Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

“Yes. Well, I suppose I am—notable. But, my fathers. It isn’t just my mother’s consort. They are supposed to be my fathers in, in—”

  He did move this time, his face suddenly alive with more than interest. “They tell the story,” he said. “When you were born, you had two shadows. Both your fathers’ faces. I always thought it was something to do with—” He gestured to the qherrique. But there was no wariness in that movement, no revulsion. If he saw me as a specimen, and there had been Dhasdeini scribes, I knew, who would have liked nothing better than to dissect me, to him I was a live specimen: a thinking, feeling being.

  “Yes,” I said gratefully, relaxing into the speed of his understanding, so like my fathers’ own. “My mother says that. If it could choose to be—reborn—with a human—” I looked to be sure he understood all I meant—“it could choose to have two fathers as well.”

  He had understood. His eyes went once to the qherrique and back, and then the momentary sadness passed. “But when you were born,” he said softly, “your mother was so pleased.”

  “Yes.” I could almost smile this time, remembering with Two’s memories as well as his. “So I don’t really care if I have one blood-father or two, and if anyone else wants to worry about it, they can.”

  He had been watching me closely all the time. Whatever he read from that last sentence, his eyes narrowed a little. Then he said abruptly, “You don’t look like them. Any of them. Your father Alkhes,” it came without a stumble, “his hair is much blacker, and his skin is white. You have the Amberlight skin, but your hair is straight. And your father Sarth’s is lighter. Yours is like—black coffee. With lights of gold. You don’t have your mother’s nose, either. When you move or speak, sometimes I can see all three of them. Just the turn of a phrase. Or the shape of your cheekbone at a certain angle. But that is not you. In the end, you are someone else. I don’t know who that someone is, but it is not them. Even the sum of them is not you.”

  Nobody in Iskarda, not even my mother, had ever seen so far into my heart. I stood with a feeling of enlargement, of surprised recognition, of a gratitude close to joy. Such as a riddle, given life, might feel at being finally fathomed. Rightly known.

  He gave me a diffident little smile and another gesture, this time pure Dhasdein: I have over-stepped, and been presumptuous. Pardon me.

  “Tell me, if you will, about your fathers? Your mother’s consort? Was that not part of her, her plans for change?”

  It was a deflection, a mannerly ward for my feelings. Old news, too. Yet despite the newly restrained manner, he sounded genuinely interested. And still, despite the subject, without prurience.

  “You mean,” I said, “the plan to end marriage? As it was in Amberlight?”

  The corners of that long, usually governed mouth winced a little, but he nodded.

  “No more men’s towers? No more—losing—firstborn sons? And men, as well as women, able to marry or, or have more partners, as they wish?”

  The spark of interest had brightened. “Has it worked?”

  “Not really.” I could not help echoing my mother’s disgust. “There aren’t towers, or any more sons lost. But even the young women just want to share one man between two or three of them, or marry a man and keep a partner, but not allow him one. Except my sister Tez’s consort, it’s all just like before!”

  He was laughing. Openly, shaken clean out of manners and wariness and composure, a soft but lung-deep burst of laughter that warmed me like spring rain.

  “Ah, damis, seen from Dhasdein, all of that is change!”

  He caught himself, and managed the sketch of a bow. “Forgive me. I only meant . . .”

  “It is unimportant,” Two said.

  He heard the difference instantly. His eyes went wide and my own heart cringed. Now he knows how different I really am. Now he’ll be put off, or shocked.

  Or worse, I would not let my heart say, afraid.

  I put my own chin up and stood waiting to meet my fate.

  His eyes flicked once to the qherrique and back. He drew a sharp little breath. Then he said, “Who was that?”

  Not, What. Who. Suddenly my quaking heart swelled with more than relief.

  “That was Two,” I said.

  “Two?” Then his whole face lit. “The qherrique? It, you—she? can talk as well?”

  “Two. Just Two.” I could have laughed aloud from simple happiness. “He, she, it, doesn’t work. Say, She, if you want. Two, because we are two. And Too, as well as me.”

