Liolesa’s enemies are again at her heels, though why I have not been able to divine. Something to do with the heir, if I can trust rumor. But Bethsaida is a young spitfire, and well able to handle any criticisms, I am certain. Anyone who can bear the brunt of our Queen’s frequent attention, as she must in order to take instruction on her duties, will find Liolesa’s foes beneath notice! And yet, I have not seen Bethsaida at court as often as I expected. I know you had little congress with her, so asking you after her mind… well. If you know anything, I would be glad to hear it. She used to speak more with your brother, but as you know, your brother is also gone away, out of reach. Poor woman, trammeled on the world while all around her the exciting and eligible are flying from it! Were I her, I’d be rebelling myself!
Jahir tried to imagine his mother as a young maiden, balking at her own cage, and thought it humorous, until he wondered if she’d ever felt that resentment and desperation. But no, she continued:
I look forward to the day that I might also sample the wonders of the outworld… but that day is not yet, and I have always known it. I had goals I wished to accomplish first, and while most of them I have achieved, I have yet to finish the work I have chosen here. One day, though, my dearest, I shall follow your lead and see the wonders you have described with my own eyes! I will have earned it. Until then, how I cherish the sight of the seasons changing the land we have taken as duty, and the way the years turn, patient and measured. I love our home, and am its glad steward until you return.
Strange to think that when he did, he would be steward of more than the Seni lands. Looking up from the tablet, he found his eyes resting on the view through his room’s window. What would happen when he came home as the Eldritch’s first modern healer? Would his Queen’s foes set aside their animosity in order to take advantage of his skills? If he was the only person who could help them, what choice would they have? What would that do to their world’s politics, did so much power rest on one side?
Did not all that power rest there now? Perhaps that was the true cause of the resentment that seethed beneath so much of their people’s masks, and perennialized so many of their most divisive feuds.
He had focused so much on the practicalities of what he would be bringing with him. That the situation might be more complicated than ‘arrive and set up a practice’ was… he inhaled. Both odious, and… a relief. He’d been so focused on his duty to go home and make himself useful that he’d missed that there might be barriers to his doing so that he alone could not address. And if that was so… then rushing home might be the least optimal of his choices. He drew down a fresh page to answer his mother, and almost by rote he responded to each of her comments about the status of their estate, not even needing to reread them to recall them in every particular. But once he had done…
You know by now that I plan to return a healer… but an Alliance-trained healer cannot operate in a vacuum. To offer those skills to our people, who sorely need them, I will require infrastructure. Even something as modest as a clinic requires technology beyond what we can support; the power grid alone is not a minor installation. There are political considerations to those modifications to our way of life… and even more such ramifications to my ability to help those who previously had no hope of aid, no matter their allegiances.
The more I consider it, the more it feels a matter for our liegelady. I would not disrupt whatever plan she nurtures now, as she no doubt does; nor do I know enough about the current mood at court to understand how my arrival—when I do arrive—will change things.
It feels presumptuous of me to address her directly with my concerns when I am not ready to offer solutions. Indeed, I do not yet have a license! But if you could, perhaps, learn enough to advise me, I would be greatly obliged to you—again, as I have been to you for so many other reasons, and never so glad have I been to be so much beholden.
Once again, I beg your advice, and look forward to hearing it. In the mean, wish me luck in my endeavors.
Your loving son,
—J
Having sent the letter, he put his tablet aside and looked again through the window, where ships of all sizes passed in and out of view, their lights gleaming like those of the park on Seersana, fairy-glows and holiday-bright. Had not the girls discovered it themselves? Nothing was as simple as one’s good intentions made it out to be. And in the end, he was grateful. To live in a world less complex would have afforded him fewer opportunities for wonder. Had he thought his homeworld lacking in those complications? And those opportunities? More fool he.
Confused, and at peace with his confusion, Jahir rested himself on his foreign bed, and slept.
If anything, the exam was easier, for his memory of it remained fresh despite the intervening weeks. He gave himself to it for the required six hours each day and spent the remainder wandering the station, or sitting in one of its cafes looking out over the traffic surrounding it. There were no rare alien proctors to intrigue him, nor did he speak much, save to request a service, or answer an occasional question. The silence felt good, surrounding him amid the bustle of the Aera’s noise. As if he was passing through a ritual space.
Only the final section of the test was new to him, and not new, for it covered emergency care. He wrote his answers in concert with the voices from Mercy, whispering out of memory, and this raveling of the most difficult experience of his life with the life he was living now felt… wholesome. Needful. KindlesFlame would have been the first to tell him that not all healers worked in hospitals. Even if he one day found himself there again, he would not be alone. A hospital required infrastructure, staff, other healers. The notion made his heart tense in his chest, and he couldn’t tell if it was joy or awe or something more bittersweet. Perhaps he would be the first Eldritch healer licensed in the Alliance. But he would certainly not be the last. Who would be his companions on that journey? Would he be home in time for Vasiht’h to be one of them? What shape would that future take? And oh, how he could find the anticipation of it so glorious, when he’d found it so fraught before!
