Some Things Transcend

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Outside her room, Vasiht'h studied him for several long moments.

  "Do you find it uncomfortable?" Jahir asked, hesitant.

  "I was about to ask you the same thing!"

  "Then... no." He drew in a breath, sighed it out, felt the warmth race along his skin. "Though I hope it passes. I wouldn't want to spend my life this... attuned... to sensual reality."

  "Sensual reality," Vasiht'h repeated, mouth twitching. "Funny... my life is a sensual reality."

  "Oh?" Jahir paused, then sorted through the density of experiences they'd lived through alongside one another. "Yes. Food in the mouth. The richness of scent. Siblings sleeping at your side."

  "Paws losing feeling from siblings sleeping on my side...." Vasiht'h chuckled. "I think I've always been more in touch with those things than you."

  "You have made me appreciate them more." Jahir folded his arms behind his back and followed as Vasiht'h began walking down the corridor. "Strange to think that most of my life I have been surrounded by an excess of luxury, but I never appreciated texture or flavor or color until I left for the Alliance."

  "You might have been surrounded by excessive luxury," Vasiht'h said. "But it was the same luxury, year after year. It's not like home, where you can get a different cuisine every night of the week for months. The differences remind you to pay attention." He grimaced. "It keeps coming back to food for me. I am so tired of rations."

  "Soon, arii."

  "I hope you're right." Vasiht'h padded through their door into their rooms... which were empty, save for a note written on the back of the paper Jahir had left for his partner earlier.

  Restless—am in salle. Do come by.

  –L

  Squinting at it, Vasiht'h said, "Half the time he talks like a dragon, and then he suddenly defaults to Eldritch courtliness."

  Jahir smiled at that. "Let's go fetch him from his exertions."

  "Before he gives himself an aneurysm," Vasiht'h muttered.

  Sadly, not an entirely humorous comment given Lisinthir's state. Jahir said nothing to it and queried the computer as to the location of the Ambassador.

  The courier had a gymnasium. Jahir thought it a misnomer, too general for what was essentially a physical training room. There were weapons lined against one wall, and a padded mat used up most of the floor. The wall facing the door was composed of floor-to-ceiling mirrors: electronic ones, for they were dimmed almost to opacity by the power shortage.

  In the center of the room, Lisinthir was sparring with a slim Asanii feline, her fur gingery with the suggestion of darker stripes. They were working hand-to-hand, no gloves, no weapons, and no armor. She gave him no contest, unsurprisingly, but she tried him willingly enough. This was exercise for Lisinthir, nothing more: an opponent who attacked him without obvious menace and who couldn't win past his most casual defenses would never activate the instincts Jahir had seen in play on the Chatcaavan vessel. For the woman, though... she was breathing hard when she begged off, holding up her hands. "I'm... good, I'm... good. Look! Your keepers are here... to save me!" She laughed, holding herself up with her hands on her knees. "Just... just in time, too. Haven't... worked this hard... since the Academe chewed me up."

  Lisinthir said, "And I thank you for indulging me, Lieutenant."

  She blew her forelock off her damp forehead. "My pleasure. Aletsen, can I hand him over to you? I have to be on duty in fifteen and I need to change."

  "Yes, thank you. You observed no issues?"

  "Other than my being terribly out of shape?" She grinned, then shook her head. "No symptoms, no lapses, nothing."

  "That's what we were hoping to hear," Vasiht'h said. "Thanks, alet."

  "Anytime." She tossed off a mock salute to Lisinthir. "And you, Ambassador... I mean that. My lap's all yours whenever you want it."

  Lisinthir grinned. "I may take you up on that."

  "You do that. Cheers, aletsen."

  The moment the door closed, Vasiht'h said to Lisinthir, "Your lap?"

  "While we were in the cabin," Lisinthir said, plucking a towel off a rack and scraping it across the back of his neck. "We talked a while. The couch is rather too small, as you've no doubt observed, and it seemed impolite to have her sit on the floor or the table, so...."

  "You asked her to sit and then put your head in her lap?" Vasiht'h asked, ears sagging. And then, unable to help an amusement that tickled the mindline. "And she agreed?"

  "Why not?" Lisinthir lifted his brows. If he could have managed coy surprise, he would have tried, Jahir thought... but there was nothing in Lisinthir that could be coy. "I asked politely."

