CHAPTER 9

The work then was good. Better than that, for after the brief but interminable period when he and Vasiht'h were having trouble feeling connected, this return to normalcy felt bright, vivid, like spring's first breeze after too raw a winter. And he went to that work knowing that they people they were aiding would be helping the Ambassador and the ship's Captain carry out their plan, and their plan was so brazen and so preposterous that it had to have every chance of success. The nightmares, the anxieties, the griefs and fears they found slipping through the minds of their clients seemed to melt away beneath the sunlight of his relief… and he was not so involved with the feeling to fail to find it curious. Was this all his trust in Lisinthir's ability? Was it that he had found some hope for his own future, perhaps even with Sediryl? Was it some part of his own pattern sense, whispering that there was more to their destinies than this?

No, that was wishing, he thought as he followed Vasiht'h to the third client of the night. Perhaps it was as simple as a physical release after too long in denial that he might benefit from it. His mind drifted toward his cousin's offer, wondering if on the other side of it there might be freedom.

Oh, it would be good, to be free. If he could find the courage to make the attempt.

First, though, they had to win themselves clear of this. And then they could all move forward, into whatever roles they needed to play to help secure the future of the Empire… because Jahir didn't need the Queen's ability to know that the fate of the Eldritch was woven into that future, sure as warp and weft.

"Everyone so far's seemed a little better," Vasiht'h was saying to Hea Borden.

The Seersa nodded. "I think knowing that we're going to make a decision soon one way or the other helps. And the Ambassador gave us the hope that we could do something active about our problems, rather than wait for rescue." She grinned, one ear sagging. "We're not very good at passivity around here."

"I imagine not," Vasiht'h said. "Do you know when?"

"Another day. Two at the latest. If we move soon, we might be able to use some of the ship's remaining power for assaulting the enemy, if we do some creative re-routing of the secondary generator's protocols." Her tone became almost smug. "Will probably suck up all the reserves at once, but if the plan works we won't need them."

His partner, in contrast with the Seersa's satisfaction, was littering the mindline with agitated caltrops. "You really think we can figure out how to make a Chatcaavan vessel go?"

"It's a ship," the Seersa said. "Two of us can speak Chatcaavan—three if you count the Ambassador—plus we have one specialist with experience in their tech systems… no, don't ask, I can't tell you how. And if that doesn’t work, we could probably take a prisoner and ask for his cooperation."

"And you really think a Chatcaavan would cooperate?" Vasiht'h asked, ears flattening.

"They can't all be sociopathic lunatics."

They could if their cultural rewarded them for that orientation, Jahir thought. But even if it did, he had no doubt that Lisinthir could pry the information out of any prisoner they detained; he wondered if he should be worried that this thought didn't disturb him as much as it should, given what that persuasion would probably require.

"What would happen to us?" Vasiht'h asked. "While you were taking over the other ship. Where would we be?"

"That's a good question." Borden glanced over her shoulder and up at him. "Your friend seems able to keep himself in one piece in a fight. You didn't do too badly either."

"You're not suggesting we go over there with you!"

"It might be safer than staying behind." The Seersa shrugged. "Anyway, not my decision. The Captain will talk to you about it when it's closer to time." She stopped in front of a door. "Patient Number Three. Then it's my turn. You ready?"

/I am./

"Yes," Vasiht'h said. /You're so calm./

/Let tomorrow take care of itself, arii. Right now is all we can move through./

The Glaseah sighed, smiled. /You're right. Let's do this./

Borden was their last client; they tucked her in and Jahir let Vasiht'h blow the breath of the Goddess through her sleeping mind, wind chimes in a night wind, the low whisper of it through leaves, the smell of them, spicy with sap, ripe, a call to the living. It raised the hair on the back of his neck, warmed his blood until he flushed, but it was a strangely peaceful feeling, less like need and more as if he was finally open to the world.

Outside her room, Vasiht'h studied him for several long moments.

"Do you find it uncomfortable?" Jahir asked, hesitant.

"I was about to ask you the same thing!"

"Then... no." He drew in a breath, sighed it out, felt the warmth race along his skin. "Though I hope it passes. I wouldn't want to spend my life this... attuned... to sensual reality."

"Sensual reality," Vasiht'h repeated, mouth twitching. "Funny... my life is a sensual reality."

"Oh?" Jahir paused, then sorted through the density of experiences they'd lived through alongside one another. "Yes. Food in the mouth. The richness of scent. Siblings sleeping at your side."

"Paws losing feeling from siblings sleeping on my side...." Vasiht'h chuckled. "I think I've always been more in touch with those things than you."

"You have made me appreciate them more." Jahir folded his arms behind his back and followed as Vasiht'h began walking down the corridor. "Strange to think that most of my life I have been surrounded by an excess of luxury, but I never appreciated texture or flavor or color until I left for the Alliance."

"You might have been surrounded by excessive luxury," Vasiht'h said. "But it was the same luxury, year after year. It's not like home, where you can get a different cuisine every night of the week for months. The differences remind you to pay attention." He grimaced. "It keeps coming back to food for me. I am so tired of rations."

"Soon, arii."

"I hope you're right." Vasiht'h padded through their door into their rooms... which were empty, save for a note written on the back of the paper Jahir had left for his partner earlier.

 

Restless—am in salle. Do come by.

     –L

 

Squinting at it, Vasiht'h said, "Half the time he talks like a dragon, and then he suddenly defaults to Eldritch courtliness."

Jahir smiled at that. "Let's go fetch him from his exertions."

"Before he gives himself an aneurysm," Vasiht'h muttered.

