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I set the coconut shells in front of Kip, and a pile of pebbles in front of myself.
“Draughts?” Kip asked, considering.
“If you play.”
Kip raised his eyebrows at me. “We were accustomed to the occasional game, if you recall. When you were disinclined to trouncing me at chess.”
I smiled up at him. “You are the only person I ever regularly beat who didn’t simply let me win.”
“I’ve never been particularly good at truckling to authority,” he acknowledged.
“Even at your most obsequious—” I started to laugh, thinking back to all of the times he had tried to keep his expression respectful, but the truth of his feelings showing in his eyes. “Your most obsequious lasted all of an hour, that second day you were my secretary.”
“After I looked you in the eyes.” His voice was quiet, but I thought I could hear some long ago shock of that day. I wanted very badly for him to understand what that moment had meant to me.
“After you corrected my pronunciation, capped my joke, and…saved me.”
He was quiet after that, turning his focus to the game pieces that I had laid out, and so I did the same.
“Perhaps,” Kip said softly, “it would be good for you to talk about your time as emperor.”
There was nothing I wanted to do less. Even that brief mention was enough to cast me back to those bleak, unending days, trapped within the magic, untouchable by even those closest to me. Fourteen years, four months, four days, seventeen hours, and then the Fall; time that I marked diligently until it broke alongside my empire.
I recalled myself back to the moment, and answered him, “Perhaps it would. One day.”
Kip just nodded, in that quiet, focused way of his, and turned his attention to the game.
I continued to think on it as we played, looking for the words that would allow me to express what it had been like. I, who had once had so many words that I could not stop speaking, now struggling to find even a few of the right ones. Kip continued to wait in patient silence, as he had so many times when I paused in my dictation.
As the game wrapped up, I found myself speaking. “I only have metaphors,” I said, sounding out an answer as I spoke. “The fire at the heart of me, down to a handful of embers, buried in ash. The garden of my poetry, blighted, frosted, burned, sere as a northern winter. No clear wind, only stagnant, heavy air … doldrums. My whole … myself, thrust down so far below the surface I thought I should never return.” Even after the Fall, when my magic was finally free to come at my call, I my fire was still banked down almost to nothing. “They were trying to make me a god, you know.”
Kip nodded, but kept his peace.
“I almost let go, let … myself … float away. Until you caught me. For so long all I had was that morning ritual, of you looking at me and saying ‘good morning’ when I looked at you and said ‘good morning’—that was it, Cliopher, that was all I had to remind myself that I was a person, a human being, a man. You, never quite able to look at me as you were supposed to. Never quite able,” I said, looking at him with affection, “Never quite able to, as you say, truckle to authority.”
Kip grinned, looking just the slightest bit embarrassed, and I could not leave it there, could not let him simply brush it away, as he did so many of the ways that I had tried to show my appreciation - my love - before. I reached out to take his hand, holding it in mine, enjoying, still the small joy of being able to touch, to show some of the affection I had seen him share so easily with his kin, and said simply, “Thank you.”
He met my eyes, as he had done so many times before, not turning away, but reflecting some of my wonder, some of my joy for being here, with him, on an adventure worthy of the best of my songs.
I gazed back at him, my magic rising in response to the depth of feeling I saw mirrored back to me there.
I wished I could have seen him bargain with the Sun, seen the Sun’s reaction as he proved, as he had always proven, his extraordinary competence at anything he set his mind to.
Kip. Cliopher. My lord Mdang. Who solved impossible problems for other people, and hid from the truth in his own heart. Oh, he could re-work the world government, but it had taken him years and the gradual development of true friendship to be willing to show me the framework at the heart of it, so closely did he guard it. Who had a word, a concept, that mattered so much to him that he could barely even bring himself to speak of it.
I wanted to understand it, wanted to surprise him with my own understanding. Naturally, while he was away questing, I had asked the sailors of the He’enkana what that word, fanoa, meant.
I had not entirely expected that the word meant “lover”.
It did explain a great deal: why Kip shied away from it, and why his family teased him so. I was glad that he was not there as I learned it, for I had very much lost my composure that would think of me so.
But here we were, his eyes meeting mine as we sailed down the river of stars, and Kip was smiling.
