Minerva fic, rough draft - part 1.
Jul. 18th, 2010 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreTitle: Anabasis
Author: Amber Michelle
Challenge: #004: temper
Gauntlet theme: 18 - where warriors dream
Game: 11: Shadow Dragon / 3: Mystery of the Emblem
Word Count: 12,636
Pairings/Characters: Minerva, Maria, Michalis
Warnings: eh.
Notes: rough draft, may be unlocked later for essay purposes. Has to be split in two for LJ-posting purposes.
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Snow drifted from a sky almost black to catch on the weave of Minerva's cloak and feather her in gray, lacy flakes that soaked in and darkened the dun color to something dull, cold and heavy. She carried another over her arm, one lined with fur and padded with quilting. The musty smell of wet wool made her nose wrinkle. Light from the fortress at her back cast long shadows across the courtyard and dyed the stones brassy yellow, glinting on metal fixtures - the gardener's shed, an abandoned bucket - without offering any illumination, but her target habitually wore white; darkness made it dingy and gray, but she stood out, framed by the shape of the well.
Minerva made her footsteps loud, scuffed the flagstones with her boots for good measure, and shook out the cloak, dropping it onto Maria's shoulders as soon as she reached the well. "When you told me you would get water," Minerva said, cinching it closed at her sister's throat, "I thought you meant to visit the kitchen."
"I didn't think it would snow." Maria's short hair curled inward around her chin, caught on the folds and fur lining. "It never snows this early."
Minerva followed her gaze into the pit of the well. The line was slack; the water was probably frozen over. Snow was starting to catch and gather on the dead brown branches of the apple tree and straggling strawberry vines criss-crossing over every plot of dirt. "Inside," she said, turning Maria by the shoulders, pushing when her sister dug her heels in and twisted, leaned toward the well. The water, she said, and Minerva yelled at the open door for someone to fetch a pitcher of water. Her voice snapped back at her from the high wall. She felt Maria flinch. Her hands were freezing cold, like stone. Minerva's teeth chattered until she clenched them shut.
No one met them at the door; she kicked it shut and pushed her sister up the stairs, shaking her cloak out, rubbing Maria's arms through the fabric. The Aerie had never seen a warm winter, but the fires were big, the hearths wide and welcoming - it was often the only good visitors had to say about the place when they had the bad luck to visit at the close of the year. The plain stone stairways were lit by torches, smelled of pitch; the long corridor was almost as cold as the courtyard. Maria's room greeted them with a blast of warm air and red, red everywhere - red tapestries to cover the walls, red rugs to cushion the floor, everything they could muster from Minerva's quarters, Michalis's effects, everything they could afford not to sell. Maria dropped down to sit on the hard cushion of her bed, and Minerva knelt at her side and pulled off her sister's boots to rub her feet. The skin looked white, her nails greyish, cold to the touch. They twitched.
"They couldn't have seen him," Maria said. Her fingers tangled in her lap, the cloak folded open to show her bare arms. "Could they?"
Minerva's body still trembled in reaction, though it was no longer cold. The cloak-- she shucked it off, left it on the floor to take Maria's other foot and rub color back into it. The air tasted thick and stale, but it was warm-- hot, even, toasty. "That's what led you to this foolishness?"
Maria yanked her foot away. "You never said--" Her chin dropped to her chest and the shadow smudges beneath her eyes stood out in the glare of firelight. It seemed she contemplated her fingers - also white and gray, also cold, and they snatched away when Minerva tried to touch them. "You told me he would be okay. It's been three weeks." Her eyes drifted away. "You never really said otherwise."
She sat back on her heels and sighed, blowing it through her nose. The fire snapped behind her, popped, the shadows twitched and stilled. "The rebels are lying." Her ankles ached, her knees, hips, straining until Minerva pulled her legs in front and bent them to the side. Maria is in your hands now, Marth said, on the path to the dragon's altar. That was his only request, and beyond that, in his blue eyes, the implication there was nothing else left-- not a word of apology. She'd thought it a high price to pay for a stupid tome, when alive Michalis could have added the strength of his arm to theirs. "He's dead. I saw it with my own eyes, this time."
He died of spite.
"You're positive?"
"Unless you believe in the walking dead. I've heard worse attributed to the Dark Pontifex." Minerva leaned back on her hands. Michalis didn't deserve to be dead. "Maybe he's dripping flesh as we speak, shambling down into the dale to find us - his hair falling out, his eyeballs rolling. We'll defeat him by offending his vanity with a mirror."
A smile twitched Maria's lips up at the corners. "Michalis wasn't vain."
"No? But I remember pacing outside his quarters for an hour while he prepared to meet that Archanean diplomat. He didn't come out looking any sweeter than when he went in."
"That was because..."
Minerva watched her sister's hands pluck at her habit, pulling a loose thread farther and farther out. The fire shined in Maria's eyes the way it would in a mirror, though they reflected so little back - they were dry and red. "Don't tell me he was hiding some weapon."
"He wouldn't do that."
"There were many things I believed he wouldn't do, and then he handed you over to Dolhr."
Maria's fingers stopped in their curled pose, and Minerva pushed her own bangs back and curled her hand into a fist at the back of her head. Sweat moistened her scalp. Where was that water, anyway? Someone must have heard her shout - a chambermaid, anyone. It wasn't hard to guess where she might be.
"I'm cold," Maria said.
Minerva's body moved before her mind made the connection; poke at fire, remove coat; it wasn't cold - sweat trickled down the ridges of her spine. She leaned past Maria's shoulder to yank the quilts back up from the floor and sat on the bed. "Keep the cloak on--"
"No--" Maria grabbed her arm, pushed against it to remain sitting. "No! No, wait. I'm not ready to go to sleep--"
She stopped and sat on the mattress, one leg bent under. It was hard not to sigh; did Maria think anybody missed those shadows beneath her eyes? Not ready, was it? Minerva would wager on her sister's inability to walk in a straight line, just now.
This was the past all over again - Maria refusing to go to bed out of fear of the dark, or a dream, or lightning, sneaking into the study while Michalis read The Twelve Paragons of Kingship aloud and hinted, though Minerva did not recognize it then, where lay their father's fatal flaws and, on occasion, his strengths. Maria would tiptoe from one shadow to another: a table, a bookstand, the potted Aurelis lime that thrived inside, lending its citrus scent to the dust and the beeswax candles, and finally-- the corner of his chair. He pretended not to notice. Now tell me which sacrifices the monarch owes the state, he might say, his eyes fixing on Minerva over the dragonskin cover, while Maria crept around the curve of the arm, candlelight glinting on the crown of her head. She would scramble onto his lap, squeal when he used her head for an armrest. For an instant, his mask would break, though Minerva only saw the crinkle of his eyes above the green cover.
