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runicloreReflection
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9/10
Theme: 24 - good night
Gauntlet Theme: 13 - the flower of forgetting
Words: 9258
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: this is set several years after the last installment. No need to retread familiar ground.
Previous Installments:
1. Judgment
2. Initiation
3. Unforgiven
.......................................
Sanaki had no idea what time it was when Lehran knocked on her bedroom door and came in to arrange her hair - only that it was still dark outside when she peeked through a gap in her curtains, and Sigrun was the one to announce him, so her shift had not ended yet. They chose a formal dress, one with an empire waist in white damask, which she'd hardly had the opportunity to wear. Her everyday clothes - robes and plain white gowns, coats and over-skirts - were starting to look dingy at the cuffs, the hem, the elbows threadbare. She tried not to commission clothes when fabric was so expensive and hard to come by, though it wasn't as bad as she feared when Sigrun put her foot down.
You've been wearing the same clothes for five years, her knight had said, insisting they buy something new for administrative use. That was fine when you were a little younger, but you've outgrown nearly all of it. I understand your concern over our coffers, but taxes have steadily accumulated since Lehran returned. Think nothing of it. Even Lehran had the nerve to say, it's unflattering and inappropriate for you to to traipse around in a girl's costume. You must keep the dignity of your office in mind.
Dignity, he said - when she had to appear in ballgowns and festival robes for audience while they waited for her new clothes?
She thought for a while she'd never change - never get taller, or look like an adult. Wasn't she the second child, the un-gifted scion, the normal girl? Yet it took five years to outgrow a dress. If she heard another murmur about late-blooming, someone was going to be fired. A dozen someones with spears and white coats, and another one with wings.
Gold combs held rolls of hair to her head, and their short dangles clinked when she turned her head to see what Lehran was doing. Braiding, he said, a style they call the herringbone. "Why the early summons?" He wrapped the end of her braid around his hand and reaching over her shoulder for a ribbon.
Sanaki turned her face the other way, frowned. She'd seen this style worn by other women in the capitol, but it was too big for her round face - too elaborate for her. A courting style. "Ashera said King Gallia would arrive this morning and commanded me to be ready at dawn." Who was she supposed to court - the lion king?
His hands paused in wrapping the ribbon. "I see." The bow he tied was precise, the loops perfect. "And her orders?"
"No orders." She reached for a vial of scented oil and his hand stopped her - it would disturb their guests. Sanaki considered it another moment before sliding it back to its place in front of her mirror. It was a dark, resinous scent, myrrh and apple and something she couldn't remember, some kind of spice, and it was strong. It reminded her of Ashera, bleeding out of the pre-dawn darkness, a heavy white hand and a pale oval of face to wake her with instructions. "I suppose that means I can do what I want."
"She's testing you," he said, tucking something into her hair. A stray strand, perhaps.
"I know." Sanaki gathered her skirt and stood, pushing the stool back, and turned around to face him. His chin was at eye-level. She blew a sigh through her nose. "Have those heels brought back up."
He gave her a sideways look, his face turned slightly aside to the gold lamplight. "You don't need them."
She frowned and stared at his shoulder. "I'm almost twenty." The skirt folded to the floor when she let go; his hands tugged it straight, reached around her to adjust the bow securing her sash, and he wasn't wearing anything scented either - not even the herbal traces of his soap. "I didn't pierce my ears because you hated the idea. I don't use cosmetics. You're an absolute pest when I talk to anything male. At the very least, I refuse to be looked down on."
Lehran laughed softly, the puff of his breath tickling her ear and her neck with flyaway hairs. "Everyone is small before the lion king."
Sanaki stamped her foot on the floor, but the rug muffled the slap her sandal should have made. "He's probably not going to bend his neck, and I won't crane mine back just to tell him off."
He tugged her braid and turned away from her, his wings arcing up and folding so they wouldn't hit her. The long feathers traced a line across her skirt before his back was turned. "Count your blessings, my lady. If you were laguz you might be half this size, and you'd have to meet him from my shoulder."
She blew her bangs from her eyes, straightened them out again. "I'm not laguz."
"Nor are you beorc." Lehran glanced over his shoulder, angled a wing to reach back, and took her hand to pull her along. "Now come. Dawn approaches."
The tick of the clock on the mantle in her living room broke the stillness. She listened to the sound of his robes, the way they folded together and whispered when he walked or moved his wings, and the rustle of her skirt and the short train pulling over the rug behind her, then slithering on the smooth floors. When they reached the door he let go of her hand. Sanaki wanted to ask him what he meant just then, when he said she wasn't beorc, but he didn't wait for her to gather her thoughts, and her knights were outside, all four of her command unit: Sigrun, Tanith, Marcia, Catalena.
Others would meet them outside, Sigrun told her. Not enough to imply they did not trust Gallia, but a number adequate to defend Sanaki if necessary: ten, and the others were a shout away if they were needed. Lehran said it might not be a bad idea to meet them with a full contingent of the holy guard, but when Sigrun raised her eyebrows, he shrugged and steered Sanaki forward with his wing spread around her and the flight feathers brushing her wrist as it curved.
Day broke outside while they crossed the palace to the cathedral. The roses in the courtyard were beaded with dew and moistened Sanaki's fingers when she stretched to touch one; the walks were damp and brown, not their normal beige. Her kerria rose waited along their path, now many roses and many bushes, their bright yellow and white blossoms closed like praying hands. Inside, the cathedral was still lit by lamps, and she didn't see the sky or the yellow crescent of the sun until they left the building and walked across the plaza to the wide, trapezoid stretch of steps that opened to the public square. She would have made speeches here, held celebrations - were she a normal queen. Sephiran had carried her to the edge of the steps once to address her people after coronation, and all she could remember was the noise - a rush of voices from the crowd which should rightfully be described as a roar, and it left her ears ringing over the sonorous tone his voice took when magnified by the acoustics of the area, walled in by cathedral, library, university. Their high walls all around made it feel like a coliseum or an amphitheater.
But those were across the river, three long city blocks away, and had not been used since the Judgment. For many years, this area had been enough to hold the remaining citizens of Begnion and Daein, and even Crimea.
Wasn't thirteen years long enough to wait? Didn't they deserve a release - to bring the old plays out again, and engage in sports? Ashera had saved the library, but only, it seemed, in reflex. Knowledge was important, knowledge was power, knowledge was-- forbidden, not suitable for contentious, inconsiderate children serving out their punishment to an angry mother. Even Sanaki was not allowed to read them now that she had finished narrating as much history and philosophy as the goddess felt she needed; Lehran was better than any book, she was told.
That might be true, if he had served the goddess as long as he claimed. But were his memories incorruptible?
Across the square, where the walls narrowed to two mammoth gates Sanaki had yet only seen up close twice in her life, she spotted shapes of red and blue. Lehran's hand on her arm brought them to a halt four steps from the bottom. Sigrun and the others took their places around her, two on the bottom step, one to her left, one to the right. The others fell in behind, and two remained at the top to watch. Lehran remained close at her side and a step back, his hand a brush against her waist where her purple sash was tied, his wing shading the back of her head from the sun. The lions noted this when they approached; she saw one of them flick his eyes back and forth, from her to her heron, back, and he told her who they were: the slender one is the king's adviser, Ranulf. The one at the king's left is his shadow. He will not speak.
When their guests reached the foot of the steps they didn't bow. Sanaki hoped her eyebrows remained level, though it felt they were climbing, or wanted to; she'd expected the slight, but her knights shifted, boots and spears scraping, and she wished she'd thought to warn them.
"I bid you welcome in Ashera's name," she said, raising her voice slightly. The steps weren't small, nor was Sanaki that short, though her knights were all taller than she - but Caineghis was taller by a head, even standing at the bottom, and his wealth of red hair added another hand of height. The distance between them enabled her to look him in the eye without lifting her chin. "I trust my adviser explained her requirements when he met you in Gallia, and I assume you mean to comply if you've come here to present yourself."
Caineghis did not dress like any noble she had met. A fur-lined robe, or cape, or coat - she couldn't tell - hung from his shoulder and spread golden-edged around his foot, a deep indigo, and the rest of his clothing was plain, perhaps embroidered nicely, but unremarkable before Sanaki's ridiculous finery with its pearl edges and hand-woven brocade. His belt jingled, made of wide gold plates and dangles, and the sound reminded her of Ashera.
Just as well. A man dressed flamboyantly would imply with his vanity an untrustworthy nature. From all Lehran and the Crimeans told her, Caineghis was an honorable individual who kept the well-being of his people at the forefront of his mind. A good king, Lehran said. The only one absolved of the Serenes tragedy.
"I have come in response to the goddess's threat." His voice resonated as if it came from the bottom of a well, with a rumbling undertone that reminded her of that crowd and made her feel small again, fit for the cradle of Sephiran's arms. "Gallia waits to the north, on the other side of the Ribahn. We will not move any farther."
"Unacceptable." A breeze flitted through Sanaki's bangs and stirred the king's mane. Lehran's fingers tensed across her back, curling. "Ashera demands obedience, and moving according to her order is the first step in proving your loyalty to her. She would remind you a king is made by his nation, not his strength, and any punishment you incur will be levied upon your subjects."
The blue-haired adviser snorted, laughed sharply. "Another threat? I thought the goddess wanted peace."
Sanaki kept her gaze on the king. "Will you still resist?"
He examined her as his subordinate did, looking her up and down, glancing behind her. His nostrils flared, or it might have been the light; she'd heard beast laguz had extraordinary olfactory capability, yet had never found the chance to see for herself. "We will not bow to a beorc overlord."
"Then don't." The breeze stilled, and the air smelled like wet stone again. "Take the land I offer and live at peace with your neighbors. The goddess doesn't demand very much from her followers - only that they obey her commandments."
"Begnion has never dealt honorably with laguz," Caineghis said. "The rulers before you preached beorc superiority and enslaved our kind. Your diplomats played us false. Our inquiries into the Serenes Massacre were ignored, and our messengers killed." His frown was a dark slash above his chin, and she wondered if it ever changed. "Under the circumstances, we cannot take your word at face value."
