11 No rest around immortal carnivores
“You let him touch you?” Kashvi whispered, as vicious as low syllables allowed.
“I reiterate,” Fi whispered back. “I did not let him do anything. The bastard was fast.”
“You let him get your guard down.”
“He was conniving.”
“I’d have taken his head off.”
“Yeah. Well…” Fi blew a rainbow strand off her cheek. “All clearer in hindsight.”
They sat in the back of the governor’s office, Fi attempting to recount her visit to the Twilit Plane without being too loud. A difficult task, thanks to Kashvi’s interruptions for expletives each time Avroz came up. “Twig-headed dusk fungus” was one to save for later.
Antal perched on a sofa near the windows, tail curled, a mug of coffee in his lap.
Across from him sat the new council member from Sunip.
Thanks to their early return from the Twilit Plane, Kashvi had rescheduled the meeting.
She and Fi were on hand for emotional support, a reassurance that the Lord Daeyari would meet with goodwill, not teeth.
Unnecessary, judging by the councilwoman’s easy posture. Most people warmed to Antal on their own, once they had a chance to speak with him.
Soft creature. Always bending himself backward just to earn basic decency.
“Are you sure that’s the end of it?” Kashvi said. “This daeyari, Avroz, won’t come here next?”
Fi had no idea. It had only kept her up most of the night. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Kashvi let out a low breath. “I’m glad you made it back in one piece. You are in one piece, right?”
“Don’t worry, Kashvi. I’m fine.”
Fi wasn’t fine. She’d been helpless against Avroz, outplayed and outmatched, her two least favorite outs.
Antal had told her to Voidwalk as a last resort, but she hadn’t had time before Avroz grabbed her.
Also, hurling herself into the abyss between realities didn’t seem like a perfect fallback, especially as she was still ironing out the kinks.
“You don’t have to do that,” Kashvi said. “Pretend like nothing can hurt you.”
The audacity. Fi’s bristles raised on instinct, a dozen defensive counter-arguments about how she could look out for herself, she’d fought daeyari before, she… sighed.
“I know,” Fi said. “Bad habits.”
“Hm.”
Kashvi rubbed her chest, fingers idling with the silver buttons of her governor’s jacket. Fi had seen her do it before, massaging muscles aching with silver sickness.
“How are you holding up?” Fi asked.
Kashvi scowled, inspecting stiff fingers. “Hurts like shit. Hospital here is superb. They’ve got damn fine pain meds, some Shapers experimenting with drawing out the excess energy current before it can burn. Takes the edge off. Still hurts. Worse, with busy days.”
Fi wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Kashvi string that many sentences together about her illness, more prone to gruff shrugs.
“You can rest,” Fi said. “Void knows you’ve earned it.”
There came the shrug. “Bad habits.”
Both of them still fighting old impulses. The past year had brought change, but maybe not as much as Fi thought. Maybe not all of it as good as she’d thought.
She’d hoped, for example, that escaping the Twilit Plane would feel like a victory. That Antal would be glad to return home—his real home, here on the Winter Plane.
The cracks were so glaring, Fi could slap herself for not seeing them sooner.
The subtle tilt to Antal’s posture on a human sofa, the backrest cramping his tail, compared to daeyari floor pillows.
The too-bright glare of sun through the window.
His coffee, clasped for amicable conversation, but hardly touched.
Merciless Void, how had she never realized the coffee would taste different on another Plane?
The greatest insult was that he’d never told her.
The meeting ended in good spirits. Antal walked the councilwoman to the door with a careful, fang-less smile. He’d dressed in mortal fabrics, unornamented. A panther, terrified that these hares would turn on him if he showed too much of himself.
When the door closed, his smile fell, exhaustion slumping his tail.
“She’s requesting timber,” he said. “An influx of residents, like everywhere else. They need to build.”
Kashvi nodded. “We can send some shipments that way.”
“Her greater worry is the territory next door.” Antal returned to the sofa, dropping to the cushions with a less formal sprawl.
“Sunip sits near the border. They’ll be closest to whichever daeyari takes Verne’s place.
