Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cliopher Lord Mdang considered the prospect before him with some reservation.

“Go on,” one of his captors ordered, brusquely impatient. “You jump, we’ll toss her down on top of you. Or would you rather we threw the girl in first?”

The space below the floor of this otherwise unremarkable empty guest bedroom in the Zuni wing of the Palace of Stars was black and uninviting. Cliopher had a fairly solid sense of the architecture, having at one time or another approved building works in almost every corner of the building. The floor below was another set of guest rooms, slightly less well-favoured (slightly further down and away from the Imperial Apartments that formed the literal and figurative centre of the rarified world of court and government).

“I’ll jump,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the hole. Dora was watching him, her eyes very big, her face pale. He smiled at her. “It’s not very far,” he added, hoping that he sounded more certain than he felt.

He was not sure how long he’d been here. He had no idea how long he’d slept, come to that. The stick of incense he had lit the night before had burned down but the fragrance of Vangavayen sweetgum was hanging heavy in his room when Franzel had woken him, to say that the young Sayina was missing, and that somebody had left a letter on her bed.

He had tumbled up and thrown on a dressing gown and slippers, saying, “Let them in.” That had led, of course, to the entire Vangavayen contingent pouring into his bedroom, all distressed and talking at once. It had taken several precious minutes to persuade them to calm down enough to tell him the story.

Dora had gone to bed before they ate dinner the previous night, which was early for her. Aunt Oura had tucked her in, and checked her after dinner – that was, half past the third bell of the evening – and she had been sleeping peacefully then. Dora had been allocated her own room, a fact of which she had been inordinately proud. It had a shared bathroom that opened onto Aunt Oura’s room. Aunt Oura had gone to bed before Cliopher and had slept soundly for some hours. She had woken, possibly (although not certainly) in response to some noise, had gone to use the facilities, and had – as was her routine – stuck her head around Dora’s door to check on the child.

The bed had been empty and the window open. Oura had clapped her hands to bring up the mage lights at once and gone straight to the window; seeing no sign of Dora on the broad external terrace a couple of floors below she had breathed a sigh of relief, closed the window, and turned to find out where the girl had hidden herself. That was when she had spotted the scrap of paper on the pillow.

The note had been short, blunt, and accompanied by a lock of Dora’s dark hair. It demanded Cliopher’s presence, alone, under a certain tree in the Palace gardens, before the first hour of the morning. He was to bring his seals of office.

There had been some argument, of course. Cliopher had overruled it. Dora was here in Solaara to see him, she was his cousin, and she was only eight.

He had not stopped to dress. He had hugged Aunt Oura, promised to recover her granddaughter, collected the set of seals from his writing kit and insisted that his relatives all stay where they were, where they could see one another, and send a runner for the guards.

The walk down to the gardens in his slippers and night robe had been long enough for him to start having second thoughts, but he could not bear to think of Dora being alone – afraid – in the hands of people who certainly did not have her best interests at heart.

He had stopped, just outside the door, breathing in the warm humid air of the gardens and waiting for Vinyë to catch up with him.

"How did you know I was –?"

"I knew one of you would be following," he had told her. "That window – it's one flight of stairs up and past three alcoves – try to stay out of sight if you can. You'll be able to tell the guards –"

She had hugged him, fiercely, and then ran. He had walked out into the damp and fragrant night, breathing deeply, trying to take comfort from the brightness of the mage lights set in between the plants, from the distant stars.

He had not reached the tree before they grabbed him. The box of seals had been taken from his hands, a bag of some rough fabric pulled over his head, and he had been hustled away. The cloth scratched his face, his arms were held securely and not kindly, his legs had stumbled to keep up with the pace his captors set.

Cliopher knew the palace well, but he knew the gardens best of all. The old Ystharian rose arbours had all been replaced, as his Radiancy made the magic safe, with avenues and grottoes of tropical greenery. Small retreats hung with flowering vines, benches beneath spreading jacaranda or mango trees. The paths curved to lead a wanderer soothingly through the shrubs to the places where the vista opened up across Solaara: the city of white stone, its roof tiles red and terracotta, its street markets picked out in the colourful striped awnings.

He tried to count his steps. Twelve, and then a left turn, and then forty three, and then – they spun him on the spot, several times, so that he would have lost track of all directions if he did not have his island as a sure and certain reference point. He knew, as the dizzying motion ceased and they hurried forwards again, that he had been led back into the Zuni wing at the far end, and that they had climbed three stairs before pulling him out of the corridor.

When they stopped again his hands were held behind him, by one or more people who were physically more powerful than he was. He tried to speak; at the first sound a new pressure was applied to the front of the cloth, as though another hand was holding it tightly against his mouth and nose. He sagged as far as he could, trying to breathe past the new constriction, and hung there, waiting.

Some time passed. His arms hurt. His face hurt. He could hear people speaking, but the words were quiet and distant, and muffled by the bag. As much as he strained, he couldn’t hear anything that sounded like a child’s voice at all.

Then someone spoke nearby. "Is this him?" (Accent court Shaian; voice unfamiliar; tone fraught.)

"He had the seals, all right."

"Check."

The bag was pulled back over his head, the dust making him sneeze.

His captors were indistinct figures in gauzy black robes, painful to look at directly. Some magic at work. Their faces were – their body language suggested – their eyes told him –

It was almost painful how his mind kept trying to tell him that his eyes knew what he was seeing.

The only person in the room he could look at directly was Dora who was – thank all the gods – whole and clothed and wriggling hard in the arms of the person who held her.

"Fucking hell, we did it!"

"Congratulations," he said, trying not to sound too snide. "Dora, are you –"

One of them backhanded him across the mouth, not hard. It was enough to make Dora freeze in front of him. It was enough to make him stop talking.

"Get them below," said the first voice again. It belonged to the person holding Dora, who was – they had… It was no good. His mind swore that he could give a full description in a court of law, and his eyes refused to inform him what that description was.

He had been able to see the gap in the floorboards from across the room. He had also seen the way the planks of wood were lying beside it, the chest of drawers that had obviously been shifted to one side... this was a hiding place, prepared by their captors to conceal them.

That was bad, in that they intended to keep him and Dora hidden from any rescue attempt. It was good, however, in that it hinted that they were being kept. And ‘them’ meant Dora too. He tried not to let his relief show as he was jostled to the edge of the pit. He tried to move slowly, to delay them as far as possible without making the effort obvious.

His hesitation about slipping into the darkness hardly needed exaggeration. He wasn’t about to let them throw Dora in before him, but every second he could slow them down was a second longer for the guards to reach the room. Ludvic and Rhodin would be searching. Vinyë would tell them what had happened. They would find him. They would find him, and he wouldn’t let himself worry about what happened next.

The guards trained for violence. They knew what to do, in a way that he – had never wanted. He wished that he was not so useless now. Perhaps if he could stall for long enough, it would help –

"May I ask what you intend?" He tried, sitting there at the edge.

"No." Someone pushed him from behind. His stomach lurched as he fell, but the distance was not very far. He let his legs bend under him, absorbing the shock of it as best he could. His right foot caught at an angle, twisting sideways, the sudden pain making him yelp. He did not dare stop to examine it, though, he turned as fast as he could and raised his arms just in time for Dora's solid weight to cannon into his chest.

"Ooof!" He sat down heavily, Dora on top of him, and lay there, winded. She was clinging to him, and crying, and he gripped her and wheezed comfort and watched over her shoulder as the planks above were levered back into place, blotting out the light.

He had expected to hear the sound of the chest being pulled back across the floor, but the moment the last slab of wood came down the whole space around them fell eerily, entirely silent.

"Shhh. Shh, Dora, it's me, I'm here."

"C-c-cousin Kip."

"I'm here. I've got you. We're going to be fine."

She quieted down, nestled against Cliopher's chest. He blinked against the total blackness. His eyes were not adjusting; wherever they were – an adapted guest or servant room seemed most likely – light and sound were entirely cut off.

Dora cried for a while. He held her, hoping that this was the right thing to do. It had been a long time since he last had a younger cousin entrusted to him to look after. He rubbed her back and whispered reassurances. Eventually her small shaking sobs turned into hiccups, and the hiccups stilled, and he pushed up from the floor.

"This is a strange place we're in, isn't it?"

"It's very dark," she replied, sounding small but not entirely overwhelmed. He let out a slow breath in relief at this evidence of recovery.

"They're using magic to hide us," he said. "Like they were hiding their faces."

"They are bad people and I am telling Granny and Lord Artorin about them."

"That's a good idea," he told her. "Perhaps we could see what we can find out about this place, so we know what to explain to the guards when they arrive?"

She kept a firm hold of his hand as they stood up. He bit back a curse as he tried to take his weight on his right ankle: it was certainly twisted, perhaps broken. With Dora's help he managed to hobble forward until they found a wall.

Exploring the room kept her distracted for some time. It was square, they found, and entirely without furniture. The floor was wood, polished, probably parquet. ("What's par-kay, Cousin Kip?") The door was locked, didn't have a handle, and didn't move at all as he tried to rattle it.

This must have taken considerable effort to prepare – bribery or concealment from the Palace staff, the magic working slow and subtle to pass unnoticed by the priest-wizards, the external access to Cliopher's apartments meticulously mapped out to avoid alerting the guards. Their captors were too professional to drop clues, but the noble accents and the familiarity with the Palace suggested either political or court skulduggery. Unfortunately, that did little to narrow it down.

They settled again on the floor, leaning against the wall opposite the door, Dora in his lap. She was yawning and, despite everything, the tightly curled ball of her body loosened out in his lap. It would be good for her to sleep, Cliopher thought, stroking her hair. She needed it.

He felt his own head drooping and forced himself to keep it up, leaning against the wall, stretching out his neck and upper back. His side was still sore where the protections on the doors to the Imperial Apartments had knocked him to the floor – yesterday, that had been, technically – just before midnight. He should have thought to alert his household to the disturbance... he should have realised that the chief priests would not be the only parties moving, hoping to take advantage of his Radiancy's temporary (temporary) indisposition.

He might not know exactly what these people had in mind, but they had him, a hostage for his good behaviour, and a full set of official seals – including all those appertaining to the Lord Chancellor. It was not difficult to guess that he would be asked to sign something, tomorrow.

That was not what worried him. His signature, under duress, would not be legal. As a hostage, he had little personal value; his lord would not (and should not) sacrifice the good government of the world for Cliopher's sake. His household and family knew that he had been taken; the Private Offices would not be deceived by anything delivered in his hand.

No, what worried him was the thought of what might happen next, when his captors realised that the government did not operate like clockwork. When they found that he was not the key to control, or to access, or to anything. At that point, his usefulness, and Dora's, would abruptly come to an end.

He had signed off that protocol himself. He knew what it said. He knew it was right.

He had just never imagined that there might be a child – his cousin – Dora – involved.

Chapter Text

The pillows were piled high behind me, lifting my lungs for easier breathing. The silk sheets were rumpled, as they had been these past three days and nights, with my constant uneasy movement. I could not get comfortable, however hard I tried, not with the enormous dull ache in my chest, the strange sick dizziness that came and went, and the confounded weakness in all my limbs.

It was all I could do to retain your Imperial mask against the constantly shifting maladies and mishaps of my battered body. I had barely kept it together when, the evening before, my excellent Lord Chancellor had forced his way in through the serried ranks of guard dragging the high priests of my cult – not exactly by the scruff of of necks, but nearly so – and the Commander of my guard, whom they were attempting to execute.

(Very well, I would allow that he did not have to fight his way to my side; I had long since given the order that Kip was to have access to my person at any hour of the day or night, but he had not known that and he came storming through with the light of battle in his eyes and as far as I was concerned, that amounted to the same thing.)

That had been a grisly scene. Kip had been hurt, accidentally triggering my magical protections. Anybody else, I knew, would have been killed, but Kip walked through the world cradled in my magic (the best I could manage, as it was not possible for him to lie cradled by my side.)

(Not that I knew whether Kip wanted to lie by my side, having never been free to ask him, but it would not have been possible even if he was willing, not while I was surrounded by the deadly enchantments that maintained the Imperial taboos against touch.)

Ludvic Omo, the sturdy commander, had taken grave magical injury merely from touching my bare skin to save my life when I was struck down by the heart attack that left me this weakened; that had been the reason the chief priests had given for his execution.

It had certainly been a reason but not, I thought, the only one. With my incapacity, the other pillars of state that held up the government of Zunidh suddenly looked like more valuable targets.

I rolled onto my side on the pillows again and tried to stop thinking about what that could mean for Kip, who was already shouldering so much extra work on my behalf. It would be worse still, with Ludvic temporarily relieved of his duties to undergo the rituals of purification, and with one of the chief priests dead and the other imprisoned. Kip controlled the bureaucracy; he was in sole charge of the last fully functioning element of my government, and was also my friend and confidant and the last legitimate voice of my authority left standing at this senior level. He should certainly have guards at the very least, as much as he would hate it... Tomorrow, I would tell the deputy commander, if he hadn't already...

I had just rolled over yet again and was facing the door when someone knocked. Quietly, so as not to disturb me too harshly with the sound, but insistently, so that I would have to be disturbed.

I struggled upright, breathing hard, suddenly afraid – to be woken before the dawn was no good news. Had something further happened to Ludvic?

It was Ser Rhodin an Gaiange, the deputy commander, who entered the room. He marched stiffly up to the end of my bed. I heard a muffled murmur of objection from the attendant waiting there, and Ser Rhodin's voice insisting – uncharacteristically tense, I thought, and my fluttering heart seemed to float up and out of my chest to lodge itself firmly in my gullet.

The curtain was swept aside. Ser Rhodin met my eyes. His face was greenish white, his mouth was set, and his salute trembled.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

"Tell me."

"Your Radiancy," he began, and stopped, and swallowed, and started again. "An hour ago I received a message from your Lord Chancellor's household."

My thoughts swirled furiously. No. That – that wasn't possible – it couldn't be –

"Tell me," I said again, and this time it came out with a thunderous magical echo.

Rhodin, to his credit, did not flinch. "Earlier this evening, my lord, some unknown assailants found access to one of the guest rooms in the Lord of Zunidh's apartments. They entered by stealth and abducted Lord Mdang's cousin, Dora, leaving a message instructing Lord Mdang to meet them in the gardens."

It was only a few hours ago that Kip had brought his family to visit me, that Dora had made her delightful speech thanking me for the loan of a sky ship and presenting me with a picture she had drawn herself. A picture by a child, of me and her family together. I had received no greater gift in all my time as emperor. It made it, for a moment, as though I were – I had taken it, at once, to squirrel away in my private study with all my most precious and private belongings. The thought of her being seized, being harmed, because of me, because of what I demanded of her cousin – I sank back into my pillows, powerless to stop my magic flaring bright and desperate about the bed. “Dora... is she? Is Kip...?"

Rhodin saluted again. "Lord Mdang insisted on following the instructions, your Radiancy. His sister went down with him and hid to watch. She saw three assailants take hold of your Lord Chancellor and hurry him away through the trees. She tried to follow, but she is unfamiliar with the Palace grounds, and –"

Rhodin kept talking but I was unable to listen. I sat forward, gripping the covers, panting hard against the lumpen ache in my chest.

I was seeing Kip, as he had been earlier that evening, a huddled heap of robes lying where the magic had blasted him across the floor. I had been so relieved that he was alive. I had reached out with my magic, again and again, assuring myself that his hurts were superficial, that his spirit was strong within him.

Kip had never suffered any deficit of spirit, in all the time I had known him, and he had never shown any surfeit of common sense, either.

"You are searching," I said, because of course they were. If they had found Cliopher, Rhodin would have begun by assuring me of his rescue. The only other reason a search would be halted was if... if there was no need for it, any longer, which was not the case (which could not be the case).

"Yes, your Radiancy. We are carrying out a close search of the Palace and surrounding environs, and I have alerted the Solaaran city watch and sent messengers along the courier routes in every direction. I can assure you – unless they have some arcane means of transport – that they have not travelled beyond our reach."

He kept talking, but once again I was not listening. The guard would, naturally, be using every mundane and magical trick they had to search for my missing Lord Chancellor. I could do the same.

I pulled in my magic from its careless extension across the room; this exhausted, I was handling it with effort, but it came at my command. Rhodin has a small gift of his own, and has always been clear-sighted. He started and fell silent as my power whispered past him, pouring back into me, pulling me down with it into the trance.

It has been a long time since I last sank within myself like this, without preparation, without forethought, outside my carefully arranged workroom and without the assistance of my faithful Groom of the Chamber, whose steady voice and patient care have led me back to my body more times than I can count.

The need was urgent.

Below the mundane surface the Palace of Stars was a close-crossed net of spell and cantrip: the slow building pools of power generated by the half-effective wizardries of Schooled Magic; their tighter, sharper, hybrid magic counterparts; the whippings and bindings that I had worked and re-worked so many times with my own power – wild, golden, and gloriously erratic – to mend and shape the fabric of reality in the interests of protecting my people.

I reached out, hunting for a signature I knew almost as well as my own. Better, in the same way that I knew his face and features better than my own – having gazed at them far longer – the salt-sea tang and rock-solid rootedness that I associated with Cliopher Lord Mdang.

For a terrifying moment – a mindless extension between two thuds of my stuttering heart – I could not find him at all. He was not in his apartments (I knew that) or in mine (that was not a surprise). He was – he was nearby. I could hear an echo, a presence – a real, living, definite presence – but it was muffled, somehow.

He had been taken in the gardens, so I extended myself there. The gravel of the path; the leaves of the trees; the cool night air – all whispered faintly of his presence. I could not, from here, follow it.

The need was urgent.

I came back to myself, arrowing hand over fist along the thin glassy connection that tied my wandering spirit to its physical anchor. It had been a long, long time since I forced myself out of a trance like this, but I remembered the technique. I crashed back into my body, shaking it against the bed, sitting up so abruptly that Conju, who was standing beside me, took several rapid steps backwards.

"He's – alive –" I croaked.

"Thank you, your Radiancy," Conju whispered, and I saw the moisture shining in his eyes, and remembered that he and Kip were friends, good friends. He handed me a cup of something hot and astringent; tea, with jasmine and hibiscus, sharply floral and refreshing. I drank it in one long, thirsty gulp, feeling the heat roll soothingly over the dry and claggy surface of my throat. Then I placed the cup down firmly on the tray, and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

"I can find him," I said.

"Your Radiancy!" That cry of protest was the closest that Conju had ever come to outright disagreeing with me.

"My sandals, Conju."

He brought them. I refused to dress. I stood still long enough for him to place a robe about my shoulders, and then I started for the door. My body did not want to obey: my chest was aching again, my ribs were sore, my legs felt like lead. I wanted to limp, but I could not allow that – I had to maintain you, the mask of the Emperor, and so I seized my magic and I made it hold me up: power sliding along my back to stiffen my spine, filling my legs with a frantic energy, fizzing across my arms, glowing in my skin, in my eyes – it would not last long, but it would carry me far enough.

The need was urgent.

I let the light of my magic robe me in splendour, the better to strike terror into the hearts of those I passed. I would not be stopped. I would not be set aside. I was the Lord of Zunidh, and this world knew me, and so would those malefactors who thought to gain some petty political advantage by harming my Kip, and his cousin Dora.

(I wished I had the luxury of a life that would let me be horrified by the threat to a child; I wished that I could believe that both of them were being kept safely in comfortable surroundings; I wished that I did not know how close it was possible for a man to come to death without releasing the signature of his presence in the magic of the world.)

The guards formed up behind me. I paid them no heed. The few people we met, in this grey hour before the dawn, scattered in confusion. I did not care. Nothing and nobody in the Palace of Stars could stand against me. Nothing in all the Nine Worlds could hold me back.

The gardens were full of shadows and whispers, roused by my careless shaking of their magic earlier. I stopped at the door, close to the place where he had been. The echoes were loud, here. I followed them: along the path, along another path, a small curve round and then back inside, into the Zuni wing. Halls. Stairs. An unremarkable corridor of guest bedrooms.

A door, barred shut. The correct thing to do would have been to let my guards knock and demand entry, to let these eager young men go before me with their spears out.

I did not, at that moment, care for the proper thing to do. I was Lord of Zunidh; nobody in this building could stand against me. I looked at the door, and it evaporated into a flood of fragments too fine even to be called splinters; my magic sent the cloud of sawdust flying before me into the room.

In here there were six people, wearing black robes. With a flick of my hand, three were pressed up against the left wall. With another flick, the other three were held against the right wall. They struggled, and I breathed out, increasing the pressure of the blankets of air that held them fixed in place. I strode into the centre of the room, ignoring them: they were, for now, unimportant.

I stopped, temporarily stymied. Kip had been in here. I was sure of it. There were no other doors. Unless they had passed him out of the window – but no, the sense of his presence was close. So close, it seemed to be coming from all around me – and yet – it was still muffled.

The need was urgent.

I drew in my breath. I wanted to grip these weeping, black-clad fools by the throat. I wanted to take the one closest to me, to the door, and hold her up in my magic, slowly constricting it around her until she felt a fraction of the heavy vise of rage and guilt and terror pounding through my veins. I wanted to make her beg for mercy, and then deny it.

That would not help Kip. And he would not approve of it. I had to shut my eyes and count, slowly, breathing in and out. I had reached the low thirties before I was confident that I could do what I had in mind without my magic breaking free.

I released the woman. She sagged to the ground.

"Where," you enquired icily, in the Emperor's voice, "is Our Lord Chancellor? And his cousin?"

The woman looked up at me. She was wrapped about in an unhealthy magical shroud, dark and rotten and distressing. A death had been involved in creating it, I thought, the death of some higher creature – a dog, perhaps, or a monkey – possibly even a willing human. I felt sick.

"He's safe," she said. "Let us go, and I'll –"

I roared and slammed her back against the walls, then stood there, trembling. "You are in no position to make demands," I hissed.

"Then I am saying nothing."

I could – I wanted to – it would be so easy – to hurt her. But her suffering would not help Kip.

I could not keep this up for long. I was drawing on my deep reserves, and my heart attack had (in some strange way) involved my power, and magic had been extended in healing me for days. I had no idea how long I could last. I had to find him, quickly, before...

I waved the guards forward. "Arrest them." At least that would take one source of strain away. For the rest –

It was a puzzle. A magical one. I gritted my teeth and extended my senses again.

The floor. The rest of the room was warded, in various ways, none of them a match for me – but the floor was something else entirely. Thick-woven with hidden sigils, each plank scored with runes, each gap between filled with more of that strange seeping blackness that was only clearly visible to my uncanny sight.

"The floor," I said, stepping back to let the guards lead the hapless conspirators away. "They've done something to the floor."

There were more guards available. At least three shifts of them; all the reserves must have sprung into action. I let them past and leaned against the door frame. Just a little longer – I had to – ah, there – "Under that chest of drawers!"

Ser Rhodin was in the room now, coordinating their efforts. Two of my inner guard – Pikabe and Varro – lifted the furniture away. Rhodin himself crouched down and pulled a dagger, testing the edges of the floorboards. "Here!"

I was suddenly beside them, as they pulled the planks away.

There was, under the floor, a hidden room.

There was no ladder.

There was, from below, a faint cry, a child, suddenly stifled.

The need was urgent.

I stepped into the gap and lowered myself: levitating, glowing, golden, exhausted, desperate, down into the darkness beneath.

I stumbled forward, as I hit the floor, steadied myself, and saw –

Kip. Kip was there. Kip was alive. His face was streaked with dust and tears, his clothes were smudged and dirty. He was holding his small cousin on his lap, his hand placed gently over her lips.

His grip was loose; she squirmed out of it. "Lord Artorin! You came!"

Dora knew that she was not supposed to touch me. She had been told that I was sacred, like the statues in the temples, that it was dangerous.

She was eight. She had been terrified, and she saw - I had no idea what she saw, except that she was bounding up, her face bright with welcome. It struck me to the heart, that she saw me as a friendly figure – as her rescuer – despite my furious golden aura. Dora certainly didn’t deserve to see the person she reached out to for help retreat from her on a wave of furious fear. Unwisely, I hesitated.

Kip saw the danger and came to his feet, but he was unsteady on them, slower than usual. Dora danced towards me. I took an unsteady step back. Too slow.

"Dora, stop!" Kip, frantic, flung himself forward. He tripped, and almost tackled his young cousin, but did not manage to redirect her momentum. I had backed all the way to the far wall, my hands up in futile denial –

Somehow, Kip managed to twist his body as it was moving through the air, rolling sideways so that he and Dora were falling together, with him underneath – I cried out, as they hurtled towards me – as –

It was Kip, wrapped entirely around Dora, who hit me in the centre of my chest. It was Kip, my deft bureaucrat, my peerless and coordinated Lord Chancellor, who knocked me back against the wall. He shoved Dora away from him, at the last moment, and his hands came up, and –

I took them.

I didn't mean to, but that final burst of energy had expended the last of my magic, and I felt myself falling back down a deep, dark hole, and – Kip was reaching for me, and he had been my friend, my lifeline, for so long. I had neither the strength nor the presence of mind to stop myself from reaching back.

There was a snap, a spark, a sputter, and all my golden light went out. My hands flooded with warmth, and I yelped and tried to let go (not that it would make any difference, not that anything could save him, from the searing heat of my touch, from the flames, from –)

I was slumped back against the wall. Kip was lying on top of me. In the darkness, the place where our hands was brilliant with – not with fire, but with the gleam of gold.

I was suffused with shock, floating on a tidal wave of astonishment, of terror, of –

My lord – my lord – Tor –

That sounded like Kip's voice, low and sweet and – with a sob in it – but that couldn't be true, because he had landed on me and I had taken his hands and he would burn –

A flood of anguish. Oh, my lord, please – please be all right –

A long strange flurry of confused impressions. There was that voice, which was curiously without an echo. There were hands, gripping mine. There was dampness, falling on my face? Or was that the fire licking against me as he burned?

