One of Theirs

by Lionheart (TheSouthernFalconer)

Summary:

Jataeyi finds she can neither live up to mortality nor divinity.

Through the butter-soft light framing the overlarge mirror at the vanity Jataeyi sees, again, a face not her own. Father’s plumage is the heart of a flame, crimson and luminous. His eyes are the same fervent gold as hers. Jatayu is a sun unto himself, twin of the mighty Sudachala, the crest of her Grandmother’s brood. In His mighty wingspan He cradles the peace and the plenty of her home valley. He is pleased with her, and her heart tears in two, wanting and dreading nothing more. 

“Golden One.” His voice is of the sky, a rolling thunder, a billowing wind. “Lordship becomes you, as I have promised.” 

She speaks in silence, through the thread of thought that links them. She has perfected the art of communing with Him in silence. He appears to her in each reflection of the sky, His blessing and guidance in her ear from steppe to coast to the cold peaks of her monastery. And here, to Restov, where the morning has only breached its early hours on this day of her coronation. She hears the clamour of preparation; the jostling of weaponry, the rush of servants as they stream in and out of the guest wings to tend to who knew what visitor saw fit to pay respects to her, the upstart Baroness.

Greetings, Father. I am not Lord yet.

“You were hatched into your destiny. What mortal titles they heap upon you is the business of this world.”

Would You not leave this world to its own business, then?

“You are my business. I would not have them mistake you for one of theirs.”

When Jataeyi was a girl, Father would pluck her from her mother’s hut, fly the span of the valley with her clinging to his neck. With the eyes of birds she loved her land with its veins of trilling waterfalls, knew the span and wind of every river and verdant forest far beyond the bleached bones of the coast and the arbors. She followed the dip of lakes and the gusts of rain and felt the monsoon’s path at her fingertips. When they swooped low so she could wave to her mother’s kin at the tea plantations, they bowed their heads to Jatayu, keeper of duty, giver of abundance. Sometimes, they went further, and they soared over the pearlescent domes and ornate spires, the skyscrapers and tiled terraces that made up Vudran urbanity. He showed her the black hills and the green, slithering snake of the Western ghats. He would drop her squealing into her mother’s arms and gather them both into His wings, whisper His promise in her ear each time. “You shall have dominion beneath the skies.”

Such fortune had Nethravati, they whispered. She had but to shade her eyes and smile at Him, speak to Him of life and the harvest, of love and politics, ask Him to hold her basket while she stretched and rested on her labours. He had come to her on the wings of dawn. He had filled her arms with harvest, her cloth sack with treasures from afar. He had loved her as only the Garuda could, with all the world folded into every reach of affection. He praised her wisdom, her grit, her green, rugged beauty. To Jataeyi, their firstborn and only child, neither mother nor father would promise no less.

Jataeyi looks away.

 *

The morning passes in the company of the Aldori, who take it upon themselves to bring her to tea, present her with a run-down of the rituals of coronation she had been too exhausted to go over after her long travel the night prior. Jamandi regards her with steely attentiveness as Jataeyi recounts, again, the outlandish events leading up to the Stag Lord’s fall.

“A war,” She repeats slowly, “between mites and kobolds.”  

“Do you believe I could make that up?”

Jamandi huffs out a laugh, raising her teacup in a toast. “No. I don’t rightly think you would. To be clear, Jataeyi, I’m glad I threw my weight behind you.”

Father peers through the window. She hides half-truths in a warrior’s aspect. She knows her bond-title shines like a promise. Ask her, does she take you for her legion?  

“I know that.”

You enjoy their company.

“Glad you do.” Smile still on her face, she turns to Kassil, who straightens at her regard. He nods at her, imperceptibly.

Jataeyi. He is angry. She feels its fire snake through her veins.

She sets her cup down. “Why?”  

Jamandi pauses. “Why?”

“Why did you throw your weight behind me?”

