[30 Kisses][Fire Emblem 9/10] Unforgiven (Elysium AU #3)
Unforgiven
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9/10
Theme: 25 - fence
Words: 4570
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: a rewrite. This is like an AU of an AU.
Eh, I'll edit later when I find a mistake that embarrasses me. I should probably get some real work done.
Previous Installments:
1. Judgment
2. Initiation
.......................................
Wisteria climbed the arbor covering Sanaki's balcony, frothing with green after a long season of dormancy. She waited for Lehran on a cushioned bench, her legs drawn up under her skirt, searching the fans of leaves and twisting green arms with her eyes for a sign of pink or lavender. Marcia leaned on the stone rail near the door with her spear resting in the crook of her arm. Sigrun would be in the antechamber waiting for Lehran, and Sanaki wondered if she should have switched them, left Marcia to greet him, as that would surely be a more civil reunion.
A rake scraped the gravel down in the garden, clippers snicked and branches fell, leaves scattered. Three hours ago she let Lehran go to refresh himself, intending to scrub her hands clean and change into clothing more fitting for her station. Much had changed in seven years. She remembered the slight widening of his eyes when he approached her downstairs, and the way his gaze fixed on her face, how his hands reached for hers, then turned her around by the shoulders, and around again. Nasir said you were taller, but I-- and his voice faltered, his grip tightened. Time flows too quickly.
Funny, it seemed to move so slowly while she waited - now, and while he traveled, crisscrossing Tellius on a foolish mission she'd never learned anything about. Did Ashera regret sending him away? Maybe Lehran failed her in some nebulous fashion, but he was a good servant; he knelt to her, bent his neck, called her lady. Why not a more formal title? she'd asked Nasir once when he delivered Lehran's letters. She's a goddess, not a noblewoman - and you're one of her children. Nasir said it was a custom reaching back to the beginning, when the goddess did not have a tower or concern herself with customs, but walked among mortals. Only Lehran remembers that time, he told her. Ask him.
How was it he remembered that far back? Her books said nothing about herons living such lengthy lives.
She was leaning over the rail to see her roses, a dark red grape in her fingers, when he finally made his appearance. His arrival, well after her lunch was served on a round, folding table, was so quiet she wouldn't have noticed had Marcia's spear not scraped the wall when she stood at attention. Sanaki watched him sink to one knee and bow his head. His gray coat spread in a half-circle behind him, the hem gleaming with gold, decorated like hers was with a long row of knots. A circlet glittered in the dappled sunlight. His wings looked brown, the feathers shiny. She wondered how he washed them, and thought of birds in the courtyards, little sparrows splashing in the shallow fountain bowls, frantically flapping and scattering droplets of water.
"Sit over here," she said, and pointed to the other side of her bench when he raised his head. "If you need to eat, there's enough for both of us."
He hesitated, blinking at the plate scattered with red grapes and walnut halves, and he rose slowly. "Are you sure?"
Sanaki pointed again, and pushed the grape into her mouth. He sighed and sat down, angling his wings over the end and pulling one leg up; he faced her, but his eyes slanted to the tray, to her silverware, the rounds of crispy flatbread and wedge of soft cheese. His letters spoke little of food and other niceties, responding with sparse details when she asked directly. What was it like to camp with such a small group? What did one eat in Daein? Crimea? When she realized crops would be sparse in Begnion the first year despite the goddess's help, she wrote her first letter to him, relented for the first time when Nasir came with his reports.
What if he starved? What if they failed because they couldn't find new supplies? How on Tellius did they siege Nevassa without a supply line?
What did dragons eat, anyway?
"How long," she asked, reaching for a piece of bread and her knife, "has it been since you've had a proper meal?"
He snorted and reached for a grape, twisting it from its stem with a flick of his fingers. "Of all the questions I thought you might ask, that isn't the most appropriate."
She stuck her tongue out at him. "You look thinner."
"I don't eat very much."
"Like a bird?"
"Clever, my lady."
Her cracker snapped under the pressure of her knife when she spread the cheese on, and she let herself frown. It was smeared all over her fingers now. "I remember you being nicer."
Lehran laughed, and this time his eyes crinkled with it, sparkling in a patch of sun when he leaned to take a piece of bread and smoothed cheese onto it more gracefully. His hair was longer, and it spread over the red cushion, a fan of black that shined like his circlet, like precious metal. He wore a ring on his left hand, and she couldn't remember if it had been there before. A little knot twisted in her stomach, and Sanaki ate her flatbread, sucking the cheese from her fingers and lifting her brows when he scolded her.
"What happened?" She wiped her hands.
He paused, a crescent bitten into his cracker. "My reports were honest - unless you mean to inquire into our eating habits."
Sanaki ignored the way he tilted his head and unfolded her legs so her feet rested on the ground and she leaned back against the rail. "Your last report from Daein said Dheginsea killed his son."
Lehran's lashes lowered. "Yes."
She smoothed her skirt over her knees. As in his letters, he seemed to think silence would encourage her to put these matters from her mind. "He didn't return with you, according to Sigrun. Is he... well?"
He pushed his half-eaten cracker onto the edge of the tray, brushed tiny yellow crumbs from his lap. "He hasn't yet recovered from that battle."
