Work Text:
She is not but a week gone from Eulmore when she returns to it. She comes by airship from the Crystarium, and finds the City of Final Pleasures little changed since her last visit. But for its new resident. He is much changed—anyone else might not notice the tension in his jaw or the bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes; most of her companions may not care to.
She is hardly one for easy embrace, but when she takes his arm she cannot help but note the way his hands shake. X’shasi says nothing, only descends with him into the Canopy and the villa she has let there.
Zenos yae Galvus has not come to the First for leisure; there is little in his nature that would allow it. But after their return from Garlemald and the occasion of a note from Ryne about matters out in the Empty, she has brought him there. No one will be looking for the Crown Prince here, even if they know to. There have been many theories put about as to who is responsible for the death of Varis zos Galvus, some of them even more outlandish than the truth.
He is at ease with the ostentation of Eulmore’s gilded halls, though she can tell the sights bore him. “If you’re uncomfortable here,” she finds herself saying, “we could go elsewhere. Twine, perhaps. It’s nearer to the Empty, after all.” Even the Crystarium would be better. Few enough she might weather that place for, but he is on that short list. Not least because she’s certain he would gladly place himself between the Exarch and her, even without her asking. In this she is a spiteful creature, perhaps, but he has pledged his acceptance to all of her, even and perhaps especially the parts too ugly for her to bare before others.
After a moment, he says, “No. This is the place you’ve chosen; that is more than enough for me.”
Now that she looks, she can see Emet-Selch’s hand upon it—more lightly than in Garlemald, to be sure, but she has seen the city of his heart and now the city of his hands, which he molded to his needs and from which he ran his empire. Eulmore is neither Emet-Selch’s residence nor, in such a way, his tool, but Vauthry’s influence, she is finding, is really his influence, and there are parts of this place that do remind her of the Imperial Palace. “It doesn’t look like Garlemald to you? All the snow aside?”
“Ah,” he says. “A bit.”
“Is that why you’re not sleeping well?”
He seems surprised by the question, lifting a hand to his face as though he might feel the evidence against his fingers. They slide over his cheek and brush his long blonde hair back over his shoulder, but his expression never changes.
“No,” Zenos says. His throat is dry, his voice cracking as in those early days in a far different cage from this.
Shasi waves him to sit and fetches a glass of water. “Zenos,” she says a moment later, “what’s going on?”
He glances away, dark eyes fixed on something beyond this plane. Memory, she supposes, or dream. “Am I so obvious,” he murmurs, not quite a question. The next words are: “So weak?”
“Looking upon you I cannot help but recall how you were when first you awoke in the conservatory,” she tells him. “I have hardly known you to tire since.”
He smiles, crooked and sharp. “I don’t,” he says. Then, “How did you look upon me in my sickbed and not long to crush me?”
“I am not so cruel a creature as to save your life so I might end it at my leisure,” X’shasi says. “All executions notwithstanding.”
He shakes his head, dismissing the notion. “Yes,” he says, “I suppose that’s rather unbecoming in a hero. I hadn’t counted on that.”
“You accused me once of casting you in a role,” Shasi reminds him.
Zenos nods. “I did. You were. And so was I,” he admits. “I still believe that in the tales concerning us you would be described thus, but it is my own role I was mistaken about.”
“What do you mean?” she asks. His hands rest on the table before him. One of them cradles the glass of water, but the other simply sits idle. She studies the calluses upon it.
“My great-grandsire was fond of the arts,” Zenos says.
“I’m aware,” Shasi replies. She has not spoken much of her dealings with Emet-Selch to his descendant, and for a moment wonders if this might be the moment to disclose. She dismisses the notion a moment later—this is Zenos’s story, and ostensibly about why he looks so tired.
“Early in my life I took it upon myself to study all I could. His favorite epics and works of theatre, among other things. The Empire—and all of the Spoken races, in truth—has ever favored songs of war and tales of great battles and the greater people who fought and won them.”
“I suppose I’ve known enough bards to take that for the truth it is,” X’shasi agrees.
Zenos seeks her eyes, and, a moment later, finds them. “It became clear to me early on that the bards were liars,” he says. “That there was no bliss to be found in battle; no excitement. Not on the training ground, nor as I was made ready to enter the army, nor thereafter. When I crossed blades with Lord Kaien, something in me awoke for all too brief a time. But in that moment it lasted, I was granted clarity: that I would never make a hero, never know that euphoria that was their province in the arena of combat. That left one role for me to occupy, if I hoped to share that grandest of stages.”
“The villain,” Shasi says, voice hushed.
“Just so,” Zenos replies, taking a sip of his water. “Few enough were the nights I slept well in my youth,” he continues. “The night I defeated my tutor, my victory was ashes in my mouth and I found myself moved to dream instead of a worthy foe; of the stuff of songs. And not again until Kaien, when I understood my role. It never lasted,” he says.
The midday sun is not so harsh as the tyrannical light that had once scourged this place, but he looks sallow in it just the same. The shadows it carves into Zenos’s face only make worse the pallor and dullness of his skin, and for a moment, speaking of his past, he looks almost haunted. Fragile. Shasi stretches out her arm, her fingers brushing his knuckles a moment.
He looks down at her hand, and his unfurls like a galleon’s sails. It dwarfs hers, the whole of her hand resting in his palm. Zenos says, “When we came to Rhalgr’s Reach I expected to find nothing of interest to me there. I thought I should dream the same dream as ever. And when I left I had no reason to believe otherwise. And yet … I slept soundly, and dreamed of nothing. And at Doma, when we met there … the dream left me and did not return. Not until I came upon you, broken upon the ground, and the Emissary in my skin standing over you.”
Shasi cannot help but shudder at the memory, her free hand skating over her chest as though to assuage some ghostly ache. “Then the Hunt was,” she says, but finds she has not the words to finish.
“An attempt—horrific and misguided—to win some measure of peace for myself,” he says, bowing his head briefly. “To seize back command of my unconscious mind from that which has encroached all my life.”
“It went away,” she says, “when we fought that second time. When you named me your equal.”
Zenos nods again. “I believed I had found peace because I finally knew what role I would play and which tale I was in,” he says.
“But you were wrong,” X’shasi says.
“I was,” he agrees. “I did not think the hero of my tale would see my throat exposed and do anything but sink her teeth into my neck.” There is some retort she could make to that, but it is ill suited to this moment. “That you would see my weakness and do anything but destroy me. I had never imagined I could be in such a song where a place might be made at the hero’s side for one such as me.”
“What is your role now, do you believe?”
He looks at her. “A hero may have any number of allies or friends. Or lovers. I am glad to be counted among them at all.”
“I liked it better,” Shasi says, “when you named us equals.”
Then she asks, “Is it always the same dream?”
“All my life,” Zenos says.
“Tell me,” she says, in those soft words a plea.
“The heavens fall,” he says. “A city burns. A people flee.”
“Bozja?” she wonders.
He shakes his head. “No city I know,” he says, “though Bozja was gone long before I ever came that way.”
“I used to dream of Carteneau,” Shasi tells him. “Of the flares falling to earth; of the lamentations.”
“Yes,” he says. “More like that.”
She looks at him and, belatedly, understands. There’s no need to say it out loud, so she stands from her place at the table, and crosses to take him in her arms. Even with him sitting, he can envelop her easily, strong arms holding her head to his chest. In the warm darkness of his embrace she can still feel him shake.
“I wish I could do this for you,” she murmurs against his shirt.
“Hold me?” he wonders, shrugging to shift her arms around him.
“Make you feel safe,” she replies.
“Weren’t you listening, Shasi?” he says. “They go away when you’re around.”