Path of Repentance
By: Amber Michelle
...
The crimson drapes closed Sanaki's sitting room against the sunset so the large rectangle space was lit by the glow of a dying fire on the hearth, set into the center of the back wall near her bedroom door, and one crystal lamp on her dining table by the window. Her guest cast a large shadow with his black wings, darkening the front corner, the sepia shape of their arch projected onto the pale ceiling and moving slightly with the lamp flame. She fingered the lip of her wine glass and looked at the pattern of light it cast on her tablecloth. "I'm sure this won't be the last time I tell you laguz tradition is completely incomprehensible."
Naesala shrugged, and the bottom of his wings flared a moment, then slatted back together. "If I hadn't made a business out of understanding yours, I'd say the same."
His knees bunched the lace covering against the surface. Sanaki kicked his feet off the table base; they thumped to the floor, muffled on the carpet, and their place settings rattled - just the glasses, small plates adorned with uneaten berry tarts, and a decanter of muscat wine. "Let me guess - pressing the issue is tantamount to rebellion?" She didn't wait for his answer before going on, though it was a nod as she suspected. "I'd think, honestly, the father of this hypothetical heron child wouldn't matter. Between the king of Phoenicis, the king of Kilvas-"
"Not anymore, thank the-" His mouth twisted and the last word hung between them. Three years later, going on four, and nobody present with her in the tower liked to say the word 'goddess.'
"Nevertheless."
Again, he shrugged, and the table trembled when he again placed his feet on the ornate carving of the base underneath, the feet in the likeness of gnarled roots. "Anyway, as long as she's having him, I'd rather be somewhere else. Like the Desert of Death."
She let one corner of her mouth curve up. "Thank you, Kil- Naesala. I'm flattered."
"You said it first," he said, showing teeth with his smile. "'I'd rather sup in the deepest pit of the desert of death than share a table with Lekain,' right? I agree, by the way. It took a week to wash the taste of his blood out of my mouth."
Sanaki sipped from her glass on that note, and reached for the plate laid between them to lift a thin chocolate wafer the shape of a cherry blossom and lay it on her tongue. Straight from Melior, or so he said, and there was a milky smoothness to the taste unlike the deep, sweet flavor she was accustomed to tasting in chocolate made in Begnion. There was more where that came from, he told her when he arrived: cooking chocolate of the same variety, another flavored with spearmint, and a block of white chocolate just like the slivers she'd tasted on that dessert at Elincia's table years ago.
He watched her take another piece, refilled his glass, and she held hers out. "I'm surprised they didn't try to convince Lehran to marry her," he said over the slide of garnet oblivion into her glass. "Since he's the only heron not directly related to her."
Stay here? No. I have my part to play in the rebuilding as well. Do not be selfish, my empress.
"If you ever say that again," she said, pulling it back to swallow a mouthful, "I'll cut your wings off and stuff my mattress with the feathers."
"Whatever you say, empress."
...
...
The trees shed their blossoms in favor of heavier green cloaks, and those turned yellow and some red before the former raven king, now diplomat, returned to Begnion. Sanaki decided not to ask where he obtained the ruby pendant he bestowed upon her - for the hospitality, he said, as if she'd already invited him to stay - but the ring around the scroll he delivered next was clearly of Serenes make. The entwined cords of gold, hair-thin, were too delicate to be anything else.
"I heard about your announcement," he said, pulling a chair out from the table with a scrape, turning it, sitting on it backwards. "Over in Daein. Micaiah asked me if I knew anything about it." Naesala folded his arms on the filigree carving shaping the back, and his wings bent at an angle she didn't recognize before they folded in again, curled to rest against his arms. The longest of his feathers whispered across the rug. "Don't you need kids? At least one."
"I don't need to marry for that," Sanaki said. She dropped the ring onto the table, let it clatter and settle, and unrolled the scroll. It smelled fresh and green, like clover and a babbling creek. The message was short and to the point, penned in a hand she wished she didn't recognize - so they're employing him as secretary, she muttered. What a wonderful use of his talents - and Sanaki let the bottom curl up again with a dry, folding sound. "This... is cause for celebration."
Naesala wasn't looking at her, but at the verandah beyond her glass doors, and the wisteria curling down from the overhead trellis, swaying in a movement of the air they couldn't feel. The vines were mostly bare, but not quite brown, the flagstone tiles outside littered with seed pods of the same color. He looked relaxed, but his hands gripped the top of his chair tightly.
It was no stretch of the imagination to picture her own feelings if the situation were slightly different. Sanaki took her seat across from him and stared at the back of his chair, remembering when it belonged to someone else by custom. The scroll she tucked behind the flower vase on her side. "I'll send my congratulations by courier."
He nodded.
She leaned back and wished their refreshments would arrive. The ends of her hair tickled the back of her neck, slowly escaping the hold of her gold clips to curl and spiral over her shoulders, kinked by a long day twisted up against the back of her head. If he'd come later, she would have met him in something less formal - a plain dress instead of her stiff layers of red and imperial purple, and her hair released from the contraptions of rank. But it was always like that between them. First they were two monarchs allied for the sake of their respective interests, all business, and now rank separated them again, literally and philosophically, she an empress, he an ambassador, sometimes messenger, but no longer king. No longer suitable, according to the rules of society, to sit in her company and share a pot of tea.