"Do you still have those reports from the border?" Minerva let her arm slide down, let Maria leap up from the bed and lean on the post for support. They were on the desk beneath a book whose title couldn't be read from across the room, and she held them tight against her chest when she brought them back. Minerva let her have them and crab-walked back to shove the pillows against the wall for a cushion. "Let's finish reading them."
Maria rolled the parchment in one hand and crawled onto the bed, curled against Minerva's side. Her head thumped onto Minerva's shoulder. "Will there be more about the rebels?"
"There aren't enough left to bother in the regular reports." She pulled the quilts up over her legs, folded them twice over Maria. She kept one for herself, the thinnest, to drape over her legs. The room was so far from cold Minerva could have closed her eyes and imagined the windows open to let in hot summer air. "We left off somewhere around the Lepreon township, didn't we? Thirty cases of fever with characteristic red streaks..."
Water. Where was that water?
*
"Rebels still hold Las and Tynaron hostage. Their ringleader claims to have sent a letter to Pales demanding your deposition for the murder of your brother--"
There was the usual exchange of glances, which Minerva pretended not to see. This lot had served her father during her childhood - Arkias the general, Leon the chamberlain, Alexander the bishop, and she even believed Leon's claim that he didn't suspect Michalis as a party to his death, couldn't have, maybe didn't want to. The bishop had Archanean sympathies - always had, always would. How convenient, that. She twitched her cloak back over her knees and wished she'd had a fire lit. Her outlook had been too optimistic; the meeting, meant to be perhaps half an hour, had already stretched two, and her hands didn't want to move anymore. "Can you retake the townships without losing the granaries?"
"I suspect they've been emptied," Arkias the general said. His hair bristled at the nape of his neck in a short ponytail, black streaked with gray. "Our scouts say the fields were burned - no sign of livestock, hostages, nothing. O'course, we can't get our men too close without those snipers taking exception."
"Better if they've been put out of their misery," Leon said. "If we divided that supply among the other northern communities..."
"Fever's spreading. All up and down the river out of Dolhr."
Minerva folded her legs up onto the chair and crossed them. Her father used to lean on this very chair arm and rub his temple; she even remembered the way his bristled hair folded back and forth under his fingertips. "So that's five stores lost altogether, in addition to the dozen or so burned during the war, and this leaves us with--?"
Another exchange of glances, this time between the bishop and Arkias. "Seven."
"Seven. And a tainted river, gods only know how or why. Maybe a dragon died in it." Or maybe the Dark Pontifex had enough breath left when Marth killed him to wheeze a death curse. The chair squealed and cracked when Minerva shifted to sit up straight, putting her weight on the arms and knocking her knees on the lip of the table. They smarted, throbbed. "Why didn't you deploy guards while I was gone?"
Now she understood the lines creasing her father's face, the ones that always plowed deepest when he frowned. There were a great many things she wanted to say: the general could have deployed his remaining men (if he were not holed up at his command post, trembling in fear), Leon could have sent warnings to the heads of each clan (if he hadn't already taken shelter in Leandros, the spitless coward). She supposed bishops were useless. But-- it was easy to cast blame. Minerva did not think ahead - not far enough - and in any case, war was war. The window at the south end of the table was still broken and boarded up; the silver candlesticks had been stolen the day Ryuke grabbed her, held her at knife-point in this very room. Two spots of her blood stained the gray, trampled fringe of the rug beneath the table, whose red weave was so faded it appeared sandy brown in places. The Aerie's stores were full. She wondered how many bags of millet were looted from the territories formerly held by the rebels.
War was war. Macedon hadn't eaten well in nigh on three years, now. Perhaps when spring bloomed there would be few enough citizens left that she could feed them all.
"Never mind," Minerva said. "Let them send all the letters they'd like. I'm more concerned about the rumor regarding my brother."
"That he lives?" Alexander the bishop scratched a white sideburn. "I understand the Aum staff--"
"No."
He blinked his milky blue eyes at her. His white silk miter slipped a hair farther down on his forehead. "If the princess held it even once-- that is, she has a kind heart--"
And Minerva didn't? "There was no opportunity."
Alexander pushed his hat back, adjusted a pin. The others weren't looking at him, and the sun dimmed its shine outside, veiled for a measure of three loud breaths by a streak of white clouds. "I see."
No, he didn't see, and Minerva wasn't about to tell him. "Michalis died seizing the Starlight tome from Gharnef."
"Yes," he said. "Of course."
*
"How do you define barbarism?" came her brother's voice from behind. "I wonder."
The question sent a thrill from the core Minerva's chest to her empty stomach. She hadn't heard the library door open or latch again, and without his cape there was no telltale hiss of dragonhide or silk to catch her attention. "Uncivilized," Minerva said, placing a leather marker between the pages of The Twelve Paragons and turning in her chair. "The absence of modern systems such as fiefdom, slavery, coinage, agriculture."
"You do a passable imitation of a textbook," Michalis said, unbuttoning his blue coat, shedding it over the back of his usual chair, the round one that appeared all one piece. The silver chasing on his cuffs and collar gleamed in the light from the window. Dust motes danced in each shaft of light as he passed through them. "Do you know what any of that means?"
"Of course I do." She pulled her legs up and sat on them, the chair hard against her shins. Pine and ambergris teased her nose when he passed by. "Who keeps pressing me into this chair to listen to lectures on kingship? Leon talked at me for three entire hours about the irrigation channels up north and how many barbarians we have to kill to keep them in one piece."
"That word again." Her brother turned his back to her, pushing both hands into his hair. It fell long and heavy and silky to the point just between his shoulder-blades, the auburn especially bright against his black shirt. "You're like a parrot."
Minerva's lips tightened in an attempt not to frown. "You're obnoxious today." Parrot? Of course, asking would mean being told to look it up.
Michalis spared her a short glance over the high ruffle of his shirt, pausing by the window and leaning slightly, pushing it open with a screech that had Minerva grinding her teeth together and hunching behind the hardwood back of her chair. A million wings flapped and fluttered outside. Black shapes streaked past the slim rectangle of glass she could see past the bookcase, their caw caw cawcaws drowning out the scrape of the other window panel across the casement. "It's a talking bird from a mysterious land across the ocean, apparently, possessed of feathers of improbable colors like green, turquoise, azure, yellow," he said, turning back to her with a flourish, "and it followed some shipreck here from abroad before settling on a nameless island far to the south of Talys. Or-- so our guest from Pales would have me believe."
"Oh." Minerva watched his eyes glitter across the room. "So that's why you're being such an ass."