Did he just accuse her of lying? Sanaki clenched her hands behind the folds of her skirt to keep from tapping her hip, or folding her arms. Negotiations required patience, even when there was nothing to discuss, and she'd known he would not cooperate, it was a foregone conclusion - but did he have to be so abrasive? She wasn't anyone's 'beorc overlord.' Not anymore. "Do no harm to others. Do not steal. Do not deceive your neighbors." If she closed her eyes, she would see the list Ashera made her write down and recite to every group of refugees that passed the gate, remember the cream white parchment, the red ink, and her own unrefined handwriting. "Do not break your word, once given. Honor the goddess and her creations as one."
Lehran's wing folded. The sound, so close to her ear, made her start. "They are not unfair or inconvenient demands, King Caineghis," he said. "The Begnion you knew is gone. Neither my goddess nor my empress will be false with you."
"And this land," the cat named Ranulf said, crossing his arms. "Where is it, and what do you expect us to do with it? And what about the other laguz around here, your slaves and Daein's?"
Sanaki shifted her gaze to him. Her face felt stiff from remaining neutral, like it had become a mask while they talked. "Follow the western river bank south from Gallia's current position, all the way to the coast. As far as you can run west is yours, and two days to the north. More should not be necessary for some time."
The king's eyes glinted, drew her gaze back. "Serenes?"
"Some ways below the southern border," she said, and gave in, crossing her arms and letting herself frown. What did she care for their opinion of her composure? "Both the plains and the forest are healthy and currently uninhabited. Serenes will remain off-limits until the herons return to claim it."
The air moved, cool against Sanaki's cheek. Her skin was moist beneath the brocade, and it wasn't late in the year - it wasn't even warm. Lehran's hand on her back was a hot weight, a force that seemed to push her forward, though if he made any move it would be to pull her back; the hunch to his shoulders in her peripheral vision, the stiffness in his fingers, told her he wanted to step forward and say something.
"If the goddess requires an oath," the lion king said, fingers sinking into his fur ruff to adjust his cloak, "I will speak to her alone. No intermediaries."
"Fine."
The cat named Ranulf planted his hands on his slim hips. "That's it?"
"Ranulf."
"We could have stayed in Gallia--"
"I wish you had," Sanaki said sharply, her own voice echoing like the snap of a whip, and finally let her face crease into a frown to relieve the tension behind her eyes. Lehran said her name sharply, pitched low just behind her shoulder, and she shrugged him away when she felt his fingers press into her back. "But Ashera's word is law, and a place has been prepared for you here in Begnion on her order. If you want to risk another judgment by going back home, that is your concern."
The corners of his lips twitched up, but she didn't like the smile. "Make up your mind."
She sighed sharply through her nose and closed her eyes. A full three seconds passed. "You have Ashera's orders. I cannot make the choice for you." Sanaki turned slightly, almost looked back at what would surely be a frown on Lehran's face, and the light of the morning sky behind him, shining on the crown of his head. "As citizens of Begnion you will receive every right granted to the others, regardless of racial or economic descent, political affiliation - assuming you acknowledge the authority of the goddess and her servants above all others - and you will be free to keep your traditions to the extent they do not interfere with the rights of your neighbors.
"You tell me, King Gallia," Sanaki said, slanting her gaze back to Caineghis, whose expression had not changed, though his hand was extended, resting on Ranulf's shoulder. "You have three days. On the morning of the fourth, at dawn, in this place, you will give me your answer, and I will tell you how that bodes with Ashera. If you do not grace us with your presence I will assume you have rejected her offer."
The lines across Caineghis's forehead softened, and he nodded, the inclination of his head just enough to catch her attention, but his frown remained fixed. After a moment Ranulf stepped back, let his arms fall, and looked away-- at the sky, at a sparrow passing over the square, but not away from Sanaki, no, never.
She'd had a cat that did that, once. Her memory of it was dim. What ever happened to that cat? Was it her mother's? It was such a noisy, bossy, prideful thing, though she'd loved to hug its soft fur.
When Caineghis offered no further response, Sanaki gathered the folds of her skirt and turned around, brushed past Lehran's wing, and hiked to the top of the stairs. Her back felt tight, and every step felt strange, as if she were learning to walk again, or wearing an unfamiliar pair of shoes. Maybe wearing heels would have been a bad idea; she had no trouble walking in them, exactly, but her ankles always bent just a hair short of snapping or twisting, or so she imagined. With Gallia's eyes on her back - she assumed he watched, though Lehran's footsteps followed her, and his wings probably shielded her from the lion king's gaze - falling, or tripping, would be disastrous.
They were across the plaza, perhaps beyond the range of fabled Gallian hearing, when Lehran said, "You echo the worst of what they expect from beorc."
Sanaki glanced aside, lifted her skirt to step inside. Her knights walked as one around her, their footsteps an even clomp clomp on the marbled floor. The hinges creaked behind her, and she heard the scrape of the double doors moving, closing. "It's what they wanted to hear."
He lengthened his stride to walk even with her, eyebrows drawn down. "When have you ever advocated telling others what they want to hear? You know laguz will react badly if you treat them with such disrespect--"
"Lehran?"
His voice caught at the beginning of his next word, and she heard him sigh when he closed his mouth. The shadow of his wings shifted, cast by arched windows set high in the cathedral facade behind them, opening, closing. "Yes?"
Sanaki waited until they reached the end of the hall and passed into a smaller corridor where the doors were still closed and locked, some with chains; the daily business of the cathedral used to be done in those rooms, but there weren't enough people to demand their usage any longer. "He did not enter that audience with the intent of submitting," she said when they passed through another, smaller pair of doors, and she stopped at the top of the steps into the courtyard, two dark lamps above their heads and the sun shining in shafts between maple trees to gild the hem of her dress and the metallic thread decorating the bottom of his robes. "If I had pleaded, I would have looked weak. If I had tried to negotiate, he would have asked for exceptions Ashera did not authorize me to make. If I had declared judgment, I would have been no better than his petty beorc overlords."
"But if you had approached the subject peaceably--"
"Peaceably?" He flinched back at the volume of her voice, blinked, and Sanaki spread her hands. "The way you approached the bird tribes, is that what you mean?" His fingers clenched against his chest. She stepped forward, and he stepped away. "Ashera turned most of Gallia to stone without even addressing their guilt-- or lack of it, as you would have me believe. There is no peaceable way for me to approach him. I'm not better than my predecessors, or the senate, and neither is Ashera. I would not blame him one bit if he decided to rebel along with Phoenicis."
Lehran took another step back. The golden thread decorating his gray robe glittered in the sunlight and tried to catch her eye. His feathers lightened to a burnished sable where the sun slanted. "You shouldn't say such things."
He called her a child at times, a woman when convenient, yet the way his lips turned in, pressed together, bled white, the way his eyes remained wide, as if he were trying not to blink or look away, reminded Sanaki of her own childhood habits. She remembered battling those desires - to look away when Ashera's red eyes tried to pin her to the wall, to shift on her feet when she was accused of doing something wrong, or clench her fists, or hide her hands. It was stubborn. She was stubborn, resisting the goddess when, after thirteen years of service, it was clear the oft- mentioned Yune would not save her from Ashera's grasp. It would be better to bow to the inevitable. By working with the goddess, Sanaki supposed she might do some good.
By facing the truth of his goddess's nature, she thought Lehran might do more good-- but he wouldn't. Her knights were welcome to call her stubborn; she would point their criticisms to her teacher.
Sanaki turned her face away, breathed the cool morning in. Her roses were opening to the light. Sigrun's hair glinted green and white at the edge of her vision, to her right. "If you can do better, try-- with my blessing."
She left him before he could open his mouth, hurrying down the steps and across the wide square slabs paving the courtyard. The stone was dry and pale again, swept clean of dust and debris, and her skirt made a loud, slithering sound over the surface until someone fell out of step to lift it up and let the wind of their passage cool her ankles, her toes. Was he going to try? She didn't want to look back and find out. He would consider that a surrender on her part, and Sanaki wasn't going to let him think the denial of his company was all it took to change her mind.
She heard his wings flap when they neared the columns flanking the palace entrance, and his landing behind her knights when she ascended another set of steps and went inside.
Good.
Sigrun stepped in beside her long enough to say she would arrange for breakfast to be taken up to Sanaki's rooms, and then disappeared around the first flight of stairs. Her train was lowered to the floor at the second story landing, and the girl who carried it took Sigrun's place with a hand on the hilt of her sword, though the hall was empty and most of the doors there, too, were locked. Foreign royalty, what was left of it, lived in the opposite wing, as far away from her own quarters as possible without being rude. The rooms were smaller there, and the servants' quarters were in the same building; it was where the senators stayed when they decided not to go home at the end of the work day, though she couldn't understand why when they had mansions within walking distance of the cathedral.
Perhaps they didn't like to walk - a reasonable assumption, when one considered their health. Sanaki was lucky to have stairs to climb, if one wanted to call the Tower of Guidance a fortunate part of her routine. After so many years of that, climbing to the fourth floor of the palace was easy.
Sanaki sighed loudly when they entered her living area, throwing her head back when she reached the center of the room where her chairs were angled to face the fireplace, stretching her arms to weave her fingers behind her, and it seemed every one of her vertebrae cracked as she arched her back. The door clicked shut, and she heard Lehran's footsteps until he crossed onto the rug. "I'm glad this isn't an audience day." She waited for him to nudge his stool into place, or sit down. He did neither. "I'd have to skip it."
"Your prerogative, of course."
"I would say so." She twisted around to look at him, and found his face turned away and lit by the window, his hair and wings a black frame around his shoulders. The slight downturn of his mouth made her straighten up and turn to fully face him. "What good is it to be empress, otherwise?"
His green gaze slid to meet hers. "I have often wondered."
He waited several steps away, at the edge of the circle, his sandals sinking into the rug where a golden scroll bearing elephant ear leaves opened its arms to become a flower. Sanaki followed the curling stem and paused to lean against the back of a chair, so it would be more comfortable to look up at him."Being Empress accorded me quite a few advantages," she said, crossing her arms, tilting her head. "Though I used to believe you would like me even if I was a normal little girl."
There was a shadow creasing his forehead she thought would turn into a line when he looked down at her. The gauzy under-layer of her curtains still covered the window, so his eyes didn't glow as she was accustomed to seeing in more direct light. Without light to shimmer along the length of his hair and brush his skin so it seemed flawless, he was normal, real. She could touch him, and he would not disappear like mist. "Of course I would have," he said. "Why would you ever doubt?"