Sanaki bit the inside of her lip and glanced away - at the spire of Ashera's tower, which always seemed dormant in the light of day, when the sky was brighter than the glow behind the windows. There were living quarters in there, and treasure rooms, and halls meant to hold hundreds of people, now bare of everything, even light. But the windows were always alive - the arches at the top were white, where the goddess waited, and dim blue lit the rest. Gold tinged the glass on the first floor; the priesthood took residence there, though only Sanaki was allowed to ascend the stairs.
Would Ashera see Lehran now? Would she see Dheginsea, and declare his debt fulfilled, now he'd spilled his own blood in her name? Sanaki thought the goddess went to see them when she disappeared, but perhaps she was wrong.
She opened her mouth to change the subject - to tell Lehran to eat, or to ask what he wanted her to report on his behalf, if anything - but he started talking. He sat the way she remembered, his hands resting on his lap and curved slightly inward, as if they wanted to clasp; he looked at her from the reflection in the glass doors and said they killed the dragon prince because he was mad - because Sephiran employed a man who, among other things, experimented on laguz, and Dheginsea's son was merely an unlucky footnote to a larger project he'd hoped would never come to fruition. Lehran underestimated this man, and supposed it was all his fault.
It sounded as if he'd planned the war. He was not quiet long enough for her to ask, and Sanaki kept her lips pressed together, thought maybe she didn't want to know. What if he had planned to leave her from the beginning? She didn't want to know that. She didn't want him to say it. She waited seven years for him to come back, and in her memory his sorrow upon departure was genuine, the pleading in his voice when he asked her to come out of her room was real.
Lehran trailed off when she rubbed her eyes, flicking moisture away with her fingers. If only they'd left her hair loose that morning. "Your Kerria Rose," he said, reaching for her hand on the cushion. "It was beautiful. You've done a good job."
She smiled at her knees, nodded. Naturally she followed his instructions to the letter, and found a gardener who knew what he was talking about-- but she wasn't going to tell him about the latter effort. What was there to say? While he waged war in the north, she was here planting flowers and learning how to plait her hair.
His wings shifted, the sound dry like paper shuffling, and he pushed the little table away with his foot, slowly. It made a loud scrape, and Marcia dashed forward to take it, pull it back. "You're thirteen now--"
"Almost fourteen," Sanaki said.
She saw his eyebrow lift in her peripheral vision, and his lips turned up slightly. "Almost fourteen, then." She squeezed his hand, and his returning grip was strong. It didn't feel as if his bones were hollow, as people said of birds. "We've lost valuable time, but if you will allow it, I want to continue your education."
Sanaki canted her head and looked at their hands, the arm's length of cushion between them, and the ring on his finger. "This is new," she said, reaching up to touch the thin gold band circling his head. "I'm not sure yet if it suits you. Are you a prince now? I suppose I can accept instruction from someone of that stature."
Lehran's smile widened, a slight deepening of the shadows on his face, and he bowed his head to remove it, offering it to her with both hands. "Laguz did not believe in such rankings until recently." It looked smooth, but she felt tiny etchings on the surface, and lifted it to the light for a closer look while he spoke. "In my time it was given to clan leaders, and I received it when I was asked to lead the bird tribes."
She looked at him through it. "All of them?"
He nodded. She gave the circlet back to him when he extended his hand, but instead of putting it on he slid the ring onto the table. "It stayed with me in Goldoa. The inscription is a stanza from a victory song in the old tongue."
"That's even better," she said, crossing her legs, pulling her braid over her shoulder to fan the end in her hands. "I can tell everyone my tutor is almost my equal."
The sound he made must have been a laugh, but she tried not to look up. "What would I do if I were merely Sephiran? I couldn't possibly meet such a standard."
"Don't be silly," she said. "I would never refuse anything to Sephiran."
She heard the snip of another grape pulled from its stem, and smelled roses from down below, the scent brushing her cheeks and the tip of her nose with a warm breeze. It tickled the back of her neck. Sanaki wished her dress had shorter sleeves, or none at all; they reached all the way to the back of her hands, gathering at her wrists and elbows, her skirt clinging to the backs of her legs and under her knees. It was cold that morning, yet now unbearably hot, even without the sun shining on her back.
A long time ago she would have given him anything. Now she wondered what he would have asked for. She was only six when he left; if he told her to sign something, she did it - he'd told her Daein was guilty of slaughtering laguz in the north, and she believed him. She sent the central army to crush them. She remembered, clearly, giving the order while he stood at her left hand in the throne room, and the unanimous support of the senior council, each of their hands lifting from their knees, one after the other, like dominoes.
He would laugh to know she questioned everything the goddess commanded her to do. What happened, he would ask, to the sweet girl who only wanted to please?
Ashera did away with her - that was what happened.
"So you've claimed your right to the leadership of the bird tribes," Sanaki said, looking at his profile and flinging her braid back. "Have they accepted this?"
Lehran's wings curled around his shoulders, hair catching on the feathers when he flexed them. "That is a long and unfortunate story." He stood up, straightened his coat, and didn't meet her eyes. "Why don't we talk inside."
