Chapter Text
It was over an hour’s ride to the fairgrounds from the Untheileneise Court, and Maia spent the better part of it in silent and dignified panic.
The sound of Csethiro’s conversation with the children washed over him, permeating the deafening veil of his fretting at intervals: Ino, chattering about the Ilinvereise tumblers she had heard about from Marina Athmaza, who he had seen playing for a gathering of delighted children in the plaza in Cetho and who she, too, hoped to see. Mireän, indulging in a brief and florid complaint over a book she had been assigned by her own tutor, which she found dreadfully dull and ill worth her time. For a few minutes later in the trip, Csethiro cajoled Idra to speak on the latest of his endeavors with his own tutor.
“I am not very good at it,” Idra said, his tone of mild-mannered acceptance of something he saw as fact belied by the disappointed dip of his ears.
“That is not what I have heard from Leilis Athmaza,” Maia said, speaking for the first time in nearly twenty minutes. He considered it a boon beyond description, that he could entertain his own silence in the company of his family. “He says thou’rt progressing at a frankly astonishing pace.”
Idra’s ears dipped further, and Maia recognized the seed of doubt in his heart, so closely did it resemble his own. People did so like to speak charming falsehoods to their emperor, and it had sewn suspicion in his heart very quickly; as Idra had lived with such treatment for his whole life, he knew the roots of doubt would certainly have grown even deeper.
It had been a topic of some contention that, when Leilis Athmaza had raised the idea of teaching a few mazei to his pupil some months ago, Maia had agreed. The common opinion was that it was beneath the Prince of the Untheileneise Court to become a maza, and Maia had challenged this immediately with the point that it had been a maza that had saved his own life, in flawless synchronicity with his martial counterpart.
“The Prince has been schooled for many years in the art of the sword,” Maia had pointed out. “As are all noble sons. As were our martial nohecharei. Mazei are simply a different and equally noble art, and we feel that it will challenge him in those ways that benefit a growing mind.”
As there was no naysaying the Emperor on the handling of his own household, the louder dissenters—namely Lord Pashavar, who strongly believed that the only exercise for a boy’s mind should be the arts of logic and reason—subsided.
And indeed, the art of mazei had challenged Idra—a challenge to which he had risen admirably, and with a joy that he kept very much to himself. Maia worried not infrequently about Idra’s willful somberness; he did not have to ask to know who had instructed him that he should be at all moments staid and dignified, never yielding to delight. At times, Maia wished to take a visit to Bakhoree, that he might shame Sheveän for the lasting damage she had left in her wake.
“He is kind,” said Idra, a quiet gesture of dismissal.
“He is honest,” replied Maia, eyebrows raised. “Thou’rt far too hard on thyself, cousin.”
“Straight from the horse’s mouth,” Csethiro chirped, giving Maia a mirthful smile when he turned a moue of displeasure upon her.
“Was that entirely necessary?” he asked.
“Of course not,” Csethiro said, and reached to fix a crimp in his collar.
He wished she wouldn’t tease him just then, for his nerves walked a very tenuous line.
It had not occurred to him, at the Faire’s inception, that he would be charged with the giving of a speech; though really, he should have realized. An an Emperor was present, an Emperor would speak, as he had learned so quickly. And while he would not be able to enjoy full run of the fairgrounds himself—there were entirely too many variables to such a crowded place, and it would be impossible to ensure his security—he had fostered its creation. It was, as far as the country itself understood the situation, his idea—and so, he would speak.
Not just speak: orate. Maia had learned to respect his own competencies, few as they were, but he could not rid himself of the hyperawareness of his own failings. One of which, of course, was that stage fright and the damnable meekness that followed its onset rendered him hopeless as a proper orator.
Lord Berenar, of course, had tried. He had spent nearly a dozen hours over the span of a few months early in his reign, coaching Maia on how to stand, how to control the cadences of his sentences, and, mostly, how to project his voice properly, that it might be heard at the back of a crowded room.
Time and again, he had failed, and while this had displeased him, he had satisfied himself that if he had not yet found a reason to speak in such a long-winded manner, he likely would not find one any time soon.
Damn and thrice damn him, but he needed the skill now, and it was not just nobles before whom he risked embarrassing himself now—it was the entire country.
Edrehasivar Half-Tongue.
