541 - All-Spirit grant that they chalk it

So remember I said the clouds have cleared some, but I’d keep you waiting as to why? I’ll get to that now. Chevenga came home, finally. (The Marble Palace—home! For him, or me! The city of Arko, home…) He stayed in Anoseth much longer than planned, because Kallijas was so severely wounded he couldn’t travel for four days. They came in in the evening, and he and Kaninjer got Kall settled into a bed in one of the other rooms in the Imperial section, then Chevenga went to his office, saying that he just wanted to measure the size of the load of catching-up work that piled up, and—I should have known this would happen—didn’t come back until Kan dragged him here well after midnight.

I’d given up and fallen asleep, and he woke me up to kiss me goodnight. You know me, always cranky when I wake up. “I thought while you were gone you might have missed me,” I said. “But then, you’ve gotten used to hardly seeing me anyway, so I guess it made no difference.”

He froze in my arms. It was dark and his face was in shadow, so I was afraid for a moment that he was angry. But he said, “I know. I know, love. I’m sorry. I know I’ve been neglecting you. I’ve known, and I’ve done nothing about it. I am pulled so many ways…”

“By the whole world, now,” I said. “Who am I to compete with that?”

He tightened his arms around me, and nuzzled his face into my hair. “But I don’t want to lose you any more than you want to lose me. And, in a sense, we have.” Maybe he wanted me to argue, to say, “No, no, pehali, it’s all right,” and assuage his guilt. I didn’t.

We lay there, and I could tell he was considering something. “You know what?” he said finally. “I was away for more than an eight-day, doing a skeleton of the work, and the Empire didn’t fall over, burn down or sink into a swamp. In fact it’s more solid now than it has been, the whole time I’ve been here.

“I am going to take tomorrow off and spend it entirely with you, no one else. I’m going to be in here, or wherever you want us to be, and wait on you hand and foot, and take you flying, and have the best of your favourite delicacies the most skilled Palace chefs can sweat out of themselves brought here so I can feed them to you, and massage every part of you I can get my hands on, and make love with you until our eyes bleed. And in between, we can talk about whatever we want to talk the whole time, or just stare into each other’s eyes, whatever pleases us, until exhaustion sends us together into blissful oblivion.” He looked at me with his big eyes all intense—I didn’t have to see them, I could feel them—and said all Yeoli-formal, “Do you consent to that?”

Well, Piatsri, as you can imagine, my answer was not “no.” He did exactly as he set out, with a few other things I asked for as well; the time in our old spot in the woods by the lake was nice, for instance. I didn’t know that any form of afolkarig was possible when one of the pair is in a waist-to-knees cast, but we found a way.

It was so wonderful. I felt I got him back. We’d stopped being one, without knowing it, both of us denying it to ourselves, but now we talked about it, holding each other in tears. By the end of the day we were so thoroughly one again, lightning itself could not cleave our hearts apart.

Tell the truth, feeling somewhat like strangers again made it all the more enticing. At one point we went to one of the boudoirs we’ve never been inside before, and did a chiravesa as two utterly obscure, ordinary people who have never met, first seeing each other in a tavern. Aba Tyriah, was it funny. He was trying to be so smooth and suave, saying, “Perchance, lovely serina—you are indeed never married?—I might purchase you a pehali… I mean, a pehahka,” and had to say, his cheeks getting those red spots, “I’ve never done this before!” And I had to say, “But you are all the more charming for that, fair serin… no, ser… serin… are you mar—kakr, neither have I!” We were just about falling over laughing.

Aba Tyriah and Ama Kalandris entwined and world-creating, I love him.

“What’s the latest Kaninjer’s saying about when you get that off; has it changed?” he asked me over dinner. (You know, eating is one of the toughest things? Because I can’t sit; I have to either stand, braced on something, or lie on my side. I usually stand.)

“Hyeresora 68,” I said. “Fifty-two days less what’s gone of today.”

“So, no change… poor love, counting the beads.” He put his arm around me, from where he was standing to eat beside me. “I am thinking we should put in our request to Assembly. Skorsas has been just about pulling out the flesh-pincers to get a date out of me. Do you agree?”

Kakr, or maybe I should say kyash, here we go. Part of me was hoping he wouldn’t bother with this whole denigrating permission business. Who else in the world but him has to ask a pack of politicians, “Pretty please, masters, may I marry who I love?”

“Omores, what if they say ‘no’?”

“I don’t think they will. There are Yeolis lining up to learn how to fly by the thousands now.” Yes, while I’m stuck here in this supposedly-portable tomb instead of teaching them. “My people know who your people are, now.”

“That’s not answering my question,” I say. “What if they charcoal it?”

“I think we shouldn’t worry about that until it happens.”

“That’s usually wise when you say it, omores, but this time, you’re asking my agreement. I want to know what you think we should do if they charcoal it, before I give it.”

His lips tighten, and he takes in a slow deep breath, trying to keep me from noticing he is. Yes, he’s pulled so many ways, and right now I’m pulling on the opposite end that his people are. But he wants to marry me as much as I want to marry him. If I doubted it at the beginning of the day, I certainly am not doubting it at the end.

“Fine,” he says finally. “I’ll marry you anyway, even if they charcoal it. But understand, Vriah won’t be in the line of succession, because after that they’d never approve her—”

“I don’t care about that. I didn’t fall in love with you to get a child onto a throne.”

“And I’m gambling that they won’t impeach me for it. That would mean I’m not only no longer semanakraseye, but Imperator… it’s holding two nations hostage.”

“No longer Imperator only if you choose.” He doesn’t like thinking about it. It makes him very uncomfortable. But, in truth, nothing is stopping him from doing whatever he chooses, as Imperator of Arko. He has enough people who are loyal.

He whips his face away from me fast, standing tense in his nakedness. (The whole day, we only had clothes on while we were outside or doing that chiravesa.) He takes another deep breath. “All-Spirit grant that they chalk it,” he says finally. “I’d like to go back to not worrying about what is not yet and may never be real. But… I’ve said, my chalk on marrying even if they charcoal it. Meaning we can set the date to Skorsas but not publicly.”

That’s as good as I’m going to get, so I say, “Agreed, omores.” And we kiss, but I feel the fear in him, that he always gets when he goes against his people somehow, as he so rarely does, or it looks like he’s going to get chastised in some sort of official Yeoli way. I kiss him more deeply, not stopping until it goes away, and he relaxes into me.

A little while later he slips out to the garderobe. When he comes back in, he’s got an amazed look on his face. “I didn’t know Eo had a twin sister!” he says. “I just ran into her out in the anteroom, though she’s so bashful she disappeared into some doorway without saying anything. Have you got her helping him out here or something?”

“Oh, yes,” I say. “You know how Arkans are, not wanting to mention the women kinfolk… that’s why we didn’t know about her. He went off to spend time with some cousins out of town while you were in Anoseth, and got her to stand in. She’s very diligent—must be a family trait—and has a touch like his, too.” Hmm… somehow I’m going to have to find a way to talk to her to make sure our stories match. Hahaha… I’ll let you know how long we manage to fool him.

Love from your endlessly-recuperating friend,
Niku