Healers wedding, p.8
Healer's Wedding, page 8
A twitch of mirth, bright as new flowers in sunlight. “He is still at work on my martyr complex.”
“Is he!” Vasiht’h laughed. “Goddess, how I love that man. What did he do?”
“Put me back to work at identifying and evaluating all the energy flows I power my talents with,” Jahir said. “So that I can more readily sense when I am depleting them.”
Vasiht’h snorted. “Right. And did he do anything about the fact that you probably already know all those things, and ignore them?”
“He did threaten to send me sprinting back and forth across the lawn while he shot arrows at me.”
The peal of laughter… there was no stopping it. Vasiht’h didn’t need to tap Jahir’s memory to hear Valthial saying it, either, because he’d met the High Priest of the God often enough to know exactly how it had popped out of him. Vasiht’h hadn’t known what to expect of the highest ranking male official of the Eldritch Church, after Liolesa as its head… but the young man with the bobbed hair and irreverent attitude hadn’t been it. Vasiht’h hadn’t even guessed Eldritch like that existed until the day he met Val and the priest had eyed him and said, “Oh, thank the Powers. Someone to ride herd with me on this hero… and with enough legs to keep up with him.”
“How… exactly… was that supposed to work on your martyr complex?” Vasiht’h managed, wiping his eyes.
“It wasn’t,” Jahir answered, eyes dancing. “It was more in the way of something to work out his own frustrations.”
“Oh, oh my. That man is golden.” Vasiht’h pushed down the last of his snickers and sipped the chocolate. “It was a good lesson, then.”
“It always is. I like him.”
“I do too.” Vasiht’h studied his friend’s face with pleasure, because it was pleasure to do so again. Because they’d survived, and were thriving, and Jahir in particular had needed… this. All of this. To come home, to bring the best of what he’d learned back with him, to have his friends and beloveds at his side. To be trained by people who believed in his talents, and didn’t blame him for how he’d wielded them. That Vasiht’h himself socketed into this new world so easily… it never ceased to amaze him. Truly they were blessed. “While you were gone, Sediryl asked if I’d run an errand offworld for her, and I said yes. You’ll be fine while I’m away?”
A faint lancing of anxiety; they both felt it. But it was no longer the raw and bleeding thing it had been when they’d been freshly reunited after the worst parting of their lives. “Is it so important that you must leave now?”
“It is, yes. I’ll be back before the wedding, though. Ordinarily I’d be more worried about you but Lisinthir’s showing up soon… he’ll take care of you.”
“That he will,” Jahir murmured. “Should I ask after the nature of the errand, and why it requires you?”
“You could, but I promised Sediryl I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Vasiht’h said. “You can ask her if you want…?”
A twinkle of amusement, like stars in the morning sky before dawn. “No doubt she’ll tell me if she wants me to know.”
“We’re absolutely not conspiring or anything.”
Jahir sipped his chocolate. “Of course not.”
“Because we would never do that and not tell you…”
His partner started laughing, one of those low, quiet laughs that Vasiht’h treasured because they were the ones that snuck out past Jahir’s everlasting self-control. “What poor conspirators you would be did you do so…!”
“We’re both very awful at keeping secrets,” Vasiht’h agreed sagely.
Jahir reached over and clasped his wrist. “You will be careful, I know. But I will say it anyway. I expect you at the wedding… I cannot have one without you.”
“I’ll be there,” Vasiht’h promised, and felt it from the core of his hearts to the empty clawbeds on all of his paws. “A war couldn’t keep us apart, Jahir. I don’t think there’s anything that can, not anymore.”
“No,” Jahir murmured. “No, I think not.”
Vasiht’h turned his hand in his partner’s grasp so he could squeeze back, then dropped Jahir’s hand so he could point at the plate. “Didn’t Val tell you that eating after practice is important?”
“I exerted myself very little! The object of the exercise, in fact, was very nearly the opposite of exerting myself!”
“Ariihir—”
“Brother?”
“Eat your biscuit.”
7
“Not that I’m complaining,” Sediryl said, “but are you sure this is training? By Val’s standards?”
