“Now I know you’re hiding something.”
Lisinthir laughed. “Who isn’t hiding something? Does anyone ever share everything?”
Jahir began to reply, then halted, frowned.
“That was somewhat by way of a rhetorical question, you do know.”
“I do, yes. But it feels like lying, to not share if it’s obvious you’re hiding something… even though I should know better, having lived with a mindbonded partner for years without ever learning all his mind.”
“I think your beloved would call it hubris for you to believe you might ever know all someone’s thoughts. Rights properly arrogated to the Goddess, yes?”
That put a smile on his cousin’s face. “Yes, come to that.” Applying the towel to the rest of his body, he added, “So, what are you really thinking?”
“Like a hound on a bone!” Lisinthir said with a laugh. “You will see shortly. I have an experiment planned for us.”
“Another!” Jahir sighed, though his smile was fond. “You are never done testing, are you.”
Cheered, Lisinthir said, “Never, and you know me so well. Now, you mentioned there was aught you wanted help with?”
The look his cousin flashed him then was a challenge, and the skin over the yoke of Lisinthir’s shoulders prickled. He loved to witness those moments of defiance and pride in Jahir. In anyone, really, though the Slave Queen had taught him there was beauty in yielding. He rose from the bench and joined his cousin in front of the mirror, watching with interest as Jahir rested his towel across the sink before plucking something from his bag. “This I could do myself. But it is easier to have it done by another.”
Lisinthir offered an open palm, and received… memories, visceral as a shove, tilting him off-balance. He accepted that vertigo with the sight of the suppository, recalling the Surgeon, and the Slave Queen, and the relief and shame and hideous anger that had come with the wounds that had needed the Chatcaavan version of this very tool.
Jahir’s voice brought him back—that and the hand that clasped his, suffusing him with concern. “Cousin?”
Lisinthir shook off the ghosts and rested his hand alongside the plane of his cousin’s cheek, as much to ground himself as to comfort. “Some Alliance magic, I assume, to make it so small for what indubitably must be its potency. Did I truly ride you so roughly?”
Jahir’s uncertainty was charming. “I don’t know? I am sore. The horse didn’t help.”
“No doubt,” Lisinthir said. “I’m surprised you didn’t use it earlier, at that.”
“I thought of it. Certainly when I packed it, that was my plan. I… didn’t know much about what to expect, so I thought I would… research the matter.”
This blush was hot enough that the skin beneath his hand was measurably warm. Lisinthir didn’t interrupt, the better to enjoy its development, along with his amusement that his cousin had—of course!—gone about his preparations for their assignation so meticulously.
“What I found,” Jahir said, “was that… I didn’t want the ache to pass too quickly. What we did… it already felt like a dream. To erase the evidence of it immediately would have made it difficult for me to believe it actually happened. If… that makes any sense at all.”
“It does, and well you know it, Healer.”
Jahir smiled ruefully, his cheek shifting under Lisinthir’s thumb. “I wanted to wait. But I have waited and now, I think, I wouldn’t mind the relief. I… I am presuming it becomes easier.”
“It does,” Lisinthir promised, and kissed him gently. “And yes, I will gladly see to it for you. And because you need proof from me that I am not a beast without consideration for your feelings, I will even apply it as dispassionately as you would to a patient.”
As Jahir bent over the sink, he said, confused, “Is there some other way to do so?”
Living Air, but the innocence of the man. Lisinthir trailed his fingers down his cousin’s spine. “Oh certainly. I would have a hand free, you see. That would be enough to wring the pleasure from you that you seem so eager to deny yourself.”
His cousin froze, which gave Lisinthir a fine view of the stippled skin that rashed his sides and flanks. That suggestion had found its mark, and for a moment he contemplated the scene he could have enacted if permitted. The floor would have been best, because he had no doubt Jahir’s knees would have buckled. Then he smiled and kissed his cousin—chastely—on the nape of the neck. “But you need to know I love you absent the clouding effects of lust more than you need to be pushed.”
Jahir sighed, head drooping. “I can’t tell if I’m disappointed.”