He was packing to leave when the results hit his data tablet. He had passed, and was now provisionally licensed, so long as he completed his practicals within five years. He stopped packing and sat on the bed to forward the note to Veta’s general hospital, which had been waiting to hear from him since he’d told the staffing assist his plans for Tsera Nova, and his desire to have his volunteer hours count toward the full license.
And then he resumed packing. His hands were shaking as he folded his clothes into his bag. So little fanfare for something that had accumulated so much unexpected drama.
Vasiht’h would want a cake. Jahir found he wanted one too.
On the flight home, Jahir received a very welcome, and very unexpected note, from Meekie, and it began, rather charmingly, with an apology:
Dear—I… don’t know what to call you? I want to say Prince Jahir because that’s what we used to call you, but that sounds juvenile, doesn’t it? And it’s probably inaccurate. And insulting, possibly. Oh, I’m doing this all wrong. How do I start my letters to you? Please tell me so I know! Because I’d like to write letters to you.
No one knows that I’m writing to you, by the way. That’s maybe the best part. They’re all already nose-deep in everything else. School. Family stuff. Field trips. Our charity work. BOYS. I don’t know if any of them took you seriously when you said we should write you. But I wanted to, and so here I am, and I haven’t told any of them. I hope you don’t mind that I do want to write you. I mean, you could have said it and not meant it, just to be polite. If you did, you can just ignore this letter!
But I’m really writing for advice… because, like we said, we all want to go into the medical profession, and I’d like to be a therapist. And of course, you and Prince Manylegs have been therapists for years now. But not hospital therapists. I want to help kits like us, of course, but… I’m wondering what a general practice is like too. I hear you have to choose pret
ty soon after you get to college, and we’re not that far from university now…
Jahir let the data tablet sag to rest against his chest, and closed his eyes, and smiled. If there was a suspicious wetness around the lashes… surely he had earned the right, to find life wondrous, and beautiful, and so, so full of blessings.
Chapter 22
Vasiht’h’s palliatives for anxiety involved baking, work, and being around people, mostly Jahir. With the Eldritch gone, and his absence the reason for his anxiety, the Glaseah indulged in as many of the other strategies as possible. Baking was less fun without someone to eat the results, so he delivered a lot of care packages, or handed out cookies to his clients. Work he could do, though talking about why Jahir was gone to clients who expected to see them both kept calling attention to the fact that Jahir was off on some space station and not here. That left being around people, something he enjoyed anyway. He visited friends, ate out and struck up conversations with strangers, went to entertainments, and sat in the starbase’s many parks.
He missed Jahir, though, with an ache like a missed heartbeat. He touched his chest now and then, feeling that skipped stroke. So he could not have asked for a better distraction than the one that landed on his doorstep two days into Jahir’s trip.
“Kristyl?” Vasiht’h said, incredulous, having opened the door on her, and: “Gladdie? And…” A punch to the stomach, hard with memories. “Is that…”
“This is Brock,” Kristyl said, scruffling the toddler’s hair. “We just got back from adopting him.”
“This is obviously a story I need to hear,” Vasiht’h said, wide-eyed. “Can I interest you in scones?”
“Someplace with a playground would be best,” Gladiolus said.
“Okay, then… French toast.”
“I like French toast,” Kristyl said. “We invented that, you know.”
Vasiht’h laughed. “I do.” And shut up the office for the morning.
The diner with French toast did breakfast all day, and it was built around a central courtyard where kids could play while their parents ate. Vasiht’h watched the two women deliver the boy to the corner of the playground nearest them, fascinated by their interactions with each other, with the boy. Gladiolus seemed more carefree, excited; Kristyl, more serious, her gaze flicking here, there, with a hypervigilance Vasiht’h associated with new parents. When the two of them rejoined him, they did so holding hands.
Vasiht’h glanced at the hands, then at the boy. “Happy family?” he guessed.
“Completely unplanned one,” Gladiolus said, ears splaying. “And if you’d asked me if I wanted to have a baby, I would have said I was far too young.”
“People on Terra have babies far younger than either of us,” Kristyl said, stirring cream into her coffee.
“It’s not about when other people think they’re ready,” Gladiolus exclaimed. “It was about us being ready!”
“We were ready the moment someone needed us.” Kristyl smiled at Vasiht’h. “You know how that goes.”
“I do,” Vasiht’h said. “But how did you know… what are you doing here? And how did that happen?”
“You did tell us several times that you worked on Starbase Veta,” Gladiolus pointed out. “Where’s your Eldritch anyway?”
“Retaking his licensing exam.”
“Which he failed… because… he came after you?” Kristyl guessed, and laughed. “Of course. What else? Your story continues to be like some unbelievable fairy tale, arii.”
Was he ‘arii’ to her? Hadn’t they earned that from one another, after surviving the storm? “I won’t deny it has its ridiculously dramatic moments.”
Gladiolus grinned. “Ridiculously romantic-dramatic.”
