushed and tell me the rest—" And stopped because his cousin had leaned over and kissed him into silence.

These kisses. God and Lady, he had no idea what to do with them, against them. They cracked him open and left him helpless, and when Lisinthir caught his jaw and held him fast all his thoughts shattered. Jahir had been kissed before. Never willingly. And he would have thought himself unwilling here, except that he was. Wasn't. Both. No, he was willing, and clotted through with denial and with exhaustion with denial.

The latent violence he felt in those fingertips petted fire from under his skin, but he could have resisted it, somehow, had he not also felt the gentleness moving through them like the descant over a hymn.

"You are irresistible," Lisinthir said, laughing, and kissed the tip of his nose. His nose! Jahir stared at him in incredulity. "Oh, come now. What's that expression for?"

The words spilled out before he knew they were forming. "You don't seem broken to me."

"Did you think I would be?" Lisinthir canted his head, and his smile saddened. "Yes, I think you would have to believe it, wouldn't you. Well, let me illuminate the subject, and you can tell me then what your professional assessment suggests about my psychological well-being."

Jahir struggled to settle himself and waited.

"Tell me how likely it is that a person rises above their society's teachings."

"I beg your pardon?" Jahir said, surprised. He'd been expecting more exposition. "It's very difficult. Impossible in many people, particularly without external stimulus...." He stopped, his skin going cold, then flushing hot. "Oh," he whispered, and looked up sharply at Lisinthir. "You. You changed him. But how? How did you do it?"

Lisinthir's brows lifted. "Well done. And yes, I did. They shift shape, as you know. I gave them mine. And we...."

"Feel emotions through our skins," Jahir said, astonished and delighted by the sheer brilliance of it. "Oh, cousin! You taught them empathy! Was it really that easy?"

"No," Lisinthir admitted, and something in that word... all of Jahir's elation drained away. "No, it wasn't. Because for most of my tenure in the Emperor's bed, I suffered. I bested him when I could, and that was maybe a third of the time. But he discovered he could use the threat of hurt against others to compel me...." He stopped, ribs flexing against skin as he inhaled. "That would be how I learned I don't enjoy torture, or submitting to others."

What to say to that? Nothing, because Lisinthir no longer communicated largely through words. Jahir rested a tentative hand on his cousin's knee, distracting him from thoughts that seeped through their touch, dark and clinging and heavy.

Lisinthir smiled a little and threaded his fingers through Jahir's. "I did what needed doing to save the foreigners the Chatcaava had enslaved, to secure concessions from their government, to gain the ear of their Emperor. Some of it I enjoyed. Some of it... threatened my sanity. To fully instruct the Emperor in compassion for others, I allowed my own torture so he could experience it through our touch. That was the moment he was transformed." Lisinthir looked away, eyes and thoughts distant. "It was a gamble, at that. If he had not already been curious about aliens, if he had not already had a nature that valued knowledge for its own sake as well as for how it could be used against others... then I might have died on the rack in that attempt."

"But you didn't," Jahir breathed. "And you transfigured him." Stunned. "You effected a change of that magnitude in the Emperor of the Chatcaavan Empire?" And then, as the consequences raced out from that change, branching like lightning, "God and Lady, they are chasing you. Because they know you've changed him. And now he will attempt to remake the Empire in a new image, and every dragon in it will be against him? But he sent you away! Why?"

Lisinthir was staring at him now, his shock lapping through their twined fingers. "I admit," he said after a moment, "I am rarely caught so flat-footed, but I don't know that I've ever seen anyone's mind work so quickly."

Jahir tugged on their joined hands. "Why? Why did he send you away?"

"I was his weakness."

"Love is not—"

"Weakness?" Lisinthir halfsmiled and reached with their joined hands, brushing a thumb against Jahir's cheekbone. "Were you not just in this room confessing how love has broken you?"

"That's...." He paused. How could he say it was different?

"Love must have a context," Lisinthir said. "It is society's work to give it one. Where there is no context, there is violence, because love will force its way in where there is no place to receive it. There is no place for me there, yet. There never will be, if he cannot change the Empire. And to do that, he needs the time to consolidate his power... the time, and to put aside everything that might drive his allies from him."

"Oh," Jahir whispered, beginning to shake as the realization smashed into him. "The war is coming."