He laughed, his mouth stretching wide in imitation of a real smile, and leaned against the corner of the bookcase. "His Excellency the Earl of Mora in Leafcandy - Phillip, to be precise - would like to express his regret that he was not introduced to the eminent lady of the realm-- that would be you, I think, though his visions of what being a 'lady' here entails are a bit optimistic. I suppose Maria was too young for him." Minerva tried not to wince, but Michalis must have seen the twitch and curl of her lip because he chuckled in a way that made her want to shrug and press her back to something solid. "Father wouldn't let me punch him where it hurt."
"He should have," she muttered. "Why aren't you yelling at him then? That idiot doesn't have anything to do with me."
"Oh, there was talk about marriage-- and dukes, and the relative worth of Macedonian royalty compared to an Archanean duchy. They're apparently of the same calibre." Michalis crossed the room - it was only ten steps from the window to the table, hardly a library at all - and he braced his hands on the back of her chair. It creaked under his weight. His shadow engulfed her. "And you let me take care of it all myself, little traitor."
"Father told me to study!" Minerva slammed her book closed and got up so he couldn't loom over her. He wasn't that much taller, maybe a finger or two, and that was only because he was so many years older. "Besides, I don't want to see what's-his-name from Leafcandy--"
"I don't want to meet with the vermin either." He shoved the chair in, but only, it seemed, so he could lean back against it and cross his arms, and look mad. He heaved a loud, sharp sigh, yet didn't relax. "I hope he's ambushed on the road and the crows eat his corpse."
Minerva stared down at her coat, adjusted the folds of its skirt. Her toes twinged, still pinched by a new pair of boots - black like her brother's, shined, carefully stitched with gold and red. "So he's gone now?"
"Phillip of Mora? No, I'm afraid father will have to speak with him personally. I don't have the authority to sign anything."
"But--" She looked up, bit her lip at the way his eyes seemed fixed on the opposite wall, as if he was waiting for the door to open and reveal their father. Even more unlucky an arrival would be Maria. She always flinched when Michalis yelled. "Well, he did say Archanea wanted some kind of trade agreement - using wyverns to cross the shoals instead of making detours, right? Why on earth wasn't he there?"
Michalis shifted his eyes to her, his face turning slightly. "Perhaps he wants to appear more important by making the man wait."
"Michalis, that's-- don't say that."
"'Adhere to Truth, though it bring misfortune to the individual,'" he quoted.
"'Never disparage the person or character of the monarch,'" she said, a hand on her hip.
"What of the monarch's son and heir?"
"What about his daughter?"
"Well, I don't know about that-- apparently women aren't fit to hold a crown, much less a spear or an axe." Michalis gave up on his staring contest with the door and turned his head fully to look at her, his hair swaying and sliding over his shoulder. "In a civilized nation, that is."
She knew where this was going. Minerva had heard the rant before - that Archanea's claim to civilizing the entire world was a lie. There were history books, and letters, though none of them were in Macedon's vaults. They weren't a nation of scholars or lords, or even knights. She'd heard Princess Nyna had never opened a book like The Twelve Paragons of Kingship, but Minerva knew it back to front, and she would learn many more, even if she never held the throne. When Michalis was king, she would be beside him, and if he ever flew off to battle, she would be up there with him. "He'll have to accustom himself to an exception. And if they want to be rid of those raiders off the coast--"
"Silly little Minerva." She glared, and Michalis smiled, leaned toward her, as if he meant to tell her a secret. "We are the barbarians. Remember?"
Minerva made sure her mouth was set in as thin a line as possible. "No, we're not."
He lifted a finger to his lips, as if to shush her. "What is barbarism?" Michalis straightened slightly. "What makes a barbarian?"
Minerva tried not to shift on her feet, and wished she knew what he wanted - how to answer.
*
"These mutterings bear too close a resemblence to such before the rebellion, Princess." Palla stood with her at the window of the library, between the tall bookcases flanking the high, arched panels of glass, her hip propped on the casement. Bright sunshine lit the snow dusting the rooftiles outside, which threw it back and cast white, glowing light upon her pale hair. "Even if the empire ignores them, the stories will eventually find purchase with your subjects, just as they did last winter."
"Too little food and nothing to do. Yes, I know the pattern." Minerva's breath misted on the glass. Winter's cold swirled past the panes like cold wind, chilled her shoulder. "Leon suggested sending troops into the Dragon's Dale. Commoners are already risking themselves to search the hills for fruit, apparently. He thinks access to the area will assuage some suspicion."
Palla sighed, expelling the air through her nose. "This would be easier if we had a corpse to show them."
Pines reared up beyond the walls, tall green triangles against the dirty gray of the mountainside, which could not make up its mind about what face to show: dusty white, dark gray granite, a dirty, smeared combination of the two. Frost collected in the cracks and dips. Minerva counted them with her eyes and tried not to notice her own reflection in the glass. "It didn't work last time." The situation could be placed squarely on Michalis's shoulders, all of it: the employment of corrupt generals, the willingness of the populace to be swayed away from the crown, rumors of his continued existence. There were days she wished he had not saved her; he could have chosen one way or the other, to desert her or to aid, rather than meandering somewhere in the middle and getting there too late.
"It may keep them in line-- this fear that he will return," Palla said, finally, and in her peripheral vision Minerva saw her arms cross.
"I can't rely on Michalis or his accursed legend." Minerva left the window and flexed her frozen fingers. The fire burned high and bright, and the room felt darker the closer she walked to the flames, its warm yellow glow contrasting with the white starkness of day. Her skin warmed slowly, tingled at her fingertips. "So I have a favor to ask, if you're willing."
Palla shifted. Her knife scraped the casement. "Does this favor require me to leave the Aerie?"
"Only temporarily."
"Consider this my formal protest, in that case."
Minerva turned with a swirl of her coat. She missed her armor - the weight of it, the predictable scraping and clanking. "Palla--"
"We have followed you twice into Dolhr to fight nightmares," she said, her back turned to the window, her figure a silhouette appearing so thin, in the whiteness, that for a moment she resembled Maria. "Before that, we three followed you into the Dale for your coming of age ceremony, heavy weapons training - even politics. How often must I repeat that our place is by your side? When will you start believing it?"
She hadn't stopped believing it, Minerva wanted to protest. Her contemplations of late had veered toward loyalty and the nature of the thing; The Four Determinations claimed virtues like 'loyalty' and 'honor' were dependent on breeding, birth, that they separated civilized man from his barbarous roots, yet she had witnessed plenty of treachery among the inheritors of those rules. Archanea was indeed rotten to the core, as her brother so often told her, and the friendships between nations were a sham. The empire was cobbled together from barbarian clans that wore the trappings of the civilizations of old, and Macedon--
Macedon. Minerva need look no farther than her own reflection to find treason running in their blood - their barbarian blood.
"The right decisions are not always correct," Palla said softly in the snowlit silence. "Military Ethics, I believe. The principle applies. I know you mean to send Princess Maria away, and I would advise you against that nonsense. You tried the same thing last time."
