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
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."