Crouching across from her, his hands loose over his knees, Qora guffawed. “You didn’t ask me if I cared about your high priest’s standards before accepting my offer.”
She put her back to a tree and listened to the hesitant first chirps of waking birds. They’d been out here for almost an hour now, and she was sweaty and tired. It was good to sit after the exertion, and this particular glade near Ontine’s lake had become a favorite of theirs. “I should have. Asked you about the standards, I mean.”
“But you didn’t. Why?”
“Because I trust you,” Sediryl said. “More than I do any Eldritch. About this, anyway.” She flexed her fingers on her thighs, uncomfortable. “I hate saying that out loud. It feels…”
“Like betrayal?” The Faulfenzair snorted. “It’s not a sin, to acknowledge the truth.”
She craned her head to look over at him. “Do Faulfenza have sin, then?”
“Don’t all peoples, who have a god?”
This was how their training sessions inevitably went. An hour before dawn, Qora showed up outside her door no matter where she was sleeping, and without her informing him where to find her. They trekked to the nearest open space where there was enough cover for privacy… and he resumed teaching her to dance as Faulfenza did, which meant each discrete pose correlated to a word that could be strung with others, pose by pose, into a dance. Sediryl was hobbled by her lack of a tail, the sail-like ears with their two mobile tips, and the missing sixth fingers and toes, but that didn’t stop Qora. “So you talk with an accent,” he’d said dismissively. “Context can supply meaning when words are garbled.”
So she danced, practicing both single words and memorized prayers or stories, though she could only remember a handful of sentences. Qora had told her there were Faulfenza who could perform dozens of stories from memory, and she’d boggled… and wished she could see. With his eyes, not hers, so she could ‘hear’ the stories without someone at her elbow to translate. Maybe if she practiced enough, one day she’d manage; she surprised herself by how much she wanted to be that proficient.
At no point did Qora require her to create fire or direct it, and her relief shamed her. In the past she’d needed extremes of emotion to summon her talent, and the thought of forcing herself to that level of pathos, over and over, filled her with dismay. She spent a great deal of time entreating the Faulfenzair God for fire, though, or thanking Him for it; faul, ‘fire’ was the first body-word she memorized, because she repeated it so frequently.
And inevitably there was philosophy. That was as much her fault as Qora’s, though. The Faulfenza were one of the few true-alien species the Alliance had discovered so far, and his ideas fascinated her.
“It didn’t seem like a good idea,” Sediryl said finally, returning to the original topic, because she wasn’t sure she was up to a deep discussion about sin and gods she didn’t believe in. “To do Eldritch training. Much as I like Val. Telepathy, empathy, even some of the things Lord Hirianthial and Lisinthir can do… those aren’t like my talent.”
“Because you don’t have a talent. You have Faulza’s gift.”
She glanced at him, rueful. “I’m not a Faulfenzair, and never will be.”
“Probably for the best. You’d be a spindly one. One step onto Qufiil’s surface and you’d flatten like a pancake.” Qora looked into the sky toward the first streaks of color. “This is a beautiful world, but too light for us.”
It had never occurred to her that he might not be able to stay. She sat up. “Is it dangerous? Should we be doing something?”
He chuckled. “Don’t worry, Princess. I am not about to dramatically expire. We can chew plants to stay on low-gravity worlds for a while. Not forever, but… a while. And Maia and her dragon are working on a longer-term solution.”
“They are?” Sediryl asked, startled.
“We are, yes,” Maia said in her ear. “Grav-plate shoes.”
“That sounds…” She tried to imagine it. “Power-intensive.”
“It is,” Maia said. “Uuvek’s having a great time with it. We’ve got them working anywhere with a gem grid, but they run through power too fast once you leave it. That’s the current challenge. That and the fact that the Faulfenza have a pretty small foot. That makes for a small shoe. Getting it to generate enough gravity in the right shaped envelope…”
Sediryl had long since figured out that tone in Maia’s voice. “You’re having fun.”
“Maybe a little?”
