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runicloreThe Child-like Empress - II
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki (platonic)
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9-10
Theme: 11 - gardenia
Words: 4949
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: part one is here.
......................................................
Sephiran had the piece of paper announcing his promotion within the week, and he stared at it in silence a full minute, until the senate's messenger cleared his throat and told him plans had already been made to move him to a suite in the palace where he might serve the empress at all hours without delay, if she called upon him. The Secretary of Finance would settle his monetary obligations in the city and the price of a new wardrobe until his new salary came into effect. The numbers outlined at the bottom of the document were meaningless and, he suspected, much higher than even a duke would normally take, excluding territorial revenue. He'd underestimated their eagerness to silence the empress; to give him a duchy and a high senate office, to offer erasure of his debts - though he didn't have any - and Lady Sanaki's signature was precisely written at the bottom, not a blot to betray her inexperience. Her seal stood red beside it, one side darker than the other, unevenly applied.
A celebration in his honor was already planned, the messenger told him. If he would be so good as to report to the palace for a fitting this morning while the servants moved his belongings, his quarters would be ready within the day.
He followed the messenger, used his carriage to ride to the palace, and allowed himself to be led through the motions. The senate's agent passed him into the hands of a maid, who escorted him to a tailor, who kept him for at least three hours taking measurements and pinning pattern pieces together to adjust them to his specific needs. I've never met a senator so slender, the tailor muttered to his assistant, who pinned Sephiran's hair up and then took notes: this shape would broaden his shoulders, the waistline should be there to balance his height. He heard them talking afterward, through the door; does he eat enough? He must take after his mother - look at that pretty face.
One of Lady Sanaki's knights found him on his way to the gardens. Session had been suspended until after the official acknowledgment of Sephiran's rank, and the lady had nothing to do - would he be so kind as to attend her this afternoon?
He went - there was nowhere else to go until his new rooms were prepared, wherever those might be - and was led once again to the empress's suite, now bright and airy with the red curtains pulled open and tied back, the balcony doors thrown wide. Gardenia blooms floated in a shallow crystal bowl at the center of her table and lent their sweet scent to the room. Lady Sanaki was outside, and he listened to her command another knight - Sigrun, he saw by the glint of green hair at the other side of the balcony - to lean over the balustrade to pick more blossoms for her bath. The tree shaded the far end, where the doors to the bedroom stood open, branches hanging over their heads and already plucked bare of flowers.
The empress ran up to him when he announced himself, hair bouncing and eyes sparkling in the sunlight. Sephiran knelt to meet her and kissed the hand she extended. Behind her, Sigrun jumped down from the stone rail with large white blossoms between her fingers, added them to the collection in a woven basket wide enough for the little empress to sit in, and brought it over. "I had no idea my lady liked gardenias so much. I would have brought a gift."
She pulled her hand back, clasped them both behind her. "More gardenias?" She tilted her head, and then looked over her shoulder at the knight. "Are there enough to cover the entire bath?"
"Doubtful." Sigrun hefted the basket, held it to her hip. "But too many will make it impossible for you to bathe, your majesty."
Sephiran stood up and offered his hand to the little empress when she turned back to him. Her pink robe was thin and light as cotton, cinched around her waist, and the lace at the hem of her nightgown fluttered around her feet as they walked inside, two of her steps for every one of his. The ruffled sleeves tickled his fingers. "Tell me," he said, helping her into a chair at the table and taking the one next to her. "What do you occupy your time with when meetings are over?"
Lady Sanaki fingered the scalloped edge of the tablecloth. "We go to the gardens sometimes," she said. He heard the knight who accompanied him come back in from the balcony and settle against the door frame behind him. "I like the gallery at the top of the cathedral," she added when he continued to watch her, biting her lip and letting it slip from her teeth, over and over. "There's-- there isn't anyone to play with."
He remembered the dull shine of a ball in the courtyard of the villa her mother died in, traces of children, though he tried not to speculate on their fate: a rag doll left on the bench by the kitchen door, a wooden sword propped beside the broom and mop in the corner. There were picture books in the library he'd searched before Zelgius found Lady Sanaki - also a collection of books on law monopolizing three shelves, bound in green, and others with more fanciful titles. There were books on the night stand, and on the bed, ready to be thrown.
"Reading--"
"Boring." She immediately looked away and found something interesting outside the window to stare at.
"The story I told you about Altina's twin swords..." He saw her chin move slightly, her hair sway when he mentioned it. He remembered the way she clung to him during that storm on their long journey, her little arms tight around the back of his neck, and thought he saw the memory of it in the way her hands clenched in her lap around her robe. "That was a true story, your majesty. One of them is stored in the vault. The other is missing."
Lady Sanaki turned her face back to him. "Really." She chewed her lip again. The light made her eyes pale, her skin white. One of her teeth was missing, and when she spoke he saw the pale beginnings of another growing in its place. "When was it stolen?"
Sephiran leaned back, folded one leg over the other. Stolen wasn't the word he would use. "That was one of the topics your senate discussed when I became a member a year ago." That drew a frown - a sharp one, along with the dip of her eyebrows, and her hands clenched again around a fold of her robe. He lifted a brow to stop her from speaking. "Would you like to see it? An empress should always be acquainted with the treasures under her care."
She hmmmed at the tablecloth, and her feet kicked the chair legs. "Is it safe? They told me I should never go down there."
