Life in Photographs [Final Fantasy XII, Vayne/Gabranth, NC17]
[A/N: Maroon 5! Changed the lyrics a little, grammar wise, to fit with the theme of the fic.]
Life in Photographs
I
.sometimes it’s a sad song
Whenever their father quarreled with their mother, he would sit alone in the dining hall, oddly small despite shoulders broadened from decades of bearing the weight of plate armor and a monarch’s will, and drink, solitary, at the head of the long mahogany table that could seat forty knights.
They would wait an hour, two, before slinking into the great hall with the wolfhounds, all watchful of the temper of the master of the holdings, dogs and boys turning their cheeks up hopefully at the carved armrests. Drac would have calmed by then, and a large, callused hand would descend once, twice, on their heads, with the awkward gentleness of a big man wary of his strength around children, and then they would follow the shaggy, massive animals under the table to loll with them on the carpets.
Another hour, two, and their father would talk. Often it was simply vague abstractions about time and family; less often it would be about wars, about fresh nicks on his sword or new wounds stiffly covered by bandages. The worst tempers were about duty and honor, poor topics for children sketched in a voice husky from drink and husked from weariness. Stretched thin, almost to breaking, Drac fon Ronsenburg lived far too many lives all at once: a husband, a knight, a Queen’s champion, a father, a Chaptermaster, a hero. He had little time for his children and even less for a wife growing ever more sickly from the lean times.
Today it was an old refrain, words they’d heard often enough that the rough and tumble with the dogs prove far more interesting. They barely listened. Kain huffed in a mock growl of warning and nipped at Basch’s neck; his brother yelped, tumbling to bury his fingers in Jasper’s ruff, but the old bitch, a scarred veteran of boar hunts, merely yawned, planting a huge paw on Noah’s chest to tumble him over his twin. Panting, but too well-bred to bark, the younger pups Iska and Marls pounced, burying the boys under their tawny gold furs, growling and licking at them as they laughed.
“Noah. Basch.”
The quiet, stern authority of their father’s voice cut sharply over their play, and even the dogs stilled, whining, turning up their muzzles. Abashed, they crept out from under the table, smoothing down their tunics and breeches hastily. Drac had a temper that flared but rarely before his own family, but it was something to be feared.
However, their father only looked at them soberly. “Eleven winters on the morrow, you both.”
“Aye, father,” Noah said softly, as inoffensively as possible. He could see the dogs shooting them sympathetic glances from their place on the carpets.
“In a week, you will both enroll with the Wolves.” The harsh certainty in Drac’s tone made them blink, confused. Surely this by itself would not have driven their normally sweet-natured mother into a temper - she had long reconciled to the unshakable fact that as Ronsenburg sons both twins would be given, when of age, to the Chapter. Personally, they had neither of them an opinion: as Drac’s children, they’ve had the free run of the Chapterhouse for as long as either of them could remember, watched over by their father’s closest followers.
“As novices, with the rest of the autumn’s intake. You’ll both stay at the dormitories until you graduate.”
Ah. The twins exchanged glances. That explained the argument, at least.
“Together?” Basch asked, unable to hide his anxiety, and flinched as Drac narrowed his eyes. Quickly, Noah reached over to grasp his brother’s hand, and he dared to hold his father’s gaze, evenly. This, he would not give. Basch’s eyes strayed, wavered, then tracked back up, as well, and his fingers squeezed tight in Noah’s grasp.
“Together,” Drac said, almost musing, and added, with a pity they did not understand, then a strange anger. “Together yet.”
Noah and Basch frowned in concert, but Jasper, an old hand at her master’s mood, broke the tension, pushing her large head into his lap and looking up at him with loving eyes growing filmy with cataracts. Drac took a breath, then sighed, and stroked her ears.
“We are dogs, we of this blood, and dogs do not choose their masters. Mayhap someday the both of you will have the good fortune to share one.”
II
.but I cannot forget
The too-pretty twelve-year-old boy with the sleek, perfectly trimmed short jet hair watched him with eyes far too intelligent and calculating for his age, eerily still as he was introduced. He wore the white and god lace vest and leggings of an Archadian boy-prince, a black velvet cape over his narrow shoulders, and a nearly comically long, gold-etched rapier at his hip. Noah stared, unabashed and fascinated, despite having nine years on the boy’s age and freshly knighted along with his twin. Basch elbowed him unobtrusively behind their father’s back, and Noah snapped his gaze back down to the crimson carpet.
“… my champion, Ser Drac fon Ronsenburg, and his sons, Ser Noah and Ser Basch of the Order of the Wolves.” The Queen’s voice was wet from age, her eyes rheumy and wavering, and she slouched on her throne, the scent of rose oil too evidently strong even from where they knelt. “Prince Vayne Carudas Solidor of the Archadian Empire.”
The Prince said something in the lilting Archadian tongue, and the Court Interpreter, a ponderous old man whose flesh sagged in patchy pouches on his cheeks spoke in his parchment-dry voice. “I am honored to make your acquaintance. The Order is highly spoken of within Archadia, and the Ronsenburg name ties close to its exploits.”
“Your Imperial Highness honors us with your praise.” Drac’s words were stilted, obviously uncomfortable, tensing as the interpreter translated. Their father was most ill at ease in the studied formal finery of Court, and functions as these stifled him, as imposing as he looked in black and silver ceremonial plate, and besides, his temper had been poor when he had discovered that his Queen had invited the Archadians to Landis without first consulting him.
Perhaps it was humility or recklessness, but the only guard Prince Vayne seemed to possess was a hulking man in embossed flint-gray armor, his hair cropped short to his skull, his weathered skin scarred across his cheek, a horned helmet held at his hip. No, not reckless, Noah realized, as he met the cold, disinterested killer’s eyes of the man introduced to him as Judge-Magister Bergan - confidence. Noah had no doubt that Vayne’s armored hound would kill, without hesitation, at his master’s word.
