#catillia

[ekebolou]

Ladies’ Night

So back in the yonder mists of time, @dharmagun (I think?) gave me the prompt “Ladies’ Night,” and this is what I came up with.  Princess Aodhnait meets the sisters Galen.  It is, as usual, way too long, and I don’t think the ending is great, but what can you do.  I still mean to do one with Nero’s bunch, when my brain is geared for modernity again.

Here you go:

Auriol was a creature of grace.  

Once, Aodhnait had been invited to her father’s doctor’s study – there were dozens of physicians, of course, for a king, but he only called one ‘doctor.’  That that one was a relentless quack was somehow fitting.

At any rate, he had walls and stands and desks full of phials for various uses – the Gods knew  what, she was so young she hadn’t even thought to ask – and there were those among them with curious lips and beaks, tiny and thin, for holding the smallest of drops of fluids.   They were fine and delicate and he moved them like delicate flowers, and she looked at Auriol and thought of them.  

They would sting like whips, she thought now – not then, but older, wiser.  Not even that, perhaps of an age.  A budding princess.

Budding like a frog.  She crouched in the dark, momentarily amphibian, and watched Auriol pour tea for her sisters.  Of course she would pour the tea for her sisters; it was a thought entirely foreign to Aodhnait, but second nature to that woman, over there.  It didn’t make her harmless, being considerate.  

Oh, bollocks.  She never could think in anything but politics.  Goes with being raised by dogs.  Her knees popped as he wiggled them into motion, which wasn’t a very princess-like way to enter a room – staggering on creaky knees.

“... and then he just whipped it out – this floppy little thing – and when I didn’t, I don’t know, faint?  He kind of wiggled it.” Ursula flopped her hand over on a limp wrist, and Catillia laughed so hard she fell out of her chair.  “Like he thought I should be impressed.”

Laeta drank hurriedly, so she wouldn’t laugh, which only resulted in her almost choking.  She was the one who looked like her brother.  

Auriol smiled demurely, but simply kept pouring tea in a steady stream.  

Spesnova, the new hope, turned a deep purple-red, frozen in her seat with her hand on what must have been a very hot mug.

Ursula took a stalk of seasoned celery from the plate in the middle of table and poked it at her sister-statue.  Laeta snatched it from her hand and haughtily ate it.  Catillia dragged herself up from the floor, but only to reach her glass, which she brought down to remain sitting where she was.

Princess Aodhnait stepped out of the shadows.  Then she waited, as another wiggly demonstration from the celery sent everyone into paralysis and/or laughter again.  The Princess Aodhnait sort of had to clear her throat.  

Auriol – of course – looked up first.  She wasn’t shocked.  Machaja bless her, she should have been born a princess.  Auriol just smiled and went to get another mug.  

Laeta stood up so quickly she banged her thigh on the table.  Spesnova followed soon after – well, Laeta had met Aodhnait very peripherally before, so she would recognize the princess, whereas Spesnova hadn’t really ever gotten a clear meeting.  Ursula scowled, but perhaps it was just her natural reaction to surprise.  Aodhnait’s guards would not have liked it at all..  

Catillia shouted what must have been a word of inquiry in Midraeic, then lobbed the leafy bits of a celery stalk at the princess.  Aodhnait, finely trained in courtly graces, knew better than to try to move suddenly, so they hit the front of her dress and fell to the floor.  Catillia said something else, which by the color of Spesnova’s cheeks must not have been nice, picked up another stalk, and mimed throwing them more gently.

Before she got to the final toss, Ursula stood up and chucked her own celery at her.  

“Greetings, Princess,” Auriol said, in a voice like honey, warm as the sunset colors hiding in her dark hair.  She floated over and presented Aodhnait with a tiny curtsey and a very nice cup of tea.  “Be welcome and find comfort here.”

“What the fuck is that about?” Catillia said.  

“It’s a goddamn princess,” Ursula said.

“YES PLEASE BE WELCOME, PRINCESS,” Laeta said, in Ainjir.  

“What the fuck is a princess doing here?” Catillia asked, staggering up.  

Aodhnait didn’t understand Midraeic.  Oh she knew a little, sure.  Somehow, he had thought maybe the sisters would speak Ainjir in an Ainjir house, and that, she realized, had been a foolish and hopeful thought born of nothing but her own desire.  “Thank you for the warm welcome, but please, do not exert yourself on my behalf.”

Oh, Gods of politics, would they even understand the word ‘exert’?  Was it insulting to use another word at the moment?  The sisters exchanged those sorts of looks, that siblings could have – yes, as she and her brother had, though presumably these siblings weren’t raised to oppose and consume each other.  A whole conversation passed.  

Auriol stepped forward again and insisted a cup into the princess’ hand, smiling like the steam rising delicately from the cup.  This smile, in itself, was a diplomatic feat.

“Thank you,” Aodhnait said.

Auriol made a gesture implying the desire for a napkin, which the princess declined.  With a delicate little kick, she sent the celery stalk on the floor into a corner of the room.  

“The hens will get it.”  Auriol said, as she walked away, signaling her sisters to sit.

“Please,” Aodhnait said, putting on her best ‘I’m your princess but only a princess’ smile.  “I am sorry to disturb your evening.  I only hoped to join you, if I might, as... as a fellow woman.”

“What?” Catillia said, her nose wrinkling over the table ledge.  

“Well, please, forgive the subterfuge, but I had so wanted to meet you all, having heard so much, that I asked to be told when an opportune evening occurred that I might.”  They were staring at her.  Quite a range of reactions on display.  It was a sensation she was used to.  Her father’s court had been more roundabout, but no less... evocative.

“What,” Catillia insisted.  Like with a hound, Aodhnait wished she could see her teeth, to at least gauge the timing and hurt of the bite.

“Well, I haven’t many... women friends...“ Aodhnait took a risk.  Wasn’t this all taking a risk?  Not that much of a risk, as it wasn’t as if these people could harm her – but still.  “And... well, I... I rather wished I could some honest advice.  I... I’m getting married,” she said.  She attempted the choked-but-excited giggle that had so awed the generals and advisors who had been secretly plotting her death for years.

It didn’t work.  Like a little girl amongst her father’s hounds, again, she wanted to shut her eyes a little.  Like the princess who had dethroned her own brother, however, she waited in the awkward silence to see who would break and who would play.

“Bullshit,” Ursula said.  

“Ursula!” Spesnova hissed.

“Bullshit,” Catillia translated, standing up.

Auriol poured herself a cup of tea and sat down.  

“Well, it’s true,” Aodhnait said.

“Technically, yes,” Ursula said, wiggling her celery at the princess.  “But what could we tell you that you didn’t already know?”

“Well,” Aodhnait said, “I was raised by my father, without a mother, and my knowledge of female arts...”

“I think the princess just called you a slut, Ursula,” Catillia said.

“Oh, sweet Word of God, could we not do this to royalty?” Laeta mumbled into her tea.

“What?” Catillia said, “Royalty’s doing it to us.”  She made a quick switch to Ainjir, her accent heavier than her sisters’.  “Anyway, we helped save royalty’s ass.”  She put fists to her hips and narrowed her eyes at Aodhnait.

Auriol gently took Spesnova’s hand off her mug.  

“I’m not sure that’s entirely how that went,” Aodhnait said.  Clearly, soft and sweet wasn’t working on these women.  “I seem to recall a certain amount of pardoning was required...”

