Chapter Text
Roshaun was much surprised to see Dhairine materialize in front of him. Even though her school was on its seasonal break, their planets’ alignment had left him not expecting her until the afternoon. “Is it not the middle of your night?” He asked, surprised.
“Don’t remind me,” she muttered, sounding about as tired as his estimate of her local time suggested she ought to be. “Spot?”
Her associate displayed the data from the non-wizardly monitoring of her star that they’d both become quite enamored of in their work on the star. The metrics were less than promising. “Oh, that is not good; what is causing that behavior? It’s very atypical for a star that age.”
“I haven’t looked into it yet. Nita woke me .002 ago, to tell me Penn thinks the Sun is sick and she’s inclined to agree. Personally, I think ‘the Sun is sick’ is a gross understatement.”
“Indeed.” It was nothing Dhairine couldn’t handle, but – despite both of them starting their wizardly career as loners – lately they’d both come to value a good spelling partner. The only difficulty was that the Quahit, the largest of the Wellakhit merchant guilds, were coming to the Sunplace in less than two hours. Blowing them off would not be good for his survival. Blowing them off for the alien Guarantor’s system would not be good for her survival.
Roshaun reached for his prepared wizardries, selecting out the proximity transit and finding the tag he used to indicate his noble sire, as well as his compact representation to include Dhairine and Spot in the transit. He tied the parameters into the wizardry with a wizard’s knot and spoke the activation word silently.
Unsurprisingly, given the time of day, Roshaun’s noble father was in his study. Roshaun consulted his Aethyr to share the summary précis as the most efficient way to present the matter, while Nelaid quizzed Dhairine. “Hev ke Khallahan is it not—”
“It is,” she interrupted, too tired to be polite.
Nelaid looked faintly amused as he turned his focus to his Aethyr, blinking beside him. “Surely you aren’t asking for my assistance with the star both of you are far more attuned to,” the Guarantor That Was remarked when he understood the matter.
“No, royal sire, but this matter will take me away from here, and the Quahit are expecting to meet with the Sunlord in an hour and forty partitions,” Roshaun explained.
“Ah. It will be taken care of. Go well, royal son, and the Aethyrs shine favor upon your endeavor.”
“Thank you, royal sire,” Roshaun replied politely, already knotting Dhairine, Spot, and coordinates for his quarters into his prepared fast transit wizardry with the flick of a hand.
Dhairine’s breath blew out between her lips more loudly than usual. “Alright,” she said as he stepped behind the screen to change into something more suited to work rather than meetings. “That’s starting to make me nervous.”
“What is?” Roshaun asked, his voice muffled as he shrugged out of the formal robes and into a shirt that was a gift from Kharmela.
“Those transits. You didn’t lay them out, or even speak the whole spell. Even if you had a ready-made transit, you’d at least need to tie my name in. You aren’t short-handing my name are you?”
“No more than usual,” Roshaun answered absently. “I do like you the way you are. Mostly.” He grinned as he emerged.
She grinned back. He’d gotten that phrasing from her, after all.
“Your place, then?” He confirmed, changing out the coordinates in the prepared wizardry.
She nodded and in less than a breath they were in the usual spot in the backyard. “Seriously,” Dhairine insisted. “How are you doing that?”
“Your sister uses ready-at-hand wizardries. I had not thought you were unfamiliar.” He really wasn’t sure what about these transits was upsetting her, but also knew this wasn’t the time to investigate it.
“What, her charm bracelet? Sure, but those only work for her. Yours worked for both of us.”
“Because hers is the only name laid into her wizardries.” And because she hadn’t built the bracelet with parameterized spells, as he had done with his prepared wizardries.
“You mean to tell me you have a ready-at-hand transit wizardry to a room I’ve never seen before that has my name laid in?” She asked as they went into the kitchen.
Nita looked up from where she was making coffee. “Isn’t it too early for you two to be arguing?”
“We’re not arguing,” Dhairine and Roshaun said on top of each other.
Roshaun looked at Dhairine. “I have several ready-at-hand transits with no names associated. It is a simple matter to tie in the appropriate name or names in the moment.”
“But you’d still have to speak the whole spell, unless you had a physical matrix, like Neets’ bracelet. And those transits took way too fast for you to have spoken them through.”
“Ah, so you aren’t questioning the principle, only the practice.”
