No Sword Will Kill You (Unless it be mine)

by Seraphim Grace

Love was easy, it was everything else that fell apart. Erik was raised in the Academy of War and trained to be the best, not to trust magic users and that he had to be harder and fiercer than everyone there. Then just before he plans to leave with Magda, to run away and leave it all behind, a group of soldiers take him to the capital where he is forced into marriage.

No Sword Shall Kill You (Unless it be mine)

Charles stood at the railing at the top of the tower of Meirin. The sky was painted with broad strokes of lavender and grey, and heavy red clouds seemed dipped in the twilight. The mountain was a mass of black against which Charles, dressed in white, stood stark. His hands were clenched fists at his side, and a slight breeze stirred his brown hair. The tension in his shoulders made them straight enough that he could have supported the world upon them.

From the doorway across the balcony Erik stood silent. He watched the sun set behind the mountain ignoring the tableau of colours that painted the sky beautiful, and merely stared at the white back of his husband and waited, perhaps in hope, for something to happen.

"You're thinking how easy it would be to push me right now." Charles said without turning around. His hands remained flat upon the railing that was all that seperated him from the fall on the outstretched palm of the balcony. "It would take four steps, and no one would say any different if you told them I fell."

Erik took those four steps and stood beside him. "And you say you can't read minds." He laughed a little to himself, " and that your magic does not work on me. But the question remains," he turned to look at Charles, "do you want me to?"

Charles finally released the tension in his shoulders unclenching his fists. He sighed. "I don't have an heir." He stretched his fingers out and then ran them through his hair. "So not yet, my love, but I promise I won't jump."

Erik turned to walk away, he felt like he had taken on Charles's tension himself, blind to the beauty of the sun setting behind the mountain, blind even to the beauty of Charles himself, who was young and slender with eyes like stars themselves. There had been many who would have been delighted to be married to such a man. "When you're ready, until then, step away from the edge, love, we wouldn't want you to fall" then he walked to the door, pulling it shut behind him.

The soldiers came at night, just as the sun fell with blood red smears across the walls, on great war horses pawing the ground in their ash grey frocks and shining armour - with a banner of a bell hanging as their standard from amongst them. They stamped the butts of their spears against the hard dirt of the practice ground. Erik, watching from just inside the mullioned windows of the dormitory corridor knew without being told that they were for him.

Sebastian met them at the gate, buying me time, Erik thought, because everything was in place for him to leave at dawn: the money; horses; Magda with her shimmering laugh and dark curling hair - but Erik already knew it was too late. The soldiers, fully dressed in glimmering formal armour were for him and there was no way that Sebastian could stop them. He knew, though he couldn't have said how it was that he knew, that there was no time; that whatever this was it was for him.

He took one last look about his dormitory cell, the narrow and hard bed that, nonetheless, was Erik's own, and the few changes of practical clothing on the shelf and the brooch of a crystal bell that had been his mother's parting gift to him. He had intended it to be his promise gift to Magda, but it was clear that that was not going to happen now. The soldiers came and he couldn't help but feel that it was because he was Selen, that here in the Academy of War he had lingered like a bad smell and despite Sebastian's efforts to the contrary he had been found out.

He took his cloak, it was a heavy grey goat's wool and thick, warm and waterproof - a gift from Sebastian as a mark of his pride at how well and how quickly that Erik learned his lessons- and pinned it shut with his mother's pin, headed as it was with a little glass bell, and took a long, deep, calming breath before he took the step out of his cell towards the parade ground.

As he stepped out at the top of the stairs the soldiers, in unison as if following some prearranged signal, beat their butts of the spears against the packed earth of the parade ground in a staccato rhythm, like the heartbeat of a giant. The sound was primal and Erik could feel it in his bones. When he descended the fifteen steps, three for every God, that he had run up and down so often in his training, the horses wheeled to face him and bowed.

The soldiers brought their horses down by bending their front legs and then up, and then up again into a rear. "Erik Lehnsherr," the captain said, pulling off his helmet to reveal dark brown hair and bone white skin, with lips so dark a red that they looked like old blood. His eyes were as black and glittered like coal. There was a red dot in the centre of his forehead, that creased with his forehead when he spoke. "You will accompany us to Dramathen. It is time, Death waits for no man." He offered Erik his hand and Erik had never felt such a sense of rightness as he did in that instant. He took the man's hand and allowed himself to be pulled up unto the back of the horse to ride pillion, even though the man looked like nothing so much as a ghoul.

"Sebastian," Erik said to the man who had trained and raised him since Erik had come to the Academy as a child; the man who had held and comforted him when he had heard of the fire which murdered his family and both encouraged and nurtured the cold rage that consumed him. "It is well, I will return as soon as I can. The thing we planned," it was an offered kindness, a salve, because Sebastian knew everything - he knew how much it meant - it was Sebastian who had introduced him to Magda. And Sebastian nodded although he was frowning.

"Come, my lord," the captain said, and Erik assumed that he must have addressed Sebastian for Erik was no lord. "Death waits for no man." And despite that the man looked like nothing so much as a revenant in one of his father's fire side tales Erik did not feel even slightly threatened, it felt right and natural and Erik could not have said why.

Dramathen was nearly four hours leisurely ride away and it meant leaving everything behind. The academy, although it had not always been kind to him, was home. The students were cruel because he was Selen and Sebastian's favourite and because children were cruel. He had been so young when he had come to the Academy - eight years old - only two years before his family's murder. For eleven years the Academy had been his world and he had always known that the soldiers would come for him.

He had been too young when he came to the Academy. He was Selen and that was a heresy, and time and again they had taken his mother's pin and he had been forced to reclaim it with his fists and feet from the other boys. Yet for all the anger and unhappiness that he had endured there he had loved it because it was all that he knew and it had Sebastian with his quiet counsel, and it had Magda whose smiles shone brighter than the very sun. Shy, sweet Magda, who walked barefoot across the parade ground on her way to the kitchens and who had secret places that tasted like cinnamon and nutmeg and sunshine.

Dramathen was something other, it was the capital of the Empire - a place that Sebastian sometimes went - but never the students. It was close enough that if you pressed a horse you could make it in two hours with time to spare, but for the students of the Academy, for Erik, it might as well have been the far side of the moon.

The ghoul captain said nothing as he crowded over the gelding he rode, pushing the horse into a heavy canter - the nine guards around him keeping time. The hoof beats sounded like a heartbeat against his palm, thudding through his body until he was breathless and the Academy forgotten behind them.

Dramathen Tor was a large conical hill, cut by generation of agricultural monks into steps which had, for at least a century, been allowed to stand fallow as grazing for ornamental deer as the tower that crested it had become a lodge outside the city proper. It was clearly an ornamental sprawl for the Imperial family or their revered guests. It had been an old hunting lodge that became a church, which became a cathedral, then an abbey, which had fallen into disuse as a larger, more modern abbey grew in popularity in the city. Now it was a well appointed palace in the southern fashion that stood overlooking the city. Throughout all of it was the tower which had been built in imitation of the five Ancient towers, although even Erik, who had never seen one of the Ancient Towers, knew it was a poor facsimile.

The ghoul captain pushed his horse up the incline, cobbled with small round stones and edged by ornamental hedgerows of bramble and sedge, towards the Tor Abbey and Erik felt it, like it was a great cord within him, lying dormant inside him, that was suddenly pulling taut. He felt like he was being dragged by that cord through his solar plexus and it felt right.

The Abbey was glass fronted inside a low wall that framed a slight courtyard with a cobbled front that Erik knew was useless for any military action or practise, although with its proximity to the city and its well defended outer walls these things probably didn't matter.

The woman who met him had red brown hair, strictly pulled back into a knot at the back of her head, and although his instant thought was that she looked like Magda, her eyes were hard where Magda's gaze had never been. She wore a short robe that was held shut by a thick belt that covered her from breast to hip, and through which a short sword was thrust. Magda was a spice seller, soft and warm and laughing, where this woman was clearly a soldier. "Moira," the ghoul said, swinging down from his horse and offering Erik his hand like he was a court lady and needed such help. "I entrust the Senshisha to you."

Moira stepped forward, left hand upon the hilt of her short sword in a reflexive gesture she probably wasn't even aware of, and looked him up and down, although she was clearly no older than Erik himself her gaze felt as heavy and cold as stone. She was clearly unimpressed. "Follow me, we have been waiting. Death waits for no man." The way that she said it, the comfortable way that the words fit in her mouth - the same way that the ghoul had said it - gave Erik the sense that this was something like a house motto and it did not chill him the way that it probably should have.

She pushed open the heavy wooden door cut into the carved main doors to the Abbey. "You received our gifts," she said, there was nothing about it that was questioning, "that is well." He blinked in surprise and she noticed it, watching his face for any tiny gesture. She was a soldier and perhaps she watched him for signs of an attack. "The cloak and boots," she said explaining as she led him through the main corridor, past tapestries of such skill that Erik felt that they were suitable for an imperial residence. They showed scenes from a story, for there was an obvious narrative, but Erik didn't know it. It was a woman, who, wrapped in solid black and outlined in thread the colour of buckwheat in the summer sun, faced down what might have been a god and was brought low.

"You are mistaken," Erik corrected her firmly. "These were gifts from my master to show his pride in my and faith of what I was capable of under his tutelage." He spoke formally as one would amongst strangers when one feared for their life.

The woman, Moira, raised a delicate eyebrow as her entire mien closed to him. "If that is what you were told then he lied." Her voice was even and calm. "Such things are unique, their craftsmanship telling. Ask any merchant in all of the Dramathen, no the empire, and they will verify the truth of my statement. The wool is from goats that graze in the shade of the mountains of Meirin, and the leather is roe deer tanned there. Your master lied to you." She said bluntly but noticing his discomfort at her words she qualified, "or at least did not correct your misconception. Your pin is example enough of our largesse. Why else would you bear the banner of Meirin?" Erik's hand flew to the pin, his mother had given him that pin, not Sebastian, and certainly not this woman with her cold demeanour.

She pushed open the door. "I would suggest that you follow her holiness' example closely. You would not want to bring further shame upon your master." She stopped, her shoulders tensing for a moment, "I give his care to you now. Do not fail him. Death waits for no man."

"I am Selen." He corrected her stiffly.

She laughed. "And what has that to do with death?" She stepped back as she asked him, pushing him forward into the room to which she had led him.

The room was clearly ceremonial. A great statue of a figure that Erik did not recognise loomed over it, sat on a dais with a giant head bowed over hands clasped in prayer. In front of the figure, a step lower, were three human sized statues. On the left was a hunched figure who cowered under a hood but offered out a censer from which smoke fell in lazy eddies. To the right of the statue was a tall, armoured figure that leaned heavily upon a great double headed broadsword. The central figure was a of a woman in an old fashioned gown whose face was hidden by a veil, but Erik could see the tragedy in the wreckage of her forearms. Erik may not have recognised the larger statue but the trio he did. They were the three aspects of death: The Lingering Death; the Violent Death, and between them – the Willing Death.

In front of the dais, in a position of power despite that she knelt in a well of fabric the colour of an old bruise was a crone with golden hair sticks thrust through coarse iron grey hair. This was the Holiness of which Moira spoke.

In ash grey livery was a small figure, kneeling with brown head bowed and every instinct that Erik had was fixed on the slim figure – one that could only be a child. The cord that had dragged him through the abbey was fixed to the boy. The figure did not turn to look at him.

He acted entirely on instinct. His fingers finding his pin – the crystal bell that had been a gift from his mother – and unfastening it so that his heavy grey cloak, the one that Moira had insisted was a lie, around his feet and knelt then before the tripartite face of Death.

Between himself and the child was a gold cup brimming with a thick, dark red wine. It sat in the centre of an arrangement made of two floral crowns, set side by side to form a figure eight, with the cup at their crux. In the well of each crown was a black ring shaped like what appeared to be a snake that swallowed its own tail, and threaded through those were coal black ribbons of finely woven silk.

The old woman appeared at once fond and heartbroken as she lifted the cup, speaking in a voice so low that Erik could not discern what it was that she had said. She lifted the cup, offering it first to Erik, who took a single swallow to find the wine gritty with a copper taste that lingered on his tongue. He repeated the words that the crone had said although he could not have answered what they were.

The boy, and it was a boy beside him slim and young, certainly no older than at most fifteen, took the cup and repeated the gesture, the wine staining his lips as dark as those of the ghoul captain who had brought Erik here.

The old woman's smile was full of love and as if something terrible pained her all at once. From the tray in front of her she took the ribbon, careful not to move anything. She took Erik's hand, "you will be his right hand," she said and her voice cracked like marble. She tied the ribbon's end about his wrist and then took the boy's hand, clasping it between her own for a moment. "And you will be his left." She said knotting the other end around the boy's wrist. There was at least two feet of ribbon between them.

The crone sighed and offered the cup to Erik again. He took another mouthful although the wine was distasteful. He could not have said why it was that he did these things other than an overwhelming sense of their rightness.

Again the cup was passed to the boy who drank, his wrist catching on the ribbon so a touch spilled across his hand, but he wiped it away with the edge of his jacket even as Erik moved to help him, though it was not in his nature to be so kind.

This time the priestess lifted one of the two crowns, as she held it before Erik he realised that it was built of twisted branches of rowan and wicker through which flowers and ribbons had been braided. "Lords of our land, you must also be lords of each other, these crowns are to symbolise the weight that the bond between you will demand." The crown, when she reached to put it on his head, was surprisingly heavy.

The boy's eyes, which were a vivid almost implacable blue, looked like a stained glass window after an explosion- glinting with beauty although the sadness in them was inherent. Then he bowed his head to accept the second crown.

More than anything Erik wanted to touch the boy with the broken glass eyes, to comfort him and pull him into his chest and murmur soft words of nonsense into his brown curls – to tell him it would be all right, that everything was going to be fine, that he was here now ; like he might have with Magda. He resisted the impulse with all the self restraint that Sebastian had so carefully taught him.

The crone lifted the cup again, offering it Erik with such a look of hope that Erik himself was humbled. He took what he knew to be the last mouthful of the gritty copper wine. "No sword," he said knowing the words this time, as he had not the two times before, "shall kill you, unless it be mine." He said as the boy said the words alongside him.

It was the boy, not the old woman, who slipped the ring unto his middle finger. It was a warm silvery black metal that he did not recognise but showed a snake that circled the digit three times before it swallowed its own tail. Like everything else it felt strangely natural. He lifted the second ring and slid it unto the boy's thumb, because it was the only one big enough to take the ring. It was small, as if designed for a woman, and it was clear that it would not fit the boy for long.

"In the sight of the Sanhikari," the old woman said taking their tied together hands in her own, which were hot and dry, "I honour these vows; I recognise these vows and I recognise you as Tennosha and Senshisha," the old woman said, using his shoulder to bring herself fully to a creaking stand, "it is still several hours till dawn and young boys need sleep."

"What sorcery is this?" the question exploded out of Erik as he stood, pulling away the wooden crown and throwing it to the floor. The serenity which had led him through the ceremony was gone now. As he raised his hand the marriage ribbon, how could he not have recognised that before?, tugged hard on the boy's arm what must have been painfully for he cried out.

"Don't you know," the boy asked, his voice was a querulous pause between a child's soprano and an adult tenor. "You went to the Academy to prepare you for this. You are supposed to know."

"I learned the art of war. I learned that the Lords of the Empire use sorcery to supplement their rule. I know my letters and I know my numbers."

"Then you have been lied to." the old woman said and her voice was calm as a winter sea. "You were chosen as a child to be the Senshisha. You were to learn the art of war but also politics and diplomacy and what it means to be the Lord of Meirin. This shall be investigated upon my word as High Priestess of the Sanhikari, for there are no words for the cruelty of this."

The boy took his hand, and the calm swept over him like a tide. "Come, my friend, its late. I shall send someone to find your Magda. Nothing can be done now."

Erik snatched his hand away. "What do you know of her? What is this sorcery?"

"This is Dramathen Tor," the boy said softly, "home of the House of Meirin in exile. I know of Magda and I know of you because I am the Tennoshaand the dead keep no secrets from me." The boy stopped, "calm your mind, my friend, your rage is not necessary here. What sorcery is at work affects us both. Now I do not know about you but I have had a very long and very trying day and I want my bed."

"And what hardships does the Lord of Meirin know?" Erik couldn't stop the sneer in his voice. His parents had died in poverty, murdered for little more than the clothes on their backs. More than once Erik had gone to bed hungry because there wasn't enough food to eat, and this was a palace where everything was fine and even the cup that they had drunk from was made of gold.

The boy untied the ribbon about his wrist so it fell down between them. "My mother died today so I was bound in marriage to a man I do not know and who is," he stopped. "I apologise, as I said, it's been a very long day."

"I don't even know your name," Erik said deflating at last as the boy took his wrist to untie the ribbon for him.

"For that alone," the crone muttered to herself as she took the ribbon from the boy, folding it in preparation for cutting.

"Charles," the boy said trying out a smile that never quite reached his eyes. "My name is Charles."

"Erik," Erik repeated the gesture, "my name is Erik."

Charles laughed to himself a little, but it was a sad and broken sound, "how ironic," he said, "the Violent Death, his name is Erik too."

The warrior woman, Moira, led the the two of them to a large suite that overlooked the staggered rear of the Tor. The suite, Erik thought to himself, was larger than the entire practise ground of the Academy, with four rooms: two sitting rooms, and a bedroom to which was attached an inside privy the likes of which Erik had never seen, it had a garde-robe built into the wall for them to relieve themselves, and a large copper bath sat in front of a massive fireplace. The bath was covered in fine white fabric, softening the hard edges of the metal, and was full of steaming water.

