Chapter Text
All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the custom of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one—
not knowing even
that was what he did—
in the blowing
sounds in the dark,
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.
--Hope and Love, Jane Hirshfield
one
Elpis petals scatter at the bloom of Emet-Selch’s robes around his feet. A parting favor from Hythlodaeus, he thinks, that they would follow him this far. Thin curls of them settle atop the waters of Ultima Thule and throw their pearly light to make stars in the sunset. The air does not smell of sea spray, nor does it hold the crispness of a clear lake. That it smells of nothing at all may well be testament to how its only two occupants lay lifeless. Soon, their blood will run the surface red and the air will sting with copper, and death will reclaim this last bastion of hope.
When Solus zos Galvus’s wife died, the air was stagnant like this. Hers was an unfair parting after childbirth, a slow bleeding out that left her enough time to hold his hand in hers and have the audacity to find peace as she faded away as candlelight between fingertips. Solus zos Galvus did not pour out the rivers of his aether, then, but he should have. He should have drenched the halls of his home in dark to see that she survived. He will not make the same mistake again. More the fool him, that he’s about as alive as she is, a dead soul with just enough kindling to hold his form and little else. He means to give it all to her, anyway.
He ripples down at her side while the pearls of Elpis flowers pin themselves into her hair. Sabre is not the late wife of Solus zos Galvus; neither is she Azem. She is lamplight surrounded by shadow, a faint glow compared to the utter sun that burned in her unsundered self, but Emet-Selch sees the color in her. He no longer hates her for bearing it. On the contrary: that he scorned her for it is difficult to reconcile, when she is the setting of the color he knows best.
Would he have given her a kinder death than this, had she bled light into Amaurot and sought his refuge? It’s a thought that crackles unbidden through his head, one that feels more distant than his earliest memories. He does not know how he thought he could stand to invite her to die and abide to watch. Perhaps he wouldn’t have. Perhaps it’s as preposterous as he thought, an invitation for his death rather than hers, which twists and burns discomfort through his gut to consider.
As she lies motionless now, every part of him resists it. Her grey coat is soaked black at her side with blood, and it is wrong. Her loose charcoal hair spills into the water like pigment, and she should care for how sopping it is. Her sword has fallen from her hand, something he’s never seen her part with willingly. Each of these is a flag to work faster. He cannot spare the finesse to find each of her wounds and ease them away. His remaining aether will ferry her home. It must. He can spare it for nothing short of this last vital task.
“Open your eyes, would you?” he tells her. The wings of his aether are threadbare feathers, but he conjures them close. He picks a petal from her hair and fans his fingers over her cheek.
She does as he asks. He does not let himself feel relief at just this. She is pale as parchment and there’s no otherworldly glint in her auri eyes. Uncertainty dulls her further, and it’s followed by fear, and neither of those promote her immediate longevity.
“Speechless as usual, then?” he says. He tips his voice into a drawl. A faint glow of aether gathers at his hand, and his gaze skids along the front of her coat where he thinks the blood is heaviest. Her aether is so faint he must search for it like a frightened animal.
“I wasn’t ready,” she says. He can think of several reasons she might feel as such, and rather than force her to define them, he nods his head. Better that she engage with him as he tries to buoy her aether to his securely enough to make an exit. He thinks he hears the water beginning to drain off the sides of Ultima Thule, and he has no desire to be present when they dry.
“Clearly not.” He tucks his hand against her side. It’s clammy with damp blood, but she doesn’t even flinch. “This is a terrible place to sleep. Imagine you nod off in a realm of imagination—this might all just, pop, disappear beneath you. And then where would you be?”
“Nowhere,” she replies, with rasping dread.
“You must go somewhere. If you can’t find your way on your own, I suppose I will have to escort you.”
The gaudy beacon of their ship is easy enough to find. Even with his attention quartered he’s already certain where it is. The primals housed within its engines create the worst cacophony of aether Emet-Selch has ever seen, but at least that gives him an easy target to aim for.
“Where, then?” she says, catching the edge of Emet-Selch’s long sleeve.
“Hold tight, hold still,” he says. He peels her hand from his arm and folds their hands together, fingers stiff like new laces. He presses aether into the lines of her palm.
“Where, Emet-Selch?” she says, and if panic rises in a high demand, she hasn’t the strength to hold it back.
“Stop moving.” His expression flickers, his indifferent mask dents. He cradles the side of her face and speaks more quietly. “I’m not stealing you away. You will see your clamoring Scions soon enough, but I cannot move you if you tear your wounds anew.”