Perhaps it didn't matter. Begnion's traditional ranking system was in shambles. In any case, he was better company than Oliver when the topic of herons came up. "When can I expect news of the birth?"
"In about ten years."
Sanaki watched his face for a sign he was joking, but his forehead was smooth, and none of the telltale lines around his mouth or eyes indicated a secret smile. "Should I send my sympathies instead?"
For the first time in three years, she watched Naesala laugh.
...
...
Sometimes a letter reached her from Serenes by other hands, and when she unfolded the paper to see handwriting still familiar to her, even after five years, or six, the rich cream of the parchment and precise, unblotted forms of ink were accompanied by a scent Sanaki knew only in Sephiran's presence - sandalwood, something sweet like fragrant amber, and a note of spice. His hair smelled like it, his clothes, his skin when freshly washed and oiled. She'd had a dream once of applying it herself, just to his arms and hands, as she'd never seen anything else hidden beneath his coat and clothing, and wouldn't have considered looking until he was too far away, too long gone to ask.
Today, it might say, after a formal greeting, I discharge another duty to Begnion owed for my freedom. The agents involved in Daein's reconstruction under our rule were as follows...
He hated her so much she'd not received one personal missive from him. When he replied to her question about the passing down of her heritage, Lehran directed her to Micaiah. When she asked him to return and face his so-called duty, he directed her to Tibarn. When, irritated and ready to burn his letters in the first of autumn's fires - all of them, everything she'd saved - Sanaki wrote a note demanding his presence to stand in for a consort she would never have, come floods or divine judgment, he wrote his first and only personalized reply.
You know that is impossible. I won't repeat that mistake even for you, my Sanaki.
It lay atop the others in a flat cedar box the size of her two hands spread out side by side, crumpled because she'd crushed it in her hands and then had to straighten it out to read the rest.
No man could ask for a more lovely child. I have always cherished you, but I cannot - will not - ignore the needs of my clan.
Child, he called her. Child. She would be an old woman, half a century down the road, and he would still call her a child, wouldn't he?
Please try to understand, he wrote. Time passes so quickly—I could not bear it. I left, I blinked, and she was gone. Someday— The ink was a slightly different color when he crossed that out, started again. Someday, when you have borne your children and I have seen to my duty here, I will return – but not today.
Yes, someday- when she was ancient like him and no longer cared. Was that the idea? It was an excuse - a sop for her wounded feelings, another pretty lie like every other he'd told for as long as she could remember. Sanaki didn't bother to reply to it, or to any letter after. The tone of his writing seemed relieved from then onward, though nothing had changed that she could point out. In her dreams, she stroked his feathers, and breathed hints of sandalwood and sweetness stirred by her fingers.
...
...
"You want to what?" Naesala stared at her when she greeted him at the beginning of his next visit, slightly hunched.
Sanaki planted her hands on her hips, looked him up and down. "Is it that unusual? You flirt shamelessly. It must have happened-"
"It's pretty common to ask when you want to sleep with someone," he said. His gifts were being delivered by caravan this time; all he brought to her sitting room was a blue bottle of wine - the first vintage ready from Serenes, and a treat of unparalleled sweetness, or so everyone said. He sat it on the table, pulled his chair out.
She waited for him to seat himself and remained where she was, standing beside the table, the drapes half-closed against the dark of night and the rope still in her hands. "Well then." Sanaki pulled them closed, fiddled with the parting so it remained sealed, and said again, "May I touch your wings?"
His black eyebrows lifted, twin arches. "How old are you again?"
"Nineteen winters," she said, leaving the crimson velvet to stretch her fingers for the arch of his wing. For once he let her touch it instead of drawing away.
"A child."
His feathers were smooth and cool, and smelled like dust and wind - icy wind and wispy clouds, the sort she saw when flying on a pegasus. "I'm sure some of these bones are delicate enough to break if I squeeze hard enough," Sanaki said, stepping closer. They were soft and downy on the inside under the bone, warmer there on her fingertips, tickling. She felt the black shape curve around her and glanced at Naesala without turning her head.
He met her gaze at the corners of his eyes. They glinted, lit by a room-full of lamps and candles. "Do you believe anything I say?"
Sanaki felt the feathers shift, fluff when the pads of her fingers slid past. "My experience has proven no one with black wings can be trusted."
His arm curled around her waist and she stumbled sideways, lost her balance when the back of her knee hit his chair, and sat hard on his lap. It wasn't as comfortable as it should have been. She felt the muscles tense and cord beneath her thighs, and he smelled like leather, wind, pine, nothing at all like Lehran. Her fingers had curled into his feathers and pulled. She smoothed them out quickly and tried to ignore the tickle against the side of her throat, the moist warmth on her ear, when he said, "Mine aren't the wings you want to touch."
"And I'm not the woman you want to bed." Sanaki tried not to breathe too deeply or quickly, and trying only made her do both. "Since when has that mattered in politics?"
His chuckle reverberated when she was so close, made her want to shiver or shift off his lap. "Politics."