Sadly, not an entirely humorous comment given Lisinthir's state. Jahir said nothing to it and queried the computer as to the location of the Ambassador.

The courier had a gymnasium. Jahir thought it a misnomer, too general for what was essentially a physical training room. There were weapons lined against one wall, and a padded mat used up most of the floor. The wall facing the door was composed of floor-to-ceiling mirrors: electronic ones, for they were dimmed almost to opacity by the power shortage.

In the center of the room, Lisinthir was sparring with a slim Asanii feline, her fur gingery with the suggestion of darker stripes. They were working hand-to-hand, no gloves, no weapons, and no armor. She gave him no contest, unsurprisingly, but she tried him willingly enough. This was exercise for Lisinthir, nothing more: an opponent who attacked him without obvious menace and who couldn't win past his most casual defenses would never activate the instincts Jahir had seen in play on the Chatcaavan vessel. For the woman, though... she was breathing hard when she begged off, holding up her hands. "I'm... good, I'm... good. Look! Your keepers are here... to save me!" She laughed, holding herself up with her hands on her knees. "Just... just in time, too. Haven't... worked this hard... since the Academe chewed me up."

Lisinthir said, "And I thank you for indulging me, Lieutenant."

She blew her forelock off her damp forehead. "My pleasure. Aletsen, can I hand him over to you? I have to be on duty in fifteen and I need to change."

"Yes, thank you. You observed no issues?"

"Other than my being terribly out of shape?" She grinned, then shook her head. "No symptoms, no lapses, nothing."

"That's what we were hoping to hear," Vasiht'h said. "Thanks, alet."

"Anytime." She tossed off a mock salute to Lisinthir. "And you, Ambassador... I mean that. My lap's all yours whenever you want it."

Lisinthir grinned. "I may take you up on that."

"You do that. Cheers, aletsen."

The moment the door closed, Vasiht'h said to Lisinthir, "Your lap?"

"While we were in the cabin," Lisinthir said, plucking a towel off a rack and scraping it across the back of his neck. "We talked a while. The couch is rather too small, as you've no doubt observed, and it seemed impolite to have her sit on the floor or the table, so...."

"You asked her to sit and then put your head in her lap?" Vasiht'h asked, ears sagging. And then, unable to help an amusement that tickled the mindline. "And she agreed?"

"Why not?" Lisinthir lifted his brows. If he could have managed coy surprise, he would have tried, Jahir thought... but there was nothing in Lisinthir that could be coy. "I asked politely."

"And I thought you were going to be bad for the ladies," Vasiht'h said to Jahir. "That's nothing to him. And the men have to worry about him too...!"

Lisinthir chuckled, pacing to the end of the gym. "No fear, alet. I miss sex, but not enough to sleep my way through the Alliance's riches."

"Oh really?"

"No." Lisinthir's face was a mask. "Reminds me rather too much of what the Chatcaava did to Alliance slaves." He pulled a staff off the wall rack and turned, tossing it. "Catch, House cousin."

Surprised, Jahir stepped into it, managed not to drop it. "And this is?"

"For you to use against me. What else?" Lisinthir considered the available weapons, rolled his shoulders, turned from the wall and returned to the center of the mat. "Lieutenant Selvein was polite to indulge me, but she's hardly tired me at all. And you have work to do."

Jahir didn't advance onto the mat. Meeting Lisinthir there wasn't the last thing he wanted to do, but it came fairly close... and he wasn't sure if it was because he knew he was no match for his cousin, or because he feared that he wanted to be shown just how completely he was no match for his cousin. "Do I."

"You do. Do you know why?"

"I assume you will have some reason with which I can't argue."

Lisinthir's smile then didn't reach his eyes. "Because odds are high that you will soon be in a situation where you will be mistaken... for me."

Jahir tightened his grip on the staff, shifted his fingers, which were already sweating. "In no universe will you sparring with me for an hour enable me to falsify your fighting skill to an audience of warriors."

"You're absolutely correct. But it will put in the forefront of your mind the truth that in a few weeks, a few days, perhaps even a few hours, you will be fighting for your life... and the life of your beloved." Lisinthir glanced at Vasiht'h. "So putting in some practice would behoove you. Wouldn't it?" When Jahir didn't immediately answer, Lisinthir said, "Besides, this is therapy for me. I'm used to spending most of my time fighting or having sex."

"Or doing drugs," Vasiht'h muttered.

Lisinthir rested a hand on his heart and inclined his head as regally as a prince acknowledging a point. "Or doing drugs. As I'm not indulging myself in alcohol, nor losing myself in the arms of a lover, I need some other outlet for my physical tension."

Sex might be easier than either of the alternatives. "I don't like fighting."

"You love fighting," Lisinthir said, exasperated. "You fight me all the time."

"With words—"

"What does the weapon matter, Healer?" Lisinthir shook his head, long hair swaying. "Don't fool yourself, scion of the Seni. You and I and all our noble kin, we were bred to fight. We might not enjoy it, but it's in our blood. We defend the helpless from death and our own from dishonor. Don't you hear the song in the marrow of your bones?"

The joints in Jahir's fingers were beginning to hurt from clenching. "I left our world to be done with that."

"And leaped headfirst into a profession where you would have to set yourself at odds with others." Lisinthir held up his hand. "Oh, you will tell me that you heal them. But first you must fight them for their own souls."

"I don't fight them for their souls because they don't come to me unwilling," Jahir said, knowing that it wasn't precisely true but pressing on anyway. "Unlike you."

/Ariihir, he's.../

/Baiting me, I know,/ Jahir said, struggling to pack his agitation beneath the surface again.