She looks at him in a way that is almost comically familiar. He has seen that tilt of head and narrowing of eyes a thousand thousand times. Perhaps she will find the strength in her yet to sit up and shake his shoulders, because she looks utterly disbelieving.
“You—I can go back to them?”
“A monumental favor, just for you.”
“But I’m dead,” she says. The way she says it of fact, her voice assured and sad, is worse than her blood sticking to his fingers.
“You are not,” Emet-Selch says fiercely. “You may feel like you’re full of clouds, my dear, but you have lost far too much blood for leisure to remain an option.”
He does not give her the chance to ask what he means. His power is a percussion drum. It rattles into her open wounds and fills her with all the aether he can muster: he spins for her the color of Amaurot’s evening lights, the vibrancy of possibility at the bureau, the memory of every spell he ever weaves in its center. He expects to have to haul her, but her fingers tighten against his, and her aether coils around his with a lurching pull he did not expect from her dilapidated state. It’s a colored cord tight around his wrist, a band of a promise.
He only means to take her as far as the ship. The Scions, in various states of hurt, do not have the luxury of squabbling over what to do about him when he delivers their champion. The announcement of his aether before him has them shouting as he appears. It’s just as loud inside as by aether sight, and Emet-Selch braces hard as he appears at their center. Water and blood drip from the heavy hem of Sabre’s coat and rivulet across the floor. She hides her face briefly against him, her cheek pressed to his mask, before she goes limp. She’s out of his arms and into Thancred’s then, with Y’shtola crackling and Alphinaud aglow rushing in to aid her. The chaos is more than enough to allow Emet-Selch simple cover to leave. As they prepare the ship for expedited take off and scramble to turn the bridge into a surgeon’s theater, he should take his leave and follow his own trail of aether back to the Sea.
She opens her eyes while he is choosing his exit, and Emet-Selch makes the mistake of meeting her gaze. He still feels the warp of her aether tight around his wrist. Ah. He can scarcely leave her any more than he could watch her die.
The Lord Speaker of Ishgard is there to meet them when the ship docks, attentive and tender in turn as he paves the way from the depths of Labyrinthos to a lavish estate where he is apparently a guest. He does not raise his voice, even when they shut him out of the room and separate him from the woman he loves. Emet-Selch watches as he converses with Thancred and Estinien, eavesdrops as they discuss what transpired at Ultima Thule (and, oh, there are gaps in that tale that will only be filled in by she who is currently unconscious) and waits as the Lord Speaker trails out the door with a cordial plea for a moment to collect his thoughts.
She could have done far worse than the Lord Speaker.
Is it approval? Emet-Selch, at least, decides he doesn’t disapprove. At least not yet. The Lord Speaker cuts a figure sleek and sharp as obsidian; he’s a sheathed blade if ever Emet-Selch has seen one, elegant and as deadly as he pleases beneath. At least he’s interesting. At least he’s competent and has steady shoulders beneath that gold-flecked mantle. Emet-Selch finds him in the courtyard of the Leveilleur estate. The colorful parade of flowers persists even as snowfall blankets their beds. Aymeric’s façade cracks as anyone else’s would: in the perceived solitude, Aymeric de Borel’s face is drawn with dread and uncertainty.
“Had enough excitement for the afternoon, have you?” Emet-Selch says, making himself known as his feet click down the cobbled steps. He joins the Lord Speaker in front of the fountain, its gentle mist rising about them. The sound of it makes a muffle for their voices; Emet-Selch will not so easily be overheard, even if the matter at hand is not of particular secret.
Aymeric’s hand goes first to the hilt of his blade; his fingers are loose on it as he finds a neutral mask for his face more opaque than anything Hades has ever worn. Such a diplomat.
“Ah,” says the Lord Speaker. He has a ruler’s assessing gaze in those blue eyes, and it is fortunate Emet-Selch already knows he exceeds the expectation of any scrutiny the man would pose to him. “I would ask to whom I owe introductions, though I’m afraid I already have some idea of who you might be.”
“It might be easier if you do,” Emet-Selch says. The mask on his chest feels like a brand. “I should like to hear from your mouth just who you think I am.”
Aymeric inclines his head in understanding. His fingers slide from the hilt with grace suited for a portrait; his arms come to rest loosely at his sides.