The bed loomed in the centre of the bedroom, though it had fresh linens and a copper pan placed under the furs to warm it. A merry fire cracked and popped in the grate. "Why is there only one bed?" Erik blurted it out.

"Because we are married." Charles answered, clever fingers finding the laces of his ash grey jacket. "I," he blushed bright red then, his ears suddenly a pretty pink against his brown hair, but his eyes retained their shattered majesty, "I don't expect, I," he stopped, "I wouldn't, I mean, I'm only fourteen, and..." He was stammering. "It's politics and." He paused again. "I would have liked to get to know you first. My mother had months to get to know my father. It's how it's normally done, but." He was groping blindly for the words and not finding them. "You should understand. ATennosha is..." His words were gone.

Erik took the hand that waved so uncertainly before him. "Go to bed," he said, although his every instinct was to pull the boy against him. It was not sexual, as it had been with Magda, it was more that he was a lock and Charles was its key. It was two pieces designed to fit together finding each other. "I'll sleep on a chair. We will sort this out in the morning."

Charles lowered his eyes, then pulled his grey coat up over his head. Under it he wore a soft white blouse. Everything he wore was excessively fine in the soft grey colours of mourning so the white seemed stark against it. "Share the bed, Erik," he said quietly. "I'll sleep easier that way. The dead are vicious come dark." Erik did not understand and when Charles saw that he made a wounded sound. "Oh, my friend, the wrongs that they have done you. I am the Lord of Meirin, do you not know what that means?"

For a moment Erik was silent. "I know the song," he said, "and a lady in Meirin talks to the dead." The song was an infamous tavern bawd that was popular all over the empire, where women of certain places from all over the known world were compared to those of Dathyl in the south. That was the line that described Meirin, and a lady in Meirin talks to the dead.

"Any one can talk to the dead." Charles said darkly, dismissing it with a frown, "in Meirin the dead talk back." He stopped. "I'm told that when we touch I will not hear them. Without a Senshisha the Tennosha quickly succumbs to madness, it is what happened to my mother. I am," he stopped, "the magic always falls to women but," he offered a smile as broken as his gaze. "I have no sister. She died in the womb. If," he stopped again as he sat on the bed to tug off his boots. "My mother said that that bond gave love, maybe if I was her you'd fight it less."

"I am Selen." Erik protested, finding comfort in the old words, "I have no truck with magicians or their sorcery."

"A magician is someone who willingly uses magic," Charles corrected undoing the points of his breeches before he climbed into the wide bed, "what do you call someone who is used by the magic, like my family?"

Erik knew the word but he didn't say anything. He just pulled one of the deeply cushioned chairs up to the fireplace to give himself a place to sleep. Tomorrow he would speak to Moira about arranging the dissolution of this, whatever it was, and then he'd find Magda – he would promise himself to her as he had wanted and think nothing more of the boy with the broken glass eyes.

Erik woke up in the chair with his head wedged uncomfortably between the wooden frame and the pillow with a vicious cramp in his left calf that felt like a Wilding had sunk in its teeth. He pried himself out of the chair, levering his entire body weight on his elbows with a grunt before he could rub the pain from the muscle. The whimper surprised him, because he thought that he had been the one to make the noise, and he looked around for the threat before he remembered that he was not alone in the room.

In the bed Charles was twisted up in his blankets and furs, but his stomach and chest were bare, the shirt that he had gone to bed in was tangled up under his arms and his teeth tugged on his lower lip almost hard enough to break the skin. He looked, although asleep, terrified. Erik walked over to him, as he would have if it had been one of the boys from the Academy who sometimes cried in the night. Some of the older boys would have climbed into their beds to offer comfort, but it was not something that came to Erik easily.

He put his hand on Charles' shoulder. It was fever hot through the muslin. Charles came awake at once, his eyes going from fierce and sharp to soft and dark. The redness faded from his skin and then he lurched up, pale hand to his red mouth, and stumbled, in only his stockings and blouse, into the privy, throwing open the garderobe doors hard enough that the wood slammed against the wall, and then there was the awful wet sound of retching.

From a jug on the sideboard Erik poured a cup of water and followed Charles into the privy. "Here," he said offering him the beaker.

Charles turned to him, wiping his face with a towel that seemed to be there for just that purpose "I woke you." He scrubbed his face with the towel, "I'm so sorry."

"Rinse your mouth out," Erik told him, "before you are sick again." Charles nodded, and then moved back to the garderobe, taking a mouthful before he spat it into the hole. "You didn't wake me." Erik corrected him, and Charles turned, and for a whole moment as Charles knelt there on the small and thick rug that was there solely for this purpose, Erik wanted to hold him. It was clear that the nightmares, and it was obviously those, were very common. A small bowl of powdered mint candies sat on a shelf just outside the garderobe as Erik looked around, distinctly uncomfortable in offering comfort.

Charles wavered there, kneeling, before he launched himself at Erik, wrapping thin arms around his chest and almost burrowing into him. The sense of relief that Erik felt was so heady for a moment he himself felt ill. Charles shuddered and sobbed into him, and Erik worked against his very nature wrapping his arms about him, fingers in his soft brown hair and found himself humming tunelessly as the magic overwhelmed him, how under the vomit Charles smelt sunshine and lavender.

The sorcery between them was clearly activated with touch, and when Erik had held Magda like this it had led to skin hunger and touch and desire and want, and perhaps with Charles' youth it would have felt predatory and perhaps a little cruel, but it was a simple easy feeling of serenity and pale fingered peace.

He slipped his arm under Charles' thigh, the other under his arms as the boy continued to shake and sob. Charles was as light as a maid when Erik lifted him, eerily comfortable in Erik's arms as if he was designed to fit there. He tried to lay him back on the bed but Charles did not, or possibly could not yet, let him go, and so Erik was forced to climb unto the mattress himself and let the boy drape along him, as he hummed tunelessly into his hair.

Overwhelmed with that peaceful, easy feeling, with Charles clutched to him sobbing and shaking, Erik fell asleep, and no one was more surprised, him, or Charles who fell asleep in his arms.

Moira came to wake them at two hours past dawn, later than Erik would normally lie abed. She clearly banged about and clattered stoneware, scraping chairs across the floor to wake them. There was a bowl of boiled eggs, buttered bread rolls, and a pot of steaming hot kir with two beakers on a tray for their breakfast. There was even a small bowl of milled salt. She placed it on a low table between two couches, and went to the trunk where they stored Charles' clothes, perfectly aware that Erik was watching her every move. Her robe was almost scandalously short, with a wide band of different, heavier, fabric, that formed its collar before running across the back of her thighs, at least two inches above the top of her stockings. The belt that she used to fasten it was tied in the shape of the imperial rose. Her hair was pinned up with kunai, though she had left her short sword somewhere. Even delivering breakfast something about her threatened violence.

"The Emperor would like to see you both," she told Erik, "I have had to guess your size, Lord Senshisha." She shook out a charcoal jacket and laid it across the back of the chair that Erik had tried to sleep in, and then fussily rearranged the cushions. Grey, Erik thought to himself, was the colour of mourning.

"I'm surprised he waited this long," Charles murmured into Erik's breastbone. He didn't even turn, he just clung there like a baby monkey.

"You appear to have slept well," Moira said with a faint smile, "already, Senshisha, you begin to repay our investment, even if it is only in preventing our dear Charles from soiling his bed with his nightmares." Something in the way that she said it was surprised and a touch sarcastic. "Do you wish me to draw you a bath?" her voice was arch, "either of you, or perhaps for both."

"If the emperor wishes to see us," Charles said finally untangling himself from Erik and rolling off the bed to his feet, "we won't have time to share a bath," he gave Moira a dark smirk which implied all sorts of things that hadn't happened. The gaze was filthy. "I bathed yesterday afternoon, it can wait even if his imperial majesty will not."

"Both the elder princes are in attendance, although the heir is with his mother." Moira told them, stepping back against the fireplace like she was a good little servant, the fire had died out during the night and no one had entered come morning to build another. "There is great curiosity about the court for your new husband."

"Is there no way to cancel this?" Erik asked, Charles flashed him a warning look, "in case such things fall apart later." The clothes that he had arrived in had been taken by Moira and it was clear that he would not be getting them back. She had left him clothes in soft charcoal will that were clearly in the cut and colours of House Meirin.

Moira barked out a laugh as she helped Charles into his pants. She seemed adept at it, as if she was a lady's maid and not a soldier, but her every movement told of years of training in the arts of war. "How will you ask the very Lord of Death himself to dissolve the bond when he chose you before the stars under which you were born decided to shine in the sky?"

Charles glanced at Moira and clearly something in his gaze silenced her.

"My apologies," Moira recanted, "you are not yet used to our ways, Nathaniel and Remy are searching for your Magda to carry word of you to her, and I have asked Cable and Wade to go to the Academy to collect those things that you were forced to leave behind yesternight."

"Wade?" Charles interrupted, aghast "you sent Wade to the academy? There are children there."

"I thought it rather apropos," Moira said calmly, "after all, he has the manner and mind of an overexcited small child." It was all delivered in the same tone that suggested that she knew best, and even if Charles demanded something else she would ignore him. "Now eat," she said gesturing to the tray, "there is more if you wish it. I shall send word to his imperial majesty that you will attend him at your earliest convenience as he requested." She went to the door, "Peter will accompany you, this place, unfortunately does not run itself nearly well enough for me to leave it for long."

"Pass my love on to Minister Fury," Charles said sitting down and pouring himself a cup of the kir. Moira's face reflected her surprise and then it stilled itself. "Do not underestimate me, Moira, it is so tiresome. Even without the dead you have hardly been subtle." This show, Erik knew, was for him. Charles was showing him who Moira really was.

"Is there anything else you wish me to tell him?" She asked then, her expression puckish and lined with threat.

"You know, Moira, better than most, I only tell the truth, tell him that." He sipped the kir, and then placed the cup down, taking a half spoon of honey to sweeten it, "it's not always an impediment, love."

When Moira was gone, slamming the door behind her, Erik finally sat with Charles in front of the tray that she had brought them. There was the eggs that he had seen before but also sliced cold sausage, bread and freshly churned butter. "Do you mind telling me what that was about?" Erik lifted one of the rolls and thickly spread it with butter.

"My mutual pact of non-aggession with the court spy-master? I am new to this role, I am forced to remind him that I am aware of how far his reach spreads. It's nothing more than that."

"Then why allow Moira to remain here? If you know that she is a spy." Erik could not understand that. Surely Charles would want to keep his household secure.

"Because I know that she's a spy, just like my mother before me. It gives Fury the idea that if anything happened here he would be among the first to know, and means I do not have to be so guarded wondering who else is passing him information, and if one of his spies is in such a good position then he will allow no others. It is not like we have anything to hide from him." He broke one of the eggs apart in his hand, revealing a dusky grey-yellow yolk which he sprinkled salt unto before he ate the egg half in one mouthful. "I slept, I doubt that the entire court will immediately pause in their schemes and plans to hear about it, oh they will gossip about it, about you, especially as the emperor wished that his son, the Oak Prince, would take the role, but it is nothing." He popped the other half of the egg into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

"Then why not choose the prince?" The why me was clearly implied.

"Because I am not the one who chose you." Charles said sadly, then washed his mouth out with another mouthful of the kir, the dark red of it staining his lips a little darker. "Can't you feel it when we touch, that," he stopped, "that silence."

Erik shook his head because it wasn't silence for him – it was serenity and peace and it terrified him. He'd spent his life learning the value of his rage, tempering it and moulding it to serve him and that it could be so easily swept away by a stranger, even if he did feel like he had known Charles for his entire life before they had even met, was against everything that he understood or could comprehend. "We have been given a great gift, my friend," Charles said softly, wiping his hands on a napkin that had been left on the tray. "We will never doubt what is between us, even if we come to hate each other when we touch there will be silence."

Erik slammed his cup down on the table. "I don't understand you. You talk of magic with one breath and politics the next. You talk of fate with the same breath you talk of love and you are a stranger who has ensorcelled me."

Charles sighed, lowering his eyes to his lap. "Whatever reason your master had for keeping you so," he stopped, "he wronged you." He shook his head, his brown hair falling across his forehead and Erik wanted nothing more than to sweep it away, "I could not explain to you in a single morning what I am and what it is that you are, only that you were chosen for me and I was chosen for you. We are a House that belongs to the dead, not the living, and we are their voice. You welcomed the gifts that come with being chosen but not the responsibilities, what am I to think of you?"

"Gifts, you mean this wealth?" Erik snapped snidely. He spread his hand showing the room.

"No," Charles said, standing up and brushing the last of the crumbs from his pants, "that is merely a side-effect. I shall ask the Emperor that we return to Meirin, if only for a short time, that you might learn what it is to be Senshisha." He offered Erik his hand. "When he returns, perhaps Cable will be better able to explain than I, but it is," he looked for the words, twisting his mouth around them before he spoke. "It is out of my control."

"And what of Magda?" Erik pressed, "why go to all of this bother for me if this is all there is."

Charles smiled, lightly tilting his head. "Why not?" he answered calmly.

Peter was perhaps the same age as Charles, although he could have been as much as a year or two older. He was thinner, with perhaps an inch or two on him. They looked like they might be brothers with the same shade of skin, hair and their eyes were the same blue, but when Erik said it to Peter, who was armed with a short sword like Moira's, and whose clothes had a more military cut in the same charcoal grey as Erik's, the boy had laughed. "I'm one of the Deathless." He explained with a beaming grin. "This colouring isn't that unusual in Meirin," he continued, "we're both just so little." He stood next to Charles and put his arm around his shoulders, careful not to touch skin, putting their faces together, but far enough part that it was clearly deliberate. "I'm his kagemusha, of course we look alike." Erik didn't know what a kagemusha was. He considered asking but Charles carried on talking.

"It's very handy for slipping out of lessons." Charles agreed, "or boring suppers." His grin was exactly like Peter's, and now that Erik looked they were dressed the same, but Peter was bright and excitable where Charles had the hint of something broken. Erik really had no idea how anyone could mistake one for the other, even if Peter was his body double.

The horses were arranged and saddled in the small yard of the abbey but there was also a small carriage. "I can't ride," Charles said, noticing the way Erik questioned it, "animals don't like me much." He stepped up to the carriage opening the door himself. "The only horse that will take me is Askani and he's mostly blind and totally deaf."

"Is it the sorcery?" Erik asked as Charles climbed into the carriage and sat down.

"Yeah," Peter agreed, swinging up unto his own horse, a war horse that made him look like a doll sat atop it, "his great grandmother was exactly the same. The dead didn't bother Lady Shalon as much, but I don't think either of them hated it as much as she did. Wade suggested we just fill the abbey with puppies so can have one, because it's cute when they're little and they bark and growl and run from nothing around him, but Charles told him not to. Animals see the dead much more than we do, pigs worst of all, I remember going to the farm in Meirin and the pigs tried to stampede us, it was so funny." Peter leaned across, "The best thing was Nathaniel, he's normally all stiff and stoic and a bit creepy, but off he went squealing like a piglet with its ass on fire, chased down by two hundred pounds of old lady porker, and even Wade was speechless for laughing."

"Wade sounds like quite a character." Erik was very careful in his choice of words. Peter seemed friendly but soldiers had bonds of loyalty that outsiders could not parse. Even if Peter was friendly now he might turn if he perceived an insult to one of his company.

"Wade is," he stopped, "well, Wade. You'll see." The boy, and Erik felt old for thinking of him like that when he had only a few years on him, had a sort of innocence that made him seem younger, and the boys at the Academy lost that early to drills and heavy training. A few solitary night drills and that bright happiness was gone replaced with something brittle and fierce.

Erik had lost his own when his parents died in the fire a few months after he had left for the Academy and Sebastian told him that tears were for weaklings and women who could afford it – it was better to be angry. Tears blinded you but anger made you sharp and he could find who killed his parents and avenge them if he was sharp. You couldn't do that if you cried.

The Dramathen Dairai was a city within the city proper, complete with its own walls and its own business district where things were made only for the palace. Erik had never seen so many people as were in the city which was built primarily of row houses, long thin buildings like barns into which families crowded like cattle into single rooms. Closer to the palace were larger manses which housed only a fraction of the people that they could. Every thing about this place reinforced Sebastian's lessons, that those who used magic only did so to repress those who couldn't.

When the magic chose Erik he had been taken from the austerity of the Academy to the luxury of Dramathen Tor. Even the clothes that he was wearing were worth a year's income to some of these families, but the complement of soldiers that surrounded them kept even the most ardent or desperate beggars away. Yet all Erik had to give a beggar would be the grey coat on his back, and he doubted there would be a single rag merchant in the city that would accept it.

A full squad of Imperial guards opened both sets of gates to allow them entrance. They wore solid black and a dark skinned man at the gates watched them carefully. He wore a steward's livery and an eye patch that dominated his face. His head was completely shaven. "That's Fury." Peter said bringing his horse around so it was between the black skinned man and Erik. "Officially he's in charge of deportment, but he controls information. He plays the long game, so be careful of him." Something about Peter's manner was oddly adult right then, "he's an invaluable ally on your side, but a very dangerous enemy if he's not. He serves the empire not the emperor. You need to make that distinction with him. Fury is good people, but wrong him and you'd much rather be chased by an army of Wildings with the hunger on them. They'd eventually give up."

Erik swung down and then stepped across to open the carriage for Charles to climb down. For a second Charles was very small and frail in the darkness before he looked across at Erik and his face lit up. It was as if Erik had suddenly become a hundred feet tall in the wake of that smile. The transformation, although it was only a smile that reached his stained glass eyes, was breathtaking.

