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This was all Pindar's fault.
The tensions behind the Third Selengane-Digiti War had shifted and grumbled for generations, only to slip loose and explode for three agonizing years. The war’s end came as abruptly, as irrevocably, as an avalanche.
At the hastily-convened surrender, journalists caught the moment that Esen Kyrates, hollow-eyed and mute in defeat, had stumbled while climbing the steps. Reflexively, Pindar threw out his arm to catch his enemy around the waist. He helped Kyrates to his seat.
Magnanimous, they called it. An example of true honor and Selengane fellowship, without respect to rank or ethnicity, at its finest.
Kyrates' country's coverage was hardly so generous. One more humiliation, the right-wing Digiti pundits cried. A slap in the face, salt in an already grievous wound, a violation of all manner of respect, social custom, and reverence for nobility. More moderate Digiti coverage, however, welcomed the gesture and, like the Selengane press, deemed it a welcome portent of the new dawn in the countries' relations. Out of defeat, a new beginning was the most popular interpretation.
"And if I'd let him fall?" Pindar wondered aloud to no one in particular. "How would that have looked?"
"Indeed," an aide murmured, and another nodded agreement. "Your decision was the best one, symbolically and concretely."
Perhaps that was so. All Pindar recalled of the moment was how haunted the man looked. Harassed by grief, there was no joy in victory, only sudden, incoherent relief, as when pain ceases after amputation.
The image of him holding Kyrates was everywhere, overnight, emblematic of the war's end and the peace that was being drafted. And yet, his only memory of the moment was the weight of Kyrates against him and the realization that, of everyone there, only Kyrates felt as Pindar himself did.
That someone, some career diplomat or public-relations tyro, looked at the image and decided to literalize it was only a matter of time.
And so, as Article III of the peace accords specified, Pindar found himself engaged to marry his former enemy and opposing general.
*
For two weeks, he was drilled, tutored, measured, buffed and coiffed, all in a concerted effort to make him presentable. No one, it seemed, trusted Pindar to conduct himself gracefully and faultlessly. Not in such delicate circumstances as these, not without a great deal of preparation and training.
In other contexts, it would have felt restrictive, but he did not blame them for their concern. He knew a few things very well, but none of them applied here. He could hardly shoot his way out of a domestic argument, nor direct a fleet of enormous mechs to attack his betrothed. Shouting, ambushing, assaulting: none of those competencies were appropriate here. A falling out could mean the end of peace. He’d earned that burden through his kindness, and he would do everything he could to avoid letting everyone down.
"With any luck, you'll never need to call on them again," Professor Dr. Trehalas told him at the close of their final session. A trim woman with close-cropped silver hair and an expression of perpetual curiosity, she had done her best to get him up to speed on how to act like a civilized person, rather than the career soldier he was.
She was a professor of comparative anthropology at one of the universities in Tolleslund; strange to say, but she seemed to know his people and their ways much better than he did. He'd found himself asking her questions unrelated to the wedding ceremony: about her fieldwork among the agriculturalists of the south and their folk songs, about a superstition he'd always heard about but never fully grasped, about the Selenganes shift, after ending serfdom, to representative democracy. She told him about the mythic origins of the stonefruit brandy, the production of which his province excelled, and more.
He hadn't had many people to invite to the wedding, so he gave her an invitation, along with a promise to share the first bottle of the next season's brandy.
"What did I say about luck?" He liked Dr. Trehalas very much. He'd never spent this much time with an intellectual before, and she was patient and forthcoming in answering all his questions.
She smiled at him. "Luck is the resort of fools and those who fail to prepare?"
He nodded, nearly beaming at her. Their association had been educational on both sides, he liked to think. "Yes. So I won't need luck, since I have --" He counted the terms off on the fingers of his good hand. "Consideration, curiosity, respect, and the flexibility to know when to chuck 'em all out the window."
"Indeed, sir." Her wide mouth deepened at the corners and her eyes crinkled up. "And may I say, it's been a pleasure?"
He stood up, as one should when someone was leaving the room. "All mine," he said. "The pleasure, that is."
"If you have any further questions," she added from the door, "don't hesitate to get in touch?" She cocked her head, then added, "I don't think you'll need to, however. You've been the best student I've had in years."
"You haven't taught in a decade!" he called after her, but all he heard was her laughter.
*
Among his people, the traditional groom's gift to the bride was a tea-blossom wrapped in linen. It symbolized prosperity, longevity, fertility, and pleasure, or so he'd been told. He was not well-acquainted with traditions of the domestic, not to say intimate variety. He was not the traditional groom, however, nor was his betrothed anything like a traditional bride.
He'd never done this before, hadn't ever expected to be here, decked out in a custom-made hybrid of the traditional groom's belted robe and his dress uniform. The decorative buttons along the diagonal, smocked front of the robe echoed the pips of his rank. Supple leather boots rose just past his knees and murmured as he moved; the skirt of the robe whispered slightly more loudly.
Rather than a delicate flower that wished on its bearer and receiver many children and decades of happiness together, Pindar held a plain wooden box, carved by his own hands, encasing a miniaturized tea tree. This suggested the traditional gift, Dr. Trehalas had told him, without duplicating it and, worse, potentially provoking embarrassment.
Shifting from foot to foot now, enjoying the fit of his new boots, he gathered his thoughts and planned what to say. The sole of the left boot was a centimetre or so thicker than the right, compensating for a limp he'd developed over a decade ago. He moved almost like a normal man now, after intense physical therapy on his hips and back, though he was fairly sure his opponents and enemies still referred to him as the Lame Bear behind his back. He'd been called worse, however.
He was lingering too long. He needed to deliver the gift, do his duty, get this over with, not moon around out here in the passage like a nervous child.
"Now or never," he heard someone say inside as he lifted his hand to knock. "Want to climb out the window and flee, just say the word."
There was an answering laugh, chiming bright and musical, that descanted into a few liquid chuckles. "Don't be silly," came the reply. That was his betrothed, Esen Kyrates, late Lieutenant General of the Digiti, though, like Pindar, he had been discharged at the time of the peace treaties. "I'm not fleeing."
"Better live on the lam than have to cozy up next to..." The voice dropped, though Pindar could imagine very well any number of insulting ways to describe himself.
"He may be a brute," Esen replied, "and gods be sure, I do look forward to administering a powerwash or two --"
Pindar turned on his heel. His face hot, breath going sharp, he clutched at the box and cursed the time he’d spent bleeding for this gift. He shoved the box at the first aide he passed and muttered something about delivering it to Kyrates.
He was under no illusions about this arrangement, nor about his own appearance and reputation. Moreover, he had faced down enemies both alien and human for decades; one obnoxious, soft-palmed pretty-boy pipsqueak should not have had the power to send Pindar Almeida, the Fright of Foxhourne and Terror of Traelania, running off like a singed cat. He was out of his element, that was all. All this ceremony and etiquette, fine dress and high ceremony had set him off-balance. Knowing he’d have to live his days within the context of tending to peace made his blood boil.
In his dressing room, he wrenched open a bottle of stonefruit brandy and took a long gulp, then another. The sweet-tangy burn of the brandy down in his gut set him right.
Just to be sure, he finished that bottle and started another.
*
Before his cousin Eleut could reply, Esen held up his hand. "Did you hear something?"
He could have sworn he heard movement in the passage outside -- something more agitated, that is, than the familiar, hushed sounds of aides and servants going to and fro.
"You're paranoid," Eleut told him. He lounged against the wall, tightly-rolled chido smoldering in his fingers. He smiled lazily. "Are the nerves getting to you, little brother?"
Esen closed his eyes for just a moment. He was not Eleut's brother and, to put it mildly, he resented the familiarity. They were cousins, barely a year apart in age. Eleut had simply always been determined to remind Esen how little he meant. When he opened his eyes, however, all he said was, "Perhaps they are."
He sat before a large mirror. Aides and a manservant had dressed him earlier, before an artist from the northern province arrived to do up his hair in the traditional double wings. Now all he had to do was wait and try like hell not to muss anything.
Eleut's company was not helping him retain even a vestige of calm.
"So no running away," Eleut remarked as he came over to stand immediately behind Esen. They regarded each other in the mirror. Eleut's hands settled lightly on Esen's shoulders, then moved to cup his neck. "If you just play your part, you won't have anything to worry about."
"It's not a part." Esen tried to keep his voice steady. "I want nothing to do with your schemes. Leave me out of it."