“I understand I might have known you as Solus zos Galvus just a handful of years prior. Though, I was surprised to find the architect of the Garlean empire to be an Ascian by the name of Emet-Selch, who orchestrated eternal dawn in the First and stood against the Warrior of Light. That would have been all, had she not returned from Elpis with the name of an old friend on her lips: Hades. Whichever of these you may choose, I know you here and now as one to whom I owe no small amount of gratitude. Estinien tells me you ensured each and every Scion returned from Ultima Thule?”
Emet-Selch affords Aymeric a round of hollow clapping. It does not come as any surprise Sabre has spared no detail in regards to him—though there is a drop in his chest to know most of those details were antagonistic. He has found Sabre’s retelling of his escapades in the First to be every bit as accurate as he was certain they weren’t when he first heard them in Elpis. It sits like glass in his gut.
“You are a very good listener. Though, I see she neglected to remind you I laid down each and every one of those titles some time ago. I’ll not have you calling me a dead man’s name, either—Emet-Selch will do, if you must.”
“Very well, Emet-Selch. You have my thanks for delivering her back to us.”
He sounds genuine, Emet-Selch will give him that. He also holds a veil over the rest of his thoughts in the manner of any good politician. Emet-Selch has been in a seat of power long enough not to fear the barbs beneath the regalia. There is a bed of sharp rock between the smooth river of his countenance, but he will not make the mistake of slipping into it except at his choosing.
“Don’t hold back now,” Emet-Selch says. He allows his tone some playful bite. “And?”
Aymeric’s gaze does not narrow so much as it clarifies. “Is there something you left unfinished?”
There isn’t, which is the thing. He overheard Estinien relay, with alarming alacrity, the words he spoke when she used the last of Azem’s power to pull her Scions out of their purgatory. There is no future here that aligns with his past. He is tired, and old, and exhausted, and earned his undisturbed rest with this impulsive last act of goodwill. He is, quite frankly, surprised he’s not going see through with the amount of aether he gathers around him to keep his form.
“What a novel thought,” Emet-Selch says. “I will meditate on it for days to come.”
Night is well underway. Emet-Selch stalks the hallways of the Leveilleur house with a restlessness that discloses his utter lack of purpose. If it so happens he chooses the hallways near her door, if it so happens that he might wish to overhear the state she’s in when the healers change the guard—well, he’s not a liar. He is as concerned for her well-being as any other, having been the first one to find her blood on his sleeves and her body limp in his grasp. But if Aymeric himself was barred entry, Emet-Selch doubts he has the favor necessary to tend to her recovery.
As Emet-Selch returns to his circuit, a quiet set of footsteps pad up the steps. G’raha Tia is mussed and moving sluggishly, leaning on the bannister as if it is his staff. Nonetheless, he soldiers down the hallway, and there is no path he can choose that does not cross him with Emet-Selch. This puts them both at a disadvantage. While Emet-Selch is eager to rub elbows with exactly none of the Scions, there is something singularly undesirable about coming to contend with the former Exarch. The last time they spoke, Emet-Selch cannot help to recall, was shortly after he dragged G’raha to Amaurot as a pretty little bargaining piece.
There is no pride in what Emet-Selch did, which is a rare thing. In the salt air of Amaurot’s shadow, he remembers the tang of G’raha’s blood on the floor of the bureau. Such defiance he has scarcely known. Even now it frustrates him to recall, to remember with such clarity means it cannot have been a mistake. He chose to interrupt G’raha’s theft of the light, chose to strike him down in as violent a manner as he did, and chose to steal him away, knowing the position it would force his Warrior into. Always, he stands between her and Emet-Selch.
At least this time there is no agony between them.
“What are you doing up so late?” says G’raha with a neutral tone that almost hides the distaste.
“Acquainting myself with the house. I’ve not been given a tour.” Emet-Selch shrugs. “Nor a room, as it happens. Condemned so am I to wander.”
“Wandering this hallway back and forth,” G’raha says, with a meaningful look at the door at the end of the hall.
“As you have seen, with your own two eyes.”
In the next moment, Emet-Selch is sure it is the Crystal Exarch standing before him. And shouldn’t that be just so, the Exarch to guard her door like he guarded her in the First? His face calms like a still pond and closes to a pleasant affect that gives away little. His ruby-cut eyes appraise Emet-Selch with every measure his hundred-some years have taught him. It’s nothing Emet-Selch will wilt under, but he meets that gaze with a raised brow of his own. He is no stranger to judgement or to scrutiny. Emet-Selch has stood before peer and persecutor alike and let their words drip down his back when they do not deserve to freeze him.