  "And I thought you were going to be bad for the ladies," Vasiht'h said to Jahir. "That's nothing to him. And the men have to worry about him too...!"

  Lisinthir chuckled, pacing to the end of the gym. "No fear, alet. I miss sex, but not enough to sleep my way through the Alliance's riches."

  "Oh really?"

  "No." Lisinthir's face was a mask. "Reminds me rather too much of what the Chatcaava did to Alliance slaves." He pulled a staff off the wall rack and turned, tossing it. "Catch, House cousin."

  Surprised, Jahir stepped into it, managed not to drop it. "And this is?"

  "For you to use against me. What else?" Lisinthir considered the available weapons, rolled his shoulders, turned from the wall and returned to the center of the mat. "Lieutenant Selvein was polite to indulge me, but she's hardly tired me at all. And you have work to do."

  Jahir didn't advance onto the mat. Meeting Lisinthir there wasn't the last thing he wanted to do, but it came fairly close... and he wasn't sure if it was because he knew he was no match for his cousin, or because he feared that he wanted to be shown just how completely he was no match for his cousin. "Do I."

  "You do. Do you know why?"

  "I assume you will have some reason with which I can't argue."

  Lisinthir's smile then didn't reach his eyes. "Because odds are high that you will soon be in a situation where you will be mistaken... for me."

  Jahir tightened his grip on the staff, shifted his fingers, which were already sweating. "In no universe will you sparring with me for an hour enable me to falsify your fighting skill to an audience of warriors."

  "You're absolutely correct. But it will put in the forefront of your mind the truth that in a few weeks, a few days, perhaps even a few hours, you will be fighting for your life... and the life of your beloved." Lisinthir glanced at Vasiht'h. "So putting in some practice would behoove you. Wouldn't it?" When Jahir didn't immediately answer, Lisinthir said, "Besides, this is therapy for me. I'm used to spending most of my time fighting or having sex."

  "Or doing drugs," Vasiht'h muttered.

  Lisinthir rested a hand on his heart and inclined his head as regally as a prince acknowledging a point. "Or doing drugs. As I'm not indulging myself in alcohol, nor losing myself in the arms of a lover, I need some other outlet for my physical tension."

  Sex might be easier than either of the alternatives. "I don't like fighting."

  "You love fighting," Lisinthir said, exasperated. "You fight me all the time."

  "With words—"

  "What does the weapon matter, Healer?" Lisinthir shook his head, long hair swaying. "Don't fool yourself, scion of the Seni. You and I and all our noble kin, we were bred to fight. We might not enjoy it, but it's in our blood. We defend the helpless from death and our own from dishonor. Don't you hear the song in the marrow of your bones?"

  The joints in Jahir's fingers were beginning to hurt from clenching. "I left our world to be done with that."

  "And leaped headfirst into a profession where you would have to set yourself at odds with others." Lisinthir held up his hand. "Oh, you will tell me that you heal them. But first you must fight them for their own souls."

  "I don't fight them for their souls because they don't come to me unwilling," Jahir said, knowing that it wasn't precisely true but pressing on anyway. "Unlike you."

  /Ariihir, he's.../

&n
bsp; /Baiting me, I know,/ Jahir said, struggling to pack his agitation beneath the surface again.

  "Turn that staff on," Lisinthir growled, and it was less anger and more invitation. The aggression in it sang under the words, lit a fire under Jahir's skin. "And show me that you haven't forgotten what's left when words no longer suffice."

  Jahir straightened, ignoring the crackle of energy that was stroking the length of his spine... the same one that made him feel alive, vital, present. How good it would be to give in! But all his life he had seen the waste created by the Eldritch system, which had elevated violence to genteel exercise, and then used it to accidentally kill its sons in the name of honor. He tossed the staff aside and said, "When words no longer suffice, violence is still not the only answer. There is always a better way, Ambassador, if only you seek it."

  The space between them seemed infinite, vast, and the time eternal. They regarded one another, and Jahir was proud of his own calm, of his commitment to principles, of his refusal to back down while refusing combat. He thought he would exist forever in that interior space, in the stillness between breaths.

