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Marquess Yathanae of Feirren climbed the ladder up to her office.
Rhoklan je Kalna stood from his desk and made a crisp little bow.
She held out a hand to stop him launching into speech, as she wiped the sweat from her brow. Half of it was from a sparring session, yes, but the other half was from the climb. It would be another century before she was too old for this, but she was old enough already to regret all her good reasons to have an office in the canopy.
Rhoklan held out a missive, the edges of it curling in the humidity. “Ma’am, His Highness Fragbor Warhammer of Brunmoor has replied.”
She knew him just well enough to hear the wince in his voice. She scanned through the four balcony doors as she went to him. No messenger birds flying towards them. The sky was the flat grey that promised rain tonight, but not a storm. This was why she liked her head up in the clouds: she could see everything before it happened.
She took the letter and skimmed it.
It was frankly flowery by Fragbor’s standards, seeing as it had a greeting at the top and a parting at the bottom, and the middle did not just say ‘no.’
“I apologise,” said Rhoklan. He hunched inwards, and the stiff smocking of his tunic exaggerated the gesture. The drow of Inmesu favoured smocking as decoration: why colour your clothing when you lived in the dark? His one concession to colour was a blue and white sash that marked him as part of her household. It made him look like a bird of paradise. (He would probably dance like one if she asked, too.)
She put the letter on the desk, holding it down with a glass paperweight. “Don’t apologise. There’s no way we could ask for help and not get a snippy response.” Many had questioned elevating a hostage to be her secretary, but the fact he got such a nice response was proof of his skills. She refused to complain that her enemies had sued for peace and given her a secretary by accident.
Rhoklan couldn’t be a spy. It was not just that he had no way of communicating with Inmesu. Inmesu learned of hostages only in recent decades, and they still did not fully understand it. The matrons sent those who would otherwise be sacrifices: the friendless, the motherless, those whose sisters could find no other use for them.
Rhoklan looked down at the woven liana floor, and held his hands out, palm up.
Every time he apologised, he did that. Real error, false error, something that had nothing to do with him, he always stood like that, hands held out as an offering while he hid his face behind a curtain of white hair.
Suppressed irritation rattled in her chest. The problem was that she could not get angry with him for the habit without him doing it more.
It had taken her a month to work out why. The idea that it would even come up only angered her more. Even if she was purely a heartless pragmatist, why would she strike her secretary’s hands? He needed those to write!
But that sort of trained fear would not listen to logic. She would strangle whoever had taught it, if she knew who they were and it wouldn’t break several peace treaties. “Don’t stand like that,” she said flatly.
Parrots argued in the distance of the fresh figs, squawking and carrying on. Leaves rustled in the stingy breeze.
Rhoklan’s gaze flicked up at her, a flash of ruby, before going back down the floor. He did not move.
Yathanae sighed and settled her shoulders. “Why do you think I asked you to do that?”
“I would not dare to guess, ma’am.”
It stuck in her craw that in the heights of the Feirren Rainforest and the depths of Inmesu, the honorific for a respected older woman was the same.
She waited for a reply that did not come.
He stayed there, holding that posture with learned stillness.
The way you coaxed a scared bird into your hand was to hold a nut in one hand and offer a gentle pat with the other. Rhoklan was, despite how he dressed, not a bird. But maybe that was how you taught him to stop holding himself to be hit.
She stepped out onto the western balcony. A spiralling bannister of lianas, first woven by her grandfather, worked its way along the floor before rising to become benches. She sat on the embroidered silk cushions provided to lounge on comfortably. “Come over here. I have something to explain.”
Rhoklan followed, and hovered next to her, back stiff. “I am aware you value, ah, confidence?” (The day after she had made him her secretary, and then had a screaming argument about provisions with a male lieutenant, he had said, “I did not expect you to accept such… confidence.”)
A sea eagle flew past, fish in its talons, and landed on the tallest tree.
