Vonne is almost shaking with the need to contain herself, but she doesn’t say anything as we trade pleasantries and make preparations to leave. Apparently we’re done with the serious talk, because after the bomb that Shulemi drops, we eat desserts and get ready to go, taking our cues from Zidanya the whole time. The desserts are kind of a disappointment after the meal, and especially after my memory of last night’s desserts; some kind of rice ball with a fruit paste and bean paste mix inside, which clashes with itself unsatisfyingly, and then we’re standing and being gracious about how much fun we had, for all the purpose that serves.
It’s not that I can’t do it, or that I don’t understand why it’s done. I even understand it from more than just the perspective of selfishly wanting a good night after an evening out to social contexts with a partner, and needing to perform the right social rituals; I just have had one too many revelatory moments deployed against me recently by more powerful, more insightful people, and I need a break.
“Amber, Zidanya, Sara, I’m guessing at least two of you want to go see the… the individual melee?” I can’t avoid the hitch in my voice, but I try to keep my face calm. The bloodbath, I carefully don’t call it, much less anything worse.
Amber can tell my discomfort, no surprise there, and she shoots me an unskeptical look of concern. She hesitates, clearly not-saying something she wants to say, and something akin to a cramp of worry and fear bubbles in my gut.
“Amber.” I grab her arm, pulling to turn her fully towards me. We’re not yet out into the corridor, not yet out where just anyone can see or hear us; if we’re going to have an awful moment, better it be here than there. “What is it?”
“Do you think of me as damaged, my lord?”
“Ah. Ah, God of my forefathers, I…” I sit down suddenly. For a split second, I consider pretending I don’t know what she means; for a split second, I consider lying, whether by omission or implication or outright. “I mean, I guess,” I admit softly. “How can you… how can you enjoy that stuff? It’s one thing to like to solve the puzzles inherent in it, or to strive for striving’s own sake, but the brutality and the blood and the gore, how can you stand it?”
There’s a lot of things I half expect her to say or do, but sitting down next to me on the stone path and pulling me into her lap isn’t one of them. She doesn’t say anything for a while, just holds me until the spike of fear and worry fades, until I realize that we’re technically in public and get my face out of her cleavage, scrubbing tears out of the corners of my eyes and looking embarrassed. “You are dear to me as you are, Adam.” She makes it sound like a rebuke, and I guess it is one, and I laugh at that, if weakly.
“Presumptuous and arrogant as I am, and thinking that my society is the right way to be and any other way represents damage to the psyche?”
“And will you tell me,” she murmurs, kissing me on the forehead, “that I may not go watch the afternoon’s matches?”
“Of course not.” That gets me an approving rumble of humor. “But it doesn’t, I dunno, bother you to know how I feel?”
“Of course it does.” I look up at that, sharply, face flaming with a sudden, sinking feeling of shame, but she just shakes her head with a smile. “Not for your sake, but for the world’s. It will be a better Iavshet for having you in it. That is your purpose; mine would ill suit you.”
“Yeah, well, you exist, so I guess I’ve already made Iavshet better.” I get a genuine giggle out of her for that, and at least one snicker from the crowd, and that’s enough to get me working my way to my feet. “Anyway, I’ll probably die before doing anything particularly significant. That’s usually what happens to people who want to change the world, right?”
“Die? Not by mortal hands, Magelord, an I or your Paladin dwell still amongst the living.” There’s an almost derisive look on Zidanya’s face, which I find rather reassuring.
“You are an idiot in many ways, sir.”
I cock an eyebrow upwards at Sara. “Any way that’s particularly relevant to this conversation?”
We all wait for her to gather her words. “The manner in which you bound me,” she says eventually, “and the manners in which I am nonetheless not bound, are new in our histories. Even if you die before we reach the surface, I will ensure that this information is disseminated. As such, you have already done something significant. Sir.”
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I give myself a few moments to chew on that, and then let the laughter bubble up. “Got you your advancement requirement, too, right? If you’re my legacy in the worst case, well, I’d say I’ll be content but actually I’ll be dead.” I stand up, shaking my head, and take a deep breath. “Not gonna happen, anyway. I want those three months in a nice house somewhere, doing nothing but, like, playing with magic and stuff.”