"With your knights and myself it will be fine, your majesty." The empress nodded, and he turned around to ask the knight behind him to have someone notified of their intentions. The girl nodded, left, and Sephiran held back a sigh when Sigrun came out to announce Lady Sanaki's bath was ready.
He was told to stay where he was because she wouldn't take long. It was eleven thirty according to the child-sized clock behind the bowl of gardenias. He heard the empress talking and the echo of her voice in the bath, and Sigrun's replies, and the splash of water. He heard soap slip from the knight's hands and her sharp sigh. Lady Sanaki comforted her - it was only soap, the floor was clean, she didn't really like it anyway - and Sephiran turned his face toward the door and the blue sky beyond the glass. A breeze brought the smell of pine to join the gardenia, and at his back the door to the antechamber opened and admitted a servant with food and tea, who laid a place for him as well as the empress. He stared at his reflection in the glass dome covering the food.
Magic would be the first thing to teach her, the most important - for her own protection. If she disliked the study as she seemed to feel an aversion to books, perhaps because of associations with her home or mother, Sephiran would have to find a way to trick her into doing the exercises. He wasn't fool enough to think she'd make an exception for him, no matter how many stories he promised to tell - was recitation so different from reading aloud? - and a forced lesson was an ineffective one. And what of the other skills a princess was expected to develop? Would she consent to dance lessons, to history, to political science, and dining etiquette? Lady Sanaki was well-mannered for her age. She held the utensils correctly, made use of her napkin, ate slowly and didn't try to speak with her mouth full, all faults of other children he'd met during the course of his travels. Perhaps it was her heritage, rather than natural talent; why expect a peasant to worry about manners, after all, when she had fields to till?
Lady Sanaki joined him at the table while he considered the options before him for her education, what he should research, and what he would tell the senators. He had no doubt they would ask him about his time with the empress once she grew accustomed to him. Duke Culbert intended to use him to keep the empress silent - but how? What did he expect? Ambition, perhaps an attempt to control her for his own purposes?
It was true Sephiran intended to use his influence to achieve his goals, but-- those were so nebulous, so far beneath the notice of the senior council, he doubted they would realize what he planned if he made his moves openly.
They must know of his 'unfortunate fondness' of laguz causes. Perhaps he would use that to his advantage.
Their bread was sliced nearly three fingers thick and fried crisp, golden, dusted with powdered sugar, and every bite melted in his mouth. It had been so long since he'd eaten anything but fruit or sponge cake - little else was served after council session - that he'd forgotten there was more to cuisine than slicing an apple into crescents instead of rings, or peeling an orange in a long, unbroken spiral. Strawberries, red grapes, and shelled walnuts were heaped into a bowl at the center of the table, the gardenias moved to an extra chair to leave space.
Five pegasus knights accompanied them to the cathedral. Ten more were sent down the spiral of stairs into the vault, he learned when they arrived in the alcove preceding the staircase, to secure the area and flush out servants - two, one with a polishing cloth and the other holding a broom - and a dingy academic in a wrinkled gray robe with a folder of papers and a dictionary on the old language under his arm. The seals were often studied for their complexity, he told the empress while they waited for Sigrun to return. They were the only form of seid magic still functioning outside of ruined Serenes. Daein and Crimea claimed to pass relics of such power down in their royal families, but those claims were a lie - he'd seen them, and he knew.
She didn't ask how. Lady Sanaki saw him pull lightning from the sky without a spell when they fled her assassins, and had not studied long enough to know what that meant. "Why is that so important?"
Sephiran looked down. Her face was turned up, her neck craned to look him in the eye. "The herons are dead," he said.
"I know that." The empress frowned. Her grip on his fingers tightened. "Why isn't it important to everybody - why just the scholar?"
"Ah." He turned back to the stairs, though she tugged on his hand. "Because the seal is so sensitive it can distinguish between race and bloodline, and even unspoken intentions." A shine of pale green hair caught his eye, and the glow of a lamp ascending. "Only a member of your family may lay a hand on the twin swords."
Sigrun's steps echoed loudly, the clank of her sword and creak of her leather armor an uneven accompaniment; two others followed her, added to the din. Sanaki let go of his hand to adjust her red mantle. "But how did the other get stolen?"
"The senate's agents have not been able to answer that question," he said. Sigrun nodded to him when she reached the landing, knelt to the empress to notify her of security conditions, and then turned to lead the way downward. Sephiran took Lady Sanaki's hand again and followed, his other hand running along the stone rail carved from the wall. "However, it is said the swords have disappeared at times of great need, and returned later of their own accord. Perhaps it is Lady Ashera's doing."
He'd walked this path ten years ago when he returned to take Alondite, and still remembered the number of steps to the bottom, and from the landing to the vault containing items blessed by the goddess, given to himself, Altina, and the others when the great war began. First three hundred - a long climb upward when one carried weapons and armor, even those lightened by a divine spell - and then two hundred eighty seven to the half-circle etched into the stone floor around the door. Expel the unworthy, o goddess of dawn stretched from the wall along the curve in his own script, burned into the stone, gleamed faintly like a pale emerald in his peripheral vision. The air moved slightly, tingled at the tip of his nose when the seal was so near. It was unfair he still felt it, when he could not harness its power or bend it to his will any longer. That oversight of nature had given him hope, at first, that his heron nature might be regained, and disappointed him again, and again, and again.
