Habitually flawless beta provided by sailorstkwrning, all remaining mistakes are mine.
This story is a belated birthday gift to my darling Chilla, who was very patient with the process and only threatened to sell me on eBay five times.
The plot for this fic was lifted, with deep gratitude and shameless abandon, from Eleonora Ratkevich's short story "Beyond Honor". The original is, of course, richer and better written; if you read in Russian, you should definitely give it a try.
People coming from the Foundling tag: these are not the droids you're looking for! Alas, the whole complicated fantasy AU this story alludes to mostly exists in our heads and chatlogs. Maybe I will make Chilla write it properly one day.
People coming from No6 tag: I AM VERY SORRY and hope you stick with the story until the end. Mind the tags and fear not.
When the fleet of Kingdom of Sale came into the harbor, there were no signs of trouble.
Hardison and Parker rode to the harbor to meet the Crown Prince Shion and his entourage together, with Eliot like an attentive, bright shadow behind Parker's shoulder. Later Hardison would remember being so pleased with himself, so satisfied. The truce and protection pact with all but finalized Sale, the diplomatic legacy of Lady Sophie on which he had spent two grueling years almost brought to fruition. Letters and alliances and courtiers and diplomats, all making the right friends and the right gestures; and yes, ultimately it came down to Illeria offering help to Sale when it was being torn apart by a civil war, but nobody could say building on this foundation was easy.
And now, the Kingdom of Sale was strong once more, the rightful king Adolphus the First set firmly on his throne, queen Harriet by his side, the king's nephew Shion - the heir apparent - returned from wherever he was hidden during the war. Returned, apparently, with an entire fleet, and the fleet's captain - Lord Nezumi, who was rumored to be an ex-pirate, now Admiral of Sale and, Hardison thought, quite obviously, if not openly, the Heir's lover.
Details, details: Hardison went over them by the rote, all the while looking at the bright blue forest of canvas rising over the harbor. A beautiful fleet, rumored to be invincible, backed by all of Sale's might and influence, and, as soon as the agreement is signed, one that would protect Illeria's shores from enemies on the seas. One that would keep them safe.
Boats from the flagship touched the bank; the Heir, a slender young man with shockingly white hair and scars circling his throat and arm, came ashore, with his glowering dark companion beside him, and an entourage of sailors and soldiers and diplomats behind him. Parker straightened in her saddle and spread her hands out to them in a traditional greeting, painfully and beautifully regal, and Hardison followed suit. He knew that Eliot was unobtrusively checking the perimeter of the harbor, noting the positions of his people and of newcomers, looking for threats, movements, flashes; he thought that he might have caught an understanding, warily respectful nod between Eliot and Lord Nezumi.
People shouted in welcome and threw flowers, in the earnest happiness of relief - no more black canvas rising on the horizon, no more burned seaside towns, no more pirate raids - and the sun beat down mercilessly and merrily, and Hardison was so sure nothing was going to go wrong.
He should've known better.
As far as parties went, this one was pretty decent. Usually the Fleet got the worst diplomatic missions - mostly, in Nezumi's considered opinion, because His Majesty used Shion's aggressive and unstoppable sweetness as the ultimate weapon in negotiations. But Sale was a last stop on a long circuit, and clearly a reward assignment. These people really, really wanted the alliance to happen, and the mood in the court was earnestly cordial. Nezumi even liked the royal couple, different as they were from Sale's rulers, and the Lord Protector, the man with carelessly smiling mouth and shrewd, careful eyes.
The accord had been signed earlier in the day, with grand ceremony and to deafening cheering of the crowds, and now only an evening of revels separated them from sailing home. Home; the word still tasted weird on Nezumi's tongue, after so many years of having none.
From Nezumi's nicely secluded corner he could see Inukashi amid many hopeful courtiers - women and men, of course, and somebody was bound to get surprised by the end of the night - while in the other corners of the ballroom, handful of officers and diplomats mingled and laughed. Somewhere in the middle Shion was making his rounds. A couple of hours more, and they could retire; the Warder of the castle had, either as a too well-informed but kind gesture or as a sly hint, assigned them rooms next to each other.