“You’re not,” Lisinthir said. “Because you know I will visit all the pleasure I’ve denied us both on you later. But we are more than lovers, have I not said?”
“Family,” Jahir murmured, shading it white.
“Yes,” Lisinthir said after a hesitation. Quieter: “Yes.” And then he did for his cousin what was done so ungently for him by the Surgeon, until he’d been forced to learn to do it for himself. There was a healing in that, too. He could not go back and restore the innocence to the Lisinthir who’d been, but he could be certain that his cousin didn’t suffer the indignity and cruelty that he’d undergone during his initiation.
“Better?” he asked, quiet.
Jahir exhaled, and his smile then was lopsided and sweetly vulnerable. “Better. Thank you.”
“Good,” Lisinthir said. “Because my experiment awaits. And after that, we have a date with a dance club.”
“Does this experiment require me to be naked?” Jahir asked, subdued.
Lisinthir waited for his cousin to straighten, then tucked his towel around his hips for him. “No. But stay this way for me for a while longer.” He traced the faint gray scar that darkened the shadows between Jahir’s ribs. “I like to look at you.”
“Until I get too cold,” Jahir said.
“Until then.” Lisinthir padded out of the bathroom and sensed his cousin trailing. “Sit,” he said, without looking over his shoulder, and heard the crumple of the bedsheets as Jahir obeyed. The Night Admiral’s gift had come to him embedded in a slim card, wrapped in an envelope; of the options for programming it prior to implantation, the earpiece had seemed the easiest to use, so that had been his request. It had come in a jewelry box which Lisinthir had packed with his infrequently-used hair ornaments. Amid them it looked the anachronism: sleek, nearly invisible technology set against pearls and platinum and the stark fire of diamonds. He brought it to his cousin and offered it on an open palm.
“And this is?” Jahir asked, taking it from him.
“The experiment.” The gravity of his voice won him a sharp glance. “Try it, if you would.”
Jahir turned it in questing fingers, then carefully wedged it into one ear, head tilted and damp hair falling alongside his hand as he adjusted it. “Is it—ah, it molds itself. Very comfortable. I imagine it’s not visible?”
“No,” Lisinthir agreed. He inhaled, aware of the same singing tension that accompanied all the risks he’d run, all the battles he’d fought. “Tap it twice.”
Jahir eyed him, frowning slightly, but obeyed.... and then froze, hand at his ear. “It is asking me for a shape? I heard that correctly?”
“Living Air,” Lisinthir whispered. “Choose a species.”
“Seersa,” Jahir said, and vanished. Without parameters, the roquelaure defaulted to random attributes, and it had given his cousin a mottled gray coat dashed with ragged rosettes. A handsome creature, and it was uncanny how convincing the expression was. He could see Jahir in it despite the alien bone structure, green eyes, and partial muzzle.
Lisinthir folded his arms and nodded toward the bathroom. “Go look.”
He received one more dubious glance and then Jahir rose and walked to the bathroom. The towel crimped around his digitigrade legs in seamless perfection; even the tail was partially hidden beneath it. The illusion was flawless, which didn’t change that it shouldn’t have been poss
ible. He waited through the ensuing silence, and then Jahir slowly leaned back into view, staring at him with flattened ears through the open doorway.
“Now,” Lisinthir said, quieter, “Ask for your base shape.”
The Seersa narrowed Jahir’s eyes at him, then straightened, hidden again behind the wall. A faint murmur them, almost too soft to be heard. A few moments later, Jahir said, voice ragged, “God and Lady, cousin.”
“Did it work?” Lisinthir asked, surprising himself with his own calm. He maintained it when his cousin stepped into the open door and he beheld… himself. Himself… with his cousin’s expressions… it was too strange. For them both, because Jahir carefully removed the earpiece. They stared at one another for a long moment.
“What exactly is this?” Jahir asked at last.
“That is a Fleet version of a domino.”
“I know dominos,” Jahir replied. “They’re used to recolor people’s hair, or give them exotic fur patterns, or change their eyes. They do not change their species, their height, their faces. I am almost entirely certain they are not capable of mimicking another person exactly.”
