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Eltura knocked on the open door to the suite of rooms Heinrix had claimed on Dargonus. Heinrix looked up as she entered, and from the immediate softening of his scowl and the faint upturn of his lip she could tell he was pleased to see her.
“Lord Captain,” he said pleasantly, putting down the document he was reading.
“Master van Calox,” Eltura said. “Are you available for the evening?”
“I can be,” he said, eyes flicking over the work still left on his desk. “One minute.”
“By all means.” Eltura watched idly as he jotted down a few notes and passed them off to one of his underlings. They had been Achilleas’s staff before, most likely, and seemed to have handled the transition well. Then, with a spring in his step, he followed Eltura and left his office behind.
Eltura dismissed the palace warden she’d brought with her, then set off for one of the side entrances. They caught up as they walked — Heinrix had just recently wrapped up the investigation into a Drukhari xenotech remnant that had been poisoning the water supply in one of the hive sublevels; Eltura was in the middle of long negotiations with House Gaprak for how to restore Kiava Gamma and (more importantly) who would pay for what.
When they stopped outside of one of the residential towers near the palace, he gave her a look, one eyebrow raised. She refused to elaborate, instead sweeping inside as a servitor opened the heavy front door.
She went up to the front desk and waited for the initial Oh shit, it’s the Rogue Trader and the Interrogator panic to fade. “Good evening,” she said. “We’re going up to the roof.”
The two servants looked at each other, then one said, “To Governor Drivestem’s apartments?”
“To the gardens,” Eltura clarified. “The Governor has found himself tickets to the Opera Lindallena tonight so he won’t be a bother.”
They hesitated for a moment longer. “Of course, Your Ladyship. Please, follow me,” the braver of the two said, showing Eltura and Heinrix to one of the elevators.
“And the Governor doesn’t need to be informed of this visit,” Eltura added as the servant put in the code for the rooftop.
“Yes, Your Ladyship,” he said with a touch of nervousness.
Once it was just the two of them in the elevator, Heinrix leaned over and asked quietly, “So how long have you been planning this?”
Eltura felt mildly called out by his amusement. “Actively? Only a few weeks. I’ve wanted to do something like this for longer, though.” He was welcome to think that meant since after the Magnae Accessio, instead of the entirely too revealing truth that she’d been spitballing things to do with him on Dargonus for a year or more.
“That explains why Chancellor Werserian’s secretary has been so attentive about the progress of my investigation. I’ll have to remove the flag on his file.”
“I’m sure Clementia will appreciate that,” Eltura said as the elevator gave a pleasant bing and opened onto the rooftop.
Urbend Drivestem’s infrequently used gardens were a true gem of Dargonus. The trees overhead drooped under the weight of their blossoms and the air was incredibly sweet. Every planter was full to bursting with flowers, most from Dargonus but some from other planets in the von Valancius protectorate. Stone paths meandered through the greenery, with plants shaped to strategically hide the surrounding hive city from view, leaving only the garden and sky, while air scrubbers built into the landscaping cut through the air pollution with only a faint hum to betray their presence. The sun was just starting to go down, giving everything a warm golden glow.
Heinrix spun in place to look at the gardens. Eltura was pleased and a little relieved to see a genuine smile on his face. Her scheme was already a success.
“I’m told that the start of spring on Dargonus is worth seeing, so I’m glad it lived up to the descriptions,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when we’d be on Dargonus this time of year next.”
Heinrix nodded. “It is. The Governor must keep skilled gardeners to be able to show it off like this.”
They strolled through the gardens, stopping occasionally to smell particularly fragrant flowers and to read the species names off of the tasteful little plaques at the edge of each planter. Eltura amused herself by picking up fallen blossoms that were still in good shape and tucking them into the back of Heinrix’s cape while he pretended not to notice.