"Cousin Kip, is Lord Artorin...?"

Dora would surely not be asking questions if Kip was burning - perhaps - I hoped -

"I – I don't know, Dora – please, will you go and shout for the guards to run and fetch his healer? Her name is Domina Audry."

Dora's feet pattered away across the floor, and then I heard her shouting, her voice high and scared. I was scared, too. Why did Kip need Domina Audry? Was he hurt? Why couldn't I tell?

The guards know field medicine, I thought, muzzily.

How are they with magical over-extension, the response whipped back. This is all my fault, I should have been more careful.

I blinked, slowly. My eyelids seemed weighted with lead.

He had answered my thoughts.

This is not your fault, Kip.

A shocked pause. Evidently that was not a thought that Kip could confuse for his own.

My – Tor?

Kip. I could not seem to talk, but this – whatever it was – this last gasp of my power was flowing between us, carrying crystal-sharp his concern and fear and remorse. I pushed back, trying to forcibly bury him in my care, in my delight at finding him, in my sheer, joyous relief. He was alive. He had not burned.

Our hands were still, incredibly, clasped together. I gripped his fingers, tightly, trying to assure myself that he was real, that he was with me. My hands shook. Kip.

Chapter Text

Dora was warm in Cliopher's arms, her breathing slow and peaceful, her small form scrunched up against his side. Otherwise the room was cold, for a man wearing nothing more than his nightwear; the palace enchantments generally kept the air cooler than Cliopher found comfortable without the layers of his official robes.

The darkness of their prison was so absolute that he found his eyes fashioning odd flickers of light to focus on. He blinked away a series of swirled waves, like the Mdang family patterns, and a dozen or more indecipherable lines of almost-letters that drifted before his vision.

He wasn't sure whether he ought to be staying awake, to be alert to any changes, or let himself drop off, to be as ready as he could be for... whatever came next. Sleep would hardly be restful, with his ankle throbbing, and it was (or he thought it had been) in the late hours of the night. They might not have long to wait before –

At least he was here and Dora was no longer alone. He might be able to persuade them to let her go, with the hint that it would make the Palace more amenable to negotiation over him. (It wouldn't. But their captors had some plan in mind that they thought would work, and would be reluctant to accept that it was hopeless.)

There was no reliable way to track the passage of time, here in the gloom, but he had made his way through about a quarter of the first day of the Lays before there was a change – a scraping noise, extremely loud in the absence of any other sound – and a flood of blessed, welcome light.

Dora woke with a cry. He put his hand over her mouth, gently but firmly. Best not to remind their captors of their double prize, if possible. Best to see if he could leave her down here, when they extracted him, so that she did not have to see any – discomfort. He looked down, meeting her eyes. "We're going to be brave, Dora, and try a trick. Quietly now."

She nodded at his whisper, and he lifted his hand, all but one finger on her lips.

"Has anybody ever sung you the story of Aurora?" he asked. "No? Well, if you're very good and quiet, when I get back I'll share it. We might find some ideas –"

He broke off, because there were steps up above, and then – improbably, incredibly – there was someone standing in the gap that made up the entrance to this hiding-hole. Cliopher had time to register a pair of jewelled sandals, and the fluttering hem of pale silky robes, and then the thin beam of light pouring down became a furious flood of gold. His eyes watered. His vision gave way to the glory – to the sunrise – it was – the colour was –

His Radiancy, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Sun-on-Earth, Protector of his People, the Shield of Astandalas, the Heart of the Empire – his Emperor, Cliopher's Emperor – was descending through the gap in the floorboards with all the slow and serene majesty of his full Presence.

All Cliopher could think was this isn't the protocol.

In the blaze of his Radiancy's magic their room was revealed as a bare wooden box, scribbled about with unrecognisable symbols. The light pouring from the Emperor was far brighter than the standard Palace mage lights in the room above. Cliopher blinked and gaped.

Dora, with the sturdy good cheer of an irrepressible morning person, bounced up from his lap. Cliopher's grip on her had loosened, in his distraction, and his hands closed on thin air as she slipped forward, shouting happily, "Lord Artorin! You came!"

Cliopher's heart seemed to plummet through the floor – he was too tired, too stupid, too slow; he pushed himself to his feet, moving as fast as he could, feeling as though his limbs were dragging in the air.

His Radiancy's eyes widened – the sheer alarm twisting through his serenity amplified Cliopher's panic.

Cliopher's feet were underneath him, now, but Dora was several steps away, and his ankle would not take his weight. It slid away beneath him, and he rolled with it. "Dora, stop!"

She either did not hear or did not understand, and he couldn't run with his foot like this, so he threw himself bodily towards Dora, hoping desperately that he would be in time.

The Sun-on-Earth had raised his hands, and was backing away, but there was nowhere for him to go. Cliopher pushed off with his good foot as he went, so that he was turning in the air, scooping his startled cousin up and thrusting her aside.

That left, of course, the problem of his own headlong flight across the room. Dora stumbled and fell to one side, and Cliopher curled into himself, trying to tuck his head down into his chest, to keep his robes between his body and – he brought his hands up, hoping to somehow catch the wall on either side of the Emperor, and push himself off – and – he had no idea – collapse into full prostration and pray that nobody had a particularly inventive punishment lined up for a wretch who managed to physically knock the Last Emperor of Astandalas into a wall –

His head was down, his eyes averted. He didn't see the moment when his Radiancy reached back. He felt it, though, with his entire body, when the palms of his outstretched hands were caught and held.

There was a snap, and a shock, as though the entire world had crashed to a halt around him.

Cliopher had been falling. He was not falling any more. The room had been flooded with exultant waves of light and magic. They were suddenly snuffed out. He had been full of awe, of terror, of astonishment, and all these emotions were doubled and redoubled in a great shout within him. It was deafening. He could only cling, and shudder, and the power rocked through him.

And then – it was over. Cliopher was lying sprawled on his front on something – on someone – soft. His arms were outstretched. His hands were warm and tingling all over, as if he had plunged them into a slightly too-hot bath. And underneath him, slumped down against the wall, his lord – his friend – his Radiancy – was lying entirely limp, his face caught bright in profile by the shaft of light that came down through the gap in the ceiling above them. His eyes were shut.

Cliopher's mind, for half a second, refused to accept what he was seeing. His heart cried out within him. My lord – my lord – my Tor –

He had not dared to use that name, that private name that his Radiancy had hinted might be acceptable. He hardly allowed himself to think it, but... he did think it, in the quiet depths of his soul, and the still features in front of him were too open, too vulnerable, too human for him to think anything else. Oh, my lord, please – please be all right – his Radiancy was supposed to be in bed, his Radiancy was recovering from a heart attack, his Radiancy was badly, badly ill. What had possessed him to come here, in all the flood of his magic?

Cliopher was crying. Their hands were clasped tightly together. He could feel the real, solid, welcome warmth of his Radiancy's fingers interwoven between his. There was a brightness between their hands, a golden glow, the last remaining flicker of that fire that had blazed in glory. He didn't dare let go.

"Cousin Kip, is Lord Artorin...?"

Dora. Dora was there. "I – I don't know, Dora – please, will you go and shout for the guards to run and fetch his healer? Her name is Domina Audry."

Blessedly, Dora asked no questions. She shouted, and someone was answering her, but Cliopher had no attention to spare. He couldn't take his eyes off the man beneath him: the smooth dark head, lying loosely back against the scraped wooden wall, the – he gulped – the intricate embroidered nightgown? How...? His Radiancy was lying underneath Cliopher, his body long and slim and warm, and he was wearing his nightgown, which was – and his eyes were closed –

The guards must be nearby. The Emperor always had his guards. The guards know field medicine. The thought rose from somewhere deep under his conscious mind, and he sparked a bitter reflection. How are they with magical over-extension? This is all my fault, I should have been more careful.

A new thought arrived from the same depths, crisp and clear: This is not your fault, Kip.

Cliopher shook his head. That... that wasn't his thought – and it came with a flood of – concern, even affection. Comfort, which was the last thing Cliopher felt like he deserved. It was as though –

Carefully, delicately, cupping the strange sensation like a man catching a spark from a firestick in a tangle of coconut husks and sheltering it from the wind, Cliopher thought back My – Tor?

Kip, came the response, at once, along with another burst of that – that delight, that warmth, that – joy. Kip.

There were tears leaking from behind his Radiancy's closed lids. They glittered on his still cheeks. The emotion flooding through Cliopher's mind was pure and passionate relief, undeniable, and under that something warmer, deeper, a nameless thing that Cliopher had perhaps glimpsed once or twice in his Radiancy's - in Tor's - rare flashes of... It was too much to absorb. His eyes focused on the flames. There was not exactly pain, just heat and tingling, but - the presumption -

My lord, you're – I'm sorry – my hands –

Don't let go, his Radiancy replied, at once.

I – I won't, I promise.

For a few moments there was silence, there was nothing else in the universe but the sound of their ragged breathing. Even Dora had fallen quiet, and whoever had been answering her was no longer shouting back.

The approbation, the delight, coming from his Radiancy was not lessening, but under and around it Cliopher was becoming aware of several less pleasant sensations. There was the sharp ache in his ankle – he understood that – but there was also a strange filmy tiredness in his mind, and a strain on his lungs, and a soreness in his ribs that made breathing difficult. His heart felt – odd – leaden and heavy in his breast, beating steadily but under strain.

His Radiancy's grip on his hands had loosened. The sense of that other presence in his mind was... fading.

Hold on, Tor he thought, desperately.

Kip – I –

A hand touched Cliopher's back. He jumped and overbalanced, landing flat on his stomach across his lord's body. He felt, all the way across his own chest, the doubled shock of that tumble, the way it crunched into a body already sore and over-strained. Sorry, sorry –

Not. Your. Fault. The words were accompanied by the distinct sense of rolling eyes.

"Cliopher, can you hear me?"

That was Rhodin. "Yes?"

"Can you let go of his Radiancy's hands?"

"I – I don't think that would be a good idea," he said. He wasn't sure why, but the strange golden flames flickering under his fingers seemed – he could not let that fire die – never mind the burn of it – I don't think I should let go.

Don't.

"He says I shouldn't."

"Does he." There was a short pause. "How?"

"In – in my mind – I can hear him."

"Ah. Yes. Of course. Cliopher, I'm sorry, we can't leave you here. This place is cursed. Literally, I mean, there are curses carved into every corner – it's a trap. For him."

Cliopher's shock and distress ran through his mind like lightning, meeting a roar of anger and remorse coming the other way. I should have known he-they-he thought.

If there was danger, now was not the time for regret. "What do you need?"

"I'm going to lift you, and you're going to lift his Radiancy, and Varro here is going to slide a fabric sling underneath him. Very carefully, aren't you, Varro? And Cliopher, you're going to keep hold of his hands, and – I'm afraid you'll have to sit on top of him, while we lift the sling – can you do that for me?"

"Yes."

"Good. So tell me, please, what we're about to do. So that I know you understand."

"You're going to lift me, and I'm going to hold onto his Radiancy's hands so he lifts up, and Varro is going to get a fabric sling under him, and then you're going to winch – both of us? – up out of this room." This room. Which was a trap. For the Last Emperor of Astandalas and Lord of Zunidh. What a – how had they – how could anyone have guessed that the Lord of Rising Stars would come in person to find his Lord Chancellor?

The way I feel about you is hardly a secret, my dear Kip.

Cliopher felt the tide of a blush flooding across his face. Surely that could not mean –

Strong hands took hold of him, and he was lifted up. He gripped his Radiancy's hands tighter and pulled as hard as he could. The emperor's body shifted, horribly floppy. Fabric moved. Cliopher was released, and collapsed back down, panting hard. Sorry, he thought, vaguely, as the fabric rose around them and they swung, adrift from floor and walls.

I can't think what for, his lord replied.

Everything.

Cliopher Lord Mdang, you are not responsible for everything. And everything you are responsible for is a joy.

Cliopher's blush grew deeper, hot across his cheeks. The sling swung sideways, bumping against a wall. It reached the gap in the planks. With his lord's body lying unresponsive beneath him, it was an inexpressible relief to hear his thoughts. I'm squashing you, he thought, determined to keep the conversation going.

A joy, repeated his lord.

Cliopher was smiling as his head rose up out of the pit.

There were more guards here, waiting to catch the sling, to move them across onto the solid floor. Conju was behind them, wearing the delicate linen gloves the attendants sometimes used, and with him was, to Cliopher's relief, Domina Audry.

"Don't separate them!" Rhodin shouted, from down below.

A complicated manoeuvre followed, which ended with his Radiancy lying on a litter and Cliopher squatting awkwardly beside it, still holding his hands. The golden light was far less evident up here.

"What's wrong with Lord Artorin?" That was Dora.

"I'm going to find out," said Domina Audry. "Why don't you sit next to me, and hold this scanning wand? There, thank you dear."

Dora's all right, Cliopher reported, and felt some part of his lord's worry relax.

How about you?

I'm fine. It's you we're worried about.

Your ankle is broken.

My lord, Cliopher thought back, reproachfully, Your ribs. Your heart. You are under a curse. My ankle can wait.

Tell Domina Audry -

Why don't you sit up, suggested Cliopher, and tell her yourself?

There was a startled silence in his mind, and then a peal of echoing, silent laughter, so unlike any sound that Cliopher had heard his Radiancy make aloud that he gasped.

Domina Audry froze. "Is his Radiancy...?"

"He's laughing," said Cliopher, in wonderment.

"And you can hear him?" The Domina sounded sceptical. He could hardly blame her.

"Yes."

"Hmm." She took another lens from her bag, peered through it, and sat back on her haunches. "There is some connection there. I would suggest calling the chief priests of the Ouranatha through for a wizardly opinion, but I understand that Lord Iprenna is under guard and Lord Bavezh is no longer with us."

"I have some slight magical sensitivity, Domina," said Rhodin. "That pit the conspirators constructed is an abomination. The walls are covered in vile words of power; the entire space is cocooned in a blackness that is designed to separate the victim from the world and render him helpless, using his own magic."

Cliopher shuddered.

What is it? asked his Radiancy.

He hesitated. This seemed cruel, but – he would want to know, if it was him. The room was a trap. Designed to use your magic to cut you off from the world.

A wave of fear. His lord's presence, pressing up against his mind. You saved me – Kip – please –

I have you, Tor, I promise I won't let you go.

Chapter Text

Cliopher felt as though his mind was balanced, precariously, on top of a narrow plank above the opening to the pit. Somewhere below him – in the darkness – unseen but anchored firmly in the warmth between his fingers – his Radiancy was dangling.

The curtains had been drawn up around them, giving some privacy, and they were being carried back to the Imperial Apartments with the closest thing to haste the imperial palanquin allowed.

He could see, he could tell, that the emperor was in fact lying on the litter in front of him. He could see the empty stillness of the Sun-on-Earth's smooth features, the silken spread of his nightgown. Cliopher was kneeling at his waist; the litter was not intended for two, and he had had no choice but to tuck his knees either side of his lord's narrow hips so that he could hold this position and keep holding those hands.

After a rapid conference, Rhodin had slipped away to find more specialist expert help. Beyond the curtains Cliopher could hear the rapid footsteps of everyone else who had been in the room: the guards all around them, the crisp staccato of Domina Audry, following closely, the scurrying sound of Dora as she kept up. "What's happening to Cousin Kip and Lord Artorin?"

The crisp tones of Domina Audry. "Your cousin and the emperor are having a magical problem, Dora."

"Why?" A slight quaver. "Was – was it my fault?"

"No."

She has that right, his Radiancy commented.

You can hear them?

Distantly. I – I think I'm hearing with your ears. Beloved.

There was a burning moment of embarrassed internal silence, and then Cliopher cleared his throat and updated Domina Audry.

"Thank you, Lord Mdang. If either of you realise anything else – anything at all – about your situation, please draw it to my attention immediately."

"Was it the bad people?" asked Dora, with the persistence that Cliopher had come to recognise and enjoy.

"I suspect it was several people," said the Domina. "The people who made the bad magic, yes, and also your cousin, and the magic around the emperor. Perhaps when we get you all somewhere safe, you can help me figure it out."

Cliopher was struggling to keep his balance - to stay in this place where he could hear outwards and inwards at the same time. The only certain thing in the medley of sensations was the warm pressure under his fingers, the heat surrounding his hands. He was finding it difficult to judge the passage of time, or how far they had travelled, and it came as a surprise when the litter was lowered to the ground and the curtains pulled back.

We're in the Imperial Bedchamber, he reported, I – they're going to move us into the bed, together. I'm sorry for the liberty, my lord –

I'm not. A rush of – warmth, acceptance. Beloved. A second time, and – dare he think it – deliberately.

My – Tor – Cliopher could feel his own emotions rising in response, the wave of feeling that he had always, always, pressed back. Refused to acknowledge. Known was impossible. And yet, in the wake of that ringing affirmation, it was suddenly more than certain. It was necessary. Beloved.

In front of him, the Emperor's limp form was being settled on the bed. Conju an Vilius, the Groom of the Chamber, was adjusting the lace at the neck of the splendid night robe. He drew back, startled. Cliopher saw again the tears leaking from his Radiancy's closed eyes. His heart clenched within him at this vulnerability – this helplessness.

I'm sorry, Tor whispered within him.

Don't be sorry. He thought, fiercely. Not for tears. They're – you need –

I need you.

You have me. Always. Beloved.

The tame fire in Cliopher's hands flickered a little warmer, a little brighter. "He's still here," he reported, "He's – we're –" he had to wipe his own face, as best he could, on the shoulder of his own flannel nightgown. "We're sharing emotions."

Conju was suddenly there, with a warm towel. "Let me, my dear."

Cliopher shut his eyes to let his friend clean his face.

That's darker, Tor commented.

Temporary, he promised, and opened them again as soon as he could. Across the room, Domina Audry was patiently examining Dora. I think the Domina is going to make some comparisons. I don’t know how much you heard, but Rhodin's gone to see if he can find a priest-wizard we can trust, who can help.

A bitter internal laugh, again freer and more natural than any emotion his Radiancy had ever expressed in front of Cliopher before. Now that would be a feat.

I told him to ask my office for help. They keep their own tabs on their wizardly counterparts.

Oh?

We have to understand something about their work. To understand the budgets they propose. And it's not as if they volunteer any information.

A happier sense of amusement. Always going above and beyond.

I have a good team, he agreed. So do you. Conju's looking after us. I think someone has gone for my family, but –

He broke off. Domina Audry was leading Dora back towards them. "Lord Mdang, my assistant here is going to take some readings."

Dora's scanning us with the Domina's devices, he reported. Can you see –?

Only light or dark, colours and impressions, Tor hesitated, then added, I can feel pressure, and heat, in my hands. I can hear something of what you hear, distantly, as if through thick gauze. I can tell when you shut your eyes. Otherwise... It's not even cold. It's just... nothingness.

Cliopher shuddered. There was both tension and fear there – even terror – and he could taste the edges of it, even though Tor was reining it in with fierce determination. "He can feel my hands, and hear a little of what I'm hearing, and tell when I shut my eyes," he reported.

"Thank you." Domina Audry nodded to Dora. "And thank you, my dear."

Dora gave a small wiggle and handed the narrow white wand back to the physician. Cliopher was heartened again to see how she had bounced back.

"So, my lords." The Domina folded her arms and spoke clearly. "Without an arcane expert I can only make a tentative series of observations. Can his Radiancy hear me?"

Yes.

"Yes."

"Good. Your Radiancy, this is an unprecedented situation, in all the records I have inherited as your personal physician. Even before the Fall it had been many years since any of your predecessors was able to touch another person without triggering a fatal convulsion of the taboos surrounding the Emperor. I have not yet had time to examine Commander Omo, though I plan to do so with all due haste, to understand the impact of your touch at present."

"Can you examine me instead?" Cliopher asked, at once. He would prefer not to summon Ludvic from his bed again, after the terrible scene earlier.

"This is the chief complication, I am afraid. My lord Mdang, what has happened between you and his Radiancy is evidently not the same as the Commander's experience. Commander Omo bears the imprint of his Radiancy's magic on his arms, but that has not as I understand it led to any further bond between him and his Radiancy?"

No... I don't believe so, said Tor, but he sounded uncertain. I have been ill, and I suppose I might not have known – but... I haven't noticed anything of the sort. A small burst of amusement, slightly forced. I’m sure I would have noticed something like this!

Despite everything, Cliopher felt a tiny coal of warmth kindle in his heart at the thought that he had formed a bond with Tor that was different – closer – more intimate in every way – than the relationship marked by the banners of his Radiancy's affection on Ludvic's strong arms.

Kip! This was genuine amusement. Were you jealous? You were!

He had been. He could feel his face heating. Sorry.

Please don't be, said Tor, I love your blushes.

"You certainly know how to summon them," Cliopher muttered, and then realised that that had been out loud. Mortified, he looked down at their joined hands. "Er..."

"Please relax as much as you can, your Excellency," said Domina Audry, sympathetically. "Your position must be distracting."

Conju had finished settling them both on the bed, and was pulling additional cushions up to support Cliopher in his half-kneeling position across his Radiancy's legs. "That's one way of putting it," he said, quietly, in Cliopher's ear.

Internally, Cliopher felt Tor shake with laughter again.

You're ganging up on me, he complained to Tor, and added out loud, "His Radiancy agrees that this is different from the situation with Ludvic."

"Thank you. There are several factors that might explain the difference: those primarily affecting his Radiancy; those primarily affecting yourself, Lord Mdang; and the circumstances which shaped the moment for both of you. I am not going to anticipate a full magical examination, but my working assumption is that the nature of the trap was to keep his Radiancy alive but insensate, to recreate the circumstances of his long sleep following the Fall, and that it had some purchase on you too due to your long working relationship and the signature of his Radiancy's magic in your body. Did you find yourself growing drowsy, during your imprisonment?"

"Yes," he whispered, horrified. "I thought – yesterday was a long day, and I hadn't slept much – I thought –"

He felt Tor catch and amplify and echo his horror, and both of them shook a little. Conju frowned, and placed a warm towel on his Radiancy's forehead.

Oh! Something feels better!

"He felt that! It's a hot towel, T- my lord!"

"A good sign, I hope," Domina Audry made a note. "So. You were both affected by the curse, but it did not fully activate until its intended victim was within reach, and then it may have been delayed by the exercise of your magic, your Radiancy. Until a moment when you were distracted."

"By me." Oh, Tor, I'm so sorry.

He felt a wordless denial of his guilt, and once again that blazing affirmation seized him like a flood. No apologies.

"As far as I can determine, your involvement at the moment that the curse took hold is the only reason that it did not seize his Radiancy entirely." Domina Audry gave Cliopher a stern look. "You were only partially affected, and you are already surrounded by – permeated by – his Radiancy's power. You were, somehow, able to provide him with a narrow route out of the intended sleep. A route that appears to run through your senses, your mind, and your emotions."

You saved me, if Tor had been speaking aloud, the words would have been breathy, even awed. Again. A confused welter of impressions and emotions came with the words, a medley of images of – himself, mostly. Younger. Bent over his desk. Raising his head to meet his lord's eyes. Looking – smug, annoyed, amused. A tiny ripple of sound, as he hummed Aurora.

I don't look like that... I don't do that... do I?

There were no words in response, merely a rock-solid certainty that this, this, was Cliopher Mdang, and that he was – to his Radiancy –

He could not face it. He fled back to the surface of his awareness. "How can we bring him back?"

"That, unfortunately, I cannot say," his Radiancy's personal physician looked smaller and older than usual. "I never imagined... I would usually consult with the priest-wizards on an emergency of this magnitude, but..."

It's not her fault, either.

"He says it's not your fault." Cliopher blinked again. His eyes were watering. "I'll stay here as long as I'm needed. But – can you – please can somebody tie our hands together? In case I fall asleep?"

"You should sleep," said Conju at once.

Is it safe?

"He wants to know if it's safe for me to sleep?" Cliopher tried to keep his worry from his voice, aware of Dora's presence.

"I – cannot be certain," Domina Audry admitted.

Let go, said Tor, at once, Kip, let go. Don't be trapped with me. I need you to let go now. That's an order, Cliopher. Lord Mdang, let go of my hands this instant. Don't be an idiot.

Cliopher had always found it easier to disregard an order he disagreed with if he did not acknowledge it. He ignored Tor now, in favour of watching as Conju took hold of the closest of their clasped hands and began binding them together with a long narrow band of white silk.

Kip, you're exhausted. You can't do this. Please. Please. Let go.

Never.

"In that case," he said aloud, "may I have some coffee?"

He felt better when his hands were tied around their fire. The silk was fine enough to be partially translucent, and he could see the glow – faint, but persistent. Stubborn, even.

This was not a comfortable position for his body, kneeling over his Radiancy, but it was better than lying down and risking drowsiness. His mind was noting a certain strain from holding the balance. It was not insurmountable. He could do this. He could keep this up for a long time, if he had to.

I promised not to leave you, he reminded Tor, and he showed him why. His Radiancy, pacing in the beautiful study; his Radiancy speaking, shaping the government, shaping the world; his Radiancy, singing, conjuring wonders of despair, and drama, and delight. His Radiancy, sitting next to Cliopher on a sandbar.

His Radiancy, moving his hand in a desperate, aborted gesture; the tiny indication that had meant more to Cliopher than any honour or achievement of his long career, than any other validation ever could –

A warm towel dabbed against Cliopher's face again. "I do not wish to interrupt whatever you are both finding so fascinating," said Conju, "but your family is outside seeking admittance, Cliopher."

Let them in, Tor said at once, the words laden with a curious coruscation of anticipation and concern.

Cliopher passed this on, then straightened his spine and tried to maintain his dignity as the Mdang contingent flowed into the room in a burst of energy, confusion, chatter, and angry love. Aunt Oura and Dora embraced. Eidora and Vinyë marched directly towards the bed. Quintus and Zemius trailing behind them.

