Palamedes Sextus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hellonspectacles) wrote2021-03-22 10:49 am
hellonspectacles) wrote2021-03-22 10:49 am
Entry tags:
[Two Years Before the Emperor's Murder]
Palamedes had written the letter six weeks ago.
Six weeks. Each one had been like a knife being slowly pressed through his hand. He'd floated ghost-like through the Library, and though he remained perfectly professional, people began to whisper about the Warden’s mental state where they thought he couldn’t hear. Plenty of people knew about his attachment to the Duchess of Rhodes, though all but those closest to him would have been shocked at his rash decision to propose. Poor girl, she wasn’t even supposed to live through the year—what reason would anyone think that the prospect of marriage was what troubled the young Warden’s mind? The most common diagnosis was simple exhaustion, with a side of he is still quite young, and the responsibility is vast, which would have annoyed Pal thoroughly if he had been in any state to notice.
Camilla knows about the proposal, of course, though in the weeks he waited for a reply, he did not speak of it. Whenever he tried, the words caught in his throat. He began to treat his studious silence on the matter of Dulcinea as a sort of talisman, as though she would be more likely to say yes if he kept all his hopes and dreams in his heart, and waited patiently.
When the letter arrived from the Seventh House, the Warden immediately shut himself in his study. Hours had passed. He’d been scheduled to attend some tedious dinner; he never appeared.
Palamedes is still in his study when the lights dim as the Library spins away from Dominicus. The letter is still in front of him. He’s read it a hundred times—as though he needed to, as though it hadn’t immediately burned into his memory, as though comprehension required anything beyond the first line.
You know how I hate to cause you pain, my darling boy.
For six weeks it was as though a knife had slowly been pressed into his hand, and now it twists.
Six weeks. Each one had been like a knife being slowly pressed through his hand. He'd floated ghost-like through the Library, and though he remained perfectly professional, people began to whisper about the Warden’s mental state where they thought he couldn’t hear. Plenty of people knew about his attachment to the Duchess of Rhodes, though all but those closest to him would have been shocked at his rash decision to propose. Poor girl, she wasn’t even supposed to live through the year—what reason would anyone think that the prospect of marriage was what troubled the young Warden’s mind? The most common diagnosis was simple exhaustion, with a side of he is still quite young, and the responsibility is vast, which would have annoyed Pal thoroughly if he had been in any state to notice.
Camilla knows about the proposal, of course, though in the weeks he waited for a reply, he did not speak of it. Whenever he tried, the words caught in his throat. He began to treat his studious silence on the matter of Dulcinea as a sort of talisman, as though she would be more likely to say yes if he kept all his hopes and dreams in his heart, and waited patiently.
When the letter arrived from the Seventh House, the Warden immediately shut himself in his study. Hours had passed. He’d been scheduled to attend some tedious dinner; he never appeared.
Palamedes is still in his study when the lights dim as the Library spins away from Dominicus. The letter is still in front of him. He’s read it a hundred times—as though he needed to, as though it hadn’t immediately burned into his memory, as though comprehension required anything beyond the first line.
You know how I hate to cause you pain, my darling boy.
For six weeks it was as though a knife had slowly been pressed into his hand, and now it twists.
no subject
You couldn't keep secrets very long in the Sixth House. Not without causing a rumor mill that could power half the Library. But you could smooth them over with a polite smile, and if it was her sworn duty to protect the Warden's person, it was a much more likely and necessary scenario for her to protect his persona.
She knew what the letter said, of course. Without truly realizing it, she'd known what it was going to say -- in one form or another -- since the evening he'd declared, "I'm going to ask Dulcinea to marry me." (Not a question. Not a request for an opinion. A declaration. Maybe a forewarning? She wasn't sure.)
She knew it was unreasonable then. She also knew that derailing Palamedes Sextus from his goals, either gently or unkindly, was even less likely. Where Dulcie was concerned? Practically impossible. She can't put a finger on when the letter writing stopped feeling like they were about the three of them and more about the two of them, but she's borne it quietly and with -- incredibly irritating -- care for both of them. If Pal didn't love everything he loved twice as hard as he should, he wouldn't be Pal, would he? There's no sense in resenting it.
Just as there's no sense in resenting what must be in that letter. But she does, just a little bit.
(She'd said, once, lying awake at the cot at the bottom of his bed in that thin time between his announcement and whatever dozenth rewrite of the proposal had made the cut, "You know she's the heir of her house." If she hadn't; if she hadn't tried, at least, how could she really claim to protect him?
