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'Sy
* * *
Elete, kneeling beside the bed, looks over the Voitre boy to peer closely at his face. He places his hand on the boy's forehead. Elete closes his eyes, obviously concentrating on something.
I stand overhead, ready to move if the Voitre boy does. I invited Elete to come in, yes, but I don't like him being so close to the boy. Still, we need to find out what's wrong with him.
Elete frowns. He leans away from the boy, then looks up at me.
I raise an eyebrow. "Yes?"
He sighs, looks down at the boy again, then bites his lip. He seems to be chewing over what he's going to tell me. I prepare myself for the worst. Finally, he takes in a deep breath and says: "He seems perfectly normal to me."
I almost fall over.
He smiles wanly, then rises. When he wobbles during the attempt, I give him a hand. "I know, 'Sy - I know something strange should show, considering what you've told me thus far. But I can find nothing in a cursory viewing. If it's something hiding from me, you'll have to ask Jhe o'Radia or the Advocate to look for something. I can verify, though, that as a Poet he also exhibits nothing wrong with his mind. The only thing I detect is a wariness of admitting where he's been, but that's quite common in your presence, and doubly common among those in his brigade." He pauses. "I did not know until now that you'd assigned him with the shadows. He hid that well."
I cock my head. Elete is an interesting person to discuss Aaren with, isn't he? As Poet King, he had Aaren first. It's something I keep forgetting - I think of all Armed as primarily mine, even the Mixed, until I'm reminded that the Mixed are not. Aaren's even new at being Armed. He only recently joined the forces under Jhe Wysthaven's command. "Perhaps you can shed a bit of light on the situation, Elete. You are correct, he does hide things well. You know him better than most, though, don't you? You brought him here, after all."
He smiles. "Ah, yes. I did aid in his extraction from the Xaillyndessen." He looks at me with an idle querying expression. "Would his paternal roots have something to do with where you've placed him in the Armed?"
I school my expression. On the one hand, there's no reason per se to hide anything from Elete. On the other, there's the automatic, oft-justified fear of telling a Poet something and then seeing the statement spread across the Kingdom like wildfire.
"Have I ever broken your confidence?" says Elete in the most measured tone I've heard him use with me.
I blink, then realize how stupid I'm being about this. There is a difference between telling a secret to Erynn Blackirons and telling it to Jhe h'Logos Elethe-travente Xaillyndesse. "I'm sorry. No, you have not. I'm just..."
"You're just protective. I understand. I am protective of my own, as well. And he is yours as well as mine, is he not?" He pauses, clearly deliberating over saying something, over admitting something. The air grows thick with it. I steel myself for the worst. "I bear no ill toward you for what happened last night, and I apologize for my excesses and my failure to listen. I'm saying this because you seem intent on going without discussing it, and pretending as if none of it happened. Certain issues need to be buried, though, am I correct?"
I can't really speak. I nod. How'd he corner me into this? I didn't see it coming at all, and I've played chess against Elete for years.
"They do. They do because we've been keeping secrets from each other, have we not? For no other reasons than rivalry and paranoia. But I have too little time left to gamble with. Death is the best secret-keeper of all. So, before Jhe Harpseal arrives with his cargo, and Jhe Lute is here to shed more light on what brought he and Jhe Voitre here, perhaps I should illuminate you about certain things, and you should illuminate me in turn."
I can't help my automatic reaction - the desire to move to see where he moves, to check my actions so that his will bend as well. He is right in that we have no time for playing games, but that's all we've ever done with each other. There's no reason not to disclose everything. ...Wait, did he just admit outright that he's been keeping secrets from me about Aaren?
A smile creeps onto Elete's jaw and sits there with impudence. Damnit. All his talk about playing games was just to checkmate me in his own game!
"You think too much, Tesynnodai. Come, now. I will tell you of what I know, but you must be open with me as well, and it is vital that I be with you when you take your next steps with the boy."
"Because you've Seen it, or of your premonitions, or because you'll die in a week?"
"Because I can help," he says primly.
"Fine." He's right in one thing: I have no time to argue with him. He seems satisfied with my agreement.
"Jhe Voitre has had me help him send false information to his Father, to perpetuate the lie that he is a spy in service of the Kommissar. He had a particular amount of difficulty in doing so himself. He has, in fact, met with his Father several times under my overseeing. These are things that wouldn't surprise you, I am sure. He would tell you. His Arms would tell you even if he tried to hide it, yes?"