The empress crossed the line at his instruction and pressed her hands to the center of the circle carved where the handles should be. The seamless wood parted down the center and swung away from her, the chamber beyond lit dimly green with more wards written into the walls and the floor. She walked in, looked up when an empty glass globe flickered and started to shed white light by a misty glow in its confines. The sword stand waited at the far end of the long room; Ragnell rested in its metal claws, the hooks below it empty. Spellbooks lined the shelves along one wall, and the family registry, staves displayed on the other side, and a crown gleaming silver and white waited on a polished wooden stand in the corner. Tanith shifted too close to the ward and started back at the bright spark with a muttered ouch and an admonishment from one of the others to be careful.
He took a deep breath of the air from the chamber and tasted dust, though he saw none dulling the shine of the treasures within. The knights muttered and crowded closer to the line. Someone called for the empress to be careful, to which she waved her little white hand back while she looked around, as if brushing away a fly. "Hurry up, Sephiran," she said over her shoulder. "I want you to tell me what these things are."
He ignored Sigrun's immediate but your majesty, he can't cross-- which she choked back when he stepped over the line, the ward flicking over his skin like heat from a fire and catching his hair at the ends to make it dance. The empress came back to tug on his sleeve. He turned around, holding Lady Sanaki's hand still when she tried to pull him again. "One of you should come in," he said, looking at the pale faces of her knights one by one. Sigrun's lips were pressed tightly together; her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated, and he reached past the barrier. "You may enter if I pull you through," he said when she flinched.
Her eyes flicked to Sanaki, the briefest of hesitations, before she let him grab her hand. Her fingers shook when he pulled her in, her eyes narrowing in a wince when the ward sparked on her armor and pulled her hair. She tried to hide a shudder when Sephiran released her. Her arms were covered in goosebumps, which Sanaki rubbed with a tiny hand. How funny, I didn't feel anything, she said to her knight, and Sigrun's smile was pale, her grip on the hilt of her sword white-knuckled.
Poor girl. He thought he could almost smell her fear - of him, of the ward. Her eyes didn't stray from him a moment, and her hand remained on her weapon when he turned his back on her.
Lady Sanaki led him forward by the hand, her knight following closely, and Sephiran explained the objects she pointed out: the Aura tome, and Nadir, the only ones of their kind; the Aveta staff, which protected its wielder from all harm, and the nameless staff recorded as Ashera's staff on the records for lack of better terms. Rexcalibur, Rexbolt, and Rexflame were tied together with golden string on a high shelf. She asked who they belonged to, whether she could pick them up, touch them, whether she would ever get to use the chainmail on its stand and the reinforced boots beneath the glittering edge, or the pale leather coat made impenetrable by Ashera's blessings and shaped to fit a woman.
Perhaps, he told her. Perhaps someday, when war flooded over the borders of Begnion, she would lead the pegasus knights to battle in Altina's armor, with her sword, or with Lehran's spellbooks and staves. Perhaps.
When. Not if. He didn't know how long it would take, but his effort to awaken the goddess would bear fruit eventually.
He would release them for her if she asked. If she were hurt, it would be his own blood spilled; if her life could be saved by the relics of the past - just hers, only little Sanaki - he would allow it. He pressed a hand to his heart, felt it beat hard against his sternum, and led her to the sword. It rested on its hooks at mid-chest height, over the empress's head, and the empty space where Alondite should have been just above it, at his shoulders.
"Can I touch it?" she asked, and he nodded.
Lady Sanaki stood on her toes to reach the hilt, wrap her fingers around it, to test its weight. The metal clattered when she failed to lift it, and her eyes rolled at his protest, and Sigrun's, uttered at the same time. Her fingers tapped the guard, danced over the flat of the blade where the ancient glyph for the sun was emblazoned near the base, a dull gray. It should have burned red like the goddess's hair, but the blade slept, uninterested in a child who could not yet wield it or prove herself worthy.
"We should find the other one," Sanaki said, lowering her hand, her heels. "I'll tell them to look again."
Sephiran smiled. "I'm sure there's no need. Whoever holds it must be worthy, if the blade allowed him to remove it from its twin." He rested his fingers on the hilt, felt the enchantment prick his fingers. Sanaki curled her fingers into his sleeve again, and he looked down. "Wherever it is, I'm sure Alondite is serving Ashera's purpose." He stepped away and drew the empress with him. "I would have it no other way."
*
The empress held his attention the rest of the day, and only released him when a messenger - the same man Sephiran met that morning at the door to his flat - came to announce his new chambers were ready, and two of her majesty's own servants waited for his direction, so they might arrange everything to his liking. Then she let him go with a command to return for breakfast the following morning with something interesting.
What did something interesting mean to a girl like Lady Sanaki? She refused to read, or be read to; she disliked the politics of the court, for which he couldn't blame her. What did she want?
The rooms assigned to him were similar to the quarters the empress enjoyed, though his did not open into several rooms but just one, furnished with a four-poster bed, a dressing table, an armoire and a small round table with a set of chairs - for breakfast, he assumed, so it would never see any use. The tablecloth was lace, the canopy above the bed a dark blue to match the curtains and the quilt. Rugs woven in green and white covered the cold marble floors and the bath was white stone, the pool painted a deep, ceramic turquoise. He told the maid where to arrange his soap and oils, instructed another on where to hang his clothes and in what order, and arranged the books himself on shelves built into the walls of the outer chamber: an entire case for history tomes, another one and a half for magic and medicinal texts, almanacs, and nature journals. He looked the part of a student of magic, excepting the range of his history choices. A Begnion national surely would not care for a Daein scholar's version of history.