“And you aren’t answering.”
Roshaun grinned and headed into the dining room. She’d look it up when she had the time, how parameterized wizardries worked. It would be educational for her. He’d noticed that sometimes her reliance and Spot left gaps in her knowledge of common wizardly shortcuts. This was only one example.
Nita raised her eyebrows as she handed Dhairine a cup of coffee. “What was that about?”
“Huh? Oh. I think Roshaun’s breaking the laws of wizardry.”
“Again? So soon?” Nita asked drily, picking up her mug of tea.
Dhairine snickered and went into the dining room to sit down next to Roshaun, across from Penn, who declared, dramatically. “Finally!”
“When one is responsible for the entire sentience of a system, arrangements have to be made before one gates off to distant systems,” Roshaun said.
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
Dhairine raised her eyebrows and affected Wellakh’s King’s Speech recension. “When one is woken at 12:07 in the middle of the night, coffee has to be made before one gets down to business.” Roshaun was officially not jealous that she sounded more noble than he when she used it.
“Nita made the coffee,” Penn said pointedly.
“When one is woken at 12:07 in the middle of the night, coffee has to be drunk before one gets down to business. Why is the Sun suddenly acting like a star three times its age?”
“I don’t know!” Penn cried. “I just fix the Sun; I don’t do diagnostics.”
“Perhaps the Aethyrs believe it’s time you learned,” Roshaun murmured, unimpressed. Knowing how to fix a star but not knowing how to figure out what was wrong was about the same as knowing the spell for a life support wizardry but not knowing the composition of air required by your own biology.
“The Whats?” Penn asked.
“The Powers,” Dhairine translated.
Roshaun frowned. Even amidst all their misunderstandings when they met, Dhairine had never needed him to explain the term.
“Yo, Spot. Can you come up here? We need the SOHO data,” Dhairine announced. Spot materialized on the table and cast a holo-display above his surface with the satellite’s data. “Spot, when did this start?”
Spot scrolled back in the data. Less than an hour ago—Penn had noticed the problem almost immediately. “No star goes this far off track this fast of its own accord,” Roshaun said. “This speaks of interference.”
“Joy,” Dhairine said. “We’re going to take It on half-asleep? And here I thought the Powers wanted us to win these things.”
“The Aethyrs can hardly be expected to take into consideration a detail as insignificant in the scheme of things as a planet’s degree of rotation about its axis at the precise moment of crisis,” Roshaun chided.
“The detail is significant to me,” Dhairine mourned.
“Whining won’t change what we’re up against,” he reminded her. Anger at the Isolate for interrupting her sleep could be useful. Carelessness because she was less than alert, on the other hand, could be fatal.
Penn frowned. “Well, what will?”
Roshaun looked down on the younger wizard. “Nothing changes what we’re up against.”
“Then what do we do?” Penn demanded, the panicky note coming back into his voice. “Shouldn’t we be planning an intervention by now? How long do we have before this is unrecoverable?”
“Some hours, which should be plenty of time, considering there’s nothing to plan.”
“You’re just going to let our Sun go nova billions of years before its time?”
Roshaun would have rolled his eyes, if it weren’t entirely ignoble. Had he ever been so dramatic at that age (or any other)? “Of course not. For one, a star of this class doesn’t go nova. I didn’t say there was nothing to be done. I said there’s nothing to plan. The Sun knows how it should be managing the nuclear reactions in its core. It’s a simple matter of going up there and convincing the Sun that it should listen to us, and its eons of prior experience, rather than the Other voice whispering to it.”
“‘Simple,’” Penn echoed, disbelieving.
“It’s your basic head-to-head with the Lone Power,” Dhairine agreed. “And we have the advantage of being three heads to one.”
“Assuming It doesn’t manifest as a Serberian,” Nita murmured, naming a three-headed alien species from a few galaxies over.
Dhairine rolled her eyes, apparently unconcerned about her dignity. But then, she wasn’t royalty.
“And what about you, Ms. Juanita?” Penn asked. “Are you going to come along, at least for the education?"
Nita shook her head. “It would speed up entropy to smack you…”
“… but only a little,” Dhairine chorused with her sister. Dhairine shared a smile with her sister. “A fourth person just requires more life support. The intervention proper isn’t hugely power-intensive; we don’t need the additional power source,” Dhairine explained. “Neets, we could use an anchor, all the same.”