*
Sanaki ascended the tower when the sun had set and Lehran retired to his rooms to rest. The shadows beneath his eyes had become more pronounced as he talked, reminding her he arrived that morning after a night of traveling - because he did not want to stop when they were so close, he said, and because they would be seen nearing the city and were unsure of the reception. The road looks just as it did before the war - the traffic is constant. Begnion is growing again. They camped outside rather than patronize public establishments. It would be nice, he said, to sleep in a real bed.
Three women chanted the evening prayer when Sanaki started up the stairs and left Sigrun and the others in the antechamber. The subsequent floors were quiet and lit with blue and purple globes that left everything half in shadow - the columns, the stairs. She knew each step by heart, recognized where she was by the smoothness of the stone where it was worn away, by the pattern of the grain when her sandals scraped. The dress she wore for Lehran felt tight around her neck, around her wrists, dragged behind her, clung to her skin in spots when the climb and the warm weather left her skin moistened and her hairline beaded with perspiration. She squared her shoulders when she reached the top and found the doors open, so the goddess would not interpret the slump of her back as defeat or, worse-- relief.
Ashera met her seated on the foot of the dais Sanaki thought of as her bed, fiery hair spread out behind her in a symmetrical fan of dusky orange, sleeves spread from her hands, clasped on her thighs, until the feathery trim stretched and hung down, drooping silver. Her gauzy, colorless curtains were swept open at a precise angle, and the ends tumbled over the floor in folds at once gray, blue, and white.
She must remember the reports; Ashera was no goddess if she couldn't eavesdrop on a conversation taking place two buildings away from the tower, but she asked predictable questions: where is Lehran? Where is Dheginsea? What of Gallia, and when will her people return?
"I heard my forest sing," Ashera said in her contralto, when Sanaki paused to consider Gallia's tardiness.
The goddess's voice tingled all the way down to her stomach and made her throat feel tight. "I don't understand." Ashera's red eyes narrowed, and Sanaki's legs trembled - because they were tired, stiff from standing for the last half hour after the long trip up the stairs. We went to the altar and found the greatest of treasures hidden in the grotto-- "He told me they went to Serenes," she said. Her jaw ached from clenching during the moments she wasn't talking. "Lehran, the tribe leaders, the herons - and a wolf, but I've never heard of such laguz on Tellius before."
The greatest of treasures. Her eyes had immediately gone to the ring on Lehran's finger, stomach already churning. But it looked old, the shine dulled by tiny scratches and fingerprints, and he didn't twist or play with it. He noticed her looking and promised to explain it later, but then he was tired, and Sanaki wished she hadn't made him come up, though she didn't want him to leave either.
He kissed her hand again before he left. His lips were soft and warm, his hand as gentle as she remembered. She curled her fingers into her skirt and thought they still tingled. Ashera's stare made her want to hide her hands, or clasp them and wring her fingers to hide it.
Ashera's brows dipped, and a line etched her forehead. "Where are the bird tribes now?"
"Phonecis," Sanaki said, trying not to frown. The last thing she wanted was to look like that. She breathed deeply when the Ashera's gaze flicked to the window, breathed the resinous scent which reminded her of incense - only thicker, like syrup. "It is somewhat south and east of Goldoa. The remaining ravens have left their island and joined the hawks." Maybe they should have a map commissioned for the goddess - painted right there on the wall behind Sanaki, where it could be seen without damaging her all-knowing image. "Lehran says they refused to acknowledge the rule of a dark goddess."
Ashera's eyes gleamed for the space of a breath, catching imaginary sunlight. Her aura was a swirl of air like the breezes outside. The tiles, already warm, and grew hotter. Sanaki waited. This was new - this expression, the slight widening of the eyes and the way her mouth opened a tiny bit. Not anger-- or was it?
They tried to tempt me into staying, Lehran told her. The hawk king, and Rafiel, and my grandson, whom I thought dead. He'd looked at his folded hands, turning them over so his palms were open, and his long feathers brushed the floor. She remembered thinking it made him look guilty, especially when he continued to avoid her eyes. Without Dheginsea to keep me on task I stayed longer than I intended.
Then they went to the forest, as if Lehran needed to be reminded how blackened the trees were, how they twisted, how their branches curled like fingers, their bark flaking away like charcoal. The sandy floor, ash and dirt and dead wood, the perpetually gray sky. He heard the forest speak - yes, he can hear it, he said, and how he wished he could still understand - and the youngest chased after every snatch of sound until they came to the grotto sheltering his sister.
She would marry one of the clan leaders, he thought. Likely Phonecis, because he was strongest; she couldn't marry any of the herons, of course.
Not you? Sanaki's hands were knotted over her stomach, but he wasn't looking. Her chest felt hollow.
She's only a child. He appeared oblivious to the way she bit her lips together, but when he said that, the churning of her stomach eased.
She looked away from the goddess, at the dark sky beyond Ashera's window, and wondered if it was cool outside now that the stars had come out. The aura cooled, congealed into whiteness again. It reminded her of fog. She'd only seen such a thing once, near the mountains north of the city, when Sephiran and Zelgius chose to risk the pass between mountains in order to shake her assassins and were nearly swallowed by snow. Sanaki had never been so cold in her entire life - not before, and not since, though she felt her insides freeze when she stood like this before the goddess, waiting for her to say something, give some command, knowing it possible she would stand for several hours. Her muscles felt wrung out and dry today, as if she was the one who traveled through the night to get home.