Sanaki felt her arms prickle with goosebumps when his lips warmed the lobe of her ear and his teeth made it sting. "What would you call it?" She cleared her throat and tried to strengthen her voice. Beneath her fingers, his wings shifted and stretched, feathers revealing more feathers, soft and warm, and her other hand wrinkled the warm, fragrant leather over the contour of his arm. "Or should I ask?"
Naesala turned Sanaki's face toward his and claimed her lips. She supposed the answer was 'no.'
...
...
Perhaps it wasn't a raven's wings Sanaki wanted to touch, but they were no less interesting to feel in the dark than she imagined Lehran's were; their shape blocked the tiny lights peeking through her sheer bedroom curtains, long, sharp crescents of black with serrated edges, soft to the touch, warm blankets to doze beneath while he stroked her thigh, her calves, the outer curves of her breasts. Naesala let his hair loose and it tangled around her fingers. In the morning it tickled her ribs when he leaned over to wake her, streaking over his back, shoulders, arms, in wavy dark blue lines.
He was most definitely attractive sitting on his legs and staring over at the pale gossamer light of the curtains, his hair gathered in one hand at the nape of his neck. Strong, solid, the pale light caressing his arms, chest, legs, sculpting out the shape of his muscle- heavy, so he sank into the mattress, and he moved his wings slowly to avoid hitting the hard wood posts, which he said would hurt like hell and maybe crack a bone. He'd done it before in someone else's bed and nearly been caught when he couldn't fly away.
"You should stay in today," he said, turning back to her. His eyes had a peculiar gold glint she would've attributed to lamp light, only the wick had burned out hours ago, before the first time she woke in the dark, his hands demanding more. "Take a long soak in that pool you call a bath, and try not to walk a whole lot. You'll regret it."
Sanaki pursed her lips, let him take hold of her ankles and pull her legs straight. She saw where his eyes went when her legs were bent. "I suppose you would know all about hiding the results of a deflowering. How many angry parents set the bounty hunters on you?"
"Only one," Naesala said, chuckling. "They seemed to think their son was ruined."
She tried not to laugh, rolling her eyes to the underside of her blue canopy and the reverse embroidery stitches depicting, of all things, lilies, in sky blue thread. He'd piled her pillows up behind her, so she sat up against the headboard, her hair spread out across to the other side. The blunt ends reached her knees when she let it flow loose. All the covering you really need he said when he undressed her. The rest is just in the way, especially when you wear that ugly court costume.
Her formal clothing wasn't that ugly; the dress was a normal dress, long and gauzy, with a high neck, and with the mantle of her office it simply covered every part of her body a man would consider worth seeing. She did not go to audience to be ogled. Her ball gowns made up for it by revealing skin with their exceptionally low necklines.
"I'll warn Sigrun and Tanith not to skewer you," Sanaki said, drawing her legs up and over the edge of her side of the bed, sitting up, gathering her hair with both hands to pull into reach. "But if they find you in here now it'll be worth your life - or at least your feathers and maybe an arm."
Naesala's hands pressed her shoulders down when she tried to stand, then took her hair, and she felt it pull slightly when he ran his hands down the length. "I can take a few pegasus knights, your majesty," he said, and the purr in his voice when he gave lip service to her title made her straighten her spine reflexively and shrug her shoulders. His fingers picked out tangles, smoothed, moved up from the ends, and her scalp only twinged once. Not a strand broke under his care. "We're going to do this right."
'Doing it right' meant combing her hair to a shine with his fingers, oiling it, arranging it in a looped style she assumed was significant, for it was done with ritual intensity before the mirror above her dressing table, by feel, as his gaze never left hers. He bathed her, massaged the kinks out of her lower back, and Sanaki thought she would have responded to his innuendo and flirting much sooner if she'd known he would spend so much time on her comfort. Love and leave- that was what she'd heard of him via rumor and whispered tirades behind the remote stacks of the library. He should have the courtesy to remain until morning, she'd heard a senator's wife mutter. Being king doesn't mean he can afford to insult me- after all, he's only laguz.
Why had they bothered to court his attention when he was only laguz?
"Where will you go after this?" Sanaki asked while he buttoned her day dress, the shadow of his wings engulfing her. "I thought Daein, but that wool you shipped is a Marado product, isn't it?"
His shadow shrugged. The fabric pulled across her shoulder blades. It was blue, the color of his hair. "I don't have any pressing appointments. Tibarn won't expect Daein's shipment for another month." He hooked the top button, stepped back. "Unless you want to get rid of me, that is."
Sanaki watched a dangling vine wave outside, a gray shadow on her curtains. "No, I think I have a new use for you now." His fingers fussed with her hair, and something clenched deep within her chest, between her ribs. She'd let her hair flow loose and unadorned since Sephiran revealed his wings and left- without a good-bye, only a correction: not 'Sephiran,' your majesty. Not anymore.
I hate you. Her eyes stung. She closed them.
"Stay," Sanaki said.
Naesala's arms curled around her waist from behind. "Your wish is my command."
...
...
Scars toughened the underside of Naesala's left forearm, and Sanaki rubbed the pad of her thumb across the shallow ridges on the rare occasion he slept in her presence, likening them to calluses. They matched the color of his flesh, so one didn't notice them unless the muscles in his arm bunched - then they stood out bloodless and smooth, four long scratches at intervals to match his own fingers. When the pact mark appeared, he said, he tried scratching it off; when that wouldn't work, he tried cutting it out, or would have, if the old buzzard - his words - hadn't caught him with the knife and interpreted the situation incorrectly.