"Turn that staff on," Lisinthir growled, and it was less anger and more invitation. The aggression in it sang under the words, lit a fire under Jahir's skin. "And show me that you haven't forgotten what's left when words no longer suffice."

Jahir straightened, ignoring the crackle of energy that was stroking the length of his spine... the same one that made him feel alive, vital, present. How good it would be to give in! But all his life he had seen the waste created by the Eldritch system, which had elevated violence to genteel exercise, and then used it to accidentally kill its sons in the name of honor. He tossed the staff aside and said, "When words no longer suffice, violence is still not the only answer. There is always a better way, Ambassador, if only you seek it."

The space between them seemed infinite, vast, and the time eternal. They regarded one another, and Jahir was proud of his own calm, of his commitment to principles, of his refusal to back down while refusing combat. He thought he would exist forever in that interior space, in the stillness between breaths.

And then the gym spun and his knees skidded across the mat, and he found himself kneeling with his cousin's arm locked around his throat and his arms trapped behind him. He met Vasiht'h's eyes across the room and found a matching shock in them, but whatever the mindline wanted to give him was drowned out by Lisinthir's grief and frustration, writ large by proximity.

"That presumes the luxury to seek alternatives," his cousin said. "God and Living Air, but will you tell me that you should answer torture with meekness?"

Jahir sagged back against him, relaxed... melted until he could feel the rigidity of his cousin's chest against his. He gave in completely, baring his throat, and then opened his eyes and met his cousin's in challenge. Lisinthir stared down at him, frozen.

In their tongue, Jahir said, quiet, in the purest mode, "There is power in yielding."

"Those that submit often die."

"Those that fight die also."

Lisinthir closed his eyes, let his head drop until it was resting against Jahir's. "God, cousin. I care about you so I could give no answer to your submission but shelter. But the dragons will take you and then where will you be?"

"Among dragons, where perhaps I will find some other way to win free. But fighting is not always productive."

Lisinthir met his eyes, and Jahir suffered their regard. More than that... enjoyed it, both for the ease he seemed always to feel in his cousin's hands... and for the rare moment of having triumphed over a worthy opponent. It was the latter emotion that made him think perhaps his argument was flawed, but not enough to renege on making it.

Lisinthir spoke and destroyed his victory completely. "And while you are kneeling to your foes, what of your beloved? Will you sit back and let them take him? You would go willingly to torment, perhaps, for the opportunity to find some better way. Will you condemn Vasiht'h to rape and slavery?"

The mindline went cold so instantly Jahir's skin stippled with gooseflesh. His answer was reflexive. "No. Never."

"So as usual," Lisinthir traced his cheekbone, his resignation sinking into Jahir's skin, "it's just you that you're willing to sacrifice."

Was he doing it again? God and Lady—

The scrape of plastic distracted him. Vasiht'h had bent and picked up the discarded staff, and the tableau was so powerful his breathing hitched: the slump of the Glaseah's shoulders and wings, the expressionless face, the weapon in the hand of a peace-loving race. Vasiht'h padded to him and offered it. Unable to find words, even for the mindline, Jahir accepted it.

Vasiht'h squared his shoulders and looked at Lisinthir. "Make him practice."

Lisinthir inclined his head.

/And you,/ Vasiht'h said, the words roiling with anger and fear. /You start being more willing to take care of yourself. You have the time to consider escape from some Chatcaavan harem in six hundred years, but I don't./ The Glaseah's eyes shimmered, but didn't spill... not in the world. They washed the mindline with the smell of salt and the stench of sorrow. /Goddess damn it, Jahir. Don't you dare do this to me./

The curse left him nearly speechless, and that was nothing to the pain he felt under them, the one he couldn't run from in his partner's eyes. "Vasiht'h—"

The Glaseah turned away, released him, left him slumped and shaking against Lisinthir's chest. He was so troubled he almost didn't hear the words Lisinthir spoke above his head.

"Don't blame him for his essential nature."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

Lisinthir's lopsided smile was in his voice. "I'm guessing."

"You just got done taking him down for being too passive and you want to stop me from doing the same?"

"I'm his cousin," Lisinthir said gently. "And an Eldritch of his station, and I address him as such. Our relationship is... not precisely antagonistic, but there is testing in it. You, though, are his beloved. He needs you for other things."

"He's not a coward."

"Yielding is not always a coward's way. One of the strongest people I know yields. Your beloved errs too much on that side, perhaps. But I err too far on the side of aggression." Lisinthir took Jahir's hand. "Up."

Almost he didn't make it to his feet. He was still shaking.

"Now," Lisinthir said to Vasiht'h, "tell him he still has a home."

"What? Of course he—"

"He doesn't know it right now." Jahir felt a nudge at his back. "Go, hug your beloved."

We don't hug that often, he wanted to say, but Vasiht'h was wrapping his arms around him and it flew from him.

/You are home with me,/ Vasiht'h said. /You always will. But Aksivaht'h, Jahir...! Don't frighten me like this!/

/I may not be the person you thought I was./

/I know exactly who you are./ The Glaseah's arms tightened around him. /You're my brother. You're family. And I love you. And I don't care if you kneel for Lisinthir, but Goddess, don't kneel for dragons!/

But if dragons could be disarmed by kneeling...? Jahir wondered. There was a truth there that he could feel the shape of, but not name. So he said, because it was a truth he could name, /I love you as well. And I would die to keep them from taking you./

Vasiht'h shuddered and pressed his head against Jahir's midriff, hiding his face. /Good. Because I don't want to become any dragon's slave. And I need to know that you'll work as hard to defend yourself as you would me... because without you..../

The bleakness that swept through the mindline was so encompassing Jahir swayed, feeling it like the cold wind off a field of graves. He rested his hand on the back of Vasiht'h's head and said, softly, "I vow I will."