Sanaki could have recited the list: he scolded her for throwing things at senators, which anybody would have done in her place, if they were forced to sit and listen to Lekain's condescending tone for hours upon hours, or watch Oliver stroke his mustaches more than a dozen times. He started a war with Daein, made her kneel to Ashera, left her alone for seven years, and lied to her when he returned and confessed his sins. She'd waited for him to say it, when he explained the path that led to the goddess's awakening, when he explained why Sanaki was not what Ashera expected to find and what the legacy of Altina's line was, waited for him to say what the goddess had already told her: you are not the child he hoped to find. Did you know that, little empress?
You were all they left to him.
Over and over, the goddess reminded her: your value is in the blood which sleeps within your veins, the thread of Lehran's power, the only fragment of Altina's great line, whom Ashera had known in her dreams as flashes of silver light, like morning. The only question was which fragment of Sanaki attracted him - the remnant of his birthright, or the way her features reflected the woman he loved.
"Anyone would." She looked at the shadows of maple and mulberry leaves on the window covering, but kept her attention on his face at the edge of her vision. "You were so popular. Everyone wanted your attention. I remember that much - they were like butterflies, flitting around you, trying to remind you of their existence. The only way I could keep your eyes on me was to make ridiculous demands."
The shadow between his brows disappeared and his eyes narrowed slightly with the upturn of his lips. "That sounds like the behavior of a typical child to me. I liked you just as well then as when you were quiet."
"Liar." He lifted his eyebrows and Sanaki stretched her arms and clasped her hands behind his neck. "I'm tired, Sephiran. Carry me up the stairs," she said, pitching her voice higher and stomping her feet like she used to. "Take my shoes off! Do my hair!" She let her hands slide from his shoulders, flung her arm aside to point to the window. "Fetch a branch from that cherry tree so I can have blossoms in my tea."
Lehran chuckled, his smile widening until it was more than a shadow. "I'm afraid they're out of season," he said softly, catching her hand and curling her fingers to look at her ring - one of many gifts he sent while he was away. "Then, and now."
Sanaki felt the pad of his thumb brush her fingers, tickling the skin near her nails, and her lips felt dry. If he let go of her hand, it would drop like a dead weight, her arm too weak to hold it up. "Roses will do." He lifted his gaze, still stroking her fingers, making her nerves tingle. She licked her lips. "You never brought me roses when you were late. I always thought that was a terrible oversight on your part."
He kissed her fingers. "I stand corrected."
She wanted to stay that way, her fingertips to his soft lips, but he let go of her hand and she couldn't think of a reason to keep it there that wouldn't make him laugh or turn away. Her hand felt cool when she lowered it to her side. "As long as you know." Heat crept into her ears, her throat, and Sanaki turned away before it could reach her face and erase any doubt as to her state of discomfiture. "Sigrun should be here soon," she said, looking at the empty table, afraid she would trip on the edge of the rug, or worse, her own dress, if she tried to walk all the way over there. "You-- you'll be staying for breakfast, won't you?"
"Yes." Lehran probably smiled, because he always did, and she felt his hand at the small of her back again, and his wing curving around her shoulder, the arch brushing the rolls of her hair and jingling the ornaments on her combs. He led her across the room, watching his feet - to avoid stepping on her train, perhaps. "It's rather lonely to take meals in my rooms."
Sanaki hoped she made an appropriately sympathetic reply. Her knights were on speaking terms with him, but she would be surprised to hear any sought him out as they used to when he was just 'Sephiran.' Without Tanith or Sigrun, or Marcia, Sanaki was alone as well, unable to sit comfortably in company now that she noticed how carefully they spoke, how frequent their sidelong glances were, and realized Lehran was not the only person blamed for the judgment.
That used to make her angry. Sanaki used to recall the night she pulled his feather out and think to herself that he deserved a moment of pain, of betrayal - that as he gave, so should he receive.
He pulled her chair out, waited for Sanaki to sit, and she reached to run her fingers down over the smooth plane of his wing. The feathers overlapped and felt like velvet, and the edges of the longest feathers, the flight feathers, were stiff and almost sharp. She blinked when it was pulled away, and saw it stretched a second before he folded it in again and took his seat on the other side of the table before she turned her eyes to her empty place setting, fingertips still tingling.
Maybe he'd forgotten that night. Sanaki looked up through her lashes, hoping the window had him distracted again, but he was watching her, and she jerked her gaze away.
She'd thought herself immune to his charm. What was it-- his smile, his voice? Sanaki had always loved both. Nothing had changed - certainly not Lehran, not since his return, now that she knew who he really was. Wasn't that the problem? He didn't want to change.
Sanaki looked at the pale shadows on the curve of her plate, and saw the distorted curve of a wing. It was so soft - softer than fur, or wool, or even his silky hair. She wanted to reach for one again to run her fingers over it, or feel him curve it around her like a cloak, a blanket, a veil to cover her and keep her warm.
Just his wings. Nothing else.
*
Two days passed. An agent told Sanaki Gallia had moved back from the Ribahn, yet there was no sign they had turned around - all he knew was that they disappeared, melted into the forest, and she sent him away with a command to find out. She didn't want speculation; they were promised three days to make their decision, and so she would give it to them, but that did not mean she would allow them to threaten the rest of her subjects. An imaginary threat was no less potent than a real one. Not when commoners were concerned. And Ashera kept her silence, which meant she was still watching - still testing.
Well Sanaki didn't need her divine foresight to know what the lion king would do. There was only one practical solution to their stand-off; if he was at all intelligent, he would take it.
"That isn't as logical as you think it sounds," Lehran told her on the afternoon of the second day when he joined her in the garden for lunch. A small white gazebo shaded their wrought-iron table, overgrown by eight-petaled purple clematis. His wings spread slightly at rest, the feathers ruffled by a light breeze. "The bird tribes didn't take the practical route, and they have so far gotten away with it."
She shrugged, picking through the fruit bowl with a long-handled silver fork until she found strawberries at the bottom and speared three for her plate. "She thinks they have Yune. Even Ashera knows it would be stupid to scare them off."
He rolled his eyes, and she stuck her tongue out, then bit into a strawberry. Water trickled from a rock fountain into a pond over the rail to her right, shaded by the dangling branches of willow trees, the water glimmering and broken by lily pads and pink lotus blossoms. If she looked over the edge there would be fish to watch, gold and orange and red with gossamer fins that trailed behind them like sunlight or stars. Lehran looked that way, and the shade dappled his skin and his wings, leaving it to glow in spots and dim in the shade. His skin seemed to soak up sunlight as flower petals did.
She pressed her fingers onto a little triangle sandwich, compressing the layers of bread, cucumber, and white cheese until she could feel the ridges of the walnut slices hidden between them. "You think I've changed his mind?"
"No."
Sanaki bit into the sandwich, listening to the murmur of water and the crunch of nuts between her teeth, scratched her ankle with the toe of her sandal. "Then?"
Lehran turned back to his plate and picked up a sandwich, though he only stared at it as if he didn't know what it was for. "I think you're right, but I have to wonder why he has decided to wait."
"To make you question," Sanaki said. "To make us nervous. It's a common enough tactic - you did it all the time when the junior senators came to ask for your backing on some matter. I remember."
"He isn't that kind of man. Laguz are straightforward--"
"Except when they're not." His wings cramped when he looked at her, tilting his head, and she almost expected him to plant his hands on his hips like she did when exasperated. "Laguz tend to charge into battle - I've studied our wars with Gallia, and our laguz agents say the same. Yet Caineghis spent five years 'gathering his people' and answering the goddess's call, even though it seemed from our records of the last war they rallied to his call more quickly. Our records also say," she continued when he opened his mouth, pointing with her silver fork, "that almost all of Gallia's beorc settlers lived in the north, near Crimea. Who were they gathering?"
"You think they were waiting to see what would happen with the bird tribes." She lifted her eyebrows, and he sighed, put his sandwich down, refolded his napkin. "It's possible, but in that case, Ashera's precedent would encourage them to remain in their forests, would it not? You can suggest they have been in contact with King Phoenicis, but--"
Sanaki speared a piece of green melon with her fork and watched him stare at his plate. Birdsong filled the silence, and their rustling through the vines, the trees, the rapid flap of their tiny wings.
He looked so placid, still, his eyes lidded and veiled by thick black lashes. His fingers spread on the white tablecloth. Each of his nails was cut and filed perfectly smooth, the white a thin white line at each tip. His layered sleeves faded from light to dark - a mid-tone gray for his wide outer sleeves, trimmed in silver, and a darker gray beneath that, and deep purple folded at his wrist so it covered the back of his hand. The ancient gold band on his left hand was still the only jewelry he wore. The circlet she saw when he first returned to her waited in a box for formal occasions that never came.
"The birds are disappearing," she said. "Our spies say their numbers on Phoenicis diminish every few months."
"Yes."
"You told me they had beorc with them as well."
"... yes."
"Do you know where they're going?"
"I-- have an inkling."
Sanaki pushed the rest of her triangle sandwich into her mouth, leaned back, and waited. Three more occupied her plate, and her two strawberries, wetting the porcelain with pink juice and water from the nubs where they were plucked from their vine.
Lehran's hair pulled across his shoulder and slid over his chest when he turned his head at a sudden cacophony of wing beats and twigs snapping, and out of the corner of her eye Sanaki saw the white and flashing steel ornamentation of one of her knights past the curtain of vines and the hanging branches of the willows. They paced the garden walks beyond her range of hearing, usually out of sight. She wondered if one of them had seen something, or if someone was approaching, but the moments passed in heartbeats, during which she watched Lehran's eyes scan the landscape, and nothing happened.
"If I were Caineghis," she said, nudging her sandwiches to form a bigger triangle, "I would accept Ashera's amnesty and wait until the birds make their move to rebel."
Lehran sighed, loud and just a bit dramatic. "I was hoping to take the optimistic tack."
"You? Optimistic?" Sanaki scowled, and he laughed, picked up a sandwich - finally. "Where are the birds going?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying again." She tapped the leg of the table with her sandal while he chewed and hooked her fingers under the lip. He took the smallest bites, was the neatest individual she'd ever met, yet she wanted to push his hair back, out of the way of crumbs. She'd gotten her hair tangled that way all the time when she was younger. "Did the goddess's judgment reach beyond the borders of Tellius?"