"Maria has never liked hunting." Minerva pushed hair from her eyes. The ends tickled her throat. "She truly isn't suited for politics, and I would rather see her established elsewhere. Lena will be a good mentor to her."
"Let her make the decision for herself."
Stubborn, Minerva muttered, not bothering to hide her frown. But she knew her sister did not sleep; she roamed the infirmary, the stables, healing staff in hand, made trips to the towns on the slopes to care for their patients, then returned to the Aerie to haunt the halls again, day to night to day. It's too quiet, Maria said in the dark, while they lay side by side beneath too many quilts and blankets. I can hear his voice. Minerva asked who she meant - Michalis, father? - and never received an answer. No, nothing, never mind-- let me go, sister, there are patients in the ward I must see. Maria risked influenza, cholera, plague, consumption, she rested her hands on the leper expelled from the keep at the conclusion of the war-- but did not sleep. Minerva wondered if the ordeal at the altar would eventually drive her sister insane. If so, which was worse - insanity, or treason?
Palla was right, of course. She'd yet to offer bad advice. "I want her away."
"What are you going to do?"
Minerva ran her hands into her hair. "Something stupid."
*
The letter was easier to write than Minerva expected and motivated, perhaps, by the bony jut of Maria's elbow in her side, and the equally sharp pressure of her shoulder: Greetings to Marth, Fifth king of Altea, Defender of the Seven Lands. I hope this letter finds you well.
Please do not be alarmed by the presence of Macedonian troops past the border of Dolhr. Their tresspass is driven by necessity.
The ink blotted, and the odd angle at which Minerva held her arm made her calligraphy slant backward. The fire at Maria's hearth burned low and red, its light casting a pink tint on her yellow parchment, tinging the edges; their last beeswax candle crackled, snapped, the flame pulsed. Minerva drew in a long, deep breath through her nose, wrinkling it slightly at the sharp, bitter scent. It could be worse-- word had it Gra had run out of burning wood and timber, and if Macedon had one resource in excess, aside from good, solid granite, that would be wood. And there were always the forests of Dolhr, which she had dutifully left intact, though a fire would have done her heart good.
Our stores have been stretched as far as they will go. Dolhr's wild persimmons and fairy gourds are all we have, at present. Our scouts assure me there has been no activity in the southern region since the war. And while the foraging parties are away-- Minerva tapped her quill with a nail. That matter which I spoke to you about at our parting will be taken care of. Minerva chewed her bottom lip, considered saying more. But Marth was smart enough to read between the lines.
As for official matters, Empress Nyna's emmissary was singularly unhel--
Maria jolted awake with a gasp and sent Minerva's nib flying across the parchment and onto the cover of the book she'd used as a writing surface. Ink slopped from its well to stain the edge of the quilt, bleeding into the white cotton, expanding. She moved it to the floor - the ink, the letter - and grasped Maria's thin, trembling shoulders.
"I'm sorry." She blinked tears from her lashes. They splattered across Minerva's fingers. "I ruined your work." Maria wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I'll help you fix it."
"It's just a letter, Maria. I would have had to rewrite it anyway."
"You should let me." She looked like a little girl with her ruffled nightgown cuffs and the lacy, drawstring collar. She'd always liked lace. "My handwriting is much neater than yours."
Minerva pulled Maria in for a hug and ruffled her long hair with both hands until she shouted and swatted. "You'd never say that to Michalis, you little traitor!"
"Michalis had better penman--eeek, no, it'll tangle!"
She let Maria seize her hands and tried not to notice how thin and bird-like her fingers were. She should have been filling out and learning to ride a pegasus - maybe not to fight, but one grew up when one learned to fly, and how old was she now? Sixteen? "You only say that because he gave you sweets." Minerva leaned back against her pillow, flicked some hair from her little sister's eyes. "He never gave me sweets - beatings, yes, all the way across the practice yard, but not caramels. Stingy bastard."
Rather than flinching, Maria giggled and circled her arms around Minerva's waist, shoving them between her body and the pillow, and they felt like twigs - maybe Xenophon's talons, if she chose to be generous in her description, as a wyvern had more gripping power than almost anything but a real dragon. And Maria certainly wasn't that-- a dragon, or a demon. "He loved you best, sister." Her fingers picked at the back of Minerva's shirt. She stretched out over Minerva's legs, and her smile faded. "You always wanted to fight by his side. I realize you're angry, but I think he tried to grant your wish."
Minerva watched the yellow candlelight shift on the crown of her head. The red glow from the hearth dyed her hair crimson; it streaked over her back the way she lay, long, wispy, straight as straw. Maria must not be taking care of it, yet it was also true they could not afford such luxuries as scented oils and boxwood combs, or silk squares and honey, whatever it was the women had been obsessing over before the war; Minerva never kept track. She'd shave her head bare if Maria would stop exclaiming about how awful it would be. Invalids do that, sister - the sick, or wounded, or madmen. You can't.
Minerva was sick-- was she not? Deluded, at least. They broke your power and your body-- but did they break your spirit as well? Get up. The Minerva I knew would open her own veins before submitting to that scum.
She'd thoght she would slit her own wrists before taking orders from her brother again, that was certain, and she told him so - only he bore all of her insults in silence, and the arm supporting her never wavered. Warm, tall, strong, gentle when he dabbed her wounds, applied astringents. That-- that was the Michalis she knew, the brother she'd wanted to support. He'd had the nerve to die before Maria could see he'd reformed.
Stingy bastard.
"You won't fool me this time, Minerva." Maria's words were hot through her shirt, muffled because her face was pressed to Minerva's chest. "Let me write the letter - and whatever you've left for last because you hate paperwork."
"Will you go back to sleep if I say yes?"
"All I do is sleep. All I do is think." Maria yanked on her shirt until the collar pinched Minerva's throat. "Let me help. Please?"
Minerva rolled her eyes upward to the wooden beams of the ceiling. "Fine, fine. But not tonight--"
"But--"
"I'm tired, thank you." She scrubbed her haind into her hair, shifted against the pillow. Its stuffing wasn't quite adequate to cushion her back completely; the wall felt unyielding through the feathers, cold, possibly the only frozen part of the room. Two layers of heavy curtains covered the window, and if Maria were not so sensitive to cold-- "Tomorrow morning, bright and early - we can get up at dawn if you want, but I'm not doing any paperwork tonight."
Maria sighed loudly, the undertone of her voice going sharp, indicating annoyance, and it was almost like she'd stepped back in time a moment. The tangle of her legs over Minerva's twisted, and Maria rolled back onto the hard mattress. "Will you stay?"
Minerva shimmied down and threw her blanket over Maria. It was too bloody hot for a down quilt. "Of course I will."