"Sayora Mdang," Conju murmured smoothly, stepping across in front of the bed, although his aristocratic soul must be withering at this assault on protocol. "Please give his Radiancy and Cliopher space; they are under the effects of a curse worked by the malefactors who kidnapped his young cousin."

"Conju!" cried Eidora, "What a pleasant surprise!"

"Enchanted to see you, Eidora, my dear."

Conju knows your mother?

They get on disturbingly well, Cliopher was having trouble splitting his attention between his Radiancy, and tracking the profusion of Mdangs. Dora had drawn Domina Audry across to introduce to Aunt Oura. Quintus and Zemius had stopped uneasily in the centre of the room. Neither his mother nor his sister seemed daunted by the presence of the guards, of the apparently unconscious emperor, of Conju, or of the magnificence of their surroundings.

"What happened to Kip?" Vinyë asked, bluntly.

Conju spread his fingers slightly, in a subtle court gesture of apology that neither Vinyë nor Eidora would recognise. "We don't know."

"I'm fine," Cliopher said.

Eidora, stepping to one side, got a clear view of the situation on the bed. "Well," she said. It was a freighted syllable.

"Hello Mama." He tried for routine good cheer, but it came out sounding a little desperate.

Within him, Tor sent a slight questioning feeler across their shared consciousness. Cliopher's attention was too divided to hold back his true emotions: the flood of chagrin, love, and shame that curled through all his interactions with Eidora Mdang. Tor shivered back in confusion.

It's complicated, Cliopher told him.

The wave of reassurance, of support, of – affection he felt from Tor in response nearly took his breath away. He straightened, taking heart. "There was an accident," he said. "A magical... complication." He took a breath. "Dora was taken in order to lay a trap for my lord. I – was caught up in it, somehow. I have to stay here, until we can be – disentangled."

Eidora Mdang turned at once to Conju, her face hard. "I'm so sorry, my dear," said Conju, at once. "That's as much as the physician could tell us."

"Is this dangerous?" Vinyë had come right to the edge of the bed, but she stopped at Cliopher's instinctive flinch.

"How long will this take?" asked Eidora, suspiciously, at almost the exact same time.

Neither of them were, Cliopher noted, talking to him.

Why is she so...? Tor sounded uncertain. Cliopher wasn't even sure he'd intended to share that question.

She's never forgiven me for leaving, he replied, and then to his own surprise added, After my father died – and Navalia… the words in the thought trailed off, swamped in a flood of emotion and association. Of course Eidora Mdang had wanted to keep her son close, having lost both husband and daughter.

Cliopher had no idea how much of his dawning shame, anger, and distress was seeping through his connection with Tor. He was astonished at the return tide of welcome, of sorrow, of a warmth too wide and powerful to look at, to name –

"Kip?"

"Sorry, Mama," he tried again to focus. "I'm afraid this is – distracting."

"I can see that." The matriarch of the Mdangs had been honing the dry edge of that tone for decades.

Cliopher hid his wince with the familiarity of long practice, and also managed to hide his reaction to Tor's small spurt of anger on his behalf. This was – this was all too much to process. But he could at least be polite for his family. "I'm afraid his Radiancy and I are – are sharing a mental connection. I can hear him, hear his thoughts, but the curse is keeping him trapped in his body otherwise. It is – a little difficult to focus."

Vinyë hooked her arm through their mother's. "Come on, Mama, let's find a seat for you."

"Let me at least make you comfortable, Eidora," Conju's tone was wheedling. "We have no idea how long this will last. Let me bring padded chairs for both of you, Sayora."

Cliopher let out a slow breath as his Mama let herself be drawn aside. He watched as Conju settled them, mercifully far enough from the bed that he would be able to speak quietly without them overhearing every word.

"Sir?"

"Yes?" he said, automatically, and then "Franzel? What are you doing here?"

"Coffee, your Excellency?" Franzel offered, in lieu of a response, lifting a delicate china cup to Cliopher's lips. Cliopher sipped gratefully. It was a strong Vangavayen blend, so exactly what he needed that he felt himself shivering all over.

He's here to look after you, my dear idiot, said Tor, Conju assured me that he would adopt you on sight, when we appointed him. Conju, and this came with a certain tinge of satisfaction, is never wrong.

Conju was, in fact, showing the excellence of his instincts by transferring his attentions entirely to Eidora and Vinye. He was fussing around them with every sign of attention, almost as though they were - Cliopher knew that neither would recognise the honour he was doing them, but –

Franzel refilled the cup again and held it patiently for Cliopher to drink. "Thank you," he said again, in between mouthfuls.

"My pleasure, Sir."

The coffee did help. Cliopher's head was clearing. He was vividly aware of the presence of the Sun-on-Earth, blazing against his hands, blazing in his thoughts.

This never came up in any of the etiquette manuals I studied. And I read everything I could get my hands on.

Tor's laughter was bright within him, with that slight edge of panic. That was the part of the exams that you found challenging, he observed.

I was highly motivated to understand why I kept failing. Cliopher shut his eyes, remembering. I had seen a portrait, he said, the first one that was distributed, after your coronation. I – I saw it, and I knew I had to go to meet this Emperor. Someone from the Vangavaye-ve always goes. To see if – well, we remember Aurelius, and –

Aurelius Magnus and the Seafarer King, the thought came with a few echoes – lines from a famous Shaian historical play, a trickle of notes that Cliopher recognised as the chorus from an opera on the same theme, an echo of Cliopher's own voice, describing the great friendship of his ancestor in a few measly sentences, on their holiday on Lesuia. You – you came for me?

Yes, he said, letting Tor see the truth of it in his emotions. I knew, when I saw that picture of you – I knew our fates were intertwined. Or could be. I've never believed in the inevitability of fate, but – the choice was there. My future was there. In that little golden portrait, that Saya Dorn had ordered for her shrine – she was an old lady I knew, a wizard who had worked in Astandalas for a few years – I used to help her, and she would lend me books, and show me Shaian things.

Tor was silent for a long time. Cliopher could feel him, suspended there in a shaft of light above a void, the flickering roil of his emotions. Wonder. Awe. And –

There was a precipice for both of them. A line Cliopher had never allowed himself to cross, not even in the privacy of his thoughts. It was dangerous.

More dangerous than this?

He was shaking. Someone placed a hand on his shoulder. Ludvic asked softly, "Cliopher, is everything all right?"

"No," he snapped, as quietly as he could. "He's – he's hanging over the darkness, Ludvic. I don't know how to help him, and it's too cold down there. I can't –"

"Shh," Ludvic squeezed his shoulder, steadying. "Rhodin's on the case. We're going to find someone who can help. All you need to do is hold on, Cliopher, and you're good at that."

"Thank you," he whispered.

I shouldn't be distracting you, Tor's inner voice was full of contrition. Not now. Kip, won't you –

I'm not letting go, he said, shoving his determination back down, imagining the strength of his love spiralling down, seizing Tor's arms, holding tight, binding him to the world as surely as the ribbons at their wrists.

Time extended. Ludvic stayed nearby; he must be off duty, but he point blank refused to go and rest, even when Cliopher told him that Tor was ordering it.

"Tell him to sit up and give the order himself," was all Ludvic would say.

Was it this irritating when I said that? he asked Tor.

More, said Tor, at least he has the decency to pretend not to believe it's my order.

Conju cleared the room, sending most of the Mdangs back under the close care of Franzel and with a solemn promise of regular updates. His helpers moved screens across to give Eidora and Vinyë the illusion of privacy as they kept watch. They brought up refreshments, and Cliopher ate as much as he could manage, hoping to replenish his energy.

The lack of windows and the unwavering mage light made it difficult to guess how the morning was wearing away. Cliopher had long since let himself sit back on his haunches, had relaxed his fingers to sit comfortably cupped around his lord's hands, trusting the ribbons to keep the fire bound between them.

He wanted, badly, to lie down. He could not. There was an enveloping ocean of sleep waiting, and if he slid below its surface... he could not.

Kip?

Yes?

I just wanted to hear your voice. Tor sounded small.

I'm here. Cliopher felt a spike of anger, at the conspirators, at himself, at Iprenna and Bavezh, who had deprived their Lord Magus of the support of his wizards at the exact moment when he needed it most. I'm – let's talk about – It was suddenly impossible to think of anything to say.

Anything but the Helma Council, suggested Tor, with a flicker of humour.

Cliopher groaned. I had forgotten. I should – "Conju, I need to speak with Kiri."

No, you don't.

"No, you don't."

See? Never wrong.

"Ganging up on me," he muttered aloud.

"If by that treasonous aside you mean to imply that I and our glorious lord are in full agreement, then I will allow it to pass." Conju gave him a warning glower. "This time. I have sent to let your office know that you have been called to attend on his Radiancy for the duration. Saya Kalikiri, unlike you, has some modicum of common sense. She will arrange matters."

What he said, his Radiancy added, smugly.

With government finance firmly removed from the list of permissible subjects, Cliopher found himself at something of a loss. And... Isn't there anything you'd like to talk about?

Tor's mental presence shifted, almost – if it were not blasphemy to think it – sheepishly. I – not really.

There is something, isn't there?

I don't want to demand your stories. Ever.

Cliopher physically flinched away from the freight of guilt that hung about that thought. It was razor-edged, sliding easily between his ribs, piercing right to the core of him. Stories are never lost in the sharing, he said, and I'd share – anything – everything – with you, my – Tor. Gladly. Which story...? There were tears in his eyes. He was, selfishly, relieved that Tor couldn't see them.

All of them, Tor said at once, But – today – Elonoa'a. The Seafarer King. Where he came from. What Aurelius did, to earn his –

A storm of words were floating, not-quite acknowledged, between them. Love. Friendship. Loyalty. And – one more word – a word that Cliopher had never dared look at directly, not in all these long centuries, not since he walked into the Imperial Study as a Fifth Degree Secretary...

Certainly, my lord, he replied, retreating into formality. And he began, quietly, to sing the sixth day of the Lays, pausing after each section to do his best to translate, sense for sense, into Shaian.

Chapter Text

The sensation of being locked into my physical body was both deeply disturbing and entirely familiar. I had spent centuries like this, it seemed, trapped by the heavy mask of the emperor, by my duty, by my fear for those around me. By my own desire to do this wretched job well if I had to do it. If I had to be an authority (I, who had scorned all the artificial imposition of the empire, who had dedicated my life to riotous anarchy, who moved in a serendipitous dance between the delights of life, seizing them with both hands, taking, sharing, being, living in a riot of laughter and colour and –). If I had to be a god, early on I concluded that mine would be a name to roll out in resonant blessing, not to cower from.

Not that I had had, as it turned out, much of a choice. In the end, like any other mortal, I had merely done my best.

That best would have been a paltry thing, soon sunk under the compulsions and manipulations of court and wizards and politics and war, except that I also failed in one of my fundamental duties, and did not protect the magic that bound my people together. (Could not, when pressed to it, bear the cost.) And so Astandalas fell in fire and fury, in twisted time and unruly magic. Worlds were, quite literally, destroyed because of me.

And after the Fall, when I woke from dark dreams and found myself stranded with my Palace of Stars in the backwaters of the world of Zunidh, in the midst of famine and plague and disaster, in a splinter of broken time... I accepted my crown as Lord Magus of that world, because it was my duty. Because, having so failed, I could not refuse the request to try again, to salvage some scraps of hope for the future. Almost at once I had found myself floundering further, cut off from the world, transfixed into the amber of my priest-wizards’ desire for my apotheosis.

And it was into that dark moment – into that foul snare – that Cliopher Mdang had arrived to free me. Kip Mdang, whose unparalleled gift for statecraft had been put at my disposal. Who had seen me, the struggling man, and not you, emperor and god. Who had handed me, one by one, the tools I needed to restore Zunidh. A functioning bureaucracy. A lasting peace. Soldiers and guards who worked for the good of all. Treaties, and trade, and a flourishing economy. New initiatives for the health and welfare of all, that equipped every one of Zunidh's citizens with dignity and freedom and everything they needed to prosper. As the world healed I was able, in truth, to restore and recover the magic.

And then. And then. Kip had given me more. More than the gift of his bright eyes, that saw me so well. More than his quick steps, that came alongside mine. More than his deft hands, square and sturdy, that slipped in beside mine to help lift the load... He gave me his trust and his smiles and his jokes and his treason, and he invited me to his home, to the beautiful Vangavaye-ve, where the Moon Lady was able to find me again, and wake my slumbering heart. Where I was able to come back to myself enough to share something of me, of my music, of my true wishes, with my dearest friends. Where I was able to choose to retire, with one last effort from Kip: a full redesign of the government of Zunidh, so that nobody need ever be trapped like me again.

Anyway, these were the thoughts that I had, as I dangled over the deeps of a cursed sleep, my beloved Lord Chancellor's hands firmly clasped about my own, my wonderful Kip's words echoing somehow inside my mind, inside my emotions.

I should have felt strange and vulnerable, linked to the world only by the slender thread of his devoted will, and yet... This, too, was familiar. He had been my lifeline for centuries, and the trust I placed in him was absolute.

If only I weren't so afraid of the risks he would take to save me.

My only access to the rest of the world – to anything outside my head and Kip’s – seemed to be the impressions I was receiving second-hand from his senses. Sight was a blur, soft golds and whites, with the oddly insistent shape of my own body lying front and centre, and everything else – the rest of the Imperial Bedchamber, apparently – relegated to the background.

Kip was looking, mostly, at me. I knew better than to read too much into the way his eyes lingered on my face, and particularly on my hands – he would be watching, naturally, for any sign of my recovery. Our hands were physically bound together (I could feel the echo of the pressure on his fingers, on his wrists) and swathed, somehow, in the odd spiralling magic that had sprung up when he caught me as I fell. I had a suspicion that I was the one whose perception contributed that; Kip is blessedly magic-null, and I am a great and wild mage and have been the anchor for the entirety of the Pax Astandalatis in my time.

The magic wound about our joined hands presented itself to me as fire. Not an angry, hungry flame but a crackling and friendly warmth that curled shy tendrils up my arms and bathed the tips of all my fingers in tingling welcome.

Beyond the fire, our magical surroundings were – I could not hide from this – a terrifying void. It was as though the curse were so complete in its exclusion of all light, of all sensation, of everything with weight and colour and form, as to recreate the abyss below the worlds. I had no desire to plunge into that desolation, to be so utterly, terribly alone with my own thoughts.

I wanted to drag Kip with me into the darkness even less. I would long since have let go, if he had been willing to loosen his grip. Since he was not and I could not, I was trying to focus instead on everything I could perceive through him.

Sounds: quiet, now that the room had emptied somewhat, and Ludvic and Vinyë and Eidora had settled to their vigil. I thought they might be sleeping. Conju, who was almost certainly awake, customarily said little while I rested, and moved on near-silent slippered feet.

Smells: the background fragrances of my bed and room, twisted a little sideways through Kip's olfactory preferences. He was noticing the roses less, I thought, and the grounding background notes of spice were more pronounced.

Touch: apart from the great conflagration round our wrists, my body was a null space. Kip's, in contrast, was awash with strain. He was tired – so tired my head swam with it. So did his: his headache was mercifully thrust back from his conscious mind, but I could feel the persistent background thrum. His arms hurt. His legs hurt. His ankle sent little stabbing shards of agony up his calf whenever he shifted position even slightly. His whole body was stiff and aching and wanted nothing more than to lie down and go to sleep.

He was not lying down. He was kneeling, I thought, or crouched; over my immobile body, I could deduce from the contextual clues.

Since he would not let go, I could not ask him to lie down, and risk tumbling with me into slumber. Instead we talked – mind to mind, heart to heart – raw, personal, occasionally fraught – I was glad when we hit upon the notion of storytelling. I do, despite everything, still consider myself an artist of words.

I had not anticipated that Kip, too, might have great and powerful songs that he was willing to share with me. I had, almost since the start, known that he drew on a rich well of legend and lore that was deeply personal to him. I had thought it private, too, and not to be shared with outsiders.

Now, as Kip eagerly sang forth the language of the Wide Sea Islanders into the echoing interiority we shared, I saw that I had been wrong. He was longing to share his stories with me; they were, yes, personal, but not private. They were simply too important for him to offer lightly, or share without this express invitation. I wished I had issued it earlier.

Kip was alternating between singing passages in Islander – in language, he said – and translating them into Shaian for me. Since our remarkable holiday to Navikiani I had been studying Islander at every opportunity – from books, with the confused but willing assistance of Kip's nephew Gaudy, with the help of Kip's kinswoman Aya and her husband Jiano, when they visited the Palace to present a petition. I found myself following more of the song than I might have expected, too, because Kip's delivery came wrapped in a halo of emotions and memories and connections that helped contextualise the words.

It was, to be honest, a little overwhelming. Kip sang of ships, and I saw the high majesty of the deep ocean waves like mountains, the double prow of a small boat, skimming crosswise up the shoulder of the water, wind whipping salt spray against my face.

Kip had sailed, alone, in greater seas than I could imagine. How? When? I remembered the vision – the glimpse – I had been granted when I first met him: two men in a small boat, adventuring on the open ocean.

The sea is so big I commented.

And my boat is so small, he replied. Are you taking the translation from my mind?

No, I admitted, I have been studying

An astonished silence. I sent him an impression of his nephew, wearing an expression equally astonished, at one of our early sessions.

You've been studying Islander with Gaudy?

That came with a swirling undercurrent, swept away almost before I had time to register it as – jealousy?

It was supposed to be a surprise for you, I told him, I'm sorry for taking up so much of Gaudy's time, I know he's your only family member here in Solaara, most of the time, but…

You've been learning Islander as a surprise for me?

Yes.

Another silence. A prickling sensation, from Kip's eyes. Are you surprised? I asked, a little abashed, a little afraid that I had intruded too far.

Entirely, he replied, swamping me with a flood of tangled, of strong, of impossible –

Love, he clarified, and if it had been voiced, it would have been a whisper. To think that I once said I could not love him more he continued, and then his thoughts simply froze. It was as if he stopped, internally, juddered to a halt, his small ship grounded on the shore in front of a jungle too deep and wild for us to venture forth.

I dared not respond in words. I sent back my own – love, support, recognition – and felt him rally. He made a soft little mental sound, as though clearing his virtual throat, and plunged back into the passage he had been singing.

That had been a long, highly allusive, technically complex series of descriptions of Elonoa'a's voyages, dense with a dozen or more references to the art of navigation, and of holding a crew together, all of which came with that dizzying layer of Kip's own impressions of the Wide Seas – and, I was amused to note, of holding together one team after another in the offices of the Lords of State. These words were woven through the heart of everything we had achieved together, and I had never known...

I was drawn out of my fond recollections by a certain tension sliding in under Kip's singing. At first I worried that this was the strain on his body breaking through his fearsome concentration, but... No, I realised, it was something associated with the words of the Lays. There was a hum of excitement, of significance, as he approached the stanzas that introduced my illustrious ancestor, Aurelius Magnus.

Aurelius had been lost, separated from his armies, when Elonoa'a first encountered him. That the two men had met and become fast friends and allies was a well-known story in Astandalas, too. The tale of Aurelius Magnus and the Seafarer King was a staple of the literary canon, told and retold in various versions and media. It had become a popular theme for playwrights in Solaara, in recent centuries, in response to Kip's increasing prominence.

Kip growled, amiably enough, at the associations from the Shaian version of the tale that rose naturally in my mind. Not a king, Tor. Elonoa'a was Paramount Chief. The Islanders have never had kings.

Next you'll be telling me that he never danced over the fire, either, I replied in kind, thrilled by this friendly chiding. Nobody ever grumbled at the Lord of Rising Stars, or not directly.

They mostly grumble at me instead, he agreed, with a flash of merriment. And Elonoa'a didn't dance the fire. He was Kindraa; he danced the wind. His friend Tupaia, the tanà, danced the fire.

Any response I might have made to that was entirely thrown off by the strength and sizzling energy of Kip's connected thoughts. The beat of a drum. The darkness at the edges of the world. The sea of coals, simmering heat rising like a wall before his face. Sweat dropping. Legs, swollen and seared with the heat. It was as though... as though...

Kip? I asked, somehow more shaken than I had been by any other twist of fate that evening. I remembered, bright and distinct, the raised white scars on his soles and feet that I had first seen when we swam together in the blue, blue waters off Lesuia. Kip?

He did not reply, abstracted as he was by those vivid thoughts. If I had any awareness of my body, I am sure it would have been trembling with – I hardly knew. Awe, perhaps. Wonder. Kip? I asked, a third time, and he seemed to come back to me from a great distance.

That was... a very long time ago.

If we had been both physically present in our bodies, able to look at one another, my eyes would have dropped from Kip's face at that quiet statement. I would have covered the moment, no doubt, with a sly sideways quip. Inhabiting Emperor Artorin had forced me into staid and conservative patterns of speech, but had never been able to fully straightjacket my sense of humour, which tended to emerge in dry wordplay and sardonic asides. Kip was the only man who acted as though he recognised these for what they were; he always smiled at my jokes. That had, very often, been a useful shield.

I had no shield here. I was defenceless before him, more naked than I had ever been in any state of dress or undress. Utterly exposed and also trapped, every petal of my heart pinned open and the dusty golden core of me bare before the full glare of day.

My body was equally in his power, locked away from my mind, lying alien and limp on the bed between his knees. He could, if he so chose, do anything to it – to me – anything at all, and I would see it only through his eyes, and would be able to respond only in his thoughts. I might as well be a dream of Kip's, a figment of his orderly imagination, a – a toy – there was a tiny shiver of delight behind that line of thought and I shoved it back hard into the wild deeps of my soul. Kip deserved better than a front row seat for my sordid fantasies. Kip was –

Kip was silent again, and I was afraid. A long time ago, I repeated, focusing on the heat-flicker-strain of the memory. I could feel a resonance with the sensation Kip felt coming from our joined hands, where insubstantial flames licked eagerly at my wrists. You... danced?

Yes.

The fire dance. The small boat climbing mountainous waves. The rippling river of song in language, with all its depths and echoes and reflections. There was so much here I did not understand, so much of this man that was a mystery beyond any I had dared to dream I might encounter again.

All those years he had served as my perfect secretary, and the only glimpse I had seen of the inner man was that one fleeting vision of a boat on the high seas, of two figures adventuring together. I had seen the foam whipped by their passing, felt the tiniest touch of salt on my tongue, and thought myself blessed. I had not known – I still did not know – Who are you?

Kip's answer flashed back, fierce as the coals his feet had brushed against: My name is Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa. My island is Loaloa. My dances are Aōteketētana.

I would be hard placed to put the power of that response into a song, I thought, my mind spinning with it. How could I conjure the effect of his presence against the isolation chamber of the curse? The straight spine, the firebird inspiration, the teak-hard roots of him that twined out of my sight into his distant core... I have been privileged to see many marvellous and magnificent sights in my life, and a scant few compared to Kip's sturdy declaration of himself.

Kip's overwhelming emotion, as I reeled, was pure puzzlement. As if he had no idea of his own strength. I showed him – I could not help showing him – some of the scenes the depths of his soul brought to mind. Associated splendours. The glory that was Damian's golden perfection, when he fought and defeated a full company in a series of blistering duels. The furious joy on Pali's face, in the shining moment when she defeated Damian. The brilliant defiance of our scarlet banner, when we rode two by two along the highways of the Empire that had declared us outlaws and criminals for daring to right its wrongs and forcibly make good its promises of peace and justice.

Kip sagged in astonishment of his own. Who are you?

I – I – I – poet, and outlaw, and emperor and lord. Lost boy, forgotten Marwn, silent sleeper - outcast and imprisoned and contained and denied –

I could not, in the darkness, face Kip and tell him my name.

I had nothing to offer that he deserved, no greatness to match that singing announcement of his soul. I was all fragments and tatters, dangling beneath him, scarcely able to keep my fingers together into a hand firm enough to clasp his.

He saw me anyway. I heard my name – my true name, that I named myself – crash through the quiet spaces between us like a cymbal reverberating under a giant’s fist.

The sound rolled on, and on, and on, and I – disintegrated. I fled, we fled, layer peeling from layer and point from point, the shadowy substance of my being coming apart in splintered sheets. I felt Kip's hands tighten, clinging to mine, felt his sudden terror, and I tried to cling back, to hold to him, but... I had no hands to cling with, and no mouth to call his name, and I realised with the final shreds of coherence that the curse had crept up on me after all.

If I was lost, I would at least save Kip. Our hands were, in the physical world, still tied together. Here, in the metaphysical, I no longer had enough substance for that to hold me.

I let go.

I had been wrong. It wasn't cold.

It was – there was – I was – nothing.

Chapter Text

Cliopher found it increasingly difficult to focus on his surroundings. That was a relief, at first. The Imperial Bedchamber was a beautiful room, but the sight of his dear lord lying unresponsive before him – beneath him – was a travesty. He didn't want to try to explain what was going on to his mother, or to Vinyë. He didn't want to think about the grim, set line of Conju's expression, or the careful way Franzel was hovering just out of sight.

They offered him food, and more coffee, lifting it carefully to his lips. They brought hot packs and icy cold ones and placed them against the aching muscles of his legs. He pushed away from any attempt to cushion him. If he relaxed, he might fall. Not the two or three feet down into the superlative softness of the emperor's bed, but down and down forever into the gaping pit that he could only see, he thought, because Tor could see it.

Singing the Lays had always helped, whatever the call for endurance. He had made it across the Wide Seas, and through any number of incredibly dull council meetings, singing the lore to himself. Singing in his mind to a rapt audience of one, sharing – directly – the stories and wisdom that he had hitherto only expressed in the Palace in the dry medium of policy and law – it was seductively absorbing.

His Radiancy was a wonderful listener, the more so because Cliopher was picking up echoes from his thoughts. There was instant delight at the turn of a phrase, a deep satisfaction at the compounding narrative arcs, and, most wonderfully, the occasional flash of recognition for a moment or expression that underpinned one of Cliopher's oft-expressed governing principles.