He shelved them according to their origin and wondered if the empress would allow him to make his collection useful to her. She'd asked questions through lunch, dwelling on the history of the items they found in the vault, and Altina in particular, voicing each query between grapes, or slices of apple. She spent an inordinate amount of time smearing soft cheese onto round crackers with her knife, scraping the edges clean and layering it with another cracker and more cheese, until she bit into it and scattered crumbs all over her plate. Sephiran watched her lick a finger clean of a smear of cheese and finally told her that was improper, the way she chose to eat - it was inelegant and messy, and not permissible for a person of her status.
"They don't care," she said, wiping her finger on a napkin. "You sound like Sigrun."
It was clear he owed Sigrun an apology for his criticisms of her care for Sanaki. "You will be asked to dine with representatives from other kingdoms when they come to renew their oaths of alliance," he said. "You will be invited to functions in which you must maintain your image as the goddess's infallible representative, and these will include dining and dance, and conversation."
Lady Sanaki sighed sharply and pulled another grape from its stem. The bunch was almost picked clean. "So? I don't like them anyway, and I'm never invited to any parties. I don't care."
Sigrun leaned against the wall panels between the glass balcony doors, behind the empress. Her eyebrow lifted when his gaze met hers, and Sephiran flattened his lips. "What of your invitation to the celebration in my honor?" He sipped his tea and watched the loose leaves settle at the bottom again, contemplated refilling it. "I can't think of another I would rather attend with."
That had her attention.
His invitation had inspired Sigrun's disapproval, though he heard nothing from her between the afternoon meal and the moment he left. She'd frowned at the far wall, her pale brows drawing down, but the next time he chanced to look at her the conversation had moved past his promises to take Sanaki to the dance floor, to let her taste every invention the kitchen concocted in his honor, and onward to questions about the truth of stories she'd heard from her knights, and the tutors they'd tried to inflict on her. He must know, she said, because he knew everything about the treasures in the vault. Sephiran walked to the cathedral with her and took her to the rooms he remembered from Altina's time, those which had survived quakes, fire, and the whims of thirty empresses to remain almost the way he'd left them. The Flower Drop room, named for the profusion of blossoms painted on the ceiling and depicted on the mosaic floor; the Chamber of Five Rings, a wide white room without windows that was empty now, but once embraced Altina's council of nobles - the predecessors of the senior council, he told Sanaki, when Begnion spanned the continent and the regional kings who bent knee to the first empress divided their lands into five states and promised to meet in this room twice a year to discuss and formulate policies for ruling. The floor was plain, white, unpolished tile, and five rings interlocked around the stone throne, another semi-circle.
Sanaki wanted to hear more about that, so he told her what he remembered, though he didn't know if it would match modern history books. If she refused to read those books, he supposed it didn't matter.
Perhaps it was better she wanted to be instructed personally. If she relied on the texts available now, what prejudices would she learn to perpetuate? What knowledge would she be denied? She would learn to see laguz as beneath her - as either sub-human or a poor, uneducated under-class - and be taught to look down on her neighbors and cast an eye only to the continued superiority of Begnion. The country's myopic view of Tellius would prove its undoing; it was already in decline, sliding slowly into the pit of ignorance and conceit Sephiran had seen destroy many other countries in his time on the earth. Such a decline in morality and perspective had led to the flood.
Only the dragons were left to remember that disaster now. His clan was dead. Prince Reyson was ignorant, a child, born centuries after the goddess went to sleep. He wouldn't know her voice if she spoke to him in a dream.
She was so close. Sephiran could see the tower from his window and watch the sunset color the sky red and gold beyond her and imagine it a tribute. So close, and yet she was silent. No matter how long he stared, how close he walked to the walls surrounding the perimeter, he wouldn't hear Ashera's voice. He'd caught the empress gazing that way too, and wondered if she entertained similar thoughts.
Sanaki still expected to develop the ability. He wondered what she would do when her hopes failed her.
Sephiran wasn't quite sure what he would do. Her smile was infinitely more pleasing than her frowns. He wanted to see it again. He wanted her to keep laughing, keep picking gardenias, keep yelling at fat, over-privileged senators until they were turned to stone. Council sessions were quite boring without her input, after all. The afternoon she threw her water glass at Lekain would live in his memory forever.
He sat down to pen a note to Zelgius while he waited for the maids to finish putting his belongings away, and asked one of them to deliver it when they finished and notified him of their departure. Sephiran smiled for them and tried not to roll his eyes when the redhead giggled all the way out, looking over her shoulder, while her companion pushed her along. People always do what you want them to when you smile, the empress had remarked when he asked one of her knights to go down to the kitchen and change their requests for dinner.
Yes - they did. For the price of a smile he'd convinced a clerk to waive his lack of registration papers when he first traveled to Sienne, and for a night of dining and talk he'd received patronage for his bid on a senate seat. For a kiss, he didn't even have to fight for the award. If he gave another inch, perhaps the empire would dance to his whims - Sanaki was too young now, but she would grow up, and when she realized how few of her advisers and subjects she could trust with the safety of her person--
He hoped it wouldn't take that long. A child might follow him without protest, even a child as critical as this empress; as an adult, she would be impossible to save.
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The S/Z snip "First Order of Business" would take place the morning after this installment, I think. :D
Next chapter I might actually get to write the scene that started this whole thing. >_>
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki (platonic)
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9-10
Theme: 11 - gardenia
Words: 4949
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: part one is here.
