her instruments 03 - laisrathera

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Everything about Rose Point made sense to Reese. It seemed ridiculous to say so about a place so wan when she’d grown up beneath a sky the color of butterscotch, on a world with soil ruddy as blood and rust, but that didn’t stop it from being true.

  “Come summer,” Hirianthial said, “it will have color.” His regard lingered on the vista, and then he surprised her by turning and holding out a hand. “Shall we go see the strand?”

  “The wha—oh, you mean the beach? Sure?” She slipped her gloved fingers into his and let him help her over the tumbled stones, and then they were descending the short distance to the shore, leaving bootprints in the damp sand. His longer fingers were curved around hers, loose but present. It was the sole point of warmth in her whole body, and it made her feel the numbness of her face and the ache of the cold air when it flowed into her lungs.

  Now and then, the little prayer bell Kis’eh’t had sewn onto the bottom of his hair dangle tinkled, high-pitched against the low rush of the surf.

  How to start this discussion? It had to be started. She had no idea how to start. “Can… I ask something?”

  “Anything.”

  Did he mean that? Blood and freedom. Reese swallowed, then continued. “Your wife. What was she like?”

  “Ah….” He looked up at the sky, but he didn’t loose her hand, nor did he stop walking. With her. “Laiselin was… a sweetness. A very gentle spirit. Kind and open-handed. She loved to sing, and embroider while listening to poetry.”

  Reese could see that as if he’d drawn her a picture: a young Hirianthial sitting in front of a fire, reciting verses of love to a blushing bride at work on her sewing.

  “I loved her very much,” Hirianthial said at last. “My Butterfly, my first wife.”

  His first wife. Reese tried not to shiver.

  “You’re cold,” he said, gentle. “Let’s walk back.”

  She followed because it was really was colder out on the shore, without the castle walls to bar the wind.

  “Now I ask?”

  “Sure.” She smiled, nervous. “Anything.”

  “Why your change of heart recently? It seemed… abrupt.”

  That was a fair question. She walked alongside him, concentrating on matching his speed with her much shorter stride while the answer seeped up into her head. “It’s… not going to be an easy thing to listen to.”

  Hirianthial glanced at her, somber. “We must become accustomed to the occasional ache of communication.”

  “Even when you can pull the answers out of my head?”

  “Because I will not pull the answers out of your head,” he answered. A little smile. “Because I respect your head, Theresa, and I would rather you advance your thoughts to me because I have justly earned them, not because you feel I will have them from you with your permission or not.”

  She shuddered and rubbed at her arm with her free hand. “You say things like that, and it makes me feel like….”

  When she didn’t finish, he prompted, “Like…?”

  Reese laughed a little. “Like we’re in one of my books.” But better, she thought. “So, the ache of communication. Right.” She steeled herself with a long breath. “There are several parts to it. The easiest part is that… it’s hard to sustain that much pique. I lived on anger, but it’s the kind of fuel that uses you up even when it’s pushing you forward. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “So, I was getting tired of being angry at you. Especially since you kept not giving me reasons. I mean, you gave me reasons, but they were accidental. Even I couldn’t keep being angry about accidents, and the fact that those things made me angry because they revealed my fears and flaws….” Reese focused on the spray of rocks they were approaching. “The only reason that mattered so much to me was because I didn’t want you to think less of me. I might have the emotional intelligence of a small rock, but even I can see some things when they slam me in the face often enough.”

  He didn’t answer for long enough that she glanced at him, fretful, only to find him hiding a smile against his fist. Noticing her look, he said, “A small rock.”

  “I know. Not even enough for a big one.” She smiled too, then chuckled and shook her braids back. “Anyway. I ran out of energy to be angry, probably because I was using so much of it up resisting you… and don’t give me the look you’re about to give me. You had to know you were attractive to me.”

  His snort made him sound much younger than his years. She liked it, that he let himself sound normal, prone to frustration and amusement. “I knew nothing of the sort.”

  “Really?” Reese stopped, pulling him to a halt and lifting her brows. “I read stories about fairy princes and sleep in lacy nightgowns!”

  “Storied princes are not much like flesh and blood Eldritch,” he said. “As you yourself pointed out, now and then.”

  “No. You’re far more attainable for one thing. And far more interesting, because you’re real.” Reese let herself reach up, pull the hair dangle over his shoulder and onto his chest. Her fingers trailed over the bits of metal and glass and wood the crew had braided into it. “You’re more than a cipher in a fantasy. You can be loved.”

  “Am I?” he asked, softly.

  She brought his hand to her cheek and rested her face on his palm until she felt his hand curve around her face. Something in his eyes relaxed: the lines around them, maybe. She kissed the inside of that hand, tasting the leather of the gloves and the sea-salt dampness that clung to them. Then she pulled him back into motion.