Or maybe it wasn't a mistake. Naesala didn't elaborate beyond a simple statement: he stopped me, and I didn't try again. Suicide wouldn't have saved Kilvas. Perhaps he didn't understand why, at the time, but the appearance of the thing on his wrist after he took kingship made the nature of the mark clear. Sanaki wondered what she would do in a similar situation and remembered meetings with the senior senate when she was younger, knowing it wasn't the same; she'd never had any power to begin with. The people suffered regardless of her cooperation.
They suffered now. Still.
"Why didn't you fight?" Sanaki asked one evening, after that discussion, while they sat on large, round rocks overlooking the glassy stillness of a circular green pond in her water garden. The sky was still light, yellow and pink, the dark purple of night still lingering far beyond the skyline of Sienne at the eastern horizon. Hints of red and orange fish caught her eye beneath the surface of the water, but the glare of the sky obscured the bottom, made their arcs difficult to follow.
Naesala's eyes tracked something below, and she supposed his eyes had no problem piercing the mirror of the pond. "It would've been stupid to fight it, empress. You know that."
"I don't mean the pact." She leaned back on both hands, felt them slide a few centimeters down the smooth curve of her rock until she curled her fingers and braced her arms to stop. "Tibarn claimed her, and you didn't fight him. Why?"
His wings, spread wide to relax, to soak up the last of the sun perhaps, drew inward slowly. His flight feathers sifted through the grass, against the ferns. They'd chosen to break from their walk in the drooping embrace of a willow's green branches, which swayed when he pulled his wings in. "The idea is to unite the bird tribes, not rip them up some more."
"Either of you could have done it." A wet, mossy scent made her want to wrinkle her nose. The lotus blossoms were closing with imperceptible movements of their petals inward. Every time she looked they were slightly different.
"Nobody would support me if I won."
Sanaki turned her face away and looked at the streaks of golden sky between the weeping branches. "Would you?" She stretched her legs out, crossed her ankles above the water, almost getting wet. "Can you defeat him?"
"Maybe."
'Maybe' wasn't good enough, was that it? She was under the impression rule among the laguz was determined by strength. Granted, strength and the training to use it correctly were normally bred within family lines- at least among beorc. Sanaki herself, if born to a common family, might possess the potential for magic her tutors and Sephiran were so excited about, but she wouldn't have received the training to develop the skill. It would have been the same as lacking it altogether.
"It isn't just about power," Naesala said, as if he knew what she was thinking. His explanation was directed at the leafy canopy. "Tibarn is the savior of the heron clan. I'm the guy who betrayed them again and again." When Sanaki tried to watch him in her peripheral vision, his wings were already reined in tightly as they could be without bending against the dirt. "I'm nothing."
She was young when he slaved under the yoke of the senate; the pact was drawn up long before her birth, and Naesala was already king of Kilvas when Sanaki ascended the throne. All she knew, until Sephiran sent him to her before the Judgment, was the black shape of his shadow and the sardonic twist to all of his words, something that told her she was being teased even when he spoke to her with a straight face and observed every courtesy due her station as empress. If she had known then that he couldn't disobey her commands - that she had more power over him than even Lekain, the man who held his leash - Sanaki would have used him. Against the senate, yes, but first- first she would have sent him on petty errands, missions to steal candy or chocolate, or some jewel that caught her eye at a party. She would have learned to like it too much. Sanaki still remembered the twinge of regret in the pit of her stomach when he tore the blood pact and let it burn.
It was good of Sephiran to hide that from her- good for all of them. She knew her own weaknesses. She reminded Naesala of his loss now because his discontent with Serenes meant he would stay in Begnion, and Sanaki wasn't yet ready to see his back. The moment he spread his wings and left he would be gone for weeks, maybe months, and she would be alone with her box of letters and their impersonal contents.
"That isn't true." An apology was on the tip of her tongue, which she did not utter. He was no fool.
She heard the shiff of his wings. "Took you long enough to say it."
"I offered to tell them about-"
"They know."
She pressed her lips together against the obvious protest.
I'm sorry, empress. Life is not fair, even for the exalted. Sephiran, a smile she'd call smug on his face as he stared at a point just above her head, not the least bit sorry for driving off the boy she'd been talking to. It won't hurt as much if you resign yourself to that. Sanaki wanted to laugh. Sephiran- no, Lehran, eternal servant to the goddess, keeper of all things wise! She kept her mouth firmly shut, both her apology and the dark line of Naesala's lips, turned slightly down, fading into the magenta of dusk. They went inside when night fell and Sigrun told her it was dangerous to remain in the open.
Sanaki wondered if Sephiran had been making fun of her back then- beyond the obvious. Was that a hint? A clue dropped right into her hands and immediately ignored, because her confidence in her own suitability was absolute?
The evening meal was laid out on the round table in her sitting room when she returned: crumbly corn cakes and greens on her plate, meat seared and left bloody on his, slices of dense yellow olive oil cake on a platter between them with bowls of sweet cream and slices of strawberry. Naesala liked sweets, almost without discrimination as far as she could tell - he'd eat a bad bit of chocolate while cursing its maker roundly, just as he'd imbibe a thin wine and tell her how much worse it could be, or eat a charred slice of toast without wincing. She blamed the poison training for her sensitive taste, and he called her spoiled.
