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The bit of brass lay heavy and cold in his hand. Only for a little while longer though, as the sun rises and his skin warms.
“This is… to our old rooms?”
“Yes. The Lady Indumathi has instructed me to guide you there, should the esteemed Warrior not recall the way.”
Issei shook his head slowly. He hasn’t looked up from the key. It seems so much smaller now.
“No, no, thank you. I… I will find my way.”
The steward inclined his head and briskly walked off, the clink of his earrings keeping time with his footsteps.
Issei tries to remember how to walk. One leaden foot in front of the other. It’s been years since he’s seen his mother. Twenty-five, to be exact. He’d half hoped she’d forgotten him. Him and his awful mistakes. It was foolish, but so was everything else he’d done, then. Enlisting as a medic, following his father onto the battlefield... Running away from his mother for the years to follow.
He shook his head and walked swiftly on, keeping his head down and trying to smile for the odd passerby who recognized him. Past the grand hall, through the courtyard, up this flight of stairs. Under sweeping arches and over tiled passages and tinkling fountains. The hall to the left led to the baths, and the one to the right led to the sitting rooms. Past both of them would be the private apartments, kept only for the satrap and his courts’ families.
And here, behind the third set of doors in the hall, the chambers where he spent his earliest days of childhood. Before father was called home. Issei has to pause to catch his breath. As memories filtered back he started walking faster and faster, stopping himself before he could break into a sprint.
Issei looked down at the doors’ lock. He was seventeen when he left Thavnair. Late for his age, he was still short and gangly and hadn’t yet experienced the rapid growth typical for Auri youths. He reaches higher on the door’s handles now, can even fully wrap his fingers around them. They're ever so slightly warm to the touch.
If he reaches lower, around an ilm from where the handles end, he’ll touch the puncture he left when he was five and ran face first into these very doors, his uncle aghast behind them. Issei had forgotten why one of his horns was slightly more skewed than the other. His hands tremble, but he's able to fit the key into the lock.
The lock turns easily, the doors old but well-kept. The rooms are nearly unchanged. Dulled in some places, the walls faded where light loved to rest. Brighter in others, among rugs and vases Issei didn’t recognize. Being here... it's almost as if he's a child again, remembering things from decades ago like it was just yesterday. That balcony was where mother and father stood most nights, laughing at jokes only the two of them understood. This sitting room was where his uncle would tell him stories and try to pinch Issei’s tail. Whenever they could all be together, they ate meals at that table - but it was usually just father and him.
That table now bears a jug pinning a note in place. It smells… familiar. Woodsy and mild. Barley tea. Father often drank it with ice during his time in Thavnair. It’s exactly like he remembers it. He’d had a sip during his relatively recent stay in Kugane, but the Shiokaze hostelry could afford to stock a higher grade of barley tea for its sailors and their exotic goods. This was the blend that graced every commoner’s table in Doma. Father’s favorite. The jug’s surface is thickly beaded with water, and leeching quickly onto the note.
Issei rescues it before the ink has a chance to bleed. Its contents were scrawled by a careless, but even hand. His mother’s writing.
I hope you didn’t think I’d just let you shack up with all the other adventurers. From what I’ve heard you have more reason to stay than leave, but I’ll give you the courtesy due my son and tell you I have trackers watching your every move. I’ll bring Ahewann over and we’ll talk. Tonight.
I'll you No Rest well.
-Indumathi
The threat is implicit, but firm. In all honesty, that's a better reception than he'd been expecting. Smudges and strikethroughs mar the end of the note. As if she was hesitating, unsure what to leave as her farewell. Issei had never known his mother to be the sort of woman to hesitate. She deliberated quickly and acted twice as fast. They had differed in that, and in other respects, as Issei was growing up. But had he been as decisive as her, father would - but he had been. Once. Thought to action, in a lightning strike. And he will never forgive himself for it. She had never thought of it as a failing of his, that he weighed options and outcomes equally, carefully. Slowly. But they've both had many, many years to change.
Tail lashing, Issei blows out a heavy breath. He had tried his best, but he knew this was inevitable as soon as he’d set foot in Thavnair. That she hasn’t had him thrown into a cell yet is more than he ever hoped for. To meet his mother and uncle, the last remnants of their family, after a quarter of a century? It’s terrifying. It’s all he’s wanted, these past few years. His mouth is dry, but he does not lift the jug. He can’t trust his stomach. The sun is starting to rise high in the sky, the air warming. His mother and uncle will only be free of their duties come dusk. Issei takes a seat at the foot of his childhood bed, and resigns himself to his fate.