“Prince Vayne honors Landis with his presence,” the old Queen murmured, after many more mindless exchanges of courtly praises, as Vayne bowed at the pleasantry with all the grace and practice of a courtier. “There will be a grand reception after this audience. It is Our hope that you will all be in attendance.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Drac said, his tone becoming stiffer. Noah and Basch both hid grins. Formal dinners, with their hours upon hours of polite formalities, were their father’s bane.
III
.I can’t regret
“Lord Vayne. A visitor.” Bergan’s knock made Vayne sit upright on the windowseat, setting down the book in his lap. He had tarried nearly a month, this time, in Landis, and relations between the Empire and this backward little country was still cordial only on the surface. Landis continued to refuse the Empire permission to build the East-West Imperial trade route through its eastern borders, and to circle around the Spinebreak mountains would be a remarkable waste of resources and manpower; not to mention that pirates were rife on its slopes. His Lord Father and his brothers were growing impatient, and to tell the truth, the Solidor blood within him too, chafed at all the evasions.
“Show him in.”
Still, even this archaic, tradition-bound country with its fiefdoms and knights, with its one sole Aerodrome and without even piped indoor water, did so have its curiosities, not the least of which was now padding through the door behind Bergan, clearly uncomfortable in his hooded gray robe. Vayne smiled warmly into ice blue eyes.
“Ser Noah.”
Noah had been one of the few Landissan nobles who Vayne had actually found interesting - the young man had an inquisitive curiosity about the world beyond the fiefs, and they had held many long, varied conversations in the library - interpreted, of course, and undoubtedly reported to Landis’ increasingly senile, paranoid Queen. And he was a fair swordsman, as well, as observed from courtyard sparring, if not as good as his brother, admittedly, and nowhere near Ser Drac.
“Ah… your Highness,” Noah began urgently, in guttural, inelegant Landissan, and as Vayne arched one eyebrow the knight sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Godsbedamned, I should have brought an interpreter-”
“What brings you out at this late hour?” Vayne inquired politely, in his best Landissan, and had the pleasure of watching Noah’s handsome face go briefly slack in surprise.
“You can speak Landissan?”
“I learned e’er I first set foot in Landis,” Vayne said dismissively. “Not being able to understand the language is a political handicap that Solidor cannot afford.” And besides, this was his first real task as a Prince, to prove his blood and worth to his Lord Father and the Senate, so as to be considered for the Sun Throne, and he had wanted to impress. On his father he could not be sure, but seeing the respect on Noah’s open features was gratifying, at the least.
“Then why do you not-”
“Knowing, but pretending not to know, is an advantage,” Vayne pointed out mildly. “But enough of politics. Why do you seek me, Ser?”
“There is a plot on your life,” Noah said, his voice nervous and quick and hushed, his eyes darting almost comically to the long stained glass windows. “You must away from Landis, your Highness.”
Behind the knight, Bergan stilled, his gloved hand reaching automatically for the heavy blade at his back, but Vayne held up a palm. “Speak slowly, Ser. How did you learn of this plot?”
“My father still has eyes and ears in the Court, e’er he falls further and further out of the old Queen’s favor. I overheard him discussing it in his offices.” A breath. “I cannot… I cannot say that he was against it, only that he misliked its cowardice. They plan to drug you, kill you in your sleep.”
“When?”
“I do not know. This week, mayhap.” Noah’s eyes cast uncomfortably to his feet, and Vayne noted that the man had dressed hastily, his clothes disheveled under his heavy peasant’s robe, and idly, he considered a hundred possibilities of treachery. Bergan, however, his blade, considered only one.
“Your Highness,” Bergan said, his voice gravel and flint and cold, “Your Highness, if I may.”
“Aye, Bergan, your counsel.”
“That the Ronsenburgs mislike your presence is evident. Mayhap Ser Noah seeks to sow discord. We are like to close the trade agreement within a week, as you have said.”
Noah’s anger, Vayne observed, was quite like Drac’s - quick and unhidden, honest. “I am a Knight of the Wolves. I do not lie.”
“Or,” Bergan continued, ignoring the flare, “Mayhap he is an unwitting pawn, sent here to do the same.”
“My father is the hero of Landis!” Now Noah’s snarl turned dangerous, and the boy’s hand was quick to the hilt of his blade, under the robes. Bergan’s lip twisted, his knees shifting to ready, the leather of his gauntlet creaking as he gripped his own.
“Hold.” Vayne snapped, “And silence.”
Bergan hesitated, but inclined his head as he obeyed, his hand falling back to his flanks. Vayne stared hard at the knight until Noah, too, straightened, his eyes bright with anger, but his hands empty and clenched.
“You, Bergan, you speak ill of a guest here with no apparent motive but good will. I do not sense untruth in Ser Noah’s words.”
“Aye, Lord.” Bergan said, his skepticism still fresh enough that Noah growled.
“And you, Ser. Your father is indeed the hero of Landis, his exploits famed beyond your borders, but yet you have told me that he is aware of a plot to murder a thirteen-year-old boy, and will do nothing.”
Noah paled, but did not avert his eyes. “He believes you are the harbinger of war. That Archadia will not be content with an agreement, that it seeks to swallow Landis as it has swallowed our neighbors. That you are young, but your blood will not change, that given time, you will be Landis’ destruction.” A long silence, broken by a harsh breath, two. “My brother, my brother agrees.”
“And you, Ser?”
“I do not know. I do not seek to give offense, your Highness, but you are only a child, and you have done nothing.”
“Yet your father is right. With the right word from me, the Empire will swallow Landis.”
“Aye, and were you killed, mayhap we will indeed be devoured.” The growing conviction behind Noah’s words told Vayne that the knight had only thought so far just as he had spoken, that he had been driven here not by any knowledge of politics or an inclination to stop an old woman’s insane gamble but of a sense of honor, and that amused him. The Empire itself was old, decadent and stagnating, and honor was a concept that had long lived solely in literature.