"Bring Lehran to me," the goddess said. Her red eyes had focused on Sanaki again, and her face was a mask again, painted white, with perfect black brows, and lashes, and a perfectly red mouth.
She stiffened her arms to hold them at her sides. Her fingers hurt from being curled in so long. "He's resting."
"Awaken him." This time Ashera's voice inflected, the intonation reminding her of Sigrun when she was irritated. "Service to me does not go unrewarded, little empress." Sanaki stepped back, braid thumping against her back. "Bring him to me. Now."
They were already almost the same height when Ashera met her standing. She couldn't do anything about that, could she? Stunt a person's growth the way the younger pegasus knights told her tea would make her shorter if she drank too much?
A peculiar curve moved the line of Ashera's mouth, and a narrowing of her eyes-- and Sanaki turned around and walked out of the room before it could be considered a smile.
*
He didn't tell Sanaki what the goddess said to him - only that she would continue to execute Ashera's will, and he was to be her companion again. He would stay close to her, leave only when she did, when she commanded. Sanaki told him it should have been that way all along, and Lehran's eyes dimmed, lidding slightly in the early morning sun piercing her curtain of wisteria over the balcony. They looked blue in that light, next to the profusion of leaves and vines.
When he left her, everything she endured as the goddess's servant flitted across her mind, every memory. Every threat to keep Lehran from her grasp - how her chest would tighten, and her eyes prickle, when she twisted Ashera's words in the passing of her commands and realized a mistake could be construed as rebellion if the goddess chose to view it as such. She'd walked among the commoners two years before to avert an epidemic; disease was part of the natural order, yet to lose thousands now would destroy Begnion. And Sanaki wondered if that wouldn't be best after all - if these people, who had left the homes they knew to till someone else's land, live in someone else's rooms and clothing, wouldn't prefer to brave a few days more of suffering, if their endurance would be rewarded with rest.
That was not within her authority to decide. And that was the difference between herself and the man she once called Sephiran. She hated him for taking that decision upon himself and trying to make her participate.
Then he returned, and kissed her hand, and she wanted to keep him in his chair by the window - the one he always used before the judgment - so she could look at him, and talk to him. His voice was resonant, set her hands to shaking. What would it be like raised in song?
Order was as its incarnation decided to see it; Sanaki could think of no other explanation for the times Ashera bent her own rules, rare though they were. What would his reward be?
Song?
But then she couldn't punish him with it.
When he sat with her the morning after his return, when the sun was still low, the sky still pink and the light still gray and blue, he looked almost like a stranger - a beautiful stranger with prismatic wings which swallowed light, then glimmered at the edges with it, feathers like blades when they were illuminated at just the right angle. The slatted together like blinds when he folded them back, and stretched open like black fans. She wanted to touch them. They were soft, probably warm. They bled. Sanaki clenched her hands into fists when she remembered and didn't ask.
"She's a tyrant," Sanaki said when it seemed Lehran had nothing to say to her last statement. "It isn't really your fault."
He sighed, and sounded tired. It was the way his shoulders bent. "You should not speak of her that way."
"What did she call me?" Sanaki circled the lip of her teacup with a finger and considered the array of sweets on the tray for her breakfast: macaroons in pink, green, and yellow, brown for chocolate; flaky peanut pastries; soft yellow cake that smelled like lemonade. "Little empress? Child? Incompetent? I follow her orders to the letter and receive no acknowledgment."
"I'm told you do not pay the proper respect to Ashera either." His frown was slight. He picked at a flat slice of cake. "What did I tell you about dealing with the senators? Do you remember?"
Sanaki knocked the leg of the table with her foot. "I only wish she were my subordinate, but she isn't."
"Nor were Lekain or the others - in their world view."
She folded her arms and stared at the orange surface of her tea. It was opaque with sweetened milk, still too hot to drink. Steam rose in curls that spread like flowers blooming and disappeared in the space of a breath. "They were wrong about a lot of things."
"Ashera is not used to being wrong," Lehran said. "We are not what she expected to awaken to."
Sanaki rolled her eyes up to the hooked vines of the wisteria creeping between the slats of her screen. "She couldn't have really believed there would be no war in a thousand years--"
"That isn't what I meant." She heard the clink of his teacup on its saucer. "But she did not - no."
"Then what?"
Lehran looked eastward when she lowered her eyes. His profile had not changed, but framed by the shadow of a wing his hair disappeared, merged with the feathers unless she looked closely, and his face looked paler. "She expected someone able to hear her voice."
His narrowed eyes stopped her from speaking when she opened her mouth with the obvious retort. Apostles were supposed to be able to hear the goddess - yes, she knew that, but what did it have to do with her now? The goddess was awake. If she wished to speak to Sanaki, she could do so.
His napkin fluttered in a breeze, half-folded and anchored by his plate. "Did she decide on silence after all?"
You are not the child he hoped to find. Did you know that, little empress?
Sanaki sat forward and lifted the teacup to her lips. It should have been sweet, but she couldn't taste it at all. "I've no idea what you're referring to." She put it down carefully. "Why don't you tell me?"