I’ll try to hold out for a good replacement but”—he ran a hand over his face—“I won’t be able to stall forever. ”
“Keep track of your promises, daeyari. I’ve got plenty to keep you busy already.”
While Kashvi assembled her list of to-do items, Fi joined Antal with an equally dismal slump on the sofa. Her sweater was thick and oversized, soft fabric perfect to mope in—and gentle on the claw marks healing across her collarbone.
Fi watched Antal’s gaze trace the cuts on her temple. A longer pause on her frown. Worried that she was still angry?
Of course she was angry. How could Fi not be angry to realize she wasn’t giving him what he needed? She’d tried to learn how daeyari acted, baring teeth and biting chins, even speaking the language.
But those were tiny things. They could never replace an entire world.
A world that had hurt him, over and over. Yet he wanted to cling to it?
“You don’t like the coffee?” she asked.
Antal’s tail twitched. He studied the mug he’d set on the table. “It’s fine.”
“But not the same?”
A pause. “No.”
“That’s a damn shame.”
His eyes narrowed. Another appraisal of her posture, her flat tone.
“You’re pouting,” Antal said softly. “Honey sweet.”
Fi sat upright. “Excuse me?”
“You pinch your face when you pout—”
“Honey… sweet?”
Fi gawked at him. Antal returned a slow, perplexed blink. An anxious tail swish.
“You requested a pet name,” he said.
“That’s your pet name?”
“Is this not what humans say to each other in affection?”
Honey. Sweet. Fi had been called each of those things in the past—never amicably. And never…
“Not both of them together,” she said. “You can’t just combine words like that.”
Antal’s tail swished wider. “This is an unnecessary amount of rules.”
“What is happening here?” Kashvi interjected, circling the sofa with arms full of paperwork. “And why in the cruel black Void is it happening in my presence?”
Antal cast her a thoughtful look. “Governor Kashvi, you’ve spent many years with your partner, yes?”
Fi was going to perish.
“What does Iliha call you?” Antal asked, so deadpan, it couldn’t be fake.
“No,” Kashvi said. Face granite. “No, we’re not doing this.”
“Iliha calls Kashvi her wolverine,” Fi said, masking a snicker.
Antal’s nose wrinkled. “You told me pet names weren’t meant to be actual pets.”
“No,” Fi said, “I know that, but…”
The laugh bubbled out before she could stop it, bright and genuine for this absurd immortal who could carve bones with his claws, but not understand the nuances of pet names. Antal huffed.
Then, he twitched a smile. Fi hadn’t seen him smile since they’d left for the Twilit Plane.
It fled at the sound of a knock on the office door.
Their moment of levity vanished with Kashvi’s gruff call of “come in,” with the door swinging open and a patrolman leaning inside. Fi slumped against the sofa anew. More territory business. A never-ending parade of demands—
“Lord Antal.” The patrolman spoke, hurried. “There’s a daeyari here to see you.”
The words snapped through the room like a match.
Antal was on his feet first. Fi right after him, sword hilt in hand.
Kashvi moved to her desk, within reach of the crossbow she kept out of sight.
The three of them, at each other’s throats more often than not when it came to the politics of the city.
But this was their city. They’d fought together to win it back. They’d fight together to keep it safe.
“A daeyari?” Antal demanded. “On what business?”
The patrolman glanced to the hall. “She didn’t say. I… don’t think she understands—”
“No one speaks daeyari here?” called out in the same language. “Outrageous!”
Yme pushed into the room like a Winter wind, past the patrolman’s half-hearted protest. She dressed in pants of red ombre and black flowers, tight at her waist and loose at her calves.
Her shirt was gossamer black with flowing sleeves, a silver cape draping one shoulder.
Her hair wove a top layer of three braids, cascading slate underneath.
Very dusk-predator chic, fit for a walk along the river before gorging on mortal flesh.
Antal stood stone-still, mouth parted in shock.
Kashvi appraised both immortals. Locked eyes with Fi. Gestured, questioning, to the crossbow beneath her desk. Fi, equally slack-jawed, held up a finger to wait.