It stood as fact that the better part of the people over whom he ruled had not yet seen him in this light—or any light. An you dismissed the funeral at the Ceth’ulimeire for the victims of the Wisdom of Choharo, Maia had gone the entirety of his reign beyond the sight of the common populace.
He felt he had made small secret of the truth that he considered these people the core of his life’s work. Everything he did, he did not for the gentry that haunted his Court, the contentious dukes, the catty sons and daughters of great houses, but for the men and women who farmed and milled the wheat that made each morning’s bread; for the workers in the Amaleise airship factories; for the rheumy-eyed silk weavers, the prelates pinching their pennies for whitewash and beeswax candles, the souls unhoused by cruel landowners and bitter fates.
It was desperately important, then, that Maia spoke well—for it was desperately important, to him, that these people think him worthy of them.
Csethiro, sensing Maia’s withdrawal behind the cloud of his anxiety, pressed her shoulder to his, lacing their fingers together.
“All wilt be well, beloved,” she said, softly enough that the words would be for him alone. “Trust us.”
She spoke in the plural, for the effort to reassure and coach him had been exerted equally by Csevet as by her. He was not willing to admit it to her, but in sooth, Csevet’s advice had been far more helpful.
“The most concrete guidance we can give,” Csevet had said after a long interlude of assuring Maia that, even an he forgot the words of the speech Csevet had written for him, the sentiments therein were all his own, and earnestness of speech had rarely done him wrong. “Is not to look directly at those to whom you speak.”
“However are we supposed to do that,” Maia had replied, weak with dread. He had just seen the finished fairgrounds for himself, and among the sights had been the dais on which he was to stand to deliver his speech. He could picture all too well the vast space before it filled, shoulder to shoulder, with people. It would be a veritable ocean of upturned faces, all eyes focused upon him—he would have to stare at the sky to avoid them.
Csevet’s reassuring smile had ceased to register to him as soothing.
“When you rise to the stage, you will have at least two minutes of delay while the crowd settles. In that interlude, we advise seeking out three fixed points just above the back of the crowd on which to fix your gaze. The crowd will still be in your periphery, but it helps to be unable to pick out individual faces. Shift your gaze between those points as you go, and it will read to those watching as personal awareness of each of them, regardless of their place in the square.”
“And that will work?” Doubt cracked in the last word, and he cringed away from it.
Csevet’s smile grew warmer, less placating, and he said, “It has worked for us in the past, Serenity.”
Maia still was uncertain what in Csevet’s life would have given him cause to give speeches; he was too entrenched in his own dread to ask at the time.
Far too quickly, the carriage glided to a stop. Fear burst in his chest like a kicked wasp nest.
“Maia,” said Csethiro, rousing him from his fugue with a hand curled at the nape of his neck, a kiss pressed to his cheek. “Look at me.”
He blinked open his eyes, and found as he did that the michen had already disembarked, leaving Maia with Csethiro and his First Nohecharei, the latter of whom had respectfully averted their gazes.
He obediently looked to Csethiro. She was radiant before him, her honey blonde hair braided with ribbons of Drazhadeise blue and topped with a resplendently simple coronet, golden and studded with glittering sapphires and a single glowing moonstone. Her edocharei had brushed sweet roses of rouge onto the apples of her cheeks and dressed her in cream silks. She was every inch an Empress, and Maia loved her as a leaf to the sun.
His breath steadied.
“There thou art,” she said, brushing a thumb over his cheek, her smile sweet. She kissed him, lingering, and parted by only a breath to murmur, “Thou wilt shine and be loved, for canst not do otherwise, even if thou were to try.
He started to speak, a single, “But—” escaping him before his lips were claimed again with a kiss.
“Speakst not thy doubts,” she murmured, a breath away again. “Give them voice now and they will own thee, and they are not worthy of that honor.”
Receding far enough to look at him properly, she trailed fingers along his jaw, a dappling touch.
“Thou’rt every inch an Emperor,” she said, in perfect mirror of his own thoughts mere moments before. “And thy people love thee, as do I.”
Maia bowed his head to her words and took another slow, deliberate breath.
On the far side of that moment, he straightened, kissed her once more, and said, “I am ready.”
He was not—he never would be—but Csethiro’s smile was well worth the assertion, and she squeezed his hand tenderly before tapping at the carriage door. It opened, and as the footman stepped aside, Csethiro descended with a poise and dignity to which Maia could only aspire.