Sir Nicholas Fury was known to the court as the Master of Manners to the three princes, the Oak Prince, Thorn, the Crow Prince, Luke and the Bear Prince, Balian, and although his loyalty to the throne was beyond question, he had little time for the man who sat upon it. His role gave him access to all of the knowledge of the court without the idea that he was dangerous. There were very few who knew exactly what the quiet man at the back of the court did but he knew everyone who kept his secret.

No one kept secrets from the House of Meirin.

The dead gave the House of Meirin counsel.

"Have you come to welcome me, Minister Fury?" Charles asked offering him a hint of his broken smile. The boy beside him, and Acuya help him they were only children, was hard edged. The Tennosha had yet to hit that growth spurt which turned boys into young men almost over night, he was a skinny boy with loose brown curls, large blue eyes and a red mouth. The Senshisha was tall and skinny, that same growth spurt had stripped the fat from his frame so he was all joints and blondish brown hair, swept back from his face, and a nose he'd have to grow into.

"Her majesty asked me to, my lord Tennosha." Fury said with a slight bow, although his instincts were to take the two of them to the kitchens for feeding, before sending them both out to play. He knew better, but only the day before Charles had sat with the two younger princes playing with a ball, the two of them so careful not to touch him, because of how dangerous it was to be faced with the death visions and today he was one of the princes of the realm, almost equal to the Emperor himself, but Acuya knew he was still a child, even if he talked to people who weren't there.

What was truly strange was the way that the new boy, the Senshisha Erik, and wasn't it telling that he was named for the Violent Death, slipped his hand into Charles' and twined their fingers together as if it didn't matter when they touched.

Fury knew that the Lady Shalon had picked the boy, but any doubt that he had was gone in that simple gesture. Charles was too powerful to be unaffected by touch, when it had almost driven his mother mad, and this new boy held his hand.

"I am truly sorry about your mother, Lord Tennosha," Fury said, bowing his head again, "I thought very well of her."

"It does my heart good to hear that." Charles said, and his tone was as formal as Fury's own. "Minister Fury, this is Erik Lehnsherr, my Senshisha, Erik, this is Minister Fury, the Master of Manners of the Dramathen Dairai." The new boy's gaze was cold and hard, with a rage in it like a storm at sea; it was the very opposite of the open, calm and broken gaze of the Tennosha.

"Well met," Erik said in a low, soft voice.

Fury bowed his head again. "I shall take you both to Lady Freyja, I think it will do her heart good to see you so well."

"Well, Fury?" Charles asked, and his voice was sharper then and his expression one of a rage that better suited his Senshisha. "Perhaps that is the wrong word to choose. I am married and summoned to see the emperor who will almost certainly challenge everything because I am a Lord, and I was not yesterday, and I have not even had a chance to see my mother, let alone grieve, so perhaps, not well." He took a sucking breath between his teeth to calm himself, "Come, Erik, Peter, the Lady Freyja will be in her salon, yes?" Fury nodded, so Charles just pushed past him so the others would follow him.

The Empress Sublime of the Court of the Winds, Lady Freyja D'Cevni wore blue, with her black hair caught in a wire cage sparkling with pearls like stars in her dark hair, and a heavy amber necklace the beads of which clacked together when she stood up to welcome them into her salon. "Oh my dear little heart." She said and went to step across the room, but stopped herself with a look that it almost pained her. "And you must be Erik," she said, "we must, of course, become better acquainted. I am sure my dear little heart has told you how dear that he is to me, as if he was one of the princes himself."

"My Lady," Charles said, and his voice wavered, and he squeezed Erik's hand hard for comfort. "I,"

"My Lady," Peter said stepping forward and into the woman's embrace as if it had always been meant for him, she seemed to deflate into his arms, and in that instant she was not an empress, merely a woman who had lost a dear friend. "We know you loved her too."

Charles moved closer and Erik could not have said why it was that he put his arm around Charles' waist and tugged him against him. He murmured something reassuring and nonsensical to him, and over Peter's shoulder the empress' eyes softened when she saw it, as if she had finally let out a breath she had held for so long she had forgotten. With a sigh she stood back.

"My husband is vexed that you chose your Senshisha without his counsel, but I remember your mother's delight, Charles, when she found you, Erik. She was so happy and I will miss her terribly." She clenched and unclenched her fists before smoothing out the fabric of her gown, and then touched the beads of amber as if to reassure herself. Only then did she return to her chair, her embroidery on a frame beside it. "My husband does not believe in magic, like many of the Outer Clans, but I am D'Cevni," the way that she said it suggested that it answered everything, and perhaps to her it did. "She said that you were a slip of a thing, she would be happy to see you all grown up. She said you came out of nowhere, through the guards and the crowd to touch her belly, she said," she stopped, biting her lip, "she said she felt it then, and told you, Charles, with her hand upon her belly, that you would have to wait. My husband will push and test you, but truly, Erik, you are the Senshisha Lady Shalon knew it when she found you that day all those years ago."

Erik didn't know what to say to that. So he said nothing.

Erik remembered that day, it was easily one of his earliest memories. He had been at the market with his mama, he thought, that bit was hazy, when the lady came. He had wanted to see her, and so he worked his way through the crowd, past the soldiers around her and the governor who she was talking to. He couldn't have been more than four.

He had stood in front of her and she looked like a goddess, the sun was behind her and she was blonde, but the details of her were long gone. And he didn't know why, but he had felt compelled to touch her belly where it was swollen with a baby. Other ladies might have had him killed for the presumption, but she hadn't, she'd just bent down and ruffled his hair and asked him where his Mama was, and she had touched her belly, and said, "it's not your turn yet," and she had taken his hand and took him to his mama.

The whole thing had seemed to strange Erik had assumed that it was a dream long since, and when he told Sebastian, he had agreed with Erik that such a thing could not have been real. A noblewoman would have a child and his family slaughtered for touching their hem, there would be no kindness. But the empress seemed so sure.

Was the woman in his dream- the pregnant goddess with her shining gold hair- Charles' mother?

Charles had said that he had been chosen, was his strange act- an act he'd never dare to do, either before or since, because he knew his mother would have been upset, even if he hadn't known that lady might execute him- the reason he had been chosen. Or was it just the sign that Lady Shalon needed that he was the one.

The draima wore a gown of red velvet through which gold had been threaded so as she moved it caught the light like she was made of fire, and matched her hair which she had bound into a long braid over her shoulder. She sat to the left of the emperor, who draped to the left over his throne with a beer mug in his hand. He was an old man, still hale, and built with strong arms and a barrel chest, but he had a patch over one eye, and gold beads braided through his beard.

Charles grabbed Erik's wrist when he went to kneel in such a way that he could not drop the way every instinct told him to. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "The Lords of Meirin bow to no one." He murmured almost under his breath so only Erik could hear him. "Odin," Charles said and bowed his head as if to an equal, there were so many types of bow that Erik did not care that he knew only a fraction of them. Charles it seemed knew them all. "Jehane." He did not bow his head to the witch at all.

Charles had sent Peter to look after the horses, and smiled as he walked away, "the boy scurries like a spider," he said to himself as if he was much older than Peter, an adult instead of a boy who spoke like one.

"Charles, and this must be your new Senshisha," the draima said and her voice was rough like fire. She was the sort of woman that men died for. Erik knew about the draimae, Sebastian had given whole years to learning what they were capable of. He did his best to keep his mind clear in front of her because they could reach into his thoughts and take what they wanted; they could make men act against their will. The Draimae were more dangerous than a boy who could talk to the dead.

"He was chosen against the will of the empire." The Emperor said, "have the forms been met?"

Charles bristled, his entire body stiffened. "It is well known that the House of Meirin does not have to obey the forms of the empire when it comes to marriage. Those who marry into our house are chosen by the God of Death or have you had a promotion whilst I was mourning?"

Erik put his hand on Charles' arm, to hold him back, to warn him perhaps. "Tell me," he said to Charles though his voice was easily loud enough to carry, "what is the law in this case?"

"A duel," the emperor said flatly, "those who are eligible fight for the honour."

Charles snorted, his opinion of the affair completely clear. "That is only when there is no clear Senshisha," he said, "and Erik can touch me, so there is no need for the Bav'ath'mordell'terasyln.

Erik knew that term. It was in the old tongue, it was a fight to the death, fought bare fisted and in the open. "It is well, Charles," he said squeezing his arm fondly, there was no way a court bred dandy could defeat him- he was the champion of the Academy of War. He had been trained in many of the arts of war, both armed and unarmed. Sebastian had always commented how quickly he learned these things. "I accept your challenge, will you fight me yourself?" His hands found the laces of his jacket, tugging free the threads and then sloughing off the jacket.

"My son was also considered for the role." The Emperor said, and his voice boomed about the throne room.

"By you." Charles muttered under his breath.

With his jacket off Erik tested the range of motion he had in the new shirt, wondering whether or not he would have to tug it off. "Fine, shall we do this here."

The Oak Prince, Thorn, stepped forward, bashful and grinning. He was the size of a house, with long blonde hair. His quilted jacket had no sleeves revealing a pair of biceps that were easily as big as Erik's head. The prince had maybe five years on him and thighs like the girth of oak trees, Erik could see where he got his cognomen. "Still feeling cocky?" Charles asked under his breath.

"I can take him." Erik said, and made the decision to pull off his boots so he stood in his stocking feet. Then undid his belt with its sheathe and clearly let it fall. "Are we doing this here?" he asked the prince.

The prince just looked at his father for permission and the old emperor nodded. In the corner, stepping into the light as the prince had done was a dark haired boy, tall and svelte, a year or two older than Charles, with bright green eyes and a long pointed face. This was the hostage prince, the Crow Prince, Luke, held to coerce the Western Emperor and prevent his hostile expansion, but still treated like royalty and as if he was a son. He skirted around his brother and went to stand beside him. "I'd tell you to crush skulls," he said and his voice had settled into a deep baritone, "but someone," he flicked his eyes at his brother, "would probably take it as an invitation."

"You don't have to kill him, love," Charles said bluntly, "just don't die."

Erik had fought men before who were much larger and they tended to be, by the very nature of their size, slow. Those who had studied the fighting arts tended to avoid such bulk, they remained wiry. The prince might be unstoppable on a battlefield, like a huge boulder rolling down a mountain, but the same tactics that he would use when fighting a group were an impediment when fighting a single opponent.

"Yes, love," the other boy said in a rather dry tone, "Don't kill him, it will cause the most awful political nightmare." His smirk was a knife's edge. Erik loathed him already.

"Are you ready?" the prince called over the room and Erik moved closer, rolling his shoulders, then he nodded.

As the prince lunged Erik darted into him, close enough that he entirely missed the grasping arms and drove the flat of his hand into the hip in front of him, hooking one leg behind the calf at the same time. A second blow landed on the prince's chest, feeling ring-mail under the jerkin. He wasn't sure it was against the rules, then the third blow against the shoulder. Then he darted back.

The prince smiled at him. At least one of them was enjoying this.

When the prince reached out again to grab him and crush him between those mighty biceps, which Erik suspected were used for cracking walnuts in the dip of his elbow, Erik went back in, the first blow landed on his hip, again, so when the prince went to block the second blow which he expected on his chest, Erik used his other hand and slammed it into the unprotected shoulder, throwing the prince off balance, then used his dominant hand and slammed it into the throat that was level with his eyes.

The prince staggered back gasping for breath. "Do you yield?" Erik asked calmly.

The prince nodded, then stepped back and bowed to him. Then he stood up, still struggling to suck in breath, and grinned again, then he wrapped his arm around Erik in a brotherly hug. "Who," there wasn't enough air for him to manage the sentence except in one word bursts, "taught you to fight?"

"I learned at the Academy of War," Erik told him. "My master in the fighting arts was called Daken."

The prince moved back and even Charles went pale when he said the name. Then he composed himself as Erik watched and spoke to the emperor. "I knew that Erik was my Senshisha as soon as I saw him, for no dead cluster about him. When he touches me there is silence. He has his secrets and I have mine, for that is how it should be between us. I don't know what my mother told you about the House of Meirin and those we welcome into it, but the only surcease we have is that between us we have what everyone else has, with no magic, no sorcery. I have told you since I knew your intention that your son was not my Senshisha. Did you have to force the matter?"

The emperor bristled as he was dressed down by a slip of a boy, his voice still breaking as he spoke, with eyes that made him look younger than he was. It was clear that Charles was offering him a salve to his pride. That made it worse. "I have heard things about the Academy of War," Charles said, "that suggests that it might be best to have it investigated. I do not know the truth of it, but if Daken is teaching there then there must be an investigation, his threats against your majesty and your family are well known in the capital, but clearly not in the Academy of War."

"Jehane." The emperor said and the woman moved, it was like she was a painting of a fire that sprung to life when eyes turned to her, despite her red gown and hair she almost vanished into the background Erik noticed.

"What theTennoshasays is true, his bond with theSenshisha is apparent, notice the ease with which the Senshisha takes his hand, as if he did not fear what his touch would do; as if he didn't know, and clearly it has no effect, he is not overwhelmed as the rest of us would be, as you can see he is not lying on the floor screaming." She was being deliberately obtuse and Erik didn't know how the emperor would react. "I can read neither of them, not without their will, such are their sorceries."

Instead of anger however the emperor took a deep breath. "Luke," he told the dark haired boy, "fetch me Fury, I want to know what is happening at the Academy of War. I want to know why such an infamous Wilding is teaching there."

Luke gave an elaborate bow before he smirked at Erik and excused himself. "By your will, father." The word father was delivered sarcastically, Erik noted, pulling on his boots again. Erik tried to school his features much as Charles did. He had not known that Daken was a Wilding. It was true then, that you could not tell them from mortal men when they walked on two legs.

Charles offered him his jacket, his eyes meeting Erik's for a long quiet moment, then he licked his red mouth worriedly. "I would like to return to Meirin," he said to the emperor, being careful to neither give title or offence. "That I might become acquainted with my Senshisha, perhaps for a year or two, by your will."

The emperor spluttered for a moment, "it is out of the question." He said.

Erik stepped forward, all of Sebastian's teaching being ignored for what felt like instinct in that moment, "if I may," he said, "the Oak Prince is wearing ringmail." The silence fell over the room like a shroud. "That is against the accords of the Bav'ath'mordell'teraslyn, is it not? You must excuse me if I am not certain of the rules of court, after all I am merely a soldier." He knew exactly what he was doing.

"No," Jehane said sadly then, like she was delivering a death sentence. "It is against the accords."

Charles grabbed his arm, "you didn't have to do this," he hissed, his fingers dug in deep enough to hurt and would leave bruises.

"I know what I'm doing." he answered just as quietly, but he didn't wrench his arm away. "But it would be bad for both of us," he looked at the prince, a man mountain who probably didn't understand how badly he had erred, at how dangerous his mistake was. "They would say that my claim was invalid because he was removed from the contest. I do not want that, for then others will make the claim and I shall have to fight and possibly kill them. So, in exchange for a boon I will keep my silence, I will acknowledge that the challenge was not bav'ath'mordell'terasyln and only for your amusement."

"A boon, you say." The emperor said. "For the life of my son?"

"A simple thing. My husband is correct, the bond between us is new and there are those at court who would exploit it. No other house would be denied this, but you deny us this time. I would like years away from court, to return when we are grown, for we are just boys," Charles' grip finally eased, "and there are those who do not see the Lords of Meirin, they see children and children to be exploited at that. It would be bad if we were forced to remind them publicly that we are not simple children." The emperor was scratching his beard but he could hear the threat there.

"I owe you more than this," he replied bluntly. "But you are right, you have leave to return to Meirin, to return when the Tennosha reaches the age of majority in five years time. But I still owe you a favour, boy, do not treat that lightly or spend it so quickly."

"It might be best to find why your sons, both of those present, wear mail to court." Erik said, "and so comfortably that it is almost as if they do not."

"How did you know?" Lady Jehane asked, leaning forward in her chair beside the emperor.

"I felt it when I struck him, iron feels different to my hand."

"He is theSenshisha," Charles said bluntly, "and as there are five Houses there are five elements, one to each of us. It is well known that the House of Meirin is allied with metal, why does this surprise you, Jehane?"

"It has been more than one lifetime since aSenshisha could discern metal." She said calmly, but there was something on her face. "Even longer still since one could manipulate it, there were blows there that knocked his highness back over a foot, could he have done that if he had not repelled the metal?"

Erik's grin showed far too many teeth, he knew that. It was a wolfish thing of sharpness and the Lady Jehane met it calmly. "Would you like to test that theory yourself, my lady?" he asked.

Jehane's eyes narrowed, her fingers finding the gold collar she wore, and then she sat back in the chair. "I am not surprised that Luke already thinks of you so well." Her eyes were like licks of flame in a dark night and Erik was not surprised that they made him uncomfortable. He remembered Sebastian's warning, "the voices drove thedraimae mad years ago, the rest is just pretending."

Charles grabbed Erik's hand, and gripped it tightly, his fingers hot and dry around Erik's own, "Come, love," Charles said and his voice was a study in calm, it was forced and Erik knew that, and both hated it and hated that he knew it. This boy had ensorcelled him before they had even met. No, Erik corrected himself in his own head, the boy's mother had ensorcelled him. Let them believe their lies of gods and destiny. It was the choice of a mother for her son. Erik would play their game for now, but when they had found Magda he would leave.

A man with one arm, the other sleeve emptily pinned to his jerkin, met them just outside the door. The man behind him was fully hooded, but Erik could make out the line of a mask over his face, and he wore gloves, only a thin line over his eyes was uncovered. He wore twin swords crossed over his back and three knives openly strapped to each leg, and another set around his waist. No one had stopped him. They were both wearing the dark charcoal colour of deep mourning.

"Cable," Charles said, bowing his head to the one armed man, "Wade." The hood bobbed but was not thrown back.