There is a beat of silence. “A steady hand at the Stolen Lands benefits more than just you.”

Paltry. Unclean.

Jataeyi wants to accept it, a small measure of rebellion against His anger. But she is taught to do nothing in halves.

She feels His gold flare in her eyes. It is a puncture, something that bleeds and bubbles to the surface. “Lady Aldori. You owe me more than that.”

Jamandi’s eyebrows rise. She leans back with half a smile. 

*

The Surtovas claim her afternoon. The Princess has sent ahead her liaison, a wizened diplomat clad in robes that may as well be vestments for their austerity. Shandra Mervey plies her with honeyed cake and venomous promises, but affects little friendship.

“You are unused to this.” She says. “Perhaps that makes for a fresh start.”

He rages again. Or perhaps she does.

“The crowds adore you.” Mervey cuts a berry into bloodied bits. “Your celestial lineage does you no discredit.” Her smile crinkles her face, a lettered parchment. “Inexperience is no fault, my lady. Only an opportunity.”

“For you?”

Mervey is unruffled, unblinking. Impervious.

Do not surrender your power.

What power? Jataeyi snaps. A stretch of lawless lands run to the dust and overwrought with monsters.

Be that as it may, you do not serve them.

Then whom do I serve?

She hears His ruffle of discontent. Noone, Jataeyi. No one.

“For us all.” Mervey answers briskly. “Brevoy is not so desperate as to court the unwilling.” The barb at the Rostlands was plain. “Neither are we short-sighted enough to favor anarchy at our borders, or fail to recognize the virtue of your industry. We have not remained as we are, at peace and unified, by turning away benefice that knocks at our doors. You are not long for your vestments, my lady. The hour of benefice will come for you soon. I dare say it already has.”

“Does that concern you, Mistress Mervey?”

She smiles placidly. “Not at all. Only a word of warning, if nothing else, from someone with the benefit of hindsight. Anyone could see that you are needed. Among them those who would presume you to be content with vassalhood. I trust that one with such initiative as you would know to circumvent presumption.”

Enough.

“I do.” She rises. “Thank you for your time.”

Her skin burns when she leaves, her feathers flaring from shame and indignation.

I have not your patience, child. He speaks from a rippling basin. Your mother sends you her love. Her eyes water, even as she knows her mother abides by no wasteful tears on auspicious days. The journey is too far for her to make it in time, and she detests delay even more than her immortal father, so He keeps His eagle-eyed watch for her, too. She has not your patience either.

She cannot tell whether it is a rebuke or a compliment, so she swiftly moves out of His reach before the thought can take hold.

*

Lander accosts her at the exit to the guest quarters, doffing his hat and offering her, again, his service. He was the first of these she met upon her arrival, a boy twice smaller than his own frame.

“You can keep your vows. They’ve got to be important to you. We’ll find a way. A loophole, if you will. ” He whispers conspiratorially, straightening so anyone bustling past them in the hallway may see where he stands.

She is spared the effort of dignifying it with a response with Theralina’s arrival. “She already has a spymaster.” Her companion says. Theralina towers over Lander as surely as Jataeyi does, and she crowds him with out with studied irreverence, without question or apology. Tristan joins them to take her other side, offering Lander an excuse about prayer and reflection. Jataeyi gives him a wave of acknowledgement as she rounds a corner with Theralina’s arm firmly at her elbow. There, she is released into where the hallway winds around a shaded alcove. They switch to Celestial. “Don’t entertain him.”

“I’m not.”

Theralina narrows her eyes to fresh-cut garnets and tosses her red braid over her shoulder. She runs a discreet hand down her flawlessly tailored, silk-lined black velvet coat, over her blades and garrote and poisons hidden away in its secret compartments.  “Want me to kill that son of a bitch?”

Jataeyi stares at her. “That won’t be necessary.”

“You sure? Just say the word.”

“He is a child.” Says Tristian. “He will learn.”  