“Yeah, sure. Can I go back to bed, though?”
“You know I have to stay awake for the next several hours and you’re going to rub it in that you’re getting to sleep?” Dhairine demanded. “Yeah, go on. You want Bobo to set it up, or should I just have Spot configure it when we draw out our diagram proper?”
“Knock yourself out. Just don’t mess up my name.”
“Spot’s never made a spelling mistake!” Dhairine protested, indignant. Nita just waved sleepily and stumbled back upstairs. Dhairine sighed as she drained the last of her coffee. “Well, it won’t get any less middle-of-the-night until it’s much too late, so we might as well get on with it. Let’s head out back.”
☀
Soon enough they stood in the Khallahan backyard. Dhairine started to say something and then stopped, frowning thoughtfully in the direction of the neighbors’ houses. Want me to put an opaque shield up, or just my terrestrial disguise? Roshaun asked silently.
The shield, please, if you think you can spare the energy.
Roshaun invited the shield into being around the whole property, along the lines she’d had the shield running during the excursus. The earth remembers the power bled into it for so long, Roshaun explained. It gives it back. It will cost us less energy to put the shield where it has “always” been, then to mask only the area we need at the moment.
Fine. Now, Spot, have you got a diagram for me?
When the diagram appeared, Roshaun looked over the main diagram. Dhairine’s eyes always went first to the names, and he knew she wouldn’t get his wrong, and she would be better than he at assessing the accuracy of Nita’s name.
Dhairine got to the life support segment before he did and selected the quantity. It was some four times what he knew he and Dhairine would need for how long this intervention should, ideally, take. “Aethyrs, I hope this doesn’t take that long,” Roshaun muttered. Even accounting the excitable third wizard coming with them, he really hoped it didn’t take that long.
☀
“Greetings, Elder Sister,” Roshaun said to the Sun when the spell brought them into the near-vicinity. The Sun flared lightly with recognition. “Yes,” Roshaun agreed, “you have history with each of us.” Roshaun spared a moment to be glad that his proximity to this star wasn’t unnerving him the way that going to Dhairine’s moon did. He would have managed either way, but it was a relief that he didn’t have to battle through that, given this was likely to be one of their more interesting interventions.
Everyone’s got history lately, the Sun replied, sounding put upon. Keep your mass out of mine for a change.
Don’t make me come in there to fix you, and I will, Roshaun said with genuine affection for the massive star.
The star rumbled with as much embarrassment as such a being was capable of and turned her attention to the Simurghian.
The Exhalation is mine and I’ll be keeping it, the Sun warned.
By all means, Penn responded, his tone suggesting he was feeling magnanimous and because of that was going to let the Sun keep its soul fragment.
Roshaun waited a breath to see if this was one of the stars that responded well toward that sort of grandiose gesture, or took offense. When the Sun didn’t seem perturbed, Roshaun got down to business. “Now,” Roshaun said casually, “about this change in the way you’re handling your fusion.”
Isn’t it glorious? The Sun replied with an enthusiasm that betrayed how much younger she was than Thahit. The Other said I would burn more luminously and the glory of it would inspire all the beings within my system, and cause at least this whole arm of the galaxy to take notice of me!
Flattery, Dhairine thought with a mental scowl. Shouldn’t something 4.5 billion years old have outgrown that?
Because your species becomes less susceptible to flattery as they mature? Roshaun asked her drily. Mine certainly does not. This would be the Isolate’s favorite trick: using the truth to do Its dirty work. To the star, he said, “I suppose it is glorious, and you are burning much brighter. However, it seems to me that anything you gain in glory you’ll lose by magnitudes in longevity – but you know how you are meant to burn better than I possibly could.”
The Other said—the Sun began, flaring uncertainly.
And how long has the Other been fusing for? Penn interrupted. Who knows more about your personal fusion reactions? The Other or you, Lady Sun? Penn looked past the Sun into the dark of space “behind” the star. “Show Yourself. We know You are here.”
Roshaun sighed. He understood the young wizard’s desire to get on with it, but he’d hoped to have the Sun persuaded to their line of thought before the Isolate put in a physical appearance. The Isolate wasn’t one to ignore a summons. Or a joke, apparently, as the dark form – darker even than the black of space – appeared in the shape of the Serberian, just as Nita had implied.