The man with one arm, a brute of a man, who might have been larger than the Oak Prince, Erik thought, bowed his head to the two of them, but the hooded man just polished the top of his scuffed boot against his trouser leg. Charles was so used to it he didn't even seem to notice. "Charles," the man said, in a voice like a thunder roll, "we have returned from the Academy," he stopped, "Lord Fury will want to know what we have discovered, until then we have taken over the Academy, there were horrors there." He stopped. "I must ask, Lord Erik, your relationship with Sebastian Shaw, the boys said you were his favourite." The man had a rich deep voice but Erik wasn't quite sure what he was hearing.

"I was, he believed I had the most potential, I," he stopped. As the man's eyes, which were the colour of warm amber or whiskey, bored into him, the realisation was obvious. One of the eyes was blind but still fixed him in place like a stake. "What did you find?" But before the man spoke the other, whip thin and hooded, stepped forward, with his gloved hand outstretched as if to touch him in offered comfort. "You're mistaken," Erik said, "you're wrong, you've got it all wrong."

"Did he touch you?" The hooded man said.

"No," Erik said surprised it had gone this way. " He clapped me on the back sometimes and listened when I had problems, he... you're thinking of the wrong man, Sebastian would never, he..."

"He has done things according to the boys," Cable said and his voice was even, even if his eyes were down cast and dark. "Some of them said he paid them to attack you, is that true?"

"Boys are boys." Erik answered, flustered, "they will attack the favourite, it's human nature, and they avoided me because I'm Selen, I shouldn't have been there, you're wrong, Sebastian looked after me. Daken trained me, you're wrong, they wouldn't."

"And what do you know of the Mirror of Selene?" the hooded man, Wade asked. "Because my girls are itching for his blood and I ain't nearly cavalier enough to go off half cocked when you ain't wanting that, we are the Deathless, we are yours to command and if you want me to go and bring you back his tanned ballsack, I'll do it and bring it back embroidered, I'm thinking pansies, what about you, Cable, my man, and then there's the question, would it be better to do the stitching whilst he's still alive, or would the skin stretch? questions, man, questions."

Cable stepped in front of him, he didn't say anything, just ignored him. This was clearly something he was very used to. Peter had said that Wade was Wade, and Erik wasn't ready to understand more than that. They were accusing Sebastian, Sebastian had never been anything but kind to him. If Sebastian had paid the other boys it was to make him stronger. "Do you know of the Mirror of Selene?"

It was Charles who answered, cocking his head to the left as if listening to counsel from someone stood there in the corridor which was empty but for the four of them. "It is said to confer immortality, to give its owner the ability to command the tides and the Wildings. It's a myth."

Erik corrected him. "It's the moon," he said, "when Selene was harried by the other gods she took refuge in a cave, but knowing the world would die without her, she captured her image in a mirror and hung it in the sky, that the other gods could not hurt her but she would abandon her people."

"There's the mirror of Nehelenia." Charles continued, "could that be what he wants?"

"Your Mama," Wade said, "he was supposed to be her senshisha or at least he thought he was, he was one of the contenders but he wasn't picked, well obviously, there's a painting at the Academy, we're talking seriously creepy, like what is left of my skin crawled off and left me when I saw it. When the boys suggested he might be a kiddy fiddler I was sceptical but then I saw the painting and was like, if anyone is going to be a kiddy fiddler here it's going to be creepy there."

Cable just talked over him. "There are suggestions he killed your father, Charles," he said, "and did everything in his power to cripple Erik, that he might be chosen in Erik's stead."

"Does he think that the Mirror is at Meirin?" Charles asked, and then stopped, his lazy sad eyes going very wide, "The Aegis," he said going very pale. "Cable, go to Fury, tell him what you have learned. Wade, go to Moira, tell her we leave tonight, saddle up the fastest horses, I'll ride with Erik," he stopped, "we have to get there before him."

"What is the Aegis?" Erik asked.

Charles started to walk forcing Erik to keep time beside him if he wanted an answer. "The Aegis is the Aegis, it is a well of wild magic, it," he stopped, "do you know the story of Setsuna and the army that died defending her?" Erik nodded, everyone knew that story. "Setsuna was a Lady of Meirin, and the Deathless, my Deathless, Wade, and Cable, and Matthew and Remy and Peter and Nathaniel and all of them, they were that army, that is what the Aegis can do. If he touches it..." He left it open. "She might serve him. He might have arranged everything with you just to get his hands on the Aegis." Erik didn't know who the woman was even if Charles thought that he should.

"I think you're wrong about him. Immortality is not an uncommon wish."

Charles cocked his head again. "He tried to drive you from the Academy," he said bluntly, "he's spent ten years trying to drive you away, I wouldn't be surprised if he introduced you to Magda for that purpose. I know you were going to leave with her." Charles sounded pained, "and I forgive you, because you didn't know."

"You forgive me?" Erik asked, stopping, "You forgive me? You arrogant little shit."

Charles stopped, his tantalising red mouth was a little open and his pink tongue flashed out to wet his lips, "I'm not allowed to be selfish, am I?" he said, "I can't touch anyone because I show them their death, and every death that has touched them and shaped them, and I see every horror they have ever seen and that they will see. I can't sleep because the dead are relentless and all they want is solace. So, yes, Erik," he snapped, "maybe it is arrogant, maybe I'm just a spoiled lordling, but all my life I knew there would only be one thing that I could call my own, and that's you. And I know I'll have to share you with Magda, because you did not know, because of what he did to you, because you say he wants immortality.

"You should have known all along that we were to be married, that you would have something with me that you could have with no one else, but you didn't, and you sought that with some girl, and," his hands were at his head now, at the place where his hair met his forehead before he dropped them, "so allow me a little selfishness, Erik, even if it's a lie between us.

"I don't care if you have women, just be discreet and be careful, a child we can find a family for, but a disease will be hard to explain, won't it?" He took a deep shuddering breath, "and you will come back to me or I will send the Deathless to fetch you back, because once in a while I would like to sleep through till dawn, so yes, Erik, I forgive you. And don't even question how much it takes me to do that little."

It silenced Erik for a long, long moment, "we shouldn't be having these arguments in the hallways where anyone could see us." He said finally.

"Like Fury doesn't already know." Charles answered and then continued to walk away.

The curtains around the bed were like embroidered mustard coloured clouds draped around the frame. The light within them was dull and muted almost grey-yellow, but it was more than enough for Erik to see by. Charles lay asleep on their bed, twisted around the pillow, soft warm fingers twined through Erik's own and the tip of his pink tongue occasionally flicked out to chase a phantom taste on his red lips. For a moment Erik was conflicted with the desire to kiss him, or to tug his hand away.

In the near dark of dawn breaking through the window of their small house, through the cloud cover of the curtains, as Charles snuffled and licked at his lips Erik said, "By Selene, I love you as much as I hate you," his voice was almost a broken whisper in the confines of the bed, strange as it seemed to span continents between them, and how hot Charles' hand was in his own, "and I hate you more than I can bear."

Charles' eyelids flickered and he took a deep huffing breath through his nose before he cracked open his eyes, so that they looked like the remnants of a broken bottle glinting in the light, "did you say something, love?" he asked, still mostly asleep. His voice was rough with it, and that pink tongue wet his lips, once, twice a third time.

"You must have dreamt it." Erik said calmly, but he did not pull his hand away.

Charles offered him a sweetly sad smile before he rolled his shoulders in a tight stretch. Then he tugged Erik's hand against his face and rubbed the knuckles against his cheek, "thank you," he murmured, as he always did when they slept together, and then dropped the hand, and tugged open the curtains to reveal the room and opened up the universe between them.

The ride to Meirin was uneventful, except that to save time, for there was no real idea how far ahead of them that Sebastian was, or even certainties that he wanted the Aegis, Charles rode behind Erik, with his hands up under his jacket so they were skin to skin. The gesture was strangely sexless. To the left of them and slightly ahead, Wade was singing loud a song he had made up about the fact that Peter climbed a tree like a spider at some point in the past. The gist of it was that Peter was a spider boy who could climb like a spider toy and ate flies. It was almost incidental how quickly that Erik was able to tune him out completely and focus on a pair of hot, sweaty palms pressed against his stomach and the hitch of him against his back, and the head that weighed between his shoulder blades.

For four days they rode without stop, for the Deathless didn't need to sleep, so when Erik did then Charles took the reins, because it seemed he didn't need to sleep either any more.

Meirin was a small gem of a village nestled at the base of several mountains, the mountain of Meirin itself was a black dagger thrust against the sky, with little black dots carved into its surface, and the village was a handful of houses with dark granite walls and heavy grass roofs along a thin and winding central path. There were a few coniferous trees, heavy with winter, along the path, shielding a few of the houses from view, but clear from the bridge that crossed the Soulsease Chasm, where the river thundered below – four and a half screams deep, Charles told him when he saw him looking down – it was possible to see the tower.

It was a searing pinnacle of white stone, the blocks so tight it was as if the entire surface had been carved of alabaster. It was capped with a minaret, with copper long gone to verdigris and brilliant emerald green in the afternoon light, but erupting out of it, like it was a lady's wrist and she held the palm flat, was a large open balcony, with a thin railing. "Welcome home," Charles said against his back as he looked at the tower, "I've never been here either."

He swung down from the huge destrier, and held his hand out for Erik to take, the leather strap which had supported him slapping down against the saddle seat as the horse, mostly blind and deaf did an all over body shudder before twitching its tail as if it were swatting a fly. Erik patted its neck three times solidly before he swung down himself. So this, he thought to himself, was Meirin.

The chamberlain, if a small town could be said to have one, was a small unobtrusive man called Takeo, who instead of leading them to the tower, instead took them to a small manor with ivy growing up the walls, around the windows and the small porch over the door. Charles just looked at him, "you'd thought we'd live in the mountain, amongst the graves?" he asked archly.

"Its been such a hardship for you," Erik replied calmly, and wondered if this would be the pattern between them. That one would speak and the other would attack. "Living in such splendour, shall we leave our things here and go to the tower?"

For a second Charles' eyes widened, then they shuttered themselves, "The tower? Oh no, I walk in my sleep, it's so restless and all, I'll quite probably just up and fall over the balcony, and where would we be then?" his tone was deliberately flip and determined to be hurtful, he stepped into the door as Takeo opened it. "Then you'd be married to a sorcerous cripple, and how much worse would that be?"

Erik went to say something, but bit his lip instead. Charles was a slim form in the darkness, a lithe wisp of a person, with all the emotions that came with such, including hurt. Five days ago Charles' mother had died and for all it hurt that Erik had lost Magda, whom the Deathless, it seemed had still not found – he doubted they would because she would hide from soldiers searching for her not knowing their intentions were good – but no one had stopped and let Charles simply grieve.

Instead of saying anything, because his words were horrid traitorous things that never did what he wanted, Erik grabbed Charles' shoulder and tugged him into his chest. For a moment Charles stiffened, going rigid in his arms and then it was like a dam had been undone within him. He wilted to the extent that Erik was forced to stumble to a chair. Fingers curling through soft brown hair as Charles took great sucking breaths and tried not to cry.

What was with Magda had been simple, it was devotion and lust and the smell of her hair, and Erik knew that whatever this was with Charles, it would not be easy.

"I'm here," Erik said softly, carding his fingers through the hair, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm here."

Charles pushed away from him. "Don't you dare," he hissed, "don't you fucking dare."

"What?" Erik asked him, Charles was incandescent with rage, "offer you comfort you sorely need? Your mother died, you've been up-ended with a stranger, I'm angry, Charles, but it's not at you."

Charles laughed, a dark bitter and somewhat broken sound, flopping down on one of the cushioned benches. There was a fire built in the grate, and a thick rug which had seen years of traffic. The manse, and it was just a country manse, with a few large rooms built around a central hall, was well appointed but lacked the obvious luxury of the Tor. "I'm not Cassandra," Charles answered, and Erik didn't know who that was, "or Magda, I'm just," He stood up and Erik couldn't help but feel he was missing half the conversation. "Just let me be."

Erik knelt on the rug before the chair, laying his hands on the lengths of Charles' thighs. "My mother told me," he stopped, the pain of her death was still as sharp as it had been ten years previous, "she told me that I would love someone I would never understand. I don't understand you, Charles, I hate you and I love you and I don't even know you or which I should feel. But you're like me, and..." He stood up, brushing down imaginary lint from the front of his trousers. "Do you think I could find a sword to spar with?"

"Ask any of the Deathless." Charles said turning into the fire, away from Erik, "just not Wade, he might not just spar, he forgets sometimes."

Leaving Charles behind him Erik went into the chill of the afternoon air in Meirin.

It was full dark, the mountain air was crisp and clear and a dark rich velvet blue, when Erik returned to the house he was supposed to share with Charles. Food had been laid out for him and hungry from the exercise he helped himself to the slices of beef, rolled up and stuffed with pickles, held fast with little polished sticks. The food was excellent. The bread was clearly fresh and still warm from the oven. The butter in little curls to make it easier to spread.

Charles sat by the fire under a large candelabra with a book, he had his legs curled up under him and his feet were bare. Like that he looked very young. "You didn't have to come back here, you know, you could have bedded down with one of the Deathless, I don't need to sleep every night."

Taking a plate from the table Erik piled it high with the cold meat and cheese laid out for him, before he sat down facing Charles, resting the plate on his thighs. There was a pot of kir on the trivet over the fire, and two earthenware cups on the hearth, "that must be..." Erik cut off the insult before it formed on his tongue. He was angry but the work out had left his muscles deliciously tight, he was tired and he did not want the fight. "What are you reading?"

"A history of the Selen." Charles answered, slipping a brocade book mark between the pages before he closed the volume.

"Reading about the Mirror?" Erik asked. It was conversation, which in many ways was an improvement.

"No, learning about you." Charles answered. "Can you read?"

Erik spluttered. "Of course," he said, "what did you think they taught me?"

Charles' look was impish, and he wore the hint of a genuine smile that lurked in the slightly upturned corners of his mouth like a kiss, "there are so many other things you're supposed to know, I thought it best to check." Charles was young and naïve, but he was not stupid. He was feeling playful, warm and comfortable by the fire with a full belly and the smile he offered Erik was a man's, there was no childishness in it, it was in many ways a peace offering. "There's so much I don't know about you, I thought," he smiled again, "that it was a place to start."

"Is it interesting? I was taken from my parents at eight, I know only a little of my own history."

"Yes," Charles said, "you can have it if you want, I think there are some histories of Meirin about here too."

"This thing with the metal." he could feel the cast iron of the trivet over the fire, the grill and the poker beside it. They were like prickles against his skin. "Is it because I was chosen?"

"No, love," Charles said, the endearment falling off his tongue so easily he didn't even notice he said it, "it's why you were chosen." He lowered his eyes and smiled at the book closed in his hands, "Meirin has always been associated with metal, but not every Senshisha can even feel it let alone manipulate it. Anthony," that was one of the Deathless, who had dark eyes and a dark beard cut close around his mouth, "thinks it might be a reflection of how the dead harry me, especially Cassandra, that you are extra powerful because I am. It's a sort of balance."

Erik narrowed his eyes but said nothing, letting Charles continue. "Meirin is one of the balance points of the world, it's the easiest way to explain it. There were six, five white towers and Sidi, which has five black towers. They have their own purposes and," he cut himself off, "that's really complicated and you don't need to know it, but the five towers are Tanis, near Dramathen, which fell, Gwen Ystrat, which is south of Dathyl, Danev, which is to the far south of here, and Atalantis which as everyone knows is in the Termigent and therefore lost. Each of the towers associates with a different element, Danev is earth and is dedicated to Aileron, the star god. Lady Vorador, Emma, she can turn herself to diamond, it's amazing to see, and she's a Draima, so she can read minds, but she's not one for people, she keeps to herself with her Senboshi Chase. If Sebastian doesn't come here he'll most likely go to her."

"Do you think he'll kill herSenboshi?" Erik asked then, the food on his lap forgotten. "To try and replace him."

"I don't know. I have asked the Dead, if any of them know I will know soon."

Erik sat back, four days of riding had given him time to consider what Sebastian had done and what he was accused of. He had weighed what Sebastian was said to want and what Erik knew of him. "Are we to kill him?" he asked.

"Death is not always the answer, Erik," Charles said quickly. "I know that better than most. Do we kill all those who mean us harm?"

"Why not?" Erik asked then, this was a simple debate. "We're strong enough."

"There would be no peace." Charles said, and then opened his book again. "You're mistaken if you think it would end it."

"Did he murder my parents?" The words were stark in the room. The logs on the fire cracked as the fire reached a salt pocket in the wood.

Charles cocked his head to the left as if he was listening to someone who was not there "Yes." He said quietly. "He did."

"I'll kill him." Erik said, and the fire was back, all the rage and pain and hate that he had known. "I'll chase him down and kill him."

"Please don't," Charles said and his voice was broken. "Let it be, or it will destroy you."

"Are you Draimae now to foretell the future?"

"No, I'm just haunted by the dead, and it won't bring you peace, it won't settle your anger or change anything."

"Should we just sit here then?" Erik looked around, "eating like kings and relaxing in our feather beds?"

"No," Charles said, "We fight, and we learn how to fight better, but death is not the answer, Erik, please believe me."

Erik lowered his eyes and began to eat, his movements methodical and firm. He didn't want to talk about this. He wanted Charles to let him rage and wondered if Nathaniel would be prepared to spar some more, to take that rage and channel it into something. The spoons on the table were vibrating and Erik knew he was doing that.