“Oooo,” Ursula said, raising her brows at her sisters.

“She helped saved our brother’s life!” Laeta snapped.

“We saved our brother’s life,” Ursula objected.  “Us and his handsome little Ainjir pony.”

“She did save the pony,” Catillia pointed out, “for whatever that’s worth.”

“Aww,” Ursula said, “Dominicus likes him.”

“HE saved OUR lives,” Laeta sighed.  

“WE saved OUR lives,” Catillia said.  “He came in as reinforcements.”

“Oh, you weren’t even there,” Laeta replied.

“He maybe saved Paciano,” Ursula conceded.  “A little.”

Aodhnait cleared her throat.  “If I could...”

“No, you can’t,” Catillia said.  “I don’t trust you.”

“You’re going to get us murdered,” Laeta declared.  “You realize you’re still married to a traitor, right?”

“So?” Catillia said.  “You’re related to one.”

“He’s married to a traitor, too,” Ursula added, helpfully.

“Well, only because marrying a traitor makes you a traitor,” Laeta said.

“Eha!” Catillia said, laughing.  “I think Erasmus is smart enough to have come around to being a traitor eventually.  Maybe.”

“This is all very bad,” Aodhnait said, even though no one seemed to be listening.  “Very bad for me to be hearing.”

“Next time come earlier,” Auriol said, serenely sipping her tea.  “It’s tea after spirits for us.”

The Princess nodded her thanks; the conversation continued undisturbed.  

“I don’t know,” Ursula said, leaning back in her chair.  “They don’t often come in pretty and smart.”

“Oh, he’s not that pretty,” Catillia shot back.

“But our brother is very handsome,” Laeta said, fiercely.  

“Point made!” Ursula cried.

Auriol stood up, and everything ground to a halt.  She walked over to Aodhnait, repeated her little curtsey and smile, guided her over to a seat.  Aodhnait was going to object – there were a wide variety of reasons to object – but Auriol’s politeness was compelling.  She sat.  

Gliding over to her own seat, Auriol resumed her mug.  Her honey-sweet voice barely stirred the steam.  “General Guy must have told you to come, as he and Advocate Archambault are the only ones who would know we were here.”

“It was Guy,” Catillia said, without anger.  “Faerghal is too paranoid.  Faerghal would never tell anyone where to find us when I am here; the Princess visits tonight because she knows that if it goes poorly she can hold my freedom over us as leverage for silence.”

“Eha!” Ursula said, hissing her displeasure.  “The little one gave us away!”

“Guy is at least a head and half taller than you, Urusula,” Laeta sighed.

“But he’s skinny,” she replied.  “I don’t trust skinny people.”

“You’re a few stone short of a talking cow, then,” Laeta said, frowning at her sister.

“Well!” Catillia said, both shouting and standing over the conversation this last would have caused   “Then it is doubly good I will be fat with child any day now, as my dearest sister will trust me in saying that I not for one moment believe that the Princess of Ainjir has any need to ask a bunch of Midraeic traitors’ sisters anything about womanly arts.”

It was undignified for the Princess of Ainjir to thank the gods – not to mention highly suspect in certain circles – even more especially for when her plans fell through – so she did so silently.  Nothing in Aodhnait’s Midraeic lore had prepared her for allusions to talking cows.

With some heaviness of step, Catillia resumed her seat.  “Well, I hope it isn’t politics.  Politics are boring talk for family gatherings.”

“I think politics are very interesting,” Laeta said in a conciliatory tone, but her eyebrows were raised dubiously.  

“I love politics,” Usula said.  

“You would,” Catillia replied.

“Well, so do you,” Ursula returned, pouting.

“Not so – I will just do anything to keep my husband out of it,” Catillia said, rolling her eyes.  The rest of the sisters laughed or tried to stop themselves laughing, as fitting.

Auriol, despite remaining for the most part silent, managed to insert a moment for Aodhnait to speak with a particularly loud breath.  Aodhnait wasn’t sure if Auriol should be requested to attend her at court or assassinated.

“Well, there is a political aspect to it,” Aodhnait said.  “In a certain sense it cannot help but be political, given who I am.”

“You should write our brother,” Urusla said.

“Oh, Prophet, no,” Catillia blurted.  “Write to his pony.”

“I...” what was the delicate way to put this...?

“General Cole is perhaps too close to the issue at hand?” Auriol said.  

That was one way to put it.  One could also say that General Cole was far too fond of politics and politics were far too fond of them in return.  Or, yet again, that he reminded Aodhnait of her father, in that slavering, blood-drawing, eat-your-kin way of his.

“Yes,” Aodhnait, Catillia, and Laeta said together.  Ursula just smiled wickedly, which made Aodhnait somehow fear for the money purse she didn’t ever carry.  Or own.

They were all silent.  They were all staring.  Even in court, Aodhnait had never felt so strongly that if she didn’t take the floor someone would bash it up from the ground and movie it several baronies over before she could get a second chance to hold it.  

Aodhnait cleared her throat.  “Despite what you think, it really is about marriage – however any marriage I should contract is bound to have repercussions, and with the delicate state of relations with my people – in particular the Midraeic people – I simply wanted a set of opinions with more relevance to my people.  My advisors are very capable of political thought, however very few could even begin to relate to the average person of Ainjir.  Without inflating my own abilities, I feel a I have a firm grasp on the political repercussions of any given union I may initiate, however, if nothing else, the last few years have shown the power of the average person’s judgment on a given political situation.  I would like to not exacerbate or alienate my people – not to continue the cycle of coup, degeneration, uprising, coup that has marked the history of Ainjir for half a millennium.”

The sisters were still staring.  It was sort of fun – one could make a game of trying to read each’s expression, like one could survey a crowd of nobles and figure out who was feuding and who was... well, friendly with each other.  Aodhnait began to feel confident.

“I have several potential matches I could pursue...”

“Bullshit,” Catillia said, sipping her tea.  All the heads swiveled towards her.

“Bullshit,” Ursula translated, to a scandalized, but also thoroughly defeated, Laeta.  The heads swiveled back to the Princess.

“That could be interpreted as a very insulting–” Aodhnait began.

“Eha,” Catillia said, waving a hand dismissively.  Even Auriol didn’t rise to Aodhnait’s defense this time.  

All right.  The Princess folded her arms over her chest.  “Oh, so what is so unbelievable this time?”

“There is one match,” Catillia said.  “

Even the other sisters were looking at Catillia, so this was not a wholesale loss of secrecy.  The panic she felt that she might have learned anything was, in fact, entirely irrational.  Aodhnait had told no one – in fact, there was literally not another person, living or dead, divine or mortal, plant or animal, with whom she had discussed the idea.  Until a week or two ago, she hadn’t even ceded to the plan originally concocted in her be-gauzed childhood suites to never marry anyone so that she might never have to share power.  The next promise, to have no one ever so close they might share any true intimate secrets or thoughts simply reinforced the notion that her heart palpitating like a rabbit’s was entirely out of order.

“General Guy,” Catillia said.  The sisters reacted in gasps, crossed arms, and pleased but not excessive surprise (two bits to the person who guessed who did the last one, Aodhnait thought).  

Aodhnait said nothing, though.  What could she say?  Catillia gave no indication that she at all could be made to doubt her guess – if it was a guess, and she were not some Midraeic witch of the mind.  To deny it would only make it more certain, as Aodhnait’s whole cause here was the get their opinion on that very match.  It was frustrating.  Extremely frustrating.