“Serenity,” said Beshelar with an unnecessary bow that Maia knew nonetheless to be a show of support, and disembarked. A moment later, Maia followed.
The air in Maia’s lungs was thick with humidity and anxiety both, but he sucked it in anyway, eyes flickering shut as he stood on his own a moment. It was the barest tick of the clock, a single grain of sand through the hourglass in which to pray for forbearance. Even in light of his own fumbling words or discontent in the crowd, there was still good to be had here. He knew it as he knew his own heart.
The moment passed, and Maia fixed his ears and squared his shoulders—donning, to the best of his ability, the guise of Edrehasivar VII.
Behold, the Ethuverazhid Zhas, murmured the ghost of Setheris’ mocking voice in his mind. He swallowed, and followed the direction of all four nohecharei, each polished to a shine and stationed about him in a perfect, protective formation.
There followed the pomp of heraldry: a chorus of trumpets, the booming call of the Faire’s crier, announcing Edrehasivar VII, Emperor of the Elflands.
Never had Maia heard such a great noise as when he stepped onto the dais. What looked like the entire population of the Ethuveraz had gathered, and their cheering rivaled earthquakes and thunderstorms for the magnitude of its din.
It rattled him to his core, and were he not supposed to be a leader of men, he would have fled back the way he came. Instead of balking, he stepped to the low railing and steeled himself to meet the eyes of his people. His true people, the elves and goblins who bore within them the soul of his country.
Tradition held that the Emperor was not a man—he was the very land he ruled. He protected the dead when they had nowhere to rest, he blessed new life with each Springnight, and every beat of his heart was the Istandaärtha’s coursing waters.
One could not blame him, then, for fearing the possibility of revilement from those for whom he breathed. He had seen it before, in Setheris’ raised hand, in Sheveän’s deeds, in Eshevis Tethimar’s wild eyes—and so he anticipated it, here.
He was perforce stunned when he found quite the opposite.
For while the noise hit him like a blow to the chest, there was not an unsmiling face in his sight, and from every direction came a shower of white posies, flung at the foot of his dais: Gifts for the Emperor of the Elflands, the only thing they would not be strung up for flinging in his direction. As the tradition went, each one was tied with a ribbon that had spent a full moon’s time on a family’s shrine (or michenmeire, had they the space for one), imbued with the same faith and trust they placed in their sects. They were god-touched; not offerings lightly given.
Was this for him? This clamor? This joy?
For it was, very much, joy. A clutch of people towards the middle of the crowd had begun to sing, and though Maia did not know the tune, he recognized the chorus when scores of folk joined in:
"Edrehasivar the Wise,
gray of skin and gray of eyes,
shall wingèd be whene’re he dies,
so beloved is he!"
It had reached him within the cold halls of the Untheileneise Court that there had begun to be songs written about him. Vedero had even recited this particular chorus for him; but it had not truly occurred to him that the words were in earnest. Rather, he had thought them light-hearted and of little consequence; similarly, he assumed that any other extant songs would surely be rude or mocking in turns.
There was no mockery here. These people—his people loved him, plain as day.
Stage fright, he thought, could not have come close to describing the liquid terror that had coursed through him until this very moment, but the energy now surrounding him swept away his fear as easily as cobwebs. There was breath again in his lungs, and strength in his spine, and he found he had no need at all for Csevet's advice, however sage it might have been. He smiled as he raised his hands, calling for quiet.
“Countrymen, neighbors,” he said, finding within himself a carrying voice he had not known he possessed, even despite all the hours of Berenar’s coaching. “Friends. It is with a full heart that we welcome you to this great, hopeful moment in the history of not just the Ethuveraz, but in all of the nations gathered here.”
These were not Csevet’s words—not initially, anyway. He began as himself, and regretted it not at all.
A fresh wave of cheering rose, and he waited several long, smiling moments for it to quiet again.
“The Faire we inaugurate today is a testament to the generosity of spirit that dwells within each of you, and the earthborn drive to share of each other—to share skills and resources, love and grief, art and science and the languages of our mothers. Long has our world been divided by conflict, as any world must be at times. We know, however, as surely as we stand before you, that a brighter world is not only possible, but already in our midst.”