When she judged the time was near, she looped her arm around his and dragged him to the benches on the western edge of the garden, where they could see the sun approaching the horizon. Eltura held her hand out, using her fingers to measure the distance between the two. Dargonus’ sun was a little redder and larger than Baraspine’s. With her increasingly hazy memories of her homeworld, it made it difficult to judge exactly the right time. But… this felt right, the light falling on the garden in familiar angles.
“There,” Eltura said. “This is a perfect Riana City sunset.” She looked at Heinrix, trying to memorize the way the shadows fell across his face, imagining how he would have looked in her city’s eternal sunset. He looked good in it, but then again, he looked good in most contexts. “It feels like I’ve been gone for more than five years,” she said softly. It had been something like thirteen years to her. “I didn’t realize I would miss it — the sun was just always there. I should have brought something with me…” She sighed and looked back at the sunset. “Did you bring anything with you when you left Guisorn III?”
“Nothing that has survived the intervening years,” he said, more wistful than hurt. “Although… I used to braid my sisters’ hair. If you’ll permit me, I’ll see if I still remember how.”
“Please do,” she said, moving to sit in front of him. As he pulled his gloves off, she fished through her coat pockets and handed him a folding comb and a hair tie.
He chuckled as he accepted the tools. He gathered all of her hair together, his fingertips warm as they brushed against her neck, and started tentatively breaking it into sections. After a few false starts, he figured out the pattern and Eltura let her eyes slip closed while he worked, focusing on the gentle tension against her head and the slight shift of weight as he got further down the braid.
“There,” Heinrix said, tying off the end.
The braid draped comfortably and felt like it would hold. She ran her fingers lightly along it and found he’d tucked flowers into the plaits in an unexpected bit of whimsy. “It’s lovely. Thank you,” she said, leaning back a little — not enough that she was actually putting any weight on him but enough to rest against the edge of his pauldrons. She was absolutely pushing it, and was prepared to pull back if he complained.
But instead, with a long exhale, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. She thought: Good, I haven’t fucked everything up, and she relaxed completely against him.
It was… a treasure. The cool, flower-scented breeze, the rippling orange sunset, the warmth at her back despite the many layers of clothing between them. It was a mistake to ever think she was safe, but sitting here in the peaceful garden, his arms wrapped around her, it was very hard not to believe it.
As the sun went completely under the horizon and the sky began to darken, hundreds of tiny lumens nestled in the flower beds and wrapped around the tree branches turned on, scattering soft light across the garden. Eltura took that as a cue to leave — if nothing else than to make sure they stayed completely out of Drivestem’s notice — and stood with great reluctance.
Heinrix adjusted his uniform and put his gloves back on, not meeting her eyes. There were still a few flowers in the back of his cape; he shook them out but caught one and held onto it.
She didn’t know what to say. If she told him how much this kind of closeness meant to her, it would be too heavy, too honest for the careful plausible deniability they kept around their relationship. So instead she fell back on incomplete truths, and said, “Thank you for making the time for this tonight.”
“Of course, I — of course,” he said. He looked like he was chewing on what to say next when the rush of an engine overhead startled them both.
“The Governor’s shuttle,” Eltura said, ducking down to let the flowers screen her from the rooftop shuttle pad. Damn. She had hoped that the Opera would have given them more time than this.
“I take it you’d prefer we weren’t seen here,” Heinrix said with a touch of sarcasm, crouching beside her.
“Perhaps,” she said, meaning Absolutely.
They cut back through the garden towards the elevator while the shuttle made its final approach. His hand found hers along the way. The shuttle landed as the elevator door opened, the clunk of the landing gear masking the bing, and as the doors were closing she heard Drivestem’s voice in the distance.
She found herself grinning at their narrow escape; Heinrix looked like he was amused despite his better judgement.
But then the elevator started to slow, Eltura gave his hand one last squeeze before letting go, and they both put their public faces back on.
Eltura kept the flowers from her braid in a vase in her bedroom until they had wilted completely.