“It is not so hard to guess,” Catillia said, consolingly but not eliminating the suspicion of mind-witchery.  “Nobody else in the Capitol knows Guy beyond the role he played in our brother’s escape – even Faerghal.  Besides that, your brother attempted the same thing twice with Dominicus’ pony.”

She thought, for the first time, she understood how pleased her brother could be that General Cole had opted to whisk himself away with his dangerous lover.

All the sisters were staring again, and this time it was at her, and this time she didn’t like it.  

Aodhnait didn’t like Catillia.  Or, rather, it wasn’t that – Aodhnait didn’t like it when other people were right.  Especially when their perspicacity implied she didn’t know what she was getting into.  Until actually meeting these women, she had been very sure.  How could a bunch of Midraeic women – Midraeic women who spent most of the last few years shut away from the war – rhetorically outmaneuver her?  She was Princess of Ainjir.  She was the Ox’s daughter.  She was the brother-usurper, father-denier, traitor-saver – she was otter argent, under and over her foes like the water itself.  

She was, apparently, an open fucking book to this lot.

“Oh, my God!”  Spesnova said.  Unhappily shocked by the first words out of the silent sister in what seemed liked hours, Aodhnait had already whipped around to look at her before she could stop herself.  Spesnova took her hands down from over her mouth to reveal a slightly teary smile.  She stood up, taking tiny shuffling steps towards Aodhnait, and hugged her princess about the shoulders.  

If Aodhnait’s guards had been here, they would most definitely had not liked that.  At all.  There would most certainly have been blood and a severe talking to later.  She should have done something.  

That’s why she’d left them, though.  Guarding a handmaid dressed as her to an assignation with the Families.  The handmaid, in turn, thought Aodhnait was enjoying much needed reading time, under the eye of an older handmaid, as her social schedule was always so busy and she was constantly pestered to do yet more.  The older handmaid had been selected for her part precisely because she believed the princess to be such a nitwit she couldn’t possibly be doing anything much more interesting than reading, and would, besides that, do her utmost to avoid having to deal with Aodhnait, including faking a ‘check’ on her should she be asked.

Clever.  Planned.  Prepared.  And completely defeated.  Well – not by anyone in the palace.  So that was nice.

Spesnova was squealing her way back to her chair; Auriol had glided up again to retrieve what was, most certainly, a bottle of something much harder than tea and some glasses.  Ursula kept demanding ‘what?’ in Midraeic, and Laeta looked as if she were going to drop dead at the table.  

As Auriol smilingly pressed a glass of something so strong it hurt the princess’ nose from a foot away, Catillia threw her hands up in a gesture of congratulations.  “De’s fortunae!”

“Don’t worry,” Auriol said, consolingly.  “She does this to everybody.”

“WHAT!?” Ursula finally shouted loud enough to deserve response.  

“Is it appropriate to say it outright now?” Catillia asked, with unusual diplomacy.

“I don’t even know,” Aodhnait said.  

“General Guy is going to be married!” Spesnova said, before Catillia could.  Catillia just smiled and poured her a glass from Auriol’s bottle.  

“What?” Ursula asked in a much more reasonable tone, glass held out.  

“Oh, why else would a princess want to talk to us?”  Catillia said, disdainfully.  She slid a full glass over the table to Aodhnait, raising her own in salute.  

“Well,” Laeta said, “I think he’s a very good pick.”

“What do we know about General Guy that a princess wants to talk to us?” Ursula said, but raised her glass as well.  

Laeta shrugged.  “I think we’re the only people in town he knows.  He works too much.  He needs a hobby.”

“He’s going to be so happy,” Spesnova said.  “You have to tell him soon.”

It was a bit overwhelming.  Aodhnait sipped her glass – it was, surprisingly, good.  She knew of the type of liquor, though she’d never had it.  It was Ainjir spirits of the sort that coal miners drank when they had a good find.

“Tell him?”  Aodhnait said.  “Isn’t it usually a question?”

“You’re a princess!” Laeta said, shocked at the very notion.

Aodhnait smiled.  “Oh, I see.”

“Do you now?”  Catillia asked.  All of the sisters fell dead silent.  Auriol sipped her liquor like a lady at court.  “Because, yes, we will tell you all you wish to know about womanly arts, men and their peculiarities – especially Ursula–”

“Eha!” Ursula objected.

“– even though she’s still a virgin,” Catillia went on.  Laeta’s forehead thumped on the table.  “But at the end of the day, we cannot tell you whether General Guy is trustworthy, whether he will let you rule the country as you rule his heart, whether he can be swayed towards or away from you by others.  That, you will have to find out for yourself.  That is the important part of a marriage.”

“Well, thank you for that life lesson,” Aodhnait said, perhaps more acidly than she should have.  “But I haven’t even decided on General Guy yet – oh, don’t you dare say bullshit to me again.”

“Or what?” Catillia said, snorting.  She filled her own glass again and slid it over so it knocked in Aodhnait’s.  “You’ll have me sent to the dungeons?  I can tell you, my princess, that nothing will be as frightening to me as meeting my husband for the first time when our hands joined at the feet of his father.  Your dungeons do not frighten me – especially if they weren’t even good enough to break my little brother.”

Aodhnait only held Catillia’s gaze for a moment – a moment she would be proud of for quite some time – before she finished her glass, slid the empty to Catillia, and raised Catillia’s glass to her for a drink.  

“Oh,” Aodhnait said, “they weren’t even trying that hard.”

Catillia laughed.  Aodhnait tasted her next breath like she’d just said the first free words of her life.  She had stood before the whole of court and told the highest authorities of Ainjir to go sit on a fencepost when she was thirteen, and the feeling could barely compare.

They hadn’t suffered – those lords – they hadn’t lost anything.  These women had had things taken from them – by her decisions, and by others.  By death and honor was she glad they didn’t compare.

“You don’t need to try to make her feel bad,” Laeta said.  “She didn’t even put our brother there.”

“No,” Ursula said, “that dumbass volunteered.”

“To save the country,” Spesnova interjected.  

“To fuck a heathen,” Catillia said.  

“They got married,” Laeta offered, as some kind of excuse.

“And he is a very pretty heathen,” Ursula added.

“He’s fine,” Catillia said.  “A little dim.  Very Ainjir.  Almost good enough for Dominicus.”

“Saving him from the dungeons wasn’t good enough?” Laeta asked, head on the table.

“When he converts,” Catillia said, to a resounding sea of nods, “I’ll think about it.”

“You said I rule his heart,” Aodhnait said.  All the ladies stopped speaking, looking first at her, and then at Catillia.

Catillia’s smile spread slow as sunrise.  Aodhnait wanted deeply for it to be the liquor – she even took a hearty sip, heartier than she should have, because she coughed, and then there was no end to the rise of heat in her cheeks and no way to stop her smiling back.  

Then everyone threw their hands in the air, and there was such a babble of congratulatory Midraeic she felt suddenly as if out in the market at midday.  She’d never been out in the market at midday, nor had she ever heard these words before, but there was, somehow, no mistaking it.  The bottle made it way back to her, and though the glass wasn’t half-empty they topped her off.

[ekebolou]

Catillia's Visit, pt. 2

The vast majority of this is new work.  Oh, Catillia - it's like writing a hurricane!  What's that?  Your delicate emotions and sense of self?  Smashy smashy - let's build you a new one!