"Oh, baby brother --" Eleut's breath pooled warm on the nape of Esen's neck; Eleut's hands tightened around his neck and his tongue found Esen's ear. "You're always in my schemes, you know that. And you know I always give you the roles you like, as well "
Esen clenched his fists and schooled his breathing. He wanted to fight -- to explode in fury, send fists and shrapnel in every direction, shred Eleut to ribbons, break him to shards, grind him for once and for all under his heel. And yet, for all the decades of hatred and resentment, Eleut's touch still dragged something out of him, a shameful desire, panting hunger for more.
Eleut knew that very well.
"Leave," Esen said instead. "I have a wedding to get to."
Eleut did not immediately loosen his hold. He nipped down on the edge of Esen's ear and worried at the cartilage until the rings tinkled and chimed. "So transparent, but fine. I'll go," he said and drew away slowly, almost leisurely. "Enjoy your wedding night, little brother. Try not to choke on the Bear's dick."
"Go," Esen said.
Eleut patted his cheek. "You'll show him a good time, I know you will." In the mirror, he winked, then licked his lower lip. His gaze stayed intent, making sure that Esen was watching him. "Use all your tricks."
Esen was out of words. He glared at Eleut's reflection until Eleut shrugged lazily and peeled off to wander out of the room.
The radicals and agitators among Esen's people hailed the peace treaty as a new day for the Digiti, a dawning freedom. Though they would have laughed themselves silly at the suggestion, he shared their belief. This wedding couldn't be concluded fast enough for him.
*
By the time the aides arrived to escort him to the ceremonial hall, Pindar was red-cheeked and grinning. He held his alcohol well; he was not sloppy, nor loud, nor clumsy (all those qualities, he saved for sobriety, it seemed). He was quiet and a little sweaty and played his part as well as any of his coaches and tutors might have dreamed.
Every so often, he heard himself humming along with the string quartet and tried to stop. The first time, his betrothed glanced sharply at him, but after that, he betrayed no awareness that they were in the same room together, let alone standing hip to hip, their arms intertwined.
Beside him, Esen Kyrates looked splendid, like someone out of an icon, all high cheeks and dark, glittering eyes, his hair swept up into two large fans, one on either side of his finely-formed skull. Pindar was roughly Esen's own height, perhaps slightly shorter, and broad through the shoulders -- no willowy youth, Strategoi Kyrates, that was for sure -- yet Pindar dwarfed him.
The officiant wound a green ribbon around their clasped hands, up their forearms, and pronounced them husbands.
The hall went silent. Pindar found Esen looking at him, one eyebrow cocked in challenge. Shall we?, he seemed to be asking. The corners of his mouth deepened in the ghost of a smirk.
"My husband," Pindar said, more loudly he'd meant, and grasped Esen by the shoulders before kissing him thoroughly and deeply. Esen dipped backwards, back arching, body pressing against Pindar's. His free arm slid around Pindar’s back, bringing the two of them even more chest to chest. For a moment, before the cheers came, they were alone up there, holding each other, breathing into each other's mouths.
”You’ll have to share your brandy,” Esen whispered into his mouth, “from now on.”
When the cheer came, however, Pindar snapped back to himself and remembered his shame, and they sank back down into their neighboring solitudes.
The banquet lasted half the night. They remained at each other's sides, but might as well have been alone. Pindar greeted his people and accepted their congratulations; Esen, his. There were rare introductions; Pindar, at least, would not remember anyone he met that night. He drank and ate with abandon, with what some might have seen as celebratory zeal but which felt to him like desperation. The banquet and its guests acquired a gelatinous, smeary shimmer that only blurred and brightened as the night wore on.
*
Pindar woke alone and hungover. Accustomed to both states, he paid them no more mind than necessary. Dressed in drab civvies, he set out for his new home on foot, a duffel bag over his shoulder. The wedding had taken place in the Hall of Justice on Îlo City's Old Island, a part of the city that had been occupied by both Digiti and Selenganes over the centuries. He crossed the wide bridge to the mainland, paying little attention to the magnificent weir below. A marvel of engineering, it redirected the harbor's tides around the Old Island, saving it from regular flooding.
Pindar and Esen had been given a home in the Îlo valley, right in the heart of what had been disputed territory, a few hours by car and ferry from the city. The highway bridge nearest to the property had been destroyed in the war, so all traffic now used the ferry across the Smallwater. While he rode on the upper deck, wind in his hair, the foothills of the Czastuls came into view, wrinkling the plain below. He briefly thumbed through a public newsfeed, full of wedding news, before setting it aside. Romantic! was the consensus, countered only by the reactionary Digiti nobles, who continued to protest not only one of their own being all-but-prostituted to the victors, but used that treatment of Kyrates as an emblem for what was being done to Digiti tradition and society.
From the ferry terminal, Pindar hiked through a nature reserve to his new house. It stood in a spot that was both relatively isolated and well protected. Both men's officers, as well as innumerable civilian aides and consultants, had weighed in on the location, debating security and privacy concerns in addition to appropriate symbolism.
The consultants had called it a "manor", but that was, it seemed, a legal rather than descriptive term. The house itself was comparatively small and plain. It resembled any number of clapboard country houses he'd seen in holos and other media: squat and square on the first floor, with a porch that wrapped around three sides. The short drive, shaded by several old pines and laurels, led to the three stairs up to the porch. The second and third floors looked as if they'd been twisted 90° from the orientation of the first. Where it faced the drive and, eventually, the river, the upper floors turned, like someone hearing a voice, toward the mountains. The gambrel roof looked like it had been lifted from a barn and set down atop the house; it sported a broad, very shallow gable that split again over the first floor.
Inside, a massive masonry stove rose through the center of the house. To one side, a neat galley kitchen, ablaze with sunlight hitting the glass cabinets, let out onto a dining room; on the other side of the stove, the space was divided into what he took to be a sitting room and a small library. The shelves were empty yet, however, and the afternoon sun lapped over the worn herringbone parquet on the floor. He had no personal collection to add to the shelves, but he felt a sudden pang, wishing that he did. They were raw in their emptiness.
Up the narrow, steep stairs, he found empty rooms, three per floor, and two washrooms snug up against the masonry chimney. Each was dominated by a massive clawfoot tub, big enough that even he might be able to stretch out inside.
There were beds in two of the rooms.
He didn't know whether to be relieved or not by the fact that they did not have to share a bed. In some ways, it might have been easier, to go all the way through with the performance. Why stop here, in what was supposed to be the privacy of home? Why shy away from the clear implications of what they were doing?
On the other hand, he'd never slept peacefully. These days, less so than ever. He snored terribly and tended to flail and throw pillows in his sleep. He could hardly hope someone would put up with that, particularly someone as refined as Esen Kyrates. Someone whose own relatives stated publicly that he'd been whored out to the Selenganes.
He’d never lived anywhere that was not military issue. His mother, an engineering technician working on the first experimental gen of mechs, elected for the family to take base housing even as a child. This space was, to put it plainly, his very first home in the most basic sense of the word. And he was to keep it that way with Esen, whether he agreed to it or not.
Pindar had the house to himself for three days. The couple assigned as caretakers arrived the second day, with their daughter and enough food for the pantry to see them through several winters, but they lived in a small cottage behind the bigger house. Pindar was alone at night, listening to the wind rumble down the mountain and excite the trees. He did not sleep so much as lie drowsing for hours, in a half-formed space where rest braided into anxiety, alertness with exhaustion, wishes with doubts.
He did not regret what he'd chosen to do. Guilt, regret, and melancholy were luxuries that he’d never indulged in, he never had the time to commit. He had always half-expected to die in battle, or at least during battle, so this reprieve, this sudden room in which regret might take form was unfamiliar, even foreign. Still, he he had no use for such things. He'd signed the treaties and married the man.
He just didn't know what to do now.
During the days, movers arrived and departed, decorators arranged furniture, and Pindar did his best to stay out of everyone's way. He explored the forest and tried to fish, with little success, in the river. When he was in the house, he was ever on alert for Esen's arrival. He'd had no word when his husband planned to make an appearance, which meant that it could happen at any moment.
When Esen did show up, there was, blessedly, no one else present. Perhaps someone had ensured that that would be the case. If so, Pindar would have liked to shake their hand.
The man making his way up the walk barely resembled the uncannily elegant, nearly statuesque figure with whom Pindar had clasped hands in the Hall of Justice, nor the starved and grieving defeated general. This version of Esen was dressed casually, though far from sloppily, and loped with an easy grace. He looked well-rested, handsome in the sort of effortless way that Pindar admired in others without ever understanding how they achieved it.
"You've cut your hair," Pindar said, then had to school the urge to wince at how inane he sounded.
Esen passed his palm over his skull. "I have."
"I liked the..." Pindar shrugged. Not knowing the words for the elaborate hairstyle Esen had sported, he settled for holding his hands around his head to approximate the hair's extent. "It suited you."
"It weighed about three kilos," Esen said.