"Our dead follow us, Erik, I cannot see my own dead, or yours, but those you kill, they will never leave you," he looked across at the window as if someone was there but the casement seat was empty. "Our dead destroy us given the chance. I," he stopped, "you were meant to be my sister'sSenshisha and she might have sent you on your way with new armour and a sword, because she's bloodthirsty and as angry as you are, but I am not her." He clenched his fists, "and I'm not going to do that to you." He calmed himself by taking great sucking breaths. "No matter what she says. There's a bath drawn, Erik, consider it, but killing him, I don't need to be Draimae to see what it will do to you."

"He..." Erik clenched out the words.

"Death is not the end, and it waits for no man" Charles said and his entire mien was firm, "but the true horror of the universe is not that horrors exist, but that we survive them."

He stopped, canting his head again. "This is not an argument we'll easily settle, love," he said, "and you've just eaten, I'd hate to spoil your digestion over politics." He was clearly listening to someone else. "Do you play chess?" he asked. "I do, and the Deathless either won't or can't."

"I do," Erik said, and Charles beamed, the light of his pleasure hitting his eyes like carved sapphires.

"At least we have that in common." Charles said, his tone was a little sad, putting down his book on the couch and going to the bookcase where he pulled out a board. "I hope you don't mind if we touch whilst we play, I'd hate for you to think I was cheating when I beat you."

"The dead, they are always with you?" Erik asked, putting aside his meal. Charles nodded as he placed the board between them. "Then how do you..." he left it open.

Charles smiled, and it was as broken as his gaze. "Oh, I don't."

The wind from the Bay of Pots in Dathyl was whip quick and sharp as it tugged at Charles' brown curls, pulling them about his face as he laughed and laughed, trying to hold his coat down.

The war was at its peak, and there in the Dathyl ports, Charles was laughing, oblivious to the people who spoke to Erik looking for guidance in their upcoming battle. He stood there, half a head shorter than his husband, staring out across a sea peppered with battle ships and laughed as the wind tried to lift his coat.

He looked across at Erik and his lashes were wet with tears and his red mouth was beaming, and his normally sad gaze was so full of love and life and laughter that the words caught in Erik's mouth, and more than anything he wanted to leave these men behind and kiss him.

"Angharad will press the advantage she has with her boats." Erik said and turned back to his men. "Don't let her, tie the empty skiffs up as a barricade to the entrance to the harbour. She can't command people who aren't there." They nodded, running to fulfil his bidding before Erik walked back to Charles, grabbed him by the back of his neck and kissed him hard, as if he could consume him whole. "You did that on purpose," he said into the hot skin of his husband's neck.

Charles just laughed as the wind played with Erik, now out of the shadow of the other men, caught in Charles' embrace as tightly as his own arms were wound about him. "Shut up and kiss me again." He said. So Erik did.

Time in Meirin passed with an easy comfort. They fell into an easy routine and Erik found himself in love with the simplicity of it. He loved the mountain with its warrens and graves, the kings that were lined up against the wall, preserved by the salt in the crystals all over the caves. There were rooms where the skulls were strung into chandeliers and monstrances so that they could save space and still welcome the dead to be buried there. He loved the songs that the mourners sang, and the easy way that Charles slipped between them and raised his voice with them.

It was such a surprise, Erik thought, to discover he loved him. It wasn't something he thought that he had in him any more.

And Charles grew into manhood, not in a spurt, but more of a sputter, broadening at the shoulders but never tall, perhaps only a fingers width or so more than most of the women who came here in the boats, with Hank swinging on the rigging and pointing out the stairs carved into the mountain, and when the boy, dark haired and brilliant, was asked how tall they were he would answer, four and half screams as if they were a measurement, and then duck out of the way of Erik terrified. Erik never knew why the boy was so scared of him.

Yet the news of what happened outside their little idyll always reached Charles first.

Within the first year Erik did not question the dead. By the second he was almost used to them. By the third, he resented them, and by the fourth he wondered if he could dispel them. He could not see them as Charles did but he saw the way he retched, or sobbed or clenched his fists in anger as he offered them all that he had, and was left spent at the end of it.

The second year Charles sent Alex to find him out on the practise field, where he was sparring with a Wilding who stank of tabac and had metal under his skin. Alex was shy of both of them, but had reached an age where bravado overcame fear, and he made the overture of nodding to Howlett in acknowledgement before he told Erik he was wanted at the main house.

They never did move into the Tower.

Erik explored it, to discover that it was hollow apart from the upper chamber, and in the centre of the staircase that curled up the wall hung a great crystal inside which a woman seemed to sleep, and around her, fixed by wires and magic and Erik knew what else, was the bones of a great and powerful lizard that was clearly long gone from the world.

In some of the steps were inlaid the bones of animals he could not even imagine, immortalised in the steps as a form of honouring their death and what Erik suspected was their extinction, because everything in Meirin came back to the dead.

Erik sheathed the sword that Charles had given him, he never had to worry about hurting Howlett when they sparred, the Wilding just healed, and his growing affinity for metal meant it was very difficult for the Wilding to strike him in return. When he had shown up with the small, dark and dangerous Tempest Erik had tried to step between him and Charles, trying to explain this was a Wilding, a creature of the Termigent, and Charles just pushed him out of the way and said, "but it's Howlett." As if that was all the answer he needed. And then Charles surprised him by not grabbing him in a tight embrace although he clearly wanted to.

In retrospect it shouldn't have been surprising; Charles never touched anyone else.

Their manor house was warm against the Northern chill. The winters here closed off the town, blanketing the bridge and stopping up the stairs down to the docks, but here in late autumn the air was just chill and not solidly frozen and sharp as wire against the skin. Charles felt the cold terribly so the fire was always built up high, and he sat on the floor, sixteen years old and devastating, and on the rug with him was a baby with brown curls and large grey eyes. She was batting a small piece of stuffed fur about as she babbled at him. "Erik," Charles said with a beaming grin, wider even than the baby's. "This is Anya," Erik nodded towards the child before he undid his sword belt, making sure to put it out of reach, for small children often found things that they should not, doubly so if the things were dangerous.

Two of the Deathless that Erik did not know were hovering. There was a basket full of blankets and things. One of the Deathless had unusual eyes, even for them, which were black with red irises. Anya raised her arms for the soldier to lift her and he did, bouncing her on his hip as if he wasn't dangerous. He made faces for her and she tried to grab at his nose.

"You stole a child?" Erik asked going over to the fire, past the Deathless and his cargo.

"Ah, my dear," the Deathless said in an accent like syrup, "we could not find your Magda, she did not want to be found, but time gave us this miracle." She had grabbed his finger, glove and all, and was stuffing it into her mouth. He pulled it away from her with a little tap on her nose, and the child scowled.

"Oh, Erik, look," Charles beamed, reaching out to take her in his arms. "She has your scowl."

Erik stopped, holding the pot over the cup and letting the boiling kir pour over his hand in surprise. "I'm sorry," he said, then realised he had burned himself and did his best to both sop up the kir and manipulate his hand.

"We could not find your Magda, dear." The Deathless said, "but we found her trail, though it took time. She died in childbed, but the child survived. Her adoptive parents called her Anya," he smiled at the baby, who beamed right back. "And she is yours."

Erik, still clenching and unclenching his fist sat down on the arm of the bench, missing and sliding unto the seat. "I," Erik found the words had suddenly abandoned him and he was left opening and closing his mouth.

"I know, love," Charles said sitting facing him so Anya could play with a pendant he had found from somewhere, she was burbling and he could see Magda in her now that he knew to look, in the way she smiled and her soft dark hair. "She'll go to Jimpachi in a few days, Meirin is no place for a child."

"You'd take her from me." Erik asked then, horrified, like he hadn't already lost everything else to Charles and his sorcery.

"No," Charles told him, "but with the docks and the bridge and the chasm, never mind the mountain she'd come to harm. Jimpachi is only a few hours away, she'll have a home with parents who will love her and never have to worry when she's hiding if she has fallen to her death or licked the crystals or thrown up on Tempest or a hundred other things babies do."

"You could have asked me." Erik said, terrified to touch the child, who looked so natural in Charles' arms and how Erik ached to see that.

"I should have." Charles agreed. "She'll know you." He continued. "I," he took a deep breath. "It's best," he said softly, "would you like to hold her?"

And Erik did, and didn't and couldn't tell which was more prevalent in what he was thinking, so Charles just stood up and sat beside him, so that Anya could meet her father. Anya didn't see his terror, she just offered him her stuffed fur thing, soggy as it was with drool, and beamed at him. And Erik laughed, his grin showing far too many teeth and his eyes tight and his jaw hurt and something unfamiliar and wonderful crashed over him, and it was only later, when Anya lay in the bed between them, sucking on her furry thing and talking in her sleep, that Erik recognised it for what it was, love.

But Charles was right, Meirin was no place to raise an infant, and Jimpachi was not that far away. Erik did not like it, but he could see why. And Charles being right didn't make it hurt any less, as Anya suckled in her sleep, her diapered bottom held up in the air and lying there like a little frog, and it didn't stop the wave of hate that Erik felt for him.

Anger was comfortable. Anger was what he knew.

And so the years passed between them.

Erik sat with his back against the wall of the tower and stared up at the great bones of the beast that hung there. Charles was wearing his ceremonial whites and his feet were bare. Erik was never prepared for Charles' feet. They were slim and long and fit perfectly across the palm of Erik's hand. They were also always cold, this, Erik thought, could be why.

"It's been a long time since you've come to see her." Charles said sitting down on the floor beside him. The floor was like shimmering glass, made of the same crystal that riddled the mountains and there was a low door to the west of them that led into the mountain proper. It was surrounded by skulls set like cobblestones into the stone, and the walls had panelling made of long thin human bones. Even the least of the dead brought here to be buried were treated with such reverence, laid into the mountain that there would always be room there for more. Erik didn't know who did these things, stringing together the fibula and tibula to create the great chandeliers in the first cavern, where the bodies were laid to rot for a year, or the monstrances, but no body was ever turned away. Anyone who brought their dead here, whether they were an emperor or a scullion boy, was given satisfaction, and they were judged on their own worth, a good serf might be given a shelf in the great rooms, and a bad king might be used as parts in the rather macabre decorations. Yet it felt so much like home.

"Her?" Erik asked.

Charles gestured not to the great bones that hung in the centre of the room, but the woman who hung, suspended in crystal, at their centre. "Onestra." He threw the name out there like it was something that everyone should know. Erik had no idea who she was. "This is her punishment, you know." He wriggled back into Erik's arms, whether Erik had intended to open them for him or not.

"What did she do?" Erik asked, Charles was feeling loquacious, clearly, the dead sometimes left him like this, drunk and affectionate, but it was rare, more often he was cold and clingy.

"You don't know the story?"Charles asked, "she did everything and nothing, she was a human slave to a Paraiko, she was so petted and cherished he demanded that the lesser lords provide her a human champion to breed and protect her."

"Like a Senshisha?" Erik's tone was playful and Charles knew that, he mock punched him in the arm.

"Yes," he said with a smile that was puckish and playful, something Erik thought Charles might have left behind but dazzled him with occasionally. "But she didn't want one.

"Imagine that." Erik murmured into the hot shell of Charles' ear.

"So she demanded that he fulfil twelve impossible tasks, the worst of which was to bring her the head of the dragon of the gorge by the bay, what we call Dathyl. And one of them did."Erik had wrapped his arms around Charles because they couldn't be this close without touching and now Charles was running the tip of his finger over the skin on the back of Erik's hands. If Erik loved Charles' feet, Charles loved Erik's hands. "It started a great and terrible war in which the Paraiko were overthrown and most of the known world were slaughtered, but the act she remains here for is not being the face that launched a thousand ballistas, they call her that you know, but for demanding the death of the last dragon.

"She didn't think that they could do it." Erik countered.

"Still,"Charles said softly, "she was the last. The knight that killed it, Menelaus, he didn't want to be her champion either, he had to leave behind a wife and family, but his own Paraiko overlord made him, it was a point of pride between them, to present the one who could complete the twelve tasks, and he did, intending to strangle her on her wedding night."

"What happened? I'm assuming he didn't."

"He didn't." Charles continued. "The story goes that when they met, when they saw that neither had a choice and they hated each other so completely that it was love and he knelt before her and she wept. He gave the then slave class steel and started the rebellion, hoping to return to his own wife and let her have a life apart from the overlords. He died in battle."

"And the dragon?" Erik asked, "It just became a footnote?"

"Oh no," Charles said with a laugh, "That's the only part of the story any one cares about, she and Menelaus fought for days, each bringing the other to the brink of death many times. Menelaus had a scar here." Charles trailed his finger from the point of Erik's widow's peak, down across his nose, narrowly skirting his eye, and to his cheek, "they called it the dragon's mark, and when he fell in battle, it was because he had received word that his family had been murdered by Aeka, his overlord, the story goes that he just knelt down there in the field and let them."

"And Onestra was punished?" Erik couldn't quite get past that.

"For the dragon yes, because it was magnificent and it was the last." Charles kissed the underside of Erik's jaw.

"I wasn't staring at her, you know." Erik said after a period of comfortable silence, sitting there in the tower of the dead with his husband. "The dragon..."

"It breaks my heart too." Charles said and that was enough. "Do you know what our family motto is?" he asked.

"Death waits for no man." Erik offered.

Charles smiled, "no, that belongs to the Deathless, ours is Etra Venares Valith. Death gives life meaning, or perhaps Life gives death meaning, but the true translation, it's the purpose of the living is to give meaning to the sacrifices of the dead. Remember that, Erik, and it will make sense eventually."

"Really?" Erik asked.

"So they keep telling me." Charles replied sweetly.

Erik was sat on the floor trying to levitate the metal twist that Howlett had given him, bending the metal as if it was string, and left him with the challenge to straighten it out. At the moment, with so many distractions, it would be all he had to lift it.

He was aware, at the edges of his skin, all of the other metal in the room, the copper kir kettle, the silver pot that the herbs were in, all of them feeling different, the iron trivet that hung over the fireplace, even the lead flashing on the windows, but the piece of steel was not doing what he needed it to.

The rain was thick as sheets and he knew it would be as cold and sharp as needles as lightning tracked across the sky.

Charles was spending the day with the Mourners, those who came to worship here and visit their dead, passing on messages from those spirits who hovered around him and gave him peace, although sometimes someone would inadvertently touch him and the Death Visions would roll over them both.

Erik had not known for nearly two years how much it meant to touch the Lord of Meirin.

It was worse for Charles he knew because he was so tactile. It mattered little to Erik if he was touched, it was better to be alone, but Charles missed the simple things like the heat of a shoulder next to him, or the ability to comfort a crying child. And so the Death Visions came.

So when Charles opened the door, soaked to the skin, and shedding clothes as he went, with his eyes so wide and his raspberry-stained mouth quivering that was what Erik thought that it was. When Charles stumbled across the room, still half in his jacket, with a sleeve trailing behind him like a tail, that's what Erik thought that it was. Charles stumbled and crouched into his arms before the fire, the piece of metal forgotten, as Erik breathed him in, and the chill of the rain on his skin and in his hair.

Charles didn't wait for explanations; he just started tugging on Erik's clothes, jerking them away as he tried to bury his skin against Erik's own. This was not unusual for the Death Visions, Charles hungered for touch and skin and it was not the first time, so Erik murmured soft empty words into his hair, and helped him take off his jacket, and his own.

Charles' fingers were like ice spikes against his skin, and tugged at his shirt and in front of the fire Erik let him, tugging it up over his head so Charles could mould himself against his chest. The magic was thick between them, as it always was when they touched. Then Charles lifted his head, and licked his red lips and tried something new. He kissed him.

Nearly four years or marriage and this was their first kiss.

Charles' lips were cold from the rain, and firmer than Erik had thought that they would be. His skin was like ice, and the rain was dripping down the skin of his back. "He's dead," Charles said against Erik's mouth. "Oh, by the Sanhikari, he's dead." And then he kissed him again. His mouth hot against the chill of his lips and Erik did not know why, but he kissed him back, running his hands over the damp skin of his back.

A different hunger came then. It had been four years after all. Four years was a long time for just the company of his own hand and Charles had not even had that, and he was beautiful, so perhaps it was natural that when Charles went for the ties to his pants that Erik turned him so that Charles was between the vee of his open legs.

It was skin hunger and loneliness and grief and need and whatever it was between them that meant that Erik never knew if he loved or loathed him, and the taste of the rain on the jut of his jaw.

It was a heady mistake.

He knew it even as his own fingers found the awkward knot of the points of Charles' trousers, the side of his foot trying to tug boots off the other, he knew it was a mistake. But he couldn't bring himself to stop, even as he told himself it was just because it had been so long. He told himself it wasn't because of the vanilla after taste on Charles' skin under the pine and the rain and the mountain and the salt of him.

His skin was rougher than he expected, and chilled from the rain and hot from the fire and Erik made his mistake knowing what he was doing, rubbing the hardness he felt against the matching hardness of Charles as Charles sobbed and jerked and thrust back so hard.

This wasn't about sex, or touch, or lust, or a hundred other things, this was about grief and death and arrogance and all the things that Charles was, and the hitch of his breath betwixt the sobs, the grunt of it, the catch of his toes against the gathered fabric of Erik's trousers and the wool of the rug and the snap and crackle of the fire and the flick of rain water from rain slicked hair and need.

This was about heavy lidded eyes and swollen lips and fingers digging into the ridges of skin between ribs and the knobs of wrists and ankles and the hair on thighs against fingernails and the taste of something other chased down into Charles' mouth.

Love was for other people.

They were equals.

There was vanilla and fire and smoke and pine and the aluminium taste of fear and the copper taste of lust and the silver of need.

That was what there was between them as they grunted and strained and pushed and so what need had they of love?