The prospect was so appealing that Nezumi left his corner and moved through the throngs of laughing, swirling people to see if he could extract Shion from his admirers early. He had almost made it to the center of the thickest knot of people moving towards the gardens when somebody screamed.
Nezumi whipped around mostly on instinct - not his castle, not his people, not his trouble - and then the crowd parted, one woman screaming one flat, unbearable note, and left - and left - impossible -
Shion was laying in the middle of a rapidly widening empty space, drowning in red and gold, and Nezumi knew at once, by the angle of his body and the shape of his outflung arm, that he been dead before he hit the floor.
There was a deafening roar in his ears; the faces of the guests blurred into one terrified, open-mouthed smear. He seized on his rage as the only thing that still made sense - betrayal! betrayal! invited as dear guests, flattered, unprotected, and Shion was -
His people were flocking to him now, hands on their swords and daggers, and he was ready to strike, to give the signal to ships in the harbor, to kill and keep killing until there was nobody left alive in the whole city, so Shion's killer could not escape - and that's when he caught a glimpse of blood red ahead of him in the panicking crowd.
He lunged forward, grasping, and caught a handful of somebody's cloak. A cloak smeared in Shion's blood. Its wearer tried to twist away and Nezumi dashed at him, focused now, cutting his legs from under the stranger, pinning him down with a dagger to his throat and finally seeing the face of the killer.
Lord Spencer's face, impossibly unruffled. Lord Spencer, with blood on his clothes and his hands. Nezumi pulled him to his knees, still holding a dagger to his jugular, and then glanced down - there was a knife tucked into Lord Spencer's boot, and when, at his nod, Inukashi pulled it, it was coated in blood as well.
This was when King and Queen arrived and stopped in unfeigned shock. The king asked, in a tone of rising outrage, "What is the meaning of this?", and Nezumi thought that they might still need to start the war to get their justice - and that's when Lord Spencer said, in a completely flat voice:
"I killed the Prince. He insulted my honor."
Hardison was quietly yet obviously panicking by her side, but she held firm. However monstrously impossible what just happened was, there would be a reason - there would be a solid, understandable reason, and Eliot will give it, and this unfamiliar new world will right itself in an instant. They just had to play along for a while.
The dungeon's heavy door clanged shut behind them, and she felt Hardison's hand flinch in hers. She strode down the corridor, dragging him along, guards hurriedly snapping to attention in their wake.
He was in the last cell, door barred shut with overcautious firmness. Two men before it were visibly nervous to guard the famous Lord Protector, and they bowed with something akin to relief. She sent them away with a wave of her hand, dismissing their half-hearted protest.
The cell was bare and cold, but clean; somebody, either out of spite or of genuine respect for Eliot's undoubtable abilities, had bothered to put chains on him. She looked at his inscrutable face and breathed out. Of course the terrible confusion of last hours would bleed away now; her sanity would be restored.
Eliot bowed as far as the chains allowed him. She opened her mouth to demand explanations - reasons - sanity - but Hardison beat her to it, rushing to Eliot. She could feel the effort it cost him to lower his voice, to keep the conversation unheard by people outside.
"What happened, Eliot! Why did you - what kind of plan is this? Is the Prince hidden somewhere? Whose conspiracy is it?"
"Conspiracy? I thought you were there, Your Majesty," - Parker mouthed "Your Majesty" to herself, words bitter like ash on her tongue - "and heard me. He offended me and so I struck him down; were other reasons needed?"
"What? No, stop this; this was bad enough back there for the Admiral's benefit, but don't give it to me now. We still have to get you out of town before he can claim you for Sale's justice - so will you stop lying to me?"
"But I won't bother to lie. Or do you think I have no honor to defend, my lord?"
"No, but..." - and Hardison actually stepped back from Eliot's cold, amused drawl, and Parker steadied him, her hand on his back. Her heart was pounding with something that felt like terror. She said, "Of course you have your honor, Eliot, you know we know that, but you know how important - you will not - you won't -"
"Won't kill? So what, my lady, I can kill on your behalf, but it's impossible for me to kill for my own amusement? Perhaps you don't know me as well as you think."
She stared at him, trying to find the merest glimmer, a sliver of lie - of hope - of salvation - and found nothing, neither in his crooked smile nor in his flat stare. Hardison took another step back, and she leaned into his shoulder; she distantly noted that her hands shook.