His Radiancy – Tor – was so hungry for the Lays. That might have been the circumstances (what else, after all, did he have to think about? Nothing good), but he was not feigning – could not pretend to – that eagerness. And he had been practising. With Gaudy, of all people. To surprise Cliopher, of all people.

It was hardly surprising that Tor was interested in his great ancestor Aurelius Magnus. Nor was it a surprise that the emperor was familiar with the classic Shaian interpretation of his ancestor’s friendship with Elonoa'a. Nor, exactly, that his Radiancy shared the common set of misconceptions that that interpretation involved.

What Cliopher had not expected – and should have, knowing how closely their minds were intertwined – was the way Tor's casual comment about Elonoa'a dancing the fire brought up, in his sharp and sudden denial, the host of his own memories. The beat of the kona drum. The patterns raked into the coals – patterns he knew with his eyes and his feet and the whole of his being. The simmering air. The stink of burning hair. The light and total lack of immediate feeling in his legs as they moved, which would be more than answered later by the deep throbbing ache of his calves as they cooled.

He had been practising, since he had settled into his work as Lord Chancellor. Since he had known that he was going to retire. He had –

Kip? Tor sounded hesitant, and distant. As though there was something he doubted. Kip? he asked again, and Cliopher remembered, incongruously, the sun hot on his back at Navikiani, the sandbar where they sat together with only a foot of pale sand between them.

Kip? The third asking was more assured, and Cliopher shook himself out of his abstraction – this was the Emperor, and he had been asked a question – but he had no idea how to even begin an explanation.

That was... a very long time ago.

Long ago, and far away. He had no idea how many times he had danced, finding his way from one tiny island to another. Learning the dance with his breath and his heart and his entire being, so that he could shape it without thinking. He would rake the coals, and bow to the watching stars and waves, and make the first leap – and float, through the velvet red and black darkness – to land blinking back where he started, breathing hard, his eyes on the horizon.

A long time ago. You... danced?

Yes. Perhaps that was all there was to say. He had been there, dancing, and he was here, now, holding his lord. The fire between their hands flickering on their faces, the darkness surrounding them blacker and more desperate, somehow, even without the looming threat of the typhoons.

It was difficult to parse his Radiancy's reaction to this claim. For a searing moment the quiet doubt read as disbelief, and Cliopher felt a nauseous uncertainty. Would his lord, like his friends, find his boasting too much? They had never accepted his promises to achieve great things without laughter – laughter that curdled, eventually, into pity when he would not laugh with them, and admit that he didn't really mean it –

Who are you?

His Radiancy's question was probing, but the emotion that underlay it was not, oh, it was not disbelief. And that was one question Cliopher knew the answer to – whoever he faced, wherever he was.

My name is Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa. My island is Loaloa. My dances are Aōteketētana.

The words whipped back between them, borne on a rising tide of – he did not know what –

Tor met them, and thrust back. Images – emotions – memories, but impossible memories –

His Radiancy had confided in Cliopher about his lonely childhood, and still lonelier isolation as the Marwn, the back-up heir and magical counterweight to the emperor. He had never mentioned being anywhere close to a fight. And such a combat! The young man's hair shone almost white in the sunshine – his sword was a ribbon of pure light – the watchers, many of them in the distinctive uniform of the Astandalan legions – were silent in that very distinctive way of a large group of people all enthralled, all holding their breath –

And then there was another scene, piling in across the first. Another fight, this one across a sandy courtyard, with only two combatants – the young man again, glittering, but now he was off-balance, because he was facing a whirling woman in tight dark robes bound about the waist with a blue sash –

Cliopher knew these scenes. He had pictured them himself, a hundred thousand times. Never with quite this sharp particularity of place and presence – the wind soughing lightly in the trees, the sand scrunching underfoot – the glorious aura of magic that flew and flickered about everything, rejoicing in the splendour of – of a red banner, raised make-shift style in front of a great grey elephant – he recognised that elephant too, and not just the creature but the woman riding atop –

Who are you?

He didn't mean to fling his question in response like a spear, or to thrust his sudden welter of emotions back so hard at his beloved lord. He didn't mean to grab the answer already forming in his heart with greedy hands from the answering confusion before him. He didn't mean to shout "Fitzroy Angursell?" aloud, breaking the peace of the Imperial Bedchamber, startling his mother awake in her chair, interrupting Conju's steady pacing beside the bed –

He didn't mean to shock and shake Tor into an instinctive recoil that ripped him roughly away – ripped his hands from Cliopher's, no matter how tightly Cliopher tried to hold him.

The fire winked out.

The darkness beneath him flared, twisted in, and swallowed itself. Swallowed his Radiancy. Swallowed Tor. Swallowed, incredibly, Fitzroy Angursell.

Cliopher shouted again in denial, in loss, in fury at himself and his own blundering.

"Fitzroy Angursell?" Rhodin was suddenly at Cliopher's bedside. "Is he behind this? How?"

"That poet." Conju was there, too, holding Cliopher up. He had, he realised, been trying to fling himself down across Tor's body. "I have always said he was overrated."

"No! No, you don't understand. His Radiancy – his Radiancy is Fitzroy Angursell." Cliopher didn't understand, come to that, but he couldn't deny the truth he had seen – had learned – had scythed back against his lord. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's my fault, I saw it, and I shouted, and it shook him away – he's gone. He's gone. The curse has him."

Franzel was there too, and a warm towel was wiping Cliopher's face, cleaning away the tears.

"Sera Harilon, if you have any observations to make, now would be the time."

A stout woman in a faded greyish robe stepped round Rhodin and genuflected, in a perfunctory way, in the general direction of the bed.

Cliopher stared dully at the new arrival. She was short enough that the roundness of her body had a pleasing symmetry with her height, giving her a smooth, tucked-away sort of look. The robe was certainly that of the Ouranatha, but it was old fashioned and somewhat dusty. Her hair was pulled back in a neat round bun, echoing the general effect of one circle on top of another. "Thank you, Ser Rhodin, how fascinating. May I...?" Her hand went to a plain metal disc, hanging around her neck.

"Please examine the Emperor and his Lord Chancellor with any tools that might assist, Sera." Rhodin was holding Cliopher's other arm, now, and Ludvic and Vinyë were crowding round.

"I'll be quick," she promised.

"The Sera is an expert on curses," Rhodin explained. "No, we're not letting you lie down on him, Kip, not unless she advises it. She comes highly recommended by your office, and against the express wishes of the High Council."

"Bunch of scheming old bastards. Of all genders," muttered Harilon. "Oh, how curious. Yes – I see."

She turned the disc towards their joined hands, and thence up Cliopher's arms to his face. The featureless circle of metal before her eyes made a disconcerting sight. "How extraordinary," she added, more warmly, and dropped it back to hang around her neck. "Your Excellency, did you know that you are acting as his anchor?"

"I've lost him." Cliopher shifted slightly, but Rhodin and Conju held him firm. "Let me go!"

"You haven't lost him. Don't be ridiculous. The soul bond wouldn't allow it – you'd be dead, first."

"The what?" The words made no sense.

"The what?" repeated Rhodin, as if that meant something to him.

"The WHAT?" snapped Eidora, from behind Vinyë. "What foolish thing has my boy done now?"

"Ah! He's your son?" Harilon grabbed her device and peered through it again. "Yes, I see it now. Excellent."

"Explanations, please, Sera." Conju's tone was ice.

Harilon looked around at her audience, as if startled to see them all there. "Oh! Of course. His Excellency and his Radiancy are bound together at the level of their souls – it's very bright, but I don't think it can be recent, because I've never seen anything quite this strong. Of course his Radiancy couldn't be lost, not entirely, not without killing his bonded partner. The curse is hiding him. You say you could feel him, until just now?"

Cliopher nodded dumbly. He had no words. He couldn't... No, best not to even think about it, now. Concentrate on the important thing: Tor was still there, even though he was cut off. "How do I bring him back?"

"Go after him, of course. The curse will let you through – you're part of him, magically speaking – and it should let both of you back, since he's part of you."

"How – how do I find him?"

Harilon studied him for a moment. "That depends on you, I'm afraid. Your magic will make its path."

"He doesn't have any magic," said Eidora, sharply.

"Together they do." Harilon waved at the bed. "The bond transfers... many things. You'll find him." She smiled, for the first time, thin and predatory. "You'll have to persuade him to come with you. The curse won't let go without a fight. But I can weaken it from out here, and – yes – anyone as determined as you should make short work of a mindless horror like this. You'll need another anchor here, though, to show you the way back."

Cliopher was trying not to hyperventilate as he took in this flood of new information. It took him a beat longer than the rest of the room to realise that Harilon was looking meaningfully at Eidora. "He is your son, you said?"

It was a challenge. Eidora raised her chin. "What," she snapped back, "do you need me to do?"

Falling forward onto the bed, onto Tor – collapsing forward, really – was easy enough. As soon as Conju and Rhodin released Cliopher he toppled over.

The bed, and his lord, did nothing to impede his fall. He plummeted through them, as if they were so much smoke. Down, and down, through the misty drifting substance of the Palace of Stars, though that had to be an illusion, because the rooms beneath his Radiancy's were – central Tower spaces, up above the Throne Room. They might be kitchens or servant quarters in between, but not these anonymous guest rooms flashing past him now like so many shells on a rope, identical, apart from – there! A flash of darkness, oozing out. Cliopher turned his headlong – fall? Flight? -- and angled towards it.

His feet came to rest, lightly, bare on cool varnished wood. He was standing in the cursed room. The sigils, visible now in this odd shadowy place – he could see them, which he couldn't before – was this magic? It didn't feel like magic, or at least not the way Cliopher had always imagined magic would feel – like a fizz of sparks under his skin. It felt natural, as though he had always drawn information from the world like this.

Now he was standing in the narrow little space where he and Dora had been held, but he could read the markings on the walls. Or some of what they whispered, at least. They made his stomach churn. Thick tendrils of oily shadow slipped from rune to rune, outlined in a weird red-purple slick of something that was not exactly light. It hurt his face; the sensation was something like a toothache in both eyes.

His Radiancy had been here, and the curse had eaten him, and Cliopher had to pass through it to get him back.

"It will let you through," Harilon had said.

Did that mean he should...? He reached towards the walls, and the blackness oozed out to meet him...

How was he seeing this? Was this right? His Radiancy was trapped inside the curse, so Cliopher had to enter it too, in order to find him, but...

His Radiancy's magic was trapped with him, turned in against him as a prison. And Cliopher had no magic of his own.

He snatched his hand back. If he was seeing the curse, that meant he was seeing magic, and he was already in the same place as his Radiancy. He had no idea what would happen if he let the curse get a better grip on him from within its bounds, but he doubted it would do either him or his Radiancy any good, for all that Cliopher’s presence was unexpected. The curse was mindless malice. It would –

It might be mindless, but the malice came with intention enough to mimic forethought. He threw himself back as the entire wall ahead of him seemed to melt into a thick black liquid. Tendrils whipped out, missing him by inches. The room bent inwards, as if trying to shake him in to be consumed.

This was not where Fitzroy was. It was, therefore, not where Cliopher needed to be. He flung himself away from the trap, without looking where he was going. Away seemed the salient point, right at this moment.

The floor behind him gave way as though it had never been. He fell back into darkness. Now, though, he knew that there were places in here where he could stand. He looked for another, unsure how he was looking – wishing, mostly, it seemed, and yet it was all he had, in his fall –

The thought was hardly in his mind before his feet hit a solid floor, jarring his knees as they bent. He let them fold beneath him, taking the impact, and rolled.

The impact was bruising, but Cliopher didn't feel safe enough to lie where he landed for long. He pushed himself up, grateful for those extra hours of dance practice, every morning. All the same he had to stop, and double over, and breathe. He had never expected curse breaking to involve so much physical exertion.

At least there was no sign of the curse here. No obvious sign of it, he corrected himself, taking stock of his surroundings. He appeared to be standing in a large, well-appointed room in what had to be a noble's house, or else the country residence of an extremely wealthy merchant. The floor he had landed on was carpeted and the carpet covered in gorgeously patterned rugs, silky under his bare toes. The walls were panelled wood, the windows were shuttered but the light that filtered through them was rich and bright. The furniture was – he blinked – the furniture was in keeping, tapestried chairs and elegant side tables.

Had there been furniture when he first opened his eyes?

He couldn't say, but he had a disquieting sense that things were shifting around him. This wasn't a real place, for all that it felt real – the air smelling sweetly of wood polish and neglect.

Harilon had seemed confident that he could find his Radiancy here. His Radiancy, who was his lord, and his Tor, and also – he had to laugh at the thought, it was so ridiculous – Fitzroy Angursell. Except it was true, and his Radiancy had never told him. Had never hinted, even once.

No, that was unfair. Tor had hinted. Had, perhaps, done more than hint, when he had found that harp, on their holiday... Aya had dared repeat the identification to his face, and he had not exactly denied it.

He hadn't told Cliopher. Why hadn't he told Cliopher? He had taken Cliopher by the hand – their souls were bonded, whatever that would turn out to mean – Tor had called Cliopher 'beloved' – and yet he had not trusted him with this single, incredible, central thing.

And when Cliopher had found out, what had he done? Shouted it as an accusation. Revealed the deepest secret of his lord's heart to a room full of people – in front of his family – in front of Harilon, whom he knew nothing about. Another wild laugh stuck in his throat. What a sorry excuse for a secretary, for a keeper of secrets, he had proven to be.

He could beg his lord's pardon later. For now... He shut his eyes. Tor?

No reply.

He tried again. Nothing. Nothing. And then - a child's voice, and not from within - speaking aloud, curious and demanding: "Who are you?"

Chapter Text

Cliopher opened his eyes.

The boy was standing in the frame of the door (the door that had not been there, a moment ago). He made a curious small figure clearly outlined against the white and gold hangings (which resolved themselves as Cliopher glanced at them) in the room beyond.

The child’s skin was dark and his head was shaved and his clothes were a magpie clash of black and yellow and white, mid-length robes over tight trews, belted by a violent scarlet sash that, together with their general bagginess, leant his otherwise Imperial garments a piratical air.

Cliopher gaped at him, entirely at a loss.

He wished, for the second time on this extraordinary day, that he had spent more time with his young cousins lately.

"Hello," he said, weakly.

The boy took this as encouragement and came strutting into the room. "You're a stranger, and you shouted. That's not allowed. Cook won't give you any afters, if you shout, and Master Tutor will make you repeat every single one of your excelsizes." This warning was delivered with relish.

"I... suspect I'll get away with it. I don't have exercises."

The boy – the princeling, in that finery – stopped, hands on hips. "You're not a servant. You're not a wizard. You're not a guard. So you must be here to play with me. Master Tutor said he would ask if I could have someone to play with, and you came. And I have excelsizes."

There was, for half a second, a crack in that glowing confidence. The boy's eyes – yes, they were beautiful amber-gold, and large for his thin face – held steady, but Cliopher was staring intently enough to see the tiny quiver of his lips. He wasn't sure whether Cliopher would stay.

"I –" Cliopher had to swallow, hard, around the lump in his throat. "Tor, I am here for you. I'm here to rescue you."

"Tor? Is that my name?"

"Is it... is it the name that you want?"

A hesitation. "It's better than 'boy'."

Cliopher felt a strange, hot pressure in his throat. His Radiancy had, once, shared a few terrible insights into his lonely childhood. It was a grief to him, that he had been raised apart from his family, that his tutor had been the only person to show him love.

That his tutor had been taken away and broken, entirely deliberately, the moment his charge had been deemed ready to be exiled as the Marwn.

This was the central tragedy of Tor's life, and Cliopher was standing in the middle of it, and the strange feeling rising in his belly was rage.

"What does your tutor call you?"

The small nose wrinkled. "Savelin, when I'm cheeky." A conspiratorial grin. "Chantling when he thinks I'm being good."

That grin was infectious. Cliopher returned it, feeling his heart fracture. He knelt, to bring himself closer to his young lord's level.

The boy shrank back. "You're not a wizard," he said, warily, and Cliopher realised belatedly that he had fallen halfway into his familiar formal obeisance.

"I'm not," he said, and shifted into a squat. "I'm sorry, I'm used to –" he stopped himself, just in time. "I'm your – I'm a friend. From later, when you're grown up. You asked me to call you Tor, once, but –" his voice shook "– that's not your only name. Would you like me to call you Chantling?"

The meaning of the name was bitterly apparent. The alternative – Savelin, lordling – would be in some ways more natural, but Cliopher found could not bear the thought of his lord, in any form, thinking that Cliopher was being stern with him when he was vulnerable.

"You're my friend?" Oh, this child had not learned to school his face. The small bow of his lips trembled.

Cliopher's eyes were wet as he said, "Always. I promised." He held out his hands.

The boy stared at them, caught in a poised uncertainty. Then, in a flurry of silks, he tackled Cliopher bodily. Cliopher rocked backwards as the slender weight hit him, falling back to his knees, bracing himself against the floor, and hugging him back. "I thought nobody was coming."

"Shh. Shh. I'm here. I've got you." Cliopher was crying too, shaken as he had seldom been shaken before. Chantling was far, far too thin. The small arms that circled his neck were holding him with a frantic strength. The back of Chantling's head was incredibly smooth and soft, cupped in Cliopher's hands. There was a glimmer in the corner of his eyes, and a light stirring on his face, that he recognised as well as he knew his own breath: Tor's magic.

It took a while for the boy's sobs to subside, and both of them to stop shaking quite so badly, and for their mutual grip to loosen so they could look at one another.

"Do you understand where you are?"

A small shift of the weight in his arms, and a reluctant, "No." Chantling didn't seem to like to admit discomfort, or a lack of knowledge. He went on quickly, "I don't remember how I came here. It's like home, but not. Master Tutor isn't here. Nobody's here. There's just me."

Cliopher nodded, trying not to let any of his fear show in his face. "This is a trap. A magical one, made for you. I fell halfway into it by accident, because I'm your friend, and that's how I could find you. I think the magic finds me confusing."

"A magic trap?" Chantling sounded, incredibly, as though he was pleased to hear it. "Like Olor and the wicked wizards?"

Cliopher blinked in confusion and then remembered his Radiancy, in those early days at Navikiani, sitting on a swinging chair poring over The Deeds of Olor. He had said it was his favourite, when he was a boy. "Something like that," he managed.

"Are you going to kiss me?"

Cliopher let go of the child at once. "I'm sorry?"

A small black eyebrow quirked in a disconcertingly familiar expression, and the child recited – in entirely correct Old Shaian diction, and without apparent self-consciousness, "Belou le Fey, down she lay, and kissed her lover there; and Olor came to wakefulness all tangled in her hair."

A brief, wild image of their physical, adult bodies, slumped together on the Imperial Bed, flashed through Cliopher's mind. It had not even occurred to him to try – certainly a good thing, as it would have been a mortifying thought to share with his Radiancy – he did not want to kiss his lord, and his lips had no business tingling like that –

"We are both inside this curse," he said, firmly. "No kissing."

"How are you going to rescue me, then? Do you have magic?"

"No."

"Can you fly?"

"No."

"Can you fight with a sword?" Chantling picked up a stick – which had, when he reached for it, always been there leaning against the wall – and swished it dramatically through the air.

"No." Cliopher pushed himself to his feet and looked around.

"Oh, can you fight with your fists?" Chantling dropped the stick and waved his arms in a wild flurry. "Master Tutor tells says the greatest warriors can fight with any weapon at all! He says I should run around the herb garden every day, so that I will be strong enough!"

Cliopher felt, against his better nature, slightly deflated as he said apologetically, "I'm not much of a fighter, I'm afraid. I've always preferred to talk to people."

"Well, what can you do?" Chantling demanded.

"I am fairly good at finding my way," said Cliopher, mildly. Not that his sense of his island would be much use in this liminal space. Still, he had experience at making impossible journeys, didn't he?

There were windows, onto blurry green vistas, and there was the doorway that Chantling had entered through. Cliopher put his hand on the handle, and held the other out to Chantling. "I don't want to lose you. Come on."

Chantling hopped forward and took Cliopher's hand. The moment their fingers came together, fire flared between them.

"Oh," Chantling sighed, entirely unphased by the flames. "Isn't that beautiful?"

Cliopher stared at their joined fingers, at the brightness licking up his wrists. "Very beautiful," he agreed. "It's your magic, To- Chantling. Binding us together. But it's... smaller than it should be. As if..."

"My magic? I have fire magic? Are you sure? Is it true? Is it real?" Chantling gleamed, entirely transfigured with joy.

"Wild magic with an affinity to fire," Cliopher found he was grinning broadly. It was impossible to stay sad and worried in the face of that blazing excitement.

He kept a tight hold of Chantling's hand as he opened the door, half afraid that they would find the endless whispering fall again on the other side, or the sticky encroaching blackness of the curse.

There was, instead, a large stone room. It gave the impression of clutter, although it was difficult to say what with. The ceiling was high, circular and vaulted. The space was divided with a series of screens, but the general shape was evident. There were windows on all sides. A tower room.

Cliopher felt his heart sink and his hand tighten on Chantling's. "I think," he said slowly, that this might be... a place you have lived. Do you recognise it?"

Chantling was still turning his hand up and down, admiring the way the fire rippled and flickered as it moved. "No!"

"I think," Cliopher began, and turned around, hunting for –

There was nobody in this large circular room, but they were standing at the top of a narrow stair. He led Chantling down, finding an equally circular hallway with a couple of doors. One stood open, and through it – there, under the window, Cliopher saw a flash of scarlet, as red as Chantling's sash. "I think we might find more of you here," he said.

The red fabric was wrapped around something indistinct inside the room, but it stood vivid and clear and solid against the frame. Not just against the window, Cliopher realised, but through it. As though...

The fabric slid a little, and he couldn't see a knot. He strode across the room, dragging Chantling with him, gripped with a sudden worry.

Closer to, the object tangled in the scarlet cloth inside the window proved to be a bathtub of ornate and intricate beauty. Cliopher had no more attention to spare for that because, as he drew level with it, a hand appeared at the window. Dark, long-fingered, flailing apparently helplessly along the sill for a grip.

Cliopher took it, at once, also leaning on the window frame as hard as he could to add his weight to secure the red cloth. He and Chantling both stuck their heads out at the same time.

"Oh!" cried the young man hanging from Cliopher's hand, a single syllable of both shock and rapturous delight. "People!"

He was as dark and narrow in the shoulder as Chantling, and his face was aglow, and behind him the wall of the tower plunged down, and down, into a seething mass of mist and cloud that carried the sky seemingly past the foundations of the world. He swung freely from Cliopher's hand, no longer scrabbling to climb despite his predicament.

It has not been possible, in the first grip of the curse, to pull his Radiancy out of the pit. Cliopher had held him, and held him, and strained to keep holding, and he had failed. He had no intention of failing again.

He had only one hand free, here – he didn't dare let go of Chantling, who was leaning over the bright blue abyss with reckless curiosity – but in the strange way of dreams he no longer seemed to have the ache in his arms and legs, or the pain in his ankle. He braced himself against the wall below the window, leaned back, and pulled with all his might.

The young man was, at first, a disconcertingly wriggling weight. Then he appeared to grasp what Cliopher was trying to do, and managed to get his other arm up to the window, and clawed and pulled his way up the wall of the tower until he tumbled over the sill.

Chantling whooped. All three of them went backwards in a heap, with Cliopher underneath. The young man landed knees and arms akimbo, his yellow and white silks smeared with moss and grime, a great scrape across his forehead and a tangle of red fabric around his waist, still binding him to the bathtub. He was a more comfortable weight than Chantling – not well-built, exactly, but fuller in the leg and softer round the middle – and as he scrambled up he managed to thump down with every bit of heft he possessed, right in Cliopher's midriff.

"Good sirs, you have saved me," he said, bowing forward and making a swirling gesture with his spare hand. Not one of the elegant and efficient court gestures Cliopher had learned over the years, but a free flourish to emphasise his words. He stopped there, his attention apparently arrested by his other hand, which Cliopher was holding perhaps rather too tightly. Between their fingers the flames were dancing in a rapid coruscation of golden light, a glinting, sparkling fire. "Oh! What is that?"

Chantling looked suspiciously at this new fire, and there was a definite coldness in the way he asked, "Does he have magic too?"

Cliopher wheezed; this might be something like a dream, but it seemed as though he still needed full access to his lungs to be able to speak.

"Are you hale, sirrah?" The young man sounded worried, and leaned in closer, pressing down more heavily on Cliopher's chest.

Cliopher coughed, spluttered, and then gave up trying to explain and just did his best to sit up. This apparently sufficed to make the point.

"My sincerest and most profound apologies!" The young man shuffled off Cliopher, equally awkwardly, and pulled him up.

"Thank you," Cliopher panted.

"Think nothing of it," the man – the youth – said, with equal earnestness, and let go of Cliopher's hand. The fire instantly went out. This version of his lord seemed unconcerned; he turned away and stared into the bathtub. "The golden thing is gone," he said, accusingly. "Did you take it?"

"A golden thing? No."

"Oh, there it is! It came back!" He bent down and scooped something up from the bottom of the tub, and looked at it uncertainly. "It must be a device of magic," he said. "I have quested for it from the gargoyle." Even more uncertainly, he added, "I was late performing my ritual, and I didn't light the candles. Is that why you have come?"

Cliopher shook his head. "No, I'm –" he hesitated. "Your ritual?"

The young man smiled at him, sunny and serene, and tucked the golden key into the red fabric wound about his waist. "The invocation for the health of the benevolent emperor," he said. "It is essential that I perform my rituals, and my ceremonies and prayers, so that the empire will be strong."

"I... see."

"I am fortunate beyond the common lot of mortals," the young man assured him, his smile bright and calm. "I am the anchor for the populated lands, and the glory of the empire." He frowned slightly. "I am usually more careful not to forget."