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Sephiran had the piece of paper announcing his promotion within the week, and he stared at it in silence a full minute, until the senate's messenger cleared his throat and told him plans had already been made to move him to a suite in the palace where he might serve the empress at all hours without delay, if she called upon him. The Secretary of Finance would settle his monetary obligations in the city and the price of a new wardrobe until his new salary came into effect. The numbers outlined at the bottom of the document were meaningless and, he suspected, much higher than even a duke would normally take, excluding territorial revenue. He'd underestimated their eagerness to silence the empress; to give him a duchy and a high senate office, to offer erasure of his debts - though he didn't have any - and Lady Sanaki's signature was precisely written at the bottom, not a blot to betray her inexperience. Her seal stood red beside it, one side darker than the other, unevenly applied.
A celebration in his honor was already planned, the messenger told him. If he would be so good as to report to the palace for a fitting this morning while the servants moved his belongings, his quarters would be ready within the day.
He followed the messenger, used his carriage to ride to the palace, and allowed himself to be led through the motions. The senate's agent passed him into the hands of a maid, who escorted him to a tailor, who kept him for at least three hours taking measurements and pinning pattern pieces together to adjust them to his specific needs. I've never met a senator so slender, the tailor muttered to his assistant, who pinned Sephiran's hair up and then took notes: this shape would broaden his shoulders, the waistline should be there to balance his height. He heard them talking afterward, through the door; does he eat enough? He must take after his mother - look at that pretty face.
One of Lady Sanaki's knights found him on his way to the gardens. Session had been suspended until after the official acknowledgment of Sephiran's rank, and the lady had nothing to do - would he be so kind as to attend her this afternoon?
He went - there was nowhere else to go until his new rooms were prepared, wherever those might be - and was led once again to the empress's suite, now bright and airy with the red curtains pulled open and tied back, the balcony doors thrown wide. Gardenia blooms floated in a shallow crystal bowl at the center of her table and lent their sweet scent to the room. Lady Sanaki was outside, and he listened to her command another knight - Sigrun, he saw by the glint of green hair at the other side of the balcony - to lean over the balustrade to pick more blossoms for her bath. The tree shaded the far end, where the doors to the bedroom stood open, branches hanging over their heads and already plucked bare of flowers.
The empress ran up to him when he announced himself, hair bouncing and eyes sparkling in the sunlight. Sephiran knelt to meet her and kissed the hand she extended. Behind her, Sigrun jumped down from the stone rail with large white blossoms between her fingers, added them to the collection in a woven basket wide enough for the little empress to sit in, and brought it over. "I had no idea my lady liked gardenias so much. I would have brought a gift."
She pulled her hand back, clasped them both behind her. "More gardenias?" She tilted her head, and then looked over her shoulder at the knight. "Are there enough to cover the entire bath?"
"Doubtful." Sigrun hefted the basket, held it to her hip. "But too many will make it impossible for you to bathe, your majesty."
Sephiran stood up and offered his hand to the little empress when she turned back to him. Her pink robe was thin and light as cotton, cinched around her waist, and the lace at the hem of her nightgown fluttered around her feet as they walked inside, two of her steps for every one of his. The ruffled sleeves tickled his fingers. "Tell me," he said, helping her into a chair at the table and taking the one next to her. "What do you occupy your time with when meetings are over?"
Lady Sanaki fingered the scalloped edge of the tablecloth. "We go to the gardens sometimes," she said. He heard the knight who accompanied him come back in from the balcony and settle against the door frame behind him. "I like the gallery at the top of the cathedral," she added when he continued to watch her, biting her lip and letting it slip from her teeth, over and over. "There's-- there isn't anyone to play with."
He remembered the dull shine of a ball in the courtyard of the villa her mother died in, traces of children, though he tried not to speculate on their fate: a rag doll left on the bench by the kitchen door, a wooden sword propped beside the broom and mop in the corner. There were picture books in the library he'd searched before Zelgius found Lady Sanaki - also a collection of books on law monopolizing three shelves, bound in green, and others with more fanciful titles. There were books on the night stand, and on the bed, ready to be thrown.
"Reading--"
"Boring." She immediately looked away and found something interesting outside the window to stare at.
"The story I told you about Altina's twin swords..." He saw her chin move slightly, her hair sway when he mentioned it. He remembered the way she clung to him during that storm on their long journey, her little arms tight around the back of his neck, and thought he saw the memory of it in the way her hands clenched in her lap around her robe. "That was a true story, your majesty. One of them is stored in the vault. The other is missing."
Lady Sanaki turned her face back to him. "Really." She chewed her lip again. The light made her eyes pale, her skin white. One of her teeth was missing, and when she spoke he saw the pale beginnings of another growing in its place. "When was it stolen?"
Sephiran leaned back, folded one leg over the other. Stolen wasn't the word he would use. "That was one of the topics your senate discussed when I became a member a year ago." That drew a frown - a sharp one, along with the dip of her eyebrows, and her hands clenched again around a fold of her robe. He lifted a brow to stop her from speaking. "Would you like to see it? An empress should always be acquainted with the treasures under her care."
She hmmmed at the tablecloth, and her feet kicked the chair legs. "Is it safe? They told me I should never go down there."
"With your knights and myself it will be fine, your majesty." The empress nodded, and he turned around to ask the knight behind him to have someone notified of their intentions. The girl nodded, left, and Sephiran held back a sigh when Sigrun came out to announce Lady Sanaki's bath was ready.