She drowned.
"Perhaps you're right," - she said, and passed her hand over her face, and heard Hardison gasp. - "Perhaps We. Do. Not. Know. You."
They turned and left, and there was not a sound in their wake.
The punishment for high treason was death, and killing a Crown Prince of a foreign nation in a wake of signing a vitally important accord between two kingdoms was, undoubtedly, high treason. High Treason. The phrase kept running through Hardison's head, all sense lost on third or fourth repetition.
Death that had been claimed for Sale, for the King and Queen beyond the sea, now left without a heir, and Hardison was thankful for Lord Nezumi for taking it out of their hands, and hated him. Hated him since, high treason or no, insanity or no, senseless murder or no, he'd still drug Eliot's guards and bring a saddled horse for his escape - but Sale's ships were in the harbor, and nobody, looking at the Admiral's pale, still shocked face, doubted that his sanity was hanging by the thinnest thread, and that he'd burn the city at the smallest provocation.
So Eliot's death was claimed, but Eliot's life in Illeria has to be released, first. And here they were, high on the marble terrace under blinding sun, and to Hardison's right was Parker's composed, emotionless face (her hands were shaking in tiny, almost invisible tremors; he was probably the only one who could see that), and to Hardison's left was Lord Nezumi, his long fingers gripping the balustrade tightly, his face twisted.
Hardison would've changed places with the poorest, dirtiest beggar in the city, in an instant, just not be in that place and moment. But he was caught as surely as fly in amber, and owed it to Eliot to watch.
They brought Eliot to the gallows in the beggar's cart, hands chained together, and yet he stepped out of it with same easy, catlike grace he used to move through the castle's halls. Hardison thought he could hear Nezumi's breath whistling through his gritted teeth; Parker did not make a sound.
Eliot went up the gallow steps, back straight and head unbowed, looking so wrong there - in his best court finery, with his sword at his side and the chain of his office glinting on his chest.
He went up the steps and bowed towards them, face unreadable - Hardison recoiled, as if from the blow. The crowd fell silent, and Hardison held his breath with it.
The executioner yanked the chain off his neck first, golden links tearing and glinting. No more Lord-Protector Eliot Spencer in the kingdom of Illeria (no more Eliot kneeling before them in sunlight, no more happy disbelief in the angle of his head). Then his clothes, the cloak and the surcoat and the tunic, all the beautiful finery (no more silk whispering under Hardison's fingers, Parker's laugh, Eliot's amused fingers never fumbling on ties and hooks), taking away Lord Spencer, courtier and royal right hand. Then the broadsword, breaking under the executioner's axe. One of the shards cut Eliot's cheek, but Hardison could swear that the flinch, quickly smoothed away, was justified by the cut rather than caused by it. Nor more Eliot Spencer, knight of the realm (no more Eliot falling down between them on the altar steps, blood flowing away, face serene).
The guards stepped back in, almost reverent now, caught - or perhaps only Hardison was - in the same feeling of dignified wrongness of this, time stretching endlessly in the obscenely golden sunlight, and turned Eliot around, guiding his chained hands to the hook high above his head. The executioner picked up the whip. Hardison tried to close his eyes and found he couldn't expose himself to this sound without the sight. He covered Parker's hands instead with his, and tried to will it all away - to unmake the day, hour, moment - it didn't work. The whip whistled and fell, flew up, fell again. Hardison counted along with the dull terrible sounds of leather meeting flesh.
Eliot didn't make a sound.
At "thirty" the whip finally stopped. Hardison could've sworn he heard the sliding blood hitting the wooden planks. The same guards brought Eliot's arms down and turned him around.
Hardison looked at him, helpless, and then at Parker, and back down again; knowing if there was a hint, just a hint of pleading, of emotion, of something in this beloved and alien face, he'd risk a war, a rebellion, anything, he'd have the strength to stop all of it.
Eliot's face was flat, expressionless, his eyes empty and cold.
Hardison shuddered and held on; the executioner stepped forward, the branding iron sizzling in the air, and pressed it to Eliot's chest (the patch of skin as helplessly, intimately known as the rest of Eliot's body; now gone). The brand: traitor; exile.