He shifted to lie down, his eyes still on me and, to my complete shock, tugged at me to join him.
It had been a very long time since anyone save my the attendants who dressed me had directed me so, and I found myself laughing with delight and surprise at this sudden assertiveness on Kip’s part.
“Lay on your back,” Kip directed, and I turned to look at him. He was nearly glowing in the starlight, and his hair curled around his face, a stray lock hanging over his eyes.
I would not - could not - make the first move. We had been lord and vassal for so long, and even though we could now speak as equals, and touch as people, I knew better than most how deeply habits could run when they wrapped around your entire life. He had been so much better about it when he returned, but I still saw hints of the courtier in him, the ingrained training that required him to defer to me.
But Kip had come into his own in the House of the Sun, and with this new assertiveness… Perhaps now he was ready to claim what he felt?
I reached my hand out to brush the hair from his face, my fingers brushing gently over his skin, and drifting up to tangle in his braids and run along the feathers braided into it. “I like this style,” I said. “I like your hair grown out. It softens your face.”
“I like how your hair looks, too,” Kip said, a little shyly, and I felt a small thrill of delight as he lay there, looking up at me expectantly.
I brushed his hair back behind his ear, and lay down to join him, letting my hand trace his face as I lay down to mirror him.
This was the closest I had been to another human since I had left on my quest. (There had been hugs, but this was different. ) It was wonderful, thrilling, delightful, and my body was making its own opinions known about this fact.
He smiled at me and I saw the delight in his eyes to match my own. Then he took my other hand, and pressed it on the deck. “Do you feel the rhythm?” Kip asked softly. “The waves, first.”
Of course his thoughts would turn to the ocean, and I matched it in turn with music, finding the tone of the water, of the current below us. His eyes seemed nearly to sparkle as he met my music with his own, picking up the beat of the current, and I, in turn, took the harmony of the other tune I felt within the water.
Very good,” he said, very quietly, nearly whispering. “That’s the one that will take us home.”
I waited, forcing myself to patience, drawing on all my hard learned lessons about keeping my thoughts to myself, all the years of enforced serenity. I was determined not ruin this by risking any reminder of our past roles.
He looked up for a time, staring at the stars, and finally began to speak, telling again the story of his journey into his own heart, finishing with, “I knew the first chamber could not be all there was to me,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I knew because my love for you was not there. All the things I had done … but not the fire at the heart of me. That was on the other side, in a hearth made of pearls …”
I returned that intimacy, the sharing of his heart, with my own. “When I look at my magic, the fire at the heart of me is protected by a ring of golden pearls, flame pearls, all the gifts you have given me …” All of the morning greetings, and his humming of Aurora, his seeing me as a person, and not as an idol.
He squeezed my hand as we fell silent once again.
I wondered if I dared push further, and found that I did.
“Do you ever dream about kissing?” I asked him.
And very quietly, he answered “No.”
Oh.
If I had paler skin, I would have glowed with the flush of embarrassment that crawled across my skin.
I had mis-read him, that much was clear. Or I had grown so rusty at seduction that he decided he wasn’t interested. I closed my eyes, seeking to master the emotions within, to control the unaccustomed physical responses that seemed to bubble up as laughter, and I found my voice enough to say “I see.”
I registered that Kip had pulled away, sitting up beside me. “It’s never been one of my great concerns,” he said. “Sex, that is. It doesn’t really … come to my mind.”
It didn’t come to his mind? I found myself laughing in truth. That was the most unexpected set down I had ever received. Though, perhaps there was some truth to it, as he had seen me for so long as an untouchable (sexless, my sarcastic voice whispered) idol. I turned away, still laughing so that he would not see the hurt.
Cliopher lay down again beside me, but the moment was clearly finished, as he did not, again, reach out.
I lay there, listening to the sound of the current, breathing deeply to settle my body and mind, and eventually fell asleep.
–
I awoke with the dawning to the sound of Cliopher pulling food from our stores.
I sat up as he finished cutting open a mango, and he handed half to me. My inner sarcastic voice observed that even now, he had the habit of service. But I took it anyway, and busied myself eating it, appreciating the taste of fresh fruit that did not have to be purified.