*
Author: Amber Michelle
Challenge: #004: temper
Gauntlet theme: 18 - where warriors dream
Game: 11: Shadow Dragon / 3: Mystery of the Emblem
Word Count: 12,636
Pairings/Characters: Minerva, Maria, Michalis
Warnings: eh.
Notes: rough draft, may be unlocked later for essay purposes. Has to be split in two for LJ-posting purposes.
.................................................................
Snow drifted from a sky almost black to catch on the weave of Minerva's cloak and feather her in gray, lacy flakes that soaked in and darkened the dun color to something dull, cold and heavy. She carried another over her arm, one lined with fur and padded with quilting. The musty smell of wet wool made her nose wrinkle. Light from the fortress at her back cast long shadows across the courtyard and dyed the stones brassy yellow, glinting on metal fixtures - the gardener's shed, an abandoned bucket - without offering any illumination, but her target habitually wore white; darkness made it dingy and gray, but she stood out, framed by the shape of the well.
Minerva made her footsteps loud, scuffed the flagstones with her boots for good measure, and shook out the cloak, dropping it onto Maria's shoulders as soon as she reached the well. "When you told me you would get water," Minerva said, cinching it closed at her sister's throat, "I thought you meant to visit the kitchen."
"I didn't think it would snow." Maria's short hair curled inward around her chin, caught on the folds and fur lining. "It never snows this early."
Minerva followed her gaze into the pit of the well. The line was slack; the water was probably frozen over. Snow was starting to catch and gather on the dead brown branches of the apple tree and straggling strawberry vines criss-crossing over every plot of dirt. "Inside," she said, turning Maria by the shoulders, pushing when her sister dug her heels in and twisted, leaned toward the well. The water, she said, and Minerva yelled at the open door for someone to fetch a pitcher of water. Her voice snapped back at her from the high wall. She felt Maria flinch. Her hands were freezing cold, like stone. Minerva's teeth chattered until she clenched them shut.
No one met them at the door; she kicked it shut and pushed her sister up the stairs, shaking her cloak out, rubbing Maria's arms through the fabric. The Aerie had never seen a warm winter, but the fires were big, the hearths wide and welcoming - it was often the only good visitors had to say about the place when they had the bad luck to visit at the close of the year. The plain stone stairways were lit by torches, smelled of pitch; the long corridor was almost as cold as the courtyard. Maria's room greeted them with a blast of warm air and red, red everywhere - red tapestries to cover the walls, red rugs to cushion the floor, everything they could muster from Minerva's quarters, Michalis's effects, everything they could afford not to sell. Maria dropped down to sit on the hard cushion of her bed, and Minerva knelt at her side and pulled off her sister's boots to rub her feet. The skin looked white, her nails greyish, cold to the touch. They twitched.
"They couldn't have seen him," Maria said. Her fingers tangled in her lap, the cloak folded open to show her bare arms. "Could they?"
Minerva's body still trembled in reaction, though it was no longer cold. The cloak-- she shucked it off, left it on the floor to take Maria's other foot and rub color back into it. The air tasted thick and stale, but it was warm-- hot, even, toasty. "That's what led you to this foolishness?"
Maria yanked her foot away. "You never said--" Her chin dropped to her chest and the shadow smudges beneath her eyes stood out in the glare of firelight. It seemed she contemplated her fingers - also white and gray, also cold, and they snatched away when Minerva tried to touch them. "You told me he would be okay. It's been three weeks." Her eyes drifted away. "You never really said otherwise."
She sat back on her heels and sighed, blowing it through her nose. The fire snapped behind her, popped, the shadows twitched and stilled. "The rebels are lying." Her ankles ached, her knees, hips, straining until Minerva pulled her legs in front and bent them to the side. Maria is in your hands now, Marth said, on the path to the dragon's altar. That was his only request, and beyond that, in his blue eyes, the implication there was nothing else left-- not a word of apology. She'd thought it a high price to pay for a stupid tome, when alive Michalis could have added the strength of his arm to theirs. "He's dead. I saw it with my own eyes, this time."
He died of spite.
"You're positive?"
"Unless you believe in the walking dead. I've heard worse attributed to the Dark Pontifex." Minerva leaned back on her hands. Michalis didn't deserve to be dead. "Maybe he's dripping flesh as we speak, shambling down into the dale to find us - his hair falling out, his eyeballs rolling. We'll defeat him by offending his vanity with a mirror."
A smile twitched Maria's lips up at the corners. "Michalis wasn't vain."
"No? But I remember pacing outside his quarters for an hour while he prepared to meet that Archanean diplomat. He didn't come out looking any sweeter than when he went in."
"That was because..."
Minerva watched her sister's hands pluck at her habit, pulling a loose thread farther and farther out. The fire shined in Maria's eyes the way it would in a mirror, though they reflected so little back - they were dry and red. "Don't tell me he was hiding some weapon."
"He wouldn't do that."
"There were many things I believed he wouldn't do, and then he handed you over to Dolhr."
Maria's fingers stopped in their curled pose, and Minerva pushed her own bangs back and curled her hand into a fist at the back of her head. Sweat moistened her scalp. Where was that water, anyway? Someone must have heard her shout - a chambermaid, anyone. It wasn't hard to guess where she might be.
"I'm cold," Maria said.
Minerva's body moved before her mind made the connection; poke at fire, remove coat; it wasn't cold - sweat trickled down the ridges of her spine. She leaned past Maria's shoulder to yank the quilts back up from the floor and sat on the bed. "Keep the cloak on--"
"No--" Maria grabbed her arm, pushed against it to remain sitting. "No! No, wait. I'm not ready to go to sleep--"
She stopped and sat on the mattress, one leg bent under. It was hard not to sigh; did Maria think anybody missed those shadows beneath her eyes? Not ready, was it? Minerva would wager on her sister's inability to walk in a straight line, just now.
This was the past all over again - Maria refusing to go to bed out of fear of the dark, or a dream, or lightning, sneaking into the study while Michalis read The Twelve Paragons of Kingship aloud and hinted, though Minerva did not recognize it then, where lay their father's fatal flaws and, on occasion, his strengths. Maria would tiptoe from one shadow to another: a table, a bookstand, the potted Aurelis lime that thrived inside, lending its citrus scent to the dust and the beeswax candles, and finally-- the corner of his chair. He pretended not to notice. Now tell me which sacrifices the monarch owes the state, he might say, his eyes fixing on Minerva over the dragonskin cover, while Maria crept around the curve of the arm, candlelight glinting on the crown of her head. She would scramble onto his lap, squeal when he used her head for an armrest. For an instant, his mask would break, though Minerva only saw the crinkle of his eyes above the green cover.