“Cute,” Dhairine muttered.
“It seemed appropriate, under the circumstances,” the Isolate said modestly.
“Bright star that was, dark star that falls, in your downward arc with defiance we greet you,” Roshaun said formally.
The greeting brought all three of the Serberian Isolate’s heads to attend Roshaun. “You!”
It wasn’t entirely news to Roshaun that the Isolate might have a particular grudge against him, more than Its general grudge with all wizards. He really hoped his luck in this regard would hold a bit longer. “Indeed,” Roshaun murmured.
The Isolate regarded him with infinite interest and malicious amusement. “It never fails to amuse. You wizards are so certain the so-called Bright Powers—or, you’re Wellakhit, aren’t you, the so-called Bright Aethyrs, then—actually have things under control and aren’t playing a grand game of chance with the lot of you. You believe this so firmly you give up all your dreams of the future to do Their bidding. In your case, going home to your little planet and tying yourself down with all manner of mundane responsibility.”
“Exactly so,” Roshaun agreed steadily. He supposed that was exactly how the Isolate would justify to Itself that it hadn’t lost where his Challenge was concerned.
The Isolate looked at him with scorn. “You went running along home like a good little wizardly sheep – not that you even know what those are, but I digress –” Roshaun made a mental note to find out what a “sheep” was and why being a good one would be bad, after the present matter was concluded. “And what good has it done your world? Here you are again, about to die in an alien system, leaving your planet to an alien guarantor, and what your people can only comprehend as alien conquest, for what short time they have before I decide to finish what I started in your system. Thahit always was fairly gullible when it comes down to it, and your planet will look so pretty all red and gold and rock gone molten.”
Roshaun stood his ground stubbornly; he refused to give the Isolate the pleasure of seeing the idea gave him chills. It would be just as easy as the Isolate implied, and he, his parents, and Dhairine would all almost certainly perish in the effort to give the Wellakhi time to escape. “I serve the One, until Time’s end and beyond. As do You, for all it galls You to admit it.”
The Isolate shook Its heads, looking for all the world like it pitied Roshaun. “How many times do you have to die in this very star before you recognize your destiny?”
Roshaun smiled even as he saw Dhairine start out of the corner of his eye. “At least once more,” he told the Isolate. Always once more, until I am welcomed back into the Heart of Time and meet the One.
“Roshaun,” Dhairine said slowly. “Exactly how many times have you ‘died’ in my star?”
“Twice, that I know of, but we’re in linear time and It isn’t, so counts could differ.” He spared a glance at her. “Don’t let It distract you from what’s important here. I’ll tell you about it later.” That the subject of his Challenge had never come up with her had not occurred to him until just that moment. While Rho was still about his task, Roshaun had, by necessity, never breathed a word of it to anyone, except his disclosure to his parents in the immediate aftermath. The habit had become ingrained, and it simply had not occurred to him to tell her, even though she had shared some of the details of her Ordeal when they visited her Mobiles at the beginning of the war.
“What is it your people say?” The Isolate asked Dhairine. “Third time’s the charm?”
You have that shield you use during assassination attempts handy? Dhairine thought to Roshaun. The last time I heard the Isolate gloating like this…. Roshaun saw in her thoughts a flicker of an image from her Ordeal. Roshaun spoke the words that would adjust the shield around the three of them to account for weaponized attacks, not just the temperatures, radiation, and vacuum of solar space.
“You know,” the Isolate said conversationally, “We’re not omniscient—we do still learn things from time to time. For example, I learned the most fascinating thing from a version of myself that was off on a wonderful little planet where I thought my dear brother was going to let me alone to do things my way, but no, it’s his way or else. You know how it goes with siblings,” the Isolate said to Dhairine.
“Sure,” Dhairine said good-naturedly. “They get tired of you being a snit and dump your bed on Pluto, only to regret it when they actually meet Pluto. The difference between You and me is that I can see, in retrospect, and even admit that I was a complete and total snit and deserved every bit of it. Until you admit that, in all the times that art, I’ll be here, and so will Your brother, proverbially dumping Your bed on Pluto.” That sounded like a tale he really needed to hear in full when they had leisure for amusement.
“Pity. You and I would have such a time together. It’d be fun. Just think: no more boring school work.”