He also knew that when Charles cried out that it was not because of him.

When it was over, as Charles lay beside him on the rug, head tucked into the bend of his armpit, and the fire crackled and spat, Charles dragged lazy fingers through the semen on Erik's stomach, drawing looping figure eights. "She killed them all." He said quietly, looking at the designs he made, the hairs on Erik's stomach, the dip of his abdomen meeting groin. "He died, so she killed them all."

"Who?" Erik asked, his fingers touching Charles' hair because he was not ready to let go.

"Lady Vorador, Emma," he said, "someone killed Chase, her Senboshi, it was like being gutted, I felt it here, and she slaughtered them all."

"The men who attacked them?"

"No," Charles said quietly, "the entire town of Danev, she bound them there and through it all – the only thing I could think of was you. What I would be, what I would do, if you were lost." His thigh was across Erik's thigh, it was hot and heavy against him. Whatever they had, it was not love.

"I'm here, Charles," he said, trying to reassure.

"I know. But for a moment, I thought that you weren't and I just," he stopped, his eyes were red rimmed and his pupils dark hollows in the broken surface of his blue irises. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have. I just needed to crawl into your skin, to make the world go away in your smell and your touch and..."

Erik placed a soft kiss to the forehead before him. "Hush, it was mutual." He said bluntly. "You needed comfort and I could offer it."

Charles seemed to settle at that. "I think it was Sebastian." He said. "I think that he,"

Erik kissed him quiet. Not now, he thought, now here. When he pulled back he whispered, "then we'll go to Danev, we'll settle their dead."

"He plans a war, Erik, he'll break the world to get what he wants. He's broken Emma, what if the next one is Angharad in Dathyl-of-the-jetties, or Jehane in Dramathen." His lips wavered and he sucked it into his mouth, under his teeth, "if the draimae fight the world will shatter, and Angharad will rally the armies of the Western Emperor to fight and needs little encouragement."

Erik knew the answers to those fears, they were the soldier's answers and he was a soldier. "Then after Danev, after you have released the dead we will go to Dathyl, we will talk to Angharad, we will go to Dramathen. We'll do whatever we can to stop him, and then we'll kill..."

"I don't want to lose you to him too." Charles said cutting his off. "Can I be a little selfish in this?"

It was only later, when Charles was tucked up in their bed that Erik found the piece of steel- as straight and sharp as a sword.

The room was lit with a soft golden glow of scented vegetable oil its in lamp, hanging from a hook over the bed within the curtains, Charles curled into the line of Erik's armpit, with Anya sitting between them. She was a plump bundle of inquisitive grey eyes, just like her father's, and fat chestnut coloured curls that stuck up in every direction no matter how much Sean tried to control it with ribbons and clips. She had a comment for everything. According to Alex and Ororo who was her adoptive mother, she loved nothing more than being read to.

And so Erik made a point to visit her at least two times a month, and wouldn't admit how it broke his heart when she saw him and ran towards him to be swept up into his arms with a scream of "Dadja!" and such joy that it overwhelmed everything, and Charles came as often as he could, and she loved him just as fiercely as her four year old heart could manage. Erik hated leaving her, even if he understood the reasons why.

She sat between them, little white hand held in Charles, and Charles making sure as much skin as possible was touching Erik, long naked skin against his thigh, so he could touch her. "Remember the lesson of the hand," Charles said, rubbing the pad of his thumb over her fat little palm, "this is a game." And his voice was sing song. "This how you remember the gods and all that they are." He ran the pad of his thumb to her pinkie finger, "this is for Nosian, god of earth and soil, the horse that carries the sun across the sky, and his tower is Tanis, because it goes all the way down." he dragged his thumb down the side of her hand and she laughed. Charles repeated this lesson with her every time, but Erik suspected it was just so he could take her hand. "This is for A'seren, Lady of the Forest, goddess of love and war and wood and Gwen Ystrat." He pulled his thumb down to her wrist, "joined to your heart with magic threads to this finger."

Anya giggled, leaning back into Charles chest and Erik's heart swelled even more, until he thought that it would burst out of his chest. "And this one," he touched her middle finger, "is for Acuya, white wolf of the sun and fire, who is the golden wonder of the world and who watches over us all from Atalantis, lost to the forest. And this one," she wiggled her index finger, knowing the lesson, "is for Aileron, god of sea and star and water, the one who leads the way, who stands in Danev, just like this little finger leads the way."

"And this is the thumb," Erik said with a grin, having heard this lesson a hundred times, the same with Anya, "is for A'tua, god of death, who points back at you, and is of Meirin, where you will go when you're older, for you are of the house of Meirin, my darling." Anya reacted the same way that she always did when Erik called her my darling, burrowing in closer to the warmth of his chest and Erik felt that overwhelming surge of love and there was nothing more in this world that he wanted than to stay in this bed with Charles and Anya and the curtains drawn and the little well of golden light and Anya burrowed between them, giggling as Charles' quick fingers tickled over her rib cage and little pot belly, whilst her fat little feet kicked at the comforter and her chestnut curls, so achingly like her mother's, fell free of its ribbons and braids and clips and Erik thought no child could ever be so loved as Anya, who loved her "Dadja" and her Charles and who would never want for love.

"And this."Erik said, running his finger tip over her pudgy little palm as Charles had done, 妬s Selene, goddess of the moon and the dark and the quiet, the mirror of us all who watches over us in the night to protect us from the dark things.

"Dadja, no,"Anya protested, "tickles."And Erik reached down to kiss her curls and smell the warmth and sun and peach caramel smell of her and wanted forever nothing more than this.

South of Meirin was the bridge that linked the mountains to the mainland, across the Soulsease Chasm. The steppes slowly slipped into the gravel of the Jimpachi desert, where the city rose in sandstone blocks amidst which the ladies of the Satrapy glided like diaphanous ghosts in soft pastel colours against the white of the sun and a moistureless sky.

The very air felt gritty as Erik rode the horse that the Deathless had prepared for him. Charles sat behind him, his carriage unusable over the bridge, with his head resting in the hollow between his shoulder-blades and his hands insinuated up under his shirt to rest on skin. It was how they always rode together.

The sun tasted of cinnamon as Nathaniel led them to the Meirin House in the city. It was larger than the small manor in which they had lived in the shadow of the mountain but it was not huge. It looked like the estate of a wealthy, but not obscenely so, merchant. It was from there that Hank, a quiet and rather shy boy, managed the trade to the small town, and the business of ferrying the pilgrims and making sure that they returned by nightfall. Erik had only met him once, as the boy seemed to try to shed his own skin to hide from him.

The Satrap waited for them in their tiled parlour as Charles blundered in, throwing back his hood and shaking the grit and dust from its folds.

She could have been any age at all as Howlett and Tempest, the dark eyed woman who shadowed the wilding, pushed him back so that they were between him and the woman. She wore a sheer white gown that fell in waves about her feet, with her hair hidden behind a hood and silver mask the covered the top half of her face entire. She stood, gloved and hooded, beside a large mosaic that covered where the fire would stand in a normal room. "My lord of Meirin," she said and her voice was accented and sounded like sand rolling across dust and caught in the desert wind, "welcome to Jimpachi."

"What brings you here, Djibrille?" Charles asked, and unpinned his cloak, handing it to Hank who looked so scared he might swallow his own tongue rather than speak and gladly took the opportunity to leave.

"Then that much is true." She said quietly, folding her gloved hands into the folds of her sheer skirt. When she moved it sounded like the desert shifting under the sun. It was clearly deliberate. "When those who mourned returned from Meirin they spoke of you, they said that you were kind, but it is not hard to be kind to those who mourn."

"You don't believe he is the Tennosha?" Erik asked and raised his hand, the metal cup on the shelf wavered for a moment and then flew into his hand. "And you seek to test him?" It was a blatant show of power and she flinched, but it was well hidden. She tried to show nothing under her mask but Erik could feel it against her skin as if it was against her own.

"You doubt the word of your draima, Djibrille." The way that Charles said it it was not a question that he asked her.

"She is a seer," Djibrille countered, "locked in madness and all that remain are her prophecies, she spoke of a male tennosha and of horrors. I wanted to know if you were him."

Erik narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. "You don't think that, you believe her prophecies?"

"It is more that we have learned that it is foolish not to, but prophecies are not always what you think they are, they are open to interpretation and what Reia speaks of..." She fell quiet. "You are Tennosha, do the dead not also speak of prophecy?"

"The dead care little for the future," Charles said, "having lost the present. I doubt her prophecies will overwhelm us."

"She speaks of a war," Djibrille cut him off. "She speaks of draima against draima. She speaks of the empire thrown asunder and the dead walking. She speaks of the Fall of Meirin. She speaks of a woman in white walking battlefields as the dead rise to avenge her. She speaks of a ship crewed by the dead who serve a single purpose in the name of Death and he who rules it."

"You are scared." Erik said bluntly, his hand on the knife hilt in his belt, the other clutching the pewter cup he had lifted to show her.

"Scared?" she laughed, "I'm terrified. Jimpachi is small, we are nothing without the patronage of Meirin and we know it, we are bordered by Death to the north and the Desert to the South. If any of Reia's prophecies come true then there will be no Jimpachi, the water sellers will lie dead in the streets with their ewers broken, and the sand will rise." She let out a deep breath and stretched out her fingers letting her anger go. "Scared is for children," she said, "You will understand if I ask you to leave my city quickly."

"Why the mask?" Erik asked, surprising himself.

"So any of us can be Satrap, so we are all Satrap, timeless in the face of death and the sand." Those words had the echo of ritual to them. "Please, Lord Tennosha please leave this place. I have no power to force you and know what your handful of soldiers could do, for Jimpachi, but please, I beseech you to leave."

"I will leave in the morning." Charles said, not in any way suggesting that this had been his plan all along. "You are right, Djibrille, I have heard word of these prophecies, but I am not the one who will have to choose, I will not raise the dead in my name."

She didn't look eased by his word, "it's not in your name I'm afraid of." She said and looked at Erik. "Word travels fast in the desert," she said and her voice was dull, "we know of Danev." Then with her skirts rustling like tumble weeds across the sand she pushed past them, towards the door. "I don't ask for my own sake, you know that, don't you, Tennosha, my city is small and broken, but it is mine and I would do anything to protect it." Charles nodded as if he understood, but Erik was becoming adept in reading him, and the tension in his shoulders was anything but comfort.

Djibrille had upset him, or maybe scared him, because Charles was many things but he was not a simple creature given to singular moods. "I shall take a bath," Charles said, "perhaps you can arrange a light meal for us, Hank," he offered the young man a smile and Hank beamed under its intensity.

Then still clutching his desert worn cloak he turned and left. "Is there anything you want, Lord Senshisha? for dinner I mean." The young man, who was perhaps a year or two older than Erik although it was hard to tell he was so shy he immediately became the young man, looked terrified.

"You can call me Erik," Erik said, "and Charles likes fish." He offered out his cloak and one of the Deathless, Erik didn't see which, took it from him. They would spend a night in Jimpachi and then in the morning depart by boat for Danev and whatever it was that had happened there that had broken Charles and horrified Djibrille. Erik wasn't nearly naïve enough to think it was as simple as what Charles had said.

Charles waited in the water, raising his hand and letting the drops fall in slow plinks unto the surface between his knees. The water's heat had stained his skin a pleasant pink. He barely looked up from his meditation when Erik entered the room with an ewer of hot water to top it up. "I thought you might want this." Erik said and placed the ewer where Charles could easily reach it.

"Are you jealous?" Charles asked him. "Of my nudity I mean, I'm in the bath and we have a houseful of servants who could have brought me more water, but suddenly you're there. It's enough to make a person wonder that you don't want anyone else to see me." His hand fell to the water with a slap. "I don't understand you, Erik, all I know is that sometimes you're so angry I could fry an egg off the heat of it and sometimes you are so broken I want nothing more than to wrap my arms about you and growl at the world coming near, and sometimes I," he stopped. "I saw the way she looked at you."

"Yes," Erik said bluntly, "like grit in her shoe." He got the impression he was missing something, and he had no idea what it might be.

Charles snorted out a laugh, "you have no idea do you, the way women look at you, and the way that you look at them. You could have her, Djibrille, I mean, and you had Magda and Cassandra, the way she talks, if you were hers, and all I have is you."

Erik snorted in derision, just as Charles had. "Cassandra is dead." He said, "she means nothing to me, she was dead before I ever knew her and I'm not haunted like you are- to me she'll only ever be a name, and Djibrille is," he stopped. "I loved Magda, truly, the way her hair fell across her shoulders, and you would have loved her too. You're being melodramatic." He punctuated this by pouring the water over Charles head.

Charles laughed. "I'm going to do something tonight, and I want you to stay here." There was a hint of command in his voice but it was not something that Erik had no idea of. "It won't be dangerous, perhaps a little spiteful, but I'm taking Peter with me." Then he stood up, the water sluicing off his skin, "and I want, no I need, to take something of yours with me, to give me courage with what I do."

"You're going to see the draima aren't you?" Erik asked, holding out a warmed sheet for Charles to dry himself on.

"I don't think she is draimae" Charles said softly, "I think she's something else, and I need to ask her something, and if I take you then Djibrille will think it's an attack and it's not. We're still leaving in the morning, and I shouldn't be long, but I want something first, a way to reassure myself, a way to tell Cassandra to leave me be, for just a little while."

Erik raised his eyebrow but said nothing, continuing to rub the water from Charles' skin, this was normal for them. Charles could not be touched because of the Death Visions but Erik was immune so the little things fell to him. This was mostly as intimate as they got.

"Erik, love," Charles said, looking for the words, "I want you to fuck me."

Erik stepped backward, standing on the sheet and it slid underneath him, causing him to lose his balance. Four years of marriage and Charles had demanded nothing. Erik had long since accepted the way that his hands disobeyed to find him, and how natural the feel of his skin was against Erik's own, how he knew the heat of Charles' body as well as his own, but he had never asked him for this, and he used the gutter words, words he knew would have an effect.

"I want to know that when I walk into Djibrille's place that you are on my skin and dribbling out of my ass." Charles said it all so calmly, even as his cock stirred between his legs, and it made it all the more real. "And I want the dead to know, I want them all to know, that you are mine." Charles' mouth crooked up in a grin, a wolfish thing that wasn't something Erik was used to seeing on his own face, it made Charles look more adult. There was little childish left in him, he had reached his full growth, still slim, yet to grow wide as he would be in perhaps as little as five years, but he was not a boy, and he was no longer the boy that Erik had married all those years ago in Dramathen Tor.

"You do know what to do, right?" Charles asked, and let the sheet fall around him to show slim thighs and the twitching interest of his cock between them.

"The Deathless may have showed me." Erik said in a tone that surprised him with how blasé it was, because he thought that it would stutter or crack because apart from their strange frottage several days ago there had been nothing with him. "They may have been explicit, there may have been diagrams. They may have threatened to take Peter and pull down his pants to show me, Wade may have been especially keen on that plan."

A bubble of laughter erupted from Charles and damn if it wasn't the most delicious thing that Erik had ever seen, and he smiled. Charles took a quick step across and kissed him.

It had been easy in the four years to have nothing happen, and the longer that nothing happened the easier it was to maintain it, but like a dam had been burst when Charles had sought him out. Erik wanted. He wanted to chase the beads of water down the arc of Charles' neck, he wanted to suck blood to the surface of his supra sternal notch, he wanted to see the way that his wedding ring batted back and forth on its ribbon against his chest. He wanted to see the flush of orgasm rise up along his neck and jaw and the easy peace that came after where Charles didn't deny himself the wonder of touch.

He wanted to push him away, to say cruel words.

He wanted all of it and more, and he didn't know what he wanted or why.

The sex was easy, Erik knew what to do and Charles was responsive but there were so many other things, crowded out by the calm of Charles' touch and the taste of him against Erik's mouth, and the curve of his back and the slam of slim hips against his own. Sex was easy, Erik knew, it was everything else that was hard.

The Draima Reia was a small blonde girl who looked to be barely past first menstruation. She had large brown eyes and a soft expressive mouth that was barely visible under her hood. She wore a dress of white organza that pooled around her feet like a swirl of sea foam, and a heavy white cloak like a snow storm She stood at the deck of the ship, looking out to sea with eyes that saw through the horizon to the future beyond. She was draimae from the tip of her toes to the crown of her hooded head. She was wilful, demanding and spoiled. Erik did not know why Charles had freed her, other than what Charles had said, crawling into their bed when he returned, lifting Erik's arm with the ease of someone who had done this for years, and climbing underneath. "They kept her in a cell deep underground," he said into the darkness, as Erik pretended sleep. "She was naked and chained to the wall, I couldn't leave her there. I just wanted to ask." About the prophecy, Erik knew, but he didn't say anything. "Djibrille isn't a bad person, but sometimes the draimae go mad, not like we do, but sometimes it's too much and you need to put them somewhere quiet, away from the minds," Erik knew that Charles understood that, because the dead followed him, talking to him whenever he wasn't touching Erik, "I think that's how it started."

Charles was silent then for a long time. "I don't think she's mad, but," he stopped. "I just couldn't."

She stood at the rail, with her hands, long pale fingers with perfectly manicured nails, and Erik knew that she was not what she seemed to be. Thedraimae could not change their forms, such was beyond them, although there were legends and rumours of one who could, or had, a male born with the power, but it was a simple thing for a draima to change how they were seen. They lived in dreams and thoughts and could be whatever they wanted to be. The only thing that they never changed was the gold torque around their necks which highlighted their ability, they all wore that with pride.

Every bone in Erik's body suggested that he push her into the water to see if she would drown, because he didn't trust magic at all and those who controlled it even less.