.
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9/10
Theme: 25 - fence
Words: 4570
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: a rewrite. This is like an AU of an AU.
Eh, I'll edit later when I find a mistake that embarrasses me. I should probably get some real work done.
Previous Installments:
1. Judgment
2. Initiation
.......................................
Wisteria climbed the arbor covering Sanaki's balcony, frothing with green after a long season of dormancy. She waited for Lehran on a cushioned bench, her legs drawn up under her skirt, searching the fans of leaves and twisting green arms with her eyes for a sign of pink or lavender. Marcia leaned on the stone rail near the door with her spear resting in the crook of her arm. Sigrun would be in the antechamber waiting for Lehran, and Sanaki wondered if she should have switched them, left Marcia to greet him, as that would surely be a more civil reunion.
A rake scraped the gravel down in the garden, clippers snicked and branches fell, leaves scattered. Three hours ago she let Lehran go to refresh himself, intending to scrub her hands clean and change into clothing more fitting for her station. Much had changed in seven years. She remembered the slight widening of his eyes when he approached her downstairs, and the way his gaze fixed on her face, how his hands reached for hers, then turned her around by the shoulders, and around again. Nasir said you were taller, but I-- and his voice faltered, his grip tightened. Time flows too quickly.
Funny, it seemed to move so slowly while she waited - now, and while he traveled, crisscrossing Tellius on a foolish mission she'd never learned anything about. Did Ashera regret sending him away? Maybe Lehran failed her in some nebulous fashion, but he was a good servant; he knelt to her, bent his neck, called her lady. Why not a more formal title? she'd asked Nasir once when he delivered Lehran's letters. She's a goddess, not a noblewoman - and you're one of her children. Nasir said it was a custom reaching back to the beginning, when the goddess did not have a tower or concern herself with customs, but walked among mortals. Only Lehran remembers that time, he told her. Ask him.
How was it he remembered that far back? Her books said nothing about herons living such lengthy lives.
She was leaning over the rail to see her roses, a dark red grape in her fingers, when he finally made his appearance. His arrival, well after her lunch was served on a round, folding table, was so quiet she wouldn't have noticed had Marcia's spear not scraped the wall when she stood at attention. Sanaki watched him sink to one knee and bow his head. His gray coat spread in a half-circle behind him, the hem gleaming with gold, decorated like hers was with a long row of knots. A circlet glittered in the dappled sunlight. His wings looked brown, the feathers shiny. She wondered how he washed them, and thought of birds in the courtyards, little sparrows splashing in the shallow fountain bowls, frantically flapping and scattering droplets of water.
"Sit over here," she said, and pointed to the other side of her bench when he raised his head. "If you need to eat, there's enough for both of us."
He hesitated, blinking at the plate scattered with red grapes and walnut halves, and he rose slowly. "Are you sure?"
Sanaki pointed again, and pushed the grape into her mouth. He sighed and sat down, angling his wings over the end and pulling one leg up; he faced her, but his eyes slanted to the tray, to her silverware, the rounds of crispy flatbread and wedge of soft cheese. His letters spoke little of food and other niceties, responding with sparse details when she asked directly. What was it like to camp with such a small group? What did one eat in Daein? Crimea? When she realized crops would be sparse in Begnion the first year despite the goddess's help, she wrote her first letter to him, relented for the first time when Nasir came with his reports.
What if he starved? What if they failed because they couldn't find new supplies? How on Tellius did they siege Nevassa without a supply line?
What did dragons eat, anyway?
"How long," she asked, reaching for a piece of bread and her knife, "has it been since you've had a proper meal?"
He snorted and reached for a grape, twisting it from its stem with a flick of his fingers. "Of all the questions I thought you might ask, that isn't the most appropriate."
She stuck her tongue out at him. "You look thinner."
"I don't eat very much."
"Like a bird?"
"Clever, my lady."
Her cracker snapped under the pressure of her knife when she spread the cheese on, and she let herself frown. It was smeared all over her fingers now. "I remember you being nicer."
Lehran laughed, and this time his eyes crinkled with it, sparkling in a patch of sun when he leaned to take a piece of bread and smoothed cheese onto it more gracefully. His hair was longer, and it spread over the red cushion, a fan of black that shined like his circlet, like precious metal. He wore a ring on his left hand, and she couldn't remember if it had been there before. A little knot twisted in her stomach, and Sanaki ate her flatbread, sucking the cheese from her fingers and lifting her brows when he scolded her.
"What happened?" She wiped her hands.
He paused, a crescent bitten into his cracker. "My reports were honest - unless you mean to inquire into our eating habits."
Sanaki ignored the way he tilted his head and unfolded her legs so her feet rested on the ground and she leaned back against the rail. "Your last report from Daein said Dheginsea killed his son."
Lehran's lashes lowered. "Yes."
She smoothed her skirt over her knees. As in his letters, he seemed to think silence would encourage her to put these matters from her mind. "He didn't return with you, according to Sigrun. Is he... well?"
He pushed his half-eaten cracker onto the edge of the tray, brushed tiny yellow crumbs from his lap. "He hasn't yet recovered from that battle."