Cliopher moved to take a seat on the outrigger, so I went to the other side of the boat to sit by the mast to finish my mango, and stared off into the distance. I could not lose control over my emotions here. It was bad enough to summon a storm in the mortal realms, how much worse would it be to lose control here. So, I sat. I meditated somewhat, not going into a deep trance, but nonetheless bringing myself to calm.
I stared off into the horizon, my mind thinking over the past night, trying to understand what I had missed. I was not accustomed to being wrong in my judgements of people, but this was not the sort of situation I had had much experience with since being crowned Emperor.
Now, at least, I had my music that I could sit with, so I pulled out my harp out after I finished eating. I cast my mind to find a something challenging to focus on, and, with the faintest sense of irony, chose the passage from Aurora of the princess rejecting her suitor.
I allowed myself to be lost in the music, focusing on the simple act of playing, and the challenges of the notes. It was meditative in it’s own way, not the trance of magic, but a simple, pure focus on what was in front of me.
Cliopher’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Fitzroy.”
I responded to him in the voice of the emperor. “Yes, my lord Mdang?”
Silence.
I remained focused on my harp, until suddenly he was in front of me. He took my hand, and I did not stop him, but simply waited in silence to see if he would speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I had heard many apologies in my life, with varying degrees of sincerity both apparent and genuine. This, I thought, could be either, and I did not particularly want to have a conversation about it. That, at least, was easy to convey. “I cannot think there is anything for which you need to apologize,” I said; a court response.
“Fitzroy …” he said again, and hesitated. I was privately impressed that he continued to push, though he certainly knew better. “Fitzroy. You seem distant this morning, and I think it is my fault.”
He thought it was his fault? My surprise broke through my calm, and I cast a look at him, before grasping again for that serene neutrality and looking away again.
Then, all in a rush, “I did not realize what you were proposing, last night,” Cliopher said. “I rarely do. Conju and Rhodin have told me all the people they claimed were flirting with me, but I … I never see it.”
For a moment, I couldn’t even process what he had said, and when I did, I could not hide my surprise. “You didn’t realize? I did everything bar—” Everything bar saying it outright, bar the things I dared not do until I was sure of him.
I knew he was not inexperienced - there had, after all, been that deeply unfortunate incident with the spy, which had done my best to forget about in respect to his pride. (I tried not to know too much about the personal lives of my household. I could at least afford them the privacy I did not have)
Cliopher rubbed his face with his free hand, impatiently pushing back that strand of hair that kept falling into his face. I saw him take a deep breath, and then he blurted out, “I love you.”
He loved me. I knew that, I supposed. He had been the perfect, loyal secretary, an excellent attendant, the very definition of devoted servant, even a good friend. But I wanted more than that, and I thought that I he did too. However… “But not that way.”
Another hesitation, and then he shifted around to look at me directly, still holding my hand in his. He looked at me, and I could see the remorse and affection clearly writ on his face. I saw a host of thoughts go through that brilliant mind of his, and then his eyes raised again to meet mine.
I could not make the first move. But perhaps…
“What are you thinking?” I asked him, so quietly it was nearly a whisper.
Cliopher moved slowly to remove the harp from my grasp. I let him, still waiting, sitting in that moment of quiet anticipation as he placed the harp of to the side, then returned to his knees in front of me, meeting my eyes as he leaned very slightly towards me. “I liked being close to you,” he said. “If you’d still like to…”
I felt my breath catch, and my heart begin to race. This was Kip, my viceroy, my hidden revolutionary, and I had wanted to know what he felt like since the night I watched him dance over the coals in my throne room. I reached out to that unassuming face that had fooled so many people.
I brushed away that unruly lock of hair that kept falling into his face, and traced my hand over his skin, to the back of his neck. Kip leaned forward, following my hand as I pulled him closer.
Oh, how I wanted this! All those years (centuries) of working closely, with only the intimacy of eye contact to ground me, and now here we were. Except. That wasn’t what he said, was it? And though he responded to my touch, it was only to follow my lead. And I…I had to be sure.
I leaned forward, setting my forehead against his “You said last night this wasn’t something you cared much for,” I said quietly, testing.
“I don’t mind,” and I felt the ripple of discomfort run through him, his skin heating under my touch.
