by R. Cooper
Food was placed in front of him as well. Shavians did eat around the emperor, it seemed, because the others were taking food and possibly discussing it, judging from the low murmur of conversation Taji finally became aware of.
Tsomyal studied their food before taking a small portion and popping it into their mouth with more bravery than anyone in that hunt. Taji watched anxiously for a few moments, and, when nothing happened and Tsomyal continued to nibble their food, he relaxed—slightly.
When his stomach gurgled, he snatched a piece of something, poisoned or not. It turned out to be sweetly spiced meat wrapped in leaves, or maybe giant petals or stems of grass, each one neat and perfect and probably bite-sized for a Shavian. The leaf was spicy, too.
He reached for another while sneaking a look at Trenne, then Lin, whose ears said they were not at ease, although Lin was pushing food at Rodian and Nadir. Taji lifted a hand to give Trenne the sign for All Clear. Trenne might or might not be fluent but he would know the military words and phrases.
Trenne shook his head once, calling Taji a liar, but briefly lowered one ear. Taji suspected it was meant to be teasing or playful and smiled back before he returned to shoving tiny meat wraps in his mouth. He glanced up as he did and nearly swallowed one whole.
Larin’s eyes were bright. He watched Taji for another moment, then turned toward Trenne with cool interest.
Taji washed the meat down with another swallow of midye. It did not ease that pain or soothe his hoarse voice. “I am glad the hunt was successful,” he offered loudly to no one in particular.
Tsomyal raised their head. Rinnah looked at him.
Larin’s gaze was slower to return. “It was,” Larin agreed, and the meds or the wine made Taji overly conscious of how quiet everything seemed to be. Maybe it was how softly Larin spoke and how it made everyone in the room, even those who pretended otherwise, strain to listen. “You are enjoying your food, little Taji?”
Less so now than he had been. “Yes,” Taji said politely in ‘Asha, and picked up something that wasn’t readily identifiable as meat, cheese, or fruit. “I am very hungry,” he added, tongue loose and face hot. He heard the word ravenous in his mind and fought to keep his eyes off Trenne.
“I understand there were a large amount of kills today,” Tsomyal said, calm on the surface. “You must be very proud. One of my staff members is fond of cooking, and hopes to someday discuss food preparation in the Shavian style.”
Rinnah leaned forward with interest.
“Most were honored with kills today,” Larin overrode whatever history of Shavian dishes Rinnah had probably been going to offer. “Your pet animal did well, or so I am told. I did not witness it. The humans survived also. I can see the pride on your face, little shehzha, the way we could all see your concern this morning. You should not feel ashamed of your worry. One of the common ways to kill a kinm, if you can get past the horns without being sliced through the middle, is to stab into the back of their neck. It can take several attempts…you look worried again. Should I be gentle and keep the details from you?”
Taji frowned in confusion and let his mouth move before he could think his answer through. “I grew up on a farm on a recently occupied planet. Do you think I never hunted or dressed my own dinner? That I never had to put an animal down?” He waved his hand, flinging a bit of fruit paste to the floor. His bracelets jangled. “That is a human expression that means to kill something in a humane—in a merciful way.” He wasn’t sure about his tone. It felt too sharp, but that could have been his voice, which had not recovered from all his shouting. “I am actually very interested in the hunt, especially the historical ones.”
“Then we must indulge you,” Larin replied. He was the only one in the room unruffled and apparently calm. Larin was too smooth for someone who should have been fighting his instincts like everyone else here. “But, little shehzha, I cannot see what relevance past hunts have to this one. Will you explain it to me?”
The warm question had Taji’s cheeks stinging. Except for Trenne, no one ever asked him to go on. He glanced up to Larin’s bright eyes and couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Larin continued in the honeyed tone that had probably seduced Elii and the shehzha before him, “Please.”
Taji shifted in his seat and wrapped one hand around his soft soria. “Well,” he said, in Anglisky, a filler word that would make no sense to the Sha. He switched languages except for when he couldn’t think of an applicable phrase. “I believe in knowledge for the sake of knowledge. But it is useful to know the past or to have someone who knows the past before you embark on new adventures. Especially if your law is a matter of precedent more than anything codified. Um, I mean, the stories, even if they are not true, still tell you things about the past. And you act on that, which affects the future.” He took another sip and shook his head. “You honored the old hunts by having this one, which affects us all now, even the food we are eating.”
“Stories,” Larin repeated, ignoring Taji’s nonsense. “Stories cannot tell you all. They might offer the shape of the rings but not what they are made of.” Taji, who knew that IPTC could probably say exactly what the rings were made of, licked midye off his upper lip and didn’t answer. Larin went on, regardless. “Stories do not tell you how it felt to gaze on them one hundred generations ago, or how it would feel to pass them.”
Taji shook his head again, but it didn’t take the longing from Larin’s voice, as though, as a child, Larin had also once reached up to try to drag his fingers through the rings. As though the phrase itself meant something impossible and fantastic.