Parker rose and turned around without a sound, and Hardison made himself rise and turn with her.
Eliot Spencer of Illeria was no more.
Illeria was well-known for her mages, and the best ones had been dispatched to spell Shion's body and keep it unchanged for their travel home.
Nezumi carried him on the ship himself, and then to the cabin they both shared - used to share - and laid him on their bed. It made him seem insane, maybe. He knew the sailors were starting to whisper; he didn't give a damn.
The world was going gray, losing colors too fast to hold on. He sat at the foot of the bed for hours, willing Shion's serene, slack features to change, and nothing happened. He tried to sing to him, the same song that once lead Shion out of his tortured dreams, but the words scraped his throat, coming out ugly and coarse. He held Shion's cold hand, thumb sweeping over Shion's knuckles in a hypnotising, useless gesture, and tried to think a day - a week - a month ahead, and couldn't; the world was grey, and vast, and empty, and the only thing left in it was to get Shion - his body - back to the family, and to deliver his murderer to justice, and then, well.
Somebody was hammering on the cabin's door and he ignored it. Then Inukashi barreled in, all brisk and angry movements, and said: "Either you do something about this man's wounds, or he's not going to survive until Sale."
"Get somebody else to deal with him."
"Everybody is either furious with him or terrified of you, or both. Nobody's going to as much as give him a glass of water without your explicit permission, and you're the only healer on the ship. Decide by yourself."
The door banged shut, leaving Nezumi no chance to say that he didn't care if the murderer rotted in the hold, that he in fact hoped for it. But then he looked at Shion again (hopelessly, always, arrow pointing north, and what would he turn to when they put Shion in the ground?), and imagined Shion looking disappointed and sad. Shion would've given his last shirt to his murderer; Shion would've been in the hold with him hours ago, trying to bandage his wounds and talking to him, finding some kind of connection. Shion would have-
Shion was too kind, and now Shion was no more, and he had no business being disappointed in Nezumi in the wake of such an enormous, glaring betrayal. But the cabin was too small to contain his imagined disapproval. Nezumi picked up his medicine bag and stormed out.
On deck, people scattered out of his way, all except for two marines guarding the hold; by their faces, they would've been glad to scatter as well, but for their duty. He said, "Bring him water and food every day, we're not savages," and pushed past them.
The murderer sat crosslegged, a chain connecting his manacled hands to the beam. There was a momentary flicker of surprise when he saw who entered, and then his face smoothed into same unnatural calm it had held since Nezumi caught him. He inclined his head, absurdly politely. If he tried to talk, Nezumi might have killed him on spot, and for a moment he wished for this moment of relief - but the man stayed silent.
Instead Nezumi brought the lamp closer to inspect his back. Some of the welts still bled sluggishly, and the three largest ones were infected - perhaps too fast. The brand on his chest was inflamed and weeping pus. The man, for all his outward calm, smelt of sickness and stale despair. Nezumi grimaced and went for his bag. His hand found a bottle of laudanum and he pushed it away with almost a distaste - then thought of Shion, swore under his breath and picked it up again.
He thrust it at the murderer, but the man made no move to pick it. Nezumi hated him for making him speak, but snarled: "Take it. I'm going to clean and sew it up, you'll need the opium.", and was replied by a quiet "No."
"Take it or I will kill you, right now," hands almost shaking to do just that, to stop this farce and then just go and curl up by Shion's side, to never get up again - and this time the bottle was accepted.
He gave the laudanum some time to take hold, then started his work on the man's back, brisk and efficient but not pointedly cruel, healer's instinct overruling everything else. And then saw that way the muscles quivered, heard the way breath hitched with an effort to hold still - and when he jerked the man around, he saw the little pool of laudanum spilled next to the man's knee. The bottle was empty.
Nezumi seized it and threw it against the wall in a moment of pure animal rage; the man looked at him blandly.
Nezumi went back to his cleaning and stitches, doing his best to ignore the small, tightly controlled flinches of pain the best he could. In his mind, Shion was shaking his head, upset.
He covered the welts with bandages, gathered everything and turned to go. A quiet voice said "Thanks." as he closed the door. He pretended not to hear it.