Sanaki had thrown her book at him when he said that - then her sandals, one at a time, then the sofa pillows, then more books, philosophy, etiquette, basic lightning cantrips, until he had her against the wall by both wrists and Sigrun came in to see what all the fuss was about and found them half-undressed.
Sanaki's face heated just thinking about the conversation that followed. She forked tiny bites from the cake and let him have most of it. Tea was served, a deep-bodied blend of plum syrup and black leaves, with a sharp bite of cinnamon and ginger. The chair that used to be Sephiran's had been moved to the side, replaced by a cushioned stool carved to match the rest of her dining set. Naesala said the wide, round lion paw feet reminded him of Skrimir.
She leaned on the table, propped her chin in her hand. "Why Skrimir?"
He cocked an eyebrow. "Caineghis has some dignity."
Sanaki dipped her spoon into the bowl of honey and twirled it around. "He was rather monolithic."
"Skrimir was a bratty cub." Naesala took his tea plain and watched the steam. "He made a good footrest if you could just tie him down."
"So you were a bully." Too much honey, it turned out after she stirred. She sipped the tea anyway, and put it down when it scalded her tongue.
"I was always nice to Reyson and Leanne." He took a long gulp and kept a straight face, but his eyes watered. "It was just me taking care of them back then. Me and Rafiel."
Sanaki straightened, folded her hands in her lap, toyed with the fringed hem of the tablecloth. "How is Rafiel? I heard Queen Hatari had to leave."
Naesala stared at his tea, both eyebrows slightly raised. His wings shifted. His mouth worked. She was about to tell him to forget she asked when he finally said: "He already had kids, you know. They died. It's hard for him to do this."
Sanaki lowered her eyes to the ever-present glow of the crystal lamp. "That's why she left, I take it." To make it easier - easier to betray his queen for what he didn't love.
"Maybe." Naesala sipped more carefully. "Who knows."
...
...
A courier brought the next letter, and a request for Naesala to return to Serenes. Sanaki didn't ask how long it would take or when he'd be back, didn't even walk him to the window at the top of the cathedral, which had become his unofficial entryway into her domain - but she did threaten to set the entire guard to chase him off if he even thought about skipping her birthday celebration. It had no significance in itself, but her supporters delighted in any excuse for a party to drag her into, and she wasn't going to sit there and fend off the crowd by herself if it could be helped. He stretched his wings, then his arms, yawned, and said he'd try. Then she threw him out of her office. She didn't need him loafing around, darkening her desk with the shadow of his wings, when more decisive individuals were demanding her time for matters that might be important.
Lehran's letter waited on her desk, tucked into a drawer, until the day's meetings were over and Sanaki had a moment to sit back and rest before she went to her rooms. She needn't have bothered waiting to open it. It wasn't important. A greeting, an overview of the politics within the bird tribes, which he accused her of demanding without cause when he'd heard she kept a certain raven at her beck and call whenever he wasn't on business, and as if his mention of her private affairs were not insulting enough, he had the nerve to ask what she'd done about securing the throne.
Nothing, she wrote on a scrap of parchment. Nothing at all, and you've no business sticking your beak into my personal affairs, unless you're offering to participate. She sent it without bothering to sign and went on with her day.
Sanaki was almost twenty, an infant in laguz eyes, and yet she felt older - sixty perhaps, or seventy. Someone told her it was the curse of living in interesting times. Some nights she lay in bed and wondered, staring at the invisible weave of her canopy in the dark, what it would be like to live longer and see lives like her own flash by like the lives of insects, or - if she wanted to be generous - small animals. When instructing her on the general management of commoners, Sephiran used a metaphor of sheep, for they were herded in much the same way. In a nobleman such opinions were merely arrogance; in Lehran, the goddess's servant, who by all appearances was eternal, she heard resignation, acceptance, belief.
Beorc. Sheep.
She considered sending another letter to criticize his metaphor. Sheep didn't have steel teeth.
His reply waited on her dining table a month later, after a senate session meant for the presentation of the new quarter's proposals which nearly ended in blows. A sour taste lingered in Sanaki's mouth after her closing meeting with Oliver. She'd been obliged to thank him for smoothing ruffled feathers on both sides of the argument. That choice of words made her want to wince the moment it came out of her mouth; he would have liked to stroke Vika's wings, no doubt, if only he could be sure she wouldn't transform and bite his hand off. Lips pressed together, skin tight, Sanaki picked the envelope up and ripped the seal open. The wax made a loud snap. The paper ripped. Pale yellow light danced on the parchment and sent shadow pooling in the creases that folded the sheet into thirds.
If you insist, the first line read. No greeting. Sandalwood and lavender lingered on the surface with his blue ink script. Below he wrote: However, between your august person and Amelie, I may be spread a bit thin-
Sanaki was on her feet with the paper crumbled between her hands before she knew she'd risen, the chair thumping, the table shaking - or maybe she was the one trembling. Her body felt hot, her face flamed, and the muscles in her hand coiled tight in a claw around his letter. A thought would burn it to ash. But why- why should she care who he kept company with- who he courted, or whatever birds did when they wanted children? His life wasn't her concern. The heron tribe was diminished to almost nothing. He had a duty. It was not her concern.