“So is that where you’ve been disappearing to all the time?” Sediryl asked Qora. “Visiting my D-per?”
“It is comfortable being on their vessel,” Qora said, tail twitching over his toes. “Maia doesn’t feel gravity, and Uuvek is used to variable gravity from his work in the dragon navy. They set the ship heavier for me and my comrades.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t think of it… I should have asked.”
The Faulfenzair snorted. “You’re busy, as you should be. And it’s not your job to make us comfortable, Princess. We are here to learn, and there’s only so much a person can learn with a tour guide in the way.” He stood, stretching. “And now we resume. Just a few more sentences before you have to run back.”
Despite the acclimatization regiment she’d undergone in the Alliance, and a naturally athletic disposition, Sediryl stifled a groan. “Do I have to? I’m getting past the hot shower stage and into the hot soak stage.”
“The only cure for what makes you sore is more of what makes you sore.” He wiggled his fingers. “Up, Princess.”
As she stood, Sediryl asked, “Qora?” When he canted his head, she said, “Why here? I mean… what are you here to learn? What’s so important?”
He grinned. “What isn’t?”
She eyed him and the grin didn’t falter. “I’m not going to get more of an answer out of you, am I.”
“You could keep trying! It would be funny?”
Sediryl sighed. “Back to sentences. What should I form?”
“The sun is coming up. Time to thank the God.”
She stepped into the first word, arching her back and rising onto her toes. God of Fire, she said with the arc of her spine and the matching curves of her hands, hear your daughter. Thank you, for life-giving, life-saving fire.
“Better, but you won’t be dancing a scroll anytime soon. Again, and watch your fingers.”
Sediryl left her lesson with just enough time to shower before diving into her morning. It never stopped amazing her, that her sessions with Qora should be so physically exhausting, and yet so… relaxing? In other ways? Sediryl never managed the tranquility of her fiancé—at least, not for longer than a minute or two—but dance soothed something in her, made the challenges of her day less irksome.
By lunch she was ready for an hour of paperwork, but rather than attack it, she found herself sitting at the table over the remains of her meal, staring out the window.
“This,” Maia declared, “is a rare moment of motionlessness. Which means your brain must be churning like one of those milkmaids of yours.”
“Now there’s a comparison,” Sediryl said, dryly. “Can you try for something more flattering?”
“Thrashing like a shark? Spinning like a galaxy?”
“Better, if a little more grandiose than the occasion calls for.” Sediryl shook herself from the reverie that had inspired the D-per to interrupt her and turned from the window of her Ontine receiving room. “I’m thinking about what you and Qora said some days ago. About Beth.”
“Which thing we said some days ago about Beth? We talk a lot about Beth, you notice.”
They did… not least of which because Sediryl had asked the D-per to keep her apprised of Bethsaida’s progress cross-country. “About her having gone through this investiture ceremony already, and therefore having given the realm a gift.”
“Oh, good. I was hoping you would follow up on that. Your afternoon’s not exactly free, though.”
“I know. But if I tell Thuliven I need to cut things a little short, he’ll understand.”
Maia’s chuckle was gentle. “Your biggest fan, Thuliven.”
Sediryl grinned, and had a last sip of her chocolate. “We understand one another.”
Which they did. Sediryl had never met the Royal Procurer before her elevation to heir-in-waiting; in fact, she hadn’t even known there was a Royal Procurer, despite the meetings she’d attended with her mother during the winter court. Thuliven Mel Deriline was one of Liolesa’s many secrets, and an unusual one because everyone knew he existed. It was just that no one knew what he did. Other than, perhaps, to buy produce for the palace larders.
But Thuliven was not just a glorified chamberlain. He tracked all the food on the planet, growing in the field or brought as liege-gift; he maintained records of the weather and harvests that stretched back centuries; he had ledgers and notes that had filled Sediryl with avarice, until they’d filled her with horror, because the Royal Procurer had been tracking the accelerating collapse of their self-sufficiency for longer than she’d been alive.