Sanaki bit the inside of her lip and glanced away - at the spire of Ashera's tower, which always seemed dormant in the light of day, when the sky was brighter than the glow behind the windows. There were living quarters in there, and treasure rooms, and halls meant to hold hundreds of people, now bare of everything, even light. But the windows were always alive - the arches at the top were white, where the goddess waited, and dim blue lit the rest. Gold tinged the glass on the first floor; the priesthood took residence there, though only Sanaki was allowed to ascend the stairs.
Would Ashera see Lehran now? Would she see Dheginsea, and declare his debt fulfilled, now he'd spilled his own blood in her name? Sanaki thought the goddess went to see them when she disappeared, but perhaps she was wrong.
She opened her mouth to change the subject - to tell Lehran to eat, or to ask what he wanted her to report on his behalf, if anything - but he started talking. He sat the way she remembered, his hands resting on his lap and curved slightly inward, as if they wanted to clasp; he looked at her from the reflection in the glass doors and said they killed the dragon prince because he was mad - because Sephiran employed a man who, among other things, experimented on laguz, and Dheginsea's son was merely an unlucky footnote to a larger project he'd hoped would never come to fruition. Lehran underestimated this man, and supposed it was all his fault.
It sounded as if he'd planned the war. He was not quiet long enough for her to ask, and Sanaki kept her lips pressed together, thought maybe she didn't want to know. What if he had planned to leave her from the beginning? She didn't want to know that. She didn't want him to say it. She waited seven years for him to come back, and in her memory his sorrow upon departure was genuine, the pleading in his voice when he asked her to come out of her room was real.
Lehran trailed off when she rubbed her eyes, flicking moisture away with her fingers. If only they'd left her hair loose that morning. "Your Kerria Rose," he said, reaching for her hand on the cushion. "It was beautiful. You've done a good job."
She smiled at her knees, nodded. Naturally she followed his instructions to the letter, and found a gardener who knew what he was talking about-- but she wasn't going to tell him about the latter effort. What was there to say? While he waged war in the north, she was here planting flowers and learning how to plait her hair.
His wings shifted, the sound dry like paper shuffling, and he pushed the little table away with his foot, slowly. It made a loud scrape, and Marcia dashed forward to take it, pull it back. "You're thirteen now--"
"Almost fourteen," Sanaki said.
She saw his eyebrow lift in her peripheral vision, and his lips turned up slightly. "Almost fourteen, then." She squeezed his hand, and his returning grip was strong. It didn't feel as if his bones were hollow, as people said of birds. "We've lost valuable time, but if you will allow it, I want to continue your education."
Sanaki canted her head and looked at their hands, the arm's length of cushion between them, and the ring on his finger. "This is new," she said, reaching up to touch the thin gold band circling his head. "I'm not sure yet if it suits you. Are you a prince now? I suppose I can accept instruction from someone of that stature."
Lehran's smile widened, a slight deepening of the shadows on his face, and he bowed his head to remove it, offering it to her with both hands. "Laguz did not believe in such rankings until recently." It looked smooth, but she felt tiny etchings on the surface, and lifted it to the light for a closer look while he spoke. "In my time it was given to clan leaders, and I received it when I was asked to lead the bird tribes."
She looked at him through it. "All of them?"
He nodded. She gave the circlet back to him when he extended his hand, but instead of putting it on he slid the ring onto the table. "It stayed with me in Goldoa. The inscription is a stanza from a victory song in the old tongue."
"That's even better," she said, crossing her legs, pulling her braid over her shoulder to fan the end in her hands. "I can tell everyone my tutor is almost my equal."
The sound he made must have been a laugh, but she tried not to look up. "What would I do if I were merely Sephiran? I couldn't possibly meet such a standard."
"Don't be silly," she said. "I would never refuse anything to Sephiran."
She heard the snip of another grape pulled from its stem, and smelled roses from down below, the scent brushing her cheeks and the tip of her nose with a warm breeze. It tickled the back of her neck. Sanaki wished her dress had shorter sleeves, or none at all; they reached all the way to the back of her hands, gathering at her wrists and elbows, her skirt clinging to the backs of her legs and under her knees. It was cold that morning, yet now unbearably hot, even without the sun shining on her back.
A long time ago she would have given him anything. Now she wondered what he would have asked for. She was only six when he left; if he told her to sign something, she did it - he'd told her Daein was guilty of slaughtering laguz in the north, and she believed him. She sent the central army to crush them. She remembered, clearly, giving the order while he stood at her left hand in the throne room, and the unanimous support of the senior council, each of their hands lifting from their knees, one after the other, like dominoes.
He would laugh to know she questioned everything the goddess commanded her to do. What happened, he would ask, to the sweet girl who only wanted to please?
Ashera did away with her - that was what happened.
"So you've claimed your right to the leadership of the bird tribes," Sanaki said, looking at his profile and flinging her braid back. "Have they accepted this?"
Lehran's wings curled around his shoulders, hair catching on the feathers when he flexed them. "That is a long and unfortunate story." He stood up, straightened his coat, and didn't meet her eyes. "Why don't we talk inside."