"No!"
"Yes."
"Did it hurt? Cutting it off."
Esen frowned vaguely. "They were extensions." At Pindar's uncomprehending look, he elaborated. "False hair. Braided in for length."
"Oh," Pindar replied. "Oh, I see."
In fact, he did not, quite, follow, but he did know that this conversation had gone on much too long for such a banal topic.
"At any rate, a haircut shouldn't hurt," Esen said and smiled. "Not if one has a competent barber, that is."
Pindar did wince now. "I suppose I meant...emotionally."
Esen still smiled, but it took Pindar several moments to realize that the man had been joking. By the time he did, Esen's smile was fading.
"Well," Esen said. "I suppose..."
Pindar stepped aside, then had to reach across the doorway to open the door. "Here, let me --"
"Thank you."
He was in Esen's way and suddenly, unaccountably, aware of his clumsiness and sheer bulk. "You still look quite nice," he said, despite himself, despite all reason. "With your hair. And also your face."
To his credit, Esen did not laugh at him. He smiled again, ducking his head momentarily. "You're too kind, xhârr."
His voice was a murmur, and its gentleness warmed Pindar as his embarrassment had not.
"Shall I show you around? Grand tour, that kind of thing?"
Just over the threshold, Esen paused to glance over his shoulder. "I think I can find my way, thank you."
*
They did not settle into the comfortable domestic intimacy that the press coverage claimed. They were two strangers, unused to civilian and peacetime life, bumping into each other and treading on each other's routines and habits. They were not hostile in the least, but the holo-stories about their cohabitation, the footage of them gardening together in the summer heat and reading at night in the small library, were constructed from awkward third and fourth takes.
Pindar had never lived without company, lots of it, yet the presence of just one man, of just Esen, left him turned about and confused. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get this right.
He tried to watch one profile of them; he set the holo player to double speed and muted the audio stream, and even then, it proved difficult to sit through. He lumbered through the background of scenes like a lost rube, while Esen spoke gently and led a tour of the kitchen garden. When Pindar couldn’t stand it any longer, he jabbed at the player to stop, but paused it instead. Esen was stuck looking at his retreating figure, an unknowable smile on his lips.
*
One afternoon, Pindar was in the workshop he'd set up in an outbuilding when he heard an animal barking and crooning in the yard. He looked out the shed door toward the woods; he'd heard foxes and something else, something larger, at night.
Something barrelled into him, knocking against his shins and bouncing off. As he was recovering from that, Esen came running in the animal's wake, chiding it. It was a half-grown foxcat, rusty-striped with a huge plumed tail, and it yipped happily when Esen caught it and scooped it up in his arms. He was beaming, an expression Pindar had never seen on his face.
"You've met Tikuli," Esen said through the animal's fluff as it twisted and purred in his embrace. "Good, good."
"This is yours?"
Esen nuzzled the back of the foxcat's head and nodded. "She just arrived. Isn't she gorgeous?"
"You should have consulted me! What if I were allergic?" Pindar hated his own voice, hated more how he'd crossed his arms without thinking. He was probably scowling, to boot.
Esen's eyes widened. "Oh, dear. Are you allergic?"
"No," Pindar said. "But you didn't know that, did you?"
Esen looked away, the angle of shoulders tilting and slumping as Tikuli squirmed in his arms and whimpered. "No, I didn't."
With difficulty, Pindar shook off his bad mood and cleared his throat. "Well, now you know. For any other beasts and creatures you want to adopt."
Esen's smile started out shy, then spread as he saw Pindar nod. "All right."
"Talk, husband," Pindar told him, and tried to ignore just how much he needed to take his own advice. "All right?"
*
"You should get a secretary," Esen commented one morning after breakfast. Pindar stopped in the entrance to the kitchen, empty plate in hand.
"What's that?"
"A secretary," Esen said. "I assume you're off to answer your fan mail, no?"
That was what Pindar did most mornings, before heading to the workshop or the garden. "Yes, but it's not -- 'fan mail'."
”It’s mail. From people who adore you for a number of reasons. It’s fan mail.” Esen waved his fork. "That's not a bad thing."
"I like to answer it."
"That speaks very well of you," Esen said. "But I'm sure you could use a secretary's help, that's all."
"But then I wouldn't be answering it," Pindar pointed out.
Esen closed his eyes, just for a moment, and shook his head. "No, I suppose not," he said eventually. "Never mind. Just a thought."
"It's just correspondence," Pindar said. He needed to make this clear. "It's not fan mail, it's not like that." Sometimes students wanted to ask him questions, or invite him to various activities. More often, those who had served under his command sought recommendations and favors. "It would be unfair to have someone else reply in my name."
"They're writing to the name and reputation," Esen said patiently. "Not to you. They don't know you."
"Of course they don't." Pindar shifted the plate and mug to his other hand and scratched the back of his neck. They seemed to be arguing about something, but not only did he have no idea what that was, he didn't know how to make Esen see what was, for him, the plain, obvious truth. "All I am is a name and reputation."
Esen blinked. The morning sun brightened the plain wooden table and found the broad planes of his handsome cheekbones. "You're --"
Pindar nodded. "I owe them the decency to engage."
"But you're not just a name!" Esen caught himself and paused. "That's absurd."
Pindar turned and deposited his mug and plate in the sink, then returned to the dining room. "That's all I've ever been." The way Esen was looking at him made Pindar think that he was suddenly speaking a different language. "I wouldn't be here, sharing a nice breakfast with you, if I weren't a symbol."
Next to his plate, Esen's hand closed into a fist. He shook it out, then covered the action by reaching for his tea. "I don't know what to say."
"No need to say anything," Pindar told him, and meant it. "Don’t worry about it. I'll see you at lunch."
He meant something to the people who contacted him. It was his duty to respond, to confirm that meaning, to embody it. He'd learned this when he first became famous in his mech, and the truth of it only persisted and strengthened as the years went on and his fame grew. It was the essence of leadership, so far as he was concerned. No ordinary grunt, or decorated officer, wanted to do what an ordinary, fallible man told them to do. No, they wanted a name, a reputation, something meaningful to follow and believe in. That was what Pindar did for them. From a daring young man breaking the Tannhauser barrier to a remarkably accomplished and victorious military leader, Pindar never doubted that his success depended not on him, but on what others ascribed to him.
*
They hosted informal dinner parties roughly once a week, or every tenday.
"Such," observed Esen, "is the price of being exhibited. Must let the VIPs get in close, feel like they're privy to the truth. Like it’s worth all those mining concessions in the northeast."
Pindar didn't think Esen had much ground to complain. While he struggled to remember to smile, his husband was adept at hosting, able to put anyone at their ease and keep conversation flowing around the table and then out onto the porch for dessert and stargazing.
"You're inviting Dr. Trehalas again?" Esen asked one afternoon while reviewing the guest list for that weekend's gathering.
To each party, they each invited one or two acquaintances to join the various government and civil-society representatives. This helped maintain the impression that they were, in fact, a married couple who just happened to enjoy hosting such parties.
Pindar was sorting through a delivery of fuel cell accessories in the sitting room. He looked up to see Esen standing in the doorway from the library.
"Yes," he replied. "Is that a problem?"
"Of course not," Esen said. He came into the room and sat in the chair opposite Pindar's. "Is there anything I should know about your, ah. Attachment to her?"
Pindar set down the manual he'd been flipping through. "My attachment," he repeated flatly.
"Your relationship," Esen said, as if Pindar were too thick to understand what he'd just implied.
Pindar crossed his arms and bit the inside of his cheek. He once was able to silence an entire cadre of junior officers with the glare he assumed now.
Esen merely shrugged one shoulder and said, "Oh, dear. I've insulted you."
"What? Hardly." Pindar recrossed his arms and stroked his beard. "You may have insulted her, however. Suggesting that such a cultured lady would dally with the crude likes of me."
Esen's expression assumed that politely bemused mask that he wore so often. Pindar longed, somehow, to break through that mask and see what he looked like underneath. What he was really like.
"I'm not interested in Dr. Trehalas," Pindar told him. "Believe me."
"Because of course I have no --"
"I'm truly not," Pindar insisted, then realized he'd interrupted. "I'm sorry. What were you saying?"
Esen studied his palms. After a moment, he said, his voice soft, "I have no claim on you, of course."
"Ah," Pindar said, in place of anything coherent. "You don't?"
Esen raised his head; their eyes met. "That sounded like a question."
"It was."
"I would think you'd make it a statement."
Pindar rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled. "I think you've lost me."
The upholstery creaked under Esen as he shifted. He propped his chin in his hand, his elbow on the edge of the table. "I stated that I had no claim on you, which you questioned, as if you had assumed otherwise."
