love or bitter vanity, pt. 7
Dol freezes at the bottom of the gangplank, and it’s only after you’ve walked halfway up it without her that you realise she’s no longer a step behind you. Even with the distance between you, you can see her pupils have narrowed into terrified, angry slits, and the tremble in her hands.
Fuck. The ship’s got a psionic assist. You should have thought of that.
There's some Helmsman-themed grossness in this chapter; consider yourselves warned.
“You should be resting,” Dol says, her voice serene and cool and utterly disapproving. Your arm has decided to throb, your back has decided to throb in off-rhythm counterpoint just to be a fuckin’ bulge about it, and the only reason you’re standing up straight is that you’re strapped into your armour. You’re pretty sure that the armour is bad for the wound, but given that it’s the only reason you’re upright and shouldering - with your good arm, at least, you’re not insane - through the crowd, you’re inclined to keep it. “You’ll collapse, if you keep this up.”
“Dol,” you say, glaring so hard at an oncoming blueblood that they cross to the other side of the street, “I ain’t entirely certain why you suddenly decided to take me under your wing, but you are invadin’ the territory of my last fuckin’ nerve with it.” You should have never decided to go through town. Still, you want to at least have a medictator eyeball you, an’ the military docks aren’t so far if you’re already cutting through.
It takes a while to find the place that you’re looking for, and longer to get there with a minimum of witnesses, since you and Dol are hardly inconspicuous. The receptionist at the medictator’s dingy office goes white when he sees you, and it takes less than five minutes for you to be ushered through - with nobody passing you, which means that either, bad, this sawbones ain’t got much in the way of patronage, or good, there’s a more discreet exit.
Said sawbones is utterly unimpressed when you nearly pass out on her table, but Dol helps you ease your chestpiece off, and her look fades into something nearly respectful. “Would have thought you could get patched up at a place where they wash the tools between patients, Orphaner,” she says, already snapping on a pair of gloves. “I don’t think I can match this stitching.”
“I wanted somethin’ a little more off the books,” you tell her, ignoring Dol’s satisfied look. “An’ don’t fuckin’ touch the stitchin’.” Ten minutes later, your back is blissfully numb, you’ve got a collection of syringes, and your credit account has had quite a burden taken off it.
Walking the rest of the way is a lot easier, and Dol keeps her mouth shut after being proven wrong on her suppositions of you possessing a modicum of foresight, which is a blessing given that the anaesthetic does nothing for headaches. She trails you through security, makes her guest pass disappear, and only digs in her heels when you get to your ship, which has crew scrambling all over as it finishes loading up. You only gave them an hour, which is pushing it even for the military.
Dol freezes at the bottom of the gangplank, and it’s only after you’ve walked halfway up it without her that you realise she’s no longer a step behind you. Even with the distance between you, you can see her pupils have narrowed into terrified, angry slits, and the tremble in her hands.
Fuck. The ship’s got a psionic assist. You should have thought of that.
“Get on the ship, Dol,” you tell her, keeping your voice as flat and neutral as you can when you’re standing around with your back torn to pieces.
One of her hands goes to her hip as she jerks her head up at the sound of your voice. Lucky for you, she doesn’t walk around armed, although you don’t think she really needs to. “How dare you?” she hisses, but makes no move towards the gangplank.
“You got obligations to attend to,” you say, taking a couple of heavy steps towards her. “If you want my protection, you stay with me or confined to the hive. Pick one.”
Dol eyeballs you warily and shifts her weight, putting herself in a better position should she need to go for your throat again. You stop far enough away that it’d be a real hardship for her to do so. “So you brought me to a psionic ship.”
“I hadn’t fuckin’ considered it, all right?” you snap, and move forward to grab her wrist while she’s confused. Your symbol still hangs there, and you twine your fingers under it. “Look. You get on the ship, or you go back to the hive. I ain’t got the time to escort you there, an’ we both know you’ll run once you think of it, so you can either get on the fuckin’ ship with me or start runnin’.” You place some pressure on the bracelet. It’s not a particularly strong latch, because strength isn’t the point. While she wears it, she’s under your protection, provided she’s got reason to be wherever whoever checks finds her. You don’t want to leave her with it should she run. It’s far too valuable, and far too damning. “Just make your fuckin’ choice so I can get on already.”