Do not take her lightly. Even in the absence of mirror, Jataeyi recalls her Father’s caution. He is strangely guarded about Theralina, far more than he is for any other of her lineage. She is Death’s daughter. She is more than Muse-Touched.

Jataeyi regards them both. Tristan is turned slightly away, a plant seeking sunlight always, his eyes ever skyward. Theralina waits, retrieving an ornate silver pipe from her pocket, and lights it with a fingertip. Her halo, so unlike Jataeyi’s own, is a blue-silver fog, a gathering shadow against all her Azata-blooded brightness.

“Has your family sent word?” She asks her.

“Oh, yeah. My mom wrote she’s sending me a stack of books for the new stronghold. And my sister’s only a little mad I didn’t tell her I was gonna take a lasting position.”

There is much they say, Theralina and Tristian both, with the appearance of openness, that reveals very little. She knows the former is of noble, even royal blood, and that the latter was raised among devotees of Sarenrae. The specifics are muddled, shifting into slightly stranger contours every deepening conversation.

“Were you expected to take on duties at home?” She ask. Numbly, Jataeyi registers she knows very little of the intricacies of nobility. Between home, the plantations and her monastery, Jataeyi was charged with a shared responsibility as a matter of course. Her mother, fiercely reticent but fiercely giving still, is a matriarch-by-necessity. Hers is the voice that rings, the foot that stands the line, and so she is given her authority.

Theralina takes a deep drag of her pipe, and shrugs.  “My brother’s got it well in hand now. I have my ways of helping, but, you know. Youngest’s liberty and all that. I’d go stir-crazy otherwise.”

“And your- parents- they agree?”

“I don’t ask for permission. Not their business ‘less I’m in trouble. Old man reminds me to stir shit up, per usual.”

“He must be pleased with you.”

Theralina exhales a cloud of smoke. She frowns slightly. “My dad doesn’t ask for that.”

Tristian turns his gaze from the light. Something knowing flickers in his eyes. “Does yours, Jataeyi?”

Love sticks like a bone in her throat. Jatayu scolds and admonishes, he directs and insists and he follows. No matter how many times she has attempted to silence Him, shrug away his influence and forfeit His dreams, He has never once punished her. Only returned, time and time again, ever exuberant, ever hopeful. You are the pearl of our heart, her mother writes each time that she does. You are the greatest of my creations, says her Father.

She answers Tristian. “He would do anything for me. I don’t know what to offer in return.” She studies him for a moment longer. “What does Sarenrae ask of you?”

Absently he reaches out so the light may wind against his smooth, scar-less skin. He lingers there for long enough that Theralina angles her pipe away to glance at him. “She asks me to be true.” He says. He draws his hand from the light and presses it to his face. The longing in the gesture is unbearably sharp, unbearably bare.  

*

You are the greatest of my creations.

She only sees herself in the mirror, as the sun descends behind her. Here, in the quiet, she leans sideways in the chair before the vanity and curls her limbs.

He would do anything for me.

She has tended to her mother, brewed tea and salve and toiled beside her, corralled her many visitors into a manageable stream. Strong as Nethravati was, she was yet mortal, with aches and pains and fevers that came with the winter, with muscles that tired from work. With her Father, there is only the language of devotion left to her. Of prayer and attention. And even that he asks for so little, and gives so much.

You are unused to this.

The Order of the Serene Watch was one that swore itself to austerity, to the fortitude of mountains, to take upon themselves the duty of mediating through mortal, monster and celestial through the thinning barriers that surrounded mountainside towns and villages. Half her heart knows she embraced that duty, steeled her body, mortified her flesh, and swore away all adornments to escape another. Without punishment, without complaint, her father had waited, patiently. She is His creature yet, not only for the hunger and wonder she still feels as she looks toward the darkening horizon. But for the wretched guilt that takes ahold of her when she walks toward what needs her with dread in her chest. Perhaps this is what they ask of her. To tend, to brew tea and salve, to toil and corral.