“Didn’t You hear? I got admitted to a ‘school’ where the work actually interests me. I learned how to stop You from having Your way with everyone else’s stars!”
“Which brings us back on point,” the Isolate admitted, still smugly confident, and casual. “What I learned from the events on Rashah.”
Light! Dhairine thought, panicked, and shouted the word to make their shield go as darkly opaque as possible. Just in time – even with the shield dark around them the flash was almost blinding.
Penn staggered under the attack, even though he was contributing little energy to the shield directly. “What was that?” He demanded.
“Starsteel,” Dhairine and Roshaun answered in the same breath.
“Well, plasma, once it’s out of the pressures in the core. I designed a wizardry once to pull starsteel from the beginnings of the universe to re-forge the Spear of Light. Roshaun used the same basic spell on Rashah’s star to put an end to an invasion of our living quarters during the war. And Roshaun and I were trying to use the same spell to burn off the Pullulus when he got tangled in the Sun, holding space for your passenger. The Lone Power would learn how to use that trick against us,” Dhairine remarked as a second blast washed across the Sunward face of their shield.
“I don’t think she likes it,” Penn said slowly, a faint smile on his face.
“Who? Me?”
Penn shook his head. “The Sun.”
“The Isolate is taking too much matter out of the core,” Roshaun remarked, feeling for the star they could no longer see through the opaque shield. “She shouldn’t like it.”
“And I doubt It asked permission,” Dhairine added.
It wouldn’t think to, Roshaun agreed. He would never be so crass as to implement that spell without the permission of the star in question, but the Aethyrs – even the Fallen One – were so much older than the stars that, perhaps, they wouldn’t feel obligated to be polite. Roshaun hoped the Sun’s displeasure with the Isolate would favor them.
A third blast of startsteel struck the shield, rocking Roshaun on his feet, even though he wasn’t really standing on a surface. Then, beyond the shield, a scream. It didn’t have the warm familiarity the Sun’s voice did, nor the cold sharpness of the Isolate. And yet, he recognized the scream, as if he’d heard it before.
The next shout was full of the rage of the One who had only anger for company. Again, a screech and something heavy thumped against their shield.
“Wish we could see,” Penn muttered.
Dhairine looked at Roshaun. Do you think the attack is over? We’ll all be blinded if I undo the opacity and It hits us with more starsteel.
I think the Isolate is otherwise engaged, Roshaun replied under another shout of rage and a shriek of defiance from whatever else was out there. Dhairine adjusted the spell accordingly. The Isolate was still there, all three of Its Serberian heads rolling as it searched for Its prey. Beyond them, the Sun blazed with fury. Between them all…
Roshaun hadn’t seen it the first time, but he recognized it all the same. The Fragment, the Exhalation. The Sun’s glory pulled into the shape of a bird of fire, a huntress bird, swooping about the Isolate, ready for another attack. And the Isolate had manifested, was as physical as the Exhalation. If it melted under the heat of the Exhalation’s attack…. Roshaun realized he actually had no idea what happened to an Aethyr if its physical manifestation evaporated, but it couldn’t be good – for the Aethyr. In this case, it had to be good for them.
It is not going to let the Simurgh anywhere near close enough for that, Penn replied, moving within their life support bubble until he was pressed up against the edge closest to the “battle”. But It is distracted by her, so if someone wanted to talk the Sun around, this might be the time! Intent on the fire bird, Penn began again to murmur in the Speech, in concert with his former passenger.
He was right, and Roshaun knew in a persuasive intervention like this, the Sun would listen better to its own than an alien, no matter what level of intimacy he’d reached with this star. He flicked the catch, dropping the Sunstone into his hands, and then promptly into Dhairine’s. “I am going to relocate us somewhere more favorable—less light and radiation, more shielded from Its attentions. The Sun listens to you—its child. Speak!”
Dhairine cupped her hands around the gem. “Hey, thanks for the assistance from the Exhalation,” she told the Sun.
You are my children, and the third of you is star-born. What is the Other, to me?
Roshaun turned his attention to doing as he’d said, moving them around the Sun, farther away from the battle, closer to the star that just needed to listen to them – to Dhairine – for a moment.
“Roshaun!”