“What would you have me do, Ser?”
“Leave. Leave Landis.” He had indeed not thought so far, Vayne noted.
“And what would I say to my father, the Senate? That I had heard of a plot against my life, and had run, craven, for home?” Vayne folded his gloved hands in his lap. “Perhaps you do not understand, Ser Noah, but Solidors wager their lives upon the Sun Throne from the moment of their birth. This is my first task as a Solidor royal, and I will not - I can not run.”
“A ‘task’?” Noah repeated, disbelievingly. “You were twelve when you first set foot in Landis, your Highness. A twelve-year-old child was expected to handle a trade dispute that had stretched for the better part of a century?”
“My brothers have accomplished easily the same when they too were of such ‘tender’ years,” Vayne retorted, bitingly quick. “We princelings are given quick to bestride Empire, for our father and the Senate to watch how we handle the reins.”
“Only one Solidor becomes Emperor,” Noah said slowly, as though struggling to grasp the concept. “I had no concept of the rivalry.”
“Only one Solidor survives to become Emperor,” Vayne corrected. “Traditionally, those of the generation who are not selected are executed before the ceremony.”
“What?”
“Admittedly, it is not a tradition that has been practiced for the better part of four hundred years,” Vayne said mildly, “Because no Solidor has survived to be Emperor whilst his siblings yet lived.”
“And you say Landis is barbaric,” Noah muttered. “I understand that you need to show strength, your Highness, but surely displaying recklessness is just as damaging.”
“Rest assured your warning will not be unheeded.” Vayne smiled, then, and allowed the gesture to warm. “I understand the danger you have taken upon yourself to do this, Ser. But what will you do next?”
“Nothing,” Noah sighed, heavily. “I can do nothing. My oath as a Knight binds me first to Landis, to the Winter Crown. I can do nothing but this.”
“I will not forget it. Though your devotion seems quite a pity.” It was then that Vayne allowed the smile to reach his eyes, and Noah seemed to relax, and smile in return, lopsided and wry.
“Dogs cannot choose their masters.”
IV
.fresh dirt under my fingernails
Prince Vayne found him kneeling outside the Ronsenburg holdings, alone, the servants and knights long killed or fled. Mud flecked his burnished armor, speckled the double wolf’s head on his breastplate, and he had sheathed his blade in the freshly dug soil, his eyes fixed on the empty stone he had dragged up to the graves. There was a steady drizzle of rain, one of Landis’ characteristics, a grey, light downpour that soaked one to the bone.
“Father was right,” he said, in a voice quiet and raw from grief. “At the very end, he was right.”
“Aye.” Vayne’s answer was sober, unforgiving. Fourteen, and the harbinger of Landis’ fall was taller, growing quickly as he shouldered the bloody mantle that was his birthright. A warprince of Archadia. Gabranth knew from hard experience that the slender longsword on Prince Vayne’s hip was not accessory.
The assassination attempt had gone forward, on the day before Vayne was to close the trade agreement, but forewarned, the Prince had been ready. Noah had not received much detail on how, but desperate, the Queen had ordered a physical attack on the Archadian Prince. Pressed back by the royal guard, Vayne had escaped Landis but barely, and had returned at the forefront of a fleet. The war had been grueling, one-sided, brutal.
“Where is your brother?”
“Fled.” Anger threaded thick in his tone, uncontrollable. Fled. He was unable to see it as anything less than betrayal. “Mayhap… mayhap I should have let you die.”
He could hear Bergan’s soft growl, but the Judge-Magister did not move; the light oiled step of metal and leather was Vayne’s. He continued to kneel, even as a small hand pressed, splayed, over his skull, and he bowed his head, staring hard at his visored helmet, the horsehair plume matted in the muddy water beside his blade.
“Dogs do not choose their masters,” Vayne mused, and the Prince’s tone seemed edged. A warprince’s mail gauntlet closed over his, over the hilt of his nicked blade. “Do they, Ser Noah.”
He understood then, the weight of his father’s words, the bitter irony in the spark of knowing that he had first felt when he had been introduced to this princeling, the driving compulsion, greater than honor, that had hastened him to give warning. A compulsion greater than honor that had bled Landis to submission. He spoke, toneless, bitter.
“Aye. Aye, master.”
“ ‘Ronsenburg’ is a name you no longer need. Choose another.”
IV
.worth all the pain that I have
Noah’s smile was hesitant when Bergan showed him into the office, and Vayne let the silence stretch as he stood before the glass windows, looking out over the Solidor estates. Fifteen now, taller, the warprince armor elegant over his slender frame, the Landis war settled behind him, Vayne had just returned to Archades.
“How fare you in the Akademy, Noah?” He was the only one to use Noah’s true name now, and it amused him to do so. The rest of Archades saw the golden-haired Landissan as a pretty-faced knight fled to the Solidor banner, a Princeling’s pet set to study for Imperial amusement.
“The work is difficult but interesting.” Law, Vayne had heard, was a discipline that had, despite all odds, managed to intrigue the knight, and he had heard fair reports from his tutors.
“Ensure that you do not disappoint,” Vayne said, turning on his heel, and a spark of Noah’s stubborn pride made the older man smile.
“Aye, master. I will endeavor not to fail too badly.”
All unbidden, Vayne felt a smirk curve his lips. Noah was handsome in the formal jacket of an Akademy cadet, and he did not doubt that foreign as he was, he likely had quite a few calls on his time outside of duty and schooling. The thought was not entirely pleasing, but Vayne stored that to think of later, and set his gloved hand up, on Noah’s shoulder. “Take a seat, Ser, and tell me how you have been.”
He arched an eyebrow, surprised, as Noah took his wrist, gently, and raised it to his lips, brushing a kiss over the arch of his middle finger, where the Emperor’s ring would sit. His hound had missed him, then. Still, before he could make sly comment, Noah had seated himself, straight-backed and demure, and his tone was dry.