No. She didn't care. She didn't. Lehran had his obligation; Sanaki had hers. She ripped the parchment into jagged pieces and threw it into the cold fireplace before she went to lie down.
Rest eluded her for fifteen minutes until she got up, pulled out her writing box, and composed a draft of her reply, which she forced herself to put away to look at again later, perhaps in a day or two, when the urge to fly all the way to Serenes and pluck him like a chicken had subsided. Then she took a long bath, and spent the rest of her night rubbing gardenia oil into her skin, brushing her hair to a shine, reclining with a book, until she was tired enough to sleep in truth. The clock read five past eleven when she tossed back her quilt and slid between the sheets, and the moon was low in the sky, centered in the frame of her window, a crescent like a claw.
Tomorrow she would hear revised proposals and attend a masque, to which her more subtle guests would likely wear costumes politically relevant - feathers and fur trim for the laguz anti-segregation proposal, throwbacks to old plays glorifying the role of the senate in Ashera's plan to oppose the dissolution of the senior council. The snow queen from Bleak Midwinter was Sanaki's own choice, for it functioned as a warning, and the elaborate beaked mask, with its immaculate swan feathers and diamond accents, would remind her subjects of white wings. It was too bad her hair wasn't silver like Micaiah's; what a striking image that would present, when paired with the airy, silk gauze layers of Sanaki's dress and the shimmering ivory paint she planned to add to her nails.
Instead of distracting her, thoughts of white wings reminded her of black, and Sanaki slipped into dreams of chasing them, black wings she'd never seen before and therefore could only imagine based on other evidence - Reyson, Rafiel, Leanne. The longest feathers were clipped and jagged. They would cut her if she touched them; she knew with a dream's certainty, just as she knew he was teasing her, luring her into some trap with hints of long, silky hair and a throaty hum, the sort that came from deep within and made her want to press her ear to his chest and listen.
Long, long ago, Lehran sang for her. It was so long ago she remembered only the tone of his voice and not what he sang, not the melody. Only the vibration of it against her ear while they sat in an empty room, the clash of metal in the background, the scent of wood burning and heat seeping inside.
She woke to the dark - no moon, but a winged shadow beside her, outlined in red and brown by dying coals in the fireplace, and she reached for an arch, stroked the feathers, felt the rough tips of the raven king's fingers pull the sheets from around her legs and run along the ridge of her bones, bunching her sleeping gown up and up and over her hips. Sanaki would always think of him as a king; his manner might cut too deeply to be graceful, his tactics too direct - when it suited him - but he made a king's sacrifices, denying himself comfort and happiness to provide for his subjects. He sustained his country when his predecessor's mistakes might have ruined Kilvas. He stepped aside and watched the woman he loved go to someone else in the name of peace.
Naesala peeled the gown away from her clammy skin like he'd already forgotten that sacrifice, heating her with his breath, the tickle of his hair, his tongue tracing her navel. Sanaki grabbed his ponytail, curling her fingers into his thick hair. His cheeks were rough between her thighs, scratched the delicate skin, his lips warm, his teeth only noticeable when they made her writhe.
He didn't kiss his way back up until she lay limp against the pillows, pliable in his hands, and he whispered his report in her ear while he took his pleasure and worked her back up to a peak: he'd uncovered enough dirt on certain families to ruin their chances at new senate seats, and he spared her the boring details, only murmuring the most interesting - lurid, dirty, ridiculous - so as not to ruin her concentration. He tickled her feet with his feathers, knowing their sensitivity, then her legs, nipped at her throat, her ears. Sanaki didn't remember one cursed thing of what he said to her once he finished, and Naesala said that was just as well, because it would involve picturing Duke Seliora in all sorts of awkward positions.
She hit him with a pillow. He laughed, and her spine tingled, her skin, all the way to her toes.
"He sent you a nasty letter, didn't he."
Sanaki slanted her gaze toward his voice, but it was too dark to see more than a glint in his eyes, so dim and red with the coals burning themselves out past the foot of her bed. "This is your fault, then."
"Lehran almost sliced me in half when I told him you were-" Naesala's fingers tapped a soft rhythm on the bone of her hip. "I thought he knew. I'd have been ready to dodge otherwise."
"Now he knows." She flexed her toes and flicked a feather.
"That paper scattered all over the floor?"
"Feathers would be more satisfying."
She knew he laughed by the way his frame shook, but he didn't make a sound. Outside, the blue canvas of sky stretched across her window frame was slightly lighter, a gray blue that reminded her of river rocks in the garden behind the palace, of the Ribahn at dawn while Sigrun's pegasus glided centimeters above the surface, almost treading water, to use the fog as a shield against spies on the other side.
Sanaki turned onto her side and let him curve a wing over her back and work an arm under her waist to hold her closer. He smelled like the forest - grass, pine, white petals. It was different every time, like he carried the remnants of distant places on his wings and tangled in his hair. If she grasped at them hard enough they would come to her, either in dreams, or in a river of words. I remember when you paid me for reports with pieces of candy, he might say, and she'd make some snappish remark about the graduated value of his services over her lifetime.