Catillia's Visit, pt. 2

Cole woke, future pain haunting his joints with their current numbness, odd spots of his body cloaked with the wetness left by half-dried dew.

He gave his leg a little roll that set his hammock to swaying gently. The yard was green shadows trimmed in gold light. He worked his tongue in his mouth and stretched small parts, starting with his jaw.

Swaying and watching, just for a moment, that turned into several minutes listening to the garden rustle. He stank slightly of damp and himself, but he got used to it after a minute.

“Oh, Esras Cole, how you confounded!”

He started up – his thoughts had drifted to whether he might walk with Calin, and that was precisely the sort of thing she would have said, only tinged with Geronese.

“My brother is like a dog – he cannot lie but by rolling onto his side,” Catillia said, swinging herself by her grip on the entrance to the Long Hallway. “Eha! I suspect you know – I suspect you know! Only lovers truly know such things of their loves, no?”

She laughed, strolling a few steps into the garden. She was wearing another amalgamation of robes, different from the clothes she wore yesterday, an odd intermixture of Adineh and Midraeic. Her hair was free, and swept round her shoulders in indistinct, half-finished curls. Though streaked with lighter gray and and darker black, it was the sunny auburn of Nika’s father’s other wife, but in a way that was brassy and burning, ill-matched or ill-tamed. On Auriol, who stuck in Cole’s mind, as indeed, Nika related with some disapproval, she stuck in most people’s minds, that color was soft and dawning. On Catillia, it had the flash of the sun, but as if it were stolen in a moment of impropriety.

Or maybe that was just the way her face implied it had been achieved. She was smiling now, and in it was the ghost of Nika’s own predatory smile. Much as he frequently did with Nika, Cole opted not to move, pretending he’d only just been awakened.

“I say so, but I am only learning, you know. There is not much time to practice in a Midraeic woman’s life.” She narrowed her eyes at him, returning to the subject at hand. “I read you in all of his letters. You were a great stamp behind his words, like a paper-maker’s mark. Like the depth of the ocean to its surface. He thinks he hid you, but he didn’t. I always knew.”

Sitting up carefully, Cole slicked a hand over his hair; the netting of the hammock gridded it at the side into furrows that stuck out like weeds. He pulled straight his jacket, and swallowed to make sure of his voice before he addressed her in return with all the aplomb a disturbance such as hers would allow. Probably more.

“Good morning to you, as well. You have me at something of a disadvantage, both in wakefulness and far-reaching knowledge.”

“You lie,” Catillia said, “like a rug.”

Cole had intended to make a sketchy, early-morning bow, over-dramatize a yawn and sleepy shuffle off to the kitchen, ceding the garden to Catillia and his morning to wakefulness. He had intended that.

“I lie,” Cole returned, having difficulty managing the bite to his voice, “asleep, until wakened – a process which I beg leave to continue, as the least of courtesies appropriate.”

“Eha! Courtesies? You sleep in the garden,” Catillia said, shrugging. “What courtesies are owed a man who sleeps in the garden?”

Cole feigned an embarrassed raising-of-his-shoulders, and opened his hand, as if offering this truth as sacrifice.

“I wished to walk in the garden.” Catillia said, “So I did.”

“And, indeed, I would be mortified to impede your desires; please excuse me.”

Cole made to stand, and Catillia swept in, feet planted and fists-on-hips, directly in his path to the doorway.

“I am not mortified,” she said.

Cole wanted to move her. Were she Nika, who her voice so achingly brought to mind, Cole would have.

“You have danger in your eyes,” she said, though the way she said it was with almost gleeful triumph. “They are so frighteningly clear – I see what my brother said! But more so, I smell it on you, I see it in the way you bury your body. I can see it because it is the danger I have been trained to see since I was a girl.”

All at once she stepped back. Gesture permissive and conciliatory in the same way a dog about to bite will wag its tail. She stared down at Cole with furiously dark eyes, demanding a decision from him.

Bloody Death. Bloody, Fortune-fucked, brutal, Death. It was jarring to realize that all these years, Nika had been the most confrontational, stubborn, provoking, and demanding person Cole had ever dealt with – and he was a whole flight of steps down from his sister.

Cole would not rise to the occasion, so instead he rose to his feet. And even as he did, it was as if he could see the next volley nocked on her lips, every bit as pointed and deadly as an arrow. He glared at her, composing his stone face, putting all that horrid anger bubbling beneath under heavier and more sealing dispassion. She watched, that same small smile showing, as if it were formed by the construction of her face and not a gesture at all. Maybe it was.

All he did was make the slightest gesture towards walking away – turning away, raising his hand to respectfully salute and extract himself from her presence.

“I expected such a look from my husband, but not my brother’s.”

Cole stumbled, but kept walking. It was Nika’s guilt that hit him; he bore it because Nika bore it. He bowed under only the shadow of it – even Cole, who as his Aunt said was laughably ignorant of the lives of women, knew the danger into which Catillia had walked. Her very words ate into him like acid.

Mounting the step, he wouldn’t even pause long enough to take his boots off entering the long hallway. He was a dozen steps away before it hit him:

She called him her brother’s husband.

He turned, and she was waiting, handing on the edge of the doorway as she had before, this time outside looking in. She smiled at him, a genuine and warm smile.

“Come back into your garden, Ainjir – if you go in the house you will punch my husband again.”

Letting go the frame, she turned on her toe and swept into the garden like a dancer. He could hear her addressing him before he’d even made it back through the entrance.

“...And then I will be forced to avenge him, and he will be embarrassed and my brother will be scandalized and that nice Ambassador will smile at us all and make peace. My husband is desperate to prove to you that he is no enemy and explain the whole extremely tedious tale of his betrayal of his father and how extremely much he wants things to be right and to not be seen as a sinful turncoat and such silliness, and so on and on – and you will punch him, and he will sulk and recompose his speeches as he did for no less than three hours last night. Eha! You walk slow.”

Leaving off her examination of a particularly interesting succulent, she turned to find Cole had barely breached the entrance to the garden. She frowned, hands instantly upon her hips again. Then she rolled her eyes so hard her head titled and waved her annoyance away as she would a fly.

“I would punch him, too, don’t worry,” she said, kicking an uneven paving stone and rendering upon it her terrible judgment. “He is a much better man than he thinks he is, but must make his ponderous way to his own conclusions. He cannot be blamed for not knowing he should listen to me; in some cases it is a virtue.” She again fixed her gaze on him. “You, however, do not have the excuse of a Midraeic upbringing for not listening to me, although, being Ainjir, I suspect that’s why you’re not being a very good husband right now.”

He did nothing, and she dared him to grow visibly angry in the raising of her brows. When he didn’t, she raised a finger.

“This is precisely the problem, Esras Cole, Erasmus Constantinus Galenus, fratriculus fraturnum. I will have this conversation with you whether you speak or not, lover-of-my-brother, for though I was indisposed when the hasty decision to join your name to his was made, I will not permit him to be married to a poor choice of husband. Unfortunately for you, you do not get to choose who his sister is. This is also unfortunate for him, and I’m sure he’s questioned God on that account more than once himself.”