Vasiht'h swallowed and nodded without lifting his head. /You keep your promises. So I believe you. But please, practice./

"I will," Jahir said again, sighing. He stepped out of the embrace and looked at the staff, then at Lisinthir. "This will be a mockery, you know."

"You mean to tell me you can't find a little anger in your heart to spare for our fight?"

The other Eldritch was still waiting, hands loose at his sides and stance tense with the restless power that made him so swift on the attack. But he was also, Jahir thought, completely alone; that tension expected assault from any corner, and it was there in his shoulders, his hips, the tilt of his head, the readiness. What must it be like to live like that for months on end? And to have survived it only to end up completely isolate?

"No," Jahir said. "But I'm sure you will do your best to prick some from me anyway." He turned on the weirdling Alliance staff with its coruscating colors. "I am at your disposal, cousin. Teach me."

Vasiht'h whispered, /Thank you./

/Stay?/

/Always./

Gripping the staff, Jahir met his cousin's eyes across the mat, braced himself, and made the attack.

The practice session fascinated Lisinthir... dismayed him, that also. There was little aggression in Jahir and what there was couldn't be sustained for long. He obviously didn't enjoy the exercise despite having trained sufficiently with the staff to be deft; it was as if fighting was a foreign language. But it was one Lisinthir felt he had been born speaking. Even unarmed, he could best his cousin, and did, over and over, attacking him and then drilling him on how to guard against that attack until Jahir could defend himself. Lisinthir gave up any pretense at verbal fencing; the sort of repartee he and the Emperor had traded as a matter of course was reserved to people at ease with violence, who could float above it to make threats and jests. This... this was too grim for any sort of badinage, no matter how good-humored.

But for all his ineptitude at dealing out violence, Jahir could take it. He rose again from every kind of blow, humiliating or physically taxing. He endured. Seeing him push himself to his feet one more time, Lisinthir revised his original assumptions about how long his cousin would have lasted in the Empire... and some small part of him whispered that Jahir would have lived through the tortures that had nearly broken Lisinthir's mind.

There was power in the yielding spirit. Lisinthir had the grace to admit to himself that he'd attacked Jahir for saying so for fear that he would lose his cousin to the Chatcaava, have to watch the partnership sundered and see what that did to Vasiht'h.

"Enough," he said finally, when they were both drenched in sweat and Jahir was visibly trembling from fatigue. He reached over to take the staff from his cousin's hands, had to twist it out of clenched fingers. "Go with your beloved," he said. "Clean off and rest. I'll be along in a moment."

That Jahir didn't object on the grounds that this would leave Lisinthir unmonitored spoke eloquently of his cousin's state. He merely turned and stumbled toward Vasiht'h, who lunged for his side and put his shoulder under his taller partner's and helped him from the gym.

Lisinthir watched them go, then replaced the staff on its socket on the wall. If he was right, there would be facilities for washing—and he found them behind a second door. Stepping through the shower cube didn't relax him the way setting it to a water cleanse and staying there until the steam beaded the deck would have, but it was better than remaining sticky. Sitting on the ledge alongside the folded towels, Lisinthir reflected that the Alliance was often thus: efficient, brilliant, shining and wondrous... and too frequently empty of the inconveniences and challenges that allowed one to hone one's edges. Would he have been soft himself had he been born Pelted? Perhaps he should be grateful to his homeworld for being so backwards, if its many unnecessary dangers had given him the opportunity to become who he was.

But then, the unnecessary dangers of his homeworld had created Jahir, as well. One place, and it had been responsible for someone ready to reshape the universe to suit his ends... and someone who was ready to die rather than force himself on anyone.

There was a revelation trying to push through the edges of his ignorance, one struggling from the soil of their culture and the rarified echelons from which they both hailed, but though he tried he couldn't chase down his quarry. Frowning, Lisinthir queried the wall; it had been enough time for them to be alone together, find some equilibrium.

When he arrived, Jahir had already fallen asleep on the floor and Vasiht'h was beside him, facing him, his entire lower body curled as if in reflexive attempt to shield the Eldritch from anyone walking through the door. Two pacifists forced to the battle: it was enough to exhaust him with unwanted pity. Lisinthir prepared for bed and then stepped past them and onto the bunk. He didn't expect to be able to sleep given his agitation... but the moment he closed his eyes, he fell forward into a darkness that resolved into arms, hide, a chest breathing against his, calm after exertion. There was a glowing, irregular sphere hanging alongside them, projected from some computer Lisinthir didn't care enough to locate.

"So you were saying before we interrupted your lecture," Lisinthir said, eyes half-lidded.

"Yes." Good humor. Satiation. Indulgence. "See here. The Empire."

Lisinthir raised his head, reached for the wire frame and the colored cloud hanging in it like the gas of a nebula. Would it expand if he tugged it the way Alliance interfaces would? It responded to a flicked motion with curved fingers, as if he had dug claws into it and ripped it open. Seeing the glittering dust scattered through the colors, Lisinthir said, "Those are worlds."

"They are." The Emperor stretched a single talon forth, tapped one of the grid lines. It lit a glowing patch along one edge. "Here is the border."

That, at least, Lisinthir recognized, and the space immediately behind it, for he'd traveled through it to reach the Throneworld, which was, he saw, very close to the border compared to the rest of the Empire.

The rest of the Empire, which was... staggeringly large. Far larger than it had been on any of the Alliance maps. Lisinthir sank his fingers into one of the sectors and jerked, magnifying it. So many worlds...! And none of them known to the Pelted and their allies. The initial treaty the Alliance and Empire had signed had required both signatories to offer maps delineating their respective political boundaries, but this map looked nothing like those. "Did you lie? Or have you simply been very busy expanding?"