The prepared speech came back to him, and he spoke on the universal grace of earthborn creativity, in the vein of scientific and artistic pursuits alike. He mentioned the Wisdom Bridge, and alluded to a return of the peace and prosperity of the reign of his namesake, Edrehasivar VI. Csevet’s words served him well, and as he concluded with thanks and a prayer of goodwill, his heart overflowed with the love of his countrymen, and of his family at his back. Their pride in him was a presence unto itself, and he could have wept for the force of it.
The day that followed was perhaps the lightest he had ever had. The rest of the opening ceremony passed in a blur of sound and color, and it felt like both an eternity and no time at all before he found himself reinstalled in the imperial carriage. He was hot all over, and alight with joy, but it was a relief of immense scale to be allowed to sink back in his seat and shut his eyes. He reveled in the quiet, holding Csethiro’s hand and simply breathing for a while.
“They love me,” he murmured finally.
“They do,” Csethiro replied, and if he did, in fact, cry a little, then no one would say anything about it.
After his return to the Alcethmeret and the moderate simplification of his wardrobe—the heavy circlet removed, a more comfortable jacket donned—he was treated to a peaceful tea with Arbelan Zhasanai, answered a few of the more important letters that had arrived throughout the morning, and felt very little shame for the general silliness of his mood.
It was on his way to dinner (an event heralded by yet another alteration of his clothes, yet again in the direction of heavy embroidery and a different but no less weighty circlet) that he heard the first whistling ascent of distant fireworks.
Ensconced still behind the gates of the Alcethmeret, Maia did not curb the childish way he rushed for the nearest balcony. He had seen real fireworks only thrice now, at Winternight and Midsummer, and his enthusiasm for them remained undimmed.
“One wonders,” he said as he watched the riot of colors in the darkening sky, “how it went for the unlucky folk who first happened upon brightly colored explosions.”
Csevet’s laugh was nearly obscured by the booming of a spectacularly crimson firework.
“Not well, we imagine,” he said, stepping to the edge of the balcony with Maia. “Lots of fire and shouting, probably.”
The grin Maia turned on him was unfettered as it so rarely was with all but Csethiro, and as Csevet’s gaze flickered to his mouth, it occurred to him only dimly that he might wish to cover the gap of his teeth, the dimple of his cheeks.
“It would seem there is still a lot of shouting,” he said, for they could just nearly hear the cries of the fairgoers on the wind, in between the great booms of the fireworks. “Somewhat less fire, though.”
“Somewhat,” Csevet agreed, and turned his face again to the sky. A burst of brilliant pink lit the night, and Maia watched it paint Csevet’s features: the high, fine cheekbones, the sweet cupid’s bow of his mouth. His eyelashes, Maia noticed, were as silvery pale as his hair, and the colored light catching in his eyes rendered them radiant.
He thought again of Signore Cavarapacci’s brief and illuminating lesson on light, and observed the shadow cast beneath Csevet’s jaw, the contrasting highlight across his smooth forehead and his fine nose. An Maia could, he would have painted him in that moment—and what a painting it would have been, the fine, gossamer threads of hair curling ever so slightly with the humidity at his nape and temples, juxtaposed with the crisp line of his high, starched collar.
How had he ever missed his feelings for this man? So deep and impassioned were they that he felt they should have been audible to the highest ceiling of the heavens. He would fasten him a crown of starlight, if asked. He would give him the moon on a silver pillow. He would start wars for him.
Had he not been acquainted with love already—with the abiding fire of it in his chest, with the lengths to which he would go in its name—the power that Csevet held over him, all unknowing, would have stricken him senseless with terror.
But he knew the feeling well, and let it burn without fear.
That is, without fear until Csevet turned his head and met Maia’s ardent gaze. Again came the weight; again spun the thread; and around them, the world stilled. Maia knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that he could kiss Csevet, and no one would stop him.
He wanted to; he nearly did.
But he could not ask this of him. This last thing, this final subsumption. Csevet had given up his old life for Maia, had taken reins he had never even imagined holding. A courier with the whole world laid out before him, tethered now to a desk and a thankless job.
When had he last slept a night through? When had he had a moment for himself?
There had been times, of course, when he was out of Maia’s sight. He did not attend dinners not meant for him, he did not ride out with Maia in the mornings or follow him on his walks, to every tea, to every luncheon. Csevet was not a nohecharis, bound to Maia’s side till death and beyond.