A long moment stretches between them. “If I could not see how plainly faint you are, I would have cast you out already,” G’raha says. It is a bold claim. He is still a babe in the scheme of Emet-Selch’s time, but he has lived a lifetime more than all the rest. It stands to reason he’d have a fortitude, after that.
“Color me terribly surprised,” Emet-Selch says. With interest, he adds, “Would you still consider me enemy?”
“You abated some of my most immediate fears when you conjured a field of flowers and wished us on our way. It’s not enough for me to call you friend. Equally, I recognize you’ve made no move against us since your departure on the First. I know nothing of you since, but you earned her trust between then and now. That is not a small feat.”
“It’s not as if I could impede you as I am,” Emet-Selch says, light. The Exarch’s honesty is better than the answer he gives, at any rate.
“No. You could not. Yet, here you are, still.”
Of course he is. To think he once found her wanting is unbelievable. His own blindness in his grief astounds him. She shouldered every burden he gave her. It is the utter least he can do to see that she stands again now that she is freed of it.
“And will you grant my audience, Exarch?”
He picks up his steps again. “Let us get it over with, if you must,” he says, and leads the way into her room.
The air is bitter and crisp with poultices and salves and saturated with aether beneath it all. It’s the fuzzy, mossy sort of feeling a room takes after so much of it has been shaped from healing. To his left, there is a lovely bay window with its own cushioned seat built into the alcove. There are heavy velvet curtains hanging, but they’ve been pushed aside; a thin, gauzy chiffon filters the moonlight over the glass. At the far end of the room beyond the wash of silver is a bed piled in downy trimmings and stacked with pillows. Sabre is nestled so deeply within it he almost doesn’t see her. She’s wrapped in loose clothing, her hair twisted over one shoulder. Wherever the fabric pulls up, Emet-Selch tracks the bone path of bandaging or dark pebble bruising in turn.
G’raha busies himself with freshening the water pitcher at her bedside and renewing the damp cloth on her forehead. The bedside table has become an apothecary, and by some magic, G’raha maneuvers through it all without tipping a single one of the bottles and boxes. He whispers to her, and though she does not reply, it sounds as if she’s being given an introduction to her new intruder. G’raha arranges her hair so it won’t dampen with the cloth on her forehead. Then, he retreats to the nook beneath the window and opens a book. He looks at Emet-Selch over the top of it just once, then devotes himself to the pages.
Emet-Selch’s legs tingle as he takes the chair at her bedside; this is the first he’s been off his feet since finding her. Unlike G’raha, Emet-Selch doesn’t open his mouth—what would he say, anyway? He’s tired of speaking when he knows there will be no reply. She needs to rest. He hopes she’s asleep, rather than coaxed into unconsciousness by a spell or draught. He hopes she is not in too much pain.
Her appearance tells little, so he focuses on the faintness of her aether. Hythlodaeus would say he’s squinting; Emet-Selch is simply reacquainting himself with it. The thing about Azem’s shards, he’s learned: it’s not the same color split into parts. It’s not as if her color got mixed with black, or white, to be diluted or muddied. He sees the original undertones at a certain angle or light, finds the warmth the same, but the precise hue is unique every time. Sabre is no exception, even when the remnants of her aether are thin as the curtains.
He spends so much time looking this way it almost startles him when she opens her eyes. She lifts the corner of the cloth over her brow to give him an appraising look that is considerably dampened by the grogginess in it.
“You were right. I’m not dead,” she says, her voice softer than the moonlight. The Exarch’s ears flick in Emet-Selch’s peripheral, but that is all.
“Of course I was,” Emet-Selch says, but his back bows. He folds his hands and his knuckles press against the edge of the mattress.
Her expression twists, then. “Am I not dead because of you?”
His throat dries. In Ultima Thule, he was convinced he needed to intervene. Perhaps she would have survived on her own—she is terribly good at that—but the greater part of him, clearly, did not chance to find out. On the larger scale, it is the Scions that poured aether into her body to mend and keep it in the critical hours between Ultima Thule and Sharlayan. At the core, he knows her will to live is iron wrought.
“You are not dead because you are stubborn, obstinate woman,” Emet-Selch says. “The same sort of woman who would wake in the night when she ought to be at rest.”
