her instruments 03 - laisrathera

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Reese sat abruptly on one of the benches scattered on what was left of the wall walk, on the battlement still intact enough to support them. So much to do. So much to fear, still. It was funny: she’d thought that not letting herself care about things would make the fear manageable, maybe even go away. But the fear never went away, whether she was enjoying her life or not. Closing her heart only meant she had no reward for living with it.

  With a sigh, Reese rose and looked over the wall into the courtyard. She could just see the glint of Bryer’s feathers amid the roses. How far back would he prune them, she wondered, and smiled. He could keep the whole garden if he wanted: an Eye-trained killer, now a noble groundskeeper. Would he bring a mate here from Phoenix-Nest and hatch a nest full of proper, tiny children? She imagined Irine’s kits pulling their tail-feathers and running away giggling and smiled.

  This was what she’d worked toward; to think she’d almost lost it because she’d been too afraid to admit to wanting it….

  “Hey, Reese!”

  She looked up, found Irine jogging toward her with Allacazam in her arms.

  “Here,” Irine said, handing the Flitzbe over. “One of the Swords on the ship brought him over. Said that he—that’s he the Sword, not he Allacazam—had a message, that she said, ‘yes’, and that you’d understand?”

  “Yeah,” Reese said, petting Allacazam’s fur. She sent a wordless query and received back a satisfied sound, like the hum of an a cappella quartet warming up. “I do. Thanks, Irine.”

  The tigraine eyed her. “Should I ask?”

  Reese grinned and put an arm around the other woman’s waist. “Let’s just say that after years of other people gambling on me, I’ve decided it’s time for me to start gambling on other people.”

  Irine rolled her eyes. “This is about Surela, isn’t it.”

  “And if it is?”

  The other woman shook her head. “You’re the boss.”

  Reese snorted. “Right. So that’s why whenever I told you people to do something you didn’t want to do, you found a way to talk me out of it, right?”

  “Well….”

  “Or gave me ideas that you made me think were mine but were actually yours, and then let me go on believing they were mine?”

  Irine looked up at the sky. “Well….”

  “Or outright badgered me when I was doing something stupid until I stopped doing it?”

  “It was for your own good,” Irine said, sagely.

  Reese started to retort and then paused. Chuckled and said, “You know, you’re right.” And grinned at the tigraine’s gape. “Come on. Let’s go talk about a wedding.”

  Finding her voice, Irine said, “So there’s going to be a wedding?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Have you proposed yet?”

  “We’ve been a little busy,” Reese said dryly.

  “Mmm. Might want to get around to that before you start sending invitations….”

  Reese sighed and smiled. “I’m in trouble when the Harat-Shar start making sense.”

  “We always make sense, by our standards. But yes, absolutely, let’s go talk weddings!”

  “Before we do, though….” Reese stopped, frowned. “Is the Sword still here?”

  “I don’t know,” Irine answered, one ear propped, the other sagging. “Probably? Why?”

  Reese pulled the dagger out of her boot and turned it in her hands. This one was plainer than the blade Hirianthial had given her in Ontine, but felt older than the one from the Alliance she’d lost on Kerayle: someone had used this one, and taken care of it. She traced the white leather girdling the hilt with a fingertip and nodded. A woman alone in a new world should have a weapon. Hirianthial would understand.

  She gave the dagger to Irine. “Give this to the Sword and tell him to bring it to Surela Laisrathera. A liege-gift, from her new lady.”

  “You’re going to lose another dagger?” Irine said, rueful, but she took it.

  “Not losing this time,” Reese said. “Giving.” She grinned a lopsided grin. “It’s not like I have any luck keeping them anyway, right?”

  Irine sighed and hugged her, but Reese could tell she was smiling.