He was a small, thin man with arched brows that lent him a perpetually surprised expression he used to his advantage at every opportunity—no one expected intellect from someone with his face—and further, he was from one of the politically neutral Houses, which led everyone to assume that he held himself aloof from Liolesa’s politics. But whatever the position of House Deriline, the position of Thuliven Mel Deriline had long since solidified. He had been buying outworld victuals too long, and for too much of the planet, to believe they could survive without them.
Sediryl’s arrival, with the knowledge, interest, and dedication to reviving their world, had turned her into his best friend. Which was fine, because she liked him too. He was a rare thing on their world: someone with an aggressively rational response to the tumult Liolesa had visited on the world after Surela’s failed coup. That made up for the fact that he didn’t hate Surela, something Sediryl couldn’t fathom. All he would say on the matter was: “She was ignorant, and she did everything in her power to rectify that.”
Not that Sediryl thought much of that. Plenty of people rectified their ignorance with wrongheaded ideas. It baffled her that Reese, whom she otherwise considered a sensible woman, would claim Surela in what had to be an attempt to rehabilitate her. Some acts were surely beyond forgiveness, and presiding over the torching of Jisiensire had to be one of them.
“At the rate you’re woolgathering, you’d better cancel your meeting entirely,” Maia said, wry.
“What a grand idea,” Sediryl said brightly. “Will you be so kind…?”
“Because I look like your secretary…” Half-hearted grumble, that.
“Because you are so much better at multitasking than your flesh-and-blood friends? As you consistently remind us?”
“Hah! Yes, I suppose I deserved that. I’ll send him a note, then. So who are you going to ask about this? Liolesa’s up on the station with the Lord of War again, she won’t be free until afternoon.”
Sediryl rolled her lower lip between her teeth, musing. Then ducked her head to look through the window up at the sky. Was it too early for an afternoon visit?
And then she realized what she was doing. How hard old habits died! She glanced back toward her desk and the chronolog floating over it. Not too early—if she took her time dressing. “I have a notion where to begin, yes.”
“It was a book.” Fassiana assayed one of those slight frowns that barely marred the stately mask of her face as she stirred her tea. “I seem to recall. A beautifully illuminated one—she commissioned its creation and gifted it to the royal library.”
Libraries were more common on her world than in the Alliance, for the creation of books was expensive and owning more than one a status symbol. Every highborn Eldritch had at least one library in their manor, and Ontine’s was the largest Sediryl had ever seen. Finding one book in it? She stifled a grimace. “You don’t have any recollection of the title? Even the topic?”
“It was fiction… not that will narrow your search down at all.” Fassiana’s smile was regretful. “I’m sorry, niece. I like fiction somewhat more than you do, but I prefer books on more practical topics myself… or the news.”
They both glanced at the discarded broadsheet on Fassiana’s table. Sediryl’s exasperation was probably a little too obvious, even in the company of someone she counted trustworthy, because her great-aunt shook her head. “I assume you’ve read it.”
“I read all her letters, yes.” Sediryl forced herself not to pick up her tea biscuit and crumble it, even if it was made with lavender flowers, which she cordially detested. She didn’t mind smelling lavender, but eating it was a bridge too far. “She’s read a few too many works of fiction herself, I think.” She met Fassiana’s eyes. “What do you think happened to her?”
“She went into the world and it depressed her pretensions.”
Sediryl’s brows lifted.
“I despise what she’s doing,” Fassiana said. “But never question that she has a purpose, niece. This popular conception of her as a traumatized miss is carefully crafted by her, and I have no doubt she intends a mischief.” The other woman canted her head, ever so slightly. “I trust you are plotting something of your own in response?”
“Liolesa says she has a plan—”
“Liolesa,” Fassiana said, putting her cup down, “will have plans until she dies, and they will be nested inside one another like mothering dolls. I don’t know, and will never know, all that she plans… and I find myself uninterested in it, in this situation. I want to know what you intend, niece. Bethsaida’s attack is aimed at you. Oh, never doubt that if she can damage Liolesa with the same throw she will count that a delicious lagniappe. But you’re the one she’s maneuvering to discredit. Who, then, should be responding?”