“Well enough, though the rumor of Emperor Gramis’ fourth wife bearing term is rife enough in the Akademy that one hears little else of the rest of the world.”
At that, Vayne had to scowl, at the reminder that soon, yet another contender for the Sun Throne would be born. Surely his Lord Father had sons enough for the matter of succession. Noah grinned, then, and Vayne’s frown deepened, realizing that he had been successfully baited.
“It seems to be the season,” Vayne said, a little too snappishly to riposte with grace. “What about you, Ser? Have any Archadian fillies caught your eye?”
“No.” Noah murmured, though he turned his eyes away, to Vayne’s mahogany desk, then back to meet his gaze. “Not particularly.”
It would be another year before Vayne understood.
V
.the perfection of his creation
The first time Vayne touched him the Prince had been sixteen, drunk on rose wine, his fingers unsteady with an adolescent’s fumble as he had pushed Gabranth up against the window seat in Vayne’s chambers within the Summer Palace, his breath honeyed and wet against his neck as they had ground against each other in the dark, his own hands trembling and uneasy in the Prince’s thick mane as gloved hands worked in his breeches.
One too many ripostes at dinner, one too many glasses of wine. They had ended up on Vayne’s bed, his master chuckling, hiccupping and drunk, so very inelegant and unlike his usual self, that they hadn’t managed so much to have sex but play, tumbling on satin sheets with uncoordinated caresses that tickled more than aroused, until Vayne had fallen asleep under him, flushed and exhausted and not even fully unclothed.
A boy, nine years his junior. Gabranth remembered kissing him, playful at first, amused at his master’s inert lack of response, little brushes over the pad of his palms, his wrists, the dip of his neck and the toned muscle of his belly, wet with their fluids, the arch of his feet and the sweep of his thighs, then his parted lips, sweet and soft, and it was only when Gabranth had moaned could he control himself and stop.
VI
.because things aren’t how they used to be
“You leave for Dalmasca tomorrow?”
“Mm.” Vayne braced his palm against the sheets, lowered his head to nuzzle absently at his lover’s neck. Sated once already for the night, they could afford to take their time, and he liked to have Gabranth like this, sometimes, slow, the knight’s face open and soft with desire.
“You will not take me with you?”
“I am fair tired of your pestering,” Vayne said dryly, angling his hips to snap up, hard, in an angle that made Gabranth jerk convulsively under him and hiss. He returned to their slow rhythm, his free hand toying idly with sticky flesh heavy and hard between them.
“Are you so sure you can abstain the month, the year, in Dalmasca?” Noah’s tone was playful, a sure sign that the knight had quite given up on having his way.
“I should ask you the same, the month, the year, you will spend alone in Archades.” Vayne retorted, pinching the very tip of Gabranth’s arousal, and the older man growled, squirmed, bucked. The matter of Dalmasca felt far removed from now, less the matter of the shards, of Occuria, of inheritance and legacy. Vayne knew even as Gabranth chuckled breathlessly, admitting defeat at the retort by curling his fingers tighter over his master’s shoulders and arching into the slow thrusts, knew Dalmasca for the catalyst it would be, to shatter this mendacious peace into the chaos a decaying Empire required within which to be reborn.
This, he knew this, as he bent lower, dropped his fingers tight to Gabranth’s hips and ground himself deeper, bent lower for a kiss deep enough for his knight to twist urgently and groan, this, he knew this, for the last the edge of his soul allowed of gentleness.
VII
.the battle’s almost won
Vayne waited until the Dalmascan boy lost consciousness before nodding tightly at the Archadian soldiers holding Gabranth down. Behind them, another set of soldiers hurried, bearing a visored soldier in Imperial armor, slumped unconscious in their grasp. Efficiently, Gabranth shook himself free from the soldiers and began to remove the Dalmascan armor on his shoulders, piece by piece, his eyes blank and cold, then strapping them on his brother as the soldiers removed the Imperial gear. Vayne watched idly for a moment, then turned his eyes away, to the corpse on the throne. The stink of death in the room was becoming displeasing, as familiar as he was to its refrains. A desert country like this - soon, the flies would come.
“It is done.” Gabranth spoke crisply, now in the Imperial armor, by his side. “Master.” The way the title was spat held all of his knight’s reproach, but Vayne only smirked, dispassionate, calculating consequence and effect, posture and impression. Conspiracy came as easily to a Solidor as war.
“Return to the Ifrit.” Vayne turned his eyes back to the boy. “And heal his wounds. We’ll not need our precious eye-witness dying before he is of any use.”
“Aye.” Gabranth was angry, and Vayne enjoyed the sharp, seething tension of the Judge-Magister’s fury, the last inch of his honor. It was rather a pity, he decided, watching Gabranth leave with half-lidded eyes. The Empire consumed more than land, and honor could, after all, only be literary.
VIII
.we’re only several miles from the sun
Vayne traced the golden frame of twisting ivy on the seat of the Sun Throne, and smiled faintly as he heard the loud, clanking approach of a Magister. Too light for Bergan, too heavy for Ghis, and no one else would have dared saunter right past his guard.
“Noah.”
“Presumption, Master?” Gabranth inquired, no doubt watching him finger the exquisite metalwork. The Judge-Magister’s tone was crisp, with a coldness that Vayne vaguely regretted.
“Nay.” He would not be the one seated, ultimately, on the Throne: this was the closest he would come to the seat of the Sun. “I will not be Emperor, not in the end. What news brings you hence, Noah?”
“Lord Larsa has been sighted in Bhujerba, Lord Vayne.” Noah’s formality cracked on his name, and he showed little of his recent reserve, since Dalmasca, in his curiosity. “You will not be Emperor?”
“Nay.” He took a moment more to caress the golden eagle that sat with spread wings over the top of the tall frame, slow and wry, then he turned to Noah, reached up, pulled down his chin, pressed his thumb to silence parting lips.