She laughed at her own joke. Cole was not quite ready to laugh. He was still stuffing down odd uprisings of virulent anger. Certainly he was angry, as she expected, just not visibly angry. He was, in fact, so angry it was as if his jaw were bound shut with iron – but not visibly angry. This was what he was good at, after all – hiding his emotions. He might not be as good at tolerating critique of his role as husband. As this was the first time ever his husband-ness had come under attack, though, he thought he was doing rather well with it.

“If I don’t speak, it’s out of recognition of your importance to him,” Cole said, voice measured. “And if you have something to say about our relationship, I will gladly listen, because he is important to me.”

He waited a fraction of a second to gauge her response to this – saw her open her mouth, narrow her eyes hardly before he’d stopped speaking. So he added:

“...But if you think you are in place to judge our relationship, having only just seen us for the first time in years, you are mistaken.”

Her grin split her face like the snarl of a wolf. “Ah, ah, now you fight. Good. I feared you’d forgotten how.”

“Please, forgive me for not leaping to attack my lover’s beloved sister,” Cole said, mockingly giving her half a courtly bow.

She giggled like a girl, and hit back like an ollamh. “If a dog is beloved do you not strike it when it bites? Tell me why you stopped fighting for my brother.”

Cole recoiled – the gesture was response enough.

“Greetings dearest Catillia,” she proclaimed, in admirable imitation of the intonation and volume of the speakers Cole had seen within when walking by Midraeic tents. “I am again unsure how to properly relate the events of the week, for again I find myself angered by the interference – scratch out – assistance of a fellow cadet. I am grateful, because this – long space – camaraderie is intended to exist, to a certain degree – long space – but fear that I shall fail to hold my own if pressed alone – or worse, be perceived to be incapable of succeeding without assistance, perception being, this cadet assures me, an important means by which we are judged. I do not understand why he does this.”

Blinking, Cole pictured perfectly in his mind one of the many evenings Nika had sat in their dorm room, lip between his teeth and stubs of candles arrayed to take over for one another as the night wore on, scribbling his letters to his family. Cole had an infinitude of memories to choose from, for it was nearly every day he wrote at least another few lines or better composed a story. Cole couldn’t help it. He chuckled.

Catillia threw her arms up to the heavens. “Eha! You see! A great you-shaped space. He could not have been less concealing if he mentioned you by name.” She stomped towards him, pausing to stare into his face like she might strip his answer from him by mere looking. “Why do you not fight for him now, as you did then?”

“I think you go too far,” Cole replied. Long years of talking to Nika had blunted the edge of being stared at like that, though the resemblance was uncanny. “I will always fight for him.”

“But you don’t, now.”

“As much as I respect your intuition,” Cole carefully answered, “forgive me for not trusting your expertise.”

Inflaming as such a barb might have been to him, Catillia let out an indulgent laugh, as if it pleased her. “You forget, I spoke to my brother last night.”

He paused. She waited, watching him. He prepared a statement, coiling up a small smile to release with it, about how he was certain they’d caught up but still wasn’t convinced Nika felt as if Cole had stopped fighting for him. It was like tearing an shallow-struck arrow out of his own flesh.

“Of course he didn’t say so directly,” Catillia said, concern knitting her brow. “My brother wouldn’t know how to begin to think so, much less say so. I ask about you.”

“In what way, then, do you understand I have failed?” Cole asked, letting his credulity sharpen his words.

She stared at him, confused. “You sleep in the garden.”

“Sometimes,” Cole spat. “It’s pleasant.”

Catillia frowned.

“Have you seen those couches? The bed at Academy was bigger!”

“Have you used those couches?” Catillia cast a glance skyward. “Sacred Mother – they’re angled perfectly.”

Quite of its own accord, Cole’s head cocked, brows knitting.

“Oh, you haven’t,” she said, teasingly piteous. “Eha!” She cried, making a gesture obscure in meaning to Cole as she directed her plea skyward. “Pray God your ignorance does not infect my brother or he shall never receive the children he so desires, with the Prophet’s blessing.”

Cole had no idea how to respond to such a plea, apparently made directly to God, but unfortunately for him, Catillia wasn’t done. She leveled her gaze at him again and grunted. “You have already infected him with a staunch desire for the root of all men.”

“The root of one man,” Cole returned, at this point adjusting his impression of Catillia until she sat firmly in the category of person that had, until he’d reached Adineh, consisted solely of his Aunt Grainne. “Me.”

At first her grin was so fierce, he thought she might tear into him with her teeth, until it burst under a booming laugh.

It cut to the quick; he missed that laugh. That was Nika’s laugh – or it had been until he’d gotten so quiet.

Once she’d stopped slapping her knees, Catillia sat up and wiped tears out from under her eyes. “You are not as stupid as you endeavor to appear.”

Perhaps if he could keep her laughing, she’d cease ripping his organs out. “Yes, all of that promotion didn’t come solely from a talent for not dying.”

“Don’t underestimate that talent,” Catillia said, shaking a finger at him. “If only Abban had been so gifted. Alas, I think Paciano used up the family reserve.”

“Bloody Death...” Cole had to look away, lest she see the expression of confused disgust on his face.

“Do you wish rather I cried or mourned or kept a grave silence?” Catillia laughed at him. “How much better than laughter those are! How much greater his memory for the way it bears down those who survive! I should tell my other brothers how much of an improvement their solemn deaths would have been.”

“Don’t even joke,” Cole growled. “Nika very nearly died.”

“And if he had, as he intended?” She looked at him, her voice fevered in spite of her calm expression and smooth gestures. “Did you not save him from that?”

“At great cost,” Cole said, trying to match her coolness. It pricked him, though – it pricked him that he could feel that it did not match, that he was not calm. She had kept him all of this conversation at the edge of one outrage or another, and this was one he could not pull himself back from. “And with no question. I would not hear the thought entertained, even now.”

“Oh, you would not hear it, for not hearing it makes it untrue – as in silence my youngest brother lives. I wonder who he might marry in silence?”

“Silence spares those who remain their grief,” Cole said, surprised at the scolding in his voice. Surprised, too, that he stepped up to meet her, that he stood tall and used his slight height advantage to try to cow her. “Solemnity softens the blow of death.”

“Eha! How did I not know that then I would not grieve? How did I not know that it was tears and not laughter that eased my pain? Forgive me if I do not let him fade nothing to spare myself the pain of his absence. Forgive me that I thank God that at least I can speak his name,” Catillia raised her shoulders in an idle shrug, but her expression betrayed a weight of grief. “At least he is not as dead to my tongue as he is to this world. At least,” she said, her voice taking on the stridency of anger, “I accept anger over silence, disgust over weakness, and reality over excuses. And if even allusion to my yet-living brother’s death so grieves you to silence, then why did you cease to fight for him as he lives?”

She was suddenly shouting, and quite beyond himself, Cole was shouting back. “What is there to fight? Where should I turn my forces?”

“Him, you bloody fool! Him! What did you ever fight but his own foolish hatred for himself? What otherwise was the point of you? Without you, without your voice making clear the truth, all he has left is what his tortures gave him!”

“All my presence does is remind him of what he cannot get back.” A quaver Cole did not intend entered his voice – but then again, those were words he didn’t know he would say.

“All you prsence does is remind him there is more than what he has lost!” Catillia threw her fists up as if she would batter down the clouds in frustration. “Do not make excuses if they will not be good ones. You do not fight for him because you are repulsed,” she started forward, thrusting a finger at his chest as sure as a soldier would a sword. “Because you see his scars and they repulse you.”

“No!”