But he knew the magnitude and quality of Csevet’s work, and so knowing, he doubted that Csevet remembered how to take a moment’s peace for himself.
No, Maia thought. Despite it all, I cannot tie this final knot upon him.
Maia had no claim over him, and he did not intend to stake one.
“You should go to the festival,” he said, reality dimming his smile to a wistfulness. The words ached, an unwilling dismissal. “Our evening is simple, and you should not be stuck at work when there is dancing to do.”
The pause held in Csevet for a moment longer, and then, despite whatever efforts Maia knew he must have exerted, his ears drooped. The glow in his face dimmed, replaced with the imperturbable mask he had so perfected.
“It is our job to be here when we are needed, Serenity,” he said primly.
“An you are present in every moment in which we have need of you, Csevet, you will never sleep again,” Maia said. The words hit closer to home than he had intended; he looked away. “We admit, we do not quite know what it is you do for fun, but if the festival is at all tempting to you...”
Csevet hesitated before saying, “Dancing does agree with us. And it has been some months since we have seen our friends.”
Months. Stars above, had he been this neglectful of all his dav?
“Well, that will not do at all,” he said, frowning. “You must have time for yourself, Csevet, to see your friends, to rest. To do whatever you may please.”
“Serenity, we are—”
“Happy to do it? This self-sacrifice, done in silence?” Maia asked in a voice more chiding than he meant it to be. “We will not have it. You are not a nohecharis, Csevet. Your life is not ours, and we would not wish it to be. An we had a choice, we would not wish even the nohecharei we do have to be so bound to us.”
From behind him came the gasp of an inhale, and Maia lifted a warding hand. “And before you speak, Lieutenant, yes, we know the insinuation of unwillingness to be offensive to you. Please trust that we mean nothing of that sort.”
He felt more than heard Telimezh subside, and repaired his attention to Csevet. He looked baffled and rather alarmed.
“When the Faire closes and we are once again in possession of room to breathe,” Maia said, “we are going to sit down and discuss a schedule for you, Csevet. One in which you have at least three evenings a week to yourself, and, preferably, a day or two in their entirety, as well.”
“Serenity,” Csevet replied, eyes widening in dismay. “But we cannot possibly spare a whole day.”
“Yes, you can,” Maia said with a twist of wryness. “We seem to recall a veritable army of undersecretaries at your beck and call. We are more than positive that one or three of them can stand in your stead from time to time, and nothing the worse will come of it.”
Csevet was positively aghast at the idea, and Maia used the distraction to ease the writing board and its host of papers from Csevet’s slack grip.
“In the meantime,” he said, tucking the board, papers and all, under his arm, “we insist you spend your evening in leisure. If you cannot yet bring yourself to do it for your own sake, do it for ours, for we would pay an irresponsible number of zashanei to be on those fairgrounds tonight.”
Slowly, Csevet said, “If Your Serenity insists…”
“We do,” Maia said, smiling. “And an we see you before ten o’clock tomorrow morning, we will be very cross with you.”
Somewhat numbly, Csevet reflected his smile back at him, and bowed his head.
“Then we will go,” he said.
“And enjoy yourself?”
The smile widened as Csevet shook his head, utterly bemused by his emperor.
“And enjoy ourself.”
“Then begone, Csevet,” Maia said, shooing him with one hand. And with a bow, Csevet was, indeed, gone.
Maia missed him immediately.
And he continued to miss him—through the overwhelming dinner with every foreign dignitary that could be fit at table; through the chamber concert given by an astonishingly talented group from Estelveriär’s capitol of Fjórður, conducted by an agile elderly Telvar by the name of Bÿrjilke Strom; through the fuddling haze of wine drunk throughout it all.
In his rooms, he succumbed to the abstraction, the thoughts of what could have happened, had he let it. He had known only Csethiro’s lips; would Csevet’s feel different? Would the essentiality of the experience differ, beyond the knowledge that the mouth pressed to his was Csevet’s?
Surely it would. He imagined a juxtaposition: Csethiro, sweet and domineering at turns, the occasional bright pain of her teeth, the taste of her laugh on his tongue; Csevet, stubborn, intense, and perhaps yielding, perhaps sighing into Maia’s mouth, perhaps bending with him, as a tree in wind. The reverence with which Maia would kiss both of them, touch them, know them.