His eyebrow twitched up. "I don't know."
Sanaki leaned back and wished the chair had a cushion when the iron grated on her shoulder blades. Another breeze tickled her neck with flyaway hairs, and ruffled the tiny feathers at the top of his wings.
They would find out. Someday. Perhaps within her lifetime.
The rest of her day was spent listening to reports. Lady Elincia was back from the east, where Sanaki sent her to manage the outlying settlements - vineyards, farms, quiet places - because the princess had seemed suited to that life when they first met. Ramon and his wife were known to be honest rulers but she didn't trust them out of her sight, knowing they thought Ashera's judgment an injustice, and while Sanaki felt the same, she was no fool.
She send a messenger to notify Elincia of a meeting on the morrow, ten in the morning, sharp, and returned to her rooms when she'd finished composing her report. There was time left before sundown, and Sanaki spent it soaking in the warm water of her bath, hair twisted up and secured with brass pins, the steam scented with herbal lavender, rosemary, and all the scents she'd read were supposed to promote peace of mind and sharp thinking. They did neither. She flicked the water with her fingers and thought about the birds, where they might be going, and for what purpose - to escape Ashera, or to marshal some kind of resistance? There weren't many left as it was; Lehran's original report was a list of eighty names, including both ravens and hawks, the remaining herons, and those he suspected to be of mixed heritage, who were perhaps protected from the judgment by a strain of Serenes blood. Quite a few of the survivors from the other countries were Branded, or suspected of carrying laguz heritage, though again, he said he could not be sure.
You were not touched, he said. I used to think it was my presence that saved you, but you are also a descendant of mixed heritage. He'd spread her hand over his palm, and at that time, when she was still thirteen - or fourteen or fifteen, there was appallingly little difference in her appearance those years - her hand still was not as long as his. It was still small, and she felt like a child again, wanting to climb into his lap for a story. Tell me more. Tell me everything.
He never did tell her everything. She waited, and kept waiting, and he kept his silence. You were not the child he hoped to find. Perhaps he was being generous by withholding that little bit of truth.
Sanaki left the bath, blotted the water from her skin with a towel, and walked out with a silk robe wrapped around and tied at the waist, pulling the brass sticks from her hair to let it uncoil over her back. The lamps had not been lit yet. Past the window, the sky was purple and magenta with dusk. A slim, familiar shadow outlined itself against that backdrop, and the black dress swallowed the light, while her red hair glowed with the highlights still burning outside.
She tapped her fingertips to the glass globe around her bedside lamp, and the wick flickered to life. "Lady Ashera. How may I help you?"
The lamp light flicked the strands of Ashera's hair. "Your handling of the lion king leaves something to be desired."
Did this mean she would be spared the trip to the tower, if they were discussing this now? She pressed her thumbs into her lower back, where the muscles were tightening again - from sitting in a chair all day, perhaps, or because the goddess had a way of making her body cramp with a single glance. "I have very little to work with," Sanaki said.
"He will rebel."
"He will surrender first." She went to her dressing table and pulled a ribbon from the top drawer. "I can't see the future, so what he does after that is beyond my mortal vision."
The goddess looked at her, and Sanaki tied her hair back, watching Ashera in the mirror. Lehran would have scolded her, but the goddess offered only her usual lack of response. "What will you do when that time comes?"
Sanaki tugged the bow tight and turned away from the reflection to face the real goddess, one arm bent behind her to rub what was fast becoming another knot. "Whatever you tell me to do."
Ashera's ornaments jangled, but aside from the glitter and tinkle of the charms on her belt she didn't appear to move except to turn her face back to the window, which now bore her reflection faintly, too dim to follow the path of her gaze. The feathers on her headdress ruffled, and Sanaki felt the movement of the air. It couldn't quite be called a breeze. "Will you continue to ignore Lehran's advice?"
There was less pink in the sky; the purple had become indigo, and the sliver of orange on the horizon, peeking between buildings, was gone. Lights dotted the skyline instead, small and yellow, shaped like windows or torch flames. Sanaki wished she had something more to do with her hands, but she wasn't about to undress in front of the goddess. Being watched didn't matter - it was the principle of the thing, of baring herself before another's gaze as she'd often borne her emotions on her sleeve as a child and left herself open to manipulation. "If he continues to counsel appeasement, then yes."
"Hmm."
Illumination flickered beneath the door to her living area, also yellow, highlighting the grain of the wooden floor and its sheen of polish. Footsteps sounded faintly, and then voices, one of which she recognized as Sigrun, but they didn't approach. Sanaki clasped her hands back and wondered what emotion that hmm wasn't supposed to signify - because of course Ashera did not have any emotions; not anger, nor sadness, nor empathy-- nor approval. One was supposed to divine such things in what she didn't say or do.
She didn't say anything else, so Sanaki assumed there were no further orders, protests, or points to discuss, only moments to endure until the goddess decided to leave and let her relax.
Maybe she would nap. There must be another hour until her evening meal was served, and she didn't feel hungry. Sigrun would be in to question Sanaki's health if she didn't eat, but those questions could be endured while flat on her back - another appealing prospect, and one she could not enjoy in front of the goddess, who required her to stand if she would not kneel. Sitting down would be rude. Lying down would be an insult.
"Lehran waits outside," the goddess finally said, and the wave of her moon-pale hand indicated the bedroom door.
Sanaki jerked her gaze to the door. She couldn't hear voices anymore, but his ears would surely hear whatever was said in her room; he'd confessed before to eavesdropping on the senators through doors, windows, even from the first story when they spoke on the third.
She looked at Ashera again, who shook her head. But at what - her silent question, her lack of attention to the goings on outside, as if she had a bird's ability to hear a whisper at a hundred paces? The goddess turned to the shadows between the folds of the curtains and melted away. "Go."
Sanaki watched the shadow slanting behind the curtain, but it did not yield a human shape again. It never did - when the goddess decided to leave, she didn't hover at the edge of the dark in indecision. The way she heard things from afar, it was difficult to believe she didn't linger, and yet, she was a goddess, and gods heard all. Sanaki worked her lower lip between her teeth, standing on the balls of her feet, and wanted to go over there and check anyway.
Instead, she went to the door and sidestepped out, left it open a hair just in case there was something to hear. Lehran's face was reflected by the window as his goddess was a few moments earlier, and the lamps were all lit and burning brightly - enough she saw his eyes slide from whatever he was looking outside to her own figure by the door, alerted by the sound or her own reflection, or perhaps both. His eyes traveled down, up, back to her face. He shifted from foot to foot when she left the doorway and wove between the sofa and chairs to approach him; Sanaki was afraid to look at herself in the window and see what he must - her robe damp and sticking to her arms and legs, the pink just white enough to show details she shouldn't be brazen enough to show.
"Y-you are not going to the tower tonight, I take it." He was dressed in full regalia - his black silk coat, his layers of gray, and the circlet, gleaming across his forehead, in his hair.
She reached up to touch it. The gold was warm, and his skin soft. "You haven't worn this in years," Sanaki said. Her neck felt warm at the back, and her throat, and she swallowed, hoping it would not spread to her face.
"I went to see Caineghis," Lehran said. His fingers curled around her wrist slowly, tickling the skin over her veins. "My intent was to go with you, but--" He looked down, his fingertips twitching, pressing harder. His gaze jerked up again. "It seems I am too late."
"Not really." He let her hand go, and Sanaki plucked at the front of her robe so it wouldn't stick. "How did it go?"
Lehran tilted his head. She shrugged. "He accepts your terms for now," he said. "I suppose he will petition the goddess as well."
Sanaki looked away. Mulberry flowers were arranged in a squat crystal vase on her table near the windows, their thick white petals contrasting with the dark, shiny green of their leaves. The lamp beside them was lit, and the petals closest to the glass were wavy, thinning, wilting at the edges. "Then we should go." She propped her hand on her hip again, rubbed her back with her thumb. She could see the tower outside, past the palace buildings, or at least its glowing windows. "I wasn't going to, but she should know we've received an answer." The answer she anticipated, no less. Her handling of the situation left something to be desired, did it?
"I apologize for my criticism earlier."
She shook her head, looking down at the tabletop and its lace covering. "There's no need. I know you dislike conflict."
"Even so, I brought an apology."
She turned her head at his odd choice of words and blinked when he presented a rose - just one, the outer petals vivid crimson and half-closed, dark at the center. The stem was smooth, the thorns removed. "Is this apology for your pacifist nonsense," she asked, flattening her lips so they wouldn't curve up, feeling heat creep into her cheeks, "or for your terrible timing?"
"Normally I would not apologize for either," he said, reaching to tighten her sash, but his eyes were averted when she lifted her gaze. "But I don't like it when you're irritated with me."
His tone made her throat tighten, and Sanaki brushed his mouth with her rose, made him look at her. "I'm not irritated, Lehran." She would give him everything he wanted if she could - peace, cooperation from the bird tribes, herons. Forgetfulness, if he wanted it. Her lips, instead of flower petals-- but that was her own desire.
She liked the way his eyes gathered light, like glass cut to refract sunlight into rainbows, like the clearest of crystals. They were so green in the yellow illumination of her lamps, yet they would be blue in the sunlight, and somewhere in- between in the shade, depending on the colors surrounding him. She'd never noticed it before. Were these the details that drew people to him when she was a child - women and men, laguz and beorc - that she was only just noticing? Sanaki hadn't wanted to see them-- she didn't now. The facade didn't make the man, and his face was a mask he could school to show any number of emotions he didn't feel, his voice a tool more finely tuned than a finely crafted musical instrument. She'd never heard him sing, but if he granted her that privilege, there was little doubt the sound would be perfect, and exactly what he wanted her to hear.
But there was the rose. There was the sweet perfume of flowers, and the scent of his hair, herbal and honeyed. There was his hand smoothing her hair, twisting a loose strand around his fingers, pulling it as if to draw her closer. He let it slide away when she was about to give in and said, "Get dressed, Sanaki. Meeting the goddess in this attire would be terribly inappropriate."
Sanaki pulled the rose back to her own lips and smiled.
..........................................
Okay, I was going to edit, I swear, but it's just-- I'm so glad to have it off my chest, and it's Sunday, which means I'm lazy, and and and. ;_; I'ms orry for the suckiness?