Lisinthir brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of Jahir's hand. "Cousin. The war has already begun." He smiled against skin, wry. "And you and your beloved are in the middle of one of its opening skirmishes. Congratulations."

The magnitude of what they were now involved in was overwhelming, particularly since they'd come into it entirely by accident. No, there were no accidents. The Queen had the Sight, the weirdling talent he had only in vague outline. She must have known that sending Lisinthir might provide the catalyst the Empire needed for reform, to maneuver it into a position where it could become a friend to the Alliance, and to their own people, if the stars aligned just so. And he and Vasiht'h must have been part of that, for him to be here. But why? What possible role could he and the Glaseah play? They were not duelists, not warriors. He could not imagine surviving what Lisinthir had endured and coming out of it whole—

And he had believed it. Believed every word of it, despite how implausible the tale. That Lisinthir had transformed his rapist into his lover, and in the act, arranged for the Alliance's salvation? Was it not more likely that this was a story Lisinthir had created to help him live with the sacrifices he'd made? Jahir looked up, found his cousin watching him with unreadable eyes. Through their touch he felt Lisinthir's wry amusement, the weariness.

"You have finally stumbled onto the notion that perhaps you have been too credulous," Lisinthir said.

"It is my duty to evaluate you as dispassionately as possible," Jahir said, feeling it an apology.

"And how little I have to convince you otherwise." Lisinthir smiled, lopsided. "Save the one thing that you and I know cannot lie."

"I have been in your mind already." But the words lacked conviction. He had never been able to hold more than pieces of his client's memories when they were patients, and dying. It was a different matter entirely for someone conscious to share them. He had done it with Vasiht'h; had given of himself and the truth of his experiences, had received them. It would constitute what was real, both to Lisinthir's body—which had its own memory of events—and his mind, and if there was disconnect between the two, it would surface as something ill-focused, subtly off. Lisinthir wouldn't be able to sense the mismatch, but Jahir, as an outsider, would feel it.

If Lisinthir gave him a memory of his time in the Empire… that would be the closest they would ever come to knowing if he was telling the truth. And if the Emperor acted in a way consistent with that story in the future… if he really did push for changes in the Empire….

"So," Lisinthir said, quiet. "Would you like to have the test of it? Knowing that what you see may not agree with you."

"It is whether or not it agrees with me that I must know," Jahir said.

"I meant—" Lisinthir paused, then shook his head, just enough for a ripple to travel through his hair. "Later for that. If you come to me in this, you will trust me for that also. So. Will you?"

Jahir flexed his fingers between Lisinthir's, switched to their tongue, shaded it white for purity and soul's witness. "I attend you."

"God help you." Lisinthir smiled and tugged him forward, and he fell through air into history.

"You do not fear the drop," the Emperor observed. They were standing together on the balcony, the sun staining its stone tiles orange and carmine. The wind was tense and changeable, now insistent, then absent; it suited his mood, restless and hungry and too full of uncertainties. This could not continue. There was blood in his mouth again, and he never felt rested enough, never whole enough to gather all of the fleeting days before their inevitable ending.

The Emperor wore his Eldritch shape, too-sharp chin and lambent predator eyes. They were close enough that their shoulders brushed, and through the contact Lisinthir felt his lover's satiation and his curiosity, never far from the surface.

"No," he said at last, glancing at the balcony, which like so many Chatcaavan balconies had no rail. "If I fall, then I fall." He smiled faintly. "And you? In this shape you would be as helpless."

"I trust that somewhere before the ground I'd find the wherewithal to Change." The Emperor looked out at the open sky, pupils contracting visibly. "If I couldn't, then I would deserve the death."

From behind them, the Queen said, hushed, "Well, I would die in either shape, so I would prefer you both to come in…!"

He looked over his shoulder, found her wearing her own Eldritch shape, such a sweetness; she had some of the Heir's perfectly curved face and brows and a mouth that reminded Lisinthir of his mother's: legacy, no doubt, of her having taken the pattern from both Bethsaida and himself. But the character she invested in her face and her movements… that was all her own, and he adored it.

"Come," the Emperor said. "Let us oblige our Queen."

Once inside, she said to the Emperor, "You should not say it that way, Master. The Ambassador has his own Queen."