And of course, he'd said back, "That's old-fashioned nonsense," the same way that he'd gone about making changes to the Library that no one had in a thousand years. "She's going to die, Camilla," he'd said, and it had cracked something in her chest into a hundred pieces. "They must know that. They're prepared for it. Why not have it be with someone who'll take care of her?"
She'd laid there, in silence, for a long beat, and said, quietly, "She'd be very lucky to have you.")
She'd gotten a letter too. A short one:
C, dearest,
Take care of him, will you? Of course you will. I don't need to tell you.
I want you to know, too, how very much I wish -- so much. That all of this was very different.
-DS
She'd archived the thing almost immediately. It hurt to read. It almost felt wrong, reading it without Pal telling her first what had happened, but it hurt beyond that, reasons she can't even name to herself exactly. No. She didn't need to tell her.
Emperor's Bones if she knows how to go about doing it, though.
She knocks on the study doors now, rubbing the bridge of her nose. When no answer comes, she unlocks them with the only other copy of the key that exists. There are a thousand things she could say. Somehow the first one is; "You need to eat something. I brought food."
no subject
Palamedes doesn’t turn around as the door opens—there is only one person it could be, after all. He doesn’t object to her offer of food, which is a little disconcerting all on its own, given his usual response to what he teasingly calls Camilla’s hovering. “The dinner,” he murmurs under his breath instead. With a voice that’s scratchy and raw, he tells her, “My apologies, I clean forgot."
no subject
She rocks up onto her toes and back. Even had she not had some context for what's happened, the room tells its own story, and she wishes, as she trails off, that her gifts lay more in tact than they do. She didn't fight her way to the role of Cavalier Primary by being gentle; she's strong, she's detail-oriented, she cares very much. She can admit she's exceptional, even, where it counts.
But she's not nice, not really, and right now Pal really deserves nice.
Setting down the little covered plate on its tray, pragmatically, she very slowly stretches out her hand to settle at the back of his neck, lets it rest just long enough for a deep breath in. Then, second-guessing, she pulls it back, stretching and curling her fingers restlessly and catching her wrist behind her back in an unsettled at-ease.
"What did she say?" she asks quietly, and then makes a face. "I'm sorry. You don't have to -- "
no subject
The truth is, whatever Camilla might think, Palamedes wouldn’t know what to do with niceness in this moment. Dulcie’s letter had been nice, and it had nearly destroyed him. Though he’s too lost in himself to completely comprehend it, Camilla Hect’s sensible bluntness is probably the medicine he needs, if only for its contrast to the devastating, careful sweetness of the letter on his desk.
Palamedes doesn’t flinch, exactly, when Cam touches his shoulder, but he shrinks away just slightly, and is relieved when the touch is gone. He thinks he might fall apart under such gentleness.
He doesn’t have to tell Cam Dulcinea’s answer. She knows, of course. Maybe she’s know what the answer would be since the beginning. Pal finds he can’t be upset about that.
“She says—“ his voice breaks, and he tries again, “She says she’s dying. She says I shouldn’t waste my youth on her, that it will only distract me from my work. She says,” and here he quotes from memory, a bitter note entering his voice, “ ‘Don’t listen to the poets, there’s nothing remotely attractive about a whey-faced girl coughing up blood.’ As though that mattered—"
no subject
At another time he might be incensed or at least intrigued by such gossip: now it seems just as inane as it is.
She crosses her arms around her waist, still a little fitful, and leans back against the desk facing him. She thinks about the things in that statement that are false, and true, and both at once. "No," Cam says, slowly and practically, "we both know it doesn't. But you've never had to watch her do it. She hates pity, Pal. Can you imagine her waiting for the day it comes from you?"
That's not even getting to the real impossibility, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
no subject
But his heart isn’t in it—not the intellectual debate, not the careful observation of the Library’s personal dynamics, not even the opportunity to infuriate Captain Promachos. His heart has been broken and tossed into the volcano.
“I would never,” Palamedes says, throat tight. At last he looks at her, trying to summon indignation. But his eyes are too bright, too pained. “You know I wouldn’t; so does she.”
At last, though, he comes to the crux of the matter. With a petulant sort of huff that would be funny if it hadn’t been so tragic, he says, “And she talked of politics, of course."
no subject
But if she didn't feel cared about, in return, it wouldn't be worth it. She's loyal, not self-destructive. And Palamedes is incredibly intelligent, but for all of that, his strength is in his passion. That extends far past his intellect and academic projects to the people he cares for. To her. Unfortunately, to Dulcinea.