"Lying would have required us to believe you worthy of the truth." The Emperor rolled onto his stomach to free his wings, stretching them and then folding them against his spine. "But the answer is 'both.'"

No use arguing about it. From their perspective, the decision made perfect sense... it was the Alliance's trust that their enemies would honor their promises that struck the Eldritch as dangerously naïve. Nothing in the Alliance's arsenal had ever convinced the Chatcaava that they could make good on their threats, so why would the Chatcaava take them seriously? Lisinthir considered the map. "The Throneworld is nowhere near the center of the Empire. That seems nonsensical. In a polity so large, would you not want the capital to be equidistant from its edges? As much as possible."

"As much as possible is in fact impossible when the Empire is continually expanding." The Emperor tapped the map, a sequence with his fingers that reminded Lisinthir of the talon-activated comm interfaces. The variegated colors converged, became four distinct hues that divided the sphere into irregular quadrants. "For a long time, we ruled from our birthworld, here." A point very far from the border, nearly in the 'back' of the projection, granting that the Alliance-facing edge was the front. "But as you can see, we expanded coreward." The Emperor smiled. "You will like this, Ambassador. Some scientists posit that we can sense the galaxy's spin and are programmed to move away from that motion, toward relative stability."

"Do you think it's true?" Lisinthir asked, fascinated.

The Emperor rumbled his amusement. "Who could prove it? But it flatters our pride." He tapped the map. "So we moved coreward and ran into your Alliance and a fight, the only fight we'd had so far. That was the point where it was decided that the Empire needed to be ruled from closer to the front, and that is why you find the Throneworld so far forward. We are killers. Our leader must be a killer. Where else would a killer live, but close to the battle?"

A perfectly reasonable explanation. "So where you born here?"

"Me?" The Emperor laughed then, eyes narrowed. Through their skins Lisinthir felt memory moving, bitter and quick and cruel. "No... I am from near the homeworld. There, near the back of the Empire, where battles are few and worlds are poor. My sire died an unremarkable death as one of the lowest ranks in all the Navy—he had no title, even, only the name he was born with. He had all my angers, Perfection, but none of my ambition... nor, I fear, my intelligence."

"A father without ambition," Lisinthir observed. "How remarkable that must have been. My own was nothing but ambition, stitched together with resentment and fury." He turned the map idly, noting the size of two of the quadrants, far out of proportion to the others. "You made your start as your sire did, I imagine."

"I did. But I earned a title within weeks, and I let nothing stop me on the way to the throne." The Emperor was contemplating less the map and more Lisinthir's hand on it. As always, juxtapositions fascinated him. "The Emperor then was venal and incompetent and incurious, and I find all those qualities contemptible. To unseat him was a pleasing side effect to slaking my ambitions."

"You and your pleasing side effects, Exalted."

"Always." The dragon smiled, lazy.

"So these colorations... they split the Empire into four sections? These two are not equal in size, I suppose, because they expanded faster."

"They did. Those areas were richer: in worlds, in metals, in people, because in some places reproduction rates accelerated more than others." The Emperor stroked the largest of the quadrants. "Each of these quarters is overseen by a bureaucracy... and an arm of my Navy. My predecessor sourced his naval commands with people from the quadrants they were supposed to be policing, a policy I did away with for reasons you will probably intuit."

"I am only shocked your predecessor didn't."

"Yes, well. He is my predecessor for a reason." The Emperor grinned. "But it also amused me to see the impoverished worlds of my birth quadrant exercising their wills on their richer neighbors, and to consign the inevitable elitists of the wealthier worlds to dragging themselves through quiet backwaters without so much as an entertainment to distract themselves with."

Lisinthir glanced at him. "I have to imagine that breeds resentment."

"Oh, it does. To maintain this situation without its implosion, or fomenting rebellion, requires the constant shift of territory and personnel in and out of situations that challenge, reward, and punish them. The rich are bored on their cruises, but take some mean pleasure in exerting themselves on the system defense fleets of the poorer worlds who think themselves their betters. When their officers begin to cavil, I send them to some other task, some other sector. I give them a system rebellion to quash, a new region to explore and claim." The Chatcaavan's eyes had become distant; Lisinthir could feel the spirit flowing outward, opening, a dark flower blooming toward the light of a monumental task. He rested his face against the Emperor's shoulder, mindful of the wing-arm, and brushed his lips against it.

"It sounds a complexity."

"It was. And rewarding. One never rests, but one never grows bored."

"A little diversion now and then is a needful thing," Lisinthir said, kissing now. Come back to me.

"Now and then." The Emperor arched that wing around, its clawed tip trailing Lisinthir's flank.

Lisinthir narrowed his eyes until the political map became a vague glint seen through dense lashes... and then bit the shoulder until he tasted blood, and smiled as his lover lunged for him. Come back to me.

Stay with me.

Don't send me away—

He jerked up, the blankets falling from him and the air on his skin was too cold and too empty. His heart raced until his head felt the most tenuous leash on the pain pounding in it. He was sweating and desperate—

A hand gripped his, injecting a coolth as shocking as the analgesic. Jahir was up, stretching himself over the edge of the bed. "Here, cousin."

"Not enough," Lisinthir said, roughly. "It's not enough. Be what I need."