He left with marines the instructions to change bandages regularly. But when he came to check on the prisoner in two days, the man looked worse, not better, and the infection was back. He went to clean the wounds again, angry at himself for not doing a thorough enough job for the first time, and almost dropped the rag when the man said, as if sensing his thoughts: "There's no fault with your work, Lord Nezumi; exile wounds just never heal well. It will hold until Sale, in any case, and won't matter after. You needn't bother."
Going by the multitude of scars on his body, the man probably knew about their treatment as well anybody could. Nezumi stayed silent, finished the process and went on to clean out the brand again.
A freshly healed scar, the one that looked like it was caused by an arrow, or a crossbow bolt, was just under it. Nezumi knew the story about it: for a while the tale of Illeria coronation ceremony was a topic of talk in all surrounding kingdoms. He touched it now, mindlessly, and his mind stuttered. The man who was, by all accounts, loyal if not just, and steadfast, the one who never dueled -
The rage was rising again, and he welcomed it; rage brought color with it, even if this color was red. "Why did you strike him in the back? Why did you - "
The murderer gazed back at him, quiet and unmovable, and said with terrible gentleness: "For all it's worth, my lord, it wasn't personal."
Nezumi fled.
When Nazumi brought Shion home, it was the King who cried and the Queen who held his hand and stood straight and firm. Nezumi thought, irrelevantly, that they were more like Illeria's monarchs than he thought before.
When the murderer was brought out, he looked even more terrible in the bright daylight than in the uneven lamp light of the hold, pale and gaunt and exhausted. Nezumi refused to feel bad about it. He hadn't been back to the hold after that last conversation, but he had given strict orders that the prisoner be tended. It wasn't his fault the universe was unkind to killers.
Now the heavy lassitude of grief was creeping over him again. Nazumi kept himself moving, knowing he had only a last handful of steps to make, before being left in peace. When they went into the chapel, he sat down heavily, on the steps near to Shion's coffin. His eyes felt full of sand. He had a moment of unwelcome connection with Shion's murderer over this resigned exhaustion, this inevitable movement towards the end.
The King came over to kiss Shion's forehead. His palm ghosted over Nezumi's hair for a fleeting moment, and Nezumi welcomed it, but was too tired to look up. The Queen came second, but didn't touch him; he was grateful for that, too.
They settled at the dais. The guards brought Spencer in and made him kneel in the middle of the floor. Then Lord Gideon moved forwards and put a round black crystal in front of him, and then put Spencer's manacled hands on top of it. Nezumi held his breath, despite himself.
The King took in a breath, and then said, in an even, steady voice:
"Eliot Spencer, formerly of Illeria: why did you kill my nephew?"
Spencer said, without missing a beat and in the same flat voice he used back then, "He insulted my honor, Your Majesty," and the stone immediately flashed blood red.
"You lie," Queen Harriet quietly said, "and lying is said to be bad for your immortal soul before death, Spencer. Why did you kill my heir?"
Eliot exhaled, roughly, and said "I told you, he insulted my honor," and the stone shone red again. "He did, he said - it was insufferable, and I couldn't let it," - red, red, - "stand, I'm telling you the truth!"
Nezumi had to raise his head at this and stare in astonishment: Spencer's face was twisted in something like panic, the first strong emotion Nezumi had seen on him - and this from a man who faced banishment and public humiliation without a blink.
Spencer was trying to raise his hands from the flashing stone, definitely panicking now, lies still tumbling from his lips, and something in this undignified, terrified struggle made a picture in Nezumi's head shatter and be put together anew.
Eliot Spencer, an ex-mercenary, a military man, a commander, refusing laudanum when it was prudent to take it? Laudanum, the drug that soothed pain away but also loosened the tongue? Lord-Protector Spencer, the one who got his position by virtue of almost becoming a coronation sacrifice, the man who was rumored to sleep at the feet of his lieges bed (if not in the bed proper), who put such obvious weight on loyalty - killing Shion over a mere slight, Shion who was unable to offend anybody if his life depended on it, Shion whose death could've so easily triggered a war?
