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curiosity-killed · 1 year

Text

a familiar season

Word count: 2604

Content warnings: none!

Rajiat is an old woman when the imperator princep walks into her garden. Perhaps not in age—her own parents still live and would laugh themselves off their seats at her making such a claim—but somewhere in her wandering soul is a seed that has grown heavier, more compacted, than it ever was when she was young. She has lived through five rulers in Arradine, three kings in Soldato, her own son’s marriage, and more seasons of drought and rain than she can begin to tally. When Uther first suggested they step down to allow Rassler and Malia to take up their crowns, she had scoffed, but she has grown fond of the time permitted to her now to linger, indulge, rest.

The imperator shows far less ease with the idea. In the midst of a garden lush with late spring blossoms and designed to encourage meandering and relaxation, he stands stiffly and frowns faintly at the stone molding high above the plants. She lifts her brow, a little arch, at his choice of view. She invested far too many hours in designing this garden for it to be overlooked in favor of old stone.

Still, she supposes she ought to offer some leniency. It has been less than a year since he returned from the dead, and to her eyes, he left a part of himself there. More than—his right arm is crowned with a golden band but it does not hide the way he carries it a little away from his body and with more stiffness than his sword arm. His hair is tucked neatly in a high knot, but she has never seen either him or his mamán willingly forego the long tail that shows off the length of their hair.

Clearing her throat delicately, she pretends not to notice how he jumps and twists toward her with his hand tightening around his sword. Perhaps, she thinks as she gives him a polite smile and nod, he is also looking for rest in his own way.

Recognition eases the wariness from his expression and shifts his hand a hair further from his sword, and he gives her a shallow, respectful bow.

“My apologies, Your Majesty,” he says, “I did not mean to intrude on your peace.”

“Please, Your Eminence,” she says lightly, “the gardens were meant to be enjoyed by friends.”

He hesitates, thumb rubbing against the pommel of his sword in a manner so clearly thoughtless she nearly rolls her eyes. Trust Aeridians to make a gesture of threat into a self-soothing practice.

Straightening a little on her bench, she fixes him with what Uther fondly refers to as her imperial expression. It has, over the decades, served effectively against both rogue dignitaries and her own husband and son.

“Would you truly dare to claim that the brother of my son is no friend?” she inquires.

At that, guilt steals into his expression and he releases the saber to come perch on the very edge of the bench with a respectful distance between them. As soon as he’s seated, some of the strain in his shoulders gives way, and he stretches his leg out away from the bench. Ah, she thinks, tucking away that morsel.

He steals a funny look at her sideways, as if trying to guess where she came to that conclusion. She almost laughs: she was the one who first suspected his paternity, long before Uther accepted the concept.

“You must know I would never desire nor cause harm to befall Rassler,” he says. “On my honor.”

He says it so solemnly, with such worried conviction, that she almost feels bad. Instinct nearly has her reaching out to pat his leg reassuringly, but then, he is a grown man now and he is not her son.

“I would never scorn the solemn honor of an Aeridian, much less the imperator princep,” she says instead with a small smile, a hint of teasing in her tone, “but I confess, I have not feared that for many years.”

It’s funny to see him here, sitting under the dogwood arbor. He cuts so close to his mamán, with his sharp edges and weight perched as if ready to fly off at any moment—and yet, Aliras would have scoffed away this whole conversation, dashed it with biting remarks that never quite landed when she was flustered, and never even accepted the invitation to sit. Even looking closely, Rajiat can hardly see Uther in the young man’s face, either; his quiet attentiveness is simply something his own.

“I had your mamán’s word before you were old enough to toddle,” she explains, and then adds, wry, “and you are a hardly a stranger to my family. I have been privy to your growing up, you know.”

He concedes that with a small smile, ducking his head. His expression turns a little thoughtful, skepticism encroaching in the faint furrow of his brow and tilt of his head. Amused, she cocks her own head.

“Do you disbelieve me?” she asks. “Your mamán was a friend of a sort, after all.”