“Because you are ashamed!” Forward again, pushing Cole back. “Of all his weakness, of all you surely know he said to spare himself a moment’s pain.”

“No! How could I know?”

“Because you expect more! You expect better of him than to be laid so low by a mere matter of few days darkness!”

“By Blood and Honor, no!” Cole swept a hand out, seizing hers in a crushing grip and turning it from his chest as he would any weapon. She raised her other hand and he blocked it with a forearm. She used the chance to seize his sleeve and gripping tight, shoved him back until he planted his feet against her, locked arm to arm.

“He had a plan and he carried it through, and it would have been better for him to die as he intended than live and be unable to accept the consequences of his decisions,” Catillia growled.

“Had he died I would have torn that palace from the ground and laid waste to the city. I would have cursed the very name of Ainjir and burned her people down to the last harmless infant. I would have overturned her plows and salted her earth and left nothing for which even the five nations left would squabble.”

“There!” She shouted triumphantly. “That is the poetry of your soul! That is the voice with which you speak to God!” She let go of his arm, but didn’t bother to try to free her other hand of his grip. “Now you speak!”

“I speak idly and to no purpose!” After long years of oratory, his anger turned him eloquent; though too furious to recognize that thought for the reflection it was, still he found it easy to pour his best words out with fury. “What point in speaking of what might have been done when the tongue dare not tempt fate in forming the cause? Were I to tear the Verun up from its course and flood the land of Ainjir it would not cleanse it of the blood I would have spilled in his name!”

“Then they should be grateful every second that they did not tempt you,” Catillia said. “But how can such gratitude be given if you do not speak? Show the river’s mud on your fingertips,” she growled, raising clawed hands, “look with thirst upon their infants’ winding limbs.”

“What is the point? Do you want to hear your own bloodthirst from other mouths? Is that your only goal?”

She leveled that dark gaze on him again, steady as a rock. “Is it bloodthirst? Or is it fury and pain, I it what is felt when one you love is threatened? Why regret that you would have thrown down a nation as a consequence of your lover’s death when you would do the same now? What is now that is not then? What is danger once tasted – do your forget its burn on your tongue? What difference does a nation make when he dies now and you will not save him?”

Seeming to remember this was a conversation and not a battle, he eased his grip, letting go her hand. “I will! I would! If I knew how!”

She tore free her hand, stepped back, and shoved him. “Fight him! Fight for him! What ever have you done but stupidly insisted upon his need for you when he could not! Where is your goddamn head, you stupid fool!”

It was all he could do not to strike back, to swallow the urge and hold his limbs still as if bound. It was a cap to all his frustration, a source of boundless anger with no place to direct it. He stepped forward, and growled, “How?”

“Speak to him. Make him speak to you. Make him say his brother’s name. Make him ask you if you think him weak if that is the only way to make him listen to your answer. You cannot fight him,” and she lifted her hands, ignoring the way his went up defensively, and pushed him by the shoulders, “but you must fight him.”

She raised her hand again, and in purest contrast to everything she’d done or said, touched his cheek with such gentleness, it was as if it were the hand of his own mother.

Taking her hand back, she stared up at him firmly, letting her words sink in (though if her look was any indication, she had some doubt of his capacity to understand her. Then again, Cole was doubting his own capacity very much at the moment).

He understood; he knew he understood. He knew, too, that there was truth in the way she’d surmised the issue – that he’d stopped fighting for Nika – but there was just as much truth in his not knowing how he could even begin. Even he, the incomparable Esras Cole, as Nika would have teased, was having trouble reconciling the two thoughts.

In contrast, it was remarkable how clear was his knowledge of how hard he wanted to hit Catillia. Then again, he’d felt her strength in their brief grapple, and had to weigh in Nika’s constant insistence that no matter how many honors he attained at Academy, his eldest sister would still be able to wipe the floor with him.

One day, Cole would have to test that thesis. The surety of the challenge brought a thrill to the base of his spine.

“You seem certain it will be easy.”

“No,” she replied, “I am certain it is right. You hide in silence and solitude because it will hurt – it will hurt both of you – but what good will pretending you feel other than you feel do?”

After a moment’s thought, he grunted. History’s most reluctant grunt. He’d had his own words spat back at him by someone he’d only met once before in his life.

“See! You forget yourself,” she scoffed. “You spent too long apart – too long on your own – and you were always the one who understood the emotional part. My brother, Holy Mother smile upon him, has the emotional understanding of a bag of peanuts. It is all night and day with him; he either understands and it aligns with him, or all is chaos and uncertainty. Changing his mind is the work of the sea eating away the shore. And the way that you fought with him was always in your words, in your way of speaking – you forget that he is the one who made your fights into ones with fists. He is the one who has gotten sullen and silent and uses his body as an excuse to keep you away, but it is your fault that you no longer speak to him the way you would, make him say to you the things he refuses to say for fear he will have to admit they are true. You spent five years without him, of course you got used to his silence. You must speak to him. Through the years of war and silence – you must speak.”

Seeing, but not appreciating, the irony, Cole fell silent. With unusual marcy, Catillia let him think.

Unfortunately for his rhetorical position, he couldn’t think of anything to say that she hadn’t already said. “You seem to have an unusual amount of insight into our relationship.”

“Little brother wrote a lot of letters,” she said, shrugging. “And I raised that boy – I ought to know.”

She paused, whole body freezing in repsonse to a new thought. “Excessive letters, maybe.”

“It was a rough time for him,” Cole replied. He couldn’t help wanting to laugh when Catillia dismissed this thought with a singularly expressive eye-roll.

“So, your advice as beloved sister is to force him to relive his trauma. Well, that will be fun,” Cole said, the jest lagging.

“Yah,” she replied. She joined her hands over her head and stretched, then rolled and cracked her neck. Walking wearily over to a comfortable-looking rocks, she set herself down in a poof of skirts and robes and smiled up at him. “I do not envy you.”

“Your sympathy is noted. I wonder where he got those violence tendencies during discussion?” Cole asked, walking over to the hammock.

She grinned, a wiked, crooked grin. “It is not sympathy. Had you not failed to recover yourself after your time fighting you would not be in this position.”

“I wonder, as well, where he got his remarkable politesse.”

“Because your politesse has gotten you so very far,” she said.

Cole sat, because sitting was better than combusting.

“Regardless, you miss the point, for my sympathy would be as useless as your politesse. I did not say your failure was unreasonable, only called it what it is. Avoiding the truth is useful, and as such, is the skill of many. Facing the truth is a skill cultivated by few.”

And in one flippant comment, Catillia summed it all up. As if a great, rusty gear had finally turned once more in Cole’s chest, he understood. The rise of his anger, its swift uncontrollable burning, the way it took his utmost restrain just to reply in semi-polite words – this made so much sense. Enough sense that scenes with Nika going back to their First Year flashed through Cole’s head. So much sense that Cole’s anger almost dissipated.

Almost.

“My politesse has kept me from, as you say, turning this fight into one with fists, so I would not call that useless.”

“I would call that wise,” she said, smiling like a wolf. “You may be all the more proud for it, for wisdom I find far more admirable than usefulness.”

It’d been this way with Nika. It was sometimes still this way with Nika. Not letting it wind him up was an old skill he merely needed to resurrect. He would be calm. He should be calm. Also, he should drop it. He knew he should. He sort of did.

“How’s your hand?”

She grunted and shook it out. “Dominicus had a harder grip as a baby. Ha! To think you would be his physical rival.”