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9/10
Theme: 24 - good night
Gauntlet Theme: 13 - the flower of forgetting
Words: 9258
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: this is set several years after the last installment. No need to retread familiar ground.
Previous Installments:
1. Judgment
2. Initiation
3. Unforgiven
.......................................
Sanaki had no idea what time it was when Lehran knocked on her bedroom door and came in to arrange her hair - only that it was still dark outside when she peeked through a gap in her curtains, and Sigrun was the one to announce him, so her shift had not ended yet. They chose a formal dress, one with an empire waist in white damask, which she'd hardly had the opportunity to wear. Her everyday clothes - robes and plain white gowns, coats and over-skirts - were starting to look dingy at the cuffs, the hem, the elbows threadbare. She tried not to commission clothes when fabric was so expensive and hard to come by, though it wasn't as bad as she feared when Sigrun put her foot down.
You've been wearing the same clothes for five years, her knight had said, insisting they buy something new for administrative use. That was fine when you were a little younger, but you've outgrown nearly all of it. I understand your concern over our coffers, but taxes have steadily accumulated since Lehran returned. Think nothing of it. Even Lehran had the nerve to say, it's unflattering and inappropriate for you to to traipse around in a girl's costume. You must keep the dignity of your office in mind.
Dignity, he said - when she had to appear in ballgowns and festival robes for audience while they waited for her new clothes?
She thought for a while she'd never change - never get taller, or look like an adult. Wasn't she the second child, the un-gifted scion, the normal girl? Yet it took five years to outgrow a dress. If she heard another murmur about late-blooming, someone was going to be fired. A dozen someones with spears and white coats, and another one with wings.
Gold combs held rolls of hair to her head, and their short dangles clinked when she turned her head to see what Lehran was doing. Braiding, he said, a style they call the herringbone. "Why the early summons?" He wrapped the end of her braid around his hand and reaching over her shoulder for a ribbon.
Sanaki turned her face the other way, frowned. She'd seen this style worn by other women in the capitol, but it was too big for her round face - too elaborate for her. A courting style. "Ashera said King Gallia would arrive this morning and commanded me to be ready at dawn." Who was she supposed to court - the lion king?
His hands paused in wrapping the ribbon. "I see." The bow he tied was precise, the loops perfect. "And her orders?"
"No orders." She reached for a vial of scented oil and his hand stopped her - it would disturb their guests. Sanaki considered it another moment before sliding it back to its place in front of her mirror. It was a dark, resinous scent, myrrh and apple and something she couldn't remember, some kind of spice, and it was strong. It reminded her of Ashera, bleeding out of the pre-dawn darkness, a heavy white hand and a pale oval of face to wake her with instructions. "I suppose that means I can do what I want."
"She's testing you," he said, tucking something into her hair. A stray strand, perhaps.
"I know." Sanaki gathered her skirt and stood, pushing the stool back, and turned around to face him. His chin was at eye-level. She blew a sigh through her nose. "Have those heels brought back up."
He gave her a sideways look, his face turned slightly aside to the gold lamplight. "You don't need them."
She frowned and stared at his shoulder. "I'm almost twenty." The skirt folded to the floor when she let go; his hands tugged it straight, reached around her to adjust the bow securing her sash, and he wasn't wearing anything scented either - not even the herbal traces of his soap. "I didn't pierce my ears because you hated the idea. I don't use cosmetics. You're an absolute pest when I talk to anything male. At the very least, I refuse to be looked down on."
Lehran laughed softly, the puff of his breath tickling her ear and her neck with flyaway hairs. "Everyone is small before the lion king."
Sanaki stamped her foot on the floor, but the rug muffled the slap her sandal should have made. "He's probably not going to bend his neck, and I won't crane mine back just to tell him off."
He tugged her braid and turned away from her, his wings arcing up and folding so they wouldn't hit her. The long feathers traced a line across her skirt before his back was turned. "Count your blessings, my lady. If you were laguz you might be half this size, and you'd have to meet him from my shoulder."
She blew her bangs from her eyes, straightened them out again. "I'm not laguz."
"Nor are you beorc." Lehran glanced over his shoulder, angled a wing to reach back, and took her hand to pull her along. "Now come. Dawn approaches."
The tick of the clock on the mantle in her living room broke the stillness. She listened to the sound of his robes, the way they folded together and whispered when he walked or moved his wings, and the rustle of her skirt and the short train pulling over the rug behind her, then slithering on the smooth floors. When they reached the door he let go of her hand. Sanaki wanted to ask him what he meant just then, when he said she wasn't beorc, but he didn't wait for her to gather her thoughts, and her knights were outside, all four of her command unit: Sigrun, Tanith, Marcia, Catalena.
Others would meet them outside, Sigrun told her. Not enough to imply they did not trust Gallia, but a number adequate to defend Sanaki if necessary: ten, and the others were a shout away if they were needed. Lehran said it might not be a bad idea to meet them with a full contingent of the holy guard, but when Sigrun raised her eyebrows, he shrugged and steered Sanaki forward with his wing spread around her and the flight feathers brushing her wrist as it curved.
Day broke outside while they crossed the palace to the cathedral. The roses in the courtyard were beaded with dew and moistened Sanaki's fingers when she stretched to touch one; the walks were damp and brown, not their normal beige. Her kerria rose waited along their path, now many roses and many bushes, their bright yellow and white blossoms closed like praying hands. Inside, the cathedral was still lit by lamps, and she didn't see the sky or the yellow crescent of the sun until they left the building and walked across the plaza to the wide, trapezoid stretch of steps that opened to the public square. She would have made speeches here, held celebrations - were she a normal queen. Sephiran had carried her to the edge of the steps once to address her people after coronation, and all she could remember was the noise - a rush of voices from the crowd which should rightfully be described as a roar, and it left her ears ringing over the sonorous tone his voice took when magnified by the acoustics of the area, walled in by cathedral, library, university. Their high walls all around made it feel like a coliseum or an amphitheater.
But those were across the river, three long city blocks away, and had not been used since the Judgment. For many years, this area had been enough to hold the remaining citizens of Begnion and Daein, and even Crimea.
Wasn't thirteen years long enough to wait? Didn't they deserve a release - to bring the old plays out again, and engage in sports? Ashera had saved the library, but only, it seemed, in reflex. Knowledge was important, knowledge was power, knowledge was-- forbidden, not suitable for contentious, inconsiderate children serving out their punishment to an angry mother. Even Sanaki was not allowed to read them now that she had finished narrating as much history and philosophy as the goddess felt she needed; Lehran was better than any book, she was told.
That might be true, if he had served the goddess as long as he claimed. But were his memories incorruptible?
Across the square, where the walls narrowed to two mammoth gates Sanaki had yet only seen up close twice in her life, she spotted shapes of red and blue. Lehran's hand on her arm brought them to a halt four steps from the bottom. Sigrun and the others took their places around her, two on the bottom step, one to her left, one to the right. The others fell in behind, and two remained at the top to watch. Lehran remained close at her side and a step back, his hand a brush against her waist where her purple sash was tied, his wing shading the back of her head from the sun. The lions noted this when they approached; she saw one of them flick his eyes back and forth, from her to her heron, back, and he told her who they were: the slender one is the king's adviser, Ranulf. The one at the king's left is his shadow. He will not speak.
When their guests reached the foot of the steps they didn't bow. Sanaki hoped her eyebrows remained level, though it felt they were climbing, or wanted to; she'd expected the slight, but her knights shifted, boots and spears scraping, and she wished she'd thought to warn them.
"I bid you welcome in Ashera's name," she said, raising her voice slightly. The steps weren't small, nor was Sanaki that short, though her knights were all taller than she - but Caineghis was taller by a head, even standing at the bottom, and his wealth of red hair added another hand of height. The distance between them enabled her to look him in the eye without lifting her chin. "I trust my adviser explained her requirements when he met you in Gallia, and I assume you mean to comply if you've come here to present yourself."
Caineghis did not dress like any noble she had met. A fur-lined robe, or cape, or coat - she couldn't tell - hung from his shoulder and spread golden-edged around his foot, a deep indigo, and the rest of his clothing was plain, perhaps embroidered nicely, but unremarkable before Sanaki's ridiculous finery with its pearl edges and hand-woven brocade. His belt jingled, made of wide gold plates and dangles, and the sound reminded her of Ashera.
Just as well. A man dressed flamboyantly would imply with his vanity an untrustworthy nature. From all Lehran and the Crimeans told her, Caineghis was an honorable individual who kept the well-being of his people at the forefront of his mind. A good king, Lehran said. The only one absolved of the Serenes tragedy.
"I have come in response to the goddess's threat." His voice resonated as if it came from the bottom of a well, with a rumbling undertone that reminded her of that crowd and made her feel small again, fit for the cradle of Sephiran's arms. "Gallia waits to the north, on the other side of the Ribahn. We will not move any farther."
"Unacceptable." A breeze flitted through Sanaki's bangs and stirred the king's mane. Lehran's fingers tensed across her back, curling. "Ashera demands obedience, and moving according to her order is the first step in proving your loyalty to her. She would remind you a king is made by his nation, not his strength, and any punishment you incur will be levied upon your subjects."
The blue-haired adviser snorted, laughed sharply. "Another threat? I thought the goddess wanted peace."
Sanaki kept her gaze on the king. "Will you still resist?"
He examined her as his subordinate did, looking her up and down, glancing behind her. His nostrils flared, or it might have been the light; she'd heard beast laguz had extraordinary olfactory capability, yet had never found the chance to see for herself. "We will not bow to a beorc overlord."
"Then don't." The breeze stilled, and the air smelled like wet stone again. "Take the land I offer and live at peace with your neighbors. The goddess doesn't demand very much from her followers - only that they obey her commandments."
"Begnion has never dealt honorably with laguz," Caineghis said. "The rulers before you preached beorc superiority and enslaved our kind. Your diplomats played us false. Our inquiries into the Serenes Massacre were ignored, and our messengers killed." His frown was a dark slash above his chin, and she wondered if it ever changed. "Under the circumstances, we cannot take your word at face value."
Did he just accuse her of lying? Sanaki clenched her hands behind the folds of her skirt to keep from tapping her hip, or folding her arms. Negotiations required patience, even when there was nothing to discuss, and she'd known he would not cooperate, it was a foregone conclusion - but did he have to be so abrasive? She wasn't anyone's 'beorc overlord.' Not anymore. "Do no harm to others. Do not steal. Do not deceive your neighbors." If she closed her eyes, she would see the list Ashera made her write down and recite to every group of refugees that passed the gate, remember the cream white parchment, the red ink, and her own unrefined handwriting. "Do not break your word, once given. Honor the goddess and her creations as one."