  “Seeing you in that tent,” Reese said finally, before she could lose her nerve. “That broke me. I had no right to be broken by it when you were the one that got hurt. I’d seen you in a prison cell, but unbowed by imprisonment. Resigned, maybe, but still sitting straight. I’d seen you half-dead from attack, from being fought by pirates and being howled at by dying aliens. And you still had a dignity. It made me feel like… all these setbacks you had, they were all some game that you could float above.” Her heart was racing; admitting these things made her dislike herself. But she kept going before she could convince herself to stop. “All those things… they were like inconveniences, and I knew you weren’t putting on some show specifically to make me feel like I was less than you, and there just to keep dragging you out of trouble, but I didn’t understand then that… that stoicism under pressure is how you cope.”

  His hand remained in hers, but Reese could sense the tension in his fingers. “On Kerayle,” she said, “I saw you lose it completely. And then it finally hit me that there wasn’t any game here, that you weren’t playing at something just to watch the mortals react. That it was as real to you as it was to me. That you could get hurt, just like me. That you could be shattered. And the terror of finding that out….” She stopped walking entirely, because she was surprised to discover she was fighting not to cry. Pushing the words out past the trembling in her chest, she finished, “It made me realize how awful I’d been to you, and how stupid it was to treat you the way I’d been treating you.”

  When Reese was sure of her feet, she resumed walking, and he went with her, quiet until at last he said, “I would never have thought any good would come out of that encounter.”

  “You found out about your power there,” she pointed out.

  “Any unqualified good.” A wry look, not quite a smile. “Becoming heir to Corel’s legacy was not a choice I would have made, given the choice.”

  “You used it to help save the world.”

  He shook his head and didn’t answer.

  They reached the remains of the tower and climbed over the lowest pile of stones until Hirianthial found an unbroken length of them, enough to serve as impromptu bench. He sat and stretched out one leg, keeping the other curled under. She joined him, sitting hip to hip, her eyes moving toward the sea. He was warm, and near, and that sufficed… except there were still things between them that needed saying.

  When she spoke, she surprised her
self by choosing none of them. “Why ‘Butterfly’?”

  “Ah?” A smile. “Ah. We have a tendency toward many names. That was the song name I chose for Laiselin, because she was the unexpected beauty that graced my life. Song names are thus… things chosen from symbol and myth.”

  “And everyone gets one?”

  “Everyone who is loved by someone who wishes to bestow one,” Hirianthial said. “We also have sweet names, or nursery names, or… milk names. I do not know how I would translate it. Shorter than our full names, usually, and employed only by intimates. Mine is Hiran. You could call me that.”

  She blushed. “It seems so… informal.”

  This laugh was a good laugh. There was no memory of sorrow in it. “It’s supposed to be. We have titles and family names and House names and all of it would be unbearably long and exhausting if we only used them. To switch between those names, and the formal names, and the song names out of myth, and the milk names… that is part of how we signal our relationships with others.”

  Reese started. “Wait, was that what all the ‘my lady’ stuff was about? And then Captain, and then Theresa, and I’d tell you to call me Reese, or at least Captain, but it felt like you were always switching from one to the other….”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “You understand.”

  “You almost never call me Reese,” she added.

  “Reese is your very informal name,” Hirianthial replied. He traced a gloved finger along her jaw. “But it has a quickness to its intimacy. I will call you Reese when we are making love. Theresa most other times. If you permit.”

  Could he feel how hot her cheeks were? The idea of being in bed with him…! She said, “And will I end up with a song name?”

  “Certainly, as you are loved.”

  That gave her the shivers the mere thought of bedding him hadn’t. “What do you think it’ll be?”

  He studied her face—no, she thought, he was seeing her in his own life, his wine-colored eyes unfocused, turned on some inward memory. “I think,” he said at last, “I will call you my Courage.”

  She couldn’t take much more of this. “I’m going to die long before you.”

  “Barring any accident,” he agreed, quiet.

  “I’m prickly and I act out when I’m afraid, which is often.”

  “Because you have not felt safe,” he said. “Perhaps that will pass.”

  “It might not!”

  “And if it does not, I will still love you.”

  She said, desperate, “I’ll have your children, and you’ll have to raise them without me…!”

  “Then at least I will have them to remember you by,” he whispered. “Theresa… Reese. My Courage, my Lady, captain of the ship where I had my resurrection. You know my feelings. You know your own. Will you accept them, though?”

  “Marry me,” she blurted.

  He paused, startled. And then he laughed, and that was a good laugh, a great laugh, and she laughed with him as he framed her face in his long hands and kissed her. When he let her come up for air, he brushed his nose against hers and said, smiling, “How could I turn down such an elegant proposal.”

  She smacked his wrist, but she was blushing. “Is that a ‘yes’? I want to hear it to be sure.”

  “Yes,” Hirianthial said, smiling, resting his brow against hers. “Yes, I will marry you. Yes.”

  “Kiss me again?” she asked, wistful.

  “You could kiss me yourself, if you wished… there is no reason you can’t.”

  “Fine,” Reese said, and tried it, and that was good too, really very good. Good enough that when they parted he rested a finger on her lips.

  “Not here,” he said. “And not like this.”

  “I guess a cold wet hunk of rock in the middle of winter is a bad place to lose your virginity,” Reese said with a weak smile.