-fin-
Life in Photographs
I
.sometimes it’s a sad song
Whenever their father quarreled with their mother, he would sit alone in the dining hall, oddly small despite shoulders broadened from decades of bearing the weight of plate armor and a monarch’s will, and drink, solitary, at the head of the long mahogany table that could seat forty knights.
They would wait an hour, two, before slinking into the great hall with the wolfhounds, all watchful of the temper of the master of the holdings, dogs and boys turning their cheeks up hopefully at the carved armrests. Drac would have calmed by then, and a large, callused hand would descend once, twice, on their heads, with the awkward gentleness of a big man wary of his strength around children, and then they would follow the shaggy, massive animals under the table to loll with them on the carpets.
Another hour, two, and their father would talk. Often it was simply vague abstractions about time and family; less often it would be about wars, about fresh nicks on his sword or new wounds stiffly covered by bandages. The worst tempers were about duty and honor, poor topics for children sketched in a voice husky from drink and husked from weariness. Stretched thin, almost to breaking, Drac fon Ronsenburg lived far too many lives all at once: a husband, a knight, a Queen’s champion, a father, a Chaptermaster, a hero. He had little time for his children and even less for a wife growing ever more sickly from the lean times.
Today it was an old refrain, words they’d heard often enough that the rough and tumble with the dogs prove far more interesting. They barely listened. Kain huffed in a mock growl of warning and nipped at Basch’s neck; his brother yelped, tumbling to bury his fingers in Jasper’s ruff, but the old bitch, a scarred veteran of boar hunts, merely yawned, planting a huge paw on Noah’s chest to tumble him over his twin. Panting, but too well-bred to bark, the younger pups Iska and Marls pounced, burying the boys under their tawny gold furs, growling and licking at them as they laughed.
“Noah. Basch.”
The quiet, stern authority of their father’s voice cut sharply over their play, and even the dogs stilled, whining, turning up their muzzles. Abashed, they crept out from under the table, smoothing down their tunics and breeches hastily. Drac had a temper that flared but rarely before his own family, but it was something to be feared.
However, their father only looked at them soberly. “Eleven winters on the morrow, you both.”
“Aye, father,” Noah said softly, as inoffensively as possible. He could see the dogs shooting them sympathetic glances from their place on the carpets.
“In a week, you will both enroll with the Wolves.” The harsh certainty in Drac’s tone made them blink, confused. Surely this by itself would not have driven their normally sweet-natured mother into a temper - she had long reconciled to the unshakable fact that as Ronsenburg sons both twins would be given, when of age, to the Chapter. Personally, they had neither of them an opinion: as Drac’s children, they’ve had the free run of the Chapterhouse for as long as either of them could remember, watched over by their father’s closest followers.
“As novices, with the rest of the autumn’s intake. You’ll both stay at the dormitories until you graduate.”
Ah. The twins exchanged glances. That explained the argument, at least.
“Together?” Basch asked, unable to hide his anxiety, and flinched as Drac narrowed his eyes. Quickly, Noah reached over to grasp his brother’s hand, and he dared to hold his father’s gaze, evenly. This, he would not give. Basch’s eyes strayed, wavered, then tracked back up, as well, and his fingers squeezed tight in Noah’s grasp.
“Together,” Drac said, almost musing, and added, with a pity they did not understand, then a strange anger. “Together yet.”
Noah and Basch frowned in concert, but Jasper, an old hand at her master’s mood, broke the tension, pushing her large head into his lap and looking up at him with loving eyes growing filmy with cataracts. Drac took a breath, then sighed, and stroked her ears.
“We are dogs, we of this blood, and dogs do not choose their masters. Mayhap someday the both of you will have the good fortune to share one.”
II
.but I cannot forget
The too-pretty twelve-year-old boy with the sleek, perfectly trimmed short jet hair watched him with eyes far too intelligent and calculating for his age, eerily still as he was introduced. He wore the white and god lace vest and leggings of an Archadian boy-prince, a black velvet cape over his narrow shoulders, and a nearly comically long, gold-etched rapier at his hip. Noah stared, unabashed and fascinated, despite having nine years on the boy’s age and freshly knighted along with his twin. Basch elbowed him unobtrusively behind their father’s back, and Noah snapped his gaze back down to the crimson carpet.
“… my champion, Ser Drac fon Ronsenburg, and his sons, Ser Noah and Ser Basch of the Order of the Wolves.” The Queen’s voice was wet from age, her eyes rheumy and wavering, and she slouched on her throne, the scent of rose oil too evidently strong even from where they knelt. “Prince Vayne Carudas Solidor of the Archadian Empire.”
The Prince said something in the lilting Archadian tongue, and the Court Interpreter, a ponderous old man whose flesh sagged in patchy pouches on his cheeks spoke in his parchment-dry voice. “I am honored to make your acquaintance. The Order is highly spoken of within Archadia, and the Ronsenburg name ties close to its exploits.”
“Your Imperial Highness honors us with your praise.” Drac’s words were stilted, obviously uncomfortable, tensing as the interpreter translated. Their father was most ill at ease in the studied formal finery of Court, and functions as these stifled him, as imposing as he looked in black and silver ceremonial plate, and besides, his temper had been poor when he had discovered that his Queen had invited the Archadians to Landis without first consulting him.
Perhaps it was humility or recklessness, but the only guard Prince Vayne seemed to possess was a hulking man in embossed flint-gray armor, his hair cropped short to his skull, his weathered skin scarred across his cheek, a horned helmet held at his hip. No, not reckless, Noah realized, as he met the cold, disinterested killer’s eyes of the man introduced to him as Judge-Magister Bergan - confidence. Noah had no doubt that Vayne’s armored hound would kill, without hesitation, at his master’s word.