No, Lady Mervey. She wants to say. I am not unused to this.

She crosses her legs, steadies her mind to summon her father again. She tells herself the emptiness that floods her extremities is peace. It feels like surrender. Perhaps they are the same.

 

*

By the time Octavia appears at the doorway, Jataeyi tells herself she has broken the surface.  She lifts her box of pigments and pastes and powders and minute combs, rattles it slightly. Her fingers are stained in their colours; red, pink and yellow. “Are you okay?” She asks, setting it down on the vanity. “You look- somewhere else.” 

Jatayu’s voice emerges from the mirror. You must surround yourself with trusted attendants.

Do not call them that. 

“Mirror’s bothering you again?” Regongar follows close behind. Even here, in this seeming languidity, he is searching shadows and crevices, every line of his body poised to bolt. He absently sweeps an arm to brush against Octavia’s hip. “You get that way. Like something’s chasing you.”

“Is it?” Octavia pads across to stand behind her. She smudges her hands clean with a sparkle of enchantment, runs gentle fingers through Jataeyi’s feathers, smoothing where they are ruffled.  

“I’m better now.” Jataeyi turns from the mirror to look at her. “I’ve been meditating.”

There is a smear of preserve at the tip of Octavia’s nose. Jataeyi contemplates brushing it away when Regongar catches Octavia in a kiss. “Want to run away, Jataeyi?” She asks, after. She tilts her head to the window. “We’ve still got time.”

She pushes down ill-advised desire. She knows to vault and leap and pummel and duck and dodge and bolt. She does not know to run away.

No. Father says, warm with pride. You do not.

She catches Octavia’s hand, still abuzz with a sparkle of magic, still scarred and callused, marked at the wrists from shackles and restraints from a life of captivity. She feels wretched and spoiled for thinking it.

“For better or for worse, I did earn this.” Jataeyi tells them both. 

Laughing, Octavia ushers her up and over to the robes laid out over the bedcovers. There were no competing gifts on offer thanks to the short notice of the feast, and Jataeyi thanks the ever watchful gods that the Aldori are not given to the Surtova’s inclination for capes and veils and high-necked gowns. The three layers are deep blue in the style of the Swordlords, bordered with silver Vudran brocade at the hems and sleeves, and a silver belt to clasp at the waist. She is grateful for the small nod to her homeland, though in the ceremonial light it will be a secret to her benefit, rather than a declaration for theirs. She has not thought of this before, how distant her necessary realignments of allegiances are from home.  

Territory is a fickle thing, child. Says Jatayu. It is easy for Him to say, with the sky to lay His head upon, with His eyes that see all of land and sea in a single, unbroken continuum. Here she is, having taken the head of one who terrorized a stretch of land so miniscule it would span barely more than a wingbeat of His. And yet, there is so much, so many, lives and dreams and hopes and terrible sorrows in this parcel she is to steward for as long as she could keep it. She wishes to speak to her mother, who knows more, knows better.  

If it helps, He says, I see more of her in you each day.  

Nethravati wears the same coarse cotton as Jataeyi’s vestments. Where she wears sharpened pebble necklaces, black beaded anklets and bangles of green glass, Jataeyi has long ceased to adorn herself. She has not spared a thought to it since she left for the Serene Watch. Jataeyi looks to the robes before her. She wants to have it over with.

“Your face, first.” Octavia tilts her chin up. “We don’t want to get pigment all over your new clothes.”

Octavia mops her face with a square of fragrant cloth, treading lightly against newly moulting feathers. She presses a finger to Jataeyi’s cheek and murmurs a drying prestidigitation. She opens the box with a snap of her fingers, an array of sunset-pinks and golds, pastes of deep, flushed red and velvet-smooth brown. Jataeyi has seen Octavia prepare many of these, with such care and such relish and the secret smile of one gifting something to oneself.