"Do you still have those reports from the border?" Minerva let her arm slide down, let Maria leap up from the bed and lean on the post for support. They were on the desk beneath a book whose title couldn't be read from across the room, and she held them tight against her chest when she brought them back. Minerva let her have them and crab-walked back to shove the pillows against the wall for a cushion. "Let's finish reading them."
Maria rolled the parchment in one hand and crawled onto the bed, curled against Minerva's side. Her head thumped onto Minerva's shoulder. "Will there be more about the rebels?"
"There aren't enough left to bother in the regular reports." She pulled the quilts up over her legs, folded them twice over Maria. She kept one for herself, the thinnest, to drape over her legs. The room was so far from cold Minerva could have closed her eyes and imagined the windows open to let in hot summer air. "We left off somewhere around the Lepreon township, didn't we? Thirty cases of fever with characteristic red streaks..."
Water. Where was that water?
*
"Rebels still hold Las and Tynaron hostage. Their ringleader claims to have sent a letter to Pales demanding your deposition for the murder of your brother--"
There was the usual exchange of glances, which Minerva pretended not to see. This lot had served her father during her childhood - Arkias the general, Leon the chamberlain, Alexander the bishop, and she even believed Leon's claim that he didn't suspect Michalis as a party to his death, couldn't have, maybe didn't want to. The bishop had Archanean sympathies - always had, always would. How convenient, that. She twitched her cloak back over her knees and wished she'd had a fire lit. Her outlook had been too optimistic; the meeting, meant to be perhaps half an hour, had already stretched two, and her hands didn't want to move anymore. "Can you retake the townships without losing the granaries?"
"I suspect they've been emptied," Arkias the general said. His hair bristled at the nape of his neck in a short ponytail, black streaked with gray. "Our scouts say the fields were burned - no sign of livestock, hostages, nothing. O'course, we can't get our men too close without those snipers taking exception."
"Better if they've been put out of their misery," Leon said. "If we divided that supply among the other northern communities..."
"Fever's spreading. All up and down the river out of Dolhr."
Minerva folded her legs up onto the chair and crossed them. Her father used to lean on this very chair arm and rub his temple; she even remembered the way his bristled hair folded back and forth under his fingertips. "So that's five stores lost altogether, in addition to the dozen or so burned during the war, and this leaves us with--?"
Another exchange of glances, this time between the bishop and Arkias. "Seven."
"Seven. And a tainted river, gods only know how or why. Maybe a dragon died in it." Or maybe the Dark Pontifex had enough breath left when Marth killed him to wheeze a death curse. The chair squealed and cracked when Minerva shifted to sit up straight, putting her weight on the arms and knocking her knees on the lip of the table. They smarted, throbbed. "Why didn't you deploy guards while I was gone?"
Now she understood the lines creasing her father's face, the ones that always plowed deepest when he frowned. There were a great many things she wanted to say: the general could have deployed his remaining men (if he were not holed up at his command post, trembling in fear), Leon could have sent warnings to the heads of each clan (if he hadn't already taken shelter in Leandros, the spitless coward). She supposed bishops were useless. But-- it was easy to cast blame. Minerva did not think ahead - not far enough - and in any case, war was war. The window at the south end of the table was still broken and boarded up; the silver candlesticks had been stolen the day Ryuke grabbed her, held her at knife-point in this very room. Two spots of her blood stained the gray, trampled fringe of the rug beneath the table, whose red weave was so faded it appeared sandy brown in places. The Aerie's stores were full. She wondered how many bags of millet were looted from the territories formerly held by the rebels.
War was war. Macedon hadn't eaten well in nigh on three years, now. Perhaps when spring bloomed there would be few enough citizens left that she could feed them all.
"Never mind," Minerva said. "Let them send all the letters they'd like. I'm more concerned about the rumor regarding my brother."
"That he lives?" Alexander the bishop scratched a white sideburn. "I understand the Aum staff--"
"No."
He blinked his milky blue eyes at her. His white silk miter slipped a hair farther down on his forehead. "If the princess held it even once-- that is, she has a kind heart--"
And Minerva didn't? "There was no opportunity."
Alexander pushed his hat back, adjusted a pin. The others weren't looking at him, and the sun dimmed its shine outside, veiled for a measure of three loud breaths by a streak of white clouds. "I see."
No, he didn't see, and Minerva wasn't about to tell him. "Michalis died seizing the Starlight tome from Gharnef."
"Yes," he said. "Of course."
*
"How do you define barbarism?" came her brother's voice from behind. "I wonder."
The question sent a thrill from the core Minerva's chest to her empty stomach. She hadn't heard the library door open or latch again, and without his cape there was no telltale hiss of dragonhide or silk to catch her attention. "Uncivilized," Minerva said, placing a leather marker between the pages of The Twelve Paragons and turning in her chair. "The absence of modern systems such as fiefdom, slavery, coinage, agriculture."
"You do a passable imitation of a textbook," Michalis said, unbuttoning his blue coat, shedding it over the back of his usual chair, the round one that appeared all one piece. The silver chasing on his cuffs and collar gleamed in the light from the window. Dust motes danced in each shaft of light as he passed through them. "Do you know what any of that means?"
"Of course I do." She pulled her legs up and sat on them, the chair hard against her shins. Pine and ambergris teased her nose when he passed by. "Who keeps pressing me into this chair to listen to lectures on kingship? Leon talked at me for three entire hours about the irrigation channels up north and how many barbarians we have to kill to keep them in one piece."
"That word again." Her brother turned his back to her, pushing both hands into his hair. It fell long and heavy and silky to the point just between his shoulder-blades, the auburn especially bright against his black shirt. "You're like a parrot."
Minerva's lips tightened in an attempt not to frown. "You're obnoxious today." Parrot? Of course, asking would mean being told to look it up.
Michalis spared her a short glance over the high ruffle of his shirt, pausing by the window and leaning slightly, pushing it open with a screech that had Minerva grinding her teeth together and hunching behind the hardwood back of her chair. A million wings flapped and fluttered outside. Black shapes streaked past the slim rectangle of glass she could see past the bookcase, their caw caw cawcaws drowning out the scrape of the other window panel across the casement. "It's a talking bird from a mysterious land across the ocean, apparently, possessed of feathers of improbable colors like green, turquoise, azure, yellow," he said, turning back to her with a flourish, "and it followed some shipreck here from abroad before settling on a nameless island far to the south of Talys. Or-- so our guest from Pales would have me believe."
"Oh." Minerva watched his eyes glitter across the room. "So that's why you're being such an ass."