Lehran's wing folded. The sound, so close to her ear, made her start. "They are not unfair or inconvenient demands, King Caineghis," he said. "The Begnion you knew is gone. Neither my goddess nor my empress will be false with you."
"And this land," the cat named Ranulf said, crossing his arms. "Where is it, and what do you expect us to do with it? And what about the other laguz around here, your slaves and Daein's?"
Sanaki shifted her gaze to him. Her face felt stiff from remaining neutral, like it had become a mask while they talked. "Follow the western river bank south from Gallia's current position, all the way to the coast. As far as you can run west is yours, and two days to the north. More should not be necessary for some time."
The king's eyes glinted, drew her gaze back. "Serenes?"
"Some ways below the southern border," she said, and gave in, crossing her arms and letting herself frown. What did she care for their opinion of her composure? "Both the plains and the forest are healthy and currently uninhabited. Serenes will remain off-limits until the herons return to claim it."
The air moved, cool against Sanaki's cheek. Her skin was moist beneath the brocade, and it wasn't late in the year - it wasn't even warm. Lehran's hand on her back was a hot weight, a force that seemed to push her forward, though if he made any move it would be to pull her back; the hunch to his shoulders in her peripheral vision, the stiffness in his fingers, told her he wanted to step forward and say something.
"If the goddess requires an oath," the lion king said, fingers sinking into his fur ruff to adjust his cloak, "I will speak to her alone. No intermediaries."
"Fine."
The cat named Ranulf planted his hands on his slim hips. "That's it?"
"Ranulf."
"We could have stayed in Gallia--"
"I wish you had," Sanaki said sharply, her own voice echoing like the snap of a whip, and finally let her face crease into a frown to relieve the tension behind her eyes. Lehran said her name sharply, pitched low just behind her shoulder, and she shrugged him away when she felt his fingers press into her back. "But Ashera's word is law, and a place has been prepared for you here in Begnion on her order. If you want to risk another judgment by going back home, that is your concern."
The corners of his lips twitched up, but she didn't like the smile. "Make up your mind."
She sighed sharply through her nose and closed her eyes. A full three seconds passed. "You have Ashera's orders. I cannot make the choice for you." Sanaki turned slightly, almost looked back at what would surely be a frown on Lehran's face, and the light of the morning sky behind him, shining on the crown of his head. "As citizens of Begnion you will receive every right granted to the others, regardless of racial or economic descent, political affiliation - assuming you acknowledge the authority of the goddess and her servants above all others - and you will be free to keep your traditions to the extent they do not interfere with the rights of your neighbors.
"You tell me, King Gallia," Sanaki said, slanting her gaze back to Caineghis, whose expression had not changed, though his hand was extended, resting on Ranulf's shoulder. "You have three days. On the morning of the fourth, at dawn, in this place, you will give me your answer, and I will tell you how that bodes with Ashera. If you do not grace us with your presence I will assume you have rejected her offer."
The lines across Caineghis's forehead softened, and he nodded, the inclination of his head just enough to catch her attention, but his frown remained fixed. After a moment Ranulf stepped back, let his arms fall, and looked away-- at the sky, at a sparrow passing over the square, but not away from Sanaki, no, never.
She'd had a cat that did that, once. Her memory of it was dim. What ever happened to that cat? Was it her mother's? It was such a noisy, bossy, prideful thing, though she'd loved to hug its soft fur.
When Caineghis offered no further response, Sanaki gathered the folds of her skirt and turned around, brushed past Lehran's wing, and hiked to the top of the stairs. Her back felt tight, and every step felt strange, as if she were learning to walk again, or wearing an unfamiliar pair of shoes. Maybe wearing heels would have been a bad idea; she had no trouble walking in them, exactly, but her ankles always bent just a hair short of snapping or twisting, or so she imagined. With Gallia's eyes on her back - she assumed he watched, though Lehran's footsteps followed her, and his wings probably shielded her from the lion king's gaze - falling, or tripping, would be disastrous.
They were across the plaza, perhaps beyond the range of fabled Gallian hearing, when Lehran said, "You echo the worst of what they expect from beorc."
Sanaki glanced aside, lifted her skirt to step inside. Her knights walked as one around her, their footsteps an even clomp clomp on the marbled floor. The hinges creaked behind her, and she heard the scrape of the double doors moving, closing. "It's what they wanted to hear."
He lengthened his stride to walk even with her, eyebrows drawn down. "When have you ever advocated telling others what they want to hear? You know laguz will react badly if you treat them with such disrespect--"
"Lehran?"
His voice caught at the beginning of his next word, and she heard him sigh when he closed his mouth. The shadow of his wings shifted, cast by arched windows set high in the cathedral facade behind them, opening, closing. "Yes?"
Sanaki waited until they reached the end of the hall and passed into a smaller corridor where the doors were still closed and locked, some with chains; the daily business of the cathedral used to be done in those rooms, but there weren't enough people to demand their usage any longer. "He did not enter that audience with the intent of submitting," she said when they passed through another, smaller pair of doors, and she stopped at the top of the steps into the courtyard, two dark lamps above their heads and the sun shining in shafts between maple trees to gild the hem of her dress and the metallic thread decorating the bottom of his robes. "If I had pleaded, I would have looked weak. If I had tried to negotiate, he would have asked for exceptions Ashera did not authorize me to make. If I had declared judgment, I would have been no better than his petty beorc overlords."
"But if you had approached the subject peaceably--"
"Peaceably?" He flinched back at the volume of her voice, blinked, and Sanaki spread her hands. "The way you approached the bird tribes, is that what you mean?" His fingers clenched against his chest. She stepped forward, and he stepped away. "Ashera turned most of Gallia to stone without even addressing their guilt-- or lack of it, as you would have me believe. There is no peaceable way for me to approach him. I'm not better than my predecessors, or the senate, and neither is Ashera. I would not blame him one bit if he decided to rebel along with Phoenicis."
Lehran took another step back. The golden thread decorating his gray robe glittered in the sunlight and tried to catch her eye. His feathers lightened to a burnished sable where the sun slanted. "You shouldn't say such things."
He called her a child at times, a woman when convenient, yet the way his lips turned in, pressed together, bled white, the way his eyes remained wide, as if he were trying not to blink or look away, reminded Sanaki of her own childhood habits. She remembered battling those desires - to look away when Ashera's red eyes tried to pin her to the wall, to shift on her feet when she was accused of doing something wrong, or clench her fists, or hide her hands. It was stubborn. She was stubborn, resisting the goddess when, after thirteen years of service, it was clear the oft- mentioned Yune would not save her from Ashera's grasp. It would be better to bow to the inevitable. By working with the goddess, Sanaki supposed she might do some good.
By facing the truth of his goddess's nature, she thought Lehran might do more good-- but he wouldn't. Her knights were welcome to call her stubborn; she would point their criticisms to her teacher.
Sanaki turned her face away, breathed the cool morning in. Her roses were opening to the light. Sigrun's hair glinted green and white at the edge of her vision, to her right. "If you can do better, try-- with my blessing."
She left him before he could open his mouth, hurrying down the steps and across the wide square slabs paving the courtyard. The stone was dry and pale again, swept clean of dust and debris, and her skirt made a loud, slithering sound over the surface until someone fell out of step to lift it up and let the wind of their passage cool her ankles, her toes. Was he going to try? She didn't want to look back and find out. He would consider that a surrender on her part, and Sanaki wasn't going to let him think the denial of his company was all it took to change her mind.
She heard his wings flap when they neared the columns flanking the palace entrance, and his landing behind her knights when she ascended another set of steps and went inside.
Good.
Sigrun stepped in beside her long enough to say she would arrange for breakfast to be taken up to Sanaki's rooms, and then disappeared around the first flight of stairs. Her train was lowered to the floor at the second story landing, and the girl who carried it took Sigrun's place with a hand on the hilt of her sword, though the hall was empty and most of the doors there, too, were locked. Foreign royalty, what was left of it, lived in the opposite wing, as far away from her own quarters as possible without being rude. The rooms were smaller there, and the servants' quarters were in the same building; it was where the senators stayed when they decided not to go home at the end of the work day, though she couldn't understand why when they had mansions within walking distance of the cathedral.
Perhaps they didn't like to walk - a reasonable assumption, when one considered their health. Sanaki was lucky to have stairs to climb, if one wanted to call the Tower of Guidance a fortunate part of her routine. After so many years of that, climbing to the fourth floor of the palace was easy.
Sanaki sighed loudly when they entered her living area, throwing her head back when she reached the center of the room where her chairs were angled to face the fireplace, stretching her arms to weave her fingers behind her, and it seemed every one of her vertebrae cracked as she arched her back. The door clicked shut, and she heard Lehran's footsteps until he crossed onto the rug. "I'm glad this isn't an audience day." She waited for him to nudge his stool into place, or sit down. He did neither. "I'd have to skip it."
"Your prerogative, of course."
"I would say so." She twisted around to look at him, and found his face turned away and lit by the window, his hair and wings a black frame around his shoulders. The slight downturn of his mouth made her straighten up and turn to fully face him. "What good is it to be empress, otherwise?"
His green gaze slid to meet hers. "I have often wondered."
He waited several steps away, at the edge of the circle, his sandals sinking into the rug where a golden scroll bearing elephant ear leaves opened its arms to become a flower. Sanaki followed the curling stem and paused to lean against the back of a chair, so it would be more comfortable to look up at him."Being Empress accorded me quite a few advantages," she said, crossing her arms, tilting her head. "Though I used to believe you would like me even if I was a normal little girl."
There was a shadow creasing his forehead she thought would turn into a line when he looked down at her. The gauzy under-layer of her curtains still covered the window, so his eyes didn't glow as she was accustomed to seeing in more direct light. Without light to shimmer along the length of his hair and brush his skin so it seemed flawless, he was normal, real. She could touch him, and he would not disappear like mist. "Of course I would have," he said. "Why would you ever doubt?"