He was told to stay where he was because she wouldn't take long. It was eleven thirty according to the child-sized clock behind the bowl of gardenias. He heard the empress talking and the echo of her voice in the bath, and Sigrun's replies, and the splash of water. He heard soap slip from the knight's hands and her sharp sigh. Lady Sanaki comforted her - it was only soap, the floor was clean, she didn't really like it anyway - and Sephiran turned his face toward the door and the blue sky beyond the glass. A breeze brought the smell of pine to join the gardenia, and at his back the door to the antechamber opened and admitted a servant with food and tea, who laid a place for him as well as the empress. He stared at his reflection in the glass dome covering the food.
Magic would be the first thing to teach her, the most important - for her own protection. If she disliked the study as she seemed to feel an aversion to books, perhaps because of associations with her home or mother, Sephiran would have to find a way to trick her into doing the exercises. He wasn't fool enough to think she'd make an exception for him, no matter how many stories he promised to tell - was recitation so different from reading aloud? - and a forced lesson was an ineffective one. And what of the other skills a princess was expected to develop? Would she consent to dance lessons, to history, to political science, and dining etiquette? Lady Sanaki was well-mannered for her age. She held the utensils correctly, made use of her napkin, ate slowly and didn't try to speak with her mouth full, all faults of other children he'd met during the course of his travels. Perhaps it was her heritage, rather than natural talent; why expect a peasant to worry about manners, after all, when she had fields to till?
Lady Sanaki joined him at the table while he considered the options before him for her education, what he should research, and what he would tell the senators. He had no doubt they would ask him about his time with the empress once she grew accustomed to him. Duke Culbert intended to use him to keep the empress silent - but how? What did he expect? Ambition, perhaps an attempt to control her for his own purposes?
It was true Sephiran intended to use his influence to achieve his goals, but-- those were so nebulous, so far beneath the notice of the senior council, he doubted they would realize what he planned if he made his moves openly.
They must know of his 'unfortunate fondness' of laguz causes. Perhaps he would use that to his advantage.
Their bread was sliced nearly three fingers thick and fried crisp, golden, dusted with powdered sugar, and every bite melted in his mouth. It had been so long since he'd eaten anything but fruit or sponge cake - little else was served after council session - that he'd forgotten there was more to cuisine than slicing an apple into crescents instead of rings, or peeling an orange in a long, unbroken spiral. Strawberries, red grapes, and shelled walnuts were heaped into a bowl at the center of the table, the gardenias moved to an extra chair to leave space.
Five pegasus knights accompanied them to the cathedral. Ten more were sent down the spiral of stairs into the vault, he learned when they arrived in the alcove preceding the staircase, to secure the area and flush out servants - two, one with a polishing cloth and the other holding a broom - and a dingy academic in a wrinkled gray robe with a folder of papers and a dictionary on the old language under his arm. The seals were often studied for their complexity, he told the empress while they waited for Sigrun to return. They were the only form of seid magic still functioning outside of ruined Serenes. Daein and Crimea claimed to pass relics of such power down in their royal families, but those claims were a lie - he'd seen them, and he knew.
She didn't ask how. Lady Sanaki saw him pull lightning from the sky without a spell when they fled her assassins, and had not studied long enough to know what that meant. "Why is that so important?"
Sephiran looked down. Her face was turned up, her neck craned to look him in the eye. "The herons are dead," he said.
"I know that." The empress frowned. Her grip on his fingers tightened. "Why isn't it important to everybody - why just the scholar?"
"Ah." He turned back to the stairs, though she tugged on his hand. "Because the seal is so sensitive it can distinguish between race and bloodline, and even unspoken intentions." A shine of pale green hair caught his eye, and the glow of a lamp ascending. "Only a member of your family may lay a hand on the twin swords."
Sigrun's steps echoed loudly, the clank of her sword and creak of her leather armor an uneven accompaniment; two others followed her, added to the din. Sanaki let go of his hand to adjust her red mantle. "But how did the other get stolen?"
"The senate's agents have not been able to answer that question," he said. Sigrun nodded to him when she reached the landing, knelt to the empress to notify her of security conditions, and then turned to lead the way downward. Sephiran took Lady Sanaki's hand again and followed, his other hand running along the stone rail carved from the wall. "However, it is said the swords have disappeared at times of great need, and returned later of their own accord. Perhaps it is Lady Ashera's doing."
He'd walked this path ten years ago when he returned to take Alondite, and still remembered the number of steps to the bottom, and from the landing to the vault containing items blessed by the goddess, given to himself, Altina, and the others when the great war began. First three hundred - a long climb upward when one carried weapons and armor, even those lightened by a divine spell - and then two hundred eighty seven to the half-circle etched into the stone floor around the door. Expel the unworthy, o goddess of dawn stretched from the wall along the curve in his own script, burned into the stone, gleamed faintly like a pale emerald in his peripheral vision. The air moved slightly, tingled at the tip of his nose when the seal was so near. It was unfair he still felt it, when he could not harness its power or bend it to his will any longer. That oversight of nature had given him hope, at first, that his heron nature might be regained, and disappointed him again, and again, and again.