“Prince Vayne honors Landis with his presence,” the old Queen murmured, after many more mindless exchanges of courtly praises, as Vayne bowed at the pleasantry with all the grace and practice of a courtier. “There will be a grand reception after this audience. It is Our hope that you will all be in attendance.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Drac said, his tone becoming stiffer. Noah and Basch both hid grins. Formal dinners, with their hours upon hours of polite formalities, were their father’s bane.
III
.I can’t regret
“Lord Vayne. A visitor.” Bergan’s knock made Vayne sit upright on the windowseat, setting down the book in his lap. He had tarried nearly a month, this time, in Landis, and relations between the Empire and this backward little country was still cordial only on the surface. Landis continued to refuse the Empire permission to build the East-West Imperial trade route through its eastern borders, and to circle around the Spinebreak mountains would be a remarkable waste of resources and manpower; not to mention that pirates were rife on its slopes. His Lord Father and his brothers were growing impatient, and to tell the truth, the Solidor blood within him too, chafed at all the evasions.
“Show him in.”
Still, even this archaic, tradition-bound country with its fiefdoms and knights, with its one sole Aerodrome and without even piped indoor water, did so have its curiosities, not the least of which was now padding through the door behind Bergan, clearly uncomfortable in his hooded gray robe. Vayne smiled warmly into ice blue eyes.
“Ser Noah.”
Noah had been one of the few Landissan nobles who Vayne had actually found interesting - the young man had an inquisitive curiosity about the world beyond the fiefs, and they had held many long, varied conversations in the library - interpreted, of course, and undoubtedly reported to Landis’ increasingly senile, paranoid Queen. And he was a fair swordsman, as well, as observed from courtyard sparring, if not as good as his brother, admittedly, and nowhere near Ser Drac.
“Ah… your Highness,” Noah began urgently, in guttural, inelegant Landissan, and as Vayne arched one eyebrow the knight sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Godsbedamned, I should have brought an interpreter-”
“What brings you out at this late hour?” Vayne inquired politely, in his best Landissan, and had the pleasure of watching Noah’s handsome face go briefly slack in surprise.
“You can speak Landissan?”
“I learned e’er I first set foot in Landis,” Vayne said dismissively. “Not being able to understand the language is a political handicap that Solidor cannot afford.” And besides, this was his first real task as a Prince, to prove his blood and worth to his Lord Father and the Senate, so as to be considered for the Sun Throne, and he had wanted to impress. On his father he could not be sure, but seeing the respect on Noah’s open features was gratifying, at the least.
“Then why do you not-”
“Knowing, but pretending not to know, is an advantage,” Vayne pointed out mildly. “But enough of politics. Why do you seek me, Ser?”
“There is a plot on your life,” Noah said, his voice nervous and quick and hushed, his eyes darting almost comically to the long stained glass windows. “You must away from Landis, your Highness.”
Behind the knight, Bergan stilled, his gloved hand reaching automatically for the heavy blade at his back, but Vayne held up a palm. “Speak slowly, Ser. How did you learn of this plot?”
“My father still has eyes and ears in the Court, e’er he falls further and further out of the old Queen’s favor. I overheard him discussing it in his offices.” A breath. “I cannot… I cannot say that he was against it, only that he misliked its cowardice. They plan to drug you, kill you in your sleep.”
“When?”
“I do not know. This week, mayhap.” Noah’s eyes cast uncomfortably to his feet, and Vayne noted that the man had dressed hastily, his clothes disheveled under his heavy peasant’s robe, and idly, he considered a hundred possibilities of treachery. Bergan, however, his blade, considered only one.
“Your Highness,” Bergan said, his voice gravel and flint and cold, “Your Highness, if I may.”
“Aye, Bergan, your counsel.”
“That the Ronsenburgs mislike your presence is evident. Mayhap Ser Noah seeks to sow discord. We are like to close the trade agreement within a week, as you have said.”
Noah’s anger, Vayne observed, was quite like Drac’s - quick and unhidden, honest. “I am a Knight of the Wolves. I do not lie.”
“Or,” Bergan continued, ignoring the flare, “Mayhap he is an unwitting pawn, sent here to do the same.”
“My father is the hero of Landis!” Now Noah’s snarl turned dangerous, and the boy’s hand was quick to the hilt of his blade, under the robes. Bergan’s lip twisted, his knees shifting to ready, the leather of his gauntlet creaking as he gripped his own.
“Hold.” Vayne snapped, “And silence.”
Bergan hesitated, but inclined his head as he obeyed, his hand falling back to his flanks. Vayne stared hard at the knight until Noah, too, straightened, his eyes bright with anger, but his hands empty and clenched.
“You, Bergan, you speak ill of a guest here with no apparent motive but good will. I do not sense untruth in Ser Noah’s words.”
“Aye, Lord.” Bergan said, his skepticism still fresh enough that Noah growled.
“And you, Ser. Your father is indeed the hero of Landis, his exploits famed beyond your borders, but yet you have told me that he is aware of a plot to murder a thirteen-year-old boy, and will do nothing.”
Noah paled, but did not avert his eyes. “He believes you are the harbinger of war. That Archadia will not be content with an agreement, that it seeks to swallow Landis as it has swallowed our neighbors. That you are young, but your blood will not change, that given time, you will be Landis’ destruction.” A long silence, broken by a harsh breath, two. “My brother, my brother agrees.”
“And you, Ser?”
“I do not know. I do not seek to give offense, your Highness, but you are only a child, and you have done nothing.”
“Yet your father is right. With the right word from me, the Empire will swallow Landis.”
“Aye, and were you killed, mayhap we will indeed be devoured.” The growing conviction behind Noah’s words told Vayne that the knight had only thought so far just as he had spoken, that he had been driven here not by any knowledge of politics or an inclination to stop an old woman’s insane gamble but of a sense of honor, and that amused him. The Empire itself was old, decadent and stagnating, and honor was a concept that had long lived solely in literature.