  And then the gym spun and his knees skidded across the mat, and he found himself kneeling with his cousin's arm locked around his throat and his arms trapped behind him. He met Vasiht'h's eyes across the room and found a matching shock in them, but whatever the mindline wanted to give him was drowned out by Lisinthir's grief and frustration, writ large by proximity.

  "That presumes the luxury to seek alternatives," his cousin said. "God and Living Air, but will you tell me that you should answer torture with meekness?"

  Jahir sagged back against him, relaxed... melted until he could feel the rigidity of his cousin's chest against his. He gave in completely, baring his throat, and then opened his eyes and met his cousin's in challenge. Lisinthir stared down at him, frozen.

  In their tongue, Jahir said, quiet, in the purest mode, "There is power in yielding."

  "Those that submit often die."

  "Those that fight die also."

  Lisinthir closed his eyes, let his head drop until it was resting against Jahir's. "God, cousin. I care about you so I could give no answer to your submission but shelter. But the dragons will take you and then where will you be?"

  "Among dragons, where perhaps I will find some other way to win free. But fighting is not always productive."

  Lisinthir met his eyes, and Jahir suffered their regard. More than that... enjoyed it, both for the ease he seemed always to feel in his cousin's hands... and for the rare moment of having triumphed over a worthy opponent. It was the latter emotion that made him think perhaps his argument was flawed, but not enough to renege on making it.

  Lisinthir spoke and destroyed his victory completely. "And while you are kneeling to your foes, what of your beloved? Will you sit back and let them take him? You would go willingly to torment, perhaps, for the opportunity to find some better way. Will you condemn Vasiht'h to rape and slavery?"

  The mindline went cold so instantly Jahir's skin stippled with gooseflesh. His answer was reflexive. "No. Never."

  "So as usual," Lisinthir traced his cheekbone, his resignation sinking into Jahir's skin, "it's just you that you're willing to sacrifice."

  Was he doing it again? God and Lady—

  The scrape of plastic distracted him. Vasiht'h had bent and picked up the discarded staff, and the tableau was so powerful his breathing hitched: the slump of the Glaseah's shoulders and wings, the expressionless face, the weapon in the hand of a peace-loving race. Vasiht'h padded to him and offered it. Unable to find words, even for the mindline, Jahir accepted it.

  Vasiht'h squared his shoulders and looked at Lisinthir. "Make him practice."

  Lisinthir inclined his head.

  /And you,/ Vasiht'h said, the words roiling with anger and fear. /You start being more willing to take care of yourself. You have the time to consider escape from some Chatcaavan harem in six hundred years, but I don't./ The Glaseah's eyes shimmered, but didn't spill... not in the world. They washed the mindline with the smell of salt and the stench of sorrow. /Goddess damn it, Jahir. Don't you dare do this to me./

  The curse left him nearly speechless, and that was nothing to the pain he felt under them, the one he couldn't run from in his partner's eyes. "Vasiht'h—"

  The Glaseah turned away, released him, left him slumped and shaking against Lisinthir's chest. He was so troubled he almost didn't hear the words Lisinthir spoke above his head.

  "Don't blame him for his essential nature."

  "Is that what I'm doing?"

  Lisinthir's lopsided smile was in his voice. "I'm guessing."

  "You just got done taking him down for being too passive and you want to stop me from doing the same?"

  "I'm his cousin," Lisinthir said gently. "And an Eldritch of his station, and I address him as such. Our relationship is... not precisely antagonistic, but there is testing in it. You, though, are his beloved. He needs you for other things."

  "He's not a coward."

  "Yielding is not always a coward's way. One of the strongest people I know yields. Your beloved errs too much on that side, perhaps. But I err too far on the side of aggression." Lisinthir took Jahir's hand. "Up."

  Almost he didn't make it to his feet. He was still shaking.

  "Now," Lisinthir said to Vasiht'h, "tell him he still has a home."

  "What? Of course he—"

  "He doesn't know it right now." Jahir felt a nudge at his back. "Go, hug your beloved."

  We don't hug that often, he wanted to say, but Vasiht'h was wrapping his arms around him and it flew from him.