  He actually took a step forward, his eyes shining, still with that candid curiosity welcome as a companion’s touch. “And Two? Is Two the qherrique?”

  “We think so,” I said.

  “That is—that is most wonderful.” I could have opened like a flower, at the focus of that warmth. “Tell me, has she—” suddenly he waved his hands in a sort of frustration, trying to look past me and at me at once—“Two, how do I talk to you? Or do I talk to, to,” he visibly drew the name back, “to Chaeris?”

  “You talk to me,” I said. “Two is me. Or I’m her. When Two wants, she’ll say things I miss.”

  “Oh.” He could get worlds in a syllable. Comprehension, eagerness, excitement far beyond simple interest. “Tell me then, Two—no, Chaeris. When did you first know—Two—was there?”

  “As soon as I began knowing.” I could not remember a time otherwise. “She was there before that, of course. I just wasn’t old enough to tell.”

  His eyes told me he was envisioning a life with no possible chance of solitude. And its more amazing obverse, a companionship one would never want to lose.

  “And,” he visibly struggled over questions’ choice. “How does it work? Do you feel Two, like an arm, or an eye, or is there one place where—she—stays?”

  Questions posed since I could string words together, as my close kin or our own physicians tried to fathom the enigma in their midst. I had no time to consider how readily the answers came for him.

  “It seems more like something we, I, carry in the blood. Everywhere and nowhere. What I feel, Two feels. What I see, Two sees. Two just has memories, lots more memories. All the memories, like this seed had.” I did not have to reach out to the qherrique behind me. “Everything it, they, we brought from Amberlight.”

  His face opened in pure amazement. Almost faintly, he said, “All?”

  He had seen the seed, Two remembered, when my mother came back from the Source. He too understood what it would mean, to call on Two’s resources, and see back to the beginning of Amberlight. To the moment when a human first bespoke qherrique.

  This time when his gaze returned to me it held longing doubled, tripled. More than longing. Unfulfillable, unkillable desire.

  Two flashed an image past me and as suddenly I understood. My mother with my father Sarth, somewhere in outdoor dark. My mother saying, with wonder in her own voice, “You’re a philosopher, Sarth.” Adding, softly, “That means, you don’t need to believe things, you need to know.”

  And Therkon was a philosopher too. Just as for Two and me, his instinct was to learn things. That, not embarrassment, had unlocked his shield at this encounter’s very first. The pure acquisition of new knowledge gave him joy, the need was a hunger in his heart.

  But unlike my father, he was a crown prince of Dhasdein.

  I saw the deer again, dark and beautiful, and turning, always turning, in the confines of a net.

  “I could show you,” I said.

  “Two will do it.” I actually took a step forward, when he blinked. “For some people, we can transmit. Like my mother, with the seed, for Tanekhet.” I bit down hard on, I want you to be one of them. “Just let me try.”

  Carried away by his desire, the philosopher had already answered, Yes. He actually lifted a hand before the crown prince caught up. And after him, the man.

  The way his stance, hi
s eyes changed, was a southerly down my back. I bit hard to cover the tremble in my lip.

  He had seen. His own face replied. He made me a grave half-bow, philosopher and prince at once. “Lady Chaeris, there is nothing I should like better. For myself.”

  Cold reality was returning, priorities first. “Your troublecrew wouldn’t like it,” I said.

  He went to say, Yes, and then, caught by truth, No. Then he said, diffident but determined, “Lady Chaeris, I am a stranger. And you know I have heard . . . how . . . how Two . . .”

  “Oh, Mother. That was long ago. Two knows better now. Two only sparks when we’re really upset, or stressed, or—it would be all right!”

  He did pause. Then he said, more diffidently, “They told me—the first time. Your own father. Alkhes saw you on the cliff here. Almost over the cliff. He ran and caught you and the—and Two—his arm was useless for three days.”

  “We were young then! Just learning to move! The old qherrique was anchored, even the seed they just carried about. But I, we can walk, Two was so excited—” In his face wonder fought with doubt, but not hard enough. “We just wanted to measure the drop! We were going to climb down, far enough to guess. My father didn’t understand, he was terrified, and he . . .”