Larin raised his voice without looking away from Taji’s stunned face. “Do stories of the passions of each family truly inform you of their cowardice and their betrayals? The many treasons of the Shyril? The greed of the Tir? The careless hunger of emperors who gave all to shehzha instead of standing strong?” Larin took his gaze away at last to look over the room. “Olea know what it means to be emperors. Is that not correct, Rinnah?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “What must be given and what must be taken. You may waste your years in study of rocks in the rain, Taji shehzha, but it will teach you nothing you could not learn in moments right here.” Taji’s time at the ruins wasn’t a secret. Larin announcing publicly that he knew about it made it feel like one. “Emperors do not listen to stories or care about old scratches on the walls.” Taji barely resisted glancing to Rinnah. Larin looked back at him. “But if you so wish it, we will indulge curious offworld shehzha who do not know better.”
“You mean, learn about the Sha?” Taji asked, deliberately misunderstanding. He could only imagine what Koel Eriat and the rest of the older nobles thought of an emperor dismissing the past.
“I am the Sha.” Larin did not make the statement idly and no one contradicted him. “Did your stories teach you that?”
“Yeah. Yes, actually.” Taji glanced at Tsomyal, who widened their eyes but said nothing. He took a breath, tried to think clearly. Larin was surrounded by tense, possibly insulted nobles and didn’t appear to care. If anything, he was agitating them, insulting the past, teasing a shehzha, hinting that he knew things about semi-private conversations. Taji turned his face slightly to the side to observe the gray shape of one of the Imperial Guard. He wriggled and shifted on his cushion again.
“If you do not mind me asking,” he paused, but no one laughed or commented on his nosiness, “not about the past. How do your people know their emperor? Is it only through the feeds?”
“They know their emperor through their good and loyal nobles,” Rinnah spoke up, not quite placating.
Larin turned one ear toward his sister as he picked up his cup and had a drink. “Sometimes it takes the Guard to remind the nobles of their emperor. But when they remember, the people follow.”
Taji frowned despite himself, because it shouldn’t take the Imperial Guard to remind anyone of anything.
Larin put his cup down. “You disapprove?”
Tsomyal g
ave Taji a look, patient on the surface, worried beneath that.
“I, um…” Taji spilled more fruit paste on the floor and dropped the rest of the morsel he’d forgotten to eat onto the table. He shifted, winced, and then brightened. “No. It is not that. I am a little uncomfortable right now.”
“Do you need another cushion?” Rinnah asked, already twisting to look for someone, probably Mos.
“Or do you need the touch of your hurat?” Larin’s easy tone made the question feel sharp. The tone said he didn’t care. The question said he did.
Taji raised his head. “No,” he lied for the second time in a few minutes. “I am a bit sore…uh, tired. That’s all. You know how it is.” Taji happened to catch Rinnah’s eye, who stared at him for a moment before abruptly looking away, ears halfway lowered. Right. He was the only public shehzha and he was talking about sex. That was bad.
The Sha existed to humiliate him. Maybe they didn’t know how it was. They probably had zero penetrative sex issues regardless of the orifice in question. And even if they did, it wasn’t like any of them were small or human or had a prosthetic that was slowly breaking down. Not to mention that most of them seemed to be unbelievably flexible.
“Sore in a good way,” he added, wanting to sound bold and not embarrassed and tiny. “I am not in pain,” he tried again. “I am very aware of my body at the moment, but only in the sense that I was well—” His throat tightened, cutting him off before he could make it worse.
Not that it mattered what he said.
“Poor little shehzha,” Larin sympathized for the benefit of the room at large. “You are young. Sometimes I cannot tell age with humans, because you are all so small, but you are young. You look younger than I was when my mother was killed and I became emperor. With all your loud speech, I did not realize your inexperience. But now, dressed in your new soria with your lip shining, you look like the blossoms you wear, and I see how overwhelmed you must be, all alone here, with only paid soldiers to talk to. Tell me, how does your human body handle it all? If you are hurt, why not demand the hurat again? Tonight, we have honored him but I am certain your I.P.T.C. Sergeant Major will be glad to leave here to serve you if you ask.” Larin pronounced Trenne’s rank like the foreign concept it was, also as though he wasn’t sure it was real. “Was it not adequate the first time? Demand him again if you cannot wait through one meal.”
Taji hadn’t thought shehzha were expected to wait. That for a time, the eshe was essentially home-bound with them so they wouldn’t have to wait. He had apparently been wrong. Even a shehzha who was kept away from public view should have been able to get through the length of one dinner.
Taji was so wrong. He had made a fool of himself and dishonored Trenne. Trenne had said a real shehzha wouldn’t be in any kind of pain. Taji telling everyone he was in pain was basically announcing that Trenne had failed, or that Taji was so insatiable that it was an embarrassment even for a shehzha. Ravenous did not sound charming now.
Taji’s face burned with the strength of his blushes. The small amount of food he’d eaten was heavy and cold in his stomach. He couldn’t look at Trenne. He looked over at Larin and then away.
“I am not young, like that,” Taji heard himself arguing. It was something a child would say. “I have never been allowed to be.”
“The young do not know any better.” Larin’s voice washed over him. “They cannot be trusted to choose wisely. But your innocent hunger should be rewarded with more of what you need, not pain.”