The temptation to just let it go was so strong that Nezumi could almost taste it. What did he care about the fate of one Eliot Spencer when Shion would never wake up again? But Shion would've never let it go, and so Nezumi made himself say: "Your Majesties, it seems to me you're asking the wrong question of him."
The King caught his eye. "Yes, Nezumi? What question would you have us ask, then?"
Nezume stood up and looked at the kneeling man, and then said, as calmly as he could:
"Eliot Spencer, formerly of Illeria. Did you kill my lover, Shion?"
"Yes," Spencer said, immediately, and Nezumi didn't even need to look at the stone to know it would flash red. "Yes, yes, gods damn your cursed lying stone, I killed him, I did, I did!"
The veins on his neck were standing out; the welts on his back had probably opened in the struggle. Nezumi gaped at him, but it was the King who asked, in astonishment:
"But... why admit to it? Why then?"
"Because I saw your face!", Eliot shouted at Nezumi, "because I knew you, because we are the same, and you were ready to start a bloodbath there!"
"You were ready to start killing, you were going to give an order to the fleet, and I would've stopped you, I could've cut you down right there, and then it would've been a goddamned war, and I couldn't - we couldn't afford it, not even for a sake of your broken fucking heart!"
A stunned silence settled in the chapel, and into this silence the words poured. "I don't know who it was - I didn't see, in the crowd, but I caught the Prince as he fell and I knew he was dead, at once, and you were moving through the crowd and I just had - a moment - and it would've worked, it all would have been fine if not this damned magic."
He turned to the King and Queen now, and it felt terribly wrong to hear the naked pleading in his voice.
"They didn't know, either - these ships, this treaty, we need it - they need it - and it's still, it's still my fault, I was responsible for their safety - I missed the killer - it's still life for life. I beg of you. Please take it and let it go."
Nezumi slumped back against the steps, astonished and heartsick, and that's when he felt a Presence - and when the giant, iridescent wings opened under the dome of the chapel.
He'd felt the touch of the guardian deity of Sale only once before, when he was officially acknowledged as the part of the country, and Shion held his hand under this very same dome, excited and radiant. But even then he had not actually seen her, and hadn't heard her voice.
He saw Eliot's astonished face; the King and Queen kneeling; the touch of the wing shattering the manacles on the man's hands and freeing him from the stone.
Then her clear, merciful voice rang over the chapel: "Life for life! I am satisfied!", and the Presence rolled over him, inexorable and terrible like a perfect storm, filled with the droning of thousands of bees and the smell of spring rain. And then, impossibly, Shion in his glass coffin shuddered and took a breath, and then coughed, and sat up.
Nezumi felt a light, ethereal kiss on his forehead, and heard the fading words: "Thank you for bringing him home."
He heard, behind him, gasps of surprise, and then a dull thud of a body falling down - Eliot finally giving up - and none of it mattered, because Shion was looking at him with his soft, bewildered smile, and Nezumi clutched at him and held, and held, and held.
Later - much later, when Shion was safely asleep in Nezumi's bed - Nezumi heard the king talking to Eliot, now also safely ensconced in bed, and attended by the kingdom's best healers.
"Our family and Our kingdom owe you a great debt. How can We repay it? Would you want to get a ship back to Illeria as soon as possible? Our fleet will be, of course, at your service."
There was a long, heavy pause, and then Eliot answered, quietly: "If possible, I'd like to ask for nothing but hospitality of your court while I heal, Your Majesty. I doubt I will ever return to Illeria."
"But surely the order of exile will be recanted?"
"It's not just that," Eliot said, and went into a paroxysm of painful-sounding coughing. "I had to make them believe me, so Lord Nezumi will believe them - and I had to, to show my face to them, to persuade them."
"I made them be tools in my plan, and I knew that it was - I knew it was unforgivable, and I did it anyway. It's best if I never return, Your Majesty."
The King said, softly: "For the sake of our kingdoms, if not for just yours, I hope you're wrong, Lord Spencer. But you're, of course, welcome in Sale as long as you wish to stay. Sleep, now."
Parker's anger filled the hallways and rooms of the castle like a living black cloud, and everybody quailed under it. Hardison tried to reach to her and failed, time after another. An empty space laid between them, the absence of a presence, and he could not bridge the gap, because the same anger sizzled in him as well.