She looks at you, some of the terror dying from her eyes, replaced by resignation. “You’re chasing Spinneret, aren’t you?” Without waiting for your answer, she jerks her wrist free. “You’ve never had to face up to the toll your pretty life takes on other people,” she says, her voice level. “The son of mine you killed was imprisoned in a psionic training camp, when he was a child. He fled into certain death rather than stay for the retrofitting that makes them able to power your ships. He had day terrors about it for three sweeps after we found him baking in the desert.”
You attempt to look attentive and interested and not like you’re trying to hide the fact that he had day terrors about it a lot longer than that. Nothing like a troll screaming in his sleep to tell you things you never wanted to know.
“He was lucky,” Dol says, soft, looking inwards. You relax a little. “If you or any of your crew dare show any disrespect to your Helmsman, day terrors will be the least of their concerns.”
She certainly has a way with conversation. You could have bought yourself a nice tealblood, but no, you had to have the Dolorosa, didn’t you? “You can fuckin’ pail the Helmsman if it’ll assuage your worries,” you tell her, and go back up the gangplank as brusquely as possible.
You’ve never really bothered to think about Helmsmen before. They’re a quiet bunch, usually, and the sailing master has more to do with them than anyone else does, excepting sometimes whatever sorry excuse for a surgeon you’ve got on board. The technology’s nowhere near what Condesce’s nerds cooked up - not as extensive, to put it politely, but enough that they can give the ship some extra oomph to make up for how they weigh it down with antibiotics.
You had to help cut an infected port out of a Helmsman’s arm, once. She didn’t flinch, didn’t squeak, even though your anaesthetics had run out a week ago and the site was so inflamed that when the sawbones prodded it with a scalpel, it oozed. She ended up killing herself three nights later by trying to navigate you out of a tight corner without all her proper conduits in place - and the thing was, it wasn’t loyalty to the ship or that she had a quadrant in the crew to protect or some big, dramatic reason like it should have been. You’d just... told her to get the ship out of there, and she did.
The lot of you buried her at sea the next night, to general mutters of ‘fucking crazy helmsmen’, and you’d requisitioned a new Helmsman once you’d limped back to port. He didn’t come to a good end either, now that you’re thinking on it, but, well, nobody in the military does - except maybe the paper-pushers.
In any case, you have more to worry about than Dol getting torn up over a Helmsman. It's probably a good thing she never went in and looked at her son, if she thinks that the current helming procedures are bad already. Dealing with Spin gone haring off and Dol in a mood at the same time is something you're less than inclined to do. You need to focus on Spin, since you have less than a clue of what she's up to now. Dol might insurrect your crew out from under you, but it's likely better than anything your kismesis has planned for you.
--
Spinneret Mindfang is smart. You like to think that you're not stupid, but at this point in your life, you're more a wadded-up ball of instinct than you are anything else. Instinct rarely leads you wrong, however, which means that you’ve been bugging Spin since the moment you met her. She destroys them, of course, either because she finds them or because she can’t hold onto something for longer than a few nights without it exploding in her face, but your latest is still active. She’s had a night’s head start on you, and knowing her she’s probably stolen a psionic as well, but you know where she is.
The fact that it appears to be the middle of fucking nowhere is a concern. Luckily for you, it’s your sailing master’s concern.
The sailing master in question is someone you’ve worked with before, an indigo with neat, folded-back horns who usually looks like she’s about to fall asleep. A small amount of the time, comparatively, she looks like she’s just ripped someone’s heart out of their chest and chewed on it a little, but that was a stressful time and she’d certainly managed to keep the crew in line without running to you over every little thing afterwards. Ignoring military conventions, because the hierarchy has its perks, you sling your arm over her shoulders and drag her into your cabin. If she notices how much weight you’re leaning on her, she doesn’t say.
“Tawret!” you say, her name finally coming to you as Dol shuts the door. That done, you collapse into a chair and try to make it look deliberate. You’re not feeling much in the way of pain, but that doesn’t mean you’re in the condition to be walking everywhere.
“Orphaner,” she replies, sounding on the edge of a yawn as usual, taking about as much notice of Dol as she does of the furniture. Without further ado, she taps your table until the screen in it lights up. “Our destination?”
You check your palmtop, then put in the co-ordinates. They’re still idly ticking away, but it’s almost like Spin’s taking a pleasure cruise, not making her escape. She might not even realise you’re alive - you did lose a lot of blood, but you don’t think Spin’s ever had cause to see exactly how hardy you are before. Most seadwellers can take a beating, but you’ve spent your life taking them professionally.