"Does he still?" The Emperor cocked his humanoid head, brows lifting, and touched his fingers to Lisinthir's mouth. "Tell me, Perfection. Do you still worship at that altar?"

Did he? Still feel allegiance to Liolesa? To his world? To the society that had done its best to negate him, that had humiliated his father to the point of destruction? A society that had created the immensely dysfunctional relationship between his parents, that had forced him to become a fighter or face the same humiliation that had unmade his father's sanity? Could he truly go back to that world, believe himself part of it?

And yet it had been Liolesa who had seen how much he needed to leave, to have some purpose worthy of a sword, of his intellect, of his aggression and ambitions. She hadn't warned him, but… if she had, would he have gone?

"Can one stop being what one is?" Lisinthir asked, finally.

The Emperor laughed then, leaned up and kissed him. "You would ask that of me? Of me. Now."

He grinned and rested his brow against the Emperor's. "Ridiculous, yes. I beg apologies, O Exalted." He caressed the more mobile mouth and pressed the lower lip down to win himself another kiss before sighing and reaching for the Queen. She fitted into them as if carved, her head dipped, and she brought to their skins the sense of her quiet happiness, and yes, her curiosity.

"I am what you have made me," Lisinthir said. "No less a transformation than I have effected upon you."

"Is it transformation?" the Queen asked, shy. "You said yourself once that you belonged to a dragon's house."

"Ah, the ring," the Emperor said. "Not the Eldritch Queen's mark, though you are of her bloodline. I had observed it." He reached for Lisinthir's hand and turned it to expose the Imthereli sigil. "This then. Your people's conception of a dragon?"

"Just so. It is my father's House." Their bent heads over it were suddenly too pale, too much like his kindred's. He longed for them to look up so he could see the evidence of their true natures in their eyes, the pupils just a little off from round. "I never quite suited my mother's. That would be why I am here."

"Because you have the violence in your blood?" There was no amusement beneath the Emperor's fingers. Interest, far too burningly focused.

"Before I came," Lisinthir said, quieter, "I was a duelist."

"What does that mean?" the Queen asked, hesitant. "You killed, the way we do?"

"No," the Emperor said, studying his face. "You told me yourself, in those first days. You had never killed a male before you came here."

He stroked the Slave Queen's hair to keep one hand from trembling. The other he rested on the Emperor's hip, once the drake released it. "Among us, we also answer insult with violence, but we cannot afford to kill. There are not so many Eldritch that any one can be spared, no matter how feckless or irritating. We don't have your gel tanks, Exalted, nor the Alliance's fine medicine. To step onto the dueling ground is to risk your death, and so few do."

"But you did," the Emperor said, studying him. "And often."

"My father's House was tarnished, and my father's honor much abused." He felt the silk of the Queen's Eldritch hair passing beneath his fingertips. "I was sent to court to find a way to renew his House's honor. My father had planned that I would do so by wedding some vulnerable woman and getting children on her. I chose a different path."

"You avenged the slights done your blood with blood," the Emperor said, satisfied.

"It wasn't my intention," Lisinthir said, slowly. "But the first insult I heard…." He found he could no longer remember the words, only the face of the man who'd spit them at him. "I called him out. And the next. And the next. Until no one dared speak ill of Imthereli."

"But you killed none of them," the Emperor observed.

"No." Lisinthir stilled the shudder, knew they felt his revulsion through their touches anyway. "No." He managed a rueful smile. "Part of the skill, Exalted, is to shame without killing, so that those who suffer might live to bear testament to your prowess. Yes? You do the same. You did it to me."

"So I did." The Emperor chuckled. "How little I knew what I would be inviting."

"Do you regret, then?"

They both awaited his answer, felt it as a quicksilver sweetness beneath his touch first, like a sigh cooling sweat-slicked skin. "No." The Emperor kissed the Slave Queen's brow, then Lisinthir's mouth. "That I do not."

"Then show me," Lisinthir said. "Show us."

"Again?"

"And again," he said, laughing, pulling them both back to the bed. "And far from the balcony this time, for the Queen's comfort."