“You’ve rested less than I,” she says. She reaches out and places a hand on his knee. There’s more strength than he expects in the grip of her fingers, even if there’s a shake in them. A thin stream of her aether climbs like vine from her fingers to his leg. It’s a very small offering, and she’s careful not to give much, but Emet-Selch statues at her touch. He did not put number to the days he could sustain here, but she’s just prolonged them, even if just by hours. It flummoxes him. Almost angers him, that she’s defying his purpose with even the smallest of gestures. It endears her to him, because it is the most expected thing she could have chosen to do.
“I have been occupied,” Emet-Selch says. He’s not sure it matters. He feels tired, but not in a way he thinks sleep will remedy. Of the two of them, he is dead in all the ways that matter, and they must both remember that. Still, he weaves the tips of his fingers with hers, bolstering from the contact alone. There are thin scratches on her skin and calluses from her sword that he has no memory for, but the curve of her palm and the pressure of her hand wake the depths of him.
Her eyes sink below her lids like a setting sun, and he thinks she might doze again. But her breathing catches more quickly, and she untangles her trembling hand from his. She pulls the damp cloth to rest along her cheek. “Not dying is painful.”
At this, G’raha is on his feet. “I thought you might be hurting when you woke,” he says, wedging himself along bedside table. Emet-Selch is dazed enough by the sudden shift he can neither reach for her again nor offer any sort of usefulness. Instead, G’raha perches a hip on the edge of her bed and reaches for one of the vials. So easily he gets to offer himself, leg nudging into hers and hands at her shoulders to help her sit enough to drink. He has claim to his place beside her; he never lost his faith. In the hundred years spent waiting for her, the Exarch did not waver. Did not lose hope like Emet-Selch, though Emet-Selch thinks it must be taken into account how short a hundred years is to wait for someone. Still, if there is one to wait on her now, it makes sense it ought to be the one who was faithful in the first place.
Emet-Selch gets up from her bedside. He feels splashed in cold water. Narrow edges of her bed aside, he recognizes there is not room for him among them. He stands briefly in front of the windows, Sharlayan gleaming sleepily down the hillside while the Exarch help her catalogue her hurts. Its glow is nothing like Amaurot’s. The only magic in the air is the aether G’raha stirs up like tea leaves.
The ocean becomes starlight for how it reflects the clear sky. It invites him with its simple rippling dark. It would be much easier to rest beneath its curtain, to no longer worry about such vain things like who will sit at her side and tend to her health. Perhaps he ought not have bothered here at all. Emet-Selch sighs and leaves the room.
The following evening when Emet-Selch makes himself at home in Forchenault’s library, Aymeric chooses the chair opposite his sofa to seat himself upon. His blue eyes have dulled their edges with tiredness, but he still has color in his face, and his clothes are neat. He wears a simpler coat trimmed in fur, no regalia to add to his encumbrances. The presence of another person in the study should hardly rankle, but if Emet-Selch is honest with himself, he would rather avoid the Lord Speaker.
He has unlearned his hate for Sabre, but something near it needle tips into his temper when he sees her silhouette outlined beside someone else’s shoulders and back and mistakes who precisely is seated alongside her. When he is forced to confront Azem’s absence at his own side, he does so with the reluctance of putting his palm to freezing metal. She will not wander with him through the little gardens outside the house, or laugh too loudly when they sit beneath the terrace for supper, or lay beside him in mutual sleeplessness. She will not be there when he returns to the sea. Perhaps that is the worst of it. Hythlodaeus will console him, but Azem’s shattered spirit still makes her home amongst the sundered.
As if to drive the reminder further, Aymeric has come from the direction of Sabre’s room and has with him a modest roll of letters tied in twine. He sets them along with a fine quill on the side table while he lights another lantern. The white marble floors reflect its glow.
Emet-Selch lets his sigh be loud. “I’m to read to the sound of your scratching pen, then?” he says.
“It can hardly be a sound you’re unused to,” Aymeric replies easily. He takes a double glance at the book in Emet-Selch’s hand. “Is that poetry?”
“Will none of you cease your surprise to find I have a self outside of he who lovingly fathered the Garlean Empire?” Emet-Selch says. But the Lord Speaker’s tone is light with friendly interest, so Emet-Selch tempers his own reply into palatable sarcasm rather than letting all cordial pretense drip away.
He can see Aymeric’s thoughts as if he is every ticking gear of a watch with the cover unlatched. “Have you known much of Garlemald since your departure from it?”
“No, I have not. My purpose outgrew it. I awoke in the Sea and there were none to report anything further.”