He laughed, his mouth stretching wide in imitation of a real smile, and leaned against the corner of the bookcase. "His Excellency the Earl of Mora in Leafcandy - Phillip, to be precise - would like to express his regret that he was not introduced to the eminent lady of the realm-- that would be you, I think, though his visions of what being a 'lady' here entails are a bit optimistic. I suppose Maria was too young for him." Minerva tried not to wince, but Michalis must have seen the twitch and curl of her lip because he chuckled in a way that made her want to shrug and press her back to something solid. "Father wouldn't let me punch him where it hurt."
"He should have," she muttered. "Why aren't you yelling at him then? That idiot doesn't have anything to do with me."
"Oh, there was talk about marriage-- and dukes, and the relative worth of Macedonian royalty compared to an Archanean duchy. They're apparently of the same calibre." Michalis crossed the room - it was only ten steps from the window to the table, hardly a library at all - and he braced his hands on the back of her chair. It creaked under his weight. His shadow engulfed her. "And you let me take care of it all myself, little traitor."
"Father told me to study!" Minerva slammed her book closed and got up so he couldn't loom over her. He wasn't that much taller, maybe a finger or two, and that was only because he was so many years older. "Besides, I don't want to see what's-his-name from Leafcandy--"
"I don't want to meet with the vermin either." He shoved the chair in, but only, it seemed, so he could lean back against it and cross his arms, and look mad. He heaved a loud, sharp sigh, yet didn't relax. "I hope he's ambushed on the road and the crows eat his corpse."
Minerva stared down at her coat, adjusted the folds of its skirt. Her toes twinged, still pinched by a new pair of boots - black like her brother's, shined, carefully stitched with gold and red. "So he's gone now?"
"Phillip of Mora? No, I'm afraid father will have to speak with him personally. I don't have the authority to sign anything."
"But--" She looked up, bit her lip at the way his eyes seemed fixed on the opposite wall, as if he was waiting for the door to open and reveal their father. Even more unlucky an arrival would be Maria. She always flinched when Michalis yelled. "Well, he did say Archanea wanted some kind of trade agreement - using wyverns to cross the shoals instead of making detours, right? Why on earth wasn't he there?"
Michalis shifted his eyes to her, his face turning slightly. "Perhaps he wants to appear more important by making the man wait."
"Michalis, that's-- don't say that."
"'Adhere to Truth, though it bring misfortune to the individual,'" he quoted.
"'Never disparage the person or character of the monarch,'" she said, a hand on her hip.
"What of the monarch's son and heir?"
"What about his daughter?"
"Well, I don't know about that-- apparently women aren't fit to hold a crown, much less a spear or an axe." Michalis gave up on his staring contest with the door and turned his head fully to look at her, his hair swaying and sliding over his shoulder. "In a civilized nation, that is."
She knew where this was going. Minerva had heard the rant before - that Archanea's claim to civilizing the entire world was a lie. There were history books, and letters, though none of them were in Macedon's vaults. They weren't a nation of scholars or lords, or even knights. She'd heard Princess Nyna had never opened a book like The Twelve Paragons of Kingship, but Minerva knew it back to front, and she would learn many more, even if she never held the throne. When Michalis was king, she would be beside him, and if he ever flew off to battle, she would be up there with him. "He'll have to accustom himself to an exception. And if they want to be rid of those raiders off the coast--"
"Silly little Minerva." She glared, and Michalis smiled, leaned toward her, as if he meant to tell her a secret. "We are the barbarians. Remember?"
Minerva made sure her mouth was set in as thin a line as possible. "No, we're not."
He lifted a finger to his lips, as if to shush her. "What is barbarism?" Michalis straightened slightly. "What makes a barbarian?"
Minerva tried not to shift on her feet, and wished she knew what he wanted - how to answer.
*
"These mutterings bear too close a resemblence to such before the rebellion, Princess." Palla stood with her at the window of the library, between the tall bookcases flanking the high, arched panels of glass, her hip propped on the casement. Bright sunshine lit the snow dusting the rooftiles outside, which threw it back and cast white, glowing light upon her pale hair. "Even if the empire ignores them, the stories will eventually find purchase with your subjects, just as they did last winter."
"Too little food and nothing to do. Yes, I know the pattern." Minerva's breath misted on the glass. Winter's cold swirled past the panes like cold wind, chilled her shoulder. "Leon suggested sending troops into the Dragon's Dale. Commoners are already risking themselves to search the hills for fruit, apparently. He thinks access to the area will assuage some suspicion."
Palla sighed, expelling the air through her nose. "This would be easier if we had a corpse to show them."
Pines reared up beyond the walls, tall green triangles against the dirty gray of the mountainside, which could not make up its mind about what face to show: dusty white, dark gray granite, a dirty, smeared combination of the two. Frost collected in the cracks and dips. Minerva counted them with her eyes and tried not to notice her own reflection in the glass. "It didn't work last time." The situation could be placed squarely on Michalis's shoulders, all of it: the employment of corrupt generals, the willingness of the populace to be swayed away from the crown, rumors of his continued existence. There were days she wished he had not saved her; he could have chosen one way or the other, to desert her or to aid, rather than meandering somewhere in the middle and getting there too late.
"It may keep them in line-- this fear that he will return," Palla said, finally, and in her peripheral vision Minerva saw her arms cross.
"I can't rely on Michalis or his accursed legend." Minerva left the window and flexed her frozen fingers. The fire burned high and bright, and the room felt darker the closer she walked to the flames, its warm yellow glow contrasting with the white starkness of day. Her skin warmed slowly, tingled at her fingertips. "So I have a favor to ask, if you're willing."
Palla shifted. Her knife scraped the casement. "Does this favor require me to leave the Aerie?"
"Only temporarily."
"Consider this my formal protest, in that case."
Minerva turned with a swirl of her coat. She missed her armor - the weight of it, the predictable scraping and clanking. "Palla--"
"We have followed you twice into Dolhr to fight nightmares," she said, her back turned to the window, her figure a silhouette appearing so thin, in the whiteness, that for a moment she resembled Maria. "Before that, we three followed you into the Dale for your coming of age ceremony, heavy weapons training - even politics. How often must I repeat that our place is by your side? When will you start believing it?"
She hadn't stopped believing it, Minerva wanted to protest. Her contemplations of late had veered toward loyalty and the nature of the thing; The Four Determinations claimed virtues like 'loyalty' and 'honor' were dependent on breeding, birth, that they separated civilized man from his barbarous roots, yet she had witnessed plenty of treachery among the inheritors of those rules. Archanea was indeed rotten to the core, as her brother so often told her, and the friendships between nations were a sham. The empire was cobbled together from barbarian clans that wore the trappings of the civilizations of old, and Macedon--
Macedon. Minerva need look no farther than her own reflection to find treason running in their blood - their barbarian blood.
"The right decisions are not always correct," Palla said softly in the snowlit silence. "Military Ethics, I believe. The principle applies. I know you mean to send Princess Maria away, and I would advise you against that nonsense. You tried the same thing last time."