Rhoklan looked out over the balcony. He pressed his heels against the door frame, like he actually thought she might bodily toss him over the railing—
“I am relieving you from guessing my wishes for a moment.” She patted the bench beside her. “Sit down.”
He stayed still.
She looked up at him, one eye brow raised.
He actually made eye contact. That was worse. He wore the same expression he had during the hostage hand over. Not scared, but I am in a trap, is it worthwhile chewing my own leg off?
Her jaw jumped. If she had to try again later with a bigger imaginary peanut, so be it— “There is no obligation. Just something to explain.”
He looked suspicious, but he sat down next to her. The cushions dipped under his weight. His warmth radiated against her, and an unbound section of his hair tickled her neck.
That was… closer than she had expected. She had asked him to come into range, and that had to be where the suspicion came from. But now their thighs were touching. How long had it been since someone sat that close? Her chest ached, not with irritation, but with grief tinged remembrance. Her late husband had liked to watch the birds, while leaning against her side.
“When you do not succeed at perfectly fulfilling my wishes,” she asked, “what do you actually expect me to do?”
“I do not believe you would strike me.”
She chose to believe him, or at least pretended to. “I value your work. You should know me enough to know I would not lie about that. If you did something willingly to deserve punishment, I would—” she paused. What would she even do? She could not picture him being insubordinate. “—I would demote you. Not hit you or throw you off something tall.” He probably did not believe she would throw him off anything high, like he did not believe she would strike him. Just not enough to convince his feet.
His mouth went into an unhappy little twist, like he would prefer being struck over being demoted, if not thrown off a tree.
“Ah, come here,” she said.
“I already am here, ma’am?”
She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, surprised that he did not flinch, and gently tipped him over. She rested his head against her lap.
“Ma’am?” His breath puffed against the thin cotton of her trousers. He sounded confused, yes, but not fearful.
Yathanae smiled. Perhaps he did not go for peanuts, but he’d accept his feathers to be stroked. She ran a hand over his hair.
It was soft and fine, and mostly unbound, except a crown of braids brought together in the middle by a bead.
She rolled that bead between thumb and forefinger. He’d used to wear a quartz bead carved into the shape of a spider. Now it was a wooden bead carved with orchids. Master Kalahas’ work, she’d guessed. If he’d decided he’d liked flowers and colours now that he had seen them, so much the better. If he’d decided he should mould himself to the shape his captors wanted, down to how he did his hair— There was no way to ask. If he was moulding himself, he’d just mould himself to look like he was not doing that.
Rhoklan sighed, growing heavy in her lap.
She slid the bead down his hair, and started undoing his braids. “You believe my hands more than you believe my mouth, don’t you?”
“It’s not my place to doubt you.”
The braid unravelled quickly. She he ran her fingers through the newly freed hair. “You’re my secretary. It’s your place to say I want a stupid letter written.” It’s your place too, to tell me not put you in my lap.
He laughed, a pleasant, throaty sound.
“It’s good to see you relax,” she said.
Observing it broke the spell. He went tense in her lap, and then even tenser as he realised he might have been failing her. “Ma’am—“
She cut off the next apology. “That wasn’t an order.” She couldn’t say I don’t mind what you do, because that would be a lie. She wanted him to relax, to stop holding himself so stiffly, to stop giving her his hands to hit.
She stroked him, from the top of his shoulders to his mid back, hard enough to push him down into her thighs. “I like you, even the parts of you that can’t relax.”
“I think stress is the natural state of a secretary.”
“I would value you even if you were still—” the phrase mere war booty jumped to the forefront of her mind “—just a hostage.”
He tipped his head to the side, looking back out over the trees. The breeze cooled, as the promised rain came closer and closer. “If I am just a hostage,” he said, with a tone of diplomatic suggestion, “then my purpose is to be hurt.”