When Lord Sterling begged an unofficial audience of both of them, it was almost a relief. Lord Sterling's audiences usually meant bad news, but right now Hardison would've welcomed another war, if just to stop thinking.
"If I can speak freely, Your Majesties," Lord Sterling said, "I hated that homicidal upstart of yours as much as anybody else; but he did not do it."
Hardison almost choked on his wine. "What?"
"I have a story for you, my Queen, my King. A boy in one of the noble but impoverished families tried to kill himself two days ago; he failed initially, but died of the injuries later. The boy's guardian, his brother, was afraid to call for a healer because of what the boy said in his delirium. But one of his household servants owes me a favor, and so I was apprised of the situation, and thought it prudent to check some information. The brother, of course, saw the wisdom of cooperating with me."
"What did you find, then?"
"Turns out the boy was one of a few who were much enamored with our good Lord Spencer, and the execution... left an impression of him. Because, as it came to light in his last moments, the boy loved to play cards too much, and ended up being indebted too deeply to a man who was forgiving to a point, and then called the debt in."
"The boy was one of the courtiers; all he had to do was to attack the Crown Prince and melt away in the confusion. Simple, easy, and all the debts will be paid: how was the boy to know that his hero would take credit for him?"
Parker was so white Hardison was afraid to look at her. His own ears were ringing. He asked so she wouldn't have to: "Names, Lord Sterling, names!"
"Ah, but I have a boon to ask first, my lieges. Promise me immunity for the boy's family, and you should have the one who ordered the kill."
"Do you," Parker said with such quiet, deadly menace that even Hardison almost recoiled, "dare to negotiatiate with Us right now? Over this?"
Lord Sterling was, apparently, a braver man than Hardison gave him credit for. He leaned back from her rage, but continued firmly.
"I do, my lady. I need to protect my informants. The family is ruined, the brother is a finished man. The boy tried to hang himself and botched the job: it took him two agonizing days to die. Whatever you could do further won't change anything. And it won't bring Your Lord-Protector back."
This time she was the one who had recoiled, as if struck, and Hardison finally found it in himself to go to her, to put his hands on her shoulders.
She said, "Very well then, my lord. You have Our word. Give me the name, now."
"Damien Moreau," Sterling said, and Parker nodded.
"Find him for me. Seize him, bring him. Everything he holds dear, I want to be destroyed before the ship leaves the harbor."
Lord Sterling bowed to her, and left.
She turned to Hardison, and they looked to each other, helplessly. She swallowed one dry, choking sob, and he went round the chair to kneel at her feet, put his head on her knee.
She said, "Will you go?"
He answered: "I will bring him home to rest."
There was no way to send the word ahead, but Hardison hoped the circumstances would excuse him. He spent the whole endless journey pacing from one end of quarterdeck to another, mind spinning in a neverending circle of dread. Somewhere in the dark, treacherous corner of his mind the tiniest sliver of hope lived, and this hope was unbearable.
He was going to take back - if he was allowed, if he could beg well enough, because oh, how they had discarded the right - the body. The body. He repeated it to himself, over and over, trying to make the sounds resolve into reality, and the sharp corners of the words kept tearing his throat.
Unbelievably, they arrived before he lost what was left of his sanity. He sent the messenger ahead before leaving ship: it wouldn't do to barge on another kingdom's land unannounced, despite the urgency of his errand.
As he expected, a delegation came to greet him and pick him up not two hours later, and it was - predictably - lead by Lord Nezumi.
Hardison looked at him and hated him on sight; there was nothing of that shattered, howling grief left in his face. Inscrutable and aloof, and Hardison wanted to scream at him: if you cared so little, why did you have to take him from us, why?
He knew the answer, of course, and nothing in this answer was Lord Nezumi's fault, and nothing in this knowledge made things better.
"Another killer for us, is it, Your Majesty? On his confession alone, or do we actually have evidence this time?"
Hardison almost lunged at him, but stopped himself barely in time. It didn't matter; nothing did, except to do what he came to do.
"Confession and solid evidence, all ready for your perusal. We're ready to give up the prisoner right now, of course, but I've hoped to talk to the king."
"What for?"