Tawret - no title, which is strange, although Pumprend is what people who have never met her call her - leans in and frowns, then swipes to change the map to show predicted currents. “There’s a lot in the way, Orphaner,” she says, as the table plays through a sped-up loop of the next few hours. “We’re nearing the equinox and tide’s falling. The water’s gonna be doing its best to shove us onto the sandbars to the east. We’ll be fighting to stay on course, afterwards.”
It’s not questioning your orders, exactly, but you have never been less in the mood for people not saluting and going forth. Some of that must come through in your face, because after a moment’s silence, she salutes and wipes the map before walking out at a faster clip than you’ve seen her use before, other than the pump-rending incident.
Dol leans over the table once Tawret’s closed the door and calls the map back up. Either she’s used the program before - unlikely - or you should be even more terrified of her smarts than you are. You’ll work on that once you’re not about to keel over in front of your subordinates. “Shouldn’t you be striding about the deck and telling people to climb rigging?” she asks, prodding at the map controls.
You snort. “Tawret an’ whoever’s first mate work that out between ‘em. I’m just the Empress’ will walkin’ around on two legs, to the ship.” It’s different on your own ship, with crew you’ve hand-picked; they all know you to put in the long hours of being an Orphaner, tracking down lusii and using your ship as an extension of yourself. They jump to your orders because you know you waters, and they’d have died messy deaths a thousand times over without you. Likely you’ll take a more active role as you close in on Spin, but with your back as it is, you’re happy to sit back and let those who don’t listen to your title think of you as one of the more useless Court members.
Dol seems unlikely to offer you a hand, ungrateful slave that she is, so you stand up using as few of your core muscles as possible - fuck, this is an inconvenient spawn of an unwashed bucket - and then begin the arduous task of pulling off your clothes. You should probably be out making an impression on the crew, but the built-in cupe in the corner of the room is singing your name very seductively, and the thought of getting sopor on your back would make you cry, if your tear ducts weren’t as dried-out as Dol’s sense of humour.
Your armour’s the easy part, which isn’t saying much. The clasps are fiddly and trying to twist back to reach them better makes your vision white out a little, but you get it off. The mechanics of getting your shirt off, however, are what defeat you. You’d just go fall in the sopor anyway, but you really want the shirt off so the sopor can do its thing with the wound, which is beginning to throb again. Hopefully you didn’t pop anything.
You try again, just in case, except this time the pain nearly knocks you off your feet and you end up with your hands locked around the back of your chair, swearing through ragged breaths.
“The muscle was hurt, Dualscar,” Dol snaps, finally looking up from the table she might as well be handfasted to. “You shouldn’t even be able to lift your arm. What are you trying to do?”
You give her the same look you gave Tawret.
She gives you an impassive look in return.
This is a cheap fight. Except you’re wobbling on your feet, your vision is swimming so hard it might make it to Spin before you do, and you’re probably about to collapse whether you like it or not. And Dol, well, Dol is an expert in giving absolutely no fucks, and will probably just stare at you until you do actually collapse, and that will be embarrassing for everyone involved.
“Can’t get the shirt off,” you say, averting your eyes and doing your best to not let your fins pin themselves back. This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever worried about - she is, in a quite literal sense, your own damn slave. Helping you get your clothes off is well within the line of duty, although you’ve never wanted that much intrusion into your personal life.
Instead of helping, like you expected - she’s been perfectly courteous all night, why would she change now? - Dol freezes, her hand jerking on the table and zooming in on an irrelevant patch of open sea. “I-” she says, then the words seem to dry up in her throat. Her other hand rests at her waist, and if she’s looking to start another fight, you might as well just hand yourself to the drones for a mercy cull now. The Orphaner Dualscar, done in by a jadeblood. History is not going to be kind to you.
You’re mentally preparing yourself to throw the chair, because going down without some sort of fight would be more shame than you can take, when she says in a whisper so dry that the words barely get out, “You tripped my submission reflex.”
The silence that falls between the two of you has a weight to it, stifling.
“I had to,” you say, uncertain. “With- Spin an’ all, it was a mite fuckin’ urgent, Dol.”
