Counsel
your choice of term is incorrect
Mithrigil Galtirglin
It seemed to him arithmetic; Larsa was twice as old now as he had been in the war years, and Basch yet twice that, up from thrice. It reminded the young Emperor of tutors and drills, problems writ in words when numbers would have served. As the cities grew taller and swallowed the stars, he recalled, there shone half of what lit the sky in the days men still trod upon earth. If when you were a lad of six you reckoned a million stars, and a youth of twelve a mere thousand, when shall you have as many stars as years?
"A word," he asked of Basch, prompted by the memory.
Basch turned from the door, and was still turning when Larsa came away from the balcony. The Judge had only just donned his helm and had perhaps intuited that the Emperor would soon dismiss him; it was late, and though the young man was long attuned to the night sky, his guard was not. And since coming of age, Larsa had spent near all of his nights with a rather hardy creature of a woman, and the Judges Magister worried not for his safety, least of all Basch.
Larsa wished that he had not tarried, and that he could appraise the Judge's face. "I beg your counsel on the matter of…of fidelity."
The leaves of the balcony rustled in a slow, heavy wind, and Basch stood unmoving and implacable in his armor, a thick shadow before the light that seemed in from the creases of the door behind him. "It is yours," he finally said, "though I doubt my authority on the subject."
"On the contrary," Larsa assured with a smile despite himself, and came away from the ledge and the plants, waving a hand before a sensor to turn on the lights of his foyer. The crystals faded on, and Larsa half-sat on his hands against his desk, turning to the Judge and discerning where his eyes ought be on the far side of his helm. Nonchalantly as he might, he asked, "What does it mean, to be bound to more than one place, to more than one person?"
Basch leant slightly on his left leg, and the fingers of one gauntlet curled considerately. "You know this, your Majesty. It is…how a husband is also a father, and neither wife nor children suffer for it. Is that what you mean?"
"In a sense," Larsa admitted with a slight frown. "I have delved some, into text, mind you, of the Rozarrian custom of polygamy, in—"
The shadows around one of the horns on the Judge's expressionless helm quirked.
"—…contrast to the rather imprecise monogamy practiced in House Solidor for several generations does this unnerve you, Basch?"
"Nay," the voice carried from within the mask, on the heels of a faint chuckle.
Shifting his weight from his hands, Larsa stood straighter and tugged at the tips of his gloves, sliding them off carefully, and he found his tone stealing into a covert, almost defensive half-whisper. "You have not spoken with Penelo of my plans, have you?"
"That is not my place."
"It is my thinking..." the young Emperor began, but set the intended words down with his gloves on the desktop. "It strikes me, that we have all gravitated toward those who fought beside us. Vaan excepted, of course, but the sky pirates remain in cohorts and Penelo with me, and her Maj…" and again, he cut himself off, glancing out toward the faint lights of higher Archades and the slate-blank sky. "…and…I have no wish to jeopardize that."
Basch took a half-step away from the door. "I gather you have not yet addressed the issue?"
"To be honest," and he was being honest, "it had not occurred to me that such was required. It is the wont of aristocracy, and the custom of other lands, and the province of the young. Or the old, as the case may be," he added with a private smile, turning back toward the Judge. "I do not imagine Al-Cid taking issue with your and Her Majesty's rapport."
When Basch actually smiled—and such was a rare thing—Larsa could hear it in his tone, and he sounded almost like his brother had, years ago. "Your choice of term is incorrect," the Judge said, and it carried to Larsa's temples, tinned but earnest.
"What, 'taking issue'?"
"'Rapport'," Basch corrected, no longer sounding so bemused.
Larsa amended, "Your connection, then." True, he had not beheld aught illicit between Queen Ashe and the Judge, on the few occasions the royals had come together, but Lady Ashe was ever at ease with Basch in a way she accoutered herself with no other, not even her husband, and surely something had begun between them, or would soon.
Simply, almost proverbially, Basch contested, "What good would it do his Highness to fault his wife a servant from her past?"
The Emperor tried not to let slip his irritation with the evasive answer, and turned back toward the absence of stars. "Precisely. He can no more deny your acquaintance than the moon can the light of the sun."
"What did you intend," Basch rather quickly asked, "in requesting my counsel?"
Larsa closed his eyes and found the words, sullen and threaded deep through his throat. "To learn if there is shame in it."
"In…?"
"In where Penelo will be, when I wed Adina," he answered; in where the fae sing of you, or of where you ought be, with the Queen, he did not say.
Another viscous dearth of words passed between them, and the plants on the balcony whispered amongst themselves, frittenant and foreign. "…And in that, I do not merely doubt my authority," Basch stated firmly. "I have neither it, nor the right to say."
"I see," Larsa said, and did, and opened his eyes, though the sky was black. "You may leave."