I sat back, feeling the rush of bitter disappointment. This was still service. Still an artifact of a lifetime of obedience. Still, observed a savage voice in my mind, a thing done to please me , not a thing he wanted for himself.
I kept my voice light, my best Fitzroy Angursell voice. “I confess I have never been interested unless both parties were enthusiastic,” I said, sitting back. I watched him for a moment, waiting to see if he would protest.
When he did not, I turned away, to stare off into the distance, and waited for him to leave.
He sat beside me for some time, a presence that I resolved myself to ignore. (Even if it was so close. So close, but I could not touch. This far, and no further), and then he reached for my hands again and spoke. “You wanted to be … more intimate?” his voice was tentative, laced with some emotion that I could not quite make out.
“It doesn’t matter what I wanted,” I responded calmly. We had been lord and vassal for too long, and if I could not trust it was offered freely - if he didn’t want it for himself, and not just for me - it was better that I close that path off firmly now, to prevent any future misunderstandings. I pulled my hands free of him, letting that barrier fall again between us. “Forget last night. We can continue on as we have been. It’s served us well enough, hasn’t it? Better all round, I think.”
I could feel my courtly mask settle upon me in full. I was used to concealing my feelings, even in when I was nearly (but never completely) alone. I expected to read the dismissal for what it was, but he remained there, steady and present as all the watchers that I had been on display for as the emperor.
Finally he spoke again, his voice so soft it barely rose above the wind. “When I was in Gorjo City for the viceroy ceremonies, I bought a house.”
My hands gripped together, one of the few displays of emotion I had ever allowed myself (though never when someone else could see them). “Rhodin told me.”
He had sounded so pleased, talking about that house in far distant Vangavaye-ve, where there was a place for all of them to retire to when I stepped down. He had spoken of the work that needed to be done to restore the building - apparently it had belonged to some mage of Cliopher’s childhood acquaintance - and how he’d hired one of his many cousins to do the work.
Kip deserved it, they all did. He was always so grounded in the idea of home, and I envied that for him. But it was for them, not for me.
I was sure Cliopher understood my tone, but that had not always been enough to stop him before. “There’s space for you. Private rooms you could have. If you wanted them. If you wanted to live there … ”
I felt my frustration surge up, my magic surging protectively around me. Did he think I had nowhere to go? I had the Red Company, and I was still Fitzroy Angursell, and I would find more adventures. I had no desire to be surrounded by people who still thought of me as “His Radiancy”. I certainly did not want to do so in private . Alone. Surrounded by people who wouldn’t touch me. How dare he think that I would want that?
Cliopher must have seen some of this in my face, for he reached out to me yet again . “Fitzroy..”
I had had quite enough. I shoved him away, feeling my magic reaching out to defend me. “You don’t need to pity me.” I bit out. ”Why would I want to—why would I choose—why—” My breath came hard and fast, my heart pounded as I fought to contain myself, to keep my magic from hurting him (although, whispered a voice in my head, he did look hurt already). I did not want him to pity me, I wanted him - wanted him to treat me as his equal, his friend.
“I see,” said Cliopher, and finally he turned to leave me be.
(At least he didn’t bow.)
I sat there, staring off into the distance, struggling to master myself. It was not easy - it had never been easy, but it was somehow harder now. I could not even name all the emotions churning within me, some of them so long absent that I did not even know what they were any longer.
I thought of the last time I had lost my temper, back in the shelter on the mountain. Julannar had asked me then if people talked out emotions in my presence, and I had responded with the list of people who had killed themselves when I did so. Cliopher was the only one who had ever come close, and he still showed so little. (He hadn’t shown so little today)
I became aware of the sensation of grief, of loss, of shame, and it took me a moment to realize that it was not my own. Though Cliopher had no magic of his own, he had done deeds worthy of a hero, and here, in the divine realms, the magic reacted to him accordingly.
He was weeping, I saw, as I turned to look him. I had seen him weep before, when I had made him my viceroy, in joy and community, but this was not that. (No one had wept like this before me save those begging me for mercy since I was called back to be the emperor). He wept, I thought, like a man who had lost everything.
I felt I rising sense of guilt. I was hurt, and angry (and afraid), but he had been so persistent . He had persisted, as he had done once before when he had challenged me to remind me that he I was still a man. I had pushed him away then, too.