“The Fleet versions can,” Lisinthir said. “A normal domino... it has limitations. Mostly power-related. To maintain the illusion so completely is not trivial.” He nodded at the earpiece in Jahir’s hand. “That, however, is an extremely expensive, extremely dangerous, and very restricted piece of technology. What it does is illegal outside of Fleet, which is why that one was issued specifically... to me. And only to me.”
Jahir frowned, turning it in his fingers. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Lisinthir went for the port and this time his cousin did not assault him for it. He was grateful. Pouring himself a glass, he said, “Fleet thinks it a passing poor idea for an Eldritch to be seen on the border, given how rare we are—”
“Good sense, that.”
“Yes. So they would prefer I go disguised. They have assigned me that piece of technology. But because of what it does—and what it needs—it cannot remain unattached from its user.”
Jahir hesitated. “They... implant it? Or inject it?”
“The latter. Into a vein, where it clings to the inside wall.” Lisinthir sipped, rolled the port over his tongue. “It currently exists outside my body because programming it is easier that way. When I’m done educating it on my preferred library of shapes, then they implant it to hide it... and to give it a spare power source. But even now, it has been assigned to me. Which means it is supposed to work only... for me.”
Jahir, who’d been studying the earpiece, slowly lifted his eyes.
“That,” Lisinthir said, pointing with his glass, “That very expensive, very highly developed piece of Alliance technology could not tell the difference between us.”
“Not possible,” Jahir said beneath his breath.
“Why was it that I almost died on that table?” Lisinthir asked. “Have you ever needed surgery, cousin?”
“No,” Jahir said. “Nor a transfusion. We are obviously not identical, cousin. So you are asking me… what?”
“I don’t know, Healer. What am I asking you?”
Jahir turned the earpiece. “Whether we are so closely related that we seem identical to a medical scan? But we aren’t. We can’t possibly be. What does this device examine? Did they tell you?”
“Only that it used an algorithm to check key biological factors, starting with the most rare. But my own blood, cloned, synthesized, and cleansed, failed me on the operating table. Did you not say? A completely paradoxical response. I rejected my blood. But not yours.”
Jahir looked up.
Lisinthir said, “Yes?”
Jahir shook his head slightly. “What you suggest... it goes beyond improbability.”
“And yet the earpiece responded to you,” Lisinthir said.
Jahir studied it a moment longer, then frowned and cocked his head. “You knew it would, didn’t you. Or you wouldn’t have given it to me to try. Why? Why is it important to you to know?”
That, Lisinthir knew he could not answer, or his cousin would argue with him about it… and this was a fight he could not allow Jahir to win. Perhaps before they’d discovered their unexpected talents, it would have been different. But now, with Jahir so ambivalent about his role, his identity, about everything? Lisinthir no longer knew what he planned for his cousin. So he chose a truth that obfuscated. “Because if I end up half-dead again, I’d like to know why I’ll die if you’re not there to save me. It’s all well and good to hide things from the ‘mortals,’ cousin. But to hide them from ourselves? What do we not know? And will our ignorance get us killed?”
Jahir exhaled through his nose, a hard puff. “The Ambassador speaks.”
“I am he, along with everything else you’ve named,” Lisinthir said, grateful that Jahir hadn’t chosen this once to try his new talent... and regretting that he’d predicted correctly that Jahir wouldn’t dare. He took the earpiece when his cousin passed it back, offered the glass and was rejected with a lifted hand.
“Why does it have your shape if it’s yours?” Jahir wondered.
“I wanted to know that myself.” Lisinthir set the glass back on the tray. “It’s not a projection of you-the-person. It’s a projection of you in a certain state. In that case, it makes you look healthy so that if you are wounded, you can hide it. There’s a reverse as well, so you can look worse off than you are.”
“Clever,” Jahir said, surprised.
“They think of everything,” Lisinthir said. “But it is a military weapon, cousin.” He smiled faintly. “It requires significant power to function; once in your body, it will draw on your own energy to fuel itself when it fails of other sources. And it will starve you to death to maintain its illusions, rather than expose you to the enemy.”