"You forgot your rituals?" Chantling sounded both fascinated and scandalised. "Didn't the wizards come?"

"I no longer require their assistance." This was delivered with lofty superiority.

Chantling looked distinctly unimpressed. "Well, I have fire magic. And a friend."

Cliopher found his voice again. "You both have a friend." He held his hand out. "What should I call you?"

The young man took Cliopher's hand reverently in both of his. "We shall be friends forever," he declared, "and when I find my name I will tell you first."

Between their joined hands the fire flared again, steadier and brighter than before, with fewer of those flickering sparks. Cliopher felt himself flush with – he could hardly say what. Shame, mostly. He had worked with his Radiancy for more than nine hundred years, and he had never known – not any of this. That his lord had been raised in lonely isolation. That he had ever been this bright, this eager, this innocent. This young. That his Radiancy had never felt able to share his name, his true name, with Cliopher.

That, learning that name, Cliopher would react by reaching – too hard, too fast – by spilling the secret at once, aloud, in the centre of the Palace of Stars.

He couldn't dwell on that now. His lord needed him; Tor needed him; Fitzroy Angursell, as incredible as that thought was, needed him. The boy clinging to his left hand, the young man holding his right, and – there would be more, wouldn't there? It felt wrong, to be inside his Radiancy's mind like this, to be seeing these hidden aspects of his past.

Those bright amber eyes were fixed on him. Cliopher swallowed. "Yes," he said, his voice sounding strange and harsh. "Forever. My – I'm sorry, I –" He had to stop, to breathe again.

Chantling swung his weight down on Cliopher's other hand. "I thought you were my friend. Rescuing me from a magical trap."

"I am," he said. "Chantling –"

"That's not my name," the young man said swiftly, sounding hurt. The emotion, like every other strong feeling he had shown, passed rapidly across his features and sank like a rock into a still pool, leaving scarcely a ripple in that open, trusting expression.

"No." Cliopher gathered his courage. "It's his," he said, nodding at the boy. "You are both my friend. You are – the same person. Somehow."

Two lion gazes met in wordless curiosity. After a brief mutual scrutiny, the nameless young man said, "Excuse me, but I don't think that can be true. I am sure I have never been that small. Unless I will one day be victim to a shrinking spell? Or learn how to change my stature at will? I am sure I would remember, if I had done so in the past."

Chantling gave an exquisitely scornful snort. "I'm not old enough to be big yet. I hope my friend is wrong. I don't want to grow up to be stupid."

"Chantling!" Cliopher gripped both their hands in his, tightly. "Whether you believe me or not, there's no need to be rude. I am your friend – both of you – and I'm here to find you and get you out of this trap." He started to push himself up; after a moment both versions of Tor realised that he was trying to stand and did their best to help him out, and they all teetered to their feet together.

The door to the small bathroom had swung shut as they talked. The nameless man pushed it open, then froze, blocking their way. "The populated lands!"

"Not... exactly," said Cliopher, staring over his shoulder. Light and sound poured through the opening on a drift of muggy warm air, bringing with it a host of familiar fragrances – a sour note of spilled ale, the thick smell of massed bodies, undertones of old polished oak, and the sweetness of mead – but the taproom in front of them was peopled only by –

"Are those ghosts?" Chantling had found his stick again, and was clutching it tightly.

"I don't... think... so." The shapes moving about the room were blobby and indistinct, but they were recognisably human in proportion, and seemed solid enough. "I think those are... people my friend isn't paying much attention to. Come on."

It was disconcerting to say the least to step between the formless things, but they hardly seemed to notice Cliopher and his companions. They rustled past as if going about their business, accompanied by the background chatter of a busy inn. With a sense of inevitability, Cliopher realised that he recognised the famous hexagonal taproom of the Bee at the Border, on Alinor. He couldn't help looking to the bar, but the shape that lurked behind the counter was as formless as all those filling the rest of the room.

As formless as all the other shapes but one.

There, at a small table in a corner, a breathtakingly familiar slim dark man sat slumped in an entirely unfamiliar pose. If Cliopher hadn't already had so much evidence that his lord was the only distinct person in this strange half-world, he would never have thought – as it was, he felt a moment of uncertainty. The man was slouched with such human imperfection in his posture, his fingers cradling the handle of a half-full mug of mead, head bowed as if staring into its depths.

"Excuse me?" The nameless young man was attempting to speak with the shadows around them. "Good people, will you – no? Oh, perhaps you, my lady, have you a moment to converse...?"

"They're not real," said Cliopher, quietly. "You are the only real person here, my – friends."

"Is that me too?" Chantling started towards the one occupied table. "I like his hat!"

"That's hair, I think," Cliopher said, even more quietly as they approached. It was glittering with a magpie collection of beads and bound in a swathe of red ribbon, but –

"Hair? I've read about that!"

Cliopher tightened his grip on the hands in his; the shapes around them might not be real, but this busy space felt like somewhere easy to get lost in – and they were, still, inside a curse. He would never forgive himself if either of these innocents went missing. Chantling was just a child, and the youngster was... Cliopher had no words for his state but strange, and wrong. In some ways he seemed even more childish than Chantling.

Cliopher found that he was hoping, powerfully, that that was an effect of the peculiar splintering of his lord's past, even if that did mean that the other part (parts?) of his Tor were equally confused. The idea that this was how his lord's exile had actually been – this evident limitation of his personality, of his mind, of his memory – was both horrifyingly plausible and too painful to contemplate. Tor's memory, Tor's strength and his mastery of himself had blazed so powerfully all the time Cliopher had known him. It was a desecration to see him rendered so ignorant and biddable.

The man at the table showed no sign of being aware of their approach. He lifted his head, sighed glumly, stared right through them, and went back to his contemplation of his drink.

Cliopher stopped short and took him in: that glorious twist of hair, the sweeping red fabric over his shoulder, the more ordinary and somewhat travel-stained clothing underneath. The weariness in his face.

"Excuse me?" He said. Then, gathering all his courage, "Fitzroy? Fitzroy Angursell?"

Chapter Text

The head snapped up. The lion gaze focused on Cliopher's face, the magic gathering in gold and amber glints so rapidly and heavily that Cliopher felt the weight of it like a physical thing.

He was accustomed to meeting a great mage's eyes. He was used to holding this fire, and returning it. He was not used to seeing this cold suspicion on those dear features, or to seeing them look so very... young. And yet this was no longer a man so young as to be defined by his youth. This was his lord old enough to have come into himself as a person, to have named himself, to have travelled – old enough to have learned caution.

"Who's asking?" Then, at once, with a dangerous edge, "The empire? Those are the robes of the Imperial Bureaucratic Service... At, if I am not mistaken, a rarified degree. But you don't have the magic of the Palace about you."

"My name –"

Fitzroy's brows raised, "That magic is mine." He leaned back, slowly, freeing his hands from his mug. "Who are you?"

How often had his own younger self dreamed of being asked that question, by this man? Mouth dry, head spinning, Cliopher gave the only answer he could: "My name is Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa. My island is Loaloa. My dances are Aōteketētana." He would have bowed, but his hands were occupied, and so he could only continue. "I am the Hands of the Emperor. But... not the emperor you know.” He searched the narrow dark face in front of him, more recognisably beloved – entirely shuttered with suspicion. “I'm your friend, and I'm here to help."

Fitzroy studied Cliopher's face, looked askance at Chantling and the nameless man, and sighed. "No."

"I'm sorry?"

"No. I'm not coming with you." Fitzroy laughed, and the sound was open and free and – bitter, and sad. "No more adventures. I promised D- my friends."

"No more adventures?" Chantling sounded outraged.

"Gentle sir, are you sure this man is me?"

Fitzroy looked between them. "No stories, either," he said, and the gold flashed again in his eyes. To a man used to reading his Radiancy's subtle signs, the strong emotion flared like a sunburst, so bright as to be blinding.

Cliopher did his best to speak gently, feeling out the source of that distress. "Did you promise your friends that, too?"

"No, but it's what they want. They're tired of it. They're tired of me."

"That... seems improbable." The Red Company had vanished, yes, but... they had been together, until the very end.

That sour laugh again. "It does, doesn't it?"

Fitzroy had not reacted to Cliopher's companions but he had also not picked up his drink again, or looked away. He was keeping his hands free, too. He was... undecided.

"Are you waiting for them?" That, at least, was an easy guess. "They were supposed to join you here, and they haven't come down."

Fitzroy's head came up at once, and his eyes narrowed. "I am not in the habit of discussing my friends' movements with the emperor's men," he said, roughly. "I'm sure you understand."

"Yes." Cliopher hesitated. It seemed safe enough, here. There had been no sign of the curse – nothing he could detect – since he arrived.

(“'It will want to stop you leaving,” Harilon had said, “It will move, and adapt. It's cackhanded though, no subtlety. You two naturally share a magical signature, so it will recognise you as part of him.”)

He hadn't expected there to be so many of his Radiancy. If the curse thought he was another wandering fragment of Tor's soul, then perhaps he did have time to... negotiate.

He could hardly walk away and leave Fitzroy behind. This was – this had to be – important to his lord.

"May I sit down?"

Fitzroy made a magnanimous gesture of permission – not the delicate invitation to sit that Cliopher was used to seeing indicated with a slight twist of his wrist. It was (this was, Fitzroy was) not what he had expected, but it was an opening. There were, now, chairs. He sat without letting go of Chantling and the young man, without breaking Fitzroy's gaze.

"Thank you."

He knew the value of silence. Whatever had happened, in his lord's memories and here in the trap made of his mind, Cliopher would learn nothing by pushing for answers. He could see that already in the sullen set of Fitzroy's shoulders. This man – so young still, and so beautiful, and so unhappy – must, on some level, be curious. Cliopher could wait.

Chantling had evidently sat through fewer lessons on patience. He tugged at Cliopher's hand. "Do you have to rescue him?"

"I'm here for every part of you," Cliopher told him, steadily. Then, because it was true, perhaps his greatest truth, even if he had scarcely allowed himself to think it before this misadventure: "You're my friend."

From this close Cliopher could be sure that Fitzroy had missed none of this byplay. His mouth twisted. He had looked away again, but there was a slight flicker as he glanced quickly at Chantling and then away, as though the sight were painful.

The nameless man broke the silence next. "Perchance I have misunderstood, sirrah? Why would you seek concealment from the servants of the Sun-on-Earth? Have you been grievously misled?"

Fitzroy's fingers pressed down into the table, his knuckles standing proud, but it was Cliopher he addressed. "What are you doing here, taunting me? Haven't you got some business to be about? Or are we waiting for the guards you've summoned to arrive?"

"If you suspect me, why are you still here?"

Fitzroy shook his head.

"I'm not here to arrest you."

"What are you doing here, then, Sayo Hands?"

"Rescuing you."

"You? Rescuing me?" Fitzroy made an ugly scoffing sound.

"You have... argued with your friends, I think. And then they left you here. Nobody came, for a long time, so you tried to leave. But you couldn't, because this isn't an inn. It's a trap. A curse."

"And what would you know about that?" Fitzroy almost spat the words. Tears glinted on his cheeks. "How long have you been watching us, waiting for your chance?"

"Fitzroy." The name was growing more comfortable on his tongue as the man was growing more exasperating, which was something. "I'm in here with you. We're trapped together. I... don't know exactly what happened, between you and your friends, but I don't believe they abandoned you. They aren't here because this is a curse twisted out of a memory."

"A... memory." Fitzroy's gaze slid sideways again across Cliopher's companions, skimming swiftly and not resting on either of them.

"Several memories."

Fitzroy shut his eyes. When he opened them again they were gilded edge to edge, pupil and whites all flattened into a gold as impersonal as his state portraits. His face smoothed out, the lines uncreasing, the strain fading into blank serenity. Cliopher felt as though the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck – perhaps they were, on his physical body, for all he knew.

"Oh!" Beside Cliopher, Chantling's head came up. "He's looking at me!"

The nameless man shook his head and frowned. "He is working magic, but the cantrip is unfamiliar from all my books. There... may not be a cantrip."

"You are a great mage," Cliopher said, trying not to show how unsettled he felt at the sight of all that lively emotion slackened out into this bleak shining emptiness. "He has had time to learn that." And what did it mean, that it was this return to imperial poise that stung Cliopher like a loss?

The tide of gold ebbed out of Fitzroy's face. He gasped, shook himself, and stared at them. "You can... They are... You have my magic, and you can see my past." He gripped his mug. "I don't know you."

"You will."

Fitzroy shuddered. With difficulty, Kip controlled his urge to flinch at the sight of his lord's distress. It was – he would not mind, if Fitzroy was wary of him. He had no right to expect trust, let alone to demand it, from this outlaw hunted by all the armies of Astandalas.

"A cunning man could win a great deal of trust, entering another's mind and approaching him through his memories." Fitzroy mused. "Starting with those most... persuadable. A patient man could take magic that way, too."

"I have no gift of magic, apart from what you've given me."

"Indeed."

The youngster looked troubled. "By your logic, Sir Me, we could trust nobody in this place." He blinked in surprise as they all looked at him. Chantling with a tiny furrow in his brow, Fitzroy in surprise, and Cliopher with unexpected and unalloyed relief at being handed an opening.

"Yes," he said, "but trust is hard, and I am asking for a great deal." He left a small gap for Fitzroy to consider this, and then picked up the thread. "Perhaps we could both moderate our expectations? I don't –" he had to work hard to control his expression "– need you to put all your faith in me, without knowing who I am. I am only asking for you to come with us as we seek your future self, or selves. You need not touch me, or them. You can – you can keep an eye on what I do with them. And perhaps we will find some part of you who knows me, who can reassure you."

Fitzroy hardly moved, but his fingers tightened again on the mug, and his eyes darted about the room.

"Do you have a better option?" Cliopher kept the question light, the challenge as mild as he could.

There was a long silence. Then Fitzroy pushed his mug away, and stood up. He collected a small battered bag that appeared slung across the back of the chair as his hand reached down for it. "You are collecting my memories together."

Cliopher tried hard not to stare at the bag – the Bag! "I'm looking for my friend. For all of him, to save him from this curse."

"And what will you do to us, to get your friend back?" There was, in the question, a tiny hint of – loss, perhaps? Or longing?

Cliopher looked up at Fitzroy Angursell, at the poet and adventurer he had loved all his life; at the revolutionary whose vision had shown him the way; at the folk hero whose stories had inspired so much, from so many... At his lord, who had never, never ceased to do his duty, and who wanted above all else to be mortal, to be human, to have those pleasures and privileges the great poet had extolled to the skies, the common and ordinary goods. He had long dreamed of finding out what had happened to the Red Company. He had long since recognised that dream as foolishness.

Now that he stood before his hero he could only think how young this Fitzroy was. How young they had all been, the Red Company of legend. They had achieved more in a handful of years than he had in as many centuries.

"Nothing," he said. "I will do nothing to you unless you wish it. All of you. I'm here to rescue my friend, not to hurt him. But... you should know that the curse is designed to use your own magic to cut you off entirely from the rest of the world. I was... able to take your hands, as it took hold, and your magic let me slip past it as if I were part of you. Our physical bodies are being cared for by your... by other friends, including a physician and an expert on curses. I was assured that it should be possible for me to find you and find our way home. I... wasn't expecting to find so many of you. I have no idea how long has passed, out there, but I was advised not to take too long, for fear of my presence putting too much pressure on your mind." He stopped. "Do you have any questions?"

"Yes. How do you plan to get us out of here? The doors go nowhere. I've tried them all. It's just... fog, outside, and any fool knows what that means, in the Woods Noirell."

Cliopher looked around. In the time that they had been talking, the weird half-formed people had mostly disappeared. The space was still a taproom, still recognisably the taproom of the Bee at the Border, but it had emptied out of people and furniture both. An indistinct blur behind the bar might be... In Fitzroy's memories, almost certainly not Basil.

"This place changes," he said, "Every time I've opened a door I've found somewhere different."

He had to tug gently to persuade the younger two parts of his lord to follow him across the room. Fitzroy, unencumbered, strode past them and reached the door first. He stopped with one hand resting lightly on the handle. "I don't sense any curse, Cliopher. The only magic here is mine, and it tells me that you are the only anomaly. Either my senses are lying, or you are." He grinned, the expression flashing brightly across his face like a firework. "Or both." He turned the handle, and opened the door.

The light that streamed in through the opening was neither grey nor foggy but a piercing brightness of gold, all bright clarity and glinting beauty. Cliopher had a momentary glimpse of an expanse of glittering white stone – the familiar limestone and marble of the Palace of Stars – before Fitzroy swore and slammed the door shut.

"That," said Fitzroy, levelly, "was a sunny morning on Ysthar. At the heart of the empire. He was leaning against the door, his face grey with shock, his hand reaching down to his belt where the hilt of a sword had (all at once) always been there. "Do you have an explanation, Hands of the Emperor?"

The blade whipped out faster than Cliopher would have thought possible. It was narrow and shimmering, though it was held in a steady hand. The tip hovered a couple of inches from Cliopher's chest.

Being run through by Fitzroy Angursell while seeking to recover the Last Emperor from a deadly curse was about as dramatic an end as teenage Cliopher could ever have dared to imagine. Not that he was sure he would die, if he were stabbed here. Not that he was going to allow it to happen, when he was the only chance his lord had.

He loosened his hold on Fitzroy's younger selves, or tried to. The nameless youngster let go of him at once, but Chantling simply hung on tighter, swinging his slight frame against Cliopher's side and raising his short stick as if in guard.

Cliopher kept his arms relaxed and his breathing even. He met Fitzroy's gaze, again, and spoke as gently as he could to the fear he saw there. "This is... the next part of your story. I'm sorry, my – Tor."

"Tor?" There was no recognition in that strained curiosity.

Cliopher braced himself. The name had slipped out, as he had been using it since taking his lord's hands, to reassure him in his distress. He hated to think that he was about to cause further – to reveal – he tried to remind himself that this had all happened, long ago, and that his Radiancy had survived it.

He thought of the flickers of the inner man he had seen, and mistaken for a merry blaze. Fitzroy had been buried deep within his Radiancy for a long, long time.

"Tor," he repeated, clearly. "Short for Artorin Damara. The hundredth Emperor of Astandalas."

The tip of the blade was wavering now. Fitzroy was shaking. "No. No, no, no, no."

"I'm sorry."

"But Shallyr –"

"Died before he could be crowned. Before he had named an heir." It seemed kindest to say this quickly. To leave no doubt. "You told me –" on a sandbar, on Lesuia, sitting close together in the full glare of the midday sun, "You told me that you had never been meant to inherit. That you were the back-up heir."

"They wouldn't. They couldn't. I – I would have refused. My friends –"

"I'm sorry," Cliopher said again, helplessly.

This was his lord. This was Fitzroy Angursell, who had vanished shortly before Artorin Damara became emperor. Who had vanished because Artorin Damara became emperor, and had sat there on his throne in plain sight, for...

Cliopher could feel that rising outrage again, that fury on Tor's behalf. Where were his friends? What had happened to them, that none of them had ever been found? Had they known? Had they survived? There were rumours of the Red Company constantly, of course, but they had never been substantiated.

It was hard to know whether it would be worse, centuries later, to find out that Fitzroy's friends had perished than to find out that they had survived, and never come for him.

He couldn't allow himself to become light-headed with horror. He couldn't think too hard about what he was doing – about who he was doing it with, and for.

Fitzroy lowered his sword, but did not sheathe it. "You lie," he said, but he said it without conviction.

"I don't know what happened, exactly. It was... before my time. But that –" Cliopher nodded at the door, "isn't Ysthar, any more than this is Alinor. Our physical bodies are on Zunidh, my –"

"'My lord', is it?" Fitzroy sneered at him, "And you claim to be my friend."

Cliopher felt his throat constrict. Tor had called him 'beloved', and he had felt the truth of it, in the innermost recesses of his being. And yet – he had not been trusted with this secret.

"I am your friend," was all he could say. It might not be true for Fitzroy, but it was true for him. It would always be true for him. "But, yes, I am also your Hands. My lord."

Fitzroy was still ashen, but he was evidently finding a focus for his distress. Cliopher could be that, if that was what his lord needed. It was –

"And if I ordered you to leave me?" Fitzroy swept the sword down by his side, his red mantle swishing back, his eyes proud with challenge.

Cliopher had to offer truth, here, there was no escaping it. He could only be himself, and hope that it was enough. "I have never been very good at following orders I thought unwise," he said quietly.

The presumptuousness of it struck him painfully. He was no Pali Avramapul or Damian Raskae, to challenge the might of the empire. He was no laughing Faleron, or valiant Jullanar of the Sea, to fling himself into wild adventures, to challenge the very gods. He was a creature of ledgers, and reports, and committees, who did as his lord asked, except when he didn't. Cliopher had not even seen how trapped Tor was.

Fitzroy stared at him, hard and fierce, and then suddenly laughed. "Not so meek after all, Sayo Hands. And how long have you served me, then?"

Another difficult truth. "I have served in your government for more than a millennium, my – Fitzroy, as time runs in the Palace of Stars. I have worked for you directly for just over nine hundred years. Your future is... complicated." As was his past, although Cliopher couldn't say that, not with these older iterations of Fitzroy standing close beside him.

He saw the thought strike Fitzroy, too, in the way the lion eyes slipped sideways again over his past selves. It was strange, finding this sympathy of understanding with a man who was otherwise so much a stranger.

"A thousand years." Fitzroy laughed again, unhappily. "You believe it."

"I could hardly blame you if you didn't."

"How could I doubt such a ridiculous story?" Fitzroy shrugged, and his shoulders relaxed further.

Chantling, whose stick was still held high in his free hand, seemed to take this as a sign it was safe to interrupt. "Cliopher is my friend. He came to rescue us! Why are you being so mean to him?"

"Cliopher tells us he is our friend, certainly," said Fitzroy. "And he's charmed you two easily enough."

"He opened the door of the tower and led me to the peopled lands."

"So he did. And now he wants to take all of us to visit the emperor."

"The emperor?" The youngster turned large and earnest eyes on Cliopher. "Good sir, it is essential for the continued prosperity of Astandalas that I do not approach the Glorious One."

"I want to see the emperor!" Chantling proclaimed, loudly. "I don't care about you."

"This is a memory," Cliopher said, to all of them. "The only two people trapped in this curse are me, and you. There is nothing on the other side of this door but your future self. Or selves," he corrected.

Chantling dropped his stick, swung his weight forward on Cliopher, and made a flourishing dramatic gesture at the door. "I want to see!"

The youngster looked shyly from Cliopher to Fitzroy. "If it will do no harm to the empire?"

Fitzroy was studying Cliopher again. His expression was muted, as though he were trying to hide his emotions, but he had no veil of serenity and Cliopher knew his lord's face better than his own.

It felt wrong to be able to read Fitzroy's face so well, when Fitzroy didn't even recognise him. He read it anyway: the fear lurking behind the brittle hostility, the temptation to accept Cliopher's friendship at face value and the pain at the thought of what it might mean to take him at his word, all wrapped up in a terror of his other selves, of seeing himself so clearly, of being seen by them.

Cliopher felt as though his heart had been aching so long that it was reduced to a heavy bruise to carry in his chest. He breathed slowly, in and out. There was one more truth he had to offer. The fire in his hands burned brighter for the thought, curling around his fingers but not quite reaching his wrist. "It will do no harm to the empire. It can't. Astandalas fell, long ago. The Pax disintegrated. We have been dismantling the broken remnants of the empire for centuries."

The youngster frowned, as though this made no sense at all. Fitzroy stepped closer, his scrutiny blazing up to a burning weight, a river of fire.

Cliopher knew how to make himself a rock, how to stand and let the fire flow over him. He stood, and withstood.

"The empire is... gone?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Nobody has ever been able to answer that." Time to push, before Fitzroy asked for more details that would only distress him. "Will you come and see? I don't know how many more of you there are. I am afraid that... You were emperor in Astandalas for fourteen years. That must be next, I think, and then... the Fall." He smiled. "Or we can stay here, until you're ready."

"We?"

"The doors led nowhere when you tried them, and I have no magic to steer my way back here. I will not leave you trapped." (Again, he thought, trapped again, in a tower, in enchantments, on a golden throne…) Cliopher saw the shine of tears, and knew that his own cheeks were wet. "Never. My lord.”

Chapter Text

The door swung open, becoming two doors, unfolding enormous gold and black leaves into the glorious sunshine that streamed through the high coloured windows of the throne room of the Starry Court.

Rainbow shafts of light dappled a room that was almost empty. No courtiers danced or paraded across the wide expanse of the floor; no ambassadors bowed or preened in the coveted spots near the throne; no priest-wizards paced in ritual rounds. The only apparent people present were the stationary figures standing guard along each wall, unmoving as statues in bronze and ivory, crested with the unmistakable leopard skin and peacock feathers of the Imperial Guard.

Fitzroy strode into the room, radiating confidence, projecting an unassailable right to be there that Cliopher wanted to applaud, knowing it for a grand performance. He and his two outriggers followed more slowly, stopping to take in the view.

Cliopher had only seen the great room this empty in passing visits, at times when it stood unused or cleared for maintenance between court sessions. It was, as always, astonishing. The floor flowed out before them, a glittering mosaic of all the worlds of the empire. The vault of the roof arched high over their heads, the shafts of light slanting down between the massive pillars.

At the other end of the room there was one more human-sized figure. Gold and ebony and peerless glowing yellow, he was sitting motionless above all that echoing space. He showed no reaction to their arrival, said nothing, simply sat and watched as Fitzroy approached. He might have been as much a shadow as the guards. He might have been a god, sitting in a sunbeam.

He might have been the source of the sunbeam, Cliopher corrected himself, as they drew closer: the man on the throne was lit up, literally, from within. The effect was something like Cliopher had seen from an alabaster lamp, or a candle placed in a carved opaque crystal, or an ember nestled in the creamy curve of a great shell. His Radiancy was darker than lamp or crystal or shell, far darker, but the light shone through him anyway, filling the air around the throne with a diffuse golden haze.