She asks Regongar to shut the window, draw the curtains. The mirror falls silent again.

She thinks of her Father plucking and preening his feathers to full shine when He descends to meet her mother. A gift is a gift is a gift, no matter how oddly it clings and sticks to her skin.

Octavia hesitates, brush in hand. “How do you want this?”

She does not know to answer. She simply nods. Keeps her eyes on Octavia until she is asked to shut them, and then she centers her breath, exhales her vows of conduct, one by one.

Guard the delicate balance between planes upon which this world exists and flourishes. Protect mortal lives whenever called to act, but abandon not our commitments to the skies, the pits, and the depths of wilderness.

Know the world in patience. All beneath the sun and moons and all beyond are are created in time.

Give your word with caution. Always keep what promise is given.

Be firm in your defence, quick upon your feet, but slow in your anger. Seek no conquest. There is no victory in war.

Your strength is a gift to be honed. Seek not the short-lived accolades of glory, and embrace in your spirit both doubt and certainty, for these are the truths behind strength. 

Approach all with duty and piety. Constrain your rage to purpose.

Relinquish all material distractions, remain unadorned, and take for yourself no title but the truth of your own name, the incompletion of your own self.

Her eyes fly open. Kohl dries at the corners of her eyes, faint bronze dusting the tops of her cheeks. Little else. Octavia has touched as lightly as she could.

“Thank you.” She says.

“You’re perfect.” Octavia croons. “There’s not much for me to improve here.”

“Up,” she says, and Jataeyi follows. Her chest is hollow save for an odd burning. Whatever she wears would be a shell. She only has to get through today. And every day after. You cannot dishonour your vestments by returning to them? Where do you go from there?

First she releases her feathers from their binds and lets her golden mane tumble to her shoulders. Next, she unpins the yellow cotton sash she received at her vow-taking. She remembers each blow she has dealt and weathered, each reflection she has undertaken at her final examination. She remembers her sanctuary, a cleft in the rock where she spent the morning hours in meditation, the blanket of peace and certainty over the gnawing thing in her heart that always, always wants more. She undoes the flare of her dhoti fitted to her calves. It is a shapeless thing again, fabric creased and stained. Picks apart the rags of red and blue and yellow strung together to form her blouse. Each one she has mustered in acts of aid and reflection, in protecting mountainside villages from ruin, in arbitrating their disputes both planar and mundane, as tokens of learning in each examination. For all that she has strived to separate herself from pride and ambition, she has woven too much of herself into these small and ephemeral mementos. She feels unravelled, a spirit with no mooring, and she flinches when Octavia slips the first robe about her shoulders.

At the back of her neck, the tell-tale pinpricks of new feathers. The weight of the robe feels enough to crush her posture. She holds herself upright, swallows a wave of nausea as she fits a shirt over the robe. She clips buttons in place so tightly their impressions are grooved to her fingers. The silken coat comes next, and she wheels around to prove to herself that she could stand it.

She sees a shining, feathered stranger, tears streaming down her face, lip bloodied where she has bitten it. The dusting at her cheeks catches the light. More feathers emerge at the back of her palm, bloodying them.

“Enough.” Regongar crosses the space in one quick motion. “Take it off her. I can’t stand to look at it.”

They quarrel, often, the two of them, he bites and she tosses venom back, he cajoles in all the wrong ways and she pushes back, a dance they do over and over again until they retreat exhausted into each other again. This time, they fall into another rhythm, a fall-and-catch of knowing that often arises in battle, in quiet nights about their campfire, in the way one’s arms open even before the other leans into them. Octavia strips the coat off of Jataeyi’s shoulders. Jataeyi realizes she has been tugging madly at the collared shirt when one brass button tears itself from its thread and clatters across the room. Octavia makes quick work of the rest, catching one of Jataeyi’s hands in hers. The robe is lifted from her and is balled into Regongar’s uncaring fist. His eyes are still on her, every scar on his face taut with the reflection of her anguish. What anguish? He has been whipped and bound and enslaved, and he watches her as if her petty discomfort has any meaning at all.