Sanaki could have recited the list: he scolded her for throwing things at senators, which anybody would have done in her place, if they were forced to sit and listen to Lekain's condescending tone for hours upon hours, or watch Oliver stroke his mustaches more than a dozen times. He started a war with Daein, made her kneel to Ashera, left her alone for seven years, and lied to her when he returned and confessed his sins. She'd waited for him to say it, when he explained the path that led to the goddess's awakening, when he explained why Sanaki was not what Ashera expected to find and what the legacy of Altina's line was, waited for him to say what the goddess had already told her: you are not the child he hoped to find. Did you know that, little empress?
You were all they left to him.
Over and over, the goddess reminded her: your value is in the blood which sleeps within your veins, the thread of Lehran's power, the only fragment of Altina's great line, whom Ashera had known in her dreams as flashes of silver light, like morning. The only question was which fragment of Sanaki attracted him - the remnant of his birthright, or the way her features reflected the woman he loved.
"Anyone would." She looked at the shadows of maple and mulberry leaves on the window covering, but kept her attention on his face at the edge of her vision. "You were so popular. Everyone wanted your attention. I remember that much - they were like butterflies, flitting around you, trying to remind you of their existence. The only way I could keep your eyes on me was to make ridiculous demands."
The shadow between his brows disappeared and his eyes narrowed slightly with the upturn of his lips. "That sounds like the behavior of a typical child to me. I liked you just as well then as when you were quiet."
"Liar." He lifted his eyebrows and Sanaki stretched her arms and clasped her hands behind his neck. "I'm tired, Sephiran. Carry me up the stairs," she said, pitching her voice higher and stomping her feet like she used to. "Take my shoes off! Do my hair!" She let her hands slide from his shoulders, flung her arm aside to point to the window. "Fetch a branch from that cherry tree so I can have blossoms in my tea."
Lehran chuckled, his smile widening until it was more than a shadow. "I'm afraid they're out of season," he said softly, catching her hand and curling her fingers to look at her ring - one of many gifts he sent while he was away. "Then, and now."
Sanaki felt the pad of his thumb brush her fingers, tickling the skin near her nails, and her lips felt dry. If he let go of her hand, it would drop like a dead weight, her arm too weak to hold it up. "Roses will do." He lifted his gaze, still stroking her fingers, making her nerves tingle. She licked her lips. "You never brought me roses when you were late. I always thought that was a terrible oversight on your part."
He kissed her fingers. "I stand corrected."
She wanted to stay that way, her fingertips to his soft lips, but he let go of her hand and she couldn't think of a reason to keep it there that wouldn't make him laugh or turn away. Her hand felt cool when she lowered it to her side. "As long as you know." Heat crept into her ears, her throat, and Sanaki turned away before it could reach her face and erase any doubt as to her state of discomfiture. "Sigrun should be here soon," she said, looking at the empty table, afraid she would trip on the edge of the rug, or worse, her own dress, if she tried to walk all the way over there. "You-- you'll be staying for breakfast, won't you?"
"Yes." Lehran probably smiled, because he always did, and she felt his hand at the small of her back again, and his wing curving around her shoulder, the arch brushing the rolls of her hair and jingling the ornaments on her combs. He led her across the room, watching his feet - to avoid stepping on her train, perhaps. "It's rather lonely to take meals in my rooms."
Sanaki hoped she made an appropriately sympathetic reply. Her knights were on speaking terms with him, but she would be surprised to hear any sought him out as they used to when he was just 'Sephiran.' Without Tanith or Sigrun, or Marcia, Sanaki was alone as well, unable to sit comfortably in company now that she noticed how carefully they spoke, how frequent their sidelong glances were, and realized Lehran was not the only person blamed for the judgment.
That used to make her angry. Sanaki used to recall the night she pulled his feather out and think to herself that he deserved a moment of pain, of betrayal - that as he gave, so should he receive.
He pulled her chair out, waited for Sanaki to sit, and she reached to run her fingers down over the smooth plane of his wing. The feathers overlapped and felt like velvet, and the edges of the longest feathers, the flight feathers, were stiff and almost sharp. She blinked when it was pulled away, and saw it stretched a second before he folded it in again and took his seat on the other side of the table before she turned her eyes to her empty place setting, fingertips still tingling.
Maybe he'd forgotten that night. Sanaki looked up through her lashes, hoping the window had him distracted again, but he was watching her, and she jerked her gaze away.
She'd thought herself immune to his charm. What was it-- his smile, his voice? Sanaki had always loved both. Nothing had changed - certainly not Lehran, not since his return, now that she knew who he really was. Wasn't that the problem? He didn't want to change.
Sanaki looked at the pale shadows on the curve of her plate, and saw the distorted curve of a wing. It was so soft - softer than fur, or wool, or even his silky hair. She wanted to reach for one again to run her fingers over it, or feel him curve it around her like a cloak, a blanket, a veil to cover her and keep her warm.
Just his wings. Nothing else.
*
Two days passed. An agent told Sanaki Gallia had moved back from the Ribahn, yet there was no sign they had turned around - all he knew was that they disappeared, melted into the forest, and she sent him away with a command to find out. She didn't want speculation; they were promised three days to make their decision, and so she would give it to them, but that did not mean she would allow them to threaten the rest of her subjects. An imaginary threat was no less potent than a real one. Not when commoners were concerned. And Ashera kept her silence, which meant she was still watching - still testing.
Well Sanaki didn't need her divine foresight to know what the lion king would do. There was only one practical solution to their stand-off; if he was at all intelligent, he would take it.
"That isn't as logical as you think it sounds," Lehran told her on the afternoon of the second day when he joined her in the garden for lunch. A small white gazebo shaded their wrought-iron table, overgrown by eight-petaled purple clematis. His wings spread slightly at rest, the feathers ruffled by a light breeze. "The bird tribes didn't take the practical route, and they have so far gotten away with it."
She shrugged, picking through the fruit bowl with a long-handled silver fork until she found strawberries at the bottom and speared three for her plate. "She thinks they have Yune. Even Ashera knows it would be stupid to scare them off."
He rolled his eyes, and she stuck her tongue out, then bit into a strawberry. Water trickled from a rock fountain into a pond over the rail to her right, shaded by the dangling branches of willow trees, the water glimmering and broken by lily pads and pink lotus blossoms. If she looked over the edge there would be fish to watch, gold and orange and red with gossamer fins that trailed behind them like sunlight or stars. Lehran looked that way, and the shade dappled his skin and his wings, leaving it to glow in spots and dim in the shade. His skin seemed to soak up sunlight as flower petals did.
She pressed her fingers onto a little triangle sandwich, compressing the layers of bread, cucumber, and white cheese until she could feel the ridges of the walnut slices hidden between them. "You think I've changed his mind?"
"No."
Sanaki bit into the sandwich, listening to the murmur of water and the crunch of nuts between her teeth, scratched her ankle with the toe of her sandal. "Then?"
Lehran turned back to his plate and picked up a sandwich, though he only stared at it as if he didn't know what it was for. "I think you're right, but I have to wonder why he has decided to wait."
"To make you question," Sanaki said. "To make us nervous. It's a common enough tactic - you did it all the time when the junior senators came to ask for your backing on some matter. I remember."
"He isn't that kind of man. Laguz are straightforward--"
"Except when they're not." His wings cramped when he looked at her, tilting his head, and she almost expected him to plant his hands on his hips like she did when exasperated. "Laguz tend to charge into battle - I've studied our wars with Gallia, and our laguz agents say the same. Yet Caineghis spent five years 'gathering his people' and answering the goddess's call, even though it seemed from our records of the last war they rallied to his call more quickly. Our records also say," she continued when he opened his mouth, pointing with her silver fork, "that almost all of Gallia's beorc settlers lived in the north, near Crimea. Who were they gathering?"
"You think they were waiting to see what would happen with the bird tribes." She lifted her eyebrows, and he sighed, put his sandwich down, refolded his napkin. "It's possible, but in that case, Ashera's precedent would encourage them to remain in their forests, would it not? You can suggest they have been in contact with King Phoenicis, but--"
Sanaki speared a piece of green melon with her fork and watched him stare at his plate. Birdsong filled the silence, and their rustling through the vines, the trees, the rapid flap of their tiny wings.
He looked so placid, still, his eyes lidded and veiled by thick black lashes. His fingers spread on the white tablecloth. Each of his nails was cut and filed perfectly smooth, the white a thin white line at each tip. His layered sleeves faded from light to dark - a mid-tone gray for his wide outer sleeves, trimmed in silver, and a darker gray beneath that, and deep purple folded at his wrist so it covered the back of his hand. The ancient gold band on his left hand was still the only jewelry he wore. The circlet she saw when he first returned to her waited in a box for formal occasions that never came.
"The birds are disappearing," she said. "Our spies say their numbers on Phoenicis diminish every few months."
"Yes."
"You told me they had beorc with them as well."
"... yes."
"Do you know where they're going?"
"I-- have an inkling."
Sanaki pushed the rest of her triangle sandwich into her mouth, leaned back, and waited. Three more occupied her plate, and her two strawberries, wetting the porcelain with pink juice and water from the nubs where they were plucked from their vine.
Lehran's hair pulled across his shoulder and slid over his chest when he turned his head at a sudden cacophony of wing beats and twigs snapping, and out of the corner of her eye Sanaki saw the white and flashing steel ornamentation of one of her knights past the curtain of vines and the hanging branches of the willows. They paced the garden walks beyond her range of hearing, usually out of sight. She wondered if one of them had seen something, or if someone was approaching, but the moments passed in heartbeats, during which she watched Lehran's eyes scan the landscape, and nothing happened.
"If I were Caineghis," she said, nudging her sandwiches to form a bigger triangle, "I would accept Ashera's amnesty and wait until the birds make their move to rebel."
Lehran sighed, loud and just a bit dramatic. "I was hoping to take the optimistic tack."
"You? Optimistic?" Sanaki scowled, and he laughed, picked up a sandwich - finally. "Where are the birds going?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying again." She tapped the leg of the table with her sandal while he chewed and hooked her fingers under the lip. He took the smallest bites, was the neatest individual she'd ever met, yet she wanted to push his hair back, out of the way of crumbs. She'd gotten her hair tangled that way all the time when she was younger. "Did the goddess's judgment reach beyond the borders of Tellius?"
His eyebrow twitched up. "I don't know."