Fitzroy stopped at precisely the correct distance from the throne for a high noble, or a minor imperial cousin. He made no obeisance.

Cliopher caught up with him there, struggled briefly with his habitual practice, and also did not bow. It was important to maintain this careful truce with Fitzroy. He didn't like to think of Chantling and the nameless man bowing to themselves. Besides, somewhere his body – aching and exhausted – had recently collapsed unceremoniously on top of his lord's sleeping form. From a man already taking that extraordinary liberty, an obeisance might seem disingenuous.

This effort of will it took to avoid falling into obeisance distracted him enough that he fell back without thinking into his other habits when approaching the emperor. Unlike Chantling, and the young man, and even Fitzroy – all of whom must know the threat the taboos posed – Cliopher lifted his head, and looked Artorin Damara in the eyes.

The emperor looked back at him. The distance between the throne and the hall floor was carefully judged; the four of them were standing beyond the prescribed seven ells required for safe observation.

The man on the throne drew in a breath, slowly and precisely, the way he did when he was profoundly shocked. The movement, slight as it was, set all his delicate silks fluttering about him.

It was too late to return to proper deference. Cliopher took a step forward. "Good morning, my lord."

Artorin Damara shivered all over again. "Who are you? We did not hear your arrival announced."

Between the place where those seeking audience stood on the main hall floor and the stark gilded height of the throne there was an intermediate platform: the formal petitioner's spot, for those who had been bidden to approach the Sun-on-Earth. Standing there, Cliopher could see, a supplicant would be just close enough to be bathed in the very edges of the light radiating from the Glorious One. That had never been the case in Solaara, when the light had been figurative and the godhood held terrifyingly real.

There was no magic but Fitzroy's in this place. There was nobody here but him and his lord.

Without waiting for an introduction – there were no heralds here to issue one at the emperor’s signal, in any case – Cliopher climbed the steps to the lower dais. He moved slowly, leading his Radiancy's younger iterations, giving them time to protest or pull away. Neither did. Fitzroy did not seem to be following.

The Lord of Rising Stars watched them approach. The silence hung heavily across the room, as sculptural as those great pillars, or as the enormous shafts of sunlight. When Cliopher stopped at the top of the stairs, high above the hall floor, he looked up again and met the lion eyes. This, according to all ritual and tradition, was still safe. Barely.

He stepped forward, into the bright halo of the taboos, and did not avert his gaze.

Artorin Damara was watching him with – he could see clearly, from here – shock that shaded into utter horror. As Cliopher stepped within the outer limit of the taboos, the dark hands clenched on the arms of the throne. The narrow body flinched back with an abrupt jerking motion, stopped by the back of the chair and bound at once back into that absolute control.

"Who are you?" The emperor whispered it, this time, but the acoustics of the throne room were excellent and there was no other source of sound here. The echoes hissed and rustled away into silence.

Cliopher felt the pressure of his lord's regard pushing down at him from those wide, fearful eyes. He felt his eyes sting, watering in response, locked now into their mutual gaze.

It burned, but this was the fire he knew – this was his fire to hold, and his question to answer.

He eschewed all the usual preamble for the Emperor of five worlds. This was Tor, who was Fitzroy, who was also his own dear lord. "My name is Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa. My island is Loaloa. My dances are Aōteketētana." He smiled. "I am your friend, Glorious One. With me are a boy named Chantling and a young man who has not yet named himself, and also the poet Fitzroy Angursell."

A pause. Artorin's expression was still, benevolent, and false. His eyes had not released Cliopher's, and they burned. "How do you come to be in my dream, Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa, in such unexpected company?"

"Your dream?" Cliopher asked carefully.

"It is an unusually dull dream," the emperor said. "A relief from other visions. There may have been a potion in my evening meal; they have provided one before to prevent my disturbances."

Cliopher was the one shaking now. "Without consulting you?" His voice was almost as flat as the emperor's.

Artorin's brows rose a very tiny fraction of an inch. "You are a stranger here indeed."

His lungs were full of – his throat – his bruised heart was thudding painfully – any planned speech fled, and Cliopher found his fury spilling into words. "My lord, that is an abomination." He was managing, at least, to control his tone; despite the tight shiver in his voice he had not raised it.

"You walk in my dream, Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa, where I do not recall inviting you. You bring me my past, and I do not recall inviting them, either. You disregard the precaution of the taboos, without hesitation, and without making any request. And you claim to be my friend, and you dare to speak of abominations."

Artorin Damara was as smooth and serene as Cliopher had ever seen his Radiancy; it was only the insight of long familiarity that impressed on him the rage that laced every syllable. Cliopher had heard this tone before, rarely, and if it had ever been directed at him in the waking world he would have thrown himself at once into the most profound prostration. This was not the waking world, but it was not a dream either, and he was intruding into his lord's mind without his permission.

His eyes were watering with the strain, but he did not look away. He tried to put all of himself, all of what he knew to be true, into his response: "This is no dream, my lord. It is a curse that we are both trapped inside, made out of your mind, and out of your memories. I am here to find you and set you free." He felt his face twist, as he failed to fully contain his anguish. "And what you are remembering here is an abomination."

"He's not wrong." From the direction of his voice, Fitzroy was still standing in the centre of the hall. "Cliopher – this – this can't be real. They would never – I am Fitzroy Angursell!"

The emperor looked between them. "A nightmare, then," he said, conversationally. "Where a friend seeks me out and is burned for his pains, while my past looks on."

"I am standing within the light of the taboos, my lord, and I am not blinded. There is no magic here but yours, and I trust you not to hurt me." Cliopher lifted both hands, showing the flames dancing at his wrists.

Artorin stared at them, and then at him. "I can –" the resonance quavered away, leaving the words small and high and sad. "I can see your magic."

"It is your magic, my lord."

"They bound my magic." The emperor's face had faded to an unhealthy pallor, more striking against the natural darkness of his skin. "They made me one of the anchors of schooled magic, and when my power tried to rise I had to thrust it away. There was... blood."

Behind him there was a horrible choking noise from Fitzroy. Cliopher swallowed the bile rising in his own throat. "This is a memory," he said, to himself as much as to the radiant being before him. "Your power is free. It has been free all the time I have known you. I didn't know. I didn't know how bad it was." He was crying freely now, his court face be damned. "I'm sorry, my lord, for this invasion of your privacy."

Artorin Damara shut his eyes. Cliopher, released, blinked and gasped and tried to wipe his streaming face on his shoulder.

"Good sir?" The nameless man lifted a scrap of fabric.

Cliopher turned so that it could clean his face. "Thank you."

"This is a great and painful mystery," said the young man solemnly. "That I may meet so many people, even unto the Sun-on-Earth, and all of them are me, and so unhappy. But you are my friend."

If Cliopher started crying again he would have to ask for another wipe, which would surely be an imposition.

"My friends have never come for me." Artorin's eyes were still shut, and his face was empty of all expression and also wet with tears.

"Cliopher is my friend and he is here," said Chantling, staunchly.

"So he is." There were diamonds caught in the Emperor's robes, wrapped around his neck, glinting from his ears. They flickered like stars as he came to his feet. "What are you here to ask of Us, Cliopher Mdang? What knowledge do you require to break this curse? The locations of Our armies, perhaps? The intent of Our government? Or the promise of Our goodwill?"

Artorin kept his eyes above them, and Cliopher was free to glance back over his shoulder and meet Fitzroy's small sardonic smile. Fitzroy was nearly as grey as his future self, but had recovered his balance faster than Cliopher might have expected. He made an ironic gesture, a delicate sweep of one hand that said clearly, 'please continue'.

That was far from an endorsement, but it was at least a willingness to engage. Cliopher felt his heart lighten, just a little, as he turned back to the emperor. "I want you to come with us, my lord, and escape."

"Escape?" Artorin turned his head, taking in the room.

"These are shadows from your mind, my lord. They are not your guards."

"I have not allowed myself to dream of escape." Artorin stepped to the edge of the dais, his feet moving so evenly that he appeared to be gliding.

"Why not?" Fitzroy's voice was rough with challenge. "You've – you've given up."

There were no steps down from the upper dais. Artorin stepped out anyway, and golden footholds appeared beneath his feet. The glow of the taboos moved forward with him, sliding around the three of them on the lower dais, encompassing them entirely.

"My magic is bound and my friends have not come." Artorin took another step. "I took oaths to serve my people, the people of the empire. I would not be forsworn." He descended further. "I denounced us." He stopped and gestured to the names inscribed and gilded beneath the feet of his throne. "Eritanyr made us a Terror of Astandalas, but I was the one who announced our defeat. I thought, if I challenged them, if I put my name beside my seat, if I threw down that gauntlet, they would come." He breathed, in and out, the way Cliopher had seen so many thousands of times. "They didn't come."

Cliopher could not make out the start or end or shape of the layered fury that he was building up for Tor – for all the cruelties and abandonment he had known – but he forced it back. He could have emotions later; his lord needed him now.

"Nobody ever learned what happened to the Red Company," he said. "They vanished. There are many who still hope that they will one day return." He had always been one of them, before today. Perhaps he still was, if they had not intended this hurt... If they begged Tor's forgiveness.

Artorin's eyes fell on him again and he read a recognition there, and the tiniest shadow of wry agreement. "Hope can be devastating." It was an accusation, but not a rejection.

The emperor stepped down two more bars of light and stood before them on the dais. "You appear to be correct about my magic, Cliopher Mdang. For the purposes of this dream, I will admit hope." The last word was almost a curse.

There was a desperate desire here. There was an urgent need. Cliopher let go of Chantling and held out his hand, palm uppermost, in a gesture of supplication that was so ancient it had no need for Astandalan refinement.

The emperor held his gaze, and reached back.

The tips of those long fingers rested on Cliopher's, tentatively, a feather-light touch. Artorin's expression was outwardly calm, but the emotions were swirling in the lion eyes. Cliopher held his hand steady, breathed with his lord, let him see that no disaster was unfolding, that no flesh was afire.

There were flames, but they were the yellow and golden flames of his Radiancy's magic: pure, bright, familiar. They wrapped Cliopher's wrist as hungrily as they had from Chantling's fingers.

"Will you take the child, my lord?"

"I'm not a child," Chantling informed them, reaching for his older self. "I'm nearly ten and I am a progidgy. Master Tutor said so."

Artorin seemed to focus for the first time on Chantling. "So he did," he said, and he stepped beside Cliopher to take Chantling's hand.

Cliopher saw the way the emperor's eyes shone, and remembered what his Radiancy had said about the fate of his childhood tutor, and did not dare say anything else. He turned, instead, pulling them all round with him.

With three versions of his lord clasping his hands the fire burned brighter still. He looked to Fitzroy. Fitzroy raised an ironic brow.

"What next?" He asked. "Tell us, Cliopher, about the glorious future of the emperor of Astandalas."

"This is your past." Cliopher had not really thought that through, but it was true, and it was significant. What made a person, after all, but the collection of their memories, the sum total of who they had been to themselves and to those around them. "We should look for your future."

The main doors of the throne room were wide and heavy, but there was a small side chamber used mostly by those who needed to emerge near the front of the space to be announced.

Cliopher was encumbered by his trail of – it was hard to know how to think of them. The people who would one day be his beloved Tor. The memories of his Radiancy's selves. His friends, who needed him. He would not let them go – not Chantling, who was hanging now off the emperor's arm, or the nameless man whose quiet deliberation was so insightful despite his evident uncertainty, or the emperor himself, whose fingers rested lightly in Cliopher's, whose trust was not to be bought for any price but who, perhaps, was moved by the thought of escape.

And then there was Fitzroy. The man who stood apart from the others, who listened with a scepticism that was harsher for his painfully obvious desire to be convinced. Who spotted the door before Cliopher reached it, and strode in front of him to push it open first.

Who staggered back at the sight on the other side.

The other versions of his lord stopped too, with a cry from Chantling, a muttered exclamation from the young man, and a silent flinch from Artorin Damara.

Cliopher could see nothing, at first, that warranted this level of alarm. The door that Fitzroy had pushed open led to a palace corridor rather than to the anteroom that sat behind it in the waking world that Cliopher knew, but there was no obvious call for alarm.

"This is your future," he said, and he stepped through, pulling those holding onto him with him. He would have stopped in the doorway, but Fitzroy was following him closely, and so he kept going, into –

The corridor, which had looked innocuous from the outside, bent and twisted at a disconcerting angle. Somebody was wailing, somewhere out of sight, and the sound clawed at Cliopher's ears, scoring sharp lines down the fragile core of himself.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fitzroy reach for – catch – hold onto the outstretched arm from the nameless man.

Their joined hands flared brighter at the contact, but he had no time to spare for that thought because he was entirely occupied with the effort it took to stumble forward, foot after foot, as the corridor pitched and swayed like the deck of a ship in an overwhelming swell.

He staggered forwards, because there was nothing to be gained from falling back, and clung to the hands in his, and trusted – hoped – that his Radiancy would follow.

Someone was shouting nearby. Any person here who was not him was his lord, and so it must be one of his companions. Cliopher couldn't make out the words, but he could guess at the sense of them. "Keep going!" He shouted back. This was – it had to be – he should have expected –

He had not had any magical senses, the first time he had experienced the Fall of Astandalas, and he had stayed in his room and trembled.

He could see the magic now. Twisting, coiling, snapping bands of power, all golden, all fraying and coming apart and whipping down in thin sharp blades of light that he threw himself aside, pulled his lord aside from, did his best to dodge.

It couldn't last forever. It hadn't lasted forever, not for him, and not for his lord. It seemed to take far longer than it should to cross that reeling corridor, but they crossed it together, holding fast. On the other side there was another door – dark, heavy wood, foreboding, but a door all the same, a way forward –

They had nearly reached it when another figure came cannoning out of the twisting reaches of the corridor and flung himself at the space between Cliopher and Artorin, to be caught on their joined arms. Cliopher could not spare the time to consider the newcomer – all frantic movement and wild eyes – he reminded himself that there was nobody here but himself and his lord, and choked out, "Catch him!", and plunged on, landing shoulder first against that heavy-looking door.

It gave under his weight, thankfully, and he pressed through, shoulder first, dragging his small cohort with him.

They emerged into warmth and bright stillness.

The terrible squalling magic was gone, wiped away as if it had never been. In its place there was...

A breeze, soft against his cheek. The sun, heavy and high in the sky. The sound of waves, lapping softly on the sand. The cry of a gull, somewhere up above.

The peace was disconcerting after the eerie twisted walls of the corridor they had passed through. Cliopher found that he was gripping Artorin and the nameless man with a frantic hold, clinging to them as though he expected –

Between him and the stately form of Artorin Damara, a skinny dark man with a bare head and a shredded gold mantle was pushing away from them, gasping. Cliopher felt addled, as though this last change of scenery had finally been too much for him, as though the rattling reality of the disordered magic had scrambled his wits.

"Wait!" He managed, as this new person pulled away.

The man staggered backwards, ripped silk flying out at wild angles around him, eyes big and terrified, body loose with mindless fear. He didn't go far – just back until he was ankle-, and then knee-deep in the water surrounding them.

"We won't hurt you."

"You – you –"

"Cliopher, what was that? The empire..."

"The Fall of Astandalas," said Cliopher, as calmly as he could. "The end of the world was long ago for me, my lord. It... it passed."

He was speaking partly to the men at his side, but mostly to the terrified figure in front of him. This was, he could see, his lord distressed – still shaking, despite the quiet.

"Wh-wh-where are we?"

The terror struck Cliopher hard, pulled out from him his matching fears, the memory of – fear, dissolution, of loss –

"This isn't real," he said. He had to hold on to that. "It's a curse, my lord. You've been thrown back into your memories."

The apparition blinked at him. "I'm dreaming."

"Are we dreaming, Cliopher?" The nameless youth's hand was shaking, but his voice was clear.

"You are memories."

The gull cried again, and Cliopher looked from side to side, trying to catch and return each anxious gaze. "This was all real, but it's the past. The empire fell, and the Fall came to an end. This is..." He breathed in. "This is what happened after."

The terrified gasps from the man in front of him were calming. They were standing close to one another, the sand firm and damp beneath their feet, the waves lapping at the edge of this sandbar.

Cliopher let go of the hands in his. Slowly, heart pounding, knowing what he was going to see, he turned.

At the other end of the sandbar another man was sitting with his legs curled up at the knee. He was watching them with steady attention, and with a slight familiar amusement. He was entirely naked, but clothed in a peculiar dignity. As they turned, he pushed himself to his feet and raised his chin, his tawny golden eyes glinting in the sunlight.

"My dear Cliopher."

"My – lord," he breathed, nearly overcome with relief at being known, at being recognised. "Are you...?"

"I have been waiting since you vanished," said his lord, with elegant unconcern. "Or that is how it seemed to me. But we are... memories?"

"This is the cove at Navikiani."

"The most beautiful place in creation," his lord replied, serene, "Where Ani met Iki."

Cliopher felt his face heat. "My friends, this is… a few years before the curse I told you about."

"And this is your lord?" Fitzroy paused just long enough to draw attention to his next sentence. "He hasn't dressed for it."

Chapter Text

Cliopher couldn't let himself be distracted, or distressed, by the Presence – the Presences? – of so many versions of his lord. The sandbar was too small for anybody to insist on seven ells distance, although the ragged man who had fled the Fall with them stayed far enough back from the group that he was standing in the water.

The other memories hovered around him uncertainly. Chantling's small hand had found Cliopher's again almost at once, as soon as it was free. Fitzroy and Artorin were on opposite sides of him, as though neither wanted to be close to the other but both were reluctant to be too far from Cliopher. The nameless man was somewhere behind them, staring round at the blueness of the sky and the sea with wide and wondering eyes.

His Radiancy was serene as he listened to Cliopher's report, only the twitch at the corner of his mouth betraying what must be a complicated tangle of emotions.

"And so, my lord, recognising the disturbance of the Fall, I opened the next door I came to, and found – you." He hesitated, but it had to be said to all of them. "I must apologise for the invasion of your privacy."

He wondered, belatedly, if he should have made obeisance. It still seemed as though it would be a mockery, here where his lord was so multiplied.

"Very good, Sayo Mdang," his Radiancy murmured. "The things you take in your stride! And have you devised a plan for our escape?"

"I needed to find you, my lord, and ask for your assistance. I am here because we are bound by your magic, and I was told that I could use it, but I didn't want to presume – and I don't know how. Rhodin found us an expert in curse breaking, and she set up an anchor. With your help I should be able to find it and lead us out."

For a moment the only sound was the gentle splash of the waves rolling over themselves at the edge of the sandbar, and the scrunch as one of Cliopher's companions – the nameless man, he thought, although he didn't take his eyes off his Radiancy to check – kicked up the sand to see what would happen.

"We are bound by my magic?"

Cliopher could feel the attention of his small audience sharpening. "So I understand, my lord."

"Sayo Mdang –" his Radiancy hesitated, "Cliopher. Kip. Please expand."

Cliopher had started his explanation, for his Radiancy, with the same bald statement that they were caught together in a curse. He had not wanted to – he was not sure he could – explain the strange merging of their minds, or the way that he had reached for Tor and lost him. He was aware of a rustle of interest from the older memories as his Radiancy named him.

He was abruptly aware that this man was not, quite, Tor. This was the man Cliopher had sat next to on a sandbar; this was nearly but not – yet – the man who had threatened to make him Duke of Ikiano, or who had reached for him, on the sky ship, with the heart-wrenchingly aborted gesture, or who had descended into a cursed pit robed in all the beauty of his magic to rescue him, despite being weak and in pain following a serious shock on top of a severe heart attack.

"I will explain," he said, "when I have found the rest of you."

"The rest of me?" There was a subterranean hint of challenge. The Cliopher who had sat on the sandbar might have flinched away from that small sign of displeasure, recognising the underlying dissatisfaction – might have dropped into prostration in the damp sand – might have feared –

"If you don't remember what happened, then you're not the person he's looking for." That was Fitzroy, scornful and just slightly pleased. "You're another shadow, like the rest of us. Of me."

"Memories," Cliopher corrected, at once. "Not shadows. You're all... you're real. You're parts of my –"

"Of your...?" The pleading was as hidden and as strong as the dissatisfaction, currents moving below the surface of a world, about to tip and twist the continents out of shape.

The word that came irresistibly – inevitably – to mind was not one that he could explain here. Not while his lord was splayed open and vulnerable before him, standing around him, staring at him with such –

"Of my friend." He said it as firmly as he could. It was not inadequate, not untrue – not enough. But it would have to do, for now.

"And here I thought this place must represent the highest possible degree of felicity and joy." His Radiancy sighed, and his posture relaxed, showing all at once how tense he had been. "How do we proceed, then, Sayo Mdang?"

That... was a good question. Cliopher turned, slowly. There was no obvious way to go.

"How did We get here?" The choked formality of Artorin Damara's question was belied – for Cliopher, who happened to be looking – by his wistful glance across at his older self.

"We swam," his Radiancy was definitely pleased with himself. "Kip – Cliopher – found me a device for viewing sea creatures, and we swam together over the reefs and then out here."

There was no other obvious way to move on, but... "Can you swim, Chantling?"

"Yes!"

"No, he can't." Several people said this at once.

"It sounds easy," Chantling protested. "Like flying!"

"I have never mastered flying, either," said his Radiancy, firmly.

"This is not a good place to experiment," said Cliopher, as apologetically as he could manage. "There might be... a boat?" There quite probably was a boat, nearer to the house. There had been in reality. But going to fetch it would mean leaving at least some of the memories he had collected behind on this sandbar, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that it could prove difficult to find them again. "What happened to the door that brought us here?"

"It vanished when you shut it behind you," said his Radiancy, promptly. "It only existed as long as you needed it."

"Can you make us another one, then? This is... all you. And the next step is your future."

His Radiancy frowned, and looked thoughtfully over the waves. "For you, Cliopher –" he sank into a contemplative silence.

Cliopher was fairly confident that he could tow Chantling along to the shore, if needed. He was more worried about the nameless man, whose experience was hardly likely to be wider than his child-self and whose mildly biddable nature and strange gaps in understanding might well lead him into difficulties. And –

Fitzroy was looking at him, as always, with that edge of challenge. Artorin Damara's expression was smooth, even haughty, and he was carefully not looking at Cliopher. Both of them could most likely swim; he was fairly sure that his lord must have known how before he became Emperor, or the learning would have been a challenge.

The man they had encountered as the Palace of Stars shook apart had sat down in the edge of the waves, his arms wrapped around his knees. Cliopher felt a sudden wave of compunction: the Fall had been utterly horrifying, and for his Radiancy it had lasted a hundred years. He crouched down, Chantling beside him, and reached out a hand – slowly, as though making an approach to a wild animal, not pressing too far into this stranger's space. "My lord, may I...?"

"No!" The man jerked backwards, sending a spray of seawater up between them.

Cliopher held very still. "I won't reach any further," he said. "But the taboos have no power here. I can take your hand – have taken it – will take it, as often as you let me."

He could hear, again, the deepening of the silence around him as all the memories of his lord focused on his words. It was strange, being in the middle of a crowd made up of one man, being the centre of so much considered attention from – it was like he imagined it must have been passing through the mirrored antechamber to the Imperial Apartments in company with the Emperor in Astandalas, being struck by the brightness from every angle, the light beamed from each reflection equally glorious.

Chantling said something, very softly, that ended in, "my friend."

The ragged emperor of the Fall stared at Cliopher's hand, chest heaving.

It would be helpful, Cliopher couldn't help thinking, if one of his lords’ other selves – the brashly confident Fitzroy, or the serene Artorin Damara – was willing to come close and help too. But he knew even as he had the thought that it wouldn't happen. Apart from Chantling, who had needed so badly to be held, none of the other memories seemed comfortable with physical closeness. The nameless man had bowed and backed away, despite his eagerness. Fitzroy had radiated suspicion and held himself aloof. Artorin Damara had a thoroughly austere and remote manner, the ragged emperor was even now flinching away, and his Radiancy was – he knew, so well – restrained by taboo and habit.

He couldn't even ask what had happened, to turn the bright inquisitive child at his side into these wary older selves, circling one another like cats, not willing to let down their hackles and risk mutual comfort. He had seen it – in the isolation of the youth, and the outlawry of the young man, and the long torture and imprisonment of his lord in his prime.

He was, he realised, crying again. The tears rolled down his face, cool against his skin in the ocean breeze. "I want to help," he said. "Please?"

The ragged emperor shook his head, though it looked less like a refusal and more like confusion. "This – can you – how are you inside my curse?"

"Your curse?" Cliopher asked, carefully. None of the others had seemed aware –

"Something broke. It – it – it – there are dark places, and everything is – I can't –"

"The Empire Fell." All of his lords spoke with that lovely musicality Cliopher associated with his Radiancy, but his Radiancy's voice was deeper than that of his younger selves, Cliopher thought. Richer, somehow. Resonant with practice, perhaps, from so many years making proclamations. "The Pax Astandalatis shattered, and took with it the chains binding the worlds together, and the structures of Schooled Magic. The Palace of Stars plummeted between the worlds and came to rest in the town of Solaara, on Zunidh. And I slept, for a hundred years, and wandered in dark dreams."

"That was nine hundred years ago," said Cliopher, and then felt the need to add, "Time was broken, too. But you anchored it. You accepted the crown of Zunidh as Lord Magus, and you knit the world back together again in great works of magic."

"I did what I could." His Radiancy said, softly, "But Cliopher made it possible."

"My lord!"

"You can take his hand," his Radiancy went on. "He is... our rock."

Cliopher had no reply to that. He kept his hand out, steady, and knew his face was flaming. The ragged emperor appeared to have been calmed by the conversation, whether or not he believed them. His hand was wet and sandy and trembling, but he lifted it and let the tips of his fingers hover close to Cliopher's.

