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“Most Glorious and Illustrious One,” Sayo Mdang said, not rising from his obeisances at the automatic dismissal you had given him. You could practically hear the tears in his voice, but he didn’t move, his forehead pressed to the floor.
The taboos had . . . changed since the Fall, but you did not dare test them. You had likely blinded him - the competent, intrepid, unrefined secretary, who would laugh at your jokes. Perhaps he did not dare to stand for fear of being unable to find the door.
“As I have already broken the taboos,” Sayo Mdang said, “I do not think that there can be any further harm in asking, Glorious One. The Emperors of Astandalas have long held the skin of Elonoa’a of Izurayë, known to the world beyond the Vangavaye-ve as the Seafarer King. It was given in trust to Elonoa’a’s fanoa Aurelius Magnus, and left behind when Aurelius Magnus was taken by the Sun and the Moon. In the absence of the one it had been given to, the skin should have been returned to Elonoa’a. Many have gone to the Emperors of Astandalas over the years to ask this, and now, Illustrious One, I come before you. Will you return Elonoa’a’s skin?”
“No,” I said reflexively, taking a step back, my hands instinctively coming up to clutch at the black and white skin arranged over my shoulder. “No, I can’t.”
I’d worn the skin constantly since I woke up after the Fall to find it draped over me like a blanket, and my magic, cringing but there once again, had told me what I had not been able to sense under the tightest bindings of the Pax: it was a shifter’s skin, supple and healthy and strong, and alive still, after however many years it had been separated from its person.
I had remembered it from your long-ago visit to the treasury, from the endless rotation of Imperial symbols of power. If I had known -
I don’t think that I could have used it, before the Fall. I remembered your Grooms presenting it on the holiday celebrating the submission of the Wide Seas to the Empire: the Seafarer King’s own skin, given to the lord he had sworn himself to, in one of the greatest shows of fealty a skin shifter could perform. I remembered thinking that it looked to be in far too good condition to have survived two thousand years of Astandalas, unable to feel the life it shared with its person.
There was the question of whether he was telling the truth, but I remembered again the vision of the boat on the ocean: the hint of friendship, the gift of a moment. My magic again reached for Cliopher, and for the skin, and told me that they came from the same seas and skies.
I had latched onto the skin after the Fall, refused to allow it to be taken away from me even to bathe. It was not my own cloak of feathers, but a shifter’s skin could handle water. It was not my own cloak of feathers, but it was enough to allow me to shift in my private study, away from the watchful eyes of your guards and attendants. I couldn’t fly, but - I couldn’t fly, but - it was better than nothing. It was better than nothing, and I couldn’t -
“No,” I said again, but -
I had always known that someone would come to reclaim it. It was a living skin. I had not thought it could truly be the skin of the legendary Seafarer King from two thousand years ago. I had not thought that he could still be alive after all these years.
Intrepid , I thought blankly, looking down at Cliopher, taking in how he visibly trembled as he sat up, his eyes still downcast. I had to look away quickly, and I couldn’t tell from that brief glance if he was blind or not.
“Yes,” you said, pained. You could not make my fingers unclench from the folds of the skin. You said, “We will give it back.”
Cliopher was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Glorious One, if it is not too presumptuous of me to ask, are you perhaps missing your own skin?”
Your eyes landed on Ludvic and Sergei, who of course were watching your hands and not your face, waiting for any silent command you might give them.
I could not speak. And you had never had a skin.
“I see,” Cliopher said.
There were some quiet rustling noises as you tried to pry my fingers off the skin. You could do it. You would. You would not be like those who kept my feather cloak away from us still.
“Glorious One,” Cliopher said.
You glanced back at him, then had to freeze. Cliopher was still kneeling, sitting back on his heels. And in his hands, offered up like every image you had ever seen of the Seafarer King doing the same, was a silvery grey pelt. His sand-colored secretarial robes were loose and pulled askew.
“Cliopher - Sayo Mdang,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“I would not see any shifter unwillingly without a shifter’s skin while it is in my power,” Cliopher said, not moving to drop his hands. “It is my duty to see Elonoa’a’s skin returned, and so instead I offer you my own pelt.”
“If we meant to hold another’s skin against their will, we would not return the Seafarer King’s skin to you,” you said, finally managing to convince my fingers to release the folds of the skin, and to allow you to reach for the clasps that held the skin in place without piercing it. (Thankfully, without piercing it.) You tossed the skin at Cliopher so that it fell over his head, and I was shamefully grateful that his face was hidden.
“Glorious One,” Cliopher said, his muffled voice coming from under the skin, not moving to lower his arms, “it is different if the skin is willingly given, as I willingly offer my pelt to you.”
“We will not bind you to us,” you said tightly.
“Then return my pelt to me when I leave, but Glorious One, please , do not force me to watch you suffer when there is something I can do to remedy it!”
No one argued with you. No one suggested you suffered or were tired or were in pain. You were, officially, the source of the world’s blessings. What could you need?
Your eyes went to your guards again. They watched, stoic.
I did want to have a skin, even if it was not mine. And I did know that willingly giving away my feather cloak had not been awful, little though I could imagine that now.
“Have you been blinded by the breaking of the taboo?” you asked, taking a single step towards him.
“No, Glorious One.”
“And you will ask for your pelt should you want it back, for any reason?” I took another few steps closer.
“Yes, Glorious One.”
I paused there, something stopping me from reaching out to take the skin from Cliopher. Trepidation, yes, but . . .
I had only asked two questions. In poems, in stories, it would be three.
I had not written poetry in years.
Still. There was one more question I might ask. I took a few more steps forward and let my hand hover over the silver pelt. “Will you accept your appointment to the position of my secretary?”
“Yes, Glorious One.”
I let my hand drop.