Sanaki leaned back and wished the chair had a cushion when the iron grated on her shoulder blades. Another breeze tickled her neck with flyaway hairs, and ruffled the tiny feathers at the top of his wings.
They would find out. Someday. Perhaps within her lifetime.
The rest of her day was spent listening to reports. Lady Elincia was back from the east, where Sanaki sent her to manage the outlying settlements - vineyards, farms, quiet places - because the princess had seemed suited to that life when they first met. Ramon and his wife were known to be honest rulers but she didn't trust them out of her sight, knowing they thought Ashera's judgment an injustice, and while Sanaki felt the same, she was no fool.
She send a messenger to notify Elincia of a meeting on the morrow, ten in the morning, sharp, and returned to her rooms when she'd finished composing her report. There was time left before sundown, and Sanaki spent it soaking in the warm water of her bath, hair twisted up and secured with brass pins, the steam scented with herbal lavender, rosemary, and all the scents she'd read were supposed to promote peace of mind and sharp thinking. They did neither. She flicked the water with her fingers and thought about the birds, where they might be going, and for what purpose - to escape Ashera, or to marshal some kind of resistance? There weren't many left as it was; Lehran's original report was a list of eighty names, including both ravens and hawks, the remaining herons, and those he suspected to be of mixed heritage, who were perhaps protected from the judgment by a strain of Serenes blood. Quite a few of the survivors from the other countries were Branded, or suspected of carrying laguz heritage, though again, he said he could not be sure.
You were not touched, he said. I used to think it was my presence that saved you, but you are also a descendant of mixed heritage. He'd spread her hand over his palm, and at that time, when she was still thirteen - or fourteen or fifteen, there was appallingly little difference in her appearance those years - her hand still was not as long as his. It was still small, and she felt like a child again, wanting to climb into his lap for a story. Tell me more. Tell me everything.
He never did tell her everything. She waited, and kept waiting, and he kept his silence. You were not the child he hoped to find. Perhaps he was being generous by withholding that little bit of truth.
Sanaki left the bath, blotted the water from her skin with a towel, and walked out with a silk robe wrapped around and tied at the waist, pulling the brass sticks from her hair to let it uncoil over her back. The lamps had not been lit yet. Past the window, the sky was purple and magenta with dusk. A slim, familiar shadow outlined itself against that backdrop, and the black dress swallowed the light, while her red hair glowed with the highlights still burning outside.
She tapped her fingertips to the glass globe around her bedside lamp, and the wick flickered to life. "Lady Ashera. How may I help you?"
The lamp light flicked the strands of Ashera's hair. "Your handling of the lion king leaves something to be desired."
Did this mean she would be spared the trip to the tower, if they were discussing this now? She pressed her thumbs into her lower back, where the muscles were tightening again - from sitting in a chair all day, perhaps, or because the goddess had a way of making her body cramp with a single glance. "I have very little to work with," Sanaki said.
"He will rebel."
"He will surrender first." She went to her dressing table and pulled a ribbon from the top drawer. "I can't see the future, so what he does after that is beyond my mortal vision."
The goddess looked at her, and Sanaki tied her hair back, watching Ashera in the mirror. Lehran would have scolded her, but the goddess offered only her usual lack of response. "What will you do when that time comes?"
Sanaki tugged the bow tight and turned away from the reflection to face the real goddess, one arm bent behind her to rub what was fast becoming another knot. "Whatever you tell me to do."
Ashera's ornaments jangled, but aside from the glitter and tinkle of the charms on her belt she didn't appear to move except to turn her face back to the window, which now bore her reflection faintly, too dim to follow the path of her gaze. The feathers on her headdress ruffled, and Sanaki felt the movement of the air. It couldn't quite be called a breeze. "Will you continue to ignore Lehran's advice?"
There was less pink in the sky; the purple had become indigo, and the sliver of orange on the horizon, peeking between buildings, was gone. Lights dotted the skyline instead, small and yellow, shaped like windows or torch flames. Sanaki wished she had something more to do with her hands, but she wasn't about to undress in front of the goddess. Being watched didn't matter - it was the principle of the thing, of baring herself before another's gaze as she'd often borne her emotions on her sleeve as a child and left herself open to manipulation. "If he continues to counsel appeasement, then yes."
"Hmm."
Illumination flickered beneath the door to her living area, also yellow, highlighting the grain of the wooden floor and its sheen of polish. Footsteps sounded faintly, and then voices, one of which she recognized as Sigrun, but they didn't approach. Sanaki clasped her hands back and wondered what emotion that hmm wasn't supposed to signify - because of course Ashera did not have any emotions; not anger, nor sadness, nor empathy-- nor approval. One was supposed to divine such things in what she didn't say or do.
She didn't say anything else, so Sanaki assumed there were no further orders, protests, or points to discuss, only moments to endure until the goddess decided to leave and let her relax.
Maybe she would nap. There must be another hour until her evening meal was served, and she didn't feel hungry. Sigrun would be in to question Sanaki's health if she didn't eat, but those questions could be endured while flat on her back - another appealing prospect, and one she could not enjoy in front of the goddess, who required her to stand if she would not kneel. Sitting down would be rude. Lying down would be an insult.
"Lehran waits outside," the goddess finally said, and the wave of her moon-pale hand indicated the bedroom door.
Sanaki jerked her gaze to the door. She couldn't hear voices anymore, but his ears would surely hear whatever was said in her room; he'd confessed before to eavesdropping on the senators through doors, windows, even from the first story when they spoke on the third.
She looked at Ashera again, who shook her head. But at what - her silent question, her lack of attention to the goings on outside, as if she had a bird's ability to hear a whisper at a hundred paces? The goddess turned to the shadows between the folds of the curtains and melted away. "Go."
Sanaki watched the shadow slanting behind the curtain, but it did not yield a human shape again. It never did - when the goddess decided to leave, she didn't hover at the edge of the dark in indecision. The way she heard things from afar, it was difficult to believe she didn't linger, and yet, she was a goddess, and gods heard all. Sanaki worked her lower lip between her teeth, standing on the balls of her feet, and wanted to go over there and check anyway.
Instead, she went to the door and sidestepped out, left it open a hair just in case there was something to hear. Lehran's face was reflected by the window as his goddess was a few moments earlier, and the lamps were all lit and burning brightly - enough she saw his eyes slide from whatever he was looking outside to her own figure by the door, alerted by the sound or her own reflection, or perhaps both. His eyes traveled down, up, back to her face. He shifted from foot to foot when she left the doorway and wove between the sofa and chairs to approach him; Sanaki was afraid to look at herself in the window and see what he must - her robe damp and sticking to her arms and legs, the pink just white enough to show details she shouldn't be brazen enough to show.
"Y-you are not going to the tower tonight, I take it." He was dressed in full regalia - his black silk coat, his layers of gray, and the circlet, gleaming across his forehead, in his hair.
She reached up to touch it. The gold was warm, and his skin soft. "You haven't worn this in years," Sanaki said. Her neck felt warm at the back, and her throat, and she swallowed, hoping it would not spread to her face.
"I went to see Caineghis," Lehran said. His fingers curled around her wrist slowly, tickling the skin over her veins. "My intent was to go with you, but--" He looked down, his fingertips twitching, pressing harder. His gaze jerked up again. "It seems I am too late."
"Not really." He let her hand go, and Sanaki plucked at the front of her robe so it wouldn't stick. "How did it go?"
Lehran tilted his head. She shrugged. "He accepts your terms for now," he said. "I suppose he will petition the goddess as well."
Sanaki looked away. Mulberry flowers were arranged in a squat crystal vase on her table near the windows, their thick white petals contrasting with the dark, shiny green of their leaves. The lamp beside them was lit, and the petals closest to the glass were wavy, thinning, wilting at the edges. "Then we should go." She propped her hand on her hip again, rubbed her back with her thumb. She could see the tower outside, past the palace buildings, or at least its glowing windows. "I wasn't going to, but she should know we've received an answer." The answer she anticipated, no less. Her handling of the situation left something to be desired, did it?
"I apologize for my criticism earlier."
She shook her head, looking down at the tabletop and its lace covering. "There's no need. I know you dislike conflict."
"Even so, I brought an apology."
She turned her head at his odd choice of words and blinked when he presented a rose - just one, the outer petals vivid crimson and half-closed, dark at the center. The stem was smooth, the thorns removed. "Is this apology for your pacifist nonsense," she asked, flattening her lips so they wouldn't curve up, feeling heat creep into her cheeks, "or for your terrible timing?"
"Normally I would not apologize for either," he said, reaching to tighten her sash, but his eyes were averted when she lifted her gaze. "But I don't like it when you're irritated with me."
His tone made her throat tighten, and Sanaki brushed his mouth with her rose, made him look at her. "I'm not irritated, Lehran." She would give him everything he wanted if she could - peace, cooperation from the bird tribes, herons. Forgetfulness, if he wanted it. Her lips, instead of flower petals-- but that was her own desire.
She liked the way his eyes gathered light, like glass cut to refract sunlight into rainbows, like the clearest of crystals. They were so green in the yellow illumination of her lamps, yet they would be blue in the sunlight, and somewhere in- between in the shade, depending on the colors surrounding him. She'd never noticed it before. Were these the details that drew people to him when she was a child - women and men, laguz and beorc - that she was only just noticing? Sanaki hadn't wanted to see them-- she didn't now. The facade didn't make the man, and his face was a mask he could school to show any number of emotions he didn't feel, his voice a tool more finely tuned than a finely crafted musical instrument. She'd never heard him sing, but if he granted her that privilege, there was little doubt the sound would be perfect, and exactly what he wanted her to hear.
But there was the rose. There was the sweet perfume of flowers, and the scent of his hair, herbal and honeyed. There was his hand smoothing her hair, twisting a loose strand around his fingers, pulling it as if to draw her closer. He let it slide away when she was about to give in and said, "Get dressed, Sanaki. Meeting the goddess in this attire would be terribly inappropriate."
Sanaki pulled the rose back to her own lips and smiled.
..........................................
Okay, I was going to edit, I swear, but it's just-- I'm so glad to have it off my chest, and it's Sunday, which means I'm lazy, and and and. ;_; I'ms orry for the suckiness?
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Date: 2009-09-18 07:39 am (UTC)Honey and vanilla? Interesting. It matches the colors in my imagination, believe it or not. Golden light, white flowers, pale robe...