"You're my husband," Pindar said, as slowly as he could. His face was very warm, his beard suddenly itchy. "That's your claim."
"A marriage of convenience and politics, a propaganda piece, is --"
"-- still a marriage, by the devils!" Pindar winced with Esen at the loudness of his outburst. He coughed into his hand. "Apologies."
"No need, xhârr."
"What is that?" Pindar asked. A feeling overtook him, one he had not experienced in some time. His focus sharpened, his thoughts narrowed and gleamed, his entire body went taut. He leaned forward. "That word. You say it -- at times. Not often. But sometimes."
Esen's brows went up and he blinked rapidly as he rubbed his chin. Pindar had managed to surprise Esen. That fact alone brightened his mood, made him all the more excited.
"Xhârr? A nickname," Esen said finally. His eyes searched Pindar's expression; he must have thought he saw something there, because he added, as if apologetically, "an affectionate one, believe me. I have not been insulting you to your face."
"Just behind my back?" Pindar asked. He meant it as a joke, but then he remembered what he'd overheard before the wedding. The truth twisted in his gut and dispelled all his previous good humor.
"No," Esen said. "Of course not."
"Of course," Pindar echoed.
"You should ask Dr. Trehalas," Esen offered. "About xhârr."
Pindar banged his fist on his knee. "How many times must I tell you, she's nothing of the sort to me?"
"Please don't raise your voice like that," Esen said after a moment.
Still angry, and now even more confused, Pindar gaped at him. "Raise my voice!"
Esen winced. "You're still shouting. I don't want to ask you again."
Pindar could do nothing but laugh, uproariously and helplessly. He certainly didn't know what to say.
Esen rose and nodded stiffly, once, before leaving the room. His slippers whispered along the floorboards.
The laughter left Pindar then, in a great, sudden drain, left him empty and shivering. His head was in his hands. What sort of adult asked another not to shout? Just how delicate and sensitive was this husband of his? He wasn't someone to be hushed like a rambunctious dog! And in his own home, no less.
In their home, he corrected himself, and then began to understand.
*
"When I said don't hesitate to ask anything else," Dr. Trehalas said over holo-call, "I'm not sure I meant...this."
"I can compensate you," Pindar said. "For your time and expertise."
She shook her head, chuckling. "I wouldn't know how to draw up that invoice."
"I gravely insulted him," Pindar told her again. "I don't know what to do."
"And this was after he inadvertently hurt you?"
Pindar shifted in the narrow chair. "I thought he was insulting you, so naturally I grew...angry."
"Me?"
"He insinuated that you and I are --" He stopped, aware that he needed to put this, if not delicately, at least somewhat appropriately. The best he came up with was, "Romantically entwined."
"Oh, my," Dr. Trehalas said. Her grin was wide and delighted. "Wouldn't that be something?"
"I assure you, Professor, I harbor no --"
She waved her hand. "I know, General, I know. I'm merely teasing you."
He shrugged, then laced his fingers together one way, then the other.
"Be that as it may," Dr. Trehalas continued, "it occurs to me that you might be overlooking some salient aspects of your shared history."
He started to pop his knuckles, then stopped.
The soft exhale she gave, how she looked aside as she thought through what to say next, all those familiar things made him nostalgic for their time together in her crash course in culture and manners. He'd never spent that much time with someone when the topic wasn't killing others.
"You and he are both just months out of combat," she said at last. "He might be feeling the effects of that stress, not to say trauma, as I'm sure --"
"I'm fine," Pindar said. "That's all behind me."
"Of course," she said in a murmur. She had been looking down at something out of his view, but then she looked right at him. Or, technically, at the camera eye that stood in for him. "Perhaps it's not so far behind General Kyrates. Perhaps some gentleness would not go amiss."
He pressed his lips together, thinking about it. "I'm not the person for that."
"For gentleness? I've seen you with Tikuli."
"She's an animal."
Dr. Trehalas nodded shortly. "Aren't we all, at the end of the day?"
Perhaps, Pindar was forced to conclude, there were some subjects that even Dr. Trehalas was ill-equipped to tackle.
*
The caretakers went away to a wedding, leaving Esen and Pindar to their own devices.
"Just us, then?" Esen smiled a little. "Two men, an isolated house...If one of us dies, the culprit will be quite clear."
Pindar served up a scoop of the casserole he'd reheated, using Mr. Laval's instructions. Potatoes, sausage, and lots of melted cheese: it was his favorite dish by far. "You're already planning to kill me?"
"Hmm?" Esen blinked, as if surprised. "No, I'm plotting out a mystery novel."
Laughing, Pindar shook his head. "All right, whatever you say."
"I am," Esen insisted. "Now that I -- we -- have so much time on our hands, I confess that I'm struggling to keep myself occupied."
"You have a lot of books," Pindar said.
Esen nodded slowly. "True. I've been looking for something slightly more active, however."
"Active, eh? Get the pulse up, the sweat running?"
Esen's eyes widened, just fractionally, and Pindar bit his lip. He hadn't intended the innuendo at all; he'd been thinking of activity in terms of running, perhaps, or wild swimming. He almost said so, almost apologized, before realizing that there was a possibility that the innuendo had not occurred to Esen. If Pindar were to confirm it, then he would come off as, yet again, the vulgarian everyone assumed he was.
Instead of saying anything, Pindar took a large bite and chewed it thoroughly.
Esen shifted in his seat. "Intellectual activity, I should have said. My physical needs are..."
Unmet, Pindar thought, but prided himself for resisting the urge to speak twice now in a row. He nodded. "I see, yes. One's intellectual activity is highly important."
Esen did not reply. No doubt he could not figure out how to remain polite in the face of such absurdity as Pindar Almeida blithely discussing intellectual pursuits.
As they finished eating, the silence was not quite as uncomfortable as it might have been. As, admittedly, it had been, as recently as last week. Pindar drained the wine carafe, sharing it between their glasses, and sat back in his chair, enjoying the rosy flush as it settled over him.
Esen stacked their plates in the now-empty tureen with the cutlery. After he stood, the stack of dishes in his hands, he hesitated.
Pindar cleared his throat when their eyes met.
"Well," Esen said -- not quite diffidently, but without the firm confidence he sported when they had company. "I suppose I'll say goodnight, then."
"Oh," Pindar said. He'd been enjoying a hazy daydream about opening more wine, perhaps challenging his husband to a hand of cards, seeing the night grow old and dark together. "I suppose, yes."
"Yes," Esen said. They were caught again in that ever-recurring awkward hesitation. "Well..."
"Do remember," Pindar said, sitting forward and grinning, "many have tried to kill me. Many. But no one ever succeeded."
Esen ducked his head in a nod. He may have been smiling. After a moment, he said. "I refuse the challenge, xhârr. Any deaths at my hand will be entirely fictional, I promise."
Satisfied, as well as amused, Pindar sat back and laced his hands over his midsection. "I will keep you to that promise, husband."
Esen snorted softly. He was, indeed, smiling when their eyes met briefly, before he murmured, "Good night, then. And Pindar?"
“Yes?”
“I have taken my physical needs well in hand, but should you ever feel in need of some help, please remember you might always ask,” Esen said, casually, every bit as charmingly as he traded quips with their guests, “husband.”
"Manners are simply how we treat others well, with the respect we hope ourselves to receive," Dr. Trehalas had told him early in their tutorial. Pindar wished now for much more explicit rules, perhaps in flow-chart form, a cartography of behavior that he could follow without incident or awkwardness. He wished for the clean abstraction that such rules would afford; time would flow again, he believed, naturally and easily. Instead, what he had were awkward moments that seemed to pile up and never go away; he had to thread his way around jumbled hoards, moment after moment, without much hope of things ever getting clearer.
He was no longer alone, that was true. He had company in the house all the time: not just Esen, but the Lavals as well as various guests and aides. But he was, if anything, more alone than ever. At least in his previous life, his isolation from other people had been commonly accepted, even recognized and respected. Now, all the company merely reminded him of the fact that he was lonely.
He'd believed, when this all began, that after an initial phase of adjustment, he and Esen would find a certain equilibrium. He was not foolish enough to expect intimacy, not even affable companionship, not off the bat, nor after some time, but he had looked forward to the development of an ease together, a mutual sharing of space, even a fond acquaintance.
That had been, it seemed, incredibly foolish of him. The more time they spent in proximity to each other, the plainer it became that they did not know how to proceed. They could not be together, at least the way a marriage would suggest. Perhaps that was okay, save for the reminder of Esen’s physical needs, gnawing in the back of his head.
At night, he lay still in bed, anxious never to turn too quickly or make more noise than usual. He strained to listen for similar sounds from Esen’s room, then cursed himself for hoping to hear a squeak of bedsprings, perhaps a rhythmic flesh-on-flesh whisper.