He knew why Charles had saved her, but he doubted that she had been in the peril she had presented herself as. Lady Jehane had said that in his position as tennosha that Charles was almost immune to the power of the draimae but Erik wasn't nearly that naïve.

Her feet were bare against the wooden deck of the ship, although her cloak was pulled tight about her. The wind coming off the sea however was warm and balmy. It was not cold that caused her to pull the fabric tighter every time it billowed open.

"You don't have to false face." Erik said standing next to her, "it's too late to leave you in Jimpachi."

She looked at him for a long moment. "I don't like you." She said finally.

"I can't say that the sentiment isn't mutual. I don't like or trust you. Charles has vouched for you but we both know he can be a little soft hearted."

She tilted her head. "I could make you jump off this ship into the water." She said firmly.

"You could try, but then Charles would jump in to save me and we'd both drown." It was enough to stop her, everyone loved Charles, Erik knew, even he did.

She laughed, it was a high pitched broken sound. "He has a heart larger than himself." She said and her smile was that of a seductress and as false as the face she wore.

"You stand on a ship amongst the Deathless, I am Senshisha do you honestly think that you can seduce me?" He asked, "When you don't even wear your own face?

"If I wore my own face you would not even talk to me."She said, "There is no place in this world for one who looks such as I."

"Do you see that woman," Erik said gesturing over to Tempest, she wore a black gown and stood like a storm cloud against the prow, "She is Shiko-me, as much insect as person, and that man there, puffing tabac, is a Wilding. They see no need to hide their true face, so why do you?"

She lowered her eyes. "You would not speak to me if you saw me as I truly am." She said, "When all my life I have had to hide, even hidden away under Jimpachi I could not be as I truly am, are you so arrogant as to maintain that I must reveal myself now? Would you ask the Lady Shiko-me to remove her clothes? For it is no less offensive to ask me to remove my false face."

Erik laughed. "It is harder to get Miss Tempest to dress accordingly for she is used to going unclothed." His tone was simple. "Do you think any here would judge you? And are you not draima that even if we did you could simply pull it from our minds."

She frowned but her skin shifted, darkening in colour until it reached a dark and rich cerulean blue, her hair fell around her face and was the colour of blood, pinned at her widow's peak with a golden animal skull, and her eyes were like golden beads in her head with neither white nor pupil. "Perfection." Erik said quietly with a bow to his head. Reia made a small broken noise in the back of her throat, before the blue leeched from her and the pretty blonde girl stood there again. "Paraiko then, not draima, Charles thought to bring you to Dathyl, where such things as draima are more common, but I think that it will be best if we take you to the Termigent, to be amongst your own kind, amongst the Paraiko in the lost city of Atalantis."

"I think that you are naive," she said and pulled her cloak tight about herself again. "And I think you're going to make a terrible mistake and that the best thing that will come of it is that you care too much to hurt Charles, for he does have a heart larger than himself, but know this also, I am not nearly as fragile as he is, and if you do hurt him, even without meaning to, you will never forgive yourself and I shall stand sentinel over you to make sure of it, for I owe him no less for taking me from that place." The way she flapped her cloak about herself signalled the end of the conversation.

-

The battle had begun with a single arrow, a red streamer trailing behind it, before Angharad's forces, notable for the dark green cloth tied around their upper arms, with red flowers and soft bells because they had also served as garters for their wives because Angharad valued such things. She thought her soldiers would fight more fiercely if they knew that they were loved, by the lady who gifted them with the token, and the women who had worn it.

Jehane's forces were senshi, in polished bamboo armour with their standards on long pikes fixed to their horses, painted with their sigils and promises of violence and death.

Just after dawn the arrow flew and the two armies met, clashing like the sea against the cliffs below the Halcyon palace.

As the moon rose the battle was done, all that was left was the recovering and the dying. Erik had his A'seraphim about him, those soldiers who had come to him because they hated the draimaeas much as he did, leaving the Deathless to protect Charles. The A'seraphimhad their sigil, a pair of open wings, emblazoned on both their shields and the back plates of their armour.

There were a few fires still burning, little pockets of warmth and fire in the frozen night, but the air stunk of metal and sweat and the dying whine of horses. Two war-dogs kept pace with Erik, snarling at any soldier who came too close as he made his way across the field.

Charles stood out like the moon across the inky sky, like an image of Selene on a lady's tapestry, picked out with gold and silver thread. He wore white, it was a deliberate thing that the soldiers could see him, and beside him, in washed out white, was Remy, Wade and Cable, making sure that no one would threaten him, even in the thick of the fighting.

He held aloft a lantern, looking for the last of the heavily injured to carry to the medical tent where they would either be given their last rites of the Violent Death or the physickers would do what they could to save them. The light caught his profile and across the field Erik saw him say something, but it was too far to hear. He broke into a light trot to catch up with him, but by the time he had made his way through the broken bodies, and those who collected them, he saw Charles make his way into the physicker's tent.

Erik pushed back the fabric covering the door, gesturing with his head that his A'seraphim waited outside.

There were lanterns hung here and there and a few of the Deathless sat leant over old cots sewing shrouds around the dead, softly singing mourning songs as they pulled the fat needles through the old cloth, folded over at toe and crown, then brought over and sewed up with large looping stitches, the mourning songs to guide them on their way.

Charles was holding a soldier's hand. Whatever token had given him a place in the army had gone, and he could have been either from Angharad's Dathyl or Jehane's Dramathen, but he was clearly dying. Bloody foam frothed at his lips, and his eyes were tinted pink, and his chest pulsed wetly. He was also no older than Charles had been the day that Erik met him in Dramathen Tor.

Erik couldn't help but think that it was Charles lying there, because the boy had red lips and brown hair, and was so young. But Charles stood there in his stained and bloody whites, the purest colour of mourning, the colour of A'tua himself, and he had the boy's hand. "I'm scared." The boy murmured through the blood.

"I'm here,"Charles said softly, using the edge of his sleeve to wipe blood from the boy's chin. "I'm going nowhere."Erik had seen him do this before, because this was what it was to be the Lord of Meirin, to wear those leather gloves so he could take the boy's hand, so Erik just kissed him on the head and brought him a stool. It would take as long as it did, and Charles would not waver. He would wait and listen and be there, for this boy. He would always wait and listen and be there, because that's what it meant to be the Tennosha

And Erik would wait on Charles, because that's what it meant to be the Senshisha.

Danev was a small inlet at the southern edge of the Desert, where it met the fell lowlands of Sidi. The ground was dry and gravelly making it perfect for the growing of olives, grapes and lavender. Its primary industries had always been the making of perfume and the harvesting of salt, for such things it had in abundance, so Erik was surprised that the normally busy harbour was empty. The masts of sunken boats rose out of the water like the branches of trees, as if a great forest had grown out of the water.

"We'll have to take one of the row boats in." Nathaniel said looking at the harbour, "I think, Charles, it would be best if you and Erik remained here, Wade and Cable can go to the city and can return with what they know." Wade and Cable were the fiercest of the Deathless, and were often used, Erik learned, as a sort of front guard.

"And tell you what I already know." Charles answered, "That everyone there is dead. I'm going, Nathaniel, I don't exist for the living, you know that, I'm needed there. Do you need my help with the row boats?"

Nathaniel waved him off, and within the hour they were rowing to the city.

Erik would later tell Charles what had happened in these words, "You walked three steps and stumbled, but you were resolute. You took two more and grabbed my hand so tight I thought you'd break my fingers. Another step and you were vomiting over the jetty. That's when we took you back to the ship, and I asked Stephen and Anthony to stay, to bury the dead."

What he did not say was that when Charles took his hand rather than banish the dead, as it always had before, Erik saw them for the first time as Charles did.

The city was a charnel house with the dead lying where they fell, the tropical heat had brought lazy black flies the size of fingernails creating bumbling loops in the morning chill. The stench was something Erik would always remember, lingering in the back of his throat.

Whatever had happened in Danev it had been quick. People were ripped apart like paper. Some of them lay in pieces but more were reasonably complete. Nothing had been excluded, even down to the rats and mice in the street were all dead. The only thing left were the flies. Bloated bodies floated in the harbour. Dead prostitutes hung from the windows in bloody finery where they had hawked themselves to passing merchants. Children toppled over their toys, blood and who knew what matting their curls.

Erik could not have prepared himself for the sight of the dead. He expected them to be as they were when living, but he realised that that had been naive. They were as they were when they died, in all their gory, rotten horror. And the dead of Danev did not seem to know that they were dead, for they carried about their business unaware of the terrible wounds that beset them. A porter carried a large box on one shoulder without a head, just a wet open stump. Two children played tag weaving in and out of the sailors and merchants, without noticing how she had been disembowelled and Erik could count the ribs on his back, and the knobs of his spine, even the muscles there, stretching and pulling as the boy ran, laughing.

He did not blame Charles for losing his breakfast, he was only surprised that he himself did not.

But he learned one thing in Danev - this was what the Five Houses were capable of - this was what Charles was capable of.

He would kill Sebastian, he would make him pay for what he had done, for all the people he killed and those children still playing tag in the wreckage of Danev, and then he'd kill Charles. No, he corrected himself, he'd find the other bloodlines and leave Charles to last.

That night in bed Charles was needy but Erik was distant, sex had become a crutch between them in the few weeks since it had started. Charles needed comfort and Erik thrust it into him in slow lazy pushes, Charles made all the right noises, his arms clutching desperately around Erik's neck and Erik panted wetly into his neck, which tasted of sweat and sea salt and despair as Charles canted his hips to pull him in deeper and Erik hated him so much that he thrust harder and grunted louder and slammed the two of them into the down mattress until all there was was flesh and sweat and need and hate.

And afterwards, when he had rolled off Charles and wiped them down with a wet cloth that he had planned before, he lay there in Charles' arms, listening to the tu-tump of Charles' heart against his and he hated. He hated everything. He hated Lady Vorador for what she had done to Danev. He hated Sebastian for killing the Senboshi. He hated Shalon for finding him. He hated the God for choosing him, and most of all he hated Charles for being so weak and naive and he loved him, as much as he hated him. And that was worse.

He loved his soft hair, that curled under his fingers and the breathy gasps Charles made when he tugged it. He loved the curve of his neck up under his ear where Erik's nose fit so easily. He loved the way he laughed, with his large blue eyes crinkling, then the smile that eased across his face and then the laughter itself loud and raucous and free, but so hard won. He loved the way he pressed his middle and ring finger to his temple when there were too many dead and his mouth became a thin line.

He hated that he was a creature of power. He hated that he was some god's twisted gift to mankind. He hated that he made decisions without thinking. He hated the arrogant way that he treated Erik like he owned him. He hated that he was capable of such things as Danev. He hated that Erik needed him as much as Charles needed Erik.

He hated the way it felt between Charles' thighs, like nothing in the world mattered but this. He hated the way that Charles kissed him as if it might, if he touched or kissed or licked just right, all be all right. He hated the way he grunted when Erik thrust into him like he wanted nothing more than this forever. Erik hated this, he hated that he had no choice, although he might not have chosen differently. He hated everything about this and mostly he hated how he loved Charles who was murmuring against his pectoral muscle with lips slack from sex.

He hated that Charles loved him back as fiercely.

He would leave Charles to last, because that's what he had promised him in those fateful moments when they met, no sword would kill him, except Erik's own, and Erik hated that too.

He hated that he loved the mountain with its warrens and pine trees and how the air tasted like cold water, and the steps that led down to the jetty that were carved into the side of the mountain itself and the smoky green ignus fatui that lit the censers along the bridge, and the bustle in the early morning before the Mourners came, and then their threnodies, so sweet and slow and sad. He hated it.

He even hated that he hated it.

He hated it all.

"It's freezing out there," Charles said, coming back to the bed with two tankards of steaming hot kir, and making sure that the curtains were pulled tight before snuggling back into the heat of Erik's side, Erik tucking the blankets tight about his lap before wrapping his own arm around him, and taking one of the cups. "The snow must be knee deep."

Erik just kissed the side of his head, "good thing we're not out there, then." He said into the brown curls.

"We have to leave the bed eventually."Charles said, with a smile on his raspberry coloured lips, it curled around the lip of his mug.

"Details,"Erik said, and took a mouthful of the kir, even though the fire was up in the room the entire house was freezing, staying in bed was the only practical answer, and now he was warming through again Charles was toeing off his socks, and then placed the soles of his freezing feet against Erik's calf muscle, knowing Erik couldn't jerk away with the kir in his hand unless he wanted to cover them both. "You're wicked."He said to the man in his arms, "Just wicked.

They rode from a small harbour just south of Danev to the Danekawa Ford where they would take the river boat to Sidi, which loomed on the horizon from over a day away with its five black towers. "They call it the castle of the black hand," Cable said from behind Erik, but Erik was too on edge to be surprised that one of the Deathless was there. "It's as old as the Towers, but no one knows why it was built or how." It was a collection of five black towers, like a pruned rose bush, or a hand, with four towers, the sisters, together and the thumb apart. One tower for each god of life and the shorter, wider one for Death.

From Sidi they took the main road, through fields of barley and rye and wheat, sashaying in the breeze, and it was between Sidi with its market town and black stone towers and the white sliver of the Tower of Gwen Ystrat that they found her, barefoot and gowned, walking along the main road with her white cloak dragging behind her.

Lady Vorador, Emma, was the last thing Erik expected from the descriptions of her and the power she held. He knew these facts for certain. That she was old, perhaps even ancient, and she had used her power to maintain the life and youth of her Senboshi Chase. She was a draima and her house linked her to Aileron, the god of the stars. On the simple ritual Charles had taught him Danev was represented by the index finger, the one that pointed the way.

She stood on the field as the rye waved back and forth around her shoulders, and her hair was the colour as the crop, but just as poppies danced amongst the grain then her lips were a bright and angry red. She was beautiful, in the cold way that stars were, with pale blonde hair and large diamond bright blue eyes that he could make out all the way from where he stood, slightly behind the Deathless and to the right of Charles. She wore white, but the edges of it around her ankles was stained with red, like drops of blood upon virgin snow.

And despite the white furs she wore, and the leather dress, she was cold- that much was apparent. When she saw them she offered a broken smile, and then she changed, shifting until she looked like a statue of purest ice and her blonde hair became diamond strands falling like little razor wires down her back.

"Don't listen to her," Reia urged. "She's draimae and they lie." Reia conveniently overlooked the fact that she too was draima although it seemed her powers were limited to prophecy and glamour. Erik knew that Emma appeared exactly as she was. She did not bother with glamour at all.

"You don't understand, little death." She said and when she spoke it was in the old tongue and her voice was deep and rich like the furs around her breasts. Her body was as beautiful as her face, lush almost to the point of over ripeness, a tiny waist with large breasts and wide inviting hips, even in simple clothes, white as the clouds scudding across the sky, she was almost obscene. "What he did." She continued.

"I have had my guardian death only four years," Charles replied in the same lilting strange language that Erik did not know how that he understood, only that he did. "And I felt, all the way in Meirin, what you did in your grief. You know that I know I cannot understand," he paused, his hand wrapped around Erik's forearm, "But also that I went to Danev, and it fell to me to leave my guardian Deathless behind to bury your dead. Is that what you wanted for them, little star?"

"Does the little death not stalk the battlefields?" She asked, and her tone was snide, her entire body was as hard and cold as her tone, and her mien offered no surrender. "Does he not offer comfort to those who fall? You should thank me for giving you purpose."

"Does not the little star guide the way?" He asked her, "Does she not stay in her tower watching over those boats out at sea, or does she follow behind a man who slaughters draima in his own quest for power?"

She laughed then, and the sound was brittle, like breaking glass. "You think you know Sebastian's goals." She said, "You think you can understand why he does the things he does? why he tried to kill me that my Chase died? I will go to Dathyl-of-the-jetties where he hides in the shadow of Angharad and I will slay him for what he has done and try to prevent that which he has planned."

"And the dead of Danev shall never have peace when he binds you to whatever device it is that he has created." Charles spat the words back out. "I could not bring them to Peace, and I tried, the dead themselves forced me back, you have bound them to you and to that place and..." he stopped."I could understand things, little star, for half a world away I felt your grief in that instant, and your horror. Yet all you will do is help him."

"You think a mere human is powerful enough to kill me?!" she shrieked.

"No, but what of the wilding who follows as tight as his shadow?" Charles replied. "And in Dathyl-of-the-jetties he will have made moves towards the little wolf, perhaps enough to invoke her magic for his own purposes. Could you stand against that, little star, a draima and the little wolf both, and that is assuming he has not found the last. Four of the five houses remain, little star would you have your tower fall and your people bound there for ever?"

"And who shall kill me now?" She asked, and she was crying, little diamonds that fell along the flawless clear skin under which it was possible to see blood moving sluggishly through crystal veins like sand and how she was built with crystal muscles and crystal bones.

"There is a prophecy." Charles told her, "of the Great Death, the one who can control flesh, you are draimae have you not heard it said on the wind?"She said nothing, her hands clutching themselves so fiercely Erik wondered that they would not shatter. "And he shall kill us all. A male draimaborn to the House of Meirin so rich in death and magic, and he will unleash the Ningyo and the shiko-me and the Wildings. He will end the world and in its ashes we will all be reborn."

"Are you that one, little death?" She didn't sound hopeful or resigned, Erik thought, just cold, even though she was still crying, her eyes wet with it and tears that turned to diamonds as she blinked.

"No, I shall follow Sebastian, I shall be at his heels as the war comes, and I do not doubt that is what he wants. I am almost certain that he intends not to find the Mirror of Selene, but to build it, that her power was placed there when the demons killed her and then hung in the sky to replace her for it had her abilities. We know what happens when a draimais violently killed." He stopped. "They linger in the things they touched. Imagine him with the powers of Angharad and Jehane, and a thousand lesser draimae" he paused again, he was impassioned, talking as much with his hands as his mouth, trying to persuade her. "He did that with your star knight didn't he? He bound him to take his power with his life."