"I know you wouldn't," she says softly. Does she, though? Does he? It's hard to trust someone won't change just a little, when they have to watch suffering in person. And more than that, she knows Palamedes and she knows he'd be shattered if he couldn't fix her, whatever he knows is logically possible and whatever Dulcie might even actually want or be able to conceive of. Cam's shattered by the idea that they're going to lose her. Dulcie's been a constant friend since they were eight, and as much as the dynamic has changed, a bit, she's a part of her life as much as Palamedes'. She's kept her letters filed as carefully as Archival record, taken out to reread gently even while Palamedes hasn't needed to.
"Food," Cam reminds him pragmatically, nudging the plate a little. "Of course she did. Between you both being necromancers -- not just necromancers, heirs -- and Sixth genomics, how could she not?" Not that she expects they'd be parents, but the Sixth would have dibs on any of Dulcinea's offspring, even post-mortem, and that by itself could constitute a legal nightmare for the Seventh if not an outright feud. And Palamedes committing to someone who didn't intend to have children, vatborn or otherwise, would have gotten eight separate board meetings of protest from the geneticists of the Sixth.
She winces, hating all of this and picks up a tuber wedge, holding it out to him like a truce on the matter of food. "Would you have really rather she said yes and have been told by at least two cabinets, if not some kind of horrible oversight committee, that it was a void agreement and you were never going to be allowed?"
no subject
He sits back in his chair, adopting a pose that is much less heartsick teenager and much more Master Warden. “We’ve believed for too long that we could waylay genetic disaster with spreadsheets and sexed-up soldiers.” He makes a disdainful sound. “What we need is a fundamental reimagining of the relationship among the Houses. The Fifth is nearly in as dire straights as we are, and I’d bet the entire Archive the Third is falling apart at the seams—they’re just better at covering it all in gilt. The Fourth is barely a generation away from becoming a planet of orphaned minors, and no one has heard anything of substance from the Ninth in nearly a decade. We need each other; we’re going to fall apart if we don’t find a way to work together. Why the hell doesn’t anyone else see it, Cam?"
Palamedes has said all this before, all sensibly and theoretically, refusing to entertain the idea that he might have decidedly personal reasons for his opinions on the matter. Besides, he’s still right.
He frustratedly scrubs a hand through his hair. “Fuck the cabinets and the oversight committees. We should have run away to some forgotten colony.” Palamedes doesn’t mean it; he hates that he doesn’t mean it, that he doesn’t even know how to properly follow through with his grand, romantic gesture. “Take Dulcinea away from those Seventh ghouls who think that keeping a girl suffering is the cutting edge of necromancy, and free ourselves of these bureaucrats who can’t see past their own noses.”
God, Palamedes detests the way his voice breaks at the end. He detests that he sounds like a slighted boy; the fear that he has always sounded precisely this childish to Dulcinea claws up his throat. If he’d been better— If he’d been more confident, less baldly eager— if he’d found a way to save her sooner—
“Fuck,” he whispers shakily, squeezing his eyes tightly shut in a desperate effort to stop up his threatening tears.
no subject
She lifts her eyebrows and tilts her head in wry agreement. Most of the House traditions don't stand up under real scrutiny against arguments of personal agency, or if they do, it's in obeisance to something much larger and older than anyone practicing them has a full grasp on, which is frankly, more unsettling.
Palamedes can run on, and she doesn't always hide from him that he's doing it. Privately, though, she's of the opinion that an impassioned Palamedes is Palamedes at his best, even if he's not at all unbiased at this particular moment. "You know I back you on this, Warden," she says, and the title -- much as it can mean a variety of different things depending on her tone, especially when it's not for the benefit of anyone but the two of them -- is meant here as a nod to a point well made and his right to make it. She shrugs irritably. "Civilizations cling to tradition when everything's crumbling. Here more than anywhere else, maybe: we live in a Library, for God's sake. Some people forget that means you can learn from the records we keep."
Cam sighs softly, eating the wedge of tuber herself and stepping down off the table. The crack in his voice, the faint wobble of pursed lower lip, is like an rapier straight through the ribs.
He'd winced away from her touch before, but sometimes comfort is for everyone involved, and anyway, she thinks he might need to be forced to actually get it all out. "Come here," she instructs, and reaches to wrap her arms around him, running her hand into his hair and resting her chin on his head. He's tall enough sitting that the top of his head mostly just thunks into her clavicle.
"I could go kidnap her from the mountains of Cypris on a stolen shuttle. You'd have to come after me. It'd practically be your duty." It's absurd, of course, it's meant to be absurd, but there's some little part of her that isn't a hundred percent sure she wouldn't do it.
no subject
He gives a shaky laugh. "You'd have to get past Protesilaus," he reasons, as though they are actually considering it. "Or agree to take him along. And then his whole family will have to come, of course."