  CHAPTER 27

  Liolesa hosted the fealty sessions in the mud of Jisiensire’s ashen fields, so lately turned for the graves. Beneath the pewter-gray sky with its oppressive clouds, she sat enthroned on a small bench padded with a blue velvet cushion, with her hands folded on her lap and her skirts arrayed around her; the grime streaked up their hems looked like a brackish embroidery, and made her seem as if her purity was rising out of the muck. The display grated on the raw nerves of the men who came to kneel before her, already abraded nearly past bearing by the hours of digging holes and setting not only bodies, but parts of bodies into them. Hirianthial had required them to try to match the pieces when they could. They often couldn’t, and would break into frustrated tears at their failures.

  There were some who cherished their resentments, and he marked those as men to watch in the future. But for the most part, the service had had the desired effect. The cold, the pathetic remains of children and women, the hard labor, all of it had bewildered them, worn them down. Liolesa’s stately regard, stern and distant as any matriarch’s, undid the majority of them completely. Their guilt made them hers.

  The effort of concentrating on each petitioner as he recited the loyalty oath—concentrating and not affecting—was exacerbated by Hirianthial’s own exhaustion. The damp cold was particularly enervating, and his knees and shoulders and wrists ached with it. Olthemiel was a welcome addition, standing watch over the Queen’s physical safety at her opposite shoulder, though Hirianthial thought he could stay an attacker faster than Olthemiel could. Even so, his mental faculties were tired. He was tired.

  /Not long now,/ Val offered from behind him, his voice colored with a gray softness.

  /I know./

  He felt rather than saw the younger man’s nod and applied himself to the next stranger to drop to his knees before his cousin.

  She was magnificent, Liolesa. A woman given to quick tempers, impatient with ignorance and stupidity and incompetence and often domineering, she was nevertheless invested with an air of command entirely owed to how far she looked into the future, and all she did to secure that future. Mistakes did not frighten her; inaction did. That assurance clung to her like a mantle, and Hirianthial watched her personally accept the allegiance of every single man Athanesin had put to the task of razing Jisiensire, knowing that they had but this one chance to prove themselves to her. Did they wreak such an atrocity again, their necks would meet a sword.

  They knew it, too.

  Afterwards, he took the group assigned to him and brought them to Lady Fassiana. The northern Galares had agreed to scatter the men amongst their numbers; it was not the best solution, but it was the only one they could all live with. Literally, in the case of the criminals. He was watching the last of them follow their new mistress toward the Alliance’s Pads when Liolesa joined him.

  “That’s done,” he said at last, wondering at the satisfaction in her aura. It seemed too soft a sunrise gold for the work they’d put in, no matter how glad he might be that it was behind them.

  “So it is, and hopefully for good and true.” She nodded. “Gather up your priest, then, cousin. There’s a thing I’d like to reward you with.” She held up a finger. “And do not tell me ‘I have done nothing worthy of reward.’ Or I will set your mortal family on you.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You are cruel.”

  “Only to those what cling too hard to an improper humility,” she replied airily. Was she? She was pleased, truly pleased. He wondered what had inspired her mood. “Meet me at the Pad.”

  Accordingly, he found Val and presented himself to her, and together they crossed onto the Moonsinger. There she led them to the lift.

  /What’s this about?/

  /I have not the first notion. But one does not argue with a Quee
n./

  /Even if she’s your cousin?/

  Hirianthial eyed him, amused despite his fatigue. /Especially so./

  On the bridge, Liolesa joined Solysyrril in front of the enormous holoscreen: tall Eldritch, pale-hair wound on her head, pale nape of the neck exposed, alongside the much shorter white Seersa, her white hair brushing the shoulders of her dark uniform. “Is it about time?”

  “It is, and I still don’t know how you figured it out so quickly,” Soly said, bemused.

  “I’m good at guessing.”

  Hirianthial shook his head a little at the glint of merriment that danced over Lia’s aura at the demurring. ‘Good at guessing.’ He supposed that was one way to characterize her talent for pattern-sensing.

  “Can we see them yet?”