*
Sanaki ascended the tower when the sun had set and Lehran retired to his rooms to rest. The shadows beneath his eyes had become more pronounced as he talked, reminding her he arrived that morning after a night of traveling - because he did not want to stop when they were so close, he said, and because they would be seen nearing the city and were unsure of the reception. The road looks just as it did before the war - the traffic is constant. Begnion is growing again. They camped outside rather than patronize public establishments. It would be nice, he said, to sleep in a real bed.
Three women chanted the evening prayer when Sanaki started up the stairs and left Sigrun and the others in the antechamber. The subsequent floors were quiet and lit with blue and purple globes that left everything half in shadow - the columns, the stairs. She knew each step by heart, recognized where she was by the smoothness of the stone where it was worn away, by the pattern of the grain when her sandals scraped. The dress she wore for Lehran felt tight around her neck, around her wrists, dragged behind her, clung to her skin in spots when the climb and the warm weather left her skin moistened and her hairline beaded with perspiration. She squared her shoulders when she reached the top and found the doors open, so the goddess would not interpret the slump of her back as defeat or, worse-- relief.
Ashera met her seated on the foot of the dais Sanaki thought of as her bed, fiery hair spread out behind her in a symmetrical fan of dusky orange, sleeves spread from her hands, clasped on her thighs, until the feathery trim stretched and hung down, drooping silver. Her gauzy, colorless curtains were swept open at a precise angle, and the ends tumbled over the floor in folds at once gray, blue, and white.
She must remember the reports; Ashera was no goddess if she couldn't eavesdrop on a conversation taking place two buildings away from the tower, but she asked predictable questions: where is Lehran? Where is Dheginsea? What of Gallia, and when will her people return?
"I heard my forest sing," Ashera said in her contralto, when Sanaki paused to consider Gallia's tardiness.
The goddess's voice tingled all the way down to her stomach and made her throat feel tight. "I don't understand." Ashera's red eyes narrowed, and Sanaki's legs trembled - because they were tired, stiff from standing for the last half hour after the long trip up the stairs. We went to the altar and found the greatest of treasures hidden in the grotto-- "He told me they went to Serenes," she said. Her jaw ached from clenching during the moments she wasn't talking. "Lehran, the tribe leaders, the herons - and a wolf, but I've never heard of such laguz on Tellius before."
The greatest of treasures. Her eyes had immediately gone to the ring on Lehran's finger, stomach already churning. But it looked old, the shine dulled by tiny scratches and fingerprints, and he didn't twist or play with it. He noticed her looking and promised to explain it later, but then he was tired, and Sanaki wished she hadn't made him come up, though she didn't want him to leave either.
He kissed her hand again before he left. His lips were soft and warm, his hand as gentle as she remembered. She curled her fingers into her skirt and thought they still tingled. Ashera's stare made her want to hide her hands, or clasp them and wring her fingers to hide it.
Ashera's brows dipped, and a line etched her forehead. "Where are the bird tribes now?"
"Phonecis," Sanaki said, trying not to frown. The last thing she wanted was to look like that. She breathed deeply when the Ashera's gaze flicked to the window, breathed the resinous scent which reminded her of incense - only thicker, like syrup. "It is somewhat south and east of Goldoa. The remaining ravens have left their island and joined the hawks." Maybe they should have a map commissioned for the goddess - painted right there on the wall behind Sanaki, where it could be seen without damaging her all-knowing image. "Lehran says they refused to acknowledge the rule of a dark goddess."
Ashera's eyes gleamed for the space of a breath, catching imaginary sunlight. Her aura was a swirl of air like the breezes outside. The tiles, already warm, and grew hotter. Sanaki waited. This was new - this expression, the slight widening of the eyes and the way her mouth opened a tiny bit. Not anger-- or was it?
They tried to tempt me into staying, Lehran told her. The hawk king, and Rafiel, and my grandson, whom I thought dead. He'd looked at his folded hands, turning them over so his palms were open, and his long feathers brushed the floor. She remembered thinking it made him look guilty, especially when he continued to avoid her eyes. Without Dheginsea to keep me on task I stayed longer than I intended.
Then they went to the forest, as if Lehran needed to be reminded how blackened the trees were, how they twisted, how their branches curled like fingers, their bark flaking away like charcoal. The sandy floor, ash and dirt and dead wood, the perpetually gray sky. He heard the forest speak - yes, he can hear it, he said, and how he wished he could still understand - and the youngest chased after every snatch of sound until they came to the grotto sheltering his sister.
She would marry one of the clan leaders, he thought. Likely Phonecis, because he was strongest; she couldn't marry any of the herons, of course.
Not you? Sanaki's hands were knotted over her stomach, but he wasn't looking. Her chest felt hollow.
She's only a child. He appeared oblivious to the way she bit her lips together, but when he said that, the churning of her stomach eased.
She looked away from the goddess, at the dark sky beyond Ashera's window, and wondered if it was cool outside now that the stars had come out. The aura cooled, congealed into whiteness again. It reminded her of fog. She'd only seen such a thing once, near the mountains north of the city, when Sephiran and Zelgius chose to risk the pass between mountains in order to shake her assassins and were nearly swallowed by snow. Sanaki had never been so cold in her entire life - not before, and not since, though she felt her insides freeze when she stood like this before the goddess, waiting for her to say something, give some command, knowing it possible she would stand for several hours. Her muscles felt wrung out and dry today, as if she was the one who traveled through the night to get home.