"Speaking of lifetimes..."
The sky was more gray than blue when he spoke. His shadow was darker, definite, warm. "Let me guess, he's done the laguz equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet, and now you have to observe some kind of formalistic duel."
Naesala snorted. Her hair stirred under his breath, tickled her neck. "He's a heron. What could he do about that? No." His fingers stopped their tapping, started stroking her, ribs, stomach, legs- he pushed them apart. "Why don't we find out what happens when laguz tangles with half-blood, hm?"
Sanaki had only a breath to protest before he covered her mouth with his lips and occupied her tongue- so she didn't.
In the morning, while he slept, she went out to the sitting room and gathered her bits of soot-blackened paper.
...
...
Their arrangement was an open secret, the subject of many glances and conversations beyond Sanaki's hearing, though Naesala had no trouble listening and reporting on who said what. A minor official from Culbert muttered variations of it's indecent and she's been defiled, who would want her? behind his lace fan; the former duchess of Gaddos wanted to know what all the fuss was when the line of Altina had been impure from its genesis, and it was clear to her, at least, what Begnion needed: a new ruling family. New life and new blood to the decaying body of the mother country's former glory.
When he reported that, Naesala leaned down to whisper, she'd do Lekain's corpse for Begnion, I bet, and Sanaki choked on her attempt not to laugh.
The masque celebrating her birthday was amusing but otherwise unremarkable, and the months afterward kept her busy with the new quarterly proposals and arguments with her advisers regarding her decision not to select substitutes for the seven traitors whose seats remained vacant in the council chamber. Just for the voting, they urged. Just until we create a better system. Sanaki would have liked to have Lehran there to help her formulate a replacement plan, but he refused to speak to her aside from an irritated reply to her last letter: you should know better than to listen to anything Kilvas says about herons.
Hah. So was Lehran bluffing?
Amelie is a raven, Naesala told her when she pressed him. All she does is help him with chores as far as I know. He's been stubborn. Sanaki said something to the effect that he was in top form, a little bit of Begnion in the sanctuary of Serenes, but Naesala had only a faint smile for her. She lost her last partner in the massacre - a heron. Kilvas was engaged elsewhere, kept purposely unaware, because, as Sanaki speculated, the senators didn't want the ravens permanently estranged from the other tribes. Not when they might be useful spies later. They had kids, so if she and Lehran get together—but I guess she's not really trying.
Well. If she wasn't really trying-
Lehran did eventually write to her again, when the year was almost over. Fall darkened the maples on the green outside her windows, fading their leaves to yellow, darkening them to orange, flushing them scarlet. End this affair. Let him go. He doesn't realize what he stands to lose if he's wrong, don't you understand?
Sanaki did understand. She knew her life would fade long before Naesala's hair thinned into gray, that he would be left with nothing once she died, if his hypothesis was wrong and her laguz blood, wherever it hid, wasn't strong enough to balance his. She knew Lehran would face the same loss if he came to her as she'd asked, though his birthright had already deserted him. What more could nature do to him - rob him of his wings, his mind, his life?
If you won't do what is necessary, he said, I will.
Naesala was still in Sienne when the first frost of autumn wilted the leaves of her wisteria vines and left them hanging in crooked brown curls above the balcony. Sanaki sipped spiced chocolate at the table, both hands around the wide, shallow cup, letting each mouthful slide down her throat to leave sweet, tingling heat in its wake. He preferred cider, and she could smell the mulling spices and the tart apple, see the honeyed color of it past the lip of his heavy ceramic cup, echoing the firelight at the other side of the room. It was four past noon, and the sky was dark. The clouds carried rain, perhaps sleet. Another letter from Lehran lay tucked beneath the base of the unlit lamp.
Somewhere between the tail end of summer and the frosty mornings of true autumn, Naesala had grown quiet. She thought he knew the contents of the letter - Lehran rarely bothered to seal his anymore, and Naesala had taken to keeping score between them, teasing when something infuriated her, encouraging her when she composed her retorts. He must know already.
He must realize.
"Leanne wants you to return," she said. The mantle clock chimed twice for the half hour, a crystalline tone.
Naesala sighed through his nose, a long breath, one without a reply once it was spent. He leaned on the table, chin propped in one hand, and his eyes remained averted - a gold like honey that gleamed even in dim light, such as the gray encroaching through the under-curtains. Sanaki flicked her gaze to the letter, to the smaller, thinner paper folded between the thick wings of Lehran's parchment. The sweeping letters were written as delicately as she imagined the hand that wrote them would move, laying the ink so lightly on its rice paper canvas every swirl was thin as hair. She liked the texture, and wondered why her own heron didn't use it.
Perhaps she shouldn't identify him that way. Only, they'd always used those terms instead of names, because the sound of Lehran squeezed around her heart, and she thought Leanne must do the same to Naesala. They'd ruined themselves with that habit.
Sanaki left her chocolate on its saucer and stood up, walked around the table. His eyes finally left the window to track her, but his posture didn't change, nor did he say anything to acknowledge her when she paused at his shoulder and picked a stray hair from his coat. His wing curved slightly in her direction - like that night, the first one, when she decided it was time to stop waiting, not knowing she would continue to wait, and wait, and wait, for something that would never come.