  “We can if we magnify the image… they’ve been coasting in-system for long enough. Lune, will you put it up for us?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A series of pin-pricks in the tank swelled into focus, became an enormous vessel haloed in four smaller ships, barely large enough to be seen against its flanks.

  “Lord and Lady,” Val said. “What is that thing? A floating moon?”

  “That,” Liolesa said, “is Hirianthial’s cousin, Lesandurel.”

  “Did he buy a colony ship, then?” Hirianthial asked, startled.

  “That’s a builder/wrecker, actually, Lord Hirianthial.” Soly reached a hand into the display, grasping the ship and pulling a glowing blueline of it onto a different part of the tank. “Used for putting together other ships, or space stations. Mostly engineering and industrial capacity onboard, but a lot of storage, too. You could park it in orbit and have the beginnings of a very useful manufacturing platform… which I’m guessing is the intention.”

  “Did that use up the Meriaen fortune, then?” Hirianthial asked his cousin.

  “Nine generations of investment off-world can accrue a great deal of money,” Liolesa said. “I’d be surprised if your cousin is penniless even now.”

  “What about the other ships?” Val asked, stepping closer to examine them.

  “Three of them are the couriers run by the Queen’s Tams,” Liolesa said. “The last a personal transport. Probably Lesandurel’s.”

  In their tongue, Hirianthial said, “You have brought a Jisiensire home, now that you are sending most of them away.”

  “Somewhat,” Liolesa replied in kind, the words cautiously neutral in gray. “I doubt Lesandurel will want to stay.”

  “But?”

  “But who can know every pattern?” she said. “Perhaps he will marry and start a homeworld branch of the Jisiensires to replace the ones who are leaving to colonize our new world.”

  Val glanced over his shoulder and said, “And Lord Hirianthial doesn’t count as a branch of the Jisiensires, is that it?”

  “That would depend entirely on him,” Liolesa said, unfazed. In Universal, she said, “Commander Anderby? How long until they arrive, do you think?”

  “Oh, two hours, maybe?” Soly glanced at Lune, who inclined her head. “Give them two hours. You can talk to them now, if you want. We’ve got the repeaters in-system.”

  Liolesa grinned. “Yes, let’s.”

  “Hail them, Lune, and put them up when they answer.”

  The call went out, was received, was responded to. Part of the holo-screen blanked, reformed into an astonishing image of the wide bridge of a ship. Lesandurel was there, in a chair near the center seat but not in it, and he was surrounded—surrounded—by foxes. Golden Tam-illee and ruddy, milk-white and black, pelts gray and silver and sorrel; ears tipped in black or blond or unmarked; flat faces or more animal ones, green eyes and blue and golden and orange and brown….

  He was not the only Eldritch in this sea of foxishness: Urise was comfortably resting in one of the high-backed chairs lining the edge of the bridge, beaming, looking—again—as if he had been merely transplanted from one seat to another.

  “Meriaen,” Liolesa said, amused. “You come in good time, and with gifts.”

  “As you see, my Lady. We are home.”

  “And you!” Hirianthial exclaimed to Urise.

  The old priest grinned. “These are some fine young creatures your House cousin has yoked to his banner.” The two Tam-illee beside him looked down at his head with expressions so merry Hirianthial could almost sense their auras dancing across the distance. “It has been a most rewarding excursion.”

  “We bring you the materials for our first orbital station,” Lesandurel said, more formally, “as well as enough materiel to improve and enlarge the base on the moon. The three couriers came as escort, and my own personal ship I brought for when I make my inevitable escapes back to civilization.” He pressed a hand to his breast and inclined his head. “No offense intended, my Queen. But our world is a touch backwards for someone accustomed to the Alliance.”

  “No offense taken, since you have come bearing the tools by which we might begin to address that,” she said. “When you reach orbit, do come over that we might discuss the details?”

  “It would be my pleasure, my Lady.”

  “And mine.” She smiled. “Welcome home.”

  “Thank you. Meriaen out.”

  “And thank you, Commander, for this.”