I nod. I don't like where this is going.
"Aaren has trusted me implicitly. I think he's told you a fair bit about the circumstances with his Father. How he was able to come to Radia at all, and serve in the Halls, only because he insisted to his Father that he was serving as a spy. How he divested himself of his Father's name to hide his roots, and thus aid in that 'mission'. He told you everything that was necessary." Elete hesitates. "There is a great difference, in the Xaillyndesse family, between that which is necessary to tell and that which is the truth. It's how we survive, on that side. We make do. Some might say that Aaren didn't have the worst of it - Jhe Xen Xaillyndesse isn't, by Xaillyndesse standards, really in the family. He's not from the core line, but more of an outlying cousin. Aaren wasn't a party to the worst things that family has to offer... but as a son of the Kommissar, he would be directly in the line of sight of my Mother. That elevates the danger just a bit." The Poet King is looking more and more uncomfortable as he speaks, as if he'd rather not at all. "He would tell you that he changed his name to hide his origins, as a service to you, in fact. So that he could be a double-agent and play a game for us, so that he could in turn fool his Father into thinking he was a spy, while in reality he was spying for us."
"I understand that," I say. He's waiting for a response, in that annoying Poetic habit of halting before turning the page.
"He told you that because you are not a Xaillyndesse. I, however, who is one, and who helped to get him away from his family, he told something else - something he knew that I would understand more than anyone else here. He told me that he changed his name because he could not stand to be associated with his Father any longer, and that double-agenting for us was a personal joy to him. He told me, in very few words and nuances that only a Xaillyndesse would understand, just how much he hated his Father. Through that, he told me without any words just how much had been done to him by his Father." Elete is pale now, his tone growing green and sickly.
I frown. "Jhe Voitre told me none of that, no." To be honest, I let Aaren omit certain things when talking to me. I felt that it would be better for him that way, and since I knew I could trust him implicitly, I was eager to help him leave behind it past. "I could tell that something was abnormal with his past, but I believe in the liberty of discretion. Had it been important, I would have known to press him for it."
"He would tell you as little as possible about it, in any case. He would want you to think he was capable of the task of being a double-agent, and unmoved by emotion. Xaillyndessen prefer to keep up the appearance that everything is about business. We do not bear our weakness in the open."
"No," I say softly, "you don't."
"Thelea Xaillyndesse has done strange things to some of her children--" Elete chokes for a moment, something I'm sure is motivated by emotion or sickness. "Xen Xaillyndesse worked with her closely in many things."
"Gods in ether," I say, "are you telling me Aaren was engineered in the same way that you were?"
Elete's skin turns so pale that he's almost transparent, and I catch him around the waist. He has never, since the time I first met him, liked to discuss his Mother. He pants for a few moments, sweat dripping from his brow. He gains his feet after some time. "No, not at all. Aaren was not like me, he was conceived as naturally as you can claim a Xaillyndesse ever was. Mother just... had ideas. About children, and about control."
I remember how grateful Elete was for everything that we did for him all those years ago when he first came to Radia from Lyiannethe. Not just big things, like giving him his own suite and giving him a level of respect that most young teenagers didn't commonly receive. Little things, like inviting him to sit and have breakfast, or allowing him to pick the tea. How strangely taken he was with pouring his own tea, making his own schedule, speaking without being prompted to. Only a Xaillyndesse would understand, he said. I am beginning to see why. "You're saying that there are certain things I may have taken for granted about Aaren."
"Moreso - there are things he's outright hidden from you." Elete averts his eyes. "He swore me to secrecy, asked that I not tell unless it were a dire circumstance. As in, something that would threaten other people than himself. Aaren did not consider himself worth very much."
Another thing that Elete would have shared with the boy, had we not trained him out of that nonsense.
Something ripples through the air around me. Elete blinks and steps back. I feel an invisible weight upon myself - Diyn's. I also feel the foreboding countenance of a weapon that is very angry with me. We have a very short conversation.
"Diyn tells me that something is wrong with Schiphael, and blames some weakness in my Armed for allowing an incorruptible thing to become tainted." I sigh. It only gets worse, it seems. "What is it that Aaren told you, Elete?"
"His Father considers him only a tool, and used him as such before he came to be here." Elete closes his eyes. "He didn't want anyone else to know, but he wanted to notify someone of the danger."
I frown. "That makes no sense. He told me that he had no fear of dealing with his Father."