The wry look he shoots her suggests he’s heard a different version of that story. In truth, it’s been long enough since she was in Ancelm that she can’t guess what they say of her. She hopes they don’t think her some miserable old shrew who stole Uther away from their beloved empress—or, worse, some tragic maiden who was betrayed and trapped into a loveless marriage. These last thirty years have been an adventure, to be sure, but she has never had cause to doubt Uther’s love nor to feel terribly betrayed. After all, she was the one who gave him permission to continue his affair with Alir even before they were wed.

“It only seems imprudent to make a vow based on someone you do not yet know,” Callebero explains.

She hums faintly at that, tilting her head in consideration before giving him a wry half-smile.

“I confess, ‘prudent’ isn’t the word most often associated with your mamán,” she replies.

A smile quirks his lips briefly, and he tilts his head back as if to better enjoy the sunlight dappling them through the leaves. At least he’s not still looking at the stone, she decides.

“Anyway,” she remarks, following his gaze up toward the clouds drifting here and there across the azure sere of the sky, “I hold some faith in the knowledge that, should a dispute between Rassler and Malia ever grow too severe, they would be forced to compromise by virtue of neither wanting to give you up.”

At that, he snorts and shakes his head. A fuller smile appears, eyes narrowing in humor.

“I confess, I can think of few partners less likely to come to such a conflict,” he replies, slanting an amused look her way.

“Even you and your knight?” Rajiat asks.

In past years, when she was a queen speaking to foreign dignitaries, she would not speak with such casual ease. Even when she had spoken with him in the past, she had not been so nonchalant. Still, she is old to him, at least, and there was truth in what she’d said about his growing up. As much as she had been staunch in her stance that she and Uther would never raise nor tend to any children Aliras left behind, she feels some care toward Callebero. He had been a sweet child and then a solemn and grim young man, and though she bears no guilt for his growing up, she hopes for gladder futures.

His answer is slower in coming this time. He eyes her steadily, as if gauging her interest in such matters—whether she asks as a courtier prying for information, she imagines, or just a nosey old mother.

“Perhaps,” he says finally. “Though we have had less time to be as sure of ourselves as Malia and Rassler.”

As carefully as the answer is given, it’s more revealing than what she might have expected. She rewards the honesty with a gentle smile and then gives in to her earlier impulse to reach out and pat his hand lightly.

“I imagine you’ll get there soon enough,” she says. “In truth, I think most of a long relationship is simply learning to endure things together rather than apart—even if, sometimes, you are enduring each other. That, and savoring the joy together.”

She nods slightly, looking out over the garden in the palace Uther gave her. When she was very young, she had thought marriage all a matter of strategy—learning how to milk the most from one’s spouse in order to elevate their own status. Perhaps if Uther had been less agreeable and less easily loved, she might still feel the same way. As it is, though, she can’t help looking on her youthful scheming with a fair dose of amusement and pity. How wise she’d thought herself; how little she’d truly known.

Callebero looks at her a long moment, expression gentle. She can’t quite parse its exact sentiment; even with years of knowing his mamán and more yet of seeing him grow from afar, this quiet consideration is foreign to her.

“Your Majesties’ long partnership must attest to your wisdom in these matters,” he says, and she laughs.

“Such delicacy of language bodes well for yours,” she returns, and his polite expression cracks slightly with rue.

He looks much younger when he smiles, she decides, though the scars cut into his cheek age him more than she remembers. He had grown out of his baby face far sooner than Rassler, who even now still retains a certain roundness about his cheeks, but the tattoos on his chin that mark him an adult in Arradine’s customs had seemed absurd for years before this. They no longer do: somehow in the last year, he has grown into them and the new ones crowning his forehead.

“It is good to see you again,” she says, a little impulsive. “It grieved both our hearts when you were missing.”

She doesn’t say when he was dead, because she may have been the queen of Soldato for longer than she was a princess of Hiam, but she still carries some superstitions. Still—he had been dead for those months. She had held tightly to Uther’s hand and watched as her own son wept. Some part of her had surged with the desire to speak with Aliras, to demand if she had delivered this child into the world knowing at his birth how his life would end.