He looked up, alarmed. He hadn’t imagined anything could happen that Dhairine wouldn’t know how to handle, but then he seemed to have the most unusual luck with this star. The star was heaving, distressed. Roshaun turned his attention to the star, putting his hands out like someone trying to calm a frightened animal. “Elder Sister,” he said soothingly, “Please, could you not do that? It is quite distressing.”
Distressing for you?! I thought… Well, I mean I knew the planets would burn, but that’s their lot in the Universe’s design. There’s life, sure, but other than a few wizards, nothing from the planets speak the language of Life’s Great Beings. And the wizards would go on, elsewhere, as they do, before the planets gave up the final resistance, no?
“Maybe,” Dhairine agreed.
But you say all the life down there knows of kinship bonds, of being siblings of the same nebulae even when distance diminishes contact?
“I don’t know about all the life, but a lot of it,” Dhairine said honestly. “More than just the wizards, for sure. More than could be saved if you go off sequence now.”
The Sun started to shudder again, but stopped abruptly with a little apologetic flare. No, no. Never—if there are Great Beings, even mute ones, I could never! I’d rather live in anonymity than destroy that!
“Thank you,” Dhairine said emphatically.
Roshaun was thoughtful. “Do you tell your fellow stars what happens in your system?” He asked the Sun. “I am, as you said, star-born. I have studied or visited or heard of a great many stars, within this galaxy and without. Among all the stars I know, only one ever lost an Exhalation inside one of its own dependent sentiences. Only one was snuffed by the Starsnuffer Itself and lived to fuse anew. If the rest of the galaxy heard, I would think you’d be famous!”
Do you think they would care? The Sun asked shyly. It’s always luminosity and mass and wind speed and temperature, clear across the galaxy!
“Because that’s all most stars have experienced!” Dhairine jumped in. “But not you. You have to tell them all about it – that’ll be your glory.”
I will! The Sun enthused. Then, hesitantly, but what about the Other?
Yes, what about the Other? Dhairine thought. “Penn?”
“Call back your Exhalation,” Penn advised the Sun. “I think the Other has had enough and would rather go tempt easier prey.”
As they watched, the fire bird broke off its attack in a broad curve. The Isolate mustered Its tattered dignity as best It could, glared indiscriminately with all six eyes, and vanished. The Simurgh flew toward them.
Penn spun off his own bodysuit-shield, and stepped out of the spell bubble. The Simurgh twined around him like a cat. “I miss you, too,” Penn said, sounding genuine. “I can’t stay, though. I have to go home, and you have to stay with the Sun. I will try to come back more often, I promise.”
The Fragment curled around him once more and then dove back into the heart of the Sun. “Dai stihó, then,” Penn said to the star.
And you also, my children, Star-born. Be well about the Great Journey, until, at last, we are all assumed back into the same Center of Things.
☀
Penn glanced at his watch as they materialized in the Khallahan backyard. “Not even 1 a.m.,” he said with false cheer. “Need me for anything else?”
Dhairine shook her head wearily. “We’ll debrief this afternoon, if we need to. Or tomorrow. Or any time after we’ve slept.”
Tomorrow. It would have to be tomorrow. Aethyrs, there was a state dinner tonight. The things he did to not die.
Penn nodded and, a few seconds later, vanished.
“What about you?” Dhairine asked, as she and Roshaun walked back into the house. “Are you going home, too?”
“I should,” he admitted. “It is not even midday.”
“But?”
“I confess I am somewhat weary and they will find need for me, so it will not be restful.”
“Then stay,” Dhairine offered. “I’m crashing no matter what—it’s still very much the middle of my night—but Dad won’t freak if you’re hanging out on the couch when he wakes up, whether you sleep yourself or just chill out.”
“‘Chill out’?” He didn’t recognize the idiom, and the Speech provided no context.
“Relax.”
“Ah. A peculiar idiom. Thank you. I should check in with my royal sire and confirm nothing urgent has arisen, but, failing that, I shall plan to do as you offer.”
Dhairine nodded sleepily and wandered up the stairs. Roshaun sprawled on what she called the couch in the living room. There were two things he needed to do before he could rest. First, as he had told Dhairine he would, he checked with his father, who, of course, had everything under control. The man had done the job for a great many years; he could do it for a few hours. That handled, he turned his attention more directly to his Aethyr. “The privacy considerations around my personal history, the Ordeal, Rho, and the specifics of the first intervention we did on Dhairine’s star—all are in place?”
