her instruments 03 - laisrathera (42 page)

“You save yourself for an Eldritch love, then.”

“I haven’t been saving myself for anything, and well you should know it with your sorcerous insight.” Lesandurel smiled, amusement beading his aura. “When I say I have been busy, that is precisely what I meant…! But I admit, my mind turns more and more toward the thought of a companion. Perhaps I will meet one, as you have.”

Hirianthial took a sip from his own cup. “One of the Pelted, do you suppose?”

“No… no. Most of them are very fond of children. We can be fruitful with humans, but not their progeny.” Lesandurel shook his head. “No, I think I am curious if children of my own body will be any different than children of my spirit. Somehow I suspect not very, save that they will spend longer in the awkward ages, bedeviling me.” He grinned, then allowed that grin to fade. “And you? What shall you do, when this has done?”

This being his marriage to Reese. Hirianthial held his shoulders taut to keep them from betraying him, knew that they did anyway. “Then, I suspect my cousin will keep me… busy.”

“Ha,” Lesandurel said softly. “A fair turnabout.”

They drank together, unspeaking, enjoying the rustle of the horses, the idle switch of their tails, their whuffles and soft shifting sounds.

“You could marry your cousin,” Lesandurel said.

“Liolesa?” Hirianthial asked, brows lifting. “I hardly think she needs a man.”

“No woman needs a man, arii.” A grin at Hirianthial’s start at the use of the Universal term, dropped into the middle of a conversation in their tongue. “Least of all her. But that doesn’t mean she might not want one. Or find one useful at her side. Or to give her children, now that she is without heir again.”

“Perhaps,” Hirianthial said. “I wouldn’t presume to that position. I have no desire to be King-Consort.”

“No doubt. But would you accept her, if she offered?”

Hirianthial said nothing for a long time. He tried to feel the shape of his life after Reese and couldn’t. Didn’t want to, this close to its beginning. By this time tomorrow, he would be wed.

Finally, he said, “I love my cousin.”

Lesandurel received that as the message Hirianthial had intended, and did not press.

After a time, Hirianthial added, “Hiran.”

Lesandurel lifted his cup. “Hiran, then. I am sorry I missed your tenure as seal-bearer for our House.”

Hirianthial tapped his lightly to the other man’s cup. “Andrel. You need not. We will see more than enough of one another in the future we will make for our people.”

“Eldritch and Pelted both.”

“Eldritch and Pelted both.”

“Angels, Angels, Reese… Allacazam is missing!”

Reese ignored Irine to peer at her own reflection in the mirror, resisting the urge to touch her eyes and smear all the hard work Felith had just done there. “Did you check my hammock?”

“Yes!”

“My bed, then?”

“Yes!” Irine grabbed her ears. “He keeps rolling away lately and hiding places, and it’s driving me crazy.”

“He’ll turn up,” Reese said. “He’s not going to miss the wedding, he knows it’s today.”

“Does he?” Felith asked, entering from the room the Eldritch insisted was a closet. In Reese’s opinion, it was about six times too big for the name. The room even had a padded bench in it, which struck her as particularly crazy. Who sat in their own closet? And why? To contemplate their mounds of clothing? Ridiculous. The dress they’d talked her into was fancy enough without adding enough clones to fill a cargo bin.

“Does he what?” she asked, distracted. She forced herself to admit she was nervous.

“Know that today is the wedding,” Felith said, setting the gown on the chair next to Reese. “I did not perceive him to have much sense of normal time.”

“He has ways,” Reese said.

Felith was eyeing the gown with as close to a scowl as a well-bred Eldritch woman allowed herself. “I still think this would be far more proper with a corset.”

“I am not wearing a corset under my wedding dress,” Reese declared. “The first time Hirianthial kisses me, I’ll faint.”

Irine snickered.

“Kissing of that sort is reserved for the bedchamber,” Felith said after bestowing a quelling glance at the Harat-Shar. “The kiss during the ceremony is a symbol of the union made manifest. It is supposed to be chaste.”

Reese sighed, rueful. “Blood, Felith. It doesn’t matter what kind of kiss he gives me. They all make me breathe too fast.”