Hardison swallowed, and made himself say it, out loud: "We want to take the body back. To bury Spencer in his homeland. To take him home."
Lord Nezumi stared at him for a long moment, face inscrutable. Then he said abruptly: "Why don't you come with me," and marched out.
This was strange - and bordered on insulting - but Hardison was so heartsick he couldn't find it in himself to care. He followed, matching his stride to Lord Nezumi's, not caring about his attendants and guards clattering to catch up.
Harbor, turn, another turn, houses in all shades of blue, flowers climbing up the walls. Finally they came to the castle gates (guards gaping but not moving to stop them) and walked through a bewildering labyrinth of gardens and archways and courtyards. The waves of cicada song were overwhelming; later on Hardison would remember this silent bewildering walk as one endless summer dream.
There was a tiny pavillion tucked in one of the smaller gardens, and Lord Nezumi stopped in front of it. Behind the screen door a voice - a familiar voice, though Hardison's brain immediately rejected it - said: "You can't seriously be thinking of getting up to train, your back has barely started healing," and then somebody replied, "Can and will, it can't be put off much more," and then.
And then.
Eliot came out of the pavillion, and Hardison's mind stuttered to a stop and broke. Not a ghost - pale, face drawn and sharp, and with that ugly, hateful brand on his chest - not a vision, not a...
There were thousand of things Hardison would have to know, later, but the only thing that mattered right now was that he stared at Eliot (alive, alive, alive, alive), and Eliot stared back at him like he was a ghost, looking almost - scared - and nothing made sense and nothing mattered more than making him stop looking like that.
Hardison walked forwards, slowly, the air wavering and stretching around him, and fell to his knees, fingers clutching hopelessly at Eliot's hips (alive, alive, real). Somebody behind him gasped in outrage or astonishment, and he didn't care.
He looked up, as if in prayer, and said, "Please come home".
When the ship has finally dropped the anchor in the harbor and Alec came to collect him, Eliot had - for all he'd deny it to his dying day - to steel himself before leaving the dim safety of his cabin. This would mark his second return from death to Illeria, and repetition should've made things easier - but the memory of thousands of angry, intent eyes watching him being broken lingered.
He promised Alec, though - as helplessly as he'd promised anything else, ever. He knew, from the beginning, that he'd end up giving anything to them, everything, and there was no point in anything but graceful surrender: and here he was.
(Wasn't it funny how he kept trying to die for them, and didn't quite manage every time? Perhaps it was time to try something else).
Outside, when they went to the boats, the sunlight dancing on the water was too bright; he raised his arm to shield his eyes, and then saw people crowding the harbor, people lining the streets, silent watching people in mourning black.
He said, "What?", and Alec answered at his elbow, "We thought I was going to bring your body home," quietly, and Eliot lost his words.
They sailors rowed. They stepped off the boat (rough cobbles of the city streets, and here he thought it was lost to him, and here it hurt, despite anything) - and when they did, and somebody brought him a horse to ride, a soft, amazed sigh rose and whispered over the crowds, people in the first rows rocking forwards in a single astonished movement. The noise rose and and rolled ahead of their little procession, and Eliot stared straight ahead and tried not to listen, and his head hurt and his back hurt and his chest hurt, and the world was a strange and wavering place, and only Alec at his elbow was real and bright.
The ride seemed to have lasted forever, but finally they came to the castle walls. In the gates a frail, solitary figure in full court mourning stood. It hurt to look at her (We. Do. Not. Know. You.), and it was impossible not to. He guided his horse forward.
Closer, closer. Her golden hair glinting under the sun.
Finally she saw him, and for a moment there was incredible, shining joy in her face that had almost undone him. Then she swallowed, and held her chin up, as if bracing herself for a blow.
And ah, Parker. Alec he loved with helpless delight, but Parker he knew as if himself, in their sameness. What laid between them was unforgivable, could not be forgiven, and she didn't expect it to be. She'd take his revenge, unflinching, and ask for no mercy, just as he took hers; but what was the point of coming home from your death if not discounting your debts?
He dismounted and dropped the reins into somebody's waiting hands, and strode to her as fast as his legs would take him.
Took her cold, beloved, merciless hands into his, drowned in her face.
Said: "I'm back home."