“Azaevi,” Antal said, breaking from his stupor. The greeting quieted her, long enough for Antal to address the patrolman in seasonspeak. “Thank you. I’ll handle her.”
The man retreated swiftly, closing the door behind him.
Yme huffed at his exit. Spoke in daeyari. “Your humans are rude.”
“I’ll show her rude,” Fi returned in seasonspeak.
Kashvi braced a hand on her desk, still in reach of her crossbow. “And this one is?”
“His mother,” Fi said.
Kashvi clicked her tongue. “Better than the ex.”
“Stop it, both of you,” Antal said. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m not here to help, Lord Daeyari,” Kashvi shot back. “I’m here to make sure you fix energy conduits. And that no other carnivores snack on my citizens.”
Yme circled the room. She squinted at the bright windows, ran a hand over the back of a sofa, looked at Kashvi as if inspecting a zoo exhibit. Amazing that she didn’t get a crossbow bolt through her sternum for that alone.
“Why are you here?” Antal asked in daeyari.
Yme faced him with eyes bright, tail perked. “Visiting. Of course.”
“Why?”
“I need a reason to visit my only son?”
Fi could have heard a needle drop in the silence, could have sharpened it against Antal’s bared teeth. She withheld her own scoff—only to allow Antal scoffing priority.
“You haven’t visited in fifty years,” he said.
Yme’s tail drooped. “Perhaps it’s time for a change.”
“Did Avroz send you?”
“Of course not! Avroz is gone on council business. Three urgent meetings in the span of two weeks, didn’t even bother coming home last night. I don’t know what he’s—” She clamped her mouth. Swished her tail. “This isn’t about him. I came because I wanted to.”
Antal scoffed. An excellent scoff, loud and sharp-edged. Fi was right to give him priority.
“Did you?” he said. “Came to visit because you wanted to? What does that mean for the last five decades?”
“Antal. Please.” Yme bowed her head. “I’m here because of how you left. Because… I don’t want to spend another fifty years not speaking to my son.”
Antal hesitated. Fi swallowed a flash of anger, that he would hesitate after all his parents had done to him.
Would Fi have hesitated, if her vanished mother reappeared? Asked for amends?
The thought struck her unexpectedly. Fi’s mother had left when she and Boden were young, no longer able to endure their father’s nightly drinking, or that suffocating village, or two children wailing at her calves.
Who knew the exact reason? She’d vanished in the night, and Fi had let her go.
No point searching for someone who didn’t want to be found.
No point missing someone who didn’t want her.
No point imagining amends that would never…
This proved an unproductive line of thought. Fi abandoned it, easier to simply scowl.
“Perhaps we could talk,” Yme pleaded. “That’s easy enough?”
Antal’s tail hung in a low, pained sway. “Azaevi, I don’t think—”
“One visit. That’s all I ask.”
Antal’s sigh sank his entire chest. Fi knew that defeated look, had practiced it too many times for her own father. Easier not to argue. Easier to just get it over with.
“Fine,” he conceded. “A brief visit.” Then back to seasonspeak. “Kashvi, do you have further need of me today?”
His governor cut him a dry look. “What do you think, daeyari? Of course I have further need of you.”
He nodded. “I’ll walk to the river and back. I won’t be long.”
Kashvi huffed in reluctant agreement. Antal looked to Fi.
So did Yme. Her gaze came sharper, probing. Fi glared back, debating the merits of showing her teeth.
“You haven’t met Fionamara properly,” Antal said in daeyari.
“I haven’t,” Yme said, cuttingly cordial. “A pleasure, Fionamara.”
“Fi is fine,” she corrected. Antal could use her full name, no one else.
Antal’s second sigh came longer. He met Fi with fractured eyes, some mix of hurt and apology she couldn’t begin to disentangle.
“Would you like to come?” he asked.
Fi considered it, if only to see how many insults in seasonspeak she could slip behind Yme’s back. But Antal had said he missed spending time with other daeyari. He clearly missed spending time with his mother. Fi would only stir up trouble by tagging along.
He’d said that too, hadn’t he? That his family would never accept her.
“You go,” Fi forced through a smile. “Enjoy your walk. I’ll be here.”