"Into that damned helmet before he cut off his head and cut out his heart and mine with it. I should destroy you now, little death, that you do not fall to him also, that you do not learn what it is to lose as I have lost." She stopped then smoothed her hand over her hair in a slow tic, "Is he here?"for a moment a hint of hope was in her voice.

Erik could not bear to look at her as Charles answered her. "No."

The air was silent between them for long moments. "Let me have my men escort you to Danev, you can wait there."

"And you, little death, will you return to Meirin?"

"It is your duty to lead the way, little Star and mine to guide them home. I will walk the battlefields as we always have, and I shall tend those who need me."

"You're a child," she said then, "and with a child's foolish dream of immortality. He will destroy this world and you with it, how else will a male draima rise if not through such machinations, and you put yourself in your path with one hand whilst holding me back with the other."

Charles offered her a little smile, a sad small thing. "It's all I can do." He answered.

"No," she answered, "You can call the Dead, you can unleash the Ningyo upon him with your Deathless."

"And slaughter Dathyl-of-the-jetties the way that you slaughtered Danev?" Erik asked, surprising himself.

"If that is what it takes to kill him." Lady Vorador answered and tossed her head, her hair made a soft tinkling sound as the strands fell against each other. "He cannot kill me, and he has tried, and when the House of Meirin lies shattered and the tower broken who then will guide the dead?"

"Then we are at an impasse." Charles said.

"You are just foolish children, hunting a man who lives for no other reason than to see the world burn, who has surrounded himself with those of power, half wildings and worse. You will die."

Charles raised his head. "Then I will die, but I will not let you kill him. Death waits for no man, little star, and it is in the role of Meirin to execute those who are beyond redemption, to take them beyond death. That is what I intend for Sebastian."

That seemed to appease her, if only a little. "I shall return to Danev, little death, and wait amongst my people. No man shall set foot there whilst I breathe, and when the Great Death comes I shall be thankful."

Erik wanted to ask couldn't she find another Senboshi but he already knew the answer. It wasn't possible. There was only one for Emma, and there was only one for Charles.

Erik dipped his pen into the ink, tapping it against the edges of the glass jar, before he brought it to the paper. It had taken a while for him to get used to writing like this but now it seemed so natural he wondered how it had ever been difficult. He lay on the floor, on the fur rug in front of the large inglenook fireplace in their little manse, and Charles had draped himself, like a limbless cat, across his back, with his face against the curl of Erik's neck.

"Tell her I love her," Charles said, watching as Erik started to write, the words, my dearest Anya clear on the paper, "And that I miss her and I can't wait for her to be old enough to move here.

"Charles," Erik laughed, "Let me say hello first," and Charles was a warm comfortable weight along his back as he wrote his missives to his beloved daughter, no, Erik corrected himself, their beloved daughter.

The Tower of Gwen Ystrat was completely different from the tower of Meirin. It sat in the shadow of the Termigent forest with water pooling around it through bubbling streams and gurgling ponds. There were hot spas and the dappled shade of the Termigent, and great roots that had been carved down into seats and even the houses of the village that surrounded the tower, because Erik learned there always was one, were little dimples of wood and moss built under the raised of the roots, and they were surprisingly much larger than they looked from outside.

The whole thing was almost painfully bucolic. It was like something out of a story book of how the Paraiko lived in the Termigent, but Erik knew that the stories weren't true because there was a great lost city, one that would fit Dramathen into the smallest part of itself, and the Paraiko were human enough, as much as they could be described as such when they were so blatantly inhuman creators of the great Gwythaint that circled the Forest, the wildings, the Shiko-me, theNingyo. All of the dark things inside the Forest, the things that prevented men walking through the trees, stringing them up like lanterns when they tried it they were created by the Paraiko.

And of course Charles was enchanted. The village in Meirin was squat stone houses, built for the mourners, but that wasn't what this tower demanded. Each tower had a god and the God of Gwen Ystrat was A'seren, the goddess of love and war.

She was immortalised here and there etched onto tree branches, and a statue that was actually carved into a stone as tall as Cable, who was easily the tallest of the Deathless. It was crudely carved in which it was possible to see the lines of a woman with her head cast back in a scream, her hair and the folds of her dress vanishing into the natural sweeps and clefts of the stone. Erik supposed it suited the goddess of love and war, that she was so unfinished.

There was a lingering faint smell of sulphur from the hot springs, which Erik thought kind of suited the place. With the old fire and moss and brimstone stink it smelled like old sex, rotten eggs and gun powder.

The Priestess, for she was not like Charles and a scion of the god, was a young woman in a bronze coloured leather shift and a crown of bronze. He had thought that the god of war would be affiliated with steel, but it was bronze that her priestess wore. She had dark red hair. "Wood", she said when she asked, "the house of Gwen Ystrat is affiliated with wood," and spread her arms to show the town that she ran with a laugh and a flash of thigh between her kilt and boots. Her laugh was like a fingertip dragged down the ridges of a rib cage "I am the Cor Morrigan," she said and her hair was like turning maple leaves in autumn. "But my people call me Natasha. If you have come here on your way to Dathyl it is because you want counsel, and live under the threat of war."

Charles' smile was devastating and he used it as a weapon mercilessly against her. He tilted his head, his brown hair curling about his ears in a way that made Erik want to push them back with a fingertip, "you know what is coming," he said, "Angharad has the law on her side, but Odin's reasons for denying her are valid, Luke should be the Western Emperor but that doesn't mean he will be. Say what you will but the viceroy has served the empire better than Laufey ever did."

She tilted her head, the panels of her headpiece clanging bronze against each other before falling against her cheek. "And yet it was his empire to destroy. The purpose of a royal hostage is to control both parties from war, and yet there was war once and there will be again."

"Laufey gave his youngest son to Odin," Erik said calmly, "as an act of distraction, he wanted Odin to believe that he would make no more claims on Caelum all the while he mobilised for war. The adoption was to give him time." This was what Erik had learned at the Academy of War, these were the politics of kings that created battlefields and even Sebastian's corruption of his education hadn't stopped him learning this. It was strange that he could admit now that Sebastian had corrupted it, but he knew why now, he was supposed to be Sebastian's sword, not Charles' but then Shalon had died. "Time to mount an attack on Caelum."

"Attacking Caelum is suicide." Natasha answered calmly, her tone was even. It was hard to think of her as the terrible assassin he knew she was. The Cor Morrigan was a title given only to the deadliest of the black artisans, if Natasha wanted them dead they would never know she was coming. In the Academy they called her The Subtle Knife because when a knife was sharp enough you didn't even feel the cut.

"It is a city of walls built in the press between two mountains, the only way through the city is through a mile of tunnel gated at both ends. Do not attribute planning to Laufey, he did not send his son to Odin, Angharad did."

"Angharad is draimae," Erik pointed out, "only the wife of the Western Emperor would have the right to offer a royal hostage and she cannot have children." That was a simple truth, the draimae were sterile.

"And yet with seven sons Laufey already took her as his third wife. The first died in childbed when Luke was born," Natasha said in her soft calm voice, Erik wondered if she ever lost control and if it was as terrifying as he supposed. "The second behaved like a good wife and threw herself on the pyre when Laufey died at Caelum. Angharad has every right to call for war. The viceroy is a good ruler but he is not the only remaining heir and Luke is held hostage, treated as is his right as an imperial prince, but still refused travel."

Erik thought of Luke, whom he had only briefly met when he had battled his brother in the bav'ath'mordell'teraslyn. He had been sharp featured and tongued, they called him the Crow prince and it was what he most resembled. He had teased Charles, lingering almost close enough to touch but never did, as if Charles was fire and he was scared he might get burned but almost wanting to.

"Odin does not like to let any of what he considers his assets from his sight." Charles said and his tone was delicate.

"And yet you are here." Natasha answered.

"I am here because my Senshisha fought for the right for us to leave and return to Meirin. I am here because I believe, no, I know, that Angharad is being manipulated by a man who seeks to use the life of draimae to make himself immortal."

"The Mirror of Selene." Natasha said and it wasn't a question but Charles nodded.

"I am going to be caught in the war either way, and I have some little sway over Odin, a threat I could call in, that gives me freedom because he is scared of it, and Fury makes sure that he never forgets."

"Fury is a good spy-master," Natasha said calmly, "but he is not a good man."

"No, but my place is, like yours, on the battlefield." Charles smiled at her again, his eyes, in this light, were almost topaz blue and Erik was caught by them, Charles had power over the dead but he was beautiful and beauty had power over the living.

Natasha was nonplussed. "Do you wish to hire me?" she asked as if she was asking something as simple as for more kir.

"No," Charles said bluntly, "this has gone beyond that. You know, of course, what happened at Danev?" for a second Erik saw the corpses again, the two children, torn and oozing, running through the shattered sailors in their endless game of tag. Even the rats and flies in Danev were dead. "I will not say that she was justified in what she did but I know why the Lady Vorador did it. What would your lady do if someone took her Aisenshi from her?"

At that Natasha did frown. "She would break the world." It was simply stated and without question. "She would call down the moon to swell the seas and drown the living. She is the human scion of the Goddess of Love and War, there would be blood and fire and..." she stopped.

"And I would call the dead." Charles said it simply, "I would summon the Shiko-me and the Wildings and the Ningyo and call the very dead from their graves to avenge my Senshisha. I would become the Great Death, the A'setra if it meant for just an instant someone else would know what it was like to love like that." And Erik was left breathless. He did not know what he would do if Charles died, but he knew his vow was to kill Charles.

"Your pet Paraiko," Natasha said calmly, speaking of Reia. "She told me that she thinks that you are doomed as lovers," she cocked a bronze eyebrow under her circlet, it was less a crown than a helmet Erik thought to himself, "she said that she thinks that your Senshisha loves you too much to leave you and hates you too much to stay. I laughed in her face and told her she knew nothing of love." Even now her tone was calm. "I see now she has it backwards, he loves you too much to stay and hates you too much to leave." And that cut like a knife because it was true. "There is war coming, Tennosha " she said, "and you are right, your Sebastian goads Angharad for his own reasons, I think, going over what you have told me, that it is to bring Jehane to him, for she is far more powerful than Angharad. He will of course make a play for you, but the house of Meirin does not bestow immortality."

"But the Deathless." Erik found the words had slipped out of him and he didn't know why. The Deathless had served for nearly five hundred years, Peter had said, they had served Setsuna, the great Lady of Meirin for whom the Halcyon Palace in Dathyl had been built, the wife of Imperator who had forged the Empire that was now in two. "They're immortal, aren't they?"

Charles laughed and it was such a soft fond sound that it mocked him. "Erik," he said, "they're dead." And that slapped him in the face, the Deathless, who had been his companions and in some cases friends, and Charles seeing that sobered and became almost solemn, "they were rewarded for their sacrifice when Setsuna was threatened and they were killed to a man, the entire company, and the Aegis brought them back, they don't," he stopped, "and they can be destroyed, that is when they become the Ningyo, they're just flesh puppets then, held together by sorcery and iron and," he stopped, "when the mind is gone, when all that remains of them, unable to enter true death, they become Ningyo. It's what the word means in the old tongue, puppet."

"And you can still call them?"

"From the Forest, yes," Charles said, "but they are instruments of slaughter, what they were before is gone, and all that remains is the kill. I have never seen them, only illustrations and what Cable has told me. They are," he stopped, the idea clearly upset and perhaps terrified him, "but I would call them for you."

Erik pushed his chair back from the table with a squeal and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him, but he still heard Natasha say "and he loves you too much to stay."

Erik walked into the forest, angry and humbled and a hundred things he couldn't explain but were so big that it felt like they were exploding out of his skin, like he could at any moment just shatter all over the trees. Howlett was sitting there, chewing on his rolled up tabac leaf. Charles never let him light the things. "You don't want to go in there, bub." He moved over to a fallen tree and sat down. "Them trees aint exactly welcomin'."

"I," Erik started, then shrugged, shaking his head, and went back towards the house.

"You don't wanna talk 'bout it." It wasn't a question, Howlett wasn't that kind of person. Everything about him suggested he was hoping Erik didn't want to talk about it.

"No,"

"Thank fuck for that," Howlett said, "wanna spar instead?"

"Wade's about," Erik told him.

"He's smiling at a priestess, don't know if he likes her or her knives." He grumbled, "probably the knives." He stood up, following Erik, who glared at him. "We're going the same way." He said as if it was an excuse.

"And if I want to be on my own?" Erik growled at him.

"You just nearly walked into the Forest." When people talked about the Termigent they always capitalized it, there were forests and then there was the Forest. "It doesn't like mundanes." he scratched at his chest as he spoke. Erik heard the horror stories about the Forest, everyone had, but it was just trees, it was the things that lurked within it that were terrifying, and Howlett was proof enough for that.

"I'm hardly that."Erik snapped back, turning and leaning into Howlett in a threatening fashion. Howlett just snorted with laughter around his tabac and with his hands thrust into the pockets of his pants walked off.

"Fucking wildings,"Erik snarled under his breath. He walked over to one of the pools and stood there for a long time just watching the water bubble and trying not to think. Charles wasn't supposed to love him, didn't he understand that. When Charles was distant it was easy, he could love and hate him and everything between.

"Erik,"Reia asked, she sounded concerned and had her hood up around her blonde hair, she always wore white and Erik wondered if there was a reason for that. He hadn't heard her approach, he'd been too busy avoiding thinking about Charles. "You've been out here alone for nearly an hour, is everything all right?"

He scoffed at her, pulling his charcoal grey coat closer about himself although he was not cold at all. He hated that he always wore charcoal, that assenshisha he was expected to wear the colours of mourning. He was tired of it all. "Has Charles said something?"

Erik turned at that, leaning into her. She had a wide heart shaped face with a soft nose, wide mouth and narrow eyes in this guise. He knew better, he wondered if her blue form was any more real. The Paraiko were monsters. He knew what they had done, what they had created in the Forest. Everything that came from the trees, even the Trees themselves, had been created by the Paraiko. The Draimae were the human daughters of theParaiko. None of them could be trusted. They were manipulative. They were cruel. Someone, something, needed to keep them in check.

Reia had intentions about Erik and Charles otherwise she wouldn't be so invested. She had an agenda and Erik couldn't trust her. "Is this about what I said to Natasha, about you? I didn't think, it just slipped out."

If Erik believed that then he was a fool, and it wasn't the problem at all. Charles would do what Emma had done. He would slaughter the world if Erik fell; if he lost Erik the way that Emma had lost Chase. Erik sure as hell didn't feel worthy of that. Natasha had said it, he loves you too much to stay they weren't supposed to love each other. It was easier when there was just the bond.

"Get away from me." Erik said pushing her, hard, because she stumbled. "Or I'll cut out your heart and present it to Charles for breakfast." Years of being around the Deathless meant that Erik knew how to deliver a threat, you made it outlandish and behaved like it was perfectly natural, that no matter how ridiculous it was you would make it happen.

"Charles doesn't eat meat." Reia answered, but she stepped away, with her head bowed and Erik could swear he had seen the ghost of a smile on her lips, and hear it in the sussuration of her cloak and skirts about her white leather boots.

It was nearly dark when the woman with the white stripe of hair came up to him. She was completely covered. She didn't wear a gown, but instead skin tight leather that left nothing to the imagination but not a single inch of skin was on show except for her face, and even then she was hooded. She wore gloves and a strip of leather across her forehead but the white portion of her dark hair framed her face prettily. Her eyes were as green as the forest and her mouth bee stung. She had a fierce ripeness. "I'm Mari," she said in a voice like molasses. "I think we need to talk." He went to say something but she cut him off. "I am the Beloved," it was a title, the common name for the Aitenno, the scion of A'seren, the goddess of love and war.

"I have nothing to say."Erik said bluntly.

"Maybe you just need to listen." She said. "I am not like the other Scions." She hugged herself tightly. "If I touch you then you will die, even myAisenshi cannot withstand my touch." He appraised her, trying to figure out where she was taking this. "I will never know what it is to love and be loved in return, because that is what it means to be the Beloved." She sounded sad. "

"Of all the reasons he has to go after this Sebastian the only one that matters to him is what he has done to you. Think on that, Erik, I could tell you your future, but instead I will tell you this." She licked her bee stung lips. "Do not trust Reia, love is it's own reward and it's own punishment. Do you know what the motto of the House of Gwen Ystrat is? Setsunakutemo zutto It's a promise of fidelity despite death, even though it kills me, always think on that, Senshisha Is it truly so awful to know that he would scour the world for you?" She tucked her hair behind her ear with gloved fingers, "and what would you do to prevent him harm? Your vow to him, is it so different from our Setsunakutemo zutto?" She paused for a moment. "Love is rarely enough, but it's a foundation, what comes of it must be your decision, think on that, Senshisha."

Erik said nothing to that because the words were gone, as she walked back amongst the shadow of the houses amongst the trees. Natasha had said it, "he hates you too much to leave, and loves you too much to stay." Erik looked at his hands. Even though it kills me, always. He kicked at the rocks around the pool, and went back to Charles.

Charles was sat reading in front of a small fire that was set in a pit in the centre of the room, with a spit over it, but there was nothing cooking. He had pulled one of Erik's coats over his shoulders, and thick woollen socks. He had a pair of optics resting on his nose and his hair was a mass of cowlicks and he had never looked more beautiful to Erik who stepped across and wrapped his arms around him. "I had no choice," he whispered into Charles soft brown curls, and the winter cream shell of his ear, "but I'd still choose you."