She attempts to flatten her feathers, to resemble less a distressed bird, when Octavia slots herself before her. 

“Would you want me to clean your face?” Octavia asks.

“Its beautiful.”

“But you don’t want it.”

“I abhor waste. A waste of kindness, of effort, of time.”

Octavia rises to her tiptoes to kiss Jataeyi’s cheek. The touch burns and cools at once. “And I abhor seeing you bound.” The weight of powder and pigment evaporates. The corner of Octavia’s lip sparkles in the aftermath of prestidigitation.

Regongar holds out the folded pile of her vestments. All fangs and watchful eyes, his true smile is beautiful. “If someone’s got something to say about it, hand them to me. You’re a Queen, not a prisoner.”

“Baroness.”

He shrugs away the correction. “You’ve got no master. Not here. Not ever.”

No one, Jataeyi. No one.

She thumbs over the fabric of her vestments in apology. They still fit, like second skin. He is right, of course.

*

“Do not allow yourself to be easily led.”

 

She throws open the window, and Jatayu returns.  

“Father,” she retorts, out loud this time. “Do you know what it is to rule?”

Jatayu, who has lived eternally and yet dreams in boyish abandon, who points to the dots and lines of lands beneath His wingspan and names them in His own image, falls silent. He crooks his neck sideways as he does when her mother chastises him for the lateness of his return.

“I have spent all my life mastering myself. I will take your advice. I will not surrender that small dominion now. Not even for You. I know You have much to give me, but I only have so much to keep.”

There is grief in her father’s eyes then. It wrenches her heart. He is uncharacteristically quiet. “I have not asked that of you, hatchling.”

“Then- allow me to assume this in my own way. Not Yours. I belong here. I tend to here. I know this plane better than You know it.” She gestures to herself, her feathers and talons and the simplicity of her vestments, the bareness of her face from where His eyes shine like liquid gold.

“I would not disallow you anything.”

The frustration niggles at her, but Jatayu is unsettled, askance. He would return to her mother tonight, she knows, asking again how to love His mortal child without pruning her heart. If she fights with Him now, she would never forgive herself.

“You are no caged bird, Father. And neither shall I be.” She hopes her tone is comforting. He inclines His head in acceptance.  

*

In the end, the matter is brief. There is a flurry of whispered words, a sword touched to her shoulders, Aldori’s brisk, clean voice ringing through the declaration.

“Rise, Your Grace,” and Jataeyi is about to be done with it all, shrug the grit away and go to sleep, return to her newly forming capital to tend to what is truly necessary, and dwell in the neatness of her compromise.

Then the murmuring crowd gasps.

She faces them. Jamandi Aldori makes a sound of surprise. Shandra Mervey raises a dark brow in challenge. Maegar Varn covers his mouth, sidles closer to his tiefling companion. Theralina starts a resounding cheer. Regongar and Octavia study her with wide eyes, waiting. Tristian holds her gaze sorrowfully. She is gripped by a rightness, a satisfaction of that secret, craven hunger. They should marvel. They should draw back in fear.

When she finds her reflection in the distorted crystal chandelier, her first feeling is that of greed. She follows it, lifts her chin and squares her shoulders. It is that greed that frightens her, not the celestial light that coalesces into a crown of feathers. Not the heat gathering in her eyes, sharp and searing. Gold-tipped eagle’s wings unfurl from her back, and the crowd is dwarfed in her shadow.

I would not have them mistake you for one of theirs.

Good, she thinks, for a split-second before the breath is punched from her, and the leaden weight of despair sinks into her gut. She searches one wondering, fearful gaze after another.

She has lost her face in the radiance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Jatayu has a much happier life here than the mythical namesake, at least. Cheer!