“It’s not all rivalry,” Cole said, and this time, the jest was pretty strong.

She made a face at him. He seated himself on the hammock, letting its sway comfort him as it had this morning – not that long ago by measure of the sun, but hours by measure of his fatigue.

“I still don’t really understand how to go about this,” he admitted, running a hand over his face.

“We will practice.”

He pulled his hand down so he could see her, raising his brows. She smiled, and he didn’t like it at all.

“Do you think we could get tea?” She asked, looking towards the kitchen. She glanced disapprovingly at the sun, and Cole almost expected it to retreat in its path across the sky. “It will be just warm enough to allow tea.”

“What do you mean, practice?”

“We will talk.”

“I have no desire to continue speaking with you,” Cole said, not pretending he felt anything other than what he felt.

“You will have no desire to speak of that of which we will speak, either,” she said, adjusting her seat. She was able to lay back like a queen, eyes shaded by an overhanging leaf.

“What, with Fortune’s Favors, do think shall compel me to speak to you?”

“That you will not want to say what you are going to say to my brother – speaking to me will be a chance to speak of it without harming him, and allow you to confront what has kept you from acting in the way you should.”

“Forgive me for not leaping at the chance. That’s a bit personal, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Catillia said. “But I’m not here for long, and I have no desire to spend the week chasing hens for comfort.”

He raised his brows and she heaved a sigh of such weight that it could only be recreated by heaving a mountain upon one’s shoulders. If Nika’s expressions could be remarkable evocative then hers came with full orchestral scoring and a palette rivaling the glorious breadth of the heavens.

“I would rather be done with airing personal griefs than spend a week chasing them delicately. So you will speak to me, and later I will speak to my brother, and then we shall have a number of peaceful dinners on the fine table sat by our friend the very rich Ambassador undisturbed by your sulking and his moping.”

“He was tortured,” Cole said. “And I’m not sulking.”

“Eha!” she hissed, waving a hand dismissively, “of course.”

Cole stared at her, with her perfect aplomb and infuriating naturally smiling lips and contemplated fleeing across the border again.

She started to speak, and he held up a hand.

For once, she actually demurred.

He needed a moment to think. “Do not think I’m going to continue listening to you accuse me of not caring for your brother. Do not think I will tolerate the baiting and bruising way you have spoken until now. Do not think that because you are important to Nika, you are immune to me.”

To his surprise, she said nothing. She waited until he looked at her, his glance giving her permission to respond.

“I won’t. We won’t be speaking very much of Dominicus.”

Cole cocked his head, but she was waiting. In proper conversational style, he needed to actually respond before she would continue. It was just slightly unnerving.

“What did you have in mind, then?”

Her brows knit, and though she didn’t abandon her queenly posture, the depth of her concern shown through. “We will speak of you. You will tell me of the war.”

He almost laughed. When she didn’t change her expression, he did laugh. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you must, for it is what makes you tired of fighting. It is that which stands between you and my brother. Because if you do not speak, it will eat at your insides like maggots in a corpse. Because no one has asked, and you must speak to someone who will understand.”

He laughed again, this time with cruel disbelief. “With all of Fortune’s vast fuckery, how do you think you understand?”

She smiled at him, and it, too had the edge of cruelty to it. “Because you betrayed your country and gave up the life you had built to go into exile with my brother, and I betrayed my beliefs and gave up my life to wed myself to a stranger, exile myself from my family, because I loved them. Because I understand that you hate the directionless, foundationless difference of the life you have here compared to the life you could have had as General of the Army of Ainjir. I understand how you could love my brother so much and hate your choice to come with him at the same time. And I will listen to you speak of it and know that the hatred is itself a reflection of your love. I understand that much. And I understand as much of the war as one who was kidnapped, forcibly married, and made to live on the front lines of the losing side may know. It is not a general’s perspective, but, by God, I imagine I have seen something like.”

Cole sat back in the hammock.

“I think we should have tea,” Catillia said.

“I think we should,” Cole agreed.

[ekebolou]

Catillia's Visit

All right, so I've posted small installments of this periodically, I don't care to dig them up at the moment, but I've finally gotten near finishing it.  Three parts (perhaps four - you know me).  Post-Kostas, so if you don't want anything spoiled, don't read it (I guess except I've spoiled that Catillia lives?  Do you really think something as puny as civil war could kill Catillia?)

At any rate, first two bits today.  With any good luck, next two bits tomorrow.  See, look, I'm already talking like there's four bits.  God help my editor ('sup, dharmagun).  You've probably already read this bit, but the next is almost all-new.

Catillia's Visit

As had become his habit, Cole entered the Ambassador’s house through the back. As ever, he wondered if such a sprawling, multi-purpose thing could be called a house. As ever, he failed to care to dream up an answer.

Coming in this way, he could pass up the garden paths to the Long Hallway. He’d taken to calling it that, in surely one of his best poetic efforts, because he specifically used its solitude and length to avoid thinking about things. He didn’t even have to have a destination in mind; the Long Hallway worked like a spine for winding through the house, any multitude of destinations open to it. Of late, he ended up passing through the main foyer, as if by magic Nika’s sister was going to arrive overnight from Ainjir.

He’d shed his boots and – as also had become his habit – passed over the slippers available to walk barefoot indoors. The Ambassador had shared that going barefoot was associated with a certain asceticism, or dedication to the earth, and thus was a notable though inoffensive peculiarity for him to adopt. She’d said this with the utmost non-judgmental reserve and spared him the biographical references to famous practitioners. He’d recognized her tone, one of studious indirectness; she’d taken to using it with him. He could see the way Nika’s head had cocked expectantly, waiting for elaboration.

Cole privately admitted that Ambassador Hawath was right to adopt a tone with him, but loath to think about it. This was the Long Hallway. Boots were rude, but the slippers were both ill-sized and altogether too slippery for Cole to manage with any grace. So, barefoot was how he would go.

The floor was delightfully cool. The tiles in the Long Hallway, in addition to being a deeply attractive shade of blue, were smooth ceramic. It sapped the heat of his walking the city from his feet. It was one of the few things that he unreservedly enjoyed.

The last two days, it was the only thing, as even walking with Cailín had lost its ability to distract and amuse him.

Nika was having nightmares again. Probably due to his sister’s upcoming visit – for the visit was from his eldest sister, Catillia, whose forced marriage was, in the list of things Nika blamed on himself, second only to Abban’s death in severity.

How she was even capable of visiting, in what condition or capacity she would visit, and what dire news she might have were all left out of the announcement letter. Many things were left out of the letters they received from home. Until Guy returned from the field, the only way they could be contacted was through their families, who were under intense scrutiny. Filtered, coded, and incomplete messages, with weeks between each letter was their only point of contact with home. Even when Guy returned, they could only count on an easing of scrutiny if he returned successful, with the Comid Hierarchy captured or killed.

Until Guy returned. Until news got better. Until Catillia arrived, until Nika stopped dreaming...

The future was a great weight, but one that somehow never touched Cole’s shoulders.

Except at night.

Days could be good – there had been a good scattering of good days, in fact. They tended to be isolate, and not last, and dim like dusk in Cole’s memory though, compared to the unending chain of bad nights.

Cole sat on the edge of the ridiculous ‘bed’ they shared and waited for hours for the inevitable rejection of his presence. Sometimes Cole wished he were an old believer like his Aunt, and could call on the gods, or perhaps knew how to properly summon Nika’s prophet. He would call on them to favor Nika, because he fought. Cole could see him fight.