Aymeric says, “I had meant to share with you a report from our outpost along the outskirts of the city, if it is of interest.”
When he quit the Empire for the First, he was content not to know what became of it. The chaos left to break earth in his wake was well-set. There is a twist in his throat when he thinks on it now; he crafted Amaurot with far more care than Garlemald. Garlemald is a creation of necessity, of function and ruthless honed edge. For its usefulness, it lacks Amaurot’s passion and sentiment. That is more than enough reason to leave it in the past and not wonder if it still breathes. But the Lord Speaker has clearly brought what he thinks is a peace offering, and Emet-Selch has spent too long in rhetoric to reject it outright.
“Suppose it is of interest. You will need to inform me what happened between my departure and this present moment. Last I left it, Varis held the throne and no one was tempered.” With his thumb holding his place in the book, he lets it fall to his lap and feather closed. He squares his feet on the plush rug beneath his sofa and affords the Lord Speaker his attention. Aymeric’s posture becomes a decent mirror of his own, too formal to be at ease, too relaxed to belong anywhere near a forum hall.
The Lord Speaker, in his river-cool voice, informs him of several things: Varis’s death, firstly. This comes as little surprise, given Zenos has power to follow after his whims. Much like his father, he’s susceptible to Ascian influence despite his delusion of choice in the matter—and of course he should be. He was made to be. To know that it is Fandaniel’s voice he listened to clarifies the chaos that broke Garlemald shortly thereafter. With this buzzing between them, Aymeric speaks of the city as it is. There is a unique melancholy in hearing second-hand the destruction that has come to his architecture. The main city is slag, Aymeric tells him. The Telophoroi’s tower rises like a tree, its canopy misting bloody into the clouds. There is not a stone in the streets un-blackened with charcoal. Every building yawns open with a blast wound. The descriptions become too vivid for secondhand.
“You were there,” Emet-Selch says.
The Lord Speaker takes a breath in before answering. “Aye, if only briefly.”
This sparks more interest than the account, Emet-Selch must admit. “The front lines of your greatest enemy’s home are not usually the place for the leader of a nation depending on him.”
“I am hardly immune to aiding the Warrior of Light,” he says ruefully.
“Hardly,” he echoes. “And did you bring her an army, to conquer mine good nation?”
“She brought it ahead of me,” Aymeric says. “As you say—I had not intended to go. But intention only serves ideals. I came when she had need of me.”
He dislikes the stilted set that irons Aymeric’s voice. He guards something, now. It takes no particular insight to guess Emet-Selch’s stumbled into something tender he never intends to disclose. If she took the army with her, Emet-Selch knows it was scarcely the Lord Speaker’s martial prowess alone she needed as an afterthought. Need is such a funny word, so easy to confuse with want, so easy to turn emotional instead. It is this kind of need Aymeric speaks of.
“You know the dangers of vague speech, Lord Speaker,” Emet-Selch says.
“Forgive me,” Aymeric says. He finally breaks his posture to rub the back of his neck and shoulder, fingers pressing too long for it to be a nervous habit. He looks weary with a headache. “The whole of it is not mine to tell. She faced Zenos and Fandaniel, and afterwards I could not keep away.”
There is nothing Emet-Selch can say to that. It is such a knot in the back of his throat to share understanding of this, of her, with this man he better knows from hearsay. There are many questions he wants to ask the Lord Speaker of Ishgard that are entirely inappropriate and have nothing to do with Garlemald, past present or future. Will you follow her to the ends of the earth, bent to her call? Do you understand how precious a thing you hold in your hands?
“And none could blame you for it,” Emet-Selch says. That his tone turns lighter, more dismissive—none here know it for the mask it is. “Your secrets are yours to keep. Or, her secrets are yours to keep? Regardless. Go on.”
The Lord Speaker concludes his report. With the Towers destroyed and the Tempered un, careful movements to aid ruined Garlemald are being conducted outside the city limits. It’s a truly gracious thing. Emet-Selch makes all the right observations and pleasantries for the information. And as they both lapse into their reading, Emet-Selch forgets his poetry.
The dangers of vague speech do not lie solely in the possibility of misunderstanding. There is a wealth of weaponry in them, and he’s not sure Aymeric even knows the points raised against Emet-Selch. What the Lord Speaker has told him: your country trapped her. Your colleagues brought her to harm. This Empire you created caused her strife. Your very lineage dogged her to the ends of the stars. Your last eighty years, short as they may have been, marred her soul.