Jahir looked away. “That is...”
“Not clever?”
Jahir managed a smile. “No, it is very much clever, still. But it is also gruesome.”
Lisinthir separated the chip from the earpiece and snapped it back into the card. “They don’t call it a domino, you know.”
“No?”
“Oh no.” Lisinthir closed the box and quirked a brow up. “This gruesome piece of technology has a name possibly only an Eldritch would recognize. Though as a fashion that’s passed, if I remember from my brief visit to Ontine.” He waited for Jahir’s eyes to narrow, then said, “They call it a roquelaure.”
Jahir choked on a shocked laugh. “They do not!”
Lisinthir rested a hand over his heart and inclined his head. “I so swear it.” He grinned, watching Jahir chuckle. Holding out his hands, he caught his cousin’s and drew him close, hip to hip, nose to nose. “And now, we go to supper.”
“We dress first, I hope.”
Lisinthir smirked and said nothing until Jahir drew back just far enough to eye him, suspicious. “I missed some innuendo there.”
“Only because I have yet to kiss you.”
“You are kissing me now.”
“I am kissing your lips,” Lisinthir said against them, mouth twitching. He counted two heartbeats and then smirked at the rush of startled understanding that flooded his cousin.
“That is not food,” Jahir said when Lisinthir let him speak.
“Oh, I don’t know. I imagine there’s some nutrition in it.”
Cheeks flaming, Jahir said, “We are not discussing this!”
“You are absolutely right,” Lisinthir said. “We aren’t, because discussing it is nowhere near as edifying as doing it.”
“Cousin,” Jahir said, smothering a noise against Lisinthir’s jaw.
“No more teasing,” Lisinthir promised with a laugh. “We dress. We eat. We return to see if we have any messages about your brother.”
“And then?” Jahir asked, resigned.
“And then we dance.”
There were no flowers in the morning. The Knife found her by the vase, staring into its empty mouth, and shifted his wings u
ntil they furled neatly behind him. “My Queen?”
“Knife.” She turned from the table, disoriented. “You are here.”
“I come every morning,” he pointed out. “Particularly when you summon me.”
She looked at the vase again, then forced herself back to the important matter. “My call was finally answered.”
He straightened, unable to hide his interest. “Your alien contact. Was it well, then? She is unharmed.”
“Unharmed, and, I judge, content. Though I could not tell you how that could come to be, given what she suffered here.”
“Suffering begets scars,” the Knife murmured.
“Even in aliens, yes.”
“Particularly in aliens?” he asked, and because he was admitting to ignorance—because he had always admitted to ignorance in hopes of better understanding—she did not despair at how much her people had to learn.
“It is neither more nor less particular of aliens. It is particular of individuals,” the Slave Queen said, sliding her fingers along the rim of the table and remembering other hands: larger ones, lean and callused from the swords that had served where claws were absent. “I have known aliens harder than any Chatcaava, Knife.”
“Even the Emperor,” he said, dubious.
She paused, then laughed despite herself. “Perhaps not harder. But as hard, at least.”
“Then... it is a good thing, that your call was answered.” He canted his head. “Did you ask about your plan?”
“I did. She may be able to help us. I am to call again in five days.”
“Five days,” he murmured.
“Not enough time?” she asked, struggling not to show her unease.
“I was actually thinking ‘so soon.’” He smiled crookedly. “I am still researching my part of this operation, my Queen, and not liking any of my options.”
“Is it possible?” she asked, because if it wasn’t she would rather know now.
“I... don’t know,” he admitted, tail twitching once. He smoothed his hands on his thighs, then folded them behind his back. “There are so many variables. And so much has changed. There was... I will say it. There was too much complacency, my Queen. System security was more concerned with the movements of other Chatcaava, and mostly the system lords; we never thought the aliens worthy of notice. Now, though, all the system outposts are on alert, and they are watching everything: aliens, system lords, Navy... no one is exempt from scrutiny. It’s almost as if there’s been a breach and procedure has changed in response.”
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