He had come back then. But this, I sensed, was different.
I had been so concerned about commanding him as the emperor I’d forgotten I could hurt him as the man.
“Cliopher,” I called, but he did not respond.
“Cliopher,” I called again. And then, “Kip”
He simply shook his head, not even looking up at me. I had hurt him, and I could not leave him like this. I went to him, sitting before him as he had sat facing me, and took his hands gently, pulling them from his face. “Kip,” I said, trying to get through to him. “Kip. Look at me.”
He shook his head again, denial and refusal in every line of his body, and he tried to pull his hands away, to turn away from me again. “Let go,” he said, his voice thick with tears. A demand, if he had been able.
“No.”
He looked at me, finally, hurt in his eyes. “Please let go,” he tried again.
Again, I refused. “Kip, you’re upset.”
“So are you.”
I hesitated, thinking again of Jullanar asking us to talk out our feelings. So many of the simple, non-courtly behaviors were foreign to me now, and I did not know what to say. I wanted him in my life, I knew that. And this - whatever it was - had been wonderful until now. I wanted us to still have that.
“Kip. I am upset because … I am misunderstanding something. Talk to me. Please. I’m trying but—I’m making things worse. Please. Set me right! You’ve never hesitated before. Don’t let me spoil everything.”
“Don’t,” he whispered, still trying to withdraw. “Don’t say things like that.”
I held him tightly, determined to do this right. “Don’t say things like what? That I misunderstood something? I’ve hurt you.”
“It’s my fault. I’ve ruined everything.” He sat for a moment, and while I sorted through my mind for the right words, he said, “I should tend the vaha.”
I refused to let him pull away. “It’s fine. We’re on course. The wind and the waves are the same.”
I thought of that word, the one he held so close to his heart, like all the things he cared the most about. The one I thought I understood, but it was clear that he did not want what I thought he did. That, I thought, was the heart of this. If I had understood it wrong, if it did not mean that… “Cliopher, what does fanoa mean to you?”
He did not answer me. I did not want this distance between us. I did not want to go back to what we had before, when we permitted ourselves nothing but professional respect. I could do this, I resolved. I could talk us through this hurt.
I took a deep breath, and told him the truth. “While you were gone, I asked Tupaia and El and the others. They said…they said fanoa was the word they used because they didn’t have any other, not for what El and Auri were to each other. And I thought, of course it was. The old Shaian word for that kind of relationship—for Conju and Terec—is fayna, which is clearly derived from it. And I thought, the way Clio said it…the way you responded…the way Basil joked about us being in-laws…”
Kip did not respond.
I carried on, desperate to get a response. “I thought that was what you wanted. And what I … I wanted it, too. I wanted to…Kip, I thought…I’ve misunderstood something. What does it mean? You’re so quiet about this…it’s so important to you. I want to know. Please.”
He remain silent, but tugged his hands away again. I let him. I had said what I could. I felt raw. Exposed. Deeply out of practice showing vulnerability. But we could never move past this without honestly, so I needed to wait for his response.
It seemed like an eternity later that he drew a deep breath and answered me. “Fanoa is an old word, as I told you.”
“The shells on the beach. The small, white, common, ordinary shells. Specifically, clam shells.”
He scrubbed at his face, still not looking at me, but continued, quietly. “Yes. A fanoa is a matched-but-different pair of something. Two halves of a clam shell, a pair of sandals …” He gestured at the vaha. “The keel and outrigger on a boat.”
“Go on.”
He shifted, one hand going out to the line on the tiller. “In the Lays …In the Lays it’s also used to mean a … trading partner. Someone you meet on equal grounds and have a special relationship with.”
“Auri and El began with that meaning,” I agreed quietly.
He closed his eyes as if to gather his words. “That’s not how the Lays use it for them. It means … what we say it means … what I always thought it meant … is … someone you love so deeply you would leave the world to sail Sky Ocean for them.”
I watched the tears roll down his face, felt the magic respond to his grief. Muted now, but still whispering around me like the wind. “I was so shocked when we met Auri and El because … because it had always been so important to me that in the stories they were not lovers. That two people could love each other like that, but it didn’t need to be about sex. That you could find someone who was your match. Your other half. Your equal.”