“The Magelord objectifies me,” Zidanya says with an absolutely straight face. “I am fain to say in ever-closer spirals does his understanding of me approach my core.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I manage in between my laughter, leaning on Amber.
“Gladly. Dame Ashborn, will you be joining me?”
“For a while.” I get another kiss on the forehead, and then Amber releases me. “We’ll return for dinner tonight.” She and Zidanya share a look that I can’t decipher, and the latter nods slowly.
“How about you, Sara?”
“Maarah has offered to forge me equipment, and I have accepted on your behalf, as you have been too caught up with your own affairs to make use of the opportunity; as well, it provides me with an opportunity to avoid engagement with those aspects of your day which I have no interest in.” I blink at her a couple of times, processing that. Eventually, I just sort of nod slowly at her. “I will practice Force Bands,” she adds.
That last is clearly addressed at Vonne, who nods thoughtfully. “That’s a good idea. I think you mostly just need practice. You’ve got the basics down! Well, enough of the basics to create the spell. I think maybe I can teach you to dial up and down one more parameter by the time you’re all done here.”
“I am grateful for your tutelage, and hope not to disappoint you.” To my surprise, Sara gives Vonne a little bow, mostly a little jerk of the head with her fists and forearms together, and Vonne full-body flinches at it, but returns a variant of it, palms flat together and arms parallel to the floor.
And then they’re gone, Amber and Zidanya walking hand in hand out the door and Sara slipping past like a wraith in grey-blues and bluish-greys. “Sara, hey.” I blurt it out not knowing what I have to say, but knowing there’s something that needs saying. She stops just before the door, turning to look at me, patiently waiting. “We should probably do another soul session tonight? Get more of those threads pruned and moved and whatever?”
“After dinner.” She nods at us, and then she’s gone.
“Soul stuff? That’s gotta be a fun story! I don’t know much about soul stuff, but what happened?”
“Eh. Dybbuck took a disliking to a riddle I posed it and cursed me with its final breath.”
“Ugh! Rude. Sounds like a social challenge that was pretending to be a riddle contest but was actually a friendship thing.”
“Too bad you weren’t there.” I grin at her, and she grins back. “So what now?”
“Didn’t you hear Mama Vix?” Vonne sort of goggles at me, like I’ve just said something particularly dumb while looking like I thought it was funny. “I’m with you! I’m gonna train you and your team, and learn from you all. Like a present from her to you! Ta-da, one sed, can’t join your party but I can help you!”
“I… didn’t hear that, but I’m hardly going to argue.”
“Good!” Vonne nods twice in quick succession. “So it’s settled. Khe—” She steps out into the corridor, and her voice cuts off completely in the middle of whatever word she’s saying. Well, word or name; she’s probably talking to Khetzi, and that’s my cue to get into the corridor myself.
“—will be accompanying the Magelord to his quarters, and conceding my seat in this cycle’s tourney. Can you relay a message to, I don’t know, Shar would understand best, I think?”
“It will be as the Sed Spark requests.” Khetzi bows, and Vonne grimaces, but doesn’t try to stop him or complain out loud.
“Sed Spark?”
“It’s a thing. A thing people call me.” Vonne’s voice is a grumble, a mutter. “I don’t like it, so I don’t wanna talk about it. Let’s talk about you instead!”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you!” Her mood shifts, quicksilver, to an intense, eager focus. “Khetzi won’t talk, and I haven’t heard your story. Tell me, tell me! We’ve got a bit of a ways to walk, since the corridors shifted while we were talking with Mama.”
“Well, um.” I scratch the back of my head. The corridors shifted is certainly a thing to have someone casually drop, but I roll with it, and we start walking. “A lot of stories seem to start with once upon a time, but this is more fifty and change years ago, in a different dimension. I was born on a static, a station orbiting a world, like a much smaller moon. My family was from the Fleet, in full that’s the Life-Fleet of the Blessed Faith And Its People…”