“Oh!” Felith colored. “Well. That’s to be expected. He is the man you’re wedding.” Briskly, she continued, “Come, let us dress you. The bells will ring soon.”

“Right,” Reese said, and stood, allowing the ritual. Not just the gown, but over it, a new medallion of her own, Laisrathera’s, peach-colored stone clasped in white gold, with a bright star for an emblem: Earth as seen in the Martian sky. Felith threaded it on a long chain so that it fell past her breasts, hanging over her ribcage; it left her throat free for the choker of rubies and coral-colored moonstones the Queen had given her. All of it felt too expensive for Reese, but she supposed that was her fault for getting tangled up with royalty and Eldritch princes.

“You have a little time,” Felith said once they’d finished the toilette. “If you’d like, we can stay…?”

“No, that’s all right. I wouldn’t mind some time to myself.”

Irine nodded. “And I’ll look for Allacazam.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Then I’ll look for Sascha. I need a cuddle.”

Reese grinned. “Just so long as you remember to bring the ring.”

Irine went into the pocket of her own dress and brought out the pouch, shaking it. “Still in there.”

“Good. Then go have your cuddle. I’ll be out soon.”

Alone, she smoothed the silk folds down. It was traditional for seal-bearers to marry in their House colors, so she wore apricot, embroidered in white and honey-gold. Irine had assured her that it set off her brown skin beautifully, and she’d seen the admiration in Felith’s eyes when the woman had drawn away to consider her handiwork. They’d seen to every detail, except her hair; Reese had handled that herself, using the beads from her box. The smell reminded her of home, knitted her past and her future together in a way that calmed her anxious stomach.

She was not the woman she’d been when she left Mars. Nor the one she’d been when she met Hirianthial. She’d seen it in her own face, sitting patiently while Felith had applied the cosmetics that had edged her eyelids in gold and gilt her lips. Strain had etched lines in her face, and worry. But she liked her eyes better. She didn’t mind meeting her own gaze anymore.

The bells started singing, summoning the celebrants. She lifted her chin, brushed her skirts and answered the call.

The thing Reese remembered most about the ceremony was how little of it she did. In the days to come, it would fade into a pastiche of sensory impressions and a vague sense of overwhelming happiness… and that was fine with her. She had plenty of people to remind her of the details and she looked forward to their teasing and their company and the years of friendship those things implied.

Some parts, though, she did recall. Rose Point had once had a cathedral on the grounds encircled by the curtain walls, a building long since reduced to a rumpled stone foundation… but the keep’s private chapel remained mostly intact, boasting three walls and enough of the roof to support its bell tower. The garden’s vines had overgrown one wall, knotting through the mortar and spilling over the pinnacle into the nave. With the advent of spring, the roses had died off… but other flowers had bloomed, shining gold, tiny and fragrant. Reese had ordered the place swept, the stained glass windows replaced, and had the bell serviced, and liked the result: old and new, natural and man-made, sacred and somehow casual enough to be borne. That, then, was where they’d decided to host the ceremony.

She remembered the heady perfume of the flowers and the sea, and the warmth of the sunlight on her shoulders and Hirianthial’s, the way it made the wine red velvet of his coat seem to glow like garnets. She remembered—vaguely—Liolesa, as the head of the Goddess’s order, and Urise, serving for the God’s, saying something about love and duty, posterity, joy.

She remembered the gifts, because those were important: she gave him one of the matched set of rings she’d had made with the Laisrathera star-on-apricot field, and a new dagger to replace the ones she kept misplacing: a dagger, not a sword, as acknowledgement that while he had accepted the role of Laisrathera’s sword-bearer, he had a greater responsibility now to the kingdom—empire—as a whole. That dagger went on his belt alongside the sword he’d used on his world’s behalf, and she found herself okay with the reminder of all that he could do, and had done. If there was violence in their futures, she trusted that they would handle it.

When it was his turn, he gave her his life, because that was what men pledged to their brides, and she remembered him bowing his head to her when he vowed it.

She remembered sipping from a shallow bowl of honey, symbol of the sweetness of the life they were to share. And she remembered his lips tasting of it when he’d tipped her chin up with gloved fingers: sweet gloss on warm, dry skin.