Like Pali, I thought. Who had so rarely shown interest in another, much less in that manner. Pali had never wanted me back, had always kept me at arms length. But Pali was afraid, and whatever we might be, it wouldn’t be this. Kip was my partner, my friend (the man I loved). And there was a depth of feeling here that I had only begun to guess at.
But he was not done, his voice still raw with hurt. “I shall correct the Lays. It doesn’t matter what … fancies I have. Had. I shall make sure that people know the truth of Auri and El. It’s not as if anyone uses the word. Fanoa, that is. In its social meaning. No one else will have … lost anything. They’ve all always thought me a fool for taking that meaning. Chasing a viau.” He swallowed, forced out: “It’s very old-fashioned.”
“Archaic, I believe you said,” I said softly, taking his hands once again. His grief still rung in the magic, but it had gentled, nearly stilled once again into crystalline silence around us. He did not pull away again, but waited for me to respond.
Kip had given me so many gifts in our time together. He had always treated me as a man, as much as the constraints of tradition and taboo allowed. But here, in the River Of Stars, he gave me the gift of himself.
He was hurting, and I had hurt him. He had shown me his heart, and now I had the responsibility of handling it with all the care it deserved. And so I said, quietly, marveling, “You think of me as your equal.”
“I do”
“Your equal. Your match. Your … mirror, even? To bring in a Shaian conceit. The other shoe. The outrigger.” I squeezed the hands, that had for so long been the way I was permitted to touch the world. “Your other hand.”
“All those things,” he said, almost below his breath.
My wonderful, incomparable Kip, who had freed me from the chains that I had given up resisting. Who had unhesitatingly taken the quest to the House of The Sun, impressing every one of his own legends along the way. Kip, who downplayed his accomplishments so frequently that I could not even be sure that that was all he had done, just the parts he thought worth telling. It had been a long time since I was a folk hero, but he was clearly determined to be one himself.
He was not particularly interested in in sex. That was alright. I liked sex, but I loved him. I loved being close to him, touching, cuddling, all the quiet intimacy that didn’t need to have anything to do with sex. I wanted him here by my side, in whatever shape that took. He just needed to hear that.
I released his hands, and sat back. “Why does it matter what Auri and El made of it?”
Kip stared at me blankly.
“We are not Aurelius Magnus and Elonoa’a. We are ourselves. Fitzroy and Cliopher.”
I heard his breath catch, and the magic focus, listening to his response.
“Yes,” he breathed.
Something in me, the hurt, the grief (the loneliness) settled, and I felt joy begin to kindle in my heart, rising up into a smile on my face, and my magic reaching out to wrap around him.
Before he could speak, before he could find the words to downplay what we had here, I reached forward to take his hands once more. I had seen how he needed to be shown that he was loved, for hadn’t I had to show his family how magnificent he was before he allowed himself to be worthy of it? I pulled his hands to me, holding them on my heart. “Cliopher, Kip, you are my right hand, my outrigger, my mirror that shows me my better side. My people do not have a word for this, but yours do.”
“Yes,” he said, like a prisoner who had suddenly found freedom.
This was drama I knew, and the magic waited expectantly around us, the completion of a journey that was almost upon us. “Ask me,” I prompted. “Ask me, so I can say yes.”
I waited, and into the charged magic around us, he spoke. “You are my fanoa. My beloved. My own. Will you let me be yours?”
“Not let. You are.” And I leaned forward, once more touching my forehead to his. “My fanoa,” I whispered, treasuring the new word, treasuring what it meant, for the both of us.
The magic released, and I felt it flow out around us, joyful and beautiful. I saw that the sun had turned to sunset, and the clouds to a riot of colors, and the end of the river, the transition out of the Divine Realms, was nearly upon us.
Kip looked at me, his eyes reflecting his joy, “Would you like to come home with me?”
And I, never one to miss a moment for the dramatic, waited just a bit for the portal to approach, then I raised my eyebrow at him and said, “Goodness, my lord Mdang, you say that as if I did not fall half in love with you on sight.” I smiled, and kissed his hands, letting him see my certainty in my manner and my voice, “Yes. Yes. Let’s go home, Kip.”
“Together,” said Kip, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “Home.”
“Yes,” I said, as we crested a wave and rode into the portal.
“Home”