Was that how it was explained to him? She had restrained herself from strangling the Matron of je Kalna during the negotiations, and she regretted it more each day. “That’s not how it works.” She traced a finger across his temple, tucking a loose lock of hair behind his ear. “Not here.”
“The purpose of a hostage is to have someone who can be hurt if the other parties in a negotiation don’t hold up their bargain. It’s good sense to send someone who the counter party values more than you.” His voice went clipped, like he was frustrated he had to explain without leaving room for subtext.
There was a cold logic to it, to make your enemies give you something they valued, and give them garbage in return. “And Inmesu are idiots for sending people who are more valuable to us than to them.” It felt too intimate to ask, so, why did your matriarch think you were expendable? so she didn’t. But whoever decided to hand over someone with a good hand and a good mind, who dived into diplomacy like a cormorant, was an idiot.
Rhoklan went quiet. Yathanae felt his jaw working against her thigh.
She swept his hair over one shoulder, revealing his neck. She ran her thumb over it, searching for knots. She drew circles around the tightest one.
He hissed, pressing his head further into her leg.
“You’re mine now.” The ownership of it stuck in her craw, even if it was how Inmesu saw most relationships. He was part of her household, was her writing hand, was someone she wanted to hold close and help grow— using the possessive was not wrong. “I don’t hurt my people.”
He relaxed. Deliberately, of course, but it still counted. “Thank you,” he said, sounding choked.
Yathanae stopped her hand.
Even when he’d been handed over to a bright, foreign surface, even when he calculated how much he would be hurt, his eyes had been dry. There was a shift of his shoulders, and a slight dampness against the thin cotton of her trousers.
It felt too intimate as well to mention. She dug her thumb into a knot again. “I would not do this for anyone who was mine.” She had, thankfully, avoided her lieutenants crying on her. She categorically refused to stroke their hair. The muscle loosened.
Rhoklan made a sound that was halfway between a sob and a sigh.
She rested her palm against his shoulders, feeling the hitched rhythm of his breath. “I could not ask for a better secretary.” Or for one who would use my lap as a pillow just because I asked.
The speech of Feirren and Inmesu were similar in structure. The real differences were in the word choices. There was a word she would only use for a painting or a musical instrument, not even for something useful like a sword. But she heard a matron being doe-eyed to one of her consorts using this word. He had practically melted onto her. “You are valued,” Yathanae said.
Rhoklan kept shaking, curling in on himself. He cried silently, and the wetness grew.
She kept stroking his hair. Better out than in, perhaps? If she squinted, she could just make out the nest the sea eagles were bringing fish to. If she watched him instead— it would be easier to say she was worried he would run from his hard-won vulnerability if anyone saw it.
It would be more truthful to say she was worried about what she was doing.
…at least crying was better than holding his hands out and staring at the floor.
She stroked his hair, savouring the silk softness and ignoring the shaking. Watched the gathering clouds and calculated how long it would be until the rain hit, and not how long Rhoklan lay there.
Eventually, he levered himself out of her lap. He scrubbed his face with his hand. It smeared the wetness more than clearing it. His hair stuck up at odd angles, (almost like someone had been playing with it,) and his eyes were bloodshot, too— but he looked at her. “I do not wish to fall behind in my duties.” He smiled like he was trying to reassure her.
“If you feel the urge to,” she said. “But don’t push yourself. It’s been a long day.”
He stood up, smoothing his clothes to look more presentable, and less like he had been draped over a lady’s lap. “I have had longer.” He paused, looking at her.
She looked back at him, an eyebrow raised. That look had too much subtext. “Yes?”
With careful calculation, he reached out, resting a hand on her shoulder.
What was she meant to do with this? It was affectionate, yes, but she had a better idea of how to respond to a cavalry charge than her secretary petting her.
She placed her hand over the top of his. His knuckles were cool under her fingers.
He smiled again, and carefully withdrew his hand. “Thank you,” he said, before walking back into the office.