  I had to stop. The image of my father’s shock, the pain, the way he had carried his arm in that sling, was graven too deep. I hung my head in our common shame, struggling to suppress the tears.

  He had taken his own quick forward step. Stopped. Silence again, stretching painfully, wider and colder, as the companionship ebbed away. I had imagined him more than a philosopher. And after all, he was no different to anyone else.

  I did hear him draw in his breath. And the change in his voice as he said, “Lady Chaeris?”

  I looked up. The light had left his face, but the philosopher remained. Sober now, with all the ruler’s wariness, and the man’s simple caution. Steeling himself, however knowledge and commonsense protested, not to be afraid.

  He said, “I—we—could try.”

  His face told me what mine had said. He produced a little smile. Half shy, half impudent. The man, pleased to have pleased me. The philosopher, cocking his thumb at rules.

  I reached my hand out. In a moment, his came to my touch.

  * * * *

  When I opened my fingers it was the philosopher who looked back at me, dazzled and delighted, and still distant as a man finding himself in love. Like his, my eyes still held the pale, distant winter sky, the Amberlight hillside vacant of Houses or citadel: the face of Amanazar.

  It must have been another thirty heartbeats before he realized I had not let go.

  He looked down quickly at our hands. His eyes flashed up with all the other reflexes jerked awake and I shut my fingers as lightly as I could and said, “Two would like a favor. If you please.”

  The old childhood phrase half-disarmed him. His fingers relaxed a little. Then the prince inclined his head, an unconditional, imperial assent.

  I said, “Two wants to learn you.” I held on at the twitch of his wrist. “There’s never been anyone from Dhasdein here. All we know of it is, is second-hand. We, I, just thought . . .”

  He had been startled, far enough to show the struggle of shock and some form of amusement, and very imperial affront. You want, the arch of his chin demanded, to learn Dhasdein from me?

  “Well, after all, you are the Prince!”

  The affront dissolved in an almost helpless laugh. “Ah, my lady.” Then he became somebody quite new, a practiced, more than practiced courtier. “Such a petitioner, who could refuse?”

  He smiled into my eyes with such blatant charm I almost recoiled. In the pause he glanced swiftly over a shoulder, head cocked. Listening. All prince again, seeking what we both ought to have expected. Voices, troublecrew challenges, thud of feet. Gauging, from their absence, how much longer we might stretch this magic interlude.

  Before he turned back to me and asked gravely, “What must I do?”

  “Uh. Ah—could you, um, sit down?”

  He did splutter then. But he also disposed himself with grace’s brevity on the nearest handy rock. The sun had come further toward afternoon. The inclining light flashed across his eyes, far darker than the usual Amberlight bronze or brown, the silky sheen and the flare of jewels in his hair. Raising his brows in something that was not quite regal hauteur, he looked expectantly in my face.

  One stride had me so close he suppressed a recoil: Two was rapaciously eager for so much wealth. But it was an echo of memory, something unexplained about Zuri and Sarth, that sent my hands first to his hair’s thillian clip.

  The pin came out and I drew it carefully clear. We were eye to eye now, and I read the flicker of expressions, doubt, a certain alarm, something that, in an Outland woman, Two would have called modesty flouted, if not outraged. He kept still, deliberately, as I palmed the clip and two-handed, began to spread out his hair.

  Undone, it was longer than I had thought, almost down to the end of his shoulderblades. But it was the texture that fascinated us, as silky but far lighter than my father Sarth’s, with no sign of his slight curl. It hung over my fingers in skein upon skein, slipping, slithering, darkly glistening as some fragile net.

  Therkon had grown still. When I looked up, he was watching me, as fascinated as Two.

  I came a little closer, so my upright thigh crossed close to his. With the back of my free hand I did as Two wanted. I smoothed my knuckles very lightly down his cheek.