There was another long, slow moment of consideration.

"I don't want this to be a dream," the ragged emperor said, and lowered his fingers, slowly, to press into the centre of Cliopher's palm. The fire flared around them, and he jerked them back at once.

"That's your magic," said Cliopher, holding up the hand Chantling had grasped, "It's fine. It doesn't hurt. It's there – in the world outside this curse – it's beautiful." He was pouring all his sincerity, all of his belief, into what he was saying, and the next words rose entirely without conscious volition. "You're beautiful."

The narrow dark face in front of him shifted, eyes widening. Behind him, several tiny indrawn breaths emphasised a deepening of the general hush.

Cliopher shut his eyes. "I'm sorry, my lord."

"You find Us... beautiful?" That was not his Radiancy, that was Artorin Damara – it had to be, using the imperial plural, although everything else about the question was shy.

"Doesn't everyone?" Definitely Fitzroy.

"Now will you try kissing me?"

"I said no, Chantling." Cliopher had already been blushing; he could feel the heat of it spreading out from his face. The back of his neck was burning where several lion gazes were probably fixed on it. "This isn't that kind of curse."

"How do you know, if you don't try?" Fitzroy again, this time with a new note in his voice, an inviting purr that sent an unfamiliar shiver down Cliopher's spine. It was so intense, and so – "I am willing to make the experiment."

The ragged man smiled, the strain lifting from his face. It was shy, and slow, and – Cliopher's breath caught at the transformation as their hands met again. "I would also be willing –" his lord began.

"Perhaps," his Radiancy interrupted, almost archly, "we should attempt the door first."

Cliopher stood, pulling the ragged emperor to his feet. "Yes, certainly, thank you my lord," he got out, rather too quickly. "The door...?"

"Such as it is." His Radiancy gestured at a narrow oblong shape, dark and slightly wavery against the brightness of sea and sand.

As Cliopher looked, it resolved itself into – "The door to your Imperial Study."

"Is it? I suppose that is to be expected. We went back to the Palace of Stars, and...?"

"Began preparations for your retirement," said Cliopher.

His Radiancy went utterly still.

"You asked me to reform the government so that it could function without the Last Emperor as head of state," he went on, "And you prepared for – we discovered – there is a spell that can be cast, to discover the heir of the Lord Magus of Zunidh. We learned that Lady Jivane made use of it, on the day you awoke. But the ritual requirement – if the candidate is not nearby – is for the sitting Lord Magus to embark on a quest to find them." He nearly stopped there, remembering how difficult it had been for all of them to understand how much his Radiancy wished to retire. Remembering how that difficulty – that lack of understanding – had prompted his Radiancy's extraordinary outburst of true feeling, and how much had changed for all of them since then.

But this version of his lord had not confronted the gap between himself and his household, and Cliopher could not easily explain... He cleared his throat, and continued. "The Ouranatha are in the process of removing your taboos."

"I... see." To Cliopher's horror, his Radiancy's eyes were shimmering with – "Lead on, Sayo Mdang," he said, with every appearance of composure. "Or... no, it will be Lord Mdang? If I have unleashed you on the government to redesign it, I must surely have ennobled you."

Cliopher winced. "Perhaps we could pretend that never happened?"

More than one of his lord's memories laughed appreciatively. "Lead on, Lord Mdang," said Fitzroy, bowing and twirling one hand in a grandiloquent deferential wave.

It was better for them to be laughing at him than to be – Cliopher shook his head. Harilon had warned that his presence would put strain on Tor’s mind; it would be a bad idea to forget the urgency. They should keep going. There would be time to talk this all over with his lord at leisure when both of them were safe. When all – seven of them, at least, if there was one more to find? – were safe.

He couldn't worry about what that might look like. He was out of his depth, swept along by the current, but not – this didn't feel like – drowning in dark waters. This was a voyage he could make, be he ever so buffeted by the typhoons, as long as he had the stars of his ke'ea clear in his mind: to find Tor. To leave no part of his lord behind. To escape the curse.

The frame of the door looked rough, almost like driftwood, but the panels and handle were unmistakably those of one leaf of the great doors at the entrance to his Radiancy's study. Cliopher had never put his hand to them; he had always been ushered through by the guards. The only time he had attempted to open any door in the Imperial Apartments, it had been the door of his Radiancy's bedchamber, and he had been blasted across the room for his pains.

It was hard to believe that that had happened only... less than... Less than a day before he plunged into this strange liminal place in search of Tor. He had no idea how long had passed in the waking world while he spun through this dizzying chain of his lord's memories.

They were laughing, and his Radiancy recognised Cliopher, and there were only a few years between the sandbar near Navikiani and the beloved hands that were – somewhere – still bound to his. The parts – memories – versions of Tor that he had encountered so far were not evenly distributed across his life, true, but they each represented a culmination, a flowering of a state that he had experienced. There could not be many more –

The door swung open on silent hinges.

The study stretched before him, flooded with –

The lights went out, long shadows leaping from desks and artwork, the walls ghostly pale. Someone cried out, softly, and Cliopher realised it was him. He stepped forward –

The lights came on. They went out again.

The lights were flickering.

He ran.

Chapter Text

The room seemed longer than usual, emptier –

There had been, in reality, guards. Ludvic Omo had been there, kneeling over his Radiancy, pumping –

Cliopher fell to his knees next to the man lying on the floor. He had let go of Chantling. He could hear footsteps behind him; they had all been clustered together, he hoped that they had followed –

His Radiancy's robes were stained with sweat in great sticky patches, and his eyes were wide and unfocused, and he was making a horrible rattling sound as he gasped. His fingers were clutching at nothing, straining and twisting by his side, against the floor.

"My lord," Cliopher didn't recognise his own voice. "My lord, I'm here, I'm –" he could not help it; he knew that the taboos had no hold on them here, even if his Radiancy did not. He grabbed the nearest straining hand, wound his fingers round it, hugged it to his chest.

"Kip?" His lord's voice was high and thin and reedy with panic. The hand tried to pull away. Cliopher clutched it.

"I am here. This isn't – it's not real – oh, my lord, how long have you been lying here?"

"Kip ... do not let them ... let them ..." his Radiancy's breath began to come more rapidly, as it had when he had first said these words just three – or perhaps four – days ago.

"I did not, my lord, I didn't let them – Ludvic saved you, and Domina Audry says you will recover – this isn't real, Tor, this is a memory." Cliopher was aware that he was failing to sound as calm and collected as he had in the Palace. His own heart appeared to be hammering within him.

"Feels ... real," his Radiancy managed.

Cliopher shut his eyes. Of course it felt real; it had been so recent, and so shattering, and must be vividly lodged in his lord's mind. But here, in this empty place where there was no Ludvic – he pictured his lord, grasping for his chest, falling to the floor, lying untouched and in agony. Thinking, perhaps, that all of his guards and attendants were too frozen by fear of the taboos to help him. Believing that he was dying, alone in a crowd, untouched in the midst of all this golden adoration – Cliopher could not hold back a small sob of his own.

His lord had stopped fighting to reclaim his arm; Cliopher hugged it to him, lifted the limp fingers to press against his face. "This is a memory, inside a curse," he said. "This isn't what happened –"

"What did happen, Cliopher?" His Radiancy had retreated into high serenity, but the voice was coming from – close by, on the same level as Cliopher, perhaps just the other side of the prone form of his lord.

Cliopher didn't open his eyes. He didn't want to see the pain he had caused – didn't want to face the knowledge that he had just drawn all these parts of his lord into this moment of agony. "You had a heart attack," he said, "Three – maybe four – days ago." He shuddered. "The lights went out. I ran... Ludvic was there, Commander Omo, and he administered first aid. Chest thrusts, and – he brought you back to us. You were never alone. Never."

A hand rested softly on the back of his neck. "Cliopher? May I?"

That was... Fitzroy? Crouched beside him? Cliopher nodded, mutely, and those slim arms slipped round his shoulder, holding him.

It was, all at once, too much. Cliopher buried his face again in the hand he was holding and let the tears come. Fitzroy's arms were strong, though slender, and he was so warm and felt so solid when everything else in this strange place kept shifting. His lord's fingers were clammy against his face, wet with Cliopher's weeping, but they twitched as though to brush deliberately against his skin and he heard the slow gasp of, "Thank ... you. Mother Kip."

Close by, on the other side from Fitzroy, another warm presence pressed against him. "You do not very much resemble my mother, good sir."

Chantling – it could only be Chantling – landed heavily on Cliopher's back, wriggling his way to add his own small arms to Fitzroy's embrace. "He's not my mother, he's my friend."

It had been a long time since Cliopher was simply – held. Embraced for his comfort, for his own sake, not by his family (with all the expectations and miscommunication that sat heavy between them), but by friends – a friend – who saw his grief and weariness and wanted nothing more than to be there with him. He had never been held by – he had wanted, so often, to lift something of the burden that his dear lord carried – he had never dared to dream –

After a while his sobs quieted and he began to feel self conscious again. "I'm sorry –"

"No ... apologies." The voice from the floor was stronger, and even slightly quirked with humour. "Not necessary."

Cliopher snuffled, then wished he hadn't. "Your hand, my lord, I'm –"

He opened his eyes. The man on the floor was staring up at him, warm amber eyes liquid with – concern, perhaps. Pain, no doubt, because this was still, horribly, a memory of his lord in agony. "No ... apologies."

Fitzroy released Cliopher slowly and someone handed him a wisp of silk to wipe his face. He did so, and then reached up and managed to scoop Chantling round against his side. "This was only a few days ago, for me," Cliopher said. "We must be close. Can one of you...?"

To his surprise, it was the ragged emperor of the Fall who realised what he was asking. "We can carry him," he said.

"You don't ... need to..."

"Cliopher won't let us leave you behind," said Fitzroy, "and we need him to keep opening the doors. Up you get, Cliopher."

There was a general bustle as they sorted themselves out. Fitzroy kept hold of Cliopher's right hand, having pulled him to his feet, and Chantling stayed firmly tucked up against him with a claim on his left hand. The others cooperated in lifting his Radiancy from the floor, propping him up between them.

His other Radiancy, the man from the sandbar, prowled across the study, peering at the corners. "Like, and yet unlike," he commented. "Tell me again what you know about this curse?"

Cliopher had stopped trying to study his surroundings too closely, disconcerted by the way they changed under his gaze. "It was inscribed in the walls of a specially prepared room in the Palace, my lord. With markings that I couldn't read, but Rhodin said, and Sera Harilon agreed... Well, they thought that it was designed to turn your own magic against you, to trap you in your mind. You were – are – unable to move your body, but for a while we could still communicate, while I held your hands."

His Radiancy stopped, near the Imperial Desk, tapped his feet on the floor and turned back to Cliopher. "And you said something about us being bound together?"

There it was again – the quietening, the attention focusing in, the minute rustle of fabrics as seven dark heads turned towards Cliopher.

He could not deny their right to be intrigued, but he also couldn't – just couldn't – bring up the subject of a soul bond. It was too – big, too strange. "I'll explain – when we've found the rest of you."

They must be close. They had been travelling, all this time, in the right direction. The heart attack was so recent - this voyage was nearly at an end. Cliopher turned slowly, looking from Chantling to Fitzroy, from the ragged emperor to the gasping man supported by his younger selves, and felt the soft swoop and settle within, the aching love for his lord - for all the many facets and memories that he carried with him, that had been so long hidden under that serene facade. They had a great deal to discuss, when they had escaped this curse, and yet he found that it felt possible as it never had before. He would never again be able to consider his Radiancy, in the corporeal world, without seeing the lonely child, the isolated young man, and the sharp adventurer lurking under that surface. He would never again mistake the smooth mask of the emperor for a natural expression of his lord's soul, would never be able to forget the pain and loss that Tor had suffered. He would put this to rights, however hard it was, however long it took.

There was no need to search for a door here. They had come in as if from the anterooms; before them stood the more discreet – comparatively – ivory door that led them further in, to the sacred spaces of the Imperial Apartments. It swung open before them, as it always did before his Radiancy.

In the Palace of Stars this door led into the main hall of the Imperial Apartments. Here, it opened directly to the Imperial Bedchamber. The lights were dim – as they had been, around Cliopher and his lord – but they held steady. There were no guards, no attendants, no Mdangs, and the bed seemed, if anything, slightly larger than usual in the emptiness of the room. The foamwork canopy was as exquisite as always, an beautiful froth of pale fabric, exquisitely worked, almost glowing in its sheer white purity.

The curtains were pulled closed around the bed. Behind them, there was a source of golden light, gleaming warm like an ember through a shell.

They all stopped, as if at a signal, at a safe petitioner's distance. "We – I do not remember this?" asked Artorin. "The bed is different."

"I had it replaced," the memory of his Radiancy from the sandbar was still, Cliopher saw, entirely naked. He was carrying himself with such lordly unconcern that the fact was hard to even think of him as underdressed. "I prefer this one."

"This is how the room stood when I –" Cliopher suddenly found that he could bear the suspense no longer. He pulled his hands free from Chantling and Fitzroy and stepped forward, pulling back the curtains.

Tor lay in the bed, on his back, arms by his side. He was on top of the coverlet, clad in that padded pale robe that he had been wearing when – he looked small, against the wide expanse of the bed. And, Cliopher saw, around each slim dark wrist there curled a delicate shiver of golden fire, wrapped in a white silk band.

"Cliopher –"

"Kip –"

"Is that me?"

"Are you sure –"

The voices were wary, as each version of his lord had been wary of the next. Cliopher ignored them.

The quilting on the cover was worked into a tessellating pattern of suns and rays, a hundred thousand suns in glory to wrap the emperor in his sleep, each one glinting with fine gold thread. The smoothness of the silk under his knees was broken up by the roughness of this metallic embroidery, and the rough points where each individual diamond dug into his skin; this was clearly a layer of bedding designed to sit lightly above, rather than wrap comfortingly around, its exalted owner.

Tor was utterly motionless, his whole body slack, his face smoothed of all expression. Without thought – without hesitation -- Cliopher swung himself back into position: his knees either side of Tor's narrow waist, his hands reaching unhurt through the flames to seize Tor's again. He heard his companions' exclamations – shocked, now, as well as surprised – and he supposed it was shocking, how comfortable he had become with this, how right it felt to return to it. Tor? he tried.

There was a sudden urgent babble of voices behind him, with the loudest and clearest being a shrill command of, "Cliopher, let go of me!" Cliopher had ignored this same order from his lord enough times to do so now without thinking; he would not, he would never, let go.

Tor made no response in his thoughts, but the limp hands he grasped in his shifted, long fingers twisting through the gaps in Cliopher's to clasp their hands fully together. Tor! he tried again, and out loud, "Tor? I'm here."

He was dimly aware that one or more of the others had scrambled onto the bed, but he had no attention to spare for them, because now Tor's head was moving – thank all the gods, no longer locked in that horrible slump – and Tor's eyelids flickered, and opened.

Beneath those smooth dark lids there was... nothing. Nothing at all, Just the sticky black depths of the curse. Tor's mouth opened, and it too was oily black inside. "Cliopher," it breathed, tendrils of black and violet light snaking out towards him.

Chapter Text

Cliopher lost precious seconds to his own astonished horror. His mind whirred. He had not expected – why hadn't he thought? – of course the curse would seek to trap him.

He tried to pull his hands free, but the white bands were wound tightly round his wrists too now, and the fire that danced there had shivered from gold to white to violet, with dark shadows woven in. It clung to him, sticky to his elbows, and his lord's hands gripped his tightly enough to hurt. He tried to resist as he was tugged forwards, as those thin wispy lines of corruption slid up to caress his face, to wrap around his throat, to pull him close in some obscene mockery of –

"He said NO KISSING!" Chantling bounced fearlessly across the bed and into Cliopher's line of vision, his stick thwacking down against the dark moving mass on the pillow. Incredibly, this seemed to work – at least, the tendrils of the curse recoiled where the stick thrashed through them, and the tarry lump actually split beneath it.

"Chantling! Get back!" Cliopher snapped, shaken out of his sick fascination by sudden terror. The curse had been pushed away, but it was regrouping rapidly, puddling back together and curling outwards. Chantling ignored this order from Cliopher entirely and stayed beside him, whipping the end of his stick back and forth against the squirming substance, stopping it from coming together.

There were more people beside them, now. Slim hands taking hold of his shoulder, of his arms. "Let go of me!" he demanded, "It wants you!"

"It seems to be making a bid for you at the moment, Kip," his Radiancy said, close to his ear. "Which is unacceptable. Ready, Fitzroy? On three –"

Fitzroy had slid down beside Cliopher and reached fearlessly into the uncanny fire at his wrists, gold sparks sputtering round his hands as he whipped them through the purple-edged flames. He was sliding the short blade of a knife in under the white silk, slitting it apart with a smooth motion. "Nearly! Wait, let me get the other –" He made a face as the curse licked and sucked at his arms, but kept moving, slicing the second white band away.

Every part of Tor seemed to have hold of Cliopher together, and they all pulled at once – apart from Chantling, who was still laying about the curse with his stick and almost dancing with rage, and from Fitzroy, who took hold of Chantling instead and yanked him back with them.

They slid and staggered and fell backwards off the Imperial Bed in a tangle, and then Cliopher realised that there was one part of his lord left unencumbered – the version that was still shuddering and lined with the weight of his own heart giving way – he was still standing beside the bed, leaning against a post, his face was livid with fury, and his hands came up in a great sweep of golden magic.

The power roared like a lion, gathering between Cliopher and his rescuers and the swirling darkness on the bed. The air was full of the heat of a desert under a blistering noon sun, of the ferocity of a forest fire, blazing out of control, of the rage of the Sun-on-Earth, roused on Cliopher's behalf... With a shaking hand, this most recent memory of his lord gave it direction, and it fell on the curse like lightning finding a path to the ground.

The noise was overwhelming. The group at the foot of the bed stopped and shuddered as it passed, then went back to pulling themselves rapidly together, to their feet, to see what had happened...

The shape on the bed hardly looked like a person any longer. It had split and sprouted, like a sea urchin in the rising tide, dark tendrils splaying softly in all directions. The golden magic plunged into the pulsing core of it, splitting it and shoving it back against the bed.

The light arrowed in, and in, and – winked out. The curse reeled back, briefly, and then shivered and shot outwards as though fired with new energy, the tendrils no longer wispy or flamelike but thick and black as oil.

The part of his lord who had fired the magic had slumped back, heaving with the effort. Cliopher got a shoulder under his arm. "Come on," he gasped, and held out his other hand. Someone took it – two people – they were all in a jumble, but everyone was holding somebody else. Even the nameless youngster was caught by one hand, and Chantling was squirming in Fitzroy's arms.

If this was a trap, then... Cliopher flung himself backwards, as hard as he could, rejecting the space he was in, rejecting the oncoming tide of the curse. It might be here with them, but this place was made of Tor's magic, and Tor would not want to see Cliopher swallowed...

They fell together, plunging through the floor, plunging down past what felt like dozens of flickering versions of the same room – light and dark – and different rooms, mostly in the same gold and white of the Palace of Stars, but with black gaps between them growing larger and larger.

The scene blurred into a rush of motion, faster and faster, and Cliopher heard someone scream – Chantling, high and shrill and terrified – and his soul rebelled. This was no good. The curse was here, and his Radiancy was here, and he was here, and they were all mixed up together. He felt, as he had the first time he plunged away from the curse, that he needed somewhere to rest. Somewhere to stand.

That desire, the first time he thought it, had led him to Chantling. This time he wanted something more specific. He shut his eyes. He had no idea how he was shaping this space around them, but he had been shaping it, and he would try to do the same again. They needed somewhere secluded. Difficult to find. Far, far distant. Somewhere they would be safe (somewhere Chantling would be safe) while they worked out where to go next.

His stomach swooped as the whole angle of their momentum changed. His lord cried out in a cluster of voices, old and young, excited and scared…

They landed heavily, still in a tangle, thumping down hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. Beneath them was – he reached out to push himself up – sand? That was promising, because many of the distant places associated with isolation in Cliopher’s past would, certainly, have sand.

It was dark. Not oily violet-and-black curse dark, but inky black around them with just a hint of blue where the – waves? – the waves were lapping on the shore. Cliopher breathed in: the air was damp and salty, laden with the faintest hint of rotting weed, all the sharp and savoury smells of the sea.

Around him a selection of figures were pushing themselves up, groaning, shaking limbs loose. Above them stretched the Wake – the glorious ribbon of stars from horizon to horizon, nearly half the sky blazing up with it – and then there was a shimmer in the air, and a fountain of tiny golden-yellow mage lights erupted and spread around them.

"Is – is everyone here?" he asked, shakily.

It took a few minutes to confirm that, yes, every part of his lord that Cliopher had collected was here with him.

"Wherever here is?" Artorin asked, the cool resonance of his voice brightened with a small flame of excitement.

Fitzroy had got to his feet and was looking around with interest. "We appear to be on a beach. Again. Is this another of your romantic getaways?"

"Hardly romantic," said Cliopher, wearily. "This is a memory of mine. An island... one of many. I never learned the names of any of them."

"How did you come to be visiting deserted islands? It is deserted, isn't it?"

"They all were." Cliopher sat, scrunching his legs in, and let himself breathe. "It was the furthest place I could think of... I landed here, landed lots of places, travelling home after the Fall of Astandalas." There was a child present. He spoke carefully. "There were natural disasters. Time fractured. So did... many things. There was a wall of storms, stretching across the Wide Seas. I... my home is in the Vangavaye-ve, on the other side. I made a boat, and sailed through it."

There was a moment of quiet. The stars were very bright. The swell rolled heavy against the reef and he could hear the distinctive sound of the breakers, but here on the inward side the waves slid softly against the sand. The wind was steady and so was the sound it made in the small stand of trees. Sh-sh-crrr-shh. He remembered this... remembered it so well, he realised, because this was the island where he had cut his leg on a piece of coral, and the wound had festered, and he had lain for days feverish and unsure of his surroundings, clinging to every small piece of sensory information as a lifeline.

"You made a boat and sailed across the Wide Seas." His Radiancy, as he had been on the sandbar, sitting back down beside him.

"I did."

"Cliopher...?"

It was too dark to make out the expression, but that dear voice sounded –

"How big was your boat? How many sailed her?" Fitzroy was somewhere down the beach, a dark figure among the crowd of dark figures. Hopefully one of them was keeping hold of Chantling.

"Small," he said, smiling at the night. "Just myself, and Saya Ng." The smile faded. "She was the lorekeeper I found who helped me recover the traditional Vangavayen designs. She... went overboard, in the second typhoon. I lost her." He sighed. "And was shipwrecked. The first of many times."

"Alone?"

"Yes." He sighed again. He had got up, after each shipwreck, and kept going. He should keep going again now. The quiet and the distance were real memories, but he had no idea how safe they were here. He got to his feet. "My boat should be here somewhere. We can –"

"Gentle sir, I do not believe we should take ship." This interruption was doubly striking for coming from the nameless man, who had so far nodded amiably and gone along with whatever suggestions were made. "We should take counsel, and confer, and devise a stratagem." He stopped as his older selves turned to look at him, apparently surprised to be the centre of attention. "That is what the great heroes of old would do."

"Indeed," his Radiancy from the sandbar patted the sand beside him. "Sit down, Kip."

Cliopher sat down at once. "But –"

"You sailed home ... alone?" The memory of Tor's heart attack rasped a breath, then added, "Through the wall of storms. Kip..."

"I did, my lord," he replied, "and I can sail us on from here... We should get help for you. I should –"

"If this is indeed ... a hallucination brought on by bodily failure, then it is ... a grand gift to go out on." This most recent version of his lord was lying close by; his hand crept up and found Cliopher's feet. Cliopher reached down and took it: still clammy, but stronger now, not so limp.

"Oh, Tor," he whispered, fondness and sorrow welling up within him. "I wish I could –" he had no idea how to finish that sentence, he realised. Go back and be in the study to catch his lord as he fell? Go back further, and take on more of the work sooner, so that the terrible pressure might have been lifted in time to spare his Radiancy... Go right back, to the airy house where he had discovered Chantling, and steal the boy away and raise him with love and freedom and family…?

He did not realise that he was crying again until the shining lord who had sat with him on the sandbar placed a gentle arm around his shoulder. "Kip, my greatheart, you've done so much for me."

"But why," Fitzroy asked, out of the night, "has he done everything by himself?"

His Radiancy's arm tightened on Cliopher's shoulder. "That is an excellent question, Kip. I think that you drive yourself very hard to help other people. But... you're allowed to ask for help too."

"We would be delighted to help you." That was Artorin, almost as ringing and resonant as he had sounded on the golden throne but far less hollow, and the grandeur was immediately undercut by his following exasperated, "Come back, Chantling, we all know you can't swim."

"It is possible to get out of the habit of asking for help." That was the ragged emperor, sounding so tight and tired that Cliopher ached for him.

"Well, we're here now to remind him." Fitzroy again, and Cliopher could picture the curl of his lip. "What else are friends for? Cliopher, I think you should tell us exactly what happened between my heart attack and when you fell into the curse. The whole story."

"I –" Cliopher cleared his throat. "You're right," he said, hoarsely. "I should."

It took some time to explain, partly because he had to confess that he had indeed been made Lord Chancellor, and to talk through the arrival of his family in the Palace ("That was the first time they ever visited you?", "Wait, a sky ship, in the actual sky?") and the attempt by the priest-wizards to execute Ludvic Omo ("They DARED?", "Access to my person at all times? Good for you", "Oh, Kip, you know better than to trigger the protections on the doors") before he could describe what happened after.

His audience objected, vociferously and at length, to his decision to hand himself over to Dora's kidnappers. "This is what comes of thinking you should solve every problem by yourself!" Fitzroy scolded.

"I should take better care of my advisors," muttered Artorin, making his Radiancy flinch.