*
Pindar did not allow the press, or even aides, to enter his workshop. He was due, he maintained, some measure of privacy. His time tinkering in there was precious.
"May I see?" Esen asked, as serene and unruffled as ever.
Pindar could not hide his surprise. Surely Esen was merely being polite. "Really? It's a mess, more rust and bald wires than anything --"
"Really, yes." When Esen laid a hand on Pindar's arm, his cool palm made Pindar doubly aware of how overheated and sweaty he was. "You know that I've long admired your exploits in --"
He gaped before catching himself. "You've done what now?"
Esen's graceful eyebrows puckered together. For just a moment, he looked adorably bewildered. "I've told you this, how much your work in the first-gen mechs influenced me. Your exploits in The Will of the People --"
"With it," Pindar said, automatically. When Esen looked confused, he added, "It was both of us. I worked with Will, not --"
"Not in, of course, I'm sorry." Esen sounded genuinely contrite. "I spoke too quickly."
"I didn't realize you meant it," Pindar said almost at the same time. "All that flattery, I mean --"
Esen's lips thinned as he pressed them together. After a moment, he said lightly, "I always mean what I say."
"Well --" Pindar laughed. "I'm sure you think so, yes."
Esen frowned then, and the expression did not fade, did not resolve. Pindar abruptly stopped laughing. Once again, he'd said something crass, or rude, or otherwise unacceptable, and given insult when he'd meant nothing of the sort.
Still, he believed what he'd said. There was no way that Esen was entirely sincere all the time; such a thing was impossible for anyone, especially so political a creature as his husband.
"Only that no one does!" Despite knowing better, Pindar tried to explain. "You're a very canny, very accomplished man! This is a compliment, you understand --"
Esen inclined his head slightly, acknowledging that.
"-- but no one's honest, not all the time, not --" Pindar stopped. The more he spoke, the flatter and more distant Esen's expression became. Keep this babble up, and Esen would dry out to a leaf of paper and blow away. Pindar clasped Esen's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
Esen did not react. He said, "thank you", but otherwise remained still and composed.
Desperate for a distraction, Pindar jerked his head toward the workshop. "You really want to see the mech?"
"Yes," Esen said, nodding once, unruffled. "I do."
Pindar had cadged a new-gen frame and gyroscopic array from the army, and he was working now to install a copy of the original Will's AI. He explained this to Esen, and pointed out the capacitors and modified circuits he was testing. Esen's replies were informed, gently probing, knowledgeable in a way that pleased Pindar at a very deep level. Despite all their differences, in background and education and culture, they shared an appreciation for mechs and piloting.
"Feels odd, I have to say," Pindar said when he'd finished the tour, such as it was.
Esen turned over a pair of wire-cutters. "What does?"
"All this, I suppose," Pindar said. He stood with his hands on his hips, head back, looking up at the frame. "Mechs are a young person's game, always were."
"You're not so old," Esen said.
"Flattery," Pindar replied, laughing, then stopped when Esen lifted a brow. "Oh. Not flattery."
"No," Esen said. "Just the truth."
*
"Care to join me?" Pindar asked as Esen was sipping the first tea of the morning and reviewing the overnight news feed. Pindar was fully dressed, had long ago eaten, but Esen was still a bit bleary-eyed and fuzzy around the mental edges.
"Join you?"
"Hiking." Pindar threw out his chest and tilted his head in the general direction of the forest. "Woke up, felt like moving. Hunting mushrooms, whole thing."
"Hmm." Esen took another sip of tea and thumbed off the feed. "Yes. Thank you, I'd love to."
Together, they climbed in silence. That is, they did not speak, but there was plenty of noise around them -- leaves crackled and twigs snapped underfoot, while birds called above them. When the breeze came up, the branches of the pale maidentrees moved gracefully, letting off a woo-woo song that would have been eerie if it hadn't been so lovely.
Pindar kept back straight and his head up, eyes focused five steps ahead of him. His walking stick warmed in his palm. He observed the edges of things -- crisp furls of last season's leaves, the bright exuberance of sky bursting through the canopy, smooth bark and pitted edges of rocks. Each stride he made was the same length, each breath the same effort.
Esen hiked with less discipline and more overt curiosity: his attention was often drawn to the duff at their feet, and he'd pause to kick aside some leaves or lift an old log in order to find the fat-stalked, broad-capped summer mushrooms that sprouted everywhere. He found a tiny spring through this method, hardly more than a wet patch between two boulders, but once he'd cleared away the leaves and some soil, the water rose a few centimeters before spilling over itself.
"Don't," Pindar said from behind him.
Esen, squatting precariously, nearly tipped over as he turned in surprise. He hadn't thought Pindar noticed him stopping. "Don't what?"
"Drink that."
"I wasn't going to --"
"All these mountains saw fallout in the Hinge Wars," Pindar said.
Esen rose and brushed off his hands. "Even this far south?"
Pindar nodded, just once, and they moved on. Esen might have argued the accuracy of Pindar's claim -- most of the firestorms in the Hinge Wars had taken place in the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere and around the three moons, so the chance that this particular range experienced fallout was remote -- but he didn't feel like arguing. He didn't particularly feel like talking, in fact. He was content to push on, feeling the stretch and burn in his thighs and the pooling, clinging sweat at the small of his back. The rasp of his own breath kept him company.
They stopped to rest, three-quarters of the way up on a rock that jutted out from an old soil slide. The sun shone down across the rock's surface through a break in the trees. Without speaking aloud, they managed to agree to stop here; they sat with their backs against the cliff and sorted the mushrooms they'd found.
Pindar had managed to gather nearly as many mushrooms as Esen, though he had not appeared to stop his relentless forward motion.
"Your stealth is legendary," Esen said, smiling, "yet I'm still surprised."
Pindar rested his head against the cliff and closed his good eye. The sun warmed his scarred face and picked out the shine of sweat as well as the tangle of his beard. "Stealth is overrated. It's what others ascribe to a person to account for their failure to notice the obvious."
"Huh," Esen replied. "In dodging a compliment, you've managed to insult me. Neatly done."
Startled, Pindar turned to look at him, his mouth opening. "I didn't --"
"It's all right," Esen said. After a moment, he patted Pindar's hand. "I was teasing."
"Teasing."
"Yes." Esen's palm rested atop Pindar's hand, their fingers interlacing. The lichen curlicuing across the rock tickled their fingertips. Esen drew a breath, then asked, "Why do you do that, I wonder? Dodge compliments."
"I don't deserve them," Pindar replied. "That's all."
"Never?"
"Rarely."
"So you can be complimented."
Pindar shrugged before closing his eye and tilting his head back. "It could happen."
In the quiet, Esen took his time looking at Pindar.
He'd been handsome once, to be sure, but the face he wore now was more compelling than the blandly proportionate one of his youth. His nose was prominent, his eyebrows as heavy and thick as his mustache; scars dotted and criss-crossed his skin. A longer one, slightly raised and darker than the rest, emerged on the diagonal from beneath the plain patch over his right eye.
This was, Esen thought, the face of a survivor, one who knew very well all he'd been through and regarded the fact of his survival with equal parts pride and humility. It was a craggy face, complicated and confounding. Beautiful.
"I wasn't exactly happy about this idea, either," Pindar had told him once, early in their cohabitation. Esen couldn't even remember what they'd been bickering about, but Pindar spoke with such confidence that Esen was utterly taken aback.
"I'm not unhappy," Esen had replied. "Wherever did you get that idea?"
Pindar's laughter boomed and he clapped his hands in amusement. "Of course not! No, you were eager as anything to get close to this."
I was, Esen should have told him then, and nearly did, but Pindar's derision and disbelief tied his tongue. Now he had no idea how to say so; it felt too late, never quite the right time.
*
Esen was on the porch, Tikuli sleeping fitfully in his lap, reading the classified newsfeed. Pindar and the Lavals had departed for the ferry an hour or so before. They were heading to the city to celebrate Three Sisters Night. Whoever had decided to hold the first round of elections the day after the traditional moon festival was, Esen had to admit, a political genius. A day long associated with renewal, community, and peace was now buttressing the symbolism of the Digiti's first steps toward democracy.
He had voted by holo the week before; a small journalist team, half-Selengane and half-Digiti, covered the moment.
"Didn't take you for a democrat," Pindar had said that evening.
Esen sipped his wine. "Very much so, in fact."
"You never --"
"I could hardly share political opinions while serving the queen, could I?" Esen asked. "Not exactly becoming of a soldier to do so."