She shakes her head and looks down at the table. “I don’t care for you, Dualscar,” she says, quiet but firm. “I’ve done what I have because I want to be the kind of person my son would be proud of, because he shamed me with how easily kindness came to him, not for any feelings I have towards you. And…” Still without looking at you, she sits heavily in a chair, her face blank and serious. “There are two paths I see that led to your actions, and I like neither. Either I am not entirely real to you, in that way that the enemy is never quite real, and thus doing as you please has no real consequences - or I am real, and you don’t care.” She looks at you then, and for all that she used to set off alarms for something eerie and dangerous in your head, now she is just sad and so, so serious. “You’re terrifyingly desensitised to the consequences your actions have, in any case.”
“What was I supposed to do?” you snap, nearly throwing your hands in the air before you remember how bad an idea that would be. “Let you keep flippin’ out until Spin declared you a loss and culled us both? Had us found by security, so Spin an’ I were executed an’ you were slated to have that oliveblood of yours tortured in front a’ you for the next sweep? Isle keep it in mind, next time I get fuckin’ dismembered comin’ after you!”
“You were saving yourself,” Dol says, a chill finally colouring her voice. “I was nothing more than collateral.”
You pry yourself away from your chair, barely keeping a growl under wraps as you stalk over to the cupe and slide the lid back. The sopor’s fresh, at least, although a bit cool to the touch. At this point, you couldn’t care less. You’re going to climb in, clothes and all, and when you get back out the world might be a tad more sane. “You don’t care for me,” you finally say, once you can do it without spitting it out between your teeth. “I ain’t sure where you got the impression I cared for you, but I ain’t got a fuckin’ clue why you’d expect me to.”
A hand rests on your back, and you nearly leap out of your skin. It would be good for your continued health if your slave wasn’t a fuckin’ assassin. “Don’t be an idiot,” Dol says, finally, and you can hear the sigh in her voice. “I’ll have to cut the shirt off.”
“I like-” you say, in weak defense of your shirt, then pull the letter opener out of your boot and hand it to her. “You are sendin’ some very mixed signals, Dol.”
She pulls your shirt away from your back - oh, sticking, you definitely managed to pop a few stitches - and sets the knife to it. “Of course you like this shirt,” she mutters, a glimmer of personality coming through. “I care about people, Dualscar. I’m being incredibly charitable and believing you felt you took the best course of action. I still don’t care for you, and if you do it again under any circumstances I will make you eat your own horns, but I’m not going to make you stew in blood-soaked clothes until you feel like asking for help.” She gently bends your arm to get at the sleeve, and you nearly bite through your tongue. “As for you caring… You did attempt to bring me back.”
“You’re my responsibility,” you grumble, when she’s silent long enough for you to realise she expects a reply. “It was in the contract.”
She does sigh then, handing the letter opener back to you, not even attempting to keep it despite the way she always reverts to looking for a weapon when she panics. “I realise that the Alternian Empire is built upon it not caring about its subjects,” she says, keeping a delicate hold on the blade when you try to take it, “but being your responsibility means that I am under your care. You frame it as obligations, and you’re not wrong, but have you never simply - cared about the people working under you? Leaving aside any romantic feelings. You knew Tawret, remembered her. Somehow, she crossed that threshold from stranger to comrade.”
You repress the awful urge to laugh at the fact that Dol clearly has no idea how Tawret made an impression on you. Something in your face must look off, because she nods and lets go of the blade. “We saw it in the cooler end of the haemospectrum a lot. Trolls who thought my son was building a very nice world for other people, but they were too violent, too unable to connect to be part of it. They’d bought the Empire line that the only way to care for others is through the quadrants, and anything else is gross perversion.”
“I’m the right hand of the Empress,” you tell her, in case she’s forgotten. You’re too exhausted and slightly dizzy from blood loss for this.
“You’re allowed to do things because you care about people,” she says, and shrugs a little. “For you, it’s probably been through a framework of obligation and responsibility. You care about your crew, I’m guessing, and anyone who owes you or you owe a debt. Disciple is better at this sort of reframing than I am.”
You shake your head, letting the words wash past you. “Dol, as nice as it is havin’ your insurrection of my ship start with me, I’m takin’ off my pants an’ gettin’ in the fuckin’ sopor. Go preach to Tawret, if you want an argument.”
She gives you an alarmed look and evacuates the cabin before you’ve even begun to put word to action. You promptly do just that, collapse into your sopor like a moth to flame, and black out before you can begin processing anything she said.