“What would you have me do, Ser?”
“Leave. Leave Landis.” He had indeed not thought so far, Vayne noted.
“And what would I say to my father, the Senate? That I had heard of a plot against my life, and had run, craven, for home?” Vayne folded his gloved hands in his lap. “Perhaps you do not understand, Ser Noah, but Solidors wager their lives upon the Sun Throne from the moment of their birth. This is my first task as a Solidor royal, and I will not - I can not run.”
“A ‘task’?” Noah repeated, disbelievingly. “You were twelve when you first set foot in Landis, your Highness. A twelve-year-old child was expected to handle a trade dispute that had stretched for the better part of a century?”
“My brothers have accomplished easily the same when they too were of such ‘tender’ years,” Vayne retorted, bitingly quick. “We princelings are given quick to bestride Empire, for our father and the Senate to watch how we handle the reins.”
“Only one Solidor becomes Emperor,” Noah said slowly, as though struggling to grasp the concept. “I had no concept of the rivalry.”
“Only one Solidor survives to become Emperor,” Vayne corrected. “Traditionally, those of the generation who are not selected are executed before the ceremony.”
“What?”
“Admittedly, it is not a tradition that has been practiced for the better part of four hundred years,” Vayne said mildly, “Because no Solidor has survived to be Emperor whilst his siblings yet lived.”
“And you say Landis is barbaric,” Noah muttered. “I understand that you need to show strength, your Highness, but surely displaying recklessness is just as damaging.”
“Rest assured your warning will not be unheeded.” Vayne smiled, then, and allowed the gesture to warm. “I understand the danger you have taken upon yourself to do this, Ser. But what will you do next?”
“Nothing,” Noah sighed, heavily. “I can do nothing. My oath as a Knight binds me first to Landis, to the Winter Crown. I can do nothing but this.”
“I will not forget it. Though your devotion seems quite a pity.” It was then that Vayne allowed the smile to reach his eyes, and Noah seemed to relax, and smile in return, lopsided and wry.
“Dogs cannot choose their masters.”
IV
.fresh dirt under my fingernails
Prince Vayne found him kneeling outside the Ronsenburg holdings, alone, the servants and knights long killed or fled. Mud flecked his burnished armor, speckled the double wolf’s head on his breastplate, and he had sheathed his blade in the freshly dug soil, his eyes fixed on the empty stone he had dragged up to the graves. There was a steady drizzle of rain, one of Landis’ characteristics, a grey, light downpour that soaked one to the bone.
“Father was right,” he said, in a voice quiet and raw from grief. “At the very end, he was right.”
“Aye.” Vayne’s answer was sober, unforgiving. Fourteen, and the harbinger of Landis’ fall was taller, growing quickly as he shouldered the bloody mantle that was his birthright. A warprince of Archadia. Gabranth knew from hard experience that the slender longsword on Prince Vayne’s hip was not accessory.
The assassination attempt had gone forward, on the day before Vayne was to close the trade agreement, but forewarned, the Prince had been ready. Noah had not received much detail on how, but desperate, the Queen had ordered a physical attack on the Archadian Prince. Pressed back by the royal guard, Vayne had escaped Landis but barely, and had returned at the forefront of a fleet. The war had been grueling, one-sided, brutal.
“Where is your brother?”
“Fled.” Anger threaded thick in his tone, uncontrollable. Fled. He was unable to see it as anything less than betrayal. “Mayhap… mayhap I should have let you die.”
He could hear Bergan’s soft growl, but the Judge-Magister did not move; the light oiled step of metal and leather was Vayne’s. He continued to kneel, even as a small hand pressed, splayed, over his skull, and he bowed his head, staring hard at his visored helmet, the horsehair plume matted in the muddy water beside his blade.
“Dogs do not choose their masters,” Vayne mused, and the Prince’s tone seemed edged. A warprince’s mail gauntlet closed over his, over the hilt of his nicked blade. “Do they, Ser Noah.”
He understood then, the weight of his father’s words, the bitter irony in the spark of knowing that he had first felt when he had been introduced to this princeling, the driving compulsion, greater than honor, that had hastened him to give warning. A compulsion greater than honor that had bled Landis to submission. He spoke, toneless, bitter.
“Aye. Aye, master.”
“ ‘Ronsenburg’ is a name you no longer need. Choose another.”
IV
.worth all the pain that I have
Noah’s smile was hesitant when Bergan showed him into the office, and Vayne let the silence stretch as he stood before the glass windows, looking out over the Solidor estates. Fifteen now, taller, the warprince armor elegant over his slender frame, the Landis war settled behind him, Vayne had just returned to Archades.
“How fare you in the Akademy, Noah?” He was the only one to use Noah’s true name now, and it amused him to do so. The rest of Archades saw the golden-haired Landissan as a pretty-faced knight fled to the Solidor banner, a Princeling’s pet set to study for Imperial amusement.
“The work is difficult but interesting.” Law, Vayne had heard, was a discipline that had, despite all odds, managed to intrigue the knight, and he had heard fair reports from his tutors.
“Ensure that you do not disappoint,” Vayne said, turning on his heel, and a spark of Noah’s stubborn pride made the older man smile.
“Aye, master. I will endeavor not to fail too badly.”
All unbidden, Vayne felt a smirk curve his lips. Noah was handsome in the formal jacket of an Akademy cadet, and he did not doubt that foreign as he was, he likely had quite a few calls on his time outside of duty and schooling. The thought was not entirely pleasing, but Vayne stored that to think of later, and set his gloved hand up, on Noah’s shoulder. “Take a seat, Ser, and tell me how you have been.”
He arched an eyebrow, surprised, as Noah took his wrist, gently, and raised it to his lips, brushing a kiss over the arch of his middle finger, where the Emperor’s ring would sit. His hound had missed him, then. Still, before he could make sly comment, Noah had seated himself, straight-backed and demure, and his tone was dry.