"That's what a soldier must do," Pindar insisted, and they glared at each other, jaws tight, argument brewing. Tikuli spotted her chance and jumped onto the table to steal some meat.
"Demon girl!" Pindar bellowed, grabbing her to cuddle her upside down and scratch her ample belly.
Now, one hand in her thick fur, Esen sat up straighter as the newsfeed updated with an alarm chime. It sounded like an air raid siren from the palm of his hand, and he inhaled quickly, brushing aside the memories that surfaced upon hearing it. The Old Island is flooding, it told him, the bridge has been bombed, the weir shattered. Perhaps, the treaty with it.
Looking forward to all that trash and vermin getting washed away, Eleut had murmured last month. The party had finished dinner and they were milling around the yard, beneath the strings of bio-lum lanterns. Pindar had his arm around a young Digit, an aide to one of the more radical parliamentarians, and was pointing out the spot in the sky where he and Will had first engaged the Tannhauser limit.
"You can see it better after Three Sisters Night," Pindar had been saying. "Once they're out of conjunction, it's plain as day."
Eleut took a drag on his nasty chido and exhaled right in Esen's face to make his comment. He did not bother to speak quietly, either. When Pindar and the young person turned, mouths open, Eleut flicked the chido into the darkness and leaned over to kiss Esen on the mouth. He tasted sour and burnt, foul.
"See you, brother," he said and ambled away, hands in his pockets.
Esen made as many apologies as he could to those remaining. He had not heard from Eleut since.
He understood now, suddenly and perfectly, what had happened. Eleut and his friends would never let elections go forward, not peacefully, not without punishing those who wanted better for their country.
Esen could have stopped them. He might have been able to, if he'd been braver than he was, if he'd stayed in their wasp's nest and not fled to the foothills to play house with a man who'd never love him back.
Tikuli screeched in protest when he stood up and she slid off. He didn't look back, however, as he made his way to Pindar's shed. It was locked, of course, but Esen grabbed a heavy iron rake from the garden, intent on breaking his way in.
That was easier said than done. He battered at the locked door, desperate for access. He'd take the Will, that was the entirety of his plan, and…help. Stop the destruction, somehow, make up for everything he'd done wrong and every opportunity he'd ignored to do better.
Dimly, he became aware of someone shouting at him, grabbing him by the shoulder, shaking him back to himself. Pindar was before him, tossing the rake away, demanding to know what was wrong.
Whatever Esen told him, it worked.
The mech came bounding out of the foothills. Its legs, bent backward at what appeared to be its knee joints, strode wide and bounced farther. The suction-gripping toes provided stability on the damp soil. The trail it left was composed of depressions and some large divots, but no destruction. Tree branches whipped past its viewscreen, splattering it with wet, fiery leaves.
"No wipers?" Esen said from his precarious perch behind the pilot's seat. His stomach jolted and surged.
"Remind me for next time!" Pindar shouted, his voice wild with exuberant laughter. He grasped the controls and banked left suddenly as the ferry terminal came into view.
Bending his knees, leaning into the turn, Esen wrapped one arm around the pilot's seat and fumbled for the communications mic. Every channel for Îlo City emergency services was screeching for attention; he tried two back-channel codes for the Interior Ministry, but they, too, were overtaxed. He jabbed at the scan function, setting its range nearly to the Northern Archipelago, hoping against hope that someone would answer.
"Try the university!" Pindar leaned forward, throwing a few switches and bringing down a red lever. The mech shot into the air, its backwards-jointed bird legs straightening and lengthening.
Esen fell to the side, recovered, and punched in the academic call codes. Fourteen of the eighteen channels were occupied, but he made contact with the fifteenth as the mech picked its towering, oddly delicate way across the estuary mouth toward the inner ring of suburbs. The sudden drop in speed left their skulls ringing and muscles twitching.
"It's the weir," Esen relayed to Pindar as the city spread below them. Across the water, fireworks were still going off, but in the city itself, sirens rang and traffic ground into chaos. "Weir beneath the Old Bridge --"
"Got it," Pindar replied, all his exuberance compressed down into a single sharply-honed edge to his voice.
The mech paced along the outer edge of the harbor. The Old Bridge came into view, just around the jutting headland. It was caved in from below, asphalt hanging in ribbons, girders twisted like pipe cleaners, as the water surged over the collapsed weir onto the Old Island. Searchlights from skyscrapers on both the mainland and the Old Island picked out the destruction in strobe-stuttering detail: a panel van spinning like a top in the hole in the weir; a man hauling another man up a teetering girder to the relative safety of the bridge; and water, black and moving, licked with silver and splattered with fireworks' colors.
"That’s it!" Pindar shouted. He turned to look at Esen and the fierce joy fled from his expression. “We need to —. What’s wrong?”
Esen tried to blink, tried to shake his head, but could not. "I have to find Eleut."
"They will," Pindar said, jerking his thumb back at the crowd.
Esen’s mouth opened and closed. "I have to. This is —"
"This isn’t your fault," Pindar said. "Don’t be stupid."
Esen could not unlock his grip on the pilot's seat. The mech was lowering itself into the hole in bridge and weir, achingly slowly. "He —. I —"
Pindar held up one hand. "Wait."
”I won’t let him get away,” Esen insisted. "It's not that. I’m not like him.”
Pindar scowled and grasped Esen’s hand momentarily. “No,” he said. “I know that. Just wait one moment, will you?”
Esen’s mind floated like a lost balloon. It was easier to agree than assert himself. "Yes, all right."
Focusing back on the mech's finer controls, Pindar used one arm to extract the spinning van, then moved the body more firmly into the hole. He ripped the facing off one control panel and yanked out three wires. An alarm sounded, managing in the midst of all this chaos to startle Esen. Swearing just once, under his breath, Pindar toggled all the switches on the next panel. The walls of the cockpit shuddered and started to move apart.
Pindar tossed off the safety harness and stood, holding out his hand. "We've got about thirty seconds before we're stuck in here."
Pindar tugged down the emergency exit ladder. He stood aside for Esen to climb first.
"I can find Eleut," Esen said when they were out and clambering on hands and knees along the edge of the mech's head. There was a short jump, over a deep gash, from there to the bridge. "You should stay with Will."
Pindar's hair stood on end, raked in all directions; sweat shone down the deep lines and scars on his face and in the waves of his beard. Cheers were going up as they emerged into the crowd. Pindar ignored them.
"It's gone," he said, and pulled Esen forward, toward the mainland.
"It's what?"
They ran side by side, hellbent for relatively dry land, while rescue helicopters swooped and hovered, searching the water for survivors. The flood toward the Old Island was stemmed, the Will of the People serving as a new weir and, for the moment, passage between island and mainland. It was as if symbolism, all the beauty and terror of it, was destined for Pindar Almeida, drawn to him, never to be dislodged, whether Esen enjoyed it or not.
"Not getting it out of there any time soon," Pindar replied when they'd left the crush of the crowd behind. He swiped the back of his hand across his face. "Now, where's your cousin?"
"I can find him," Esen said.
"We came this far," Pindar told him. His tone was level, factual, but for a moment, they were truly alone, regarding each other with full understanding. "Where would he be?"
"He..." His mouth was dry and tasted like river water and blood, like he was a drowned thing, tossed up from the waves.
He thought of Eleut, one leg crossed over the other, smoking placidly while Esen was dressed down by their great-grandfather for poor grades. Even earlier, peeking around the doorway to watch Esen spanked for breaking the china that Eleut had used for target practice.
"He likes to watch. He'll be up high."
He thought, too, of Eleut watching him at the Martial Academy, and on holidays home.
"Family bank is three blocks west," Pindar said, and Esen didn't have time to marvel at how well-informed the man was. They were already running in that direction. Esen shook out the comms strap on his wrist to tell the Interior Ministry their destination.
They found Eleut in the penthouse, behind three levels of guards and four security barriers. Esen provided the fingerprints and retina scans at the barriers, but they shared the task of subduing and tying up the guards.
Pindar shifted to enter the dark room first. It was lined with windows on all four sides, a crown atop the 17-story building that glittered, even now. Esen shook his head and pushed past Pindar.
He called Eleut's name as he entered.
"Little brother, you're late and you've tried to ruin everything."
"They're coming for you," Esen told him. "You need to give up."
Eleut waved one hand. "I'll be fine, but it's cute that you're pretending to care."
"I don't," Esen said.
Eleut shrugged. "Feels like you do, honestly. Why else are you here? You never could stay away from me, huh?"
Behind Esen, Pindar cleared his throat and moved into the dim light.
"Oh, hey, you brought company!" Eleut bowed in Pindar's direction, but his smile was mocking and his eyes never left Esen. "Commander Almeida, how have the war spoils been? Flexible and accommodating, I hope."