…Reese definitely remembered the kiss.

The priest had wrapped their joined hands with the binding cloth, then, apricot and gold for Laisrathera, bronze and burgundy for Jisiensire, and meeting in the center the unicorn that spoke of Hirianthial’s royal blood. Hirianthial had removed his glove for that and she’d felt his fingers warm in hers, close in the dim heat of the silk.

After that, there was the expected celebration… for everyone else. The Eldritch, Felith had confided, expected the happy couple to leave the festivities for the guests and ascend to their rooms to consummate their bond. And then, if it pleased them, to return. The revelry would last for three days, and while they were expected to make an appearance it was not at all untoward for them to leave it until the last day. Indeed, it was something of a triumph if they did, hinting at many forthcoming years of marital bliss. Reese thought it all a little dramatic, and probably a way for people to enjoy the food and board of a rich family—Felith admitted to it without embarrassment. But when Hirianthial tucked her hand under his arm and suggested they depart, she thought there might be some merit in not having to suffer through a big dinner and hours of well-wishers before finally being alone with the man she’d married. The sounds of the party carried up through the halls as they left it behind, made it feel like they were escaping. Her heart raced, and she found she was grinning.

He surprised her by taking her by the waist and lifting her, twirling her. “That is how I like you,” he said in that baritone that she now allowed herself to admit had always made the hair on the back of her neck rise. “Laughing.”

“I’m not laughing,” she protested, though by then she was.

“You’re laughing on the inside,” he said, and kissed her, and then she wasn’t laughing—that was fine, though. Better than fine.

“Come,” he murmured against her mouth. “Let us find our bed.”

…and that was nothing like she’d imagined, because she wasn’t capable of imagining just how good it could be. Except that it was tender and wonderful, and that maybe that cultured exterior was capable of hiding something untamed. And that was good, she thought with her hands wound through his short hair, tangled in the hair-chain that sang as she pulled him down. A man should always have something a little untamed in him.

“A woman too,” he said against her sweat-glossed cheek, in a tone almost like a purr.

“A woman too,” she agreed, gone all to goosebumps and not at all minding.

The light through the window had faded to silver in a dark sky. It was later—how much later, Reese didn’t know or much care. The party was no doubt still going, but her crew could handle it, and what they couldn’t, Liolesa surely would. There was no reason in the world to descend, and every reason to linger here with her cheek on this chest, with this muscled arm curled around her shoulders, keeping her close. How had the muscle never occurred to her? A light-gravity worlder who had learned the discipline of the sword, consigned to decades in heavier gravities? She should have known, but it was instead a delightful surprise. A delicious surprise. She traced a scar on his side, thinking that she would ask him about it one day, but not today, and that maybe she’d taste the skin there, but not just now.

“If you will permit,” he murmured, brushing his lips against her forehead. “There is a custom….”

This roused her from her pleasant drifting and she laughed, husky. “Another one! Sometimes I think you people are nothing
but
customs.”

“Remove one and we may all collapse?” He smiled against her skin; she could feel it. “Sometimes I wonder myself. But this one is pleasing. I think you may find it so also.” Rolling onto his back he stretched an arm toward the table alongside the bed and brought back a little box. “For you.”

“A present?” Reese sat up, pulling the blankets up onto her lap.

“During the wedding is traditional for the bride to bestow gifts because she is invariably the one with the wealth,” Hirianthial said, lying on his side beside her with his head resting on a palm. “But if a man is pleased with the match he will bring his own offering to the marriage bed. A troth gift, it’s called politely.”

She glanced at him. “And impolitely?”

He laughed. “A stud gift.”

She couldn’t help it… she laughed too. “You people and your horses. So do I open it now?”

“I would be pleased if you did.”

The box was small enough to fit in her palm, but so intricately carved she couldn’t fit her nail into some of the cuts. The pattern reminded her of something but she couldn’t place it: leaves maybe? How long had it taken someone to make this box? Because, being Eldritch, someone had to have made it by hand. Knowing that made it incredible, like something out of a storybook.

Strange how wary she used to be of gifts, when looking at this one all she could think about was how it felt anticipating something new and wonderful. She carefully opened the lid.