  “We will do it properly,” he said. “When we have a bed, and I can do it right.” That expression… she’d never seen it on his face. Merriment, and a sort of smoky self-confidence that hinted at a lot more experience than she had in this arena, even with her very active imagination for company. Her entire body seemed to go liquid, wobble. “Let me do it properly for you.”

  “All right,” she managed, her voice gone husky. “But only the first time. I hear ‘proper’ gets kind of boring in bed.”

  Hirianthial laughed and kissed her knuckles. “Oh! We will have fun, you and I.”

  “Strange thought!” She grinned. “But speaking of fun, or at least, not fun… let’s get inside? It really is cold, and you’re getting stiff.”

  “Am I?” he asked, startled.

  “Well, you keep shifting a little, like you’re trying to stretch your legs….”

  Hirianthial chuckled. “And here I’d thought Corel’s powers so much finer an instrument than the faculties of a normal being.”

  Reese tugged on him. “You should know better by now. Come on.”

  They experimented with walking arm in arm, and decided that would take practice, given their disparate heights. They settled for hand-holding, strolling toward the keep. Hirianthial stopped them halfway there to pick one of the roses and hand it to her, and she thanked him, blushing, thinking that she had never believed she’d be the recipient of roses of any kind… hadn’t believed it even when Val had given her one as a challenge to be willing to reach for things, risking hurt and failure, because they were worth it. And here she was, with the flower in her hand, and now that she had one, the practicalities of it ran away with her. Should she put it in a vase? If she did, the thorns probably needed trimming… she’d never really thought through how strange a gift a flower was. Picking it meant it would die.

  But then, everything died, didn’t it? And there was no reason not to enjoy it, while you had it. Glancing toward the Eldritch, Reese caught him considering her and knew, somehow, that’s how the gift had been meant. His own pledge to her, and a reminder to them both. To live in the love of the moment, and make it last while they had it.

  She smiled at him, and accepted it.

  Holding the door open for her, Hirianthial asked, “Will you give me a song name?”

  “Yes,” Reese said, after a moment. “But I’ll need time to think up a good one.”

  He smiled and kissed the crown of her head, and they went into the castle together.

  The weeks that followed took Hirianthial frequently from Rose Point, and this he endured because he knew the situations that warranted his absences were extraordinary. How often would his cousin be employed in setting up an empire, after all? He did not begrudge her the questions she put to him, for while she was savvy about the Alliance—was, in fact, more savvy about financial and industrial matters—she did not have his recent experience traveling it. He had spent almost sixty years abroad on various planets, had dipped in and out of several environments while doing so: the university, medicine, and then the itinerant lifestyle of a trader. His insights when blended with hers were more productive.

  He accompanied her to the isle where the heir had remained sequestered, and freed the Chancellor and Bethsaida from their self-imposed exile there. Bethsaida remained unsuitable for her previous position; her nervousness riddled her aura with flaws, like brittle glass. Liolesa put her to work traveling to the churches and convents of the countryside, making a census of the clergy in preparation for the changes in policy the Queen planned in the wake of Baniel’s power-play. It was Lesandurel’s Tams she put to work in Ontine, cleaning out the debris of the battle and modernizing the building as much as possible. Hirianthial found himself walking the halls in winter and marveling that he did not need a coat, and that the water closets were no longer worthy of that name; even Kis’eh’t proclaimed them proper bathrooms, and expressed gratitude that someone had finally seen sense about the renovation.

  The flux of the political map remained troublesome. Scattering Asaniefa shocked the remaining Houses antagonistic to Liolesa’s aims into wary retreat, but did not dissuade t
hem from their views. Hirianthial thought that a few decades would accustom them sufficiently to the conveniences of the Alliance to prevent any uprising as obvious as the one Surela had spearheaded, but Liolesa remained unconvinced. He accused her of cynicism; she accused him of letting his forthcoming marriage fill his head with thoughts of unicorns and roses.

  That he admitted to with good grace, because it was almost certainly true.

  Reese he saw, though not as much as he preferred. She too was busy: renovating Rose Point, finding the best use of the gifts Fleet had bestowed, buying up supplies for the various industries she wanted her House to oversee in order to maintain its profitability. The Queen had awarded her seed money to furnish the House, and this amounted to more money than Reese had ever handled in her life. She confessed to him at some point, bewildered, that had that not been startling enough, she’d never had capital before, and she had no idea what to do with quite so much.

  “Build me a hospital,” he said.

  She’d glanced at him, thoughtful, then grinned. “Get me an equipment list.”

  He found the time to make one, and sent it along with suggestions for Val’s school of talents. He also sent Val, once Liolesa had finished with him, and Belinor, who was now apparently inseparable from the former renegade. On seeing the new high priest of the Lord, Hirianthial was amused at the younger man’s hangdog expression.

  “Ended up in charge, did you.”

  “All I wanted was to wander around and be of some modest use….”

  “Congratulations. Now you may wander and be of significant use.”

  Val had snorted and gone on, over the Pad and to Firilith where Reese awaited him with plans for a chapterhouse, and Belinor awaited him with the torment of his conservative wisdom. Hirianthial thought that would work out well. Val needed a Urise of his own, and if Belinor had granted himself that privilege, well… no one had gainsaid him.