Wariness, sudden as pain springing up along the length of a laceration. Other things: fear, desire, professional concern. Too much. Lisinthir pulled his cousin onto the bed alongside him, ignored the fear and the wariness, stripped Jahir of his shirt and then dragged him close. He put his spine to the wall—safety, his mind whispered—and then tucked his cousin between his legs, Jahir's back to his chest. Folded his arms around him, rested his nose against the slope of the neck, bared by the braid. The skin against his slowed his heart... but it wasn't until his cousin's anxiety evanesced, left only trust and contentment, that Lisinthir felt his desperation fade. He breathed out loneliness, breathed in the smell of someone else's skin.

Jahir's voice was sleep-roughened, lower than usual. "You remain a surprising man."

Lisinthir smiled. "You thought my needs were as simple as someone to rhack?"

A flinch of skin, an interesting one. He didn't think Jahir would react to the Universal profanity. "I think if I have learned anything in the past days, it's that your needs are... complex."

Lisinthir wondered at his cousin's complexities. The epiphany he'd been hunting in the gym's locker room ghosted through his mind like the hint of an ice deer's hide amid the silhouettes of trees. "Have you divined the one I am feeding now?" he asked, curious.

Jahir looked down at the hand spread over his sternum, shifted his shoulders. Lisinthir half-closed his eyes at the sensation of shoulder-blades pressing against his chest. So strange, the lack of wings. Convenient, also.

"You have someone to protect." Through their skin, Lisinthir felt Jahir's wonder and drank it like tea-wine. He smiled against his cousin's neck. "That's what it is."

And because he couldn't resist, Lisinthir said, "It's also that I miss having someone to rhack."

"And was all your love-making violent then?"

"No, of course not. And not violent the way our sparring was."

Jahir grew very still.

"You didn't enjoy it." Lisinthir traced one of the collarbones until Jahir's breathing deepened again. "And I owe you an apology."

"No. You and Vasiht'h are right. I... give in too often. For fear of going too far."

Was that it? Lisinthir thought not, or at least not entirely. He nipped Jahir's neck to distract him and said, "I like this braid of yours. Very nonconformist. Was it an Alliance habit you picked up?"

"Ah, no. I always slept with it that way." A smile Lisinthir could hear in the words. "I scandalized my servant entirely."

"And your father, I imagine."

"I might have, had he lived to see me wear it. But I was barely out of gowns and my brother still in leading strings when he died." Lisinthir waited, expressing his attention through their skins. "A hunting accident. My mother mourned for...." Jahir trailed off, shook his head. "She still mourns, I think. They loved one another, and us."

The deer in the woods stopped, met his eyes across a moon-lit meadow. Lisinthir said, "You were presented at court at the usual time?"

"Yes." Faint curiosity, but his cousin seemed to believe this was in the vein of a distraction from Lisinthir's loneliness. "I attended the courts for a few years."

"And you left not long after you stopped."

Jahir nodded. "I did not perceive myself to be accomplishing much for the Seni."

The gleam of light off an arrow-head, the creak of the string as he drew. "So your father died and left you the man of the house."

"He did, yes." Jahir rested his head back on Lisinthir's shoulder, eyes closed. Lisinthir could just see them in the dim lighting, pale fringe of lashes against the slope of a cheek. "He took his duties very seriously and was greatly admired for his devotion to the family and those who owed us allegiance."

"And for how long have you thought yourself a disappointment to your mother, and a failure for not fulfilling your father's legacy?" Jahir's body tensed as if against a blow; so he was right. He gave chase to revelation, winding through the forests of their shared obligations. "The eldest son, the only one, who would be expected to marry to meet his family's need, went to court and was shown to all the eligible ladies of your station. None of them took the place of the cousin he could not wed. Duty required you to forsake your heart, but you could not bring yourself to embrace it. Best that you had not been born at all, then to bring to your family and House the shame the fulfillment of your desires would entail." Lisinthir gently kissed the nape of his cousin's neck and murmured, "How long have you been punishing yourself for not being your father?"

How still the world was, Jahir thought. How cold and quiet. The only real thing in it was the feel of Lisinthir's chest moving behind his, the hand resting on his heart, the distant sound of his own breathing.

"I..." He began, and could not continue. No denial came to his lips because none was possible. He remembered his father, distant, serene, gentle and stern... perfect in every way.

Lisinthir turned him gently until Jahir's shoulder was against his chest. Feeling the hand cupping his head and the other around his waist, Jahir said, "You are nothing like an Eldritch."

Lisinthir snorted, but it was a quiet sound. "I am everything like an Eldritch. I am merely not willing to be constrained by the stupidities that are strangling our culture. In particular our culture, the one that constrains us, noble heirs, male, expendable." The fingers were stroking along Jahir's cheek now, from bone to jaw, soothing.

"Not everything about our culture is stupid."

A pause then. Lisinthir sighed, kissed his brow. "And you would say so. Your parents adored you—I feel it in your skin, in your heart, and it wouldn't matter so much to you what they thought of you if they hadn't cared so much. You were wealthy. You had the Queen's favor. You even had a brother, and what family is rich in siblings? In every way, you were born beneath a favorable sun."

"And you, not," Jahir said, wondering why he was so calm. "So it troubles you less to cast it off if it doesn't suit you."

"There's my healer, emerging again." A smile in that voice. "But yes. I suspect so."

"I don't want to cast off my culture," Jahir said, soft. "I want to go back one day. Bring home all that I've learned. Help us to thrive. Do..." He stopped at the sudden knot in his chest. "Do honor to my family, and my House."

"And you will." How could such tenderness exist in someone so violent? What had he missed? A finger on his lip distracted him from his thoughts. "Not only will you, but you can do all that with your near-cousin at your side."

"Lisinthir...."