When they were young, back when Aliras thought her some kind of rival, Rajiat had looked upon the other woman with a mixture of pity and disdain. How limited her view had seemed, how quick her jealousy and capricious her affections. When she first heard Aliras had had a child, she had thought it little more than a callous and petty act: her favorite lover had taken a wife and so, of course, the imperator princep would claim an heir. Her opinion had softened some in catching glimpses of how Aliras doted on Callebero as a child, and it had calcified when she heard that Aliras had named her child her successor years before he was old enough to be considered of age in any kingdom on the continent.

She’s not sure, now, what she would say to Aliras if the woman stood alive before her once more. She has faith she’d come up with something in the moment, though.

Now, Aliras’ son looks at her with a faint wrinkle to his brow, as if confused by her admission.

“I am sorry to have troubled you,” he says and sounds painfully, idiotically sincere.

The urge to roll her eyes or demand if he has anything other than swords rattling around in his skull is briefly powerful, but Rajiat hasn’t made it through this many decades of political manuevering to be done in by a comparative child.

“It is in our nature to be worried by harm done to one we care for,” she replies mildly. “As I am certain it is in your nature to seek to protect those you care for.” To her surprise, Callebero winces slightly and squints up at the sky just-so.

“I confess, I have not often been skilled in that regard,” he admits.

Startled, Rajiat narrowly avoids laughing aloud at his grudging tone. He has changed, she realizes, more than the physical. She had never been close to him before, but to speak so frankly and to offer his own flaws with little prompting is a far cry from the guarded young man she had known before. Smiling a little, she leans back and considers him with faint amusement.

“Well,” she says after a moment, “they do say a good map can save a caravan years of woe.”

Glancing sidelong at her, Callebero arches an eyebrow wryly.

“And if they start drawing said map while already lost in the desert?” he rejoins.

Snorting despite herself, Rajiat offers him a small shrug.

“At least the stars are clear in the desert,” she replies, “and far better signposts than one’s instincts alone, most often.”

At last, he laughs. It’s barely more than a breath of air, but he ducks his head and a smile curves the corners of his cheeks. It is, as in many of her political endeavors, a small but worthy triumph. Straightening, he affords her the full weight of his attention, softened but not lessened by the warmth that creases the skin by his eyes and quirks the edges of his lips.

“Thank you for your company and wisdom this afternoon, Your Majesty,” he says, and though the formal diction has returned, there’s a lightness there that was smothered when she first saw him standing lost in the garden. “I did not anticipate such lessons when I found myself here.”

Waving off the thanks, she smiles faintly at the lilies she had insisted be planted directly in front of the bower. Their tall stalks sway with heavy burgundy blooms, waxy petals as long as her palm gleaming faintly in the sun.

“I am sure you know we old folks enjoy the opportunity to impart our wisdoms upon the youth,” she jokes, “great or small as they may seem.”

His smile deepens briefly, and he seems about to speak when he lifts his head, turning toward some motion in his periphery. He straightens almost immediately, his courtly posture brightening into clear eagerness. Leaning forward to follow his gaze, Rajiat hides a smile: an Aeridian commander stands in almost the exact same spot in which she first saw Callebero. His eyes, however, are fixed on the young man beside her.

“Oh, go on,” she says, leaning back on one hand while waving Callebero off with the other. “You two have waited long enough already.”

He flusters, ducking his head in embarrassment, but he doesn’t argue against her dismissal before rising. With a polite dip of his head, he turns and cuts across the garden to where his knight waits with love clear in his eyes and hand already reaching out for Callebero. Huffing a laugh, Rajiat turns her gaze away as they reach each other.

The dogwood ruffles in frothy rills around her, and she closes her eyes to breathe in the spring budding all around her. Uther will find her soon, seeking her out with the eager stride that’s carried him through all their decades of acquaintance and then love. She is content to wait, bounded by the gardens all rushing into bloom.

#i started this back in nov but finally finished it today!#so much of tcp is constrained by very specific deeply-held views #which is really fun to write #but also makes it rlly fun to take a step back and look at those characters from a different pov #like jisel and callebero FEEL really old and weathered #but they're like. 20. they are Babie #(traumatized babie but still)#my writing #story: tcp #ch: rajiat #ch: callebero

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