Vasiht’h laughed. “For people who are interested in seeing it that way, then… yes. I prefer to think of it as…” What did he think of it? “My very best friendship. My forever-friendship. Goddess-blessed.”
“Amen,” the Asanii murmured.
“So, your son… what happened to his family?” Vasiht’h said. “Hinichi are awfully clannish. I’m surprised he didn’t end up with some aunt or uncle?”
“That’s the thing,” Kristyl said with a frown. “They are clannish, and these particular Hinichi had disowned Brock and his father. Can you believe that? I thought disinheriting was something out of Earth’s ugly old past, but apparently some things are universal.”
“You notice she doesn’t take responsibility for disinheritage despite the laws of syllogistic inference.”
Kristyl wrinkled her nose. “Being cruel is a personal choice. I can blame them completely for it. Anyway, Brock’s father was one of the people who died in the storm, and when we found out that his family wasn’t coming for him, Gladdie and I volunteered to take him back home.”
“She volunteered,” Gladiolus said, scanning the menu. “I just went along because I always do.”
“And I especially wasn’t going to let her wander off after Tsera Nova,” Kristyl said. “We took Brock to his homeworld, which is a colony and not Hinichitii, and that’s where we met his family and his family wanted nothing to do with him. So… we decided to rehome him. With us.”
“And you’re all right with that?” he said to the Asanii.
“He needed a family,” Gladiolus said. She looked over the top of her menu. “You didn’t see him, those first few weeks. He was so lost. And the longer he spent with us, the more he just… unfolded.”
Vasiht’h looked from her to Kristyl. “I admit, I thought you two were young to be parents myself.”
Gladiolus snorted. “That’s not the half of it. Now she wants to open an orphanage.”
“You do?”
“Why not?” Kristyl said easily. “I have more money than God. What’s money for, if not to leave the world a better place?” She called, “Brock! Pancakes? Or bacon?”
The boy looked up and bared his teeth. “NOM.”
“Right, bacon,” Kristyl said. “Carnivores. No breadth in their diets.” She shook her head sadly.
“Technically he’s an omnivore like you,” Gladiolus said. “Human DNA, you know.”
“Still getting the blame for everything,” Kristyl told Vasiht’h. “It’s a crime against humanity.”
Vasiht’h chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll rise above it.”
They spent an agreeable hour there, eating the diner’s signature French toast, which was crusted in cocoa and sprinkled with cinnamon pecans. Brock had the bacon, messily but enthusiastically, before abandoning his plate to return to the playground where he was integrating well with the other kits. Vasiht’h hadn’t specialized in child psychology, but the fact that the boy wasn’t avoiding others was a good sign.
“So are the two—sorry three now—of you going to keep traveling?” Vasiht’h asked Gladiolus once they’d finished the last crumbs. Kristyl was on the playground, drifting after Brock. “I was never clear on what your plans were after your vacation.”
“That would be because we weren’t either,” Gladiolus replied. “But for now I think we’re going back to Earth. They could use the orphanage more than a Pelted world could. Or for all I know we’ll start that there and then go on to do other things. Kristyl’s mentioned those girls you told her about… maybe we’ll stop over to see them and give them money too.” She grinned. “I admit it’s fun to be the plus-one of someone rich.”
“Is it?” Vasiht’h asked, rueful.
“I love it!” Gladiolus chuckled. “I guess I could feel like I’m not contributing enough, but that assumes that money’s the only thing people bring to relationships. But it’s not. It’s just one of many possible things, and all it accomplishes is making sure the two of you are all right, and can do things you want to do. Since Kristyl’s got that covered, I figure my responsibilities are different.”
“Oh?” Vasiht’h asked, interested. “And what do you think your responsibilities are?”
Gladiolus looked at the other woman for a long time,
and her expression softened. “To love her,” she said finally, “and forgive her for the things she feels like she’s done, just by being born human. Because she does feel them. It’s why she jokes about it so much.” She glanced at Vasiht’h. “She’s a lot more complicated than she looks on the outside.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Oh no,” Gladiolus said, laughing. “Some of us are complicated where everyone can see it. That’s easy to handle. It’s the ones who keep their complications squirreled away on the inside that are hard.”
“Oh!” Vasiht’h exclaimed. And smiled, gentler. “Oh. Yes. I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
Gladiolus nodded, twirling a lock of her hair between her fingers. “This thing with the storm hurt her, a lot. Me too. We’ll be a long time figuring it out. When Brock’s family didn’t show up for him… and then when they wouldn’t take him, it was like something imploded. She’s a lot less exuberant now, which I miss. But she’s also a lot more… focused, and that’s… I can’t decide if it’s exciting or scary. Both. Because what couldn’t she do, now that she’s decided to do something?”
The thought of Kristyl on the loose in the Alliance with more money than a divinity and all her odd thought processes brought to bear on the task of making things better… “Yes. I can see that.”
“Whatever she’s going to do, I want to be there for the ride,” Gladiolus said. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”
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