"You need to shut up," Pindar said.
Eleut took another long pull off the carafe in his hand. "And you need to learn your place, but that's never going to happen either, is it?"
Esen reached for the carafe, but Eleut clucked his tongue a few times and stepped backward. The breeze from the open windows lifted his hair in a backlit tangle; a helicopter rose and then hung level with the penthouse.
"I do hope Esen's been treating you right, my friend. The man's tongue knows things that only the devotees of the Lady Anhidda should know."
Esen flushed, swallowing a protest. Pindar moved to stand beside him. Their shoulders bumped.
"He's entertained so many friends and allies over the years, haven't you?" Eleut leaned against a side table, crossing one leg and letting it swing. Another helicopter dropped into position along the southern wall. The room was morning bright now, glaring, light bouncing off all the glass and crystal. "You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn't enjoyed Esen's favors, actually."
Pindar said, "Put the wine down and come with us."
Eleut shook back his hair. Despite the bright lights, his face looked bloodless, drained and papery, aside from the mad glower of his eyes. He was looking at Esen and nowhere else.
"You were everything to me," Eleut said. "You could have been --"
"You used me," Esen replied. "From the start."
Pindar's arm was around Esen's waist. He squeezed, just once, and stood closer yet. "He's the finest man I've ever known."
"He used to have such promise. A true believer. Someone who knew how the world ought to be organized and fought to keep it in order. He's nothing but a collection of holes now," Eleut said, finally flicking a glance over to Pindar. "Stretched out, gaping, awash in other men's come. In progressivism. I do suppose that's really all a shit-stinking crippled clod like you deserves."
He raised the carafe in a toast.
"Put it down --" Pindar shouted.
Shots from the helicopters shattered the windows; Esen threw his arms around Pindar and dove to the floor. They thudded against the marble, rolled through falling splinters of glass, each catching the golden glow of searchlights, then the black abyss of the night and water, and in a moment, it was over.
Eleut's body juddered and shook, bleeding from several points, and as he died, the glass tinkled and sang around him.
*
Dawn arrived, draining the shadows of their deepest dark, blurring the edges of things as they bobbed up into sight. They'd worked all night with the rescue crews, professional and volunteer. People, Digiti and Selengane, city-dweller and suburbanite, continued to arrive throughout the night, bringing food and blankets, changes of clothes and portable campfires by which to warm up. These were the people Eleut sought to wipe out, each of them straining to help the next, each of them with their own heart and secrets, hopes and fears. Esen tried hard not to marvel at the spontaneous aid, but it was remarkable. It was what he’d believed and hoped was possible, if his people could be more free than they had been, and yet it was as stunning as if he could never have imagined it.
The mech held, redirecting and slowing the river's flow so that the Old Island remained relatively safe. Damp, to be sure, but as its residents liked to say, it wouldn't be morning without some puddles.
When the sun rose high enough to be seen, dyeing the avenues pink-gold, Esen and Pindar were still at work on the island. They'd just finished hauling debris and sweeping up broken glass when the bells started ringing.
Pindar paused and tilted his head, listening, an unreadable expression on his face. He looked at once rapt and grief-stricken. When he opened his eyes and saw Esen watching him, he said hoarsely, "Services are starting."
Esen had forgotten that this was a holiday. "Shall we head for the temple?"
After looking around a moment, searching for something that was not there, Pindar shook his head. "No."
"But you --" Esen swallowed and took Pindar's hand. "Surely they could find room for us. I know you hate to pull rank but --"
"No quarter for death-dealers and masters," Pindar said. His voice did not sound like his own, but as if he were quoting someone else. He glanced at Esen and tried to withdraw his hand, but Esen refused to let go. "That's the law."
Esen struggled to understand. "You can't enter a temple? Ever?"
"Not the Temple of the Bear, no," Pindar said, "not after what I've done in my life."
"But you were a soldier," Esen tried. "I don't think they mean to --"
Pindar let his eyes close for several moments. When he opened them again, and took a breath, he squeezed Esen's hand. "I know what they mean. A soldier is still responsible to those they kill."
"But --" Esen forced himself to stop talking. He was flabbergasted and outraged, flailing for logic on Pindar's account, but that wasn't Pindar's problem. Making Pindar explain his own spiritual exile to Esen, obliging him, moreover, to console Esen for the injustice, was the height of selfishness. "All right."
"Let's get back to work," Pindar said.
Esen tugged on his hand. "I have a better idea."
"Oh?" Pindar seemed to smile, somewhere in his beard, and one brow jumped in amused inquiry. Esen grinned back.
"Bath," Esen said and pointed down the side street to the squat older building at the end of the block. "I don't know about you, but I smell like river brine and sweat and motor oil and who knows what else."
They were both streaked with dirt; their bodies ached from their shoulders down to their calves.
"Yes," Pindar said, nodding. "After all, you’ve yet to make good on that powerwash comment."
Esen paused, choked. “You heard that?”
He looked at Pindar, caked in soot and blood and war again, all because he hadn’t been strong enough to stop Eleut then.
”That man wasn’t my husband,” Pindar admitted, as if it solved everything Esen was feeling. “But it doesn’t mean I can’t use his words to tease you, right?”
Surprisingly, the guffaw of discomfort Esen released sounded a lot like a laugh. After a moment, it felt like one, too. They walked through the steady flow of people the baths and turning onto the avenue toward the temple complex, pushing their way upstream. By the time Esen and Pindar had paid their entrance fee and found the changing rooms, they were nearly alone in the echoing building. A few attendants lurked in niches, offering massages and scrubs, selling soap beans and gels. The main pool steamed and lapped beneath a metal dome pricked all over to let in the light.
Pindar shucked off his filthy clothes, washed fast and efficiently in the showers, and then strode toward the pool without a backward glance. Naked, he looked like something rough-hewn, chunks of masonry beneath scarred, taut skin. A mat of silvering hair curled over his chest and descended to surround the base of his thick, dark phallus.
Esen followed him at a more sedate pace. He paused to chat with a few attendants, most importantly to request that their clothes be laundered while they bathed. When he joined Pindar on the edge of the pool, he held two scrapers and a pile of warm towels. Having set the towels out of harm's way, he sank into the water with a long sigh.
"Good," Pindar said.
"Yes."
They didn't speak again for several minutes. The pool was not deep, maybe two meters, and the sides sloped gently downward in shallow steps. The hot water made them drowsy; fresh sweat sprang up on their faces and coursed down.
Esen lifted a blunt scraping tool in silent question.
Pindar shook his head. "I can do it."
"I know you can," Esen said quietly. "But I'd like to --"
"Oh," Pindar said, and looked down, suddenly shy. "All right."
Under Esen's hands, he was immobile at first, and tense despite the hot water. But gradually, as Esen moved the instrument along the ropy lengths of his muscles, drawing up old skin and dirt, Pindar loosened. His head tipped forward, chin hitting his chest. To keep him in place, Esen looped one arm around him from behind, his fingers pushing into Pindar's chest hair. Pindar bobbed there in Esen's embrace, sighing every so often, growing more and more slack and heavy. Esen scooped water up with his free hand and poured it over Esen's shoulders, down the center of his back, until his skin shone.
"There," he murmured.
Pindar turned his head, his eyelids heavy, his lips slightly parted. Water beaded the ends of his thick lashes and loosened the waves of his beard.
They'd never been this close, for this long, with such ease and intimacy. Pindar's lower lip was swollen, dark red, gleaming. Esen's hand flexed on Pindar's chest and desire throbbed down his rapidly swelling cock.
"Privacy," he whispered and started to draw away.
Pindar blinked in confusion, then seemed to understand. When he stood from the water, it streamed off him in a thousand rivulets, off thick muscles and through hair, across scars, even down the length of his own firming cock. Esen froze where he was, crouching on the edge, and took in the sight.
"You are beautiful," he said before he could stop himself.
Pindar stared at him, then shook back his hair, his shoulder lifting in laughter. He climbed out of the water, heading for the private pools at the back. "Come, husband," he called, and his voice echoed off the dome and the water's surface.
Esen grabbed their things and followed. He had lost most of his sense of gravity; in its place, he was floating and bobbing inside his own skin, breathless and overheated and excited. Yet he was focused, too, perfectly intent. He could not, nor did he try to, hide his smile as he closed the door behind him.
The private bath was square, two meters by two and just a meter deep, with faucets along one side. Light shone through a broad window set high in the wall; steam curled and unfurled in the sunbeam.
And Pindar sat facing the door, arms along the back of the pool, waiting.
"Soap," Esen said, holding up the sachets. Then, hanging them up, he added, "towels."
"You," Pindar said, quiet and firm, not so much an order as an irrefutable observation.
