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When Orsino was restless, he sang.
Oftentimes it was snatches from choral arrangements he remembered from when he was one of many, a young waif-like lad cloaked in pristine white and pure gold, wide-eyed and straight-backed as he added his clear, sweet voice to the others'. The Chant of Light was meant to be sung, and it was the boys who sang it, mage apprentices and Chantry acolytes of six and seven and eight and nine who devoted hours to their maestro and the harmony of singing.
Only the best were chosen for the holiest of rituals, the rite of rebirth, the devotion of one's body and soul to the praise of the Maker. And in this, as in everything else, Orsino was the best.
To this day, he feels freest when lifting his voice, even if it is only for a short while.
And when he is feeling particularly lost, especially restrained, he sings arias, the mournful pieces that had been written especially for his voice, partially sung in ancient Tevene and partially in the tongue they all knew.
And when he most needs consolation, he turns to the sweet and sorrowful aria that Hahren Erliah composed for him, completely in Elvish. A song for Shartan, the forgotten. A song that the Grand Cleric would not allow him to sing in the Chantry, but let him sing in private, because she could refuse him nothing.
He is no longer a choir boy, no longer a chanter. His place was always among the mages, and now his place is in the office of First Enchanter.
But he has never stopped being a singer, no more than he's stopped being a gelding.
"You sing more than usual, lately," Senior Enchanter Derry comments, their steps synchronised as they walk the labyrinth. Both men lock their hands behind their back as they walk, their heads bent slightly.
"Yes," Orsino murmurs, but doesn't say anything further, and Derry doesn't press on.
The knight-commander to whom Orsino answers is fiery, sharp-tongued, and fatally magnetic. Orsino attempts to approach her neutrally, his tone formal and pleasant, but she steamrolls him with commands and ultimatums.
The rumour is that she hates mages. Orsino finds himself believing it.
"You all belong in chains," she spits in a fit of frustration, and Orsino imagines himself in collar-and-lead, the chain looped around Meredith Stannard's wrist. A queer warmth spreads through his belly, over hairless and rarely-touched flesh. Her glare sears through him, but there's something else there, an edge that is more heat than ice.
"Oh, but you'd like that, wouldn't you."
"I don't know," he answers honestly, distantly, and leaves her to her smirking triumph.
The knight-captain's had her, Derry tells him -- because Derry knows more about Orsino than he ever lets on -- and so has Guylian before him, and at least one of the other senior enchanters has known her flesh.
"She is incorrigible," Derry states, his round face as placid and unlined as one of the Tranquil's. "Incorrigible, and she has no love for us half-men." Watch out for her. She will eat you alive.
"Have they ever made a Tranquil out of one of you?" she asks with a leer, most of her armour discarded, a goblet of thick Antivan red balanced in her calloused hand. "Wouldn't that be something? Two useless heads, instead of just one."
Orsino bows his head and remains silent, other than to say, "No. It has not occurred."
She leans forward, golden hair spilling into a flushed face, and lets her gaze drop down to where his hands are folded in front of his robes. "Show me."
"Show you...?" Orsino pales, his throat going dry. He has never said no to her before.
"You heard me."
It is nothing to see, only smooth, short flesh that is plainly missing its counterpart, but his heart flutters and his hands twitch and that strange unwinding warmth is back. He wants to show her, and worse yet, he wants to know what it would feel like for hands other than his own to touch it.
Would he feel like a whole man then?