  /You are home with me,/ Vasiht'h said. /You always will. But Aksivaht'h, Jahir...! Don't frighten me like this!/

  /I may not be the person you thought I was./

  /I know exactly who you are./ The Glaseah's arms tightened around him. /You're my brother. You're family. And I love you. And I don't care if you kneel for Lisinthir, but Goddess, don't kneel for dragons!/

  But if dragons could be disarmed by kneeling...? Jahir wondered. There was a truth there that he could feel the shape of, but not name. So he said, because it was a truth he could name, /I love you as well. And I would die to keep them from taking you./

  Vasiht'h shuddered and pressed his head against Jahir's midriff, hiding his face. /Good. Because I don't want to become any dragon's slave. And I need to know that you'll work as hard to defend yourself as you would me... because without you..../

  The bleakness that swept through the mindline was so encompassing Jahir swayed, feeling it like the cold wind off a field of graves. He rested his hand on the back of Vasiht'h's head and said, softly, "I vow I will."

  Vasiht'h swallowed and nodded without lifting his head. /You keep your promises. So I believe you. But please, practice./

  "I will," Jahir said again, sighing. He stepped out of the embrace and looked at the staff, then at Lisinthir. "This will be a mockery, you know."

  "You mean to tell me you can't find a little anger in your heart to spare for our fight?"

  The other Eldritch was still waiting, hands loose at his sides and stance tense with the restless power that made him so swift on the attack. But he was also, Jahir thought, completely alone; that tension expected assault from any corner, and it was there in his shoulders, his hips, the tilt of his head, the readiness. What must it be like to live like that for months on end? And to have survived it only to end up completely isolate?

  "No," Jahir said. "But I'm sure you will do your best to prick some from me anyway." He turned on the weirdling Alliance staff with its coruscating colors. "I am at your disposal, cousin. Teach me."

  Vasiht'h whispered, /Thank you./

  /Stay?/

  /Always./

  Gripping the staff, Jahir met his cousin's eyes across the mat, braced himself, and made the attack.

  The practice session fascinated Lisinthir... dismayed him, that also. There was little aggression in Jahir and what there was couldn't be sus
tained for long. He obviously didn't enjoy the exercise despite having trained sufficiently with the staff to be deft; it was as if fighting was a foreign language. But it was one Lisinthir felt he had been born speaking. Even unarmed, he could best his cousin, and did, over and over, attacking him and then drilling him on how to guard against that attack until Jahir could defend himself. Lisinthir gave up any pretense at verbal fencing; the sort of repartee he and the Emperor had traded as a matter of course was reserved to people at ease with violence, who could float above it to make threats and jests. This... this was too grim for any sort of badinage, no matter how good-humored.

  But for all his ineptitude at dealing out violence, Jahir could take it. He rose again from every kind of blow, humiliating or physically taxing. He endured. Seeing him push himself to his feet one more time, Lisinthir revised his original assumptions about how long his cousin would have lasted in the Empire... and some small part of him whispered that Jahir would have lived through the tortures that had nearly broken Lisinthir's mind.

  There was power in the yielding spirit. Lisinthir had the grace to admit to himself that he'd attacked Jahir for saying so for fear that he would lose his cousin to the Chatcaava, have to watch the partnership sundered and see what that did to Vasiht'h.

  "Enough," he said finally, when they were both drenched in sweat and Jahir was visibly trembling from fatigue. He reached over to take the staff from his cousin's hands, had to twist it out of clenched fingers. "Go with your beloved," he said. "Clean off and rest. I'll be along in a moment."

  That Jahir didn't object on the grounds that this would leave Lisinthir unmonitored spoke eloquently of his cousin's state. He merely turned and stumbled toward Vasiht'h, who lunged for his side and put his shoulder under his taller partner's and helped him from the gym.

  Lisinthir watched them go, then replaced the staff on its socket on the wall. If he was right, there would be facilities for washing—and he found them behind a second door. Stepping through the shower cube didn't relax him the way setting it to a water cleanse and staying there until the steam beaded the deck would have, but it was better than remaining sticky. Sitting on the ledge alongside the folded towels, Lisinthir reflected that the Alliance was often thus: efficient, brilliant, shining and wondrous... and too frequently empty of the inconveniences and challenges that allowed one to hone one's edges. Would he have been soft himself had he been born Pelted? Perhaps he should be grateful to his homeworld for being so backwards, if its many unnecessary dangers had given him the opportunity to become who he was.