"You'll go, of course," she said, softly, mindful of her proximity. He moved when she pushed him into a more proper sitting position, and held her by the waist when she bent one leg and sat on his lap to meet him eye to eye. The table rocked behind her, the edge pressing on her spine. "Unless you want to lose your wings, first."
His grip tightened, his fingers digging into her hip. "You're-"
"Not yet." Sanaki nudged his hair over an ear. It was easier to keep looking at the deep blue streaks and comb them smooth with her fingers.
The angle of his chin meant he was looking at her. "Trying to save me from myself?"
She let a frown turn her lips down. "I'm much too selfish for that."
A snort. "No you're not."
"Go see yours," she said, staring at a corner of the green scrolled carpet over his shoulder. "And I'll talk to mine. I refuse to take such a risk just because I'm feeling sorry for myself."
His fingers stroked her thigh, and Sanaki wondered if it was too late to pull him into the other room now that she'd made the suggestion. Sitting on Naesala did that; sitting next to him was a rather dangerous enterprise when he exuded warmth like a fire, and sharing a sofa with him was as good as volunteering to strip one's clothes off. He was too distracting, too unruly. He had the court in an uproar.
She turned her face away completely. "You're too much trouble. Consider these your marching orders."
Naesala chuckled and nipped the side of her throat. She let him lift her weight, slide his hands beneath her skirt, and supposed it wasn't too late after all.
...
...
This time Sanaki did watch him go. Naesala liked to leap from the highest floor of the cathedral below the minarets, sliding from human to raven form in a shimmer of blue and sunlight before his wings caught an updraft and lifted him away, fanning her with cool wind. Her white skirt fluttered against her legs, the heavy red velvet of her mantle all that kept her warm when the breeze cut through her silk, her underskirt, her stockings. The garden below met the morning sun with a panorama of changing leaves against the green and its meandering stone pathways.
He remained a streak against the blue sky for some time, then grew smaller - eventually the haze above the city hid the raven from view, and Sanaki remained at the bars bolted across the lower half of her window. A knight shifted across the room; her boots scuffed, her spear scraped the tiles. Footsteps approached. "If that letter isn't genuine-"
"It is," Lehran said.
"I can never tell with you." Sanaki turned and hoped keeping her back to the light would hide her expression, because it seemed the moment she saw him it tried to melt, to betray her. "Leanne's timing is too convenient."
Lehran's wings were slimmer, the arches higher at his back when they remained at rest, shadows not quite black, not quite brown. His hair remained darker, like charcoal streaks or ink painted just so around his face and over his coat. He looked exactly the same, aside from the slight downturn to his lips. "I told her with that in mind. He'll do anything she asks - he won't leave as long as he thinks she needs him."
Sanaki lifted her hand so it could be seen in the back, gestured; Sigrun and Eirene saluted, white blurs behind the focus of Sanaki's gaze, and left the chamber. The door clicked shut. "Underhanded," Sanaki said.
"Necessary." She didn't like this expression on his face - the narrowed eyes, the thin, whitened lips. "It will save him a lifetime of regret over a single mistake."
It had never been so hard to keep her face smooth and her voice level - not since she was a child, facing a line of senior senators she barely knew and never liked. "A mistake," she said, spinning away from him to look for a raven's invisible shadow. "Yes, that would be an apt description-"
His hand closed around her arm so tightly it made her gasp, and he yanked, made her face him again. "So you haven't outgrown your foolishness - not completely." Lehran was still taller, and his wings made him seem more so up close, maybe even taller than his rival. She opened her mouth to demand he let go. His other hand clapped over the lower half of her face, and she considered biting him. His brow lifted when her lips worked. "Take my words out of context if you like, but they were yours first. I only did as you asked."
Sanaki pulled his hand away. "You left a mountain of mistakes waiting here in Begnion."
"Yes." Lehran's fingers curled around her arm more tightly, long and delicate. She breathed sandalwood and spice when he shifted his wings, tasted the sweet undercurrent on the air between them. "There is one in particular I would like to reverse."
The mantle slipped over her shoulder, and he righted it before she could pull away under the pretense of being cold. Once she'd likened him to ice, opposed to the raven king's fire, but he was warm and solid too, not the ghost of her dreams. He wore gray and black, not white; Sephiran's perpetual smile was gone. "You assume I'm interested in forgiving you," she said, letting him straighten her hair. Old habits. He smoothed a loose curl back and it was hard to breathe, hard to blink. Moving her lips felt like moving stone. "I'm not."
"I never asked for forgiveness," Lehran said. "Only a chance to repent."
Sanaki took a deep breath and avoided his eyes, staring over his shoulder at a bare stone wall instead. "You have a hell of a lot to repent for."
His hands brushed her hair back again and lifted her chin, his head tilted to make her look at him. "Then I will start with the most important of those tasks," he said, green eyes gleaming mirrors, and bent down to kiss her.
...
End Notes:
I considered several ways to end this. On one hand, it seems only fair to give her to Naesala, with the situation I set up, and I feel bad for not doing that. On the other, this is a 30 Kisses entry, and that's not the main pairing. Also, with all those hints I dropped about her terrible unrequited love, I felt this was the middle ground - not a happy ending, but one that has potential to go several ways.