  He almost jumped. I did hear his breathing jerk but I was all but swallowed in Two’s response, greedy as qherrique feeding on heat. His skin was smooth, with an underlying roughness I had felt before, on my fathers’ faces, a shaven man’s hint of beard. But the bones, the bones of that bold jaw and cheek were entirely different.

  I drew my knuckles right down his jawbone to the chin, and up. He quivered all over, as a truly tuned string does when its neighbour is struck. I let the pads of my fingertips slip over his temple, the bridge of that arrogant nose, back to the startlingly delicate framework of his ear. Over his forehead, Two absorbing every detail and dimension as water melts into sand. Along an eyebrow, then with a finger under his chin, tilting his eyes to mine.

  His tension was part incipient affront, part something else. His breath had quickened, his eyes dilated. When I looked into their depths the oak-water irises had almost vanished. It was darkness, entire and absolute, that looked back.

  Two knew that look, if I did not. Our thighs brushed and he gave one quick jerk. Then Two leant over and touched his mouth with mine.

  His breath met mine in an uncontrollable gasp and his hands instinctively went to grasp my hips. In the same moment he tried to let go, to pull away, and Two made an imperative noise and clamped my own hands over his.

  Whatever he or I might have wanted, Two gave us no choice. She slid my tongue along his lips, making him half-gasp again before his own responses cut in.

  His hands firmed under mine. His mouth opened, he straightened up and tilted his head to reach closer, and his tongue came to answer my own.

  Practice, I can recognise now. And skill, atop a fine native talent for love. Or at least, for dalliance. Attentive, too, to his partner’s desires, anything but hungry, a man who has always had his fill of both. Two was cascading memories past us, Two was a fire in the blood, urging me on, Two understood and wanted what would happen next and suddenly among the flow of unknown bodies a flash shaped my mother and my fathers, naked together in a moonlit glen—

  I tore my mouth away and stumbled back. Without words I screamed, Stop!

  Two’s contact snapped. I was alone with myself amid mundane dirt and rock.

  Elsewhere I could not look. I clung to the refusal while, slowly, the dance of my blood calmed, while I made the lowering discovery that my body alone could be as lawless as Two. My heart steadied,
finally. Unconsciously I wiped a hand across my mouth.

  Then, at last, I had to face the man I had touched.

  He was looking as bewildered and shaken as I felt, with a fine touch, atop the confusion, of wounded, truly imperial pride. But he regained his balance far faster than I.

  Silently he stood up, raised both hands and scooped his hair back. Held out a hand, as silently imperative. I gave him the clip.

  He fastened it home. His every muscle spoke pure affront. In a moment, as silently, as thoroughly outraged as his body-speech proclaimed, he would turn and go.

  “It wasn’t you!” I burst out. “It was something Two did. I—I didn’t expect—”

  I stopped, feeling the flush rise as it too often did. Looked away, unable to help myself. I had been abashed often enough by Two’s memories. I had never been led so far astray.

  There was a chasm of a pause. Then, icily calm, his voice enquired, “Did you learn enough?”

  I had ado not to close my eyes in pure misery. He had been so understanding, so alight with such a welcome, more than a friend’s interest. And I could not even explain.

  It was Two who said, “We are ashamed.”

  My very bones felt Therkon freeze.

  “We are of age,” Two said. “This year.”

  He had to know what that meant. A woman’s moon-phases. I wanted to sink in the dirt and wriggle away. I grabbed for control and Two flatly refused.

  “We wished to know what it is, how it is, between women and men.” Two seldom used, or could not often achieve inflection, but urgency surfaced now. Almost passion, it felt. “We wished to know, for ourselves.”

  Let me do it, I was yelling, stop, don’t make it even worse!

  “But we—I—did not know the way. We—” a sudden break, sharp as glass. “I apologise.”

  Two had never said such a thing in my life. I had never heard Two use the pronoun “I.”

  The pause built, and built, and teetered on the brink of impossibilities. I have to breathe, I was thinking, or I will die . . .

  It was Therkon who let his breath out, a quick audible chuff. Then his boots moved beside the rock.