A smile, shadows accreting at the corner of a mobile mouth. "Will you argue with me? Mmm? Shall I teach you to believe me?"

Jahir ignored the ripple of gooseflesh that pricked up his shoulders. "Let us say I accept your hypothesis about the source of my self-destructive tendencies—"

"Is it hypothesis?"

His cheeks colored. "I think it a promising hypothesis. But let us say we accept it." He drew in a breath. "It won't change that these are patterns that were set in me very early, many of which are congruent with my personality. It won't change that my first instinct is not confrontation."

"No," Lisinthir agreed. "But as I told your beloved, yielding is sometimes strength. Adapting to changing circumstances requires willingness to accept and submit to their inevitability. The ability to compromise, which leads to detente and the fostering of diversity, comes with yielding. And trust..." Lisinthir met his eyes in the dark. "Trust is the ultimate strength."

"Unless you trust the wrong person."

"Nevertheless." Lisinthir wound a finger in his braid, crooking his finger to pull it taut. An idle gesture, Jahir thought, but it made him achingly aware of the constraint on his mobility. "You have a task now, Healer."

"And that is?"

"You have seen the source of your grief and how it has shaped you. You've seen the weaknesses it made in you, and perhaps admitted to some of the strengths. Now it is your duty—" A sudden tug on the braid, "—to cultivate those strengths."

"Those being," Jahir managed, voice gone rough and soft.

"Your thoughts. Your mind. Your intelligence. Your ease with change; your openness to the new and unknown. Your emotional resilience. Your willingness to take on responsibilities beyond the needful." Lisinthir nudged his face to one side and the feel of warm breath on his neck scattered his thoughts, left him more open to the ones his cousin suggested were true. And wasn't the only reason he was fighting them was his belief that he couldn't possibly be the perfect son his parents had deserved?

God and Lady, but could all of this come down to a pale and frightened child standing at his father's open grave, watching the soil fall over the slope of a coffin?

"You don't think less of me," was what he fumbled to. "For not being better at the fight."

That won him Lisinthir's fingers digging through his hair to cup his skull, and a little shake. "How can someone so loved look so constantly for reasons to be unworthy of it? Cousin—you are a psychiatrist. Who among your clients has been so perfect? Why then do you hold yourself to that standard?"

"I've had longer to work on myself...."

"You've had longer to twist yourself into strange shapes, also."  Lisinthir sighed, exasperated. "Not everyone will have my love for the fight, cousin, and there's nothing wrong with that."

"Why do you?" Jahir asked. "Love the fight."

Lisinthir let his fingers slacken, trail down to the back of Jahir's neck. There was a smile on his mouth, but beneath the skin the energy that crackled knew no mirth. It was life striving against all obstacles, refusing to be bested. It was glory and power and the fierce elation of survival. It came wound through with lust because it celebrated its own vitality. "There is a moment," Lisinthir said at last, voice low, "When you are in motion, and it is the move that will grant you victory over a foe against whom you might have lost. A moment where their life is yours. Where their death is yours. That moment, that power... that is what draws me." A kiss, grazed against his brow. "I fight to defend the innocent. But I love it for that moment."

"And it doesn't frighten you. To arrogate to yourself a power reserved to the God and Lady?"

"Had the God and Lady not wanted us to exercise it, they would not have made us capable of killing." Lisinthir traced a curve under his eye. "Besides, to guard a life is as heady as to spend it."

"I know," Jahir murmured.

Interest, incredulity, quick as alcohol to the bloodstream. "Oh?"

Jahir nodded. "I have drawn people back from death before."

"I'd thought you hadn't trained to be a physician?"

"No," Jahir thought, and some part of him whispered, Not yet. He said, "No, but our abilities... I have used them to rescue the victims of klaidopin use." At his cousin's curiosity, he clarified, "Wet."

"Ah. The street drug, if I remember right?"

"You do," Jahir said. "It kills within a dose. Two or three at most. Their minds...." He faltered at the memories. "They fall apart. And sometimes, if I was lucky, I could bring them back."

Lisinthir was very still. "Show me."

Jahir looked toward him. "They are not comfortable memories—"

"But you want to share them."

Did he? Yes, he did. Some part of him needed to demonstrate that in some arenas he too had his puissance. That he could choose his own battlefield and prevail on it if need be. He reached for his cousin's face and rested his hand on Lisinthir's cheek, settling the fingers there, and whispered, Come.

And fell back into Heliocentrus's weight, the killing grip of its gravity dragging at his limbs, straining his breath, the constant starvation for air and energy that slowed his limbs and dizzied him at every turn. Saw again the rows of beds with their unresponsive victims, the gray palls that clung to them like the cerements of their funerary biers. Felt the desperation of their certain deaths, the terror of Vasiht'h's conviction that he would die helping them, had almost died twice, his heart stopping while he fought for their minds. His world narrowed to the freneticism of their disordered minds as the halo-arch shrieked its clarion warning—no chimes or music here—and the ripping effort of holding them fast, holding them to life: live, breathe, just a little longer—

The soaring triumph of success, only to wake crumpled on the floor with his partner wound around him, knowing all that he'd given had bought only a few hours for families to arrive and make their farewells.... the desolation and the hollow ache of it, and the knowing that he would do it—did do it—all again—

The grip on his hair brought him back, into a kiss that dashed the memories away with fever and the shock of Lisinthir's ferocious and possessive admiration. Stunned, he could only accept the claim and then answer it, sliding his arm around his cousin's shoulders.