Thou art a fool, Maia Zhas, spoke the voice of Edrehasivar VII in his mind. He was inclined to agree. A fool, a moon-witted drunk—and, dare he say, a strumpet.
After his fretting edocharei had left and Maia was wrapped in soft sheets, he floated on the swells of his feelings: his longing, his doubts, his resolution, above all, to keep this last bit of distance between himself and Csevet. He longed; he stood fast; he resolutely refused to let himself dwell upon said resolution.
The effects of the wine had worn off, and Maia was trying to coax himself to sleep with repetitive prayers when his bedchamber door opened, admitting a sliver of light. He heard Beshelar shift from his post, and a faintly murmured exchange.
“Cala?” Maia asked, shifting aside part of the bed curtains. “What’s toward?”
Beshelar started a reply, but Cala said over top of him, “Mer Aisava is at the door, Serenity, and is asking to see you.”
Maia frowned.
“Well, let him in,” he said, mildly annoyed that it was even a question. “Has something happened?”
“Not as we know, no,” Cala said, and went to let Csevet in.
By the time he entered, Maia had relit his lamp and sat waiting on the edge of the bed.
“We thought we ordered you not to show your face until midmorning tomorrow,” he said when Csevet appeared, entirely in jest—and then was glad he had had the remark queued already, for had he waited long enough to truly see Csevet, he doubted he would have been able to speak a single word.
Nearly two years he had known this man, and had seen him every one of those days, lovely and removed behind starched collars and fine brass buttons; a milkweed pale chignon; unadorned hands and a tinkling of small, delicate earrings. Every day—and never once had he seen him like this.
Disorderly would have been the word for it on nearly anyone else, for he had clearly spent the intervening hours in unfettered revelry. There was a sheen of cooling sweat to his skin, and his hair was making an earnest bid for freedom from the loose style in which he had arranged it for the evening. His eyes were alight, and a hectic flush spread from ear to ear.
Disorderly, head to toe—yet on Csevet, all of this and more was beauty incarnate. He was dressed in shades of blue that set his alabaster skin aglow, and he had misplaced the jacket he must once have worn, leaving him in shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and a turquoise and silver brocade waistcoat that hugged perfectly the slender line of his waist. His collar, absent a necktie, had wilted with perspiration and lay unbuttoned to his clavicle, baring his long, lissome throat; and over it all trailed his hair, disarrayed and longer than Maia had known, and pale as moonlight.
And here Maia sat, a dolt in his nightshirt and a braid down his back. He was struck utterly still, all except his breath, which soughed from him on a reverent, wondering sigh.
“Yes, you did,” said Csevet. “An you wish to do so, and we imagine you will, you can pretend we were not here come morning, when you see us again. But we—” He paused, dragging a shaking hand over his face with a frantic laugh that frightened Maia more than a little, so strange was it to hear such a sound from Csevet's lips. “I cannot hold my tongue any longer.”
“Csevet,” Maia said, starting to rise when Csevet stayed him with a warding hand. “What is—”
“No,” Csevet said, shaking his head with a bright clattering of the many earrings following the curve of his right ear. “Please, say nothing. Only read this, and then we may never speak of it again.”
He offered a bare slip of paper, sealed with a drop of wax Maia suspected would have been warm to the touch mere moments ago. The image in the wax was of a galloping horse, and though Maia had never laid eyes on it before, he knew immediately that it served as Csevet’s own, simple seal.
“What is this?” he asked, lifting his eyes from the seal to find Csevet backing towards the door, his ears now pinned flat to his head, his eyes wide and wild. Fear, Maia thought. He was afraid.
“Csevet,” Maia said, staring at him. “What is this?”
Again, Csevet shook his head.
“Just read it,” he said, and fled without another word.
Maia stared after him, and had half a thought to call him back, or follow him himself. But he knew what it was to fear reprisal, and he did not wish to frighten Csevet more than he already was.
And what on earth could he hand thee that scares him so?
Swallowing his own trepidation, Maia cracked the seal, and discovered, on the single sheet of parchment, a poem in Csevet’s effortless hand.
A courier’s song on salted air
we hear of an afternoon—
'By Salezheio’s swelling sails,
O! Where, O weary travel I!’
And think we, ‘Ah, alas, we once did fly
On silvered wings and wine,'
our own ambling way,
down again, down again…
How shall we say,
now, here, the strangeness of our course?