"You came after me," Cliopher said, quickly, and described the way his lord had descended, robed in majesty, into the bleak darkness of the pit. And then... he spoke fast to get this over with: Dora's enthusiasm, the way he had tripped on his damaged ankle when he tried to intercept her, the way their hands had met as the curse snapped in.

There was absolute silence around him as he talked through what had happened next. Finding that he could speak with Tor, mind-to-mind, sharing images and emotions; being settled up on the Imperial Bed; the discoveries that they made of one another, dangling there above the curse, and the way that his startled realisation that Tor was Fitzroy had shaken them apart. Sera Harilon's arrival, and her theories. It was easier to share them, sitting here in the dark of night with all their faces half-hidden in the soft golden magelight.

By the time he had finished the tears had dried on his face, and his voice had sunk to a whisper, still audible in the profound stillness. He felt exposed, uncovered like the contents of a rock pool drying in the sun, parched and helpless and spread out before...

"Kip. Cliopher." His Radiancy was speaking softly too. "You are – a very important person to me. My friend. My – if Harilon is right – my soul bound. My great friend, my beloved – you don't understand your own worth, Kip – and so –" he shifted, moving round so that his face caught the golden magelight, so that Cliopher could see the shimmer in the lion eyes. "Why would you think that I'd be lying there in a bed, waiting for you to find me? Don't you see that I must be searching for you?"

Cliopher stared at him, only half hearing the agreement from the other memories of his lord. "But –"

"The curse is using my magic against me – and against you. Kip, that trap was aimed at you." His Radiancy held his gaze. “It must be keeping us apart, but –”

Fitzroy suddenly started to laugh. "Of course," he said, "Of course! Cliopher, if I couldn't reach you but my magic and memories could shape your environment, I would send whatever parts of myself I could..."

"Without alerting the curse," Artorin completed, triumphantly. "And it worked! We cut you free!"

"You – I –" Cliopher shook his head, dizzy with it, as his perspective inverted, "I came to find you."

"Your quest was magnificent, beloved," said his Radiancy, close beside him, "But this is something we need to do together."

"Then where are you?" Cliopher caught himself. "I'm sorry, I know none of you know, I'm just... I don't know where to go next."

"Next," said Fitzroy, with absolute certainty, "you stay here."

"I'm looking for you," the ragged emperor agreed. "I'll find you."

"And besides ... you should rest."

"You don't have to do everything by yourself."

Cliopher looked around the beach: mostly dim and shadowy, with just enough brightness from the hovering magelights to let him pick out here and there a raised brow, a challenging glance, a knowing look. "I should... stop?"

"Sometimes, yes!" Fitzroy, on the edge of the circle of magelight, turned and flung out an arm so that his mantle swirled dramatically. "You claimed me as a friend, didn't you? So listen to me! Wait for me!"

Cliopher hunched over his knees, and found himself looking down into the face of the part of his Radiancy that remembered the heart attack. The hand in his squeezed his fingers lightly. "We work ... best together, Kip."

"Yes," he said, to his knees, to the beach, to his lord. "Yes. If – until you get here. I'll wait."

There was a general sigh of relief and mutter of pleased agreement, broken only by a splash and a yelp as Artorin dragged Chantling back to the shallows.

The wind cut long and low over the ocean, here. It was warmer down against the sand, but if they were to stay for any length of time – "I should make a fire," he said, and tried to stand.

His Radiancy held him down. "One of me can make a fire," he said. "I am a fire mage."

"Set Chantling to finding driftwood," suggested Fitzroy.

"You would know best how to do that," Artorin said, stepping up into the light. "I will make the firepit."

"You're me!" Fitzroy protested, "You know everything I do! More, since you're old – older than me." He corrected towards politeness at the last second, and despite the protest took Chantling's arm. The ragged emperor was already kneeling in the centre of the group, digging in the sand with his hands, not looking at anybody else.

They were all willing, and surely must know something about making a campfire, but... Cliopher started to get up again. The hand lying in his tugged him back down. "Stay ... here with me?"

There was no mistaking the underlying strain in the words. This memory of his lord was breathing more steadily, and seemed stronger, but the pain was still there, still – it was incredible, that he could be so calm about experiencing – Cliopher sat again, at once. "Of course, my lord."

Before them, on the slope of the beach, an irregular fire pit was taking shape, and a stack of driftwood building up slowly beside it. Cliopher watched, intrigued, as Artorin and Fitzroy argued over the best way to place the wood. He kept his mouth shut with some difficulty, and was rewarded with the sight of the Emperor of Astandalas drawing himself to his full height and speaking a word that shook the roots of the island beneath them.

The flames licked out of nowhere to seize the dry wood, engulfing it and roaring up in a pillar of yellow, white, and blue.

"Woah!" cried Chantling, thrusting his stick into the flame.

"Perhaps a little excessive," said Fitzroy, dryly, taking firm hold of the back of Chantling's robe.

Artorin said nothing to his other selves but turned to smile up at Cliopher, who blushed, aware that he had been caught staring in delighted awe. Artorin's smile widened, just slightly, shifting out of serenity towards one of the small pleased grins Cliopher had so often enjoyed seeing on his Radiancy's face in recent years.

The fire died down fast into a more comfortable glow, red and warm and soothing. They sat round it, lounging or upright, in various states of wakefulness. It was... good, to be at rest, to feel safe here with his lord.

After a while Fitzroy began to sing.

Chapter Text

The stars wheeled past above. The sound of the ocean and the wind never changed, though the fire flickered as new pieces of driftwood were added. It burned blue and green with the salts, sending out flickers of quick-dying sparks. The songs rose and fell, sometimes in one voice, sometimes in several chiming together. Cliopher joined in, shyly at first, little more than a hum – and then louder as he grew more confident. They were all, apart from Fitzroy, a little out of practice.

One by one his companions began to fall asleep. Chantling first, stretched out at what looked like it had to be an awkward angle, still clutching his stick. Then the ragged emperor, curled up almost into a ball, near the fire. Then Artorin and both of the more recent versions of his Radiancy, one after another.

"Should you not also seek restoration in slumber, kind Cliopher?"

"I'm used to long watches," he said, which was true. He didn't want to add – didn't quite dare to admit – that he was afraid that his sleep might prove to be the entry that the curse needed to take apart this refuge he had found for them.

"So am I," said Fitzroy, cheerfully, "I'll watch with him." Their eyes met, and Fitzroy nodded understanding.

Cliopher felt a small tension relax. "Thank you."

The nameless man said, "I will keep watch also," and curled up, and immediately shut his eyes.

Cliopher and Fitzroy shared another glance, more amused, and then sat in silence.

After a long while, the sky began to lighten. The sea shifted from a formless dark expanse into something deeper and more delineated; the stars wavered as their velvety setting went from black to rich dark blue to royal blue. Thin lines of blue-grey light spread across the eastern horizon in front of them, sparking from the tips of the waves and picking out the misty veil of a scattering of low-hanging clouds.

There was, in the far distance, the dark shape of a boat approaching.

The fire had sunk low into embers. Fitzroy lifted a hand and silently recalled his mage lights. The few clouds lit up suddenly with the brightness of morning.

The boat drew closer, so slowly that it seemed as though it was hardly moving at all, just swelling slightly as it rode towards them over one low wave and then another.

Cliopher stood up, stiff with cold, brushed away the sand, and picked his way carefully past his sleeping entourage down to the firm sand closer by the water's edge. Fitzroy joined him there. "Are you cold?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer he offered his arm.

The most dreamlike nature of this experience was surely how easy it had become for Cliopher to say, "Thank you," and step into that embrace.

They stood together and watched. "That's a velioi boat," Cliopher commented, at length. It looked long and low on the water, and had no sails. Not a vessel he would have chosen for a sea voyage.

Further up the beach he could hear the assorted groans and exclamations of his lord waking up. One by one, the other parts of his Radiancy joined them.

The boat was close enough now that he could see that it was dark green, and that it was being rowed by one man with considerable energy and dubious technique. Cliopher winced as an oar rose at an exuberant angle, half-caught the surface of a wave, and flicked back up into the air in a flurry of spray that flashed as it caught the brilliant light of the rising sun.

Tor reached the edge of the encircling reef, glanced doubtfully over his shoulder, caught sight of the group awaiting him on the beach, and turned back to his oars. They swung down, smacked clumsily into the surface of the water, and – just as Cliopher was wondering whether he was about to thoroughly snag himself on the coral – pushed improbably against it so that the whole boat was propelled into the air and over the reef in one wallowing leap.

The keel belly-flopped down again on the quieter water close to the beach with an ungainly squelch and thud. Tor, still peering over his shoulder, overbalanced and slid down off the bench. The oars shot out and slammed loose from the rowlocks, one landing in the boat itself and the other a boat-length or so out of reach.

"Come on," said Cliopher, and waded into the sea without waiting to see who would follow him.

The distance was perhaps thirty feet out and the water was only waist-deep. Cliopher was nearly in arm's reach by the time Tor reappeared, rising out of the bottom of the hull and blinking at them in surprise.

"Good morning, Tor," said Cliopher, seizing his boat. "Can somebody reach his other oar?"

"Good morning, Kip," said Tor, in tones of deep relief.

"Stay where you are," Cliopher instructed, "We'll get you to shore,"

"Thank you," said Tor, meekly, staring from person to person as the small crowd gathered round the boat and started pulling it in. "Er... you are...?"

"I'm Cliopher's friend!" Chantling, perhaps inevitably, had been the one to capture the other oar. He was chest-deep even in this shallow water, and leaning on it for support as he dragged it towards the beach.

"You know who we are," said Fitzroy, shortly.

Tor grimaced. "Yes." He said nothing more until the prow of his boat drove into the sand. Then he accepted Cliopher's hand, and climbed out. "You're... me? All of you?" His eyes moved from the placid smile of the nameless man, across Fitzroy's ironic bow and over to his Radiancy's lifted chin.

"Yes." Cliopher felt a little uncomfortable about that quietly assessing stare. "All you. Every single one of them is my friend." His cheeks burned as Tor turned to look at him, but he held his ground. "I found them here, and they saved me."

"Cliopher rescued us first," Artorin had put on his imperial hauteur again, and now he stepped in close beside Cliopher. Putting Cliopher on his right-hand side, with all that that implied to an Astandalan courtier.

"He refused to leave any part of me behind." His Radiancy had stepped up beside him too.

"How could I?" Cliopher asked. The sun had risen fully above the horizon, its light fully flooding the Eastern sky, turning that whole quarter of the sea silver. They were illuminated, uplifted, held high in the promise of the dawn. Tor – his Tor – was standing before him, wrapped in a white robe that might be the remains of a night-gown and a ridiculous garment that could possibly be inspired by a rubber coverall attached to a heavy pair of galoshes. "I love every part of you."

The light crested like a wave. Tor reached out, and Cliopher took his hands. "Kip," he said, "I told you to let go."

"Never."

They stood and looked at one another, there where the land met the waves. After a moment, Cliopher had to add, "Tor, what are you wearing?"

"Fisherman... clothes?" Tor looked down at his own outfit doubtfully. "I did my best."

And this place was created by Tor's magic, given shape by his view of the world. Cliopher had to smile. "You look spectacular."

"So do you," Tor returned the smile, shyly. "Beloved."

Cliopher had not even thought to wonder what he was wearing. He looked down. "Oh." The grass skirt of his long voyage home crinkled gently about his waist. "This," he said, at random, "is closer to what fishing folk wear." His heart – his mind – his entire being seemed to be full of a strange rustle and lightness. He looked up again, and caught Tor's eyes, and flushed harder.

"As charming as this is, we should perhaps do something about the curse?" Fitzroy raised his brows as both Tor and Cliopher looked over at him. "Unless you've decided to take Chantling's advice, that is?"

It was no good mentally ordering his face to stop blushing. "We should," said Cliopher. "Tor – come and sit by the fire, and let me explain..."

It was quicker telling the story a second time. Particularly since he had no need to explain the parts that he and Tor had experienced together, and no desire to let any other part of his lord slide in any more suggestions about listening to Chantling. Tor listened as if entranced, interrupting only to ask, softly, "Soul bound?"

"So Sera Harilon said, my – Tor." Cliopher looked down at their hands, still joined, still cradling that strange swirling fire between them. "I have no idea what it means," he admitted.

"If it means that you are in danger beside me, I should not be glad," said Tor, slowly, "and yet I find that I am happy to see you here. Shockingly inconsistent, I'm afraid."

"I always want to stand beside you, Tor." Cliopher sighed. "I only wish I could have been there for each of your past selves when they needed me." Then, of course, he had to explain his journey across the eras of Tor's life. This proved harder than expected; the raw intimacy of what he had seen tripped up his tale more than once. "I'm sorry for invading your privacy," he said, slowly, once he had finished describing the trap at the end of that journey. "I had no intention –"

Tor looked around the little crowd. "I don't think any of me has any reason to object," he said, and his memories murmured agreement. "You are always welcome, with me."

Cliopher looked at the sand again, and scuffed his feet. "So, to get out..." he hesitated. "Harilon arranged an anchor. She said, when I had found you, to listen for it. But all I can hear is..." He looked around, and shrugged. "This is my memory, not one of yours, and it's more vivid than the others."

Tor frowned. "From what you say, the curse is feeding parasitically on my magic."

"So it was described to me."

"That would explain the way it was able to use my memories as a lure. But you defeated it, by bringing me with you."

"Fitzroy thought that you had sent yourself into the magic deliberately, so that I would have protectors." Cliopher pressed Tor's hand again – the warmth and weight of it grown so blessedly familiar in his. "Thank you."

"I might be right," Tor and Fitzroy exchanged brilliantly knowing glances. "My magic has a will of its own too, and would have wanted to help. But now... we need to listen, you say?"

"Yes, and find the thread that will lead us home. Sera Harilon told me that the curse would fight us."

"The curse is fighting us," Tor grimaced. "It nearly had you. It's using... all this." He waved an arm at their surroundings: the beach, the ocean, the fire, the boat. His other selves.

"Oh." Cliopher felt his eyes prick with tears again. He had suspected something of the sort, but it was still hard to hear. "Tor, you don't mean...?"

"They won't be destroyed," said Tor, with absolute assurance, "They're – all of them are – parts of me. I carry them with me. I walk with them. I am them."

There was no surprise, not on any of the narrow dark faces watching his. "Oh," said Cliopher again, stupidly. "I promised... Nothing without their agreement. Nothing done to you, beloved. Only by your choice..."

That seemed to strike Tor like nothing else had. His face twisted, as if in sudden pain. "Cliopher Mdang, I... you..."

"I am your friend," said Cliopher again, thickly. "All of you."

"So you are," said Tor, and started to cry. Not decorously, not delicately, but with a messy near-silent collapse of all his dignity, all his reserve.

Cliopher reached out and took those narrow shoulders into his arms, brought Tor's shaking head down to rest against his neck, placed his hands firmly over Tor's arms and wrapped them into him. Tor's scalp was smooth and soft and warm against the side of his face, and the dampness from his tears was sticky against Cliopher's chest, and the shudder of his sobs set Cliopher's whole body trembling too. "I wish I could make it better," Cliopher whispered, helplessly. "I wish I could –" his voice broke.

"You are making it better." His Radiancy spoke quietly, and handed him another of those wispy handkerchiefs. "For all of us."

Cliopher shut his eyes and buried his head down on top of Tor's, hugging Tor to him, letting himself feel all the pent-up fear and grief and fury. They clung to one another, cooled by the breeze, warmed by the sun on the sand, hushed by the sound of the wind in the trees.

Eventually, Tor raised his head. Cliopher loosened his hold and passed over the handkerchief. Tor sat back, and wiped his face, and then looked at the scrap of fabric. "This is all too real," he said. "I thought – I was terrified – that I was falling into a void."

"The dark pit." It had been terrifying.

"Yes. But..." Tor looked around. "This is what my magic made of it. This is how my magic is being turned against us, Kip. It's – I'm filling it in. Making a space that seems solid for us to stand. Making a world real enough to be a prison. Bringing out people who are part of me for you to talk to. And when one of us travels too far... the curse is there to turn us back."

Cliopher's free hand dug into the sand. The grains felt gritty and solid under his fingers. "It's getting more convincing," he said. "At first, it was... You could tell that the corners of the world were being sketched in as you looked at them. But now..." There was nothing that seemed wrong, anywhere. Nothing even slightly incomplete. The sea – the sky – the atoll – every sense was telling Cliopher that they were lost on an island in the Wide Seas of Zunidh.

"I have to let it go," said Tor, and something in his voice made Cliopher look back at his face.

Tor was staring around almost blindly, his eyes wide and worried, his spine straight, and his mouth set.

Tor was scared.

"I'm here," said Cliopher, softly. "You won't be alone."

"I know."

"Are you ready?" Cliopher asked the assembled parts of his beloved lord. One by one they met his eyes, and nodded. All, down to...

"What am I going to do?" Chantling asked, sounding nervous.

"I'm going to withdraw my magic," Tor told him. "To take away the power the curse can use to confuse us, and hurt Kip."

"I'm ready." Chantling replied at once, and posed with his hand on the hilt of his stick. He gave Tor a very serious look. "Will it... hurt?"

"No," said Tor, his voice cracking a little on the word, "Nobody will ever hurt you again, Chantling. I promise. You won't be able to hug Kip so easily, though, so why don't you...?"

The slim form crashed into Cliopher again. This time, with that short warning, Cliopher was braced and ready to catch him. "Tor will look after you," he whispered, "And I will look after Tor. You will let Tor know if you need me, won't you?"

"I'll always need you," sobbed Chantling, "You're my friend."

"And you're mine. Always. You saved me from the curse."

"You took me on an adventure!"

"You were so brave." They separated, but Cliopher kept hold of those two small hands. "I know you'll be there to protect Tor whenever he needs you."

Chantling nodded earnestly.

Cliopher looked past him, and met Tor's gaze. All of them were crying. Tor nodded, and shut his eyes.

The world dissolved. Not bit by bit, but all at once, like a watercolour painting under a spill of milk: colours twisting and dissolving together, lines disintegrating, shape and form vanishing under a smooth pale tide.

Cliopher tried to look round at all those past selves of his lord before they went: his Radiancy in the pain of his heart attack, hopefully going to some release. His Radiancy from the sandbar, beautiful and beloved. The ragged emperor of the Fall, less scared than he had been. Artorin Damara, smiling now. Fitzroy, looking happier. The nameless man, baffled and insightful to the end. Chantling, the lion eyes too big for his small pointed face, watching Cliopher with that hungry intensity.

They were gone, and so was the sand beneath him, and the lingering smell of woodsmoke, and the sound of the gulls above. The last thing to evaporate was the bright freshness in the air. The glory of the morning hung around Cliopher and Tor for a measureless moment before it, too, faded and winked out.

If he had time to think about it, Cliopher might have expected that wiping away the world constructed by Tor's magic would leave him and Tor sitting next to one another in a featureless place. A pure white room, perhaps, or a narrow spit of darkness between an oily black sea.

Instead there was... nothing.

His body was gone. His hands, tingling still with the loss of Chantling's, had evaporated away. He could see nothing, feel nothing, know nothing... He had not even breath to draw in to gasp or shout or scream... He was entirely alone, a consciousness drifting in a featureless emptiness, abandoned, bereft...

Kip?

Tor! If Cliopher had had any means to express surprise or relief, he would have used all of them at once. Are we...?

I have pulled in my magic, Tor told him, Can you find your anchor?

He tried to listen, but he had no ears. No. Can you?

I think I can hear, Tor paused. Singing?

Yes, yes, that could be it.

A woman's voice. Tor sounded doubtful. In... language?

Can you share it with me?

I can try.

A sense of adjustment. A brief pause. Then, thin and distant in the shapeless space, a familiar song.

...for the morning
My son who left to see the other side of the morning
My son who left

If Cliopher had a breath to draw, it would have caught in his throat. If he had eyes, they would have filled with tears. If his heart were here, it would have thudded up in his chest. His mother's voice was as true and glorious as ever. That's... that's it, he managed.

The sail comes over the horizon
The ship that went to find the other side of the sky
The ship that sailed to the country of the sun

His mother was singing Tui-na, the Song of Homecoming. In the Imperial Bedchamber, beside the entangled forms of her son and the Last Emperor of Astandalas, in Solaara, where Cliopher had never expected her to be at all. My mother, he explained, which was not really an explanation at all.

Tor accepted it, all the same. Of course, he replied, She has a superb voice. This way.

Cliopher had no idea how to listen, or to move. How?

I will carry you, beloved, if... if you'll let me?

Always, he replied. He was not aware of movement, but the thin sound of the song grew louder.

O he returns
Over the sea I see the sail
O my son returns

And then, all at once, the light breaking over them, striking his actual eyes, the sound flooding full into his actual ears. Blinding in its brilliance, even from behind closed lids, deafening in its splendour. Cliopher cried out, and tried to move his hands, but they were trapped – no, held –

He opened his eyes, squinting against – as they adjusted, he realised – the dimmest standard setting for the Palace of Stars interior. There, a few inches away, the curved dark lashes and lucid tawny eyes of his own dear Tor, open too and alive and focused on him.

The song broke over them, a wave of triumph as Eidora Mdang's voice soared up.

"My son who left for the morning
My son who left to see the other side of the morning
My son who left

O he returns"

That final line rang from every corner of the room, the sound gathered and enhanced by whatever architectural trick the builders had used to amplify the music brought from so many corners of the empire to please the Sun-on-Earth.

The Sun-on-Earth, who was lying alongside – partially beneath – Cliopher. Who was gazing at him with indescribable fondness.

"My dear Kip," he said, his voice a rumble felt all along Cliopher's chest, "Your blushes are truly delightful. I see I must seek to scandalise you more often."

Chapter Text

Dora Mdang sat plumb in the middle of the Imperial Bed, her legs crossed, and bounced up and down a little. She gave me a small grin when she saw that I'd noticed, and bounced again.

"Dora!" Oura Mdang chided her, but not sharply. Dora stopped bouncing and rolled forward onto her belly, resting her chin in her arms and smiling at us sunnily. Her black hair shone, her frilled skirts frothed over the cover, her eyes gleamed with innocent mischief, and in general she presented an artistic vision of an innocent small child in luxurious surroundings.

"It's a good thing you have such a big bed, Lord Artorin," she told me, earnestly. "There's so much space for Uncle Kip."

"Dora!" Kip, Oura, and Eidora all chimed in together, but it was Conju who continued, with a sniff, "It's considered déclassé to point it out to them, child."

Kip made a small embarrassed sound. I have no idea what happened to my face, but I happened to cross eyes with Eidora at that moment and I did my best to choke it back. "It is a very large bed," I agreed, with my most majestic gravity.

The Imperial Bed truly is excessive in both size and decoration, which is partly why I had insisted on leaving it, despite a range of contra-indicators – the powerful feeling that my chest had been trampled by a herd of elephants, the stiffness that seemed to clamp round every limb, even the delicious comfort of curling all along the length of another person, feeling them pressed against me. I had not even been able to reconcile myself to staying propped on the cushions with the thought that the person in question was Kip, Cliopher Mdang, my great friend and heroic rescuer, stretched out for once in some semblance of rest, watching me with a wondering sort of fondness and apparently reluctant ever to let me loose from his embrace again.

We had settled, therefore, for sitting in easy chairs together, propped up with many cushions, and plied with plates of sweet pastries. Kip had argued less than I expected, from which I deduced that he was in more pain than he was willing to let on. I knew his ankle was badly hurt, and also that he had held himself suspended above my sleeping form for some unconscionable length of time despite not having slept at all the previous night. And of course both he and Dora had been trapped for hours in a specially prepared pit in the heart of the Palace, surrounded by one of the nastiest curses it has ever been my misfortune to fall victim to. And I am something of a connoisseur.

It was that curse exposure that had brought Dora back up to us this morning, or afternoon, or whenever it was; Kip and I had narrowly escaped from the arcane pit that the physical one had manifested. Sera Harilon, the somewhat acerbic curse-breaking expert that Ser Rhodin had discovered lurking in the less fashionable research wing of the Ouranatha, had moved like a viper to snare and pin and destroy the curse itself once we broke through; she had sworn at it and at us with vituperative energy, thanked Eidora Mdang graciously for her assistance, and stumped off almost at once to find and contain any further remnants lurking around the room where the trap had been set.

Now she was back, looking between myself and Kip and Dora with a jaundiced eye. "Stop posing, child," she said, "Stand up and spread your arms. Hmmph."

Dora rolled her eyes at me, laughed, and leapt to her feet, entirely discarding the winsome look.

"She's taken no harm," said Eidora, dryly.

I had hoped so – it had seemed likely – but it was a great relief to be sitting here and seeing it for myself. There seemed no purpose clinging to the mask of imperial serenity in front of this mis-matched audience, all of whom had seen me in various highly undignified poses in past twenty-four bells. I let myself well up.

"None whatsoever," Harilon agreed, packing away her lenses. "A few wisps of the stuff did hook into her, but none of it activated. No magic manifest yet to work with. You can put your arms down, Dora, I've got them all." She stopped, and looked over at me – at me! – and added, "Keep an eye on her if she does show signs of a gift; it might be shaped by this experience."

"Would that be dangerous?" Oura looked between us.

"Unlikely," Harilon hauled her bag up on her shoulder and made her way around the bed towards us. "Might be an amplifier, though. Make it bigger," she translated for Dora, who dimpled in excitement.

Kip's fingers were warm in mine. His thumb circled gently in my palm, and the look in his brown eyes was uncharacteristically soft as he considered his young cousin. "Whatever happens, we'll all help," he said, low, for my ears only. "She won't be alone, ever."

It would be inappropriate, even in this company, for me to fall on his neck and start sobbing in earnest. Besides, Harilon was approaching the pair of us with the light of academic enquiry in her eyes and her curse-viewing lens in her hand. "Thank you," I whispered instead, wholly inadequately.

Kip smiled at me, and squeezed my hand.