They used the bed, and saw to the Queen first. Their Queen, Lisinthir thought while worshipping her, eating her pleasure off her belly, the insides of her arms, the curve of her collarbone beneath the rim of her metal collar... as if he could lap the emotion up through skin, this frail Eldritch skin that was so porous it barely sheathed the spirit. They loved her and tired her, spilled her languid and soft on the pillows, left here there, glistening, borrowed white lashes heavy over the orange eyes of a dragon.

And then they reached for one another with fingers curled and stiffened, blunt and brutal. The Emperor had used the Eldritch shape long enough to know something of fighting in it, but he lost more often than he won that way... too distracted by the sensitivity of fingertips, the flicker of an emotion caught off slick skin, the lack of talons, of true rending teeth, of wings, always the wings, that Lisinthir had never thought of as weapons until he'd caught one in the face.

The test as Eldritch was as much will as strength: who could ignore the tantalizing emotions gathered with every blow, every choke-hold, every love-bite.

Lisinthir won. And lost. And won again. Traded his laughter and exhilaration to his opponent, accepted affection and ferocity and amusement in turn. There was blood, inevitably, with thin humanoid skin, but the act was kinder, no chafing, no barbs, nothing but heat and friction and weight. And no lies, not skin to skin, not between Eldritch. They would not—could not—speak the name of what moved them, but it stole through them like the Chatcaava's Living Air.

There were hands on Jahir's arms, holding him steady, and that was well because he was still living in Lisinthir's shell in that memory of fever, felt the sheets crumpled under his back as if he was naked, flinched from teeth closing on his shoulder. He was trying to fall forward again, and fingers dug into his flesh, pushing him back into his body but doing nothing to dispel the haze. Would they bruise him? He glanced at one arm, swaying, saw the moment the fingertip bit deep enough to draw a single bead of blood.

Everything in him cried out for something he could not name—hadn't that been so in the memory? Things without names, begging for revelation—and in that moment he turned toward his cousin and his entreaty clouded his mind, his mouth, swelled to fill the world. He was gasping for breath when he looked at Lisinthir's face, saw that his cousin was staring at the blood. And then Lisinthir bent and swiped it up with his tongue before gripping the back of Jahir's neck and kissing him—

—with the taste of blood in his mouth—

Jahir's world shattered... dissolved and took him with it. And it was glory, finally, to give in.

His next awareness was of his own lips sticking together, and he wondered how they'd become so dry. Wondered too at his own lassitude, and of the bliss that pooled in him, heavy as still waters. He thought his head was resting against Lisinthir's ribs. Was he still on the floor? Yes, and Lisinthir still in front of him on the bed. Somehow he was leaning on his cousin, and that was well because his knees would not have held him up unaided. He tried to speak, had to wet his mouth with his tongue, even then found it difficult to form words. "Cousin."

Through the touch, a hint of trepidation, smoke against the sunrise softness of the emotions he'd been resting in, on. "Yes."

Jahir said, tongue still slow, "Shouldn't... you shouldn't... body fluids. Blood. You shouldn't ingest them. Not advisable, could... transmit diseases—" And stopped when the ribs beneath his cheek flexed. Lisinthir was laughing, and then cupped his face in both hands, tipping it up.

"You are really lecturing me about hygiene as your first thought back?" Mirth lightened the midnight blue of Lisinthir's eyes. "So concerned for my welfare then?" A gentle kiss on the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, and sighed out the words, quiet. "Oh, cousin. Beautiful cousin."

That had a resonance between their skins, a hissed whisper that suggested meaning other than the one he knew. Beauty, beautiful, perfection. Jahir accepted it with the wonder that felt like sunlight. "Why?" he asked, still disoriented. "Why... that feeling? What have I done to deserve it?"

"Because you are everything your beloved Glaseah says of you," Lisinthir said. "And in addition, a very many astonishing things he cannot appreciate." His cousin rested a thumb on Jahir's lower lip. "I feel I should apologize, however. This was not my intention."

"This..." Jahir trailed off, and caught his cousin's implication through their skins. And was speechless. His cousin had done nothing more than kiss him, and this... this had brought him, completely unplanned. Should he be embarrassed?

"Never," Lisinthir said, stilling him with a finger to the mouth, and that tone brooked no contradiction. Startled, Jahir looked up at him, and Lisinthir finished, "Never be ashamed of a sensitive spirit or body."