A wandering path we long have took,
all rivers to the sea—
but here, now, we stand,
bounded, foiled—
A man upstands, an emperor all unknowing,
askance, unthinking kind—
How straight our path becomes at once,
an arrow, silvered true,
flying ever-true, to you.
‘Away, the road, and fie the sea,’
We hear now of our own accord—
Our voice, uplifted true, and hope, in sooth,
it is not marked, nor heard,
nor thought upon at all—
‘My love, I fly to thee!’
You do not know this verse we sing,
nor shall read this one we write—
So formal I shan’t henceforth be,
and give my aching voice.
Whither standest I?
A question I once did ask a-day, a-day,
and never shall again—the answer is
‘Within thy sight, within thy ken,'
and forever will I stay.
My love, I sigh,
my heart, my light,
What can I say?
All I should not—
Thy smile, a jewel brighter than the Dachen crown,
thy hair a storm-tossed sea
in which I would sweetly drown
given half a chance to press myself to thee.
“Call him back,” Maia gasped, poem unfinished, heart in his throat. Louder, he cried, “Cala! Call him back!”
“Serenity,” chided Beshelar; Maia ignored him, making haste for a dressing gown and rushing from the bedchamber.
It took Cala nearly ten minutes to locate Csevet—Maia wondered if he had run, for he had not been reading for two minutes together before setting Cala on his tail. In the time, he read the poem to its end twice, and then had to set it down, for fear of crumpling it between his shaking hands.
He did not have a thought to his name, nor a word, for so desperate and fervent were his feelings, so many and so loud, that he became simply a man on the brink—of what? Disaster? Miracles?
Change.
He heard Csevet and Cala before he saw them, in hissed and frenetic whispering that carried well above the sound of their hurrying footsteps.
“—wilt not let me—”
“—not in trouble, thou towering idi—”
“—beg of thee to sod right off—”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” Cala said, and opened the door. His smile for Maia was warm even as he seemed to haul Csevet into the room bodily. As soon as he was through the threshold, Cala shut the door and placed his own body in the way of its ever opening again.
Csevet was as pale as death, and though he had taken great care to level his ears and smooth his expression, Maia still saw the height of the fear in him.
“Serenity, please—an you have taken offense, we beg of you to know that we meant none. Only, we had to—to speak our piece,” he said, frantic all over again, only to stumble himself to a stop as Maia took his hand in both of his.
Ardently, and yet carefully, so carefully, Maia pressed a kiss to the very tips of his fingers, drawing a shuddering gasp from Csevet’s lips.
“I had scarcely dared to hope,” Maia murmured, lips now to Csevet’s palm. The fingers in his grasp curled, brushing ever so gently over his cheek. He looked up, caring not for the stray curls that had fallen into his face as he said, “Csevet, forgive me—thou’rt a poet, it seems, yet I do not in return have words in any language for how ardently I love thee, except to say it plain.”
In a heartbeat, the touch at his cheek firmed, and Maia had barely the space for a gasp of air before he was drawn into a fierce and desperate kiss.
Joy burst in Maia, light and heat and delirious, stunning wildness such as he had never felt before; he grasped at Csevet like a drowning man to the shore, hands at his waist. They sighed together, their lips parting for the barest space of a second before Maia’s arm circled Csevet’s waist, pressing him full against him as they met again, mouths open and hungry.
He had wondered earlier at how different a thing it would be, to kiss Csevet; he knew, now, that no amount of imagining would have approached the reality for magnificence.
Csevet was lithe as a dancer, moving always in synchronicity with Maia: swaying with him, opening hungrily for him, following him when he receded even an inch. And always, his hands moved, as though he wanted to touch so much of Maia that he could not decide where to start: his throat, his shoulders, the long line of his back. His hand brushed the end of Maia’s braid, and that, too, was not safe, for he effortlessly plucked the ribbon from it and shook his hair loose with questing fingers. It cascaded across Maia’s shoulders and down his back, a sudden expanse, and he was at once surprised and delighted at the quiet, fervent moan it drew from Csevet as he sank both hands at once into its depths.
‘Thy hair a storm-tossed sea,’ Csevet had written, and Maia saw now that the fervency of that adoration was an unembroidered truth.