The empress crossed the line at his instruction and pressed her hands to the center of the circle carved where the handles should be. The seamless wood parted down the center and swung away from her, the chamber beyond lit dimly green with more wards written into the walls and the floor. She walked in, looked up when an empty glass globe flickered and started to shed white light by a misty glow in its confines. The sword stand waited at the far end of the long room; Ragnell rested in its metal claws, the hooks below it empty. Spellbooks lined the shelves along one wall, and the family registry, staves displayed on the other side, and a crown gleaming silver and white waited on a polished wooden stand in the corner. Tanith shifted too close to the ward and started back at the bright spark with a muttered ouch and an admonishment from one of the others to be careful.
He took a deep breath of the air from the chamber and tasted dust, though he saw none dulling the shine of the treasures within. The knights muttered and crowded closer to the line. Someone called for the empress to be careful, to which she waved her little white hand back while she looked around, as if brushing away a fly. "Hurry up, Sephiran," she said over her shoulder. "I want you to tell me what these things are."
He ignored Sigrun's immediate but your majesty, he can't cross-- which she choked back when he stepped over the line, the ward flicking over his skin like heat from a fire and catching his hair at the ends to make it dance. The empress came back to tug on his sleeve. He turned around, holding Lady Sanaki's hand still when she tried to pull him again. "One of you should come in," he said, looking at the pale faces of her knights one by one. Sigrun's lips were pressed tightly together; her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated, and he reached past the barrier. "You may enter if I pull you through," he said when she flinched.
Her eyes flicked to Sanaki, the briefest of hesitations, before she let him grab her hand. Her fingers shook when he pulled her in, her eyes narrowing in a wince when the ward sparked on her armor and pulled her hair. She tried to hide a shudder when Sephiran released her. Her arms were covered in goosebumps, which Sanaki rubbed with a tiny hand. How funny, I didn't feel anything, she said to her knight, and Sigrun's smile was pale, her grip on the hilt of her sword white-knuckled.
Poor girl. He thought he could almost smell her fear - of him, of the ward. Her eyes didn't stray from him a moment, and her hand remained on her weapon when he turned his back on her.
Lady Sanaki led him forward by the hand, her knight following closely, and Sephiran explained the objects she pointed out: the Aura tome, and Nadir, the only ones of their kind; the Aveta staff, which protected its wielder from all harm, and the nameless staff recorded as Ashera's staff on the records for lack of better terms. Rexcalibur, Rexbolt, and Rexflame were tied together with golden string on a high shelf. She asked who they belonged to, whether she could pick them up, touch them, whether she would ever get to use the chainmail on its stand and the reinforced boots beneath the glittering edge, or the pale leather coat made impenetrable by Ashera's blessings and shaped to fit a woman.
Perhaps, he told her. Perhaps someday, when war flooded over the borders of Begnion, she would lead the pegasus knights to battle in Altina's armor, with her sword, or with Lehran's spellbooks and staves. Perhaps.
When. Not if. He didn't know how long it would take, but his effort to awaken the goddess would bear fruit eventually.
He would release them for her if she asked. If she were hurt, it would be his own blood spilled; if her life could be saved by the relics of the past - just hers, only little Sanaki - he would allow it. He pressed a hand to his heart, felt it beat hard against his sternum, and led her to the sword. It rested on its hooks at mid-chest height, over the empress's head, and the empty space where Alondite should have been just above it, at his shoulders.
"Can I touch it?" she asked, and he nodded.
Lady Sanaki stood on her toes to reach the hilt, wrap her fingers around it, to test its weight. The metal clattered when she failed to lift it, and her eyes rolled at his protest, and Sigrun's, uttered at the same time. Her fingers tapped the guard, danced over the flat of the blade where the ancient glyph for the sun was emblazoned near the base, a dull gray. It should have burned red like the goddess's hair, but the blade slept, uninterested in a child who could not yet wield it or prove herself worthy.
"We should find the other one," Sanaki said, lowering her hand, her heels. "I'll tell them to look again."
Sephiran smiled. "I'm sure there's no need. Whoever holds it must be worthy, if the blade allowed him to remove it from its twin." He rested his fingers on the hilt, felt the enchantment prick his fingers. Sanaki curled her fingers into his sleeve again, and he looked down. "Wherever it is, I'm sure Alondite is serving Ashera's purpose." He stepped away and drew the empress with him. "I would have it no other way."
*
The empress held his attention the rest of the day, and only released him when a messenger - the same man Sephiran met that morning at the door to his flat - came to announce his new chambers were ready, and two of her majesty's own servants waited for his direction, so they might arrange everything to his liking. Then she let him go with a command to return for breakfast the following morning with something interesting.
What did something interesting mean to a girl like Lady Sanaki? She refused to read, or be read to; she disliked the politics of the court, for which he couldn't blame her. What did she want?
The rooms assigned to him were similar to the quarters the empress enjoyed, though his did not open into several rooms but just one, furnished with a four-poster bed, a dressing table, an armoire and a small round table with a set of chairs - for breakfast, he assumed, so it would never see any use. The tablecloth was lace, the canopy above the bed a dark blue to match the curtains and the quilt. Rugs woven in green and white covered the cold marble floors and the bath was white stone, the pool painted a deep, ceramic turquoise. He told the maid where to arrange his soap and oils, instructed another on where to hang his clothes and in what order, and arranged the books himself on shelves built into the walls of the outer chamber: an entire case for history tomes, another one and a half for magic and medicinal texts, almanacs, and nature journals. He looked the part of a student of magic, excepting the range of his history choices. A Begnion national surely would not care for a Daein scholar's version of history.
