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
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[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
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?"
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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."