464 - Something untoward

Actually that is going to be simple, at least as far as I’m concerned. They’ve moved him back into the Imperial bedchamber, because the security is best there so he’s safest when he sleeps. He said he could handle it so long as they got rid of those awful chain-curtains with their little sword-sharp bits of glass and steel, which make his weapon-sense itch his soul.

He is hardly there anyway. He’s gone before I wake in the morning. At night, I hear the Imperial chimes mark the end of his working day around midnight or later, he comes staggering in out of the office on Skorsas’s arm, eyes half-lidded, then to the bath and back in here naked, gives me a kiss goodnight and a slurred “I love you” then falls into bed and is gone as if the pillow were a cudgel hitting his head. Yes... that’s the extent of my usual daily conversation with the love of my life. I make myself stay awake for that moment. How long will it take things to settle enough that he’ll have time for me?

So they moved him, but I can’t sleep on that bed because it is too soft—it’s a big bag of water under the pads and sheets—when one of my legs has to be hanged like a Brahvnikian criminal. I have a bed beside it. Skorsas and Kallijas sleep on either side of him. I notice that Skorsas is always on the side away from me. I’m happy about that.

What is going to happen once I’m out of this living tomb of plaster, in half a year or whatever it is, I don’t know.

I was told only Megan wanted to see me, but five people came in, three tiny, one medium and one towering over them, who limped.

“Shkaira!” I said. “And…” The two blond boys began to go down, and were grabbed by the collar from behind by one hand each. Megan introduced them to me as her son Lixand and his best friend Ardas. “You found him after all.” The medium one was their adopted daughter Sova, whom I’d met once or twice.

“Ia,” said Shkaira in her way, though I thought Megan would answer. “Them.” She cast her grey eyes covetously over the furnishings of my office, as if she hadn’t had a chance to be part of the sack. “You and your killer mountain boys and girls seem to have found new jobs, too, changed wool and water for silk and wine, hmm? Your Imperatorness.”

She did something untoward, I thought, as I said, “So it seems.” It may or may not still matter. “Though you know full well what our true purpose was. Lixand”—I switched to Arkan. “I am very pleased indeed to meet you.” I invited them all to sit and asked what they’d drink.

“This deeply lowly one is very pleased to meet your incomparable self indeed too, You Whose Mind is the Fortress of the World,” he said. He didn’t seem to have even a trace of a Zak accent. That was going to change fast, I saw. His eyes were Megan’s in immature form, and his face had the heart shape.

“Where’d you find them?” I asked. “And, Shkaira, what happened to you?”

Megan spoke before Shkaira could. Definitely something untoward. “Well… we found out through an agent of mine that Lixand had been spirited out of House Temonen, where I’d been told he lived. Shkaira went after him. He didn’t know who she was, hid in an attic and hit her with a table leg when she put her head up to look for him. That’s it in a fingernail’s worth of script.”

“When I woke up at the bottom of the stairs, I knew he must be Megan’s,” Shkaira said drily.

“You mean you faked going missing?” I said. “No wonder Mad Cow Whatsername came clean… I thought that mystery would never be solved.” They did it because they knew me better than I knew myself, I thought. “I supposed… you wanted to get him out of the City before we got here.”

“Well… yes,” said Megan.

“You could have said something instead, though,” I said to Shkaira. “We all thought you were dead. We were about to designate you successor for the command of the mercenary cavalry whole, you know.” I saw an internal kyash! flicker across her face.

“Well, to be honest, we heard the hands the boy was in were not kind ones. It needed to be quick. And we thought that… em, well, if we asked permission, you might deny us. Wanting to keep me for cavalry commanding, and so forth.”

“They weren’t that bad,” Lixand piped up. “They taught me to play cards.” There is more to this, I thought, as Megan shot a hush! look at him.

“I might have denied you,” I said. “Then I’d have sent in my best to do the task for you. You forget, I’m a parent, too. Strictly speaking, it was acting without orders and so forswearing the strength-oath.” Megan had the decency to redden somewhat; Shkaira, a horse-aristocrat down to the end of her long nose, did less so. I remembered, they’d always been friends, and their strength-oath had originally been taken with truth-drug. This was something they hadn’t planned.

“Stroke of the past. If it had done us harm, heads would roll, but it didn’t.” That got a bit of a jump out of Shkaira; she knew I meant it. “Where to for you all, now?”

“F’talezon,” said Megan.

“With lousy winters and that noxious little shit Ranion running it… but I’ll be glad to see snow again. And the rest of the family.” Shkaira was ever elegant in speech.

Megan looked at me closely, as only someone you’ve had sex with can. “How are you?” she said. “Better?”

“Yes,” I said, keeping it from being between my teeth. “Much better, thank you.”

“As long as you’ve got over it. One wants the Imperator of Arko rowing with all oars.”

“Ordinary people go mad,” said Shkaira. “Imperators become… eccentric.” Lixand giggled, and Megan pinched his shoulder.

“I’m as sane as a person can be when nine of every ten people coming up to him tell him his Mind is the Fortress of the World. I’ve always been eccentric; you know that.” But I felt I owed her a more serious explanation, so I said, “You could say they found someone more stubborn, or perhaps I should say arguing a better case, than myself. Amazing, I know, but true. Several people, really.” She just head-wagged yes.

A bit of hesitation, then the question, “Do you trust me enough to let me close enough for a goodbye hug?” after I’d trusted her with my life; it was so much Megan. I would miss her, I saw suddenly, as I did a bit of castigation for doubting I’d trust her, then hugged them all as best I could. We swore to write, and perhaps to visit. In her kiss, and her “I love you,” was forgiveness. I couldn’t entirely hold in the tears.