Lisinthir let him breathe only when he was gasping for it, chafing their mouths together. In the bloodwarm silence, Jahir felt the other's respect settle in him, convince him in a way that words never could. It was why the resignation perplexed him. He looked up, hoping he was not sensing the beginnings of regret, or worse, a retraction—

"No," Lisinthir said, sighing. "Never that." Another little chafe, a stroke of thumb against jawline. "Just... observing how quickly you made yourself dear to me."

His heart contracted. "You would confess to feeling so quickly...."

"Did you not love Vasiht'h when you saw him?"

Jahir paused, remembered the shape tangled up in a child's jump rope, the gentleness in the voice, the laughter in alien eyes, and the kindness. "It's not the same."

"It's never the same," Lisinthir murmured. "Every person comes to you differently, because every person is something different to you. I have been what you needed. And you... what I needed." He paused, then chuckled and lifted his finger, enough to wave it admonishingly. "You are thinking now of fancy jargon and dangerous therapeutic precedents. From one lover now he fastens his attention on the next, to give his lonely heart ease."

Since he had in fact been thinking of codependency and transference, Jahir flushed and answered, "Would you blame me?"

Lisinthir smiled. "Ask me if I would keep to your side, could I return to my lovers."

He couldn't, because between their skins he could feel the truth.

"Ask now if I would keep to your side, did I need to do my duty."

Again, the uncompromising answer.

"Ask me if I would try to pry you from your beloved, or keep you from the woman I believe you must certainly wed, no matter what you think."

He wasn't sure whether to laugh or to lose his breath to the steel core that he sensed beneath the passions at the skin-level. And yet, the tenderness remained, and mystified, and he found himself speaking without consulting himself beforehand. "Am I so little then? The opposite of codependence... a convenience, to be used until you stand on your feet and then discarded."

Gently, "Do you think me capable of such?"

A long pause, because Jahir couldn't fill it. He knew the answer to that too, and found himself wondering suddenly how those who couldn't sense lies and truth through something as simple as a touch could function. To navigate the complexities of a relationship without proof loomed large as an act of bravery he could barely conceive... and yet, did not Eldritch do this, by denying themselves skin?

Was that all his cousin had wanted when he'd pulled Jahir's shirt off?

"No," Lisinthir said, his amusement rippling with wickedness. "Yes."

He couldn't help it... he laughed.

"Better."

The word came with an affectionate nuzzle, and Jahir leaned into it, admitting that perhaps his cousin had become dear to him too. It was not the breathless love he had for Sediryl, but it was close and needful all the same. He sighed, unsure whether to be exasperated, fond, or dismayed. "Lisinthir. You are incorrigible."

"So I am." Lisinthir rested his brow against Jahir's and added, contemplative, "I suppose you could make a milk name of it and use it. No one ever called me by such, so I have no idea what it would be."

"No one? Ever called you by a love-name?" Jahir leaned back to look at him, startled.

"Are you so surprised?" Lisinthir snorted. "Who would ever have felt affection for me to give me one?"

"Your mother... singing to you at the bassinet?" At his expression, Jahir fumbled, "A wet nurse." No. "A nurse? A cousin? Nothing?"

Lisinthir smiled a little.

"God and Lady," Jahir whispered. It was impossible to conceive. His own parents had given him a cradle name for his sacramental name because, as his mother had told him often while seeing him to bed, 'You are so dear that all will love you, so we have saved them the trouble of needing to learn the name they should use to call for you.'

Lisinthir kissed him at the edge of his brow, breath warm against his temple. "No regrets, cousin. I have lived to find love, and it knows my name. I like it better that it is a name known only to aliens."

"And you no longer signal intimacy by Eldritch means," Jahir said, feeling it in his cousin's fingertips, the regret and the peace with it both. "You call me cousin and healer and heir...."

"Among the dragons, names are contempt made manifest. One strives for a title because a title defines your relationships to others in a way a name never can." Lisinthir rested his hand on Jahir's neck. "So for you, 'Heir' when you are being intransigent and too constrained by our more ridiculous customs. 'Healer' in your strength, because it is your strength. 'Cousin'..." Trailing off, smug, amused, affectionate. "Because it titillates you."

"Augh," Jahir said and laughed, despite himself. "So, what do I call you?"

"You will have to choose."

"'Scion' when you are intransigent, then, and too forgetful of the good that forged us," Jahir said, challenging him and seeing the pleasure at the challenge. "'Ambassador' in your duty, because you have made that title yours and given it power beyond the office." Jahir smiled and lifted his brows. "And 'cousin,' because I accept your right to titillate me."

"Do you?"

"And if I said 'yes'?"

"Then I would be honored." That won him a kiss on the closed eye. "Perhaps later, we will find a few more titles for one another."

Jahir laughed. "Lover of dragons and wayward Eldritch peers."

"Beautiful servant," Lisinthir countered in their tongue, shading it white and holy, bringing with it echoes of the catechism, chapel bells singing silver through the mist shrouding dawn. So long as there is breath in me, I will serve life—serve life—serve life.

Stunned, Jahir froze.

"And beautiful servant," Lisinthir finished, shading it red for blood and fever, tinting it with willingness and yielding and the strength of carnal trust. He smiled at Jahir's shudder, finger tracing his lower lip. "Just so."

"Tease," Jahir muttered, and wondered why the words made the skin under his hand stipple when so little else seemed to affect his far more experienced cousin.

"Only a little." Lisinthir nipped his nose. "We should sleep. It won't be long now, before the decision."

"Yes."

"Off the bunk. And put your shirt back on. You're cold."

Jahir shook his head. "Are you always so autocratic?"

Lisinthir reached over, grabbed him by the braid, and kissed him silent. When they parted, he said, "Do you always talk so much?"

Jahir huffed past his racing heart. "Go to sleep, Ambassador."