"Yes," Esen replied, and slipped into the water. It was warm and smelled like green, fresh things. He knelt in front of Pindar, water up around his chest, and reached for him with both hands. "I'd like to --"
"Yes," Pindar said, interrupting him, and pulled him close. He took Esen's cock in his other hand, holding it alongside his own, and pumped them agonizingly slowly. "So would I."
Smiling, his cheeks aching from it, Esen pushed against Pindar's bulk, thrust into his loose grip and latched a kiss onto the base of Pindar's throat. Pindar's pulse jumped under Esen's lips, and his breath caught when Esen dragged his mouth, tongue and teeth, up through his beard. He kissed Pindar fully, holding him tight, inhaling, drinking down every taste and texture.
Pindar muttered into the kiss and shifted slightly, tightening his hold on Esen's dick, before grinding up to thrust into the crease of Esen's thigh. When Esen twisted his hand in Pindar's hand, tilting his head just so, turning the kiss into a tongue-fucking, Pindar's hoarse, surprised moan became a shout.
Esen straddled one of Pindar's thighs and softened the kiss until Pindar gasped against his mouth. When Esen pulled back, Pindar, half-blind, chased after him with open mouth.
"Let me --" Esen said, and shifted again, nudging Pindar's hand off his cock and grasping Pindar's with his own hand. Pindar looked at him with an expression as frank and hungry as it was honest. Esen shivered, deep inside, and his cock twitched, yearned. "I want to take care of you."
Pindar hesitated for a moment, then smiled. "How would you like to do that?"
Esen shook his head. "I --" For a moment, he was absurdly, thoroughly dumbstruck and diffident. But Pindar's smile widened, and he squeezed Esen's hip. "I want so much."
"Good," Pindar said, laughter rumbling up his chest. He lifted Esen off his lap and set him down in the water, then hoisted himself up so he was sitting on the narrow lip of the pool. When he gestured, Esen came forward on his knees; once he was close enough, Pindar took him by the nape of the neck and hauled him in the rest of the way.
Esen was not a small man; he was confident in his size and proud of his strength. But under Pindar's touch, he trembled slightly, overcome. Pindar's palm slid along Esen's jaw, his thumb curving to tug Esen's mouth all the way open.
"Husband," Pindar whispered, gazing down at Esen with something like wonder. His cock rose, dark as a storm cloud, beaded with bath water and his own arousal. Esen mouthed at the base, teasing the curling hairs, nibbling at them, sucking tiny kisses around the bottom of Pindar's shaft until Pindar's thighs started to tremble with the effort of keeping still, until his hand on Esen's face went demanding, fingers digging into flesh and pulling on hair. Esen stroked his knuckles back and forth along Pindar's inner thighs, through the scattered curls, and further back.
He paused, mouth on the head of Pindar's cock and fingers wedged between Pindar's buttocks. He made an inquisitive noise, hoping against hope. Pindar sucked in a breath and gentled his touch and spread his legs further. He nodded, too, and then his back arched and face went out of sight as Esen took half of his cock in his mouth and started sucking in earnest.
He teased and stroked the tender skin behind Pindar's balls, swirled the pad of his thumb around Pindar's hole, and all the while, bobbed his head and worked his tongue until Pindar's rhythm established itself and his hips started lifting and pushing, until Pindar was alternately fucking Esen's throat and working himself back onto two of Esen's fingers. Esen's hand buzzed with the crushing tension inside Pindar and the bad angle at which his wrist was cocked; spit ran free from the aching corners of his mouth and he swallowed, working his throat open.
Pindar stopped moving, except for his nails raking down Esen's scalp, and his cock throbbed. He bent forward then, his face darkly flushed, his gaze wild and mouth open. He came, and came again, shaking and surging into Esen's mouth, his ass clamping around Esen's hand.
Esen kept his eyes open throughout. He wanted to memorize this. He needed to know this, to go beyond the experience and understand from the inside out. He needed, more than anything, for Pindar's rigidity to slacken, his expression to clear, and for him to lift Esen up, so easily, until Esen was lying across his lap, bathwater cooling, and Pindar was kissing him with attention and care, gentleness and the promise of more.
"Tell me what you want," Pindar whispered, his fingertips dragging sensation along Esen's stomach, down his thighs, around the base of his cock. "Let me give you --"
"This," Esen said and it was more than a confession. Eleut's foul words dropped like artillery through his thoughts and the old, customary panic raced through him again. "I don't --"
"Anything," Pindar said. "Let me."
Esen shook his head. Shame had its teeth in his nape, but Pindar was simply looking at him, expectant and patient. Esen was here, and Eleut was not, and this was not his former life. This was the morning of a holiday, with his husband, whose touch made him hungrier than seemed possible, whose body fit against his own, and smelled like home things. Whose kiss was beginning again, not so tender, but insistent, and exploratory, and Esen clutched closer, opening his legs and mouth, holding on, offering and giving himself. Pindar fingered him open, made him gasp and keen, and then stilled his fingers until Esen was shaking with need.
"Please," Esen said, and "fuck you, I need --"
Until Pindar was chuckling and hushing him, turning him around, spreading his legs almost painfully wide, and sliding with him down into the water. Pindar had him by the hips, his mouth on Esen's neck, his chest hair scouring Esen's back, and he thrust inside Esen, too slowly, too carefully. Esen bit back a yell against the slowness, breathed through the burn of the breach, and worked himself lower, took Pindar deeper, until Pindar, too, was shaking, one hand scraping against Esen's chest and nipples. His teeth were in the meat of Esen's shoulder, his cock was rearranging Esen's core, and when he started to roll his hips, Esen was half a beat ahead of him, desperate for friction.
"Slow down," Pindar whispered.
"Can't. Won't." Esen rocked a little faster, bringing the water slapping against them, until Pindar went completely still. Even like this, held in place, speared halfway (or so it felt) to his lungs, Esen wanted more. He twisted in Pindar's grasp, tried to find his mouth, any patch of skin to kiss.
"Esen," Pindar said. He thrust in a long, liquid motion, as if Esen were a part of him, and the sound of his name in Pindar's mouth -- was it the first time? It sounded like the first time as well as, somehow, deeply familiar, out of a memory -- pulled Esen apart. He jerked, this way, that way, and started coming over Pindar's fist before he knew what was happening.
He was apologizing even before he stopped, shivering, but Pindar merely held him a little tighter and stayed inside. Every so often, Pindar tensed his stomach muscles, or changed the angle of his legs, and his cock rubbed new, fizzing, intoxicating sensations up through Esen. Esen could no longer move, certainly could not think straight, but Pindar had him well in hand; he stroked him hard again, then eased off, only to return with quick, light strokes that shot arcing lights across Esen's vision and made him squeaky with need.
For long, long stretches, Pindar just held him, firm and inescapable, his forehead tipped into the curve of Esen's shoulder. Despite the quiet and the stillness, every nerve in Esen was alight, overrunning with stimulation, hungry for more. He squeezed and bore down on Pindar, tried to shimmy, tried to thrust, but Pindar remained motionless save for the water's movement and the lift and fall of his breathing.
Esen flashed hot, then cold, then hotter still. He could not draw a full breath, not around Pindar's girth, the depth of him, nor within his embrace. He floated, half out of his mind, so that when Pindar finally did speak, the surprise of it nearly tore him free.
"Will you come on me?" Pindar was saying, mouth on Esen's ear, hand on his cock again. "Come on me, make me --"
"-- feel it, yes, please," Esen finished for him. He leaned forward, fingers straining for the edge of the pool. Pindar understood and half-carried, half-floated them over, so Esen was holding onto the edge, head pillowed on one arm, and Pindar stood behind him, arms around his waist.
They moved together, Esen back and down, Pindar up and forward, until it was too much, until Esen's moans were continuous and the pleasure Pindar was raking through him was dizzying, until he was flopping in the water and Pindar was driving into him, crowding him against the edge, fucking him deeper and harder, grinding Esen into something new and raw and necessary.
"Now," Pindar said through gritted teeth, and slammed in, then held himself so deep that Esen flew apart, shattered and showered, the orgasm wracking through him, leaving him in empty shards. Pindar groaned, too, at what it felt like, and bit Esen's neck, and tongued at his ear, and whispered, "I love you, come, come, more, give me --"
Limp, heavy-limbed and frazzle-nerved, Esen tried to fuck back, tried to breathe, and it must have been enough, because Pindar was shaking inside him and clutching at him and peppering his shoulders with kisses.
*
When they left the baths, morning was bright all around them. The wind tumbling off the sea promised clear skies for the next little while.
They borrowed Dr. Trehalas' car to drive back home. Tikuli would be starving and certain to let them know that fact.