“He has an old injury.” Tsomyal’s support in Taji’s moment of humiliation was unexpected. “His pain is never gone for long.”
“Yes. Your walk is uneven, little Taji. Were you born without a leg or was it removed? Was it punishment?” Larin spoke loud enough for everyone to hear even if they hadn’t all been eavesdropping. “How else did they fail you?”
“It was removed to save my life,” Taji answered faintly. He remembered telling Trenne about it, and everything he had begged Trenne for, and how much he had wanted to be Trenne’s.
Obvious, young, and naive, that’s what he was. Lonely and horny and starved for affection. Not smart or revered or beautiful. He couldn’t believe he’d ever thought that. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Trenne would never have touched him.
His throat tightened.
A pair of legs in black pants appeared next to him. Taji tipped his head up and his heart flailed against his ribs. Trenne had another cushion in his hands and kneeled down next to Taji when Taji only stared in wonder.
Trenne was focused on Taji as though no one else was there. It forced Taji to stay focused on him in return. He tried to steady his nerves, but Larin was right—he was overwhelmed just being next to Trenne.
“Trenne, I—” Taji hurried to apologize but stopped when Trenne’s lips brushed his forehead.
“Now zhatren too, yet’ta?” Trenne asked, quiet and pointed.
Yet’ta. Miniature, wild, birdlike creatures originally from the continent across the sea, house pets that had escaped. They were often depicted in older murals, usually either in gardens or flying over the heads of figures of importance. Taji had to remember to pay attention to their symbolism more.
Taji took a breath and gave Trenne a jerky nod. He was scared and ashamed and too hot. His thinking was a mess, which might have been the wine with the meds and not enough food. It might also have been a long, strenuous day. But he wasn’t going to fail Trenne again. “Do not go, eshe,” he said, each word distinct. “I need you.”
Trenne’s eyes met his, slightly wider than normal, the only sign he wasn’t as calm as he seemed. Things were being said around them. Taji could tell from Trenne’s ears, flicking and turning to catch sounds Taji never could. But then Trenne said, “Yes, Taji shehzha,” and scooped Taji up in order to arrange himself on Taji’s abandoned seat cushion. He pulled the other pillow into his lap once he was settled and pushed it gently but firmly beneath Taji’s ass.
Taji closed his eyes and dropped his head to Trenne’s shoulder. Trenne splayed a hand over his bad hip, offering comfort, so Taji pushed closer until he could feel Trenne’s uniform against patches of his bare skin.
Larin had wanted to make him ashamed of this. But Taji chose this. He had asked for it. Trenne deserved better, but that was between him and Taji.
“Like furniture!” someone exclaimed, slightly scandalized. Someone else laughed, and if it wasn’t Nadir, it was likely Talfa. Taji leaned his head to one side and opened his eyes. Trenne was stiff and tense but very beautiful.
“Thank you,” Taji told him sincerely, and didn’t mind this time to be told it was Trenne’s honor to do it.
Someone close, possibly Rinnah, failed to stifle a noise of surprise.
“Did you try this one, Mr. Ameyo?” Tsomyal asked Taji calmly, and gestured toward a small bowl of flowers, or things shaped like flowers. “The sergeant major is fond of sweet flavors.”
“He sure is.” Nadir’s remark was clearly audible. Trenne’s ears flicked back. Taji twisted around to glare at Nadir, only to be distracted by how every Sha quickly turned to keep from making eye contact with him.
Trenne handed Taji a bowl like the one Tsomyal had suggested, which Taji accepted before settling back. “Thank you,” he huffed to Trenne, and picked out one of the soft creations and took a bite. It was like bread or a roll, but covered in what he was going to call a hard icing. Not a product of the hunt, but definitely a treat fit for an emperor’s table. He finished the one in his hand, then selected another and held it up for Trenne.
Tsomyal regarded them for another moment, then continued to eat. They looked toward Larin. “Your offerings are generous,” they said with perfect politeness.
Taji wiggled the little flower cake until Trenne took it. Then he helped himself to another one. “You probably need protein, you know,” he reminded Trenne, his mouth full, and reached for that. Trenne didn’t have to stretch and grabbed a few of the spicy wraps. He exhaled, which was
faux-human exasperation if Taji had ever heard it, but deposited two in Taji’s palm before eating the third.
Taji stubbornly put his hand up higher and waited for Trenne to take the others as well. The look Trenne gave him sent a tingle down his spine, but Trenne was eating, so Taji didn’t mind. Trenne would say no to him when it mattered.
A murmur carried through the room, bringing Taji’s head up. “I recognize this situation is unusual, but have we done something wrong? A shehzha is…” He didn’t have a phrase to use in place of sort of and didn’t want to say sacred and have to explain its meaning He settled on, “Special. But, by human standards, at least, I have not done anything worthy of shame.”
Trenne picked up a slice of beje, crisp and hot like a pepper, from the table and silently offered it to him.
“Some embarrassment, yes,” Taji continued, accepting the beje with delight. “But we are not obscene or anything, are we? All the rules and traditions are difficult to follow from the outside.” Which was likely half the point of them. Hard to have social mobility when there would always be more hurdles and more secrets.