  “My duty, Your Majesty.”

  Liolesa nodded and turned to the two Eldritch, returning to their tongue. “You need not stay, though at some point you should greet your kinsman, cousin. It need not be soon. There are things he and I need to discuss that will be of interest to you, but you have your own duties first.”

  “Do I?” he asked.

  She smiled a little. “See to the succession, cousin.”

  That was as plain a dismissal as he was ever to receive from her, and as far as she would command him in matters of the heart. He smiled faintly and bowed to her, then left with Val at his heels.

  “She always boss you around like that?” Val asked, switching to Universal—for its informality, Hirianthial guessed, and didn’t blame him. The intimacy afforded by their own tongue seemed limited in its use, given the far greater intimacy of the occasional mindtouches they exchanged.

  “She has a commanding personality.”

  Val snorted. “Now there’s as neat-footed a dodge as I’ve heard in a while, and I’ve been living on this bloody planet all my life.”

  Hirianthial laughed. “It’s fine. She would not be Liolesa, if she was not also Queen.”

  “Mmm. So now what?”

  Two hours, she’d said, until Lesandurel arrived… and no need to rush his return. How strange it was to finally be free, to have a respite from responsibility and ugly duty. How to fill those hours?

  How else?

  “Now,” Hirianthial said, “I think I will allow you to trim my hair, as you promised.”

  Reese was in the great hall when Hirianthial stepped over the Pad. And because he stopped to lift his head and feel the age and weight of the place, she looked at him, could look at him… and this time, didn’t see the fancy clothes she could never have afforded, and the grace that used to make her feel awkward, and the gravitas that had humbled her, when being humbled had been a recipe for resentment.

  Instead, she saw the lines around his wine-colored eyes, and let herself love him for the loss and hardship he’d lived through; her gaze glanced off the cropped hair and followed the length of the dangle the crew had made for him, and she was grateful that he’d allowed them into his heart. She let the tastes linger as if she could savor them with her tongue: what it felt to be willing to be vulnerable, and even better, to trust that her vulnerability would be cherished, protected. Her skin prickled, and the nerves in them seemed to pulse in time with her heart.

  It made her realize that, as usual, the damned great hall was too cold. Heaters, first thing.

  “Theresa,” he said.

  She smiled, shy. “Hirianthial. Welcome to Rose Point.”

  “It is well and truly a castle,” he said, his eyes lifting
to the rafters. “I have not seen one. There is stonework elsewhere, but only in the cathedrals and churches.”

  “Would you like a tour?” she asked. “We’ve done a pretty good job of mapping the place, though it’s a bit of a walk. It’s pretty big.”

  “I would be delighted.”

  Should she hold out her hand? She wanted to, and didn’t; wanted the moment between their life before and the life to come to stretch out into this liminal space, where she could live with the anticipation of something good.

  Would he understand? She glanced at him and found him smiling one of those little, quiet smiles, head lowered and eyes on the floor as he folded his arms behind his back.

  Of course he did. Reese smiled too. “I’ll get my coat.”

  They walked, then. On battlements combed by the brisk wind rolling in off the bitter cold of the ocean. Through drafty halls, empty of anything but echoes and memories and the dust now disturbed by the passing of alien feet. Up stairwells and into towers with their stunning views of a countryside shrouded in pale grey slush. She didn’t know the castle as well as she one day would, but already the stones spoke to her. Reese dragged a hand along the inner walls as she paced them, sympathizing with their strength and their sturdiness and their desire to keep everything out so everything in could be safe.

  They came at last to the riotous spill of roses that crawled over the shattered tower, where the smell of the sea gamboled unfettered through the ingress, cutting the heavy perfume of the blooms with a sharp, briny scent. The sky fell toward the sea in a gradient of tarnished silver, softly lit steel, pewter gray, extending all the way to the faint, tired color of the sand. White petals framed the view, and the brambles, black and cruelly thorned, curved their talons close.