"I had been given to understand it was... something of a... a liability." He couldn't decide how he felt. Embarrassment seemed appropriate but he couldn't sustain it while enveloped in his cousin's hands, and through them, his cousin's affection. A very gentle and protective warmth, as if Lisinthir had found something to be guarded from any harm, any at all.

"A liability!" Lisinthir huffed softly, shook his head. "Only for someone without imagination. No, cousin, you are... ah, you are treasure." His eyes darkened as he smiled, a very slow smile. "Have no fears on that account. If I could, I'd keep you for a week to find the limits of this... extraordinary... sensitivity. And I assure you, I do not lack imagination."

Jahir shuddered, skin prickling.

"But to return to the apology," Lisinthir said, and kissed his brow. "I didn't intend to tease you, nor to bring you this way. This wants and deserves a better setting. And when we get back to the Alliance, if you still want it—the full experience—then come to me and I will give it to you. But not here, like this, coercive."

"You didn't...."

"I didn't force you," Lisinthir said. "But the situation is coercive. You don't know whether you will live to see your home again... how can you make good decisions that way?" He shook his head. "No. If you want this, then I want you to make the choice without compulsion. I want you to have no regrets."

This talk was beginning to make him nervous, except that Lisinthir's certitude affected him, shaped him.

"There's drinking water in the bathroom," Lisinthir said gently. "Go wet your mouth, clean up. Then we will pack and you can bring me to your cabin."

Jahir looked up at him sharply.

"I need to live through this." Lisinthir ran a hand down Jahir's arm, turned it to expose the scratch. "To be of service to my beloveds. No alcohol. You and your beloved will have to manage. I'll consent to the interventions."

Jahir exhaled. "Thank you."

"No," Lisinthir said, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "Thank you, for trusting me."

Had he? He supposed he had. He managed the bathroom, though cleaning was easier said than done—better to change once they reached his cabin, since the dry bath should not be casually used. But he sat for a moment alone on the floor without intending to do so, and wondered at his own state. Nothing had changed about what he wanted, and yet, somehow, it no longer felt shameful. The halo of intimacy, perhaps, had lent it a glow that might fade once he was more aware.

Or perhaps he would wake to the understanding that someone had been inside his mind and not shied from what he'd seen there. Maybe that would work on the knot of mortification and revulsion that had fettered him for so long.

Maybe when they got home, he should make the visit. What would it be like, he wondered, to be relieved of his own ambivalence?

A little warm shock. If he could be freed...

He thought of Sediryl and flushed. Ah, God and Lady. To go to her as a man!

...and then to perhaps be rejected! The thought made him smile. Such a normal thing, to pay court to a woman without knowing if he was welcome. Jahir had never felt able to ask. But to be able to ask...!

He pushed himself up on feet that still seemed uncertain, finished his abbreviated ablutions, drank a handful of the water just to feel it on his still warm skin.

When he exited the bathroom, Lisinthir was waiting. His cousin considered him.

"I hope I pass muster," Jahir said with a lopsided smile.

"Seni's impeccable heir," Lisinthir answered, but there was affection in it.

"Seni's impeccable heir needs clean nightclothes, and as much sleep as we may steal from the events that are about to follow," Jahir said. "And so does Imthereli's scion."

"For once, sleep sounds pleasant."

Jahir glanced at him. "Have you nightmares?"

"No." Lisinthir bent, shouldered the bag. "But I am no longer accustomed to an empty bed. Would it surprise you if I confessed to loneliness?"

Jahir paused, then tried his hand at his cousin's easy touch, reaching over to set the backs of his fingers against Lisinthir's cheek. "No. Not at all."

Surprised, Lisinthir caught his fingers and kissed them. "Go on, then, Healer. I follow."

Vasiht'h was still sleeping when they returned, as well he should be... Jahir thought he would miss the full night's sleep himself, but could not find it in himself to regret how he'd spent the time. He put Lisinthir to sleep in the bunk; for his part, he wedged himself between Vasiht'h and the bed's side, stealing some of the cushions for himself. When at last they settled, Lisinthir left one hand over the side, grazing his shoulder, and through it Jahir extended himself to monitor for any possibility of seizure. He didn't expect to sleep well, but the moment he closed his eyes, he did.