With the exception of those portions which you have already freely shared in dialogue with that being, those classes of data are always restricted from other mortal beings, and, often, the very Aethyrs themselves.
Give Dhairine access, please.
With alerting or without?
Without is fine. Roshaun had told her he would tell her about the times he had “died” in her star. He still meant to. But if obligation—on his part, or hers—called them away before they had a chance to talk, and she went looking for answers, he wanted her to be able to find them. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he could tell it in a linear fashion that would make a whole lot of sense; too many of the events were still enigmatic for him. Perhaps, if she already had the facts when they spoke, it would go better.
☀
Roshaun fell asleep, and woke slowly. Dhairine was in a chair nearby, reading something on Spot’s display quite intently. After a moment, her eyes rose, met his. He sat up, trying to interpret the depth of emotion he saw there before the sleep faded from his mind enough to come to the obvious conclusion. “You found the additional details already,” he murmured.
“Some. Enough,” she said.
“Your questions are answered, then?” He asked, mildly surprised.
Dhairine laughed shortly. “Which ones? The ones I had six hours ago, sure. But you can’t expect me to learn information like this and not have a whole new set of questions. First among them what your decision to release this information to me now is supposed to mean.”
“It means I keep my word. I told you I would explain the Isolate’s references to me dying in your Sun after the present intervention was finished. I did not want the very responsibility It criticized me for to prevent that.”
“So it wasn’t done in the hope that I wouldn’t make you talk about it?” Dhairine pressed. “Because I won’t. I can imagine they were difficult decisions.”
Roshaun tilted his head no. “I did not expect you to find the data so soon. I expected we would talk about it.” He leaned forward, intent. “Dhairine,” he said simply. “You have questions. Ask them.”
“How much of it was Rho?”
“How much of what? How much of the excursus did you spend interacting with Rho and not me, or at least not this me? Or how much of our initial personality conflict was caused by Rho’s presence?”
“Both.”
“You interacted with Rho twice to my knowledge. In my quarters on Wellakh, that was Rho. After we got back from the moon until he walked into the Sun, that was Rho. And, incidentally, that was why you couldn’t understand the Sun’s Speech that time. I couldn’t have you hearing her griping about the foreign body in her tachocline before Rho did the inevitable.”
“And Rho died that night.”
“That was his destiny,” Roshaun said grimly. It hurt. The Sacrifice he’d made, the death he’d sentenced Rho to before he understood what it meant.
Dhairine considered. “And the personality conflict?” She asked at last.
Well, that is the question, isn’t it? “I could say ‘all of it’ and it would be true. I could say ‘none of it’ and that would be true, too.” He told her his memories, his sense of the early part of the excursus: the attempt that had left him late and already out of sorts when he arrived, the pride that had kept him from naming the cause of his edge to strangers, Rho’s appearance and the confusion and pain that came with him.
At times, Roshaun derailed back to his Challenge, to explain the decision, the Sacrifice he and Rho had made. “It was nice, when being Prince got too tedious, to be able to, at will, just be somewhere else for a bit. I miss that; but at least I can come here.”
“Always. Do you have any guesses about what it was They wanted you for?”
Roshaun shrugged, a gesture he’d picked up from Dhairine. Since he’d resumed the Sunwatch, his opinion tended to be that it was the bridge-building, but the Aethyrs were silent on this question, so that was just conjecture. “Who can know? Who can say which of my interventions on Thahit would have gone otherwise if someone else had done them? Who can say which of your interventions, on Thahit or the Sun, would have gone differently, if either or both of us were not involved? To make no mention of the war, what we did for Filif’s star, or the non-wizardly works we do. You know the Aethyrs don’t see the distinction! So perhaps it was for the work I’ve done to change the political situation on Wellakh. Perhaps it is what we have done for each other and our families. And there is always the likelihood that it hasn’t happened yet: They take the long view.”
“Or all of that together,” Dhairine admitted. “As you said: who can know?”
Roshaun waited to see if Dhairine had more questions, and when she didn’t immediately seem to wondered if he should ask her about sheep or Pluto or if this was not the time. There would be time, he decided. He’d lived through one more intervention, and the Isolate would have to try, as ever, at least once more.