"Maria has never liked hunting." Minerva pushed hair from her eyes. The ends tickled her throat. "She truly isn't suited for politics, and I would rather see her established elsewhere. Lena will be a good mentor to her."
"Let her make the decision for herself."
Stubborn, Minerva muttered, not bothering to hide her frown. But she knew her sister did not sleep; she roamed the infirmary, the stables, healing staff in hand, made trips to the towns on the slopes to care for their patients, then returned to the Aerie to haunt the halls again, day to night to day. It's too quiet, Maria said in the dark, while they lay side by side beneath too many quilts and blankets. I can hear his voice. Minerva asked who she meant - Michalis, father? - and never received an answer. No, nothing, never mind-- let me go, sister, there are patients in the ward I must see. Maria risked influenza, cholera, plague, consumption, she rested her hands on the leper expelled from the keep at the conclusion of the war-- but did not sleep. Minerva wondered if the ordeal at the altar would eventually drive her sister insane. If so, which was worse - insanity, or treason?
Palla was right, of course. She'd yet to offer bad advice. "I want her away."
"What are you going to do?"
Minerva ran her hands into her hair. "Something stupid."
*
The letter was easier to write than Minerva expected and motivated, perhaps, by the bony jut of Maria's elbow in her side, and the equally sharp pressure of her shoulder: Greetings to Marth, Fifth king of Altea, Defender of the Seven Lands. I hope this letter finds you well.
Please do not be alarmed by the presence of Macedonian troops past the border of Dolhr. Their tresspass is driven by necessity.
The ink blotted, and the odd angle at which Minerva held her arm made her calligraphy slant backward. The fire at Maria's hearth burned low and red, its light casting a pink tint on her yellow parchment, tinging the edges; their last beeswax candle crackled, snapped, the flame pulsed. Minerva drew in a long, deep breath through her nose, wrinkling it slightly at the sharp, bitter scent. It could be worse-- word had it Gra had run out of burning wood and timber, and if Macedon had one resource in excess, aside from good, solid granite, that would be wood. And there were always the forests of Dolhr, which she had dutifully left intact, though a fire would have done her heart good.
Our stores have been stretched as far as they will go. Dolhr's wild persimmons and fairy gourds are all we have, at present. Our scouts assure me there has been no activity in the southern region since the war. And while the foraging parties are away-- Minerva tapped her quill with a nail. That matter which I spoke to you about at our parting will be taken care of. Minerva chewed her bottom lip, considered saying more. But Marth was smart enough to read between the lines.
As for official matters, Empress Nyna's emmissary was singularly unhel--
Maria jolted awake with a gasp and sent Minerva's nib flying across the parchment and onto the cover of the book she'd used as a writing surface. Ink slopped from its well to stain the edge of the quilt, bleeding into the white cotton, expanding. She moved it to the floor - the ink, the letter - and grasped Maria's thin, trembling shoulders.
"I'm sorry." She blinked tears from her lashes. They splattered across Minerva's fingers. "I ruined your work." Maria wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I'll help you fix it."
"It's just a letter, Maria. I would have had to rewrite it anyway."
"You should let me." She looked like a little girl with her ruffled nightgown cuffs and the lacy, drawstring collar. She'd always liked lace. "My handwriting is much neater than yours."
Minerva pulled Maria in for a hug and ruffled her long hair with both hands until she shouted and swatted. "You'd never say that to Michalis, you little traitor!"
"Michalis had better penman--eeek, no, it'll tangle!"
She let Maria seize her hands and tried not to notice how thin and bird-like her fingers were. She should have been filling out and learning to ride a pegasus - maybe not to fight, but one grew up when one learned to fly, and how old was she now? Sixteen? "You only say that because he gave you sweets." Minerva leaned back against her pillow, flicked some hair from her little sister's eyes. "He never gave me sweets - beatings, yes, all the way across the practice yard, but not caramels. Stingy bastard."
Rather than flinching, Maria giggled and circled her arms around Minerva's waist, shoving them between her body and the pillow, and they felt like twigs - maybe Xenophon's talons, if she chose to be generous in her description, as a wyvern had more gripping power than almost anything but a real dragon. And Maria certainly wasn't that-- a dragon, or a demon. "He loved you best, sister." Her fingers picked at the back of Minerva's shirt. She stretched out over Minerva's legs, and her smile faded. "You always wanted to fight by his side. I realize you're angry, but I think he tried to grant your wish."
Minerva watched the yellow candlelight shift on the crown of her head. The red glow from the hearth dyed her hair crimson; it streaked over her back the way she lay, long, wispy, straight as straw. Maria must not be taking care of it, yet it was also true they could not afford such luxuries as scented oils and boxwood combs, or silk squares and honey, whatever it was the women had been obsessing over before the war; Minerva never kept track. She'd shave her head bare if Maria would stop exclaiming about how awful it would be. Invalids do that, sister - the sick, or wounded, or madmen. You can't.
Minerva was sick-- was she not? Deluded, at least. They broke your power and your body-- but did they break your spirit as well? Get up. The Minerva I knew would open her own veins before submitting to that scum.
She'd thoght she would slit her own wrists before taking orders from her brother again, that was certain, and she told him so - only he bore all of her insults in silence, and the arm supporting her never wavered. Warm, tall, strong, gentle when he dabbed her wounds, applied astringents. That-- that was the Michalis she knew, the brother she'd wanted to support. He'd had the nerve to die before Maria could see he'd reformed.
Stingy bastard.
"You won't fool me this time, Minerva." Maria's words were hot through her shirt, muffled because her face was pressed to Minerva's chest. "Let me write the letter - and whatever you've left for last because you hate paperwork."
"Will you go back to sleep if I say yes?"
"All I do is sleep. All I do is think." Maria yanked on her shirt until the collar pinched Minerva's throat. "Let me help. Please?"
Minerva rolled her eyes upward to the wooden beams of the ceiling. "Fine, fine. But not tonight--"
"But--"
"I'm tired, thank you." She scrubbed her haind into her hair, shifted against the pillow. Its stuffing wasn't quite adequate to cushion her back completely; the wall felt unyielding through the feathers, cold, possibly the only frozen part of the room. Two layers of heavy curtains covered the window, and if Maria were not so sensitive to cold-- "Tomorrow morning, bright and early - we can get up at dawn if you want, but I'm not doing any paperwork tonight."
Maria sighed loudly, the undertone of her voice going sharp, indicating annoyance, and it was almost like she'd stepped back in time a moment. The tangle of her legs over Minerva's twisted, and Maria rolled back onto the hard mattress. "Will you stay?"
Minerva shimmied down and threw her blanket over Maria. It was too bloody hot for a down quilt. "Of course I will."
*