"Bring Lehran to me," the goddess said. Her red eyes had focused on Sanaki again, and her face was a mask again, painted white, with perfect black brows, and lashes, and a perfectly red mouth.
She stiffened her arms to hold them at her sides. Her fingers hurt from being curled in so long. "He's resting."
"Awaken him." This time Ashera's voice inflected, the intonation reminding her of Sigrun when she was irritated. "Service to me does not go unrewarded, little empress." Sanaki stepped back, braid thumping against her back. "Bring him to me. Now."
They were already almost the same height when Ashera met her standing. She couldn't do anything about that, could she? Stunt a person's growth the way the younger pegasus knights told her tea would make her shorter if she drank too much?
A peculiar curve moved the line of Ashera's mouth, and a narrowing of her eyes-- and Sanaki turned around and walked out of the room before it could be considered a smile.
*
He didn't tell Sanaki what the goddess said to him - only that she would continue to execute Ashera's will, and he was to be her companion again. He would stay close to her, leave only when she did, when she commanded. Sanaki told him it should have been that way all along, and Lehran's eyes dimmed, lidding slightly in the early morning sun piercing her curtain of wisteria over the balcony. They looked blue in that light, next to the profusion of leaves and vines.
When he left her, everything she endured as the goddess's servant flitted across her mind, every memory. Every threat to keep Lehran from her grasp - how her chest would tighten, and her eyes prickle, when she twisted Ashera's words in the passing of her commands and realized a mistake could be construed as rebellion if the goddess chose to view it as such. She'd walked among the commoners two years before to avert an epidemic; disease was part of the natural order, yet to lose thousands now would destroy Begnion. And Sanaki wondered if that wouldn't be best after all - if these people, who had left the homes they knew to till someone else's land, live in someone else's rooms and clothing, wouldn't prefer to brave a few days more of suffering, if their endurance would be rewarded with rest.
That was not within her authority to decide. And that was the difference between herself and the man she once called Sephiran. She hated him for taking that decision upon himself and trying to make her participate.
Then he returned, and kissed her hand, and she wanted to keep him in his chair by the window - the one he always used before the judgment - so she could look at him, and talk to him. His voice was resonant, set her hands to shaking. What would it be like raised in song?
Order was as its incarnation decided to see it; Sanaki could think of no other explanation for the times Ashera bent her own rules, rare though they were. What would his reward be?
Song?
But then she couldn't punish him with it.
When he sat with her the morning after his return, when the sun was still low, the sky still pink and the light still gray and blue, he looked almost like a stranger - a beautiful stranger with prismatic wings which swallowed light, then glimmered at the edges with it, feathers like blades when they were illuminated at just the right angle. The slatted together like blinds when he folded them back, and stretched open like black fans. She wanted to touch them. They were soft, probably warm. They bled. Sanaki clenched her hands into fists when she remembered and didn't ask.
"She's a tyrant," Sanaki said when it seemed Lehran had nothing to say to her last statement. "It isn't really your fault."
He sighed, and sounded tired. It was the way his shoulders bent. "You should not speak of her that way."
"What did she call me?" Sanaki circled the lip of her teacup with a finger and considered the array of sweets on the tray for her breakfast: macaroons in pink, green, and yellow, brown for chocolate; flaky peanut pastries; soft yellow cake that smelled like lemonade. "Little empress? Child? Incompetent? I follow her orders to the letter and receive no acknowledgment."
"I'm told you do not pay the proper respect to Ashera either." His frown was slight. He picked at a flat slice of cake. "What did I tell you about dealing with the senators? Do you remember?"
Sanaki knocked the leg of the table with her foot. "I only wish she were my subordinate, but she isn't."
"Nor were Lekain or the others - in their world view."
She folded her arms and stared at the orange surface of her tea. It was opaque with sweetened milk, still too hot to drink. Steam rose in curls that spread like flowers blooming and disappeared in the space of a breath. "They were wrong about a lot of things."
"Ashera is not used to being wrong," Lehran said. "We are not what she expected to awaken to."
Sanaki rolled her eyes up to the hooked vines of the wisteria creeping between the slats of her screen. "She couldn't have really believed there would be no war in a thousand years--"
"That isn't what I meant." She heard the clink of his teacup on its saucer. "But she did not - no."
"Then what?"
Lehran looked eastward when she lowered her eyes. His profile had not changed, but framed by the shadow of a wing his hair disappeared, merged with the feathers unless she looked closely, and his face looked paler. "She expected someone able to hear her voice."
His narrowed eyes stopped her from speaking when she opened her mouth with the obvious retort. Apostles were supposed to be able to hear the goddess - yes, she knew that, but what did it have to do with her now? The goddess was awake. If she wished to speak to Sanaki, she could do so.
His napkin fluttered in a breeze, half-folded and anchored by his plate. "Did she decide on silence after all?"
You are not the child he hoped to find. Did you know that, little empress?
Sanaki sat forward and lifted the teacup to her lips. It should have been sweet, but she couldn't taste it at all. "I've no idea what you're referring to." She put it down carefully. "Why don't you tell me?"
.