He shelved them according to their origin and wondered if the empress would allow him to make his collection useful to her. She'd asked questions through lunch, dwelling on the history of the items they found in the vault, and Altina in particular, voicing each query between grapes, or slices of apple. She spent an inordinate amount of time smearing soft cheese onto round crackers with her knife, scraping the edges clean and layering it with another cracker and more cheese, until she bit into it and scattered crumbs all over her plate. Sephiran watched her lick a finger clean of a smear of cheese and finally told her that was improper, the way she chose to eat - it was inelegant and messy, and not permissible for a person of her status.
"They don't care," she said, wiping her finger on a napkin. "You sound like Sigrun."
It was clear he owed Sigrun an apology for his criticisms of her care for Sanaki. "You will be asked to dine with representatives from other kingdoms when they come to renew their oaths of alliance," he said. "You will be invited to functions in which you must maintain your image as the goddess's infallible representative, and these will include dining and dance, and conversation."
Lady Sanaki sighed sharply and pulled another grape from its stem. The bunch was almost picked clean. "So? I don't like them anyway, and I'm never invited to any parties. I don't care."
Sigrun leaned against the wall panels between the glass balcony doors, behind the empress. Her eyebrow lifted when his gaze met hers, and Sephiran flattened his lips. "What of your invitation to the celebration in my honor?" He sipped his tea and watched the loose leaves settle at the bottom again, contemplated refilling it. "I can't think of another I would rather attend with."
That had her attention.
His invitation had inspired Sigrun's disapproval, though he heard nothing from her between the afternoon meal and the moment he left. She'd frowned at the far wall, her pale brows drawing down, but the next time he chanced to look at her the conversation had moved past his promises to take Sanaki to the dance floor, to let her taste every invention the kitchen concocted in his honor, and onward to questions about the truth of stories she'd heard from her knights, and the tutors they'd tried to inflict on her. He must know, she said, because he knew everything about the treasures in the vault. Sephiran walked to the cathedral with her and took her to the rooms he remembered from Altina's time, those which had survived quakes, fire, and the whims of thirty empresses to remain almost the way he'd left them. The Flower Drop room, named for the profusion of blossoms painted on the ceiling and depicted on the mosaic floor; the Chamber of Five Rings, a wide white room without windows that was empty now, but once embraced Altina's council of nobles - the predecessors of the senior council, he told Sanaki, when Begnion spanned the continent and the regional kings who bent knee to the first empress divided their lands into five states and promised to meet in this room twice a year to discuss and formulate policies for ruling. The floor was plain, white, unpolished tile, and five rings interlocked around the stone throne, another semi-circle.
Sanaki wanted to hear more about that, so he told her what he remembered, though he didn't know if it would match modern history books. If she refused to read those books, he supposed it didn't matter.
Perhaps it was better she wanted to be instructed personally. If she relied on the texts available now, what prejudices would she learn to perpetuate? What knowledge would she be denied? She would learn to see laguz as beneath her - as either sub-human or a poor, uneducated under-class - and be taught to look down on her neighbors and cast an eye only to the continued superiority of Begnion. The country's myopic view of Tellius would prove its undoing; it was already in decline, sliding slowly into the pit of ignorance and conceit Sephiran had seen destroy many other countries in his time on the earth. Such a decline in morality and perspective had led to the flood.
Only the dragons were left to remember that disaster now. His clan was dead. Prince Reyson was ignorant, a child, born centuries after the goddess went to sleep. He wouldn't know her voice if she spoke to him in a dream.
She was so close. Sephiran could see the tower from his window and watch the sunset color the sky red and gold beyond her and imagine it a tribute. So close, and yet she was silent. No matter how long he stared, how close he walked to the walls surrounding the perimeter, he wouldn't hear Ashera's voice. He'd caught the empress gazing that way too, and wondered if she entertained similar thoughts.
Sanaki still expected to develop the ability. He wondered what she would do when her hopes failed her.
Sephiran wasn't quite sure what he would do. Her smile was infinitely more pleasing than her frowns. He wanted to see it again. He wanted her to keep laughing, keep picking gardenias, keep yelling at fat, over-privileged senators until they were turned to stone. Council sessions were quite boring without her input, after all. The afternoon she threw her water glass at Lekain would live in his memory forever.
He sat down to pen a note to Zelgius while he waited for the maids to finish putting his belongings away, and asked one of them to deliver it when they finished and notified him of their departure. Sephiran smiled for them and tried not to roll his eyes when the redhead giggled all the way out, looking over her shoulder, while her companion pushed her along. People always do what you want them to when you smile, the empress had remarked when he asked one of her knights to go down to the kitchen and change their requests for dinner.
Yes - they did. For the price of a smile he'd convinced a clerk to waive his lack of registration papers when he first traveled to Sienne, and for a night of dining and talk he'd received patronage for his bid on a senate seat. For a kiss, he didn't even have to fight for the award. If he gave another inch, perhaps the empire would dance to his whims - Sanaki was too young now, but she would grow up, and when she realized how few of her advisers and subjects she could trust with the safety of her person--
He hoped it wouldn't take that long. A child might follow him without protest, even a child as critical as this empress; as an adult, she would be impossible to save.
.........................................................................
The S/Z snip "First Order of Business" would take place the morning after this installment, I think. :D
Next chapter I might actually get to write the scene that started this whole thing. >_>
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-04-02 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-02 08:41 pm (UTC)sexsmiles and I realized that's another pairing no one pays attention to.Possibly for good reason, but still. LET'S THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, I mean, he's a skank. Anything to serve Ashera!
Thank you. XD