“Hast touched it before,” he murmured, shifting his lips along Csevet’s jaw as Csevet fingers twisted in his hair. Csevet breathed a laugh.
“Yes,” he replied, his head dropping back to let Maia at his throat, “And it nearly killed me to stop.”
Never in his life had Maia had anything better than disregard for his hair—it was messy at best, unmanageable at worst, and there was just so much of it, all the time. Yet, as Csevet shifted his hands through it, touching gently the softer curls at his nape, carding through the thick weight of it across his shoulder, Maia thought that he could come to like it, much as he had come to like his freckles under Csethiro’s ministrations.
“I am sorry, for that evening,” Maia said, pulling away only enough to see Csevet’s face. “It was too much to ask of thee, and I had not even the decency to—”
Withdrawing a hand from Maia’s hair, Csevet pressed his fingers to Maia’s lips, silencing him; a dizzying grin flashed across his face as Maia kissed them gently.
“And what wouldst have said, an thou had asked?” he asked, and proceeded to affect a troublingly accurate impression of Maia’s own voice and facial expressions. “Please, Csevet, we are long overdue for a tremendous breakdown, would you do us the dreadful honor of holding our hand while we do so? Our gratitude will be everlasting.”
Maia giggled, catching Csevet’s wrist to pull his hand from his lips.
“Thou mockest,” he said, kissing Csevet’s wrist. “But my gratitude is eternal. For everything thou hast ever done for me, including thy steadiness that night.”
“I was far from steady,” Csevet said, mirth fading into a quiet intensity, his rain gray gaze hot on Maia’s face. “As I am now.”
Maia considered him—flushed rosy pink, his lips red with kissing and his hair now nearly entirely free of his half-chignon.
“Art frightened?”
“Yes,” Csevet breathed, reaching ever so carefully to touch Maia’s cheek. “Beyond imagining.”
Maia, buzzing with mingled elation and anxiety, leaned into his touch and said, “Wilt tell me why?”
For a moment, Csevet merely watched his own hand on Maia’s skin: the thumb tracing his cheekbone, his fingers dappling along his jaw before lifting to follow the curve of his nose.
“For all the reasons one usually is in such moments,” he murmured, tracing the shape of an eyebrow. “That it might end, and I find at its terminus that it was the only one of its kind.”
“It isn’t,” Maia said, so soft that it barely carried pitch.
“And what of thy wife?” Csevet said, his fingers tucking beneath Maia’s chin, thumb brushing his lower lip. “What of thy station?”
These questions, he posed as impenetrable obstacles, while eschewing any grief he might feel over them.
It was the jewel of Maia’s young life, that he was able to do away with these doubts with a few easy words.
“Csethiro knows,” he said, lifting his hands from Csevet’s hips to reach, instead, for the pins in his hair that were trying so desperately to keep the last few locks in place. He slid one free, and then another, finding them by feel while he watched Csevet’s face. “And I trust my household to help me keep those secrets I hold dear. One of which, my love, is thee, if thou wilt have me.”
Csevet’s laugh was a breathless, fluttery thing; Maia found, as he pulled the final pin free and wound his fingers finally into that silken hair, that Csevet was shaking, his eyes tellingly bright.
“If I’ll have you,” he said in a tone of amazement. “Serenity—”
“Maia,” he insisted, and Csevet flushed anew, hesitating.
“Maia,” he echoed, his lips making music of Maia’s name. “An thou asked it, couldst have any person in thy service, and more than a few of the nobility. I do not think thou’rt quite aware of thy influence, or of the transcendency of thy beauty—so to say “if thou’lt have me ” is an absurdity of grandiose proportion.”
“That is not an answer, Csevet,” Maia said. “I know thou meanst to jest, but…”
Csevet breathed a sigh, and closed the distance between them to kiss him again, for a breath; two.
When he pulled away, it was to hold Maia’s face in his fine, long-fingered hands.
“Maia, my love for thee is too large to fit in my own chest,” he said, with a look of such ardor that Maia nearly burst into tears, or laughter, or both. “It spills over in everything I do, from the first moment I awake each morning and down again to the very depths of my dreams when I sleep. I would give thee anything for one small shred of thy care, I love thee so.”
“So wilt have me, a secret though it must be?”
“Yes,” Csevet said, rapturous.
“Then take my heart,” Maia said, and kissed him. “It is thine.”