“Well enough, though the rumor of Emperor Gramis’ fourth wife bearing term is rife enough in the Akademy that one hears little else of the rest of the world.”
At that, Vayne had to scowl, at the reminder that soon, yet another contender for the Sun Throne would be born. Surely his Lord Father had sons enough for the matter of succession. Noah grinned, then, and Vayne’s frown deepened, realizing that he had been successfully baited.
“It seems to be the season,” Vayne said, a little too snappishly to riposte with grace. “What about you, Ser? Have any Archadian fillies caught your eye?”
“No.” Noah murmured, though he turned his eyes away, to Vayne’s mahogany desk, then back to meet his gaze. “Not particularly.”
It would be another year before Vayne understood.
V
.the perfection of his creation
The first time Vayne touched him the Prince had been sixteen, drunk on rose wine, his fingers unsteady with an adolescent’s fumble as he had pushed Gabranth up against the window seat in Vayne’s chambers within the Summer Palace, his breath honeyed and wet against his neck as they had ground against each other in the dark, his own hands trembling and uneasy in the Prince’s thick mane as gloved hands worked in his breeches.
One too many ripostes at dinner, one too many glasses of wine. They had ended up on Vayne’s bed, his master chuckling, hiccupping and drunk, so very inelegant and unlike his usual self, that they hadn’t managed so much to have sex but play, tumbling on satin sheets with uncoordinated caresses that tickled more than aroused, until Vayne had fallen asleep under him, flushed and exhausted and not even fully unclothed.
A boy, nine years his junior. Gabranth remembered kissing him, playful at first, amused at his master’s inert lack of response, little brushes over the pad of his palms, his wrists, the dip of his neck and the toned muscle of his belly, wet with their fluids, the arch of his feet and the sweep of his thighs, then his parted lips, sweet and soft, and it was only when Gabranth had moaned could he control himself and stop.
VI
.because things aren’t how they used to be
“You leave for Dalmasca tomorrow?”
“Mm.” Vayne braced his palm against the sheets, lowered his head to nuzzle absently at his lover’s neck. Sated once already for the night, they could afford to take their time, and he liked to have Gabranth like this, sometimes, slow, the knight’s face open and soft with desire.
“You will not take me with you?”
“I am fair tired of your pestering,” Vayne said dryly, angling his hips to snap up, hard, in an angle that made Gabranth jerk convulsively under him and hiss. He returned to their slow rhythm, his free hand toying idly with sticky flesh heavy and hard between them.
“Are you so sure you can abstain the month, the year, in Dalmasca?” Noah’s tone was playful, a sure sign that the knight had quite given up on having his way.
“I should ask you the same, the month, the year, you will spend alone in Archades.” Vayne retorted, pinching the very tip of Gabranth’s arousal, and the older man growled, squirmed, bucked. The matter of Dalmasca felt far removed from now, less the matter of the shards, of Occuria, of inheritance and legacy. Vayne knew even as Gabranth chuckled breathlessly, admitting defeat at the retort by curling his fingers tighter over his master’s shoulders and arching into the slow thrusts, knew Dalmasca for the catalyst it would be, to shatter this mendacious peace into the chaos a decaying Empire required within which to be reborn.
This, he knew this, as he bent lower, dropped his fingers tight to Gabranth’s hips and ground himself deeper, bent lower for a kiss deep enough for his knight to twist urgently and groan, this, he knew this, for the last the edge of his soul allowed of gentleness.
VII
.the battle’s almost won
Vayne waited until the Dalmascan boy lost consciousness before nodding tightly at the Archadian soldiers holding Gabranth down. Behind them, another set of soldiers hurried, bearing a visored soldier in Imperial armor, slumped unconscious in their grasp. Efficiently, Gabranth shook himself free from the soldiers and began to remove the Dalmascan armor on his shoulders, piece by piece, his eyes blank and cold, then strapping them on his brother as the soldiers removed the Imperial gear. Vayne watched idly for a moment, then turned his eyes away, to the corpse on the throne. The stink of death in the room was becoming displeasing, as familiar as he was to its refrains. A desert country like this - soon, the flies would come.
“It is done.” Gabranth spoke crisply, now in the Imperial armor, by his side. “Master.” The way the title was spat held all of his knight’s reproach, but Vayne only smirked, dispassionate, calculating consequence and effect, posture and impression. Conspiracy came as easily to a Solidor as war.
“Return to the Ifrit.” Vayne turned his eyes back to the boy. “And heal his wounds. We’ll not need our precious eye-witness dying before he is of any use.”
“Aye.” Gabranth was angry, and Vayne enjoyed the sharp, seething tension of the Judge-Magister’s fury, the last inch of his honor. It was rather a pity, he decided, watching Gabranth leave with half-lidded eyes. The Empire consumed more than land, and honor could, after all, only be literary.
VIII
.we’re only several miles from the sun
Vayne traced the golden frame of twisting ivy on the seat of the Sun Throne, and smiled faintly as he heard the loud, clanking approach of a Magister. Too light for Bergan, too heavy for Ghis, and no one else would have dared saunter right past his guard.
“Noah.”
“Presumption, Master?” Gabranth inquired, no doubt watching him finger the exquisite metalwork. The Judge-Magister’s tone was crisp, with a coldness that Vayne vaguely regretted.
“Nay.” He would not be the one seated, ultimately, on the Throne: this was the closest he would come to the seat of the Sun. “I will not be Emperor, not in the end. What news brings you hence, Noah?”
“Lord Larsa has been sighted in Bhujerba, Lord Vayne.” Noah’s formality cracked on his name, and he showed little of his recent reserve, since Dalmasca, in his curiosity. “You will not be Emperor?”
“Nay.” He took a moment more to caress the golden eagle that sat with spread wings over the top of the tall frame, slow and wry, then he turned to Noah, reached up, pulled down his chin, pressed his thumb to silence parting lips.
-fin-