"Well, he wouldn't, would he? He was a spy for his Father. Of course he'd have no fear of dealing with him - he was working for him." Elete's as matter-of-fact about this as if he's talking about the weather. I try to focus on his words while ignoring the way Diyn is growling in the back of my head.
"He worked for us, not Sul." I pause. "Are you implying that this wasn't the case?"
"I am telling you that Xaillyndessen allegiances and controls and manipulations and oaths run deep and complex. Who knows what his true heart is?" He bites his lip. "He secretly worried that he might be spying on us for the Kommissar without even knowing it."
"That's impossible!" It's not until I bark that out that I realize that my emotions are so heated. "Diyn and I knew the truth of him. If he was a backstabber, even without knowing it, we'd have seen it on him like a visible mark!"
"So you say." Elete has a distinct amount of trouble looking me in the eye.
I glare at him, not caring if he sees the expression or not. He can feel it. "You're going to tell me that I'm not a Xaillyndesse and so I wouldn't understand."
"Is it not true?" Elete shakes his head. "That's unimportant now. I only wanted to bring to light what his fears were. You deserve to know. Had I even believed that he was capable of secretly following his Father's orders, I would have told you of this sooner."
I narrow my eyes, trying to hold back how flabberghasted I am. Between this, Diyn, and the Trial I'm concurrently attending, my head is pounding. "You didn't believe him?"
Elete shrugs, his expression almost hopeless. "How could I? I didn't see the potential for it to happen. Besides, I know how paranoid being Xaillyndessen can make me - Aaren is younger and he's not yet been exposed to as much of the world as I have. I suspected teenage dramatics - something the boy has not been coming up short on, as you well know."
I rub my palms against my cheeks, then massage my forehead. My face muscles are cramping. I must be wearing the most tremendous scowl right now. Besides that, Diyn's trying to bore three holes into my skull. "So if you didn't believe him, why are you telling me this?"
Elete has the prescience to back away a few steps before he says: "Because it seems important."
I almost hit him. It's not the pathetic way he says that, it's the sound of Diyn laughing at me in the back of my head. That metallic sneer draped with smugness. Diyn directed Elete to come bother me in the first place, and now that carefully planted crop is being harvested. "Thank you for your assistance. Did you have anything else to contribute?"
Elete shakes his head. "Nothing yet. I'm considering all of the variables for now. Besides that, Jhe Lute will be here soon, and he'll have more information than I do." I look up at him due to the shift in tone and examine Elete's eyes. The far-off look that comes with prescience is dominating his expression. "He'll tell you something very important... 'Sy, you must remember these things. When this information becomes the most important, I will not be there to remind you of it."
That gives me a pang, a feeling that makes even Diyn somber. I don't want to think about missing Elete. I know that soon I will, but I just don't want to think about it. "Fine, then," I say, and look up to face my son Lute.
He's half-emerged from the shadows in the back corner of the cell, looking over Aaren with wary eyes, ready to withdraw from the open at any moment. It's strange to see that much open paranoia shown from my boy - stranger still to see it aimed at his fellow Armed. He flicks his eyes toward me and then steps away from the wall entirely, as if my presence alone assures that Aaren will not rise to attack him again. Lute walks with a limp, bleeding from a few scratches. He grips his upper left arm, wincing. The arm is hanging limp at his side. Kuroroi is whispering panicked, quiet things in the meantime - that Lute needs medical attention, that I need to know so much before that can happen, that this must be quick. The report fades into a background murmur as Diyn begins to debrief him. Then Lute catches my gaze with his own, flops down to the floor in front of me, and sits up expectantly. (References to Lute as the family dog have not been ungrounded in reality.)
"Report," I say.
Lute doesn't even bat an eye at the presence of the Poet King and just launches into things. "Early in the twilight hours I followed Xen and Thelea Xaillyndesse in a carriage from the Audivan Palace to Radia. They had Aaren Voitre with them. They had plans of sabotage in the city. I was forestalled from delivering the information by Aaren attacking me. I'll go on if none of this is news to you." His tone goes flat on that note. I certainly can't blame him for being cranky.
"It is news to us who committed the sabotage, but not that it was committed." I pause. "The danger has passed, and what can be fixed at this point has been fixed. Now we need to know how it happened."
He nods. There's something bitter in his eyes - he wasn't able to stop it. Such a thing is always hard on us. It was even harder on me. "I will start from the beginning, then, and tell you what I have seen."
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