Nika fought it tooth and nail, but eventually the lack of sleep and what haunted him sucked the strength to fight from him. What war, privation, and the worst of the Academy couldn’t do, the nightmares did. Nika walked to the bed alone, as if walking into the dungeons again.

Cole wasn’t sure it was different.

And there was nothing he could do.

Nor was that the worst of it. There were the times Nika could not move, the actual dungeon rearing its head. Pain – the injuries of his torture seizing fingers, drawing shoulders tight – these set upon Nika even when the memories didn’t. He would stand stock still, looking at Cole without even the endurance to feel regret. Cole would leave, knowing Nika wouldn’t ask him to, and just as surely knowing Nika needed him to. Nika would grow silent, retreat, prone at a second’s notice to turn to anger he had neither the energy to feel nor the physical power to perform. Anything Cole attempted – comfort, silence, reason, even medical attention – simply made Nika more infuriated or ashamed.

These happened less often – less and less, as he healed. But not never. Never is about as often as Cole wanted to see Nika frozen in pain.

When the weather permitted, Cole often slept in the garden.

He didn’t let it distract him. Not now. He walked the hallway, feeling his feet stick when the soft parts around the calluses touched the tile. Light from the garden filtered in through the big square bays on the outside wall, which eventually shrank into open-shuttered windows as the hall pulled away from the garden. Shaded all day, the hall was cool. He turned for the main foyer automatically.

This meant mounting a single rough-hewn stone step and switching to the smooth wood floors of the main house as he traversed a small hall that snaked past the kitchens. He pushed a curtain aside, mounted another step, and turned into the hallway that ran past the foyer.

Standing just in the middle of the hall was man in a military uniform a too-familiar shade of brown. His attention turned to Cole, dark eyes narrowed to focus, then opened with inquisitive warmth. He raised a paper in his hand.

By then, Cole had taken two quick steps and slammed a heel into the Comid officer’s chest.

It was, Cole reflected later, an entirely instinctual response. The force behind it spoke to a certain failure on his part to properly contain his feelings both on five years of war, and what had been done to his lover. Like flinching at a flash of light too bright for the eyes, he broke ribs, and sent a grown man skidding across the floor in a tangle-limbed heap.

Then, Cole fell sideways into the wall. Something be-veiled and heavy slammed into him, and proceeded to latch itself to his back by means of one slender arm snaking under his chin and clamping around his throat. As assuredly as Brendan stopped the Pass to Adineh, Cole could no longer breathe, elbow and arm locked tight.

Cole tried to break the lock, but even as he did, a knee slammed into the back of his thigh, numbing his leg, and he fell, face now even with the gasping Comid officer.

The cook emerged, tentatively poking around the wall. She gave out one heaving gasp and flung a heavy copper pot at Cole’s attacker, cursing in high Wulsh dudgeon. The pot missed only barely – missed Cole that is. His attacker, quick as a lightening strike, whirled Cole around by the throat for cover. Beans half-soaked scattered all over the floor and the Comid officer, holding aloft a paper, dived for the foyer as they rolled. Cole – his attacker’s dodge making him unsure he’d ever be able to use his throat again – slammed his attacker into the wall, unable to fit a hand in to weaken the hold.

As soon as the cook had started cursing, Cole’s attacker fired back in what began as a more vicious Midraeic than Cole had ever heard – including in battle. That quickly melted into pidgin of heavily-Geronese-accented Wulsh words that, while they did little to connect to one another, all conveyed a uniform level of extreme obscenity – a level extreme enough the cook’s dark skin paled toe-to-tip, as she stood stunned into silence.

A soft, but rapid, padding noise bubbled up through the wood floor, until the Ambassador slid into view. Had Cole not been on the verge of passing out – the veils were surprisingly effective at preventing his getting an actual grip on his attacker to retaliate – he would’ve found the sight remarkable. She halted on a pinpoint, long, dark hair flaring out behind her, eyes every bit as calm, glittering and mysterious as always. The only thing betraying her less-than-calmness was the fan of hair, and her grip on an unusual, dark blade, its point so sharp as to be vanishing, like the accidental overlap of the shadow of two walls. Her hold was such she could’ve been presenting a flower, the thin metal grip wrapped in some kind of skin or leather, a curved metal rod at the bottom cradling her hand.

“Release my guest or be made to.”

And, in precisely the same level tone, she repeated herself first in Wulsh – the language of the moment – then Midraeic. She may have said the same thing in Geronese, but Cole was worse with that language than with Midreaic and Wulsh combined, and she could very well have just needed to clear her throat.

The Comid officer threw himself into the hallway and urgently waved his paper, like a flag of truce.

Then Cole could breathe, and precisely after he was kicked in the small of the back such that his attacker skidded away from him over the floor.

“Salve, honeste domina,” she said, sweeping herself up from the ground and executing a swift, but precise greeting, dipping her head and pressing her fingers to her forehead in absence of the ability to hold the Ambassador’s hand.

“Salve,” the Ambassador replied, certainly earning Cole’s admiration for making the greeting sound precisely like her earlier threat.

“What,” Nika said. And despite all the others fighting, he was the one who sounded out of breath. He leaned against the wall, a pale pain lighting his cheeks.

“Bulla mea!” Catillia cried, shedding her disheveled veils as if there were spider’s webs she’d accidentally walked through. She dashed to her brother on her toes, sprightly as a little girl. Cole barely had time to see the smile strike Nika’s face before she flung her arms wide and took him in a bone-crushing hug – as evidenced by Nika’s immediate cry of pain.

Her grip relented only to pass through the motherly tests of health so rapidly she was checking behind his ears before he had the chance to speak.

“Mea germana,” Nika said, though he held the words so close, it clearly didn’t matter if they were heard at all. They embraced again. He was smiling.

It took some time before Cole could look away.

In the interim, the noise of the shaking paper had ceased because the ambassador crossed over to the prone Comid officer and taken it from him. She deferred helping him up until she’d read it, at least partially at his own insistence. The cook was back in the kitchen, yelling at her assistants to clean up the mess in the foyer they were somehow responsible for.

Cole massaged his throat, and ignored the fact that Catillia and Nika had immediately disappeared up the hallway, arm-in-arm, blind to the rest of the world.

“This is a letter of introduction from General Guy,” Ambassador Hawath said. She glanced at Cole, but reached down to help the Comid officer up without him. She did not seem surprised Cole remained seated on the floor, silently rubbing his throat.

“It explains how Lady Catillia’s husband used the premise of seeking diplomatic recognition of the Comid cause as a cover for their escape. A clever plan, really – it would arouse no suspicions, if he were being watched by Comid spies, to arrive at my house in his uniform.”

It was that tone; polite disinterest, as if she’d hardly noticed him.

She turned back to the Catillia’s husband, nodding. “This letter contains much for me to consider. Please, come with me.”

The Comid officer began a gesture towards Cole that the slice of the Ambassador’s smile cut short. And with that, both she and the officer swept past Cole up the hall to her offices. The Comid officer cast one questioning glance back at Cole over his shoulder, rubbing his chest.

Otherwise, Cole remained sitting alone on the floor.

When he got up, it was to take a packed meal from the cook and retreat to the garden. When darkness fell, he didn’t bother to go back inside.