“And—what about the jeweled world Mahakala?” An impulse to rip off all the deadbolts, throw open all the doors. It does not seem time to keep anything back: what is the point, now, when even Taheen is not exactly who she thought they were. Xinfei and the Mirror are ashes. “The Warlord of the Mirror was preoccupied with it. She used to tell me of its beauty. Its seas like diamonds, its canopies like hachure portraits.”
Ovuha does not quite recoil. She studies Suzhen as though they’ve new-met, strangers on a battlefield. Then she lets that go; her posture relaxes. “I owe you answers. Although I don’t imagine the Mirror bandied the subject of Mahakala about to just anyone.”
“My mother, Xinfei, was her wife.”
A startled look. “You were to be her heir?”
She laughs, more loudly than she meant to, and more bitterly. “No. It wasn’t an inherited title—yours probably isn’t either—and she had a successor chosen by the time I was born, some colonel or lieutenant. In the most technical sense she was my mother, but I never called her that.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“No, not at all. I didn’t want to be warlord. And she—” Her throat clots. Preposterous: she has made peace with this long ago, has never mourned the Mirror because to mourn the warlord means to admit that the Mirror loved Suzhen as best she could, indulged her in so much. “I don’t suppose you left behind issue.”
“I was never the parental sort. I could have children on my own if I wanted to, but it never occurred to me, and I never married or had a committed partner. Until I succeeded the previous Thorn, I spent most of my time away from Mahakala, and warships were no place for long-term romance.” Something like a smile. “To think I fell in love with the same woman as one of my officers. I’ve missed you terribly.” Ovuha shakes herself slightly, as though that was not what she meant to say, as though the words have slipped loose and spontaneous.
Suzhen doesn’t argue the notion of anyone falling in love with her: it is self-evidently ridiculous and so doesn’t require refutation. “It’s been hardly five weeks.”
“Yes. But I didn’t think I would see you again.”
Just like that she is disarmed, or at least wants to be. It is said so quietly and meant so furiously that she is inclined to believe, in spite of the revelations. Suzhen steels herself against this, against her own weakness. “It was said that your armada was numberless.”
Ovuha has spread out her weapons like cards, to signal surrender, to signal that she will not attempt again what she did on the station. Two guns, some knives, a cluster of small grenades. She does not elaborate why Deratchan allowed her to remain armed. “Nothing human is numberless. I had access to resources other warlords didn’t, that is all. But my army’s not yet finished, no. Mahakala remains.”
They sit very close, so close she can feel Ovuha’s body heat. She imagines it radiating in thermal rainbows. Hers and Ovuha’s overlapping. Guilt gnaws at her—Taheen is out there, alone with their own thoughts, with whatever demons have surfaced from their memory—but she has let too many chances pass her by. “I thought you’d be more offended to learn of my connection to the Mirror.” More shocked.
“I’m surprised. But it does explain. And in a way I’m glad.”
For the commonality, for the shared architecture of their pasts, even if Ovuha and Suzhen occupied entirely different positions. Stilclass="underline" they are both of elsewhere, by nature not belonging to Anatta and therefore to Samsara. She raises her hand, thinks to let it fall back into her lap. Instead it alights on Ovuha’s jawline. “Do you remember,” Suzhen says, “the vineyard?”
“If I live to see five hundred, I would not be able to forget it.” Ovuha takes one of her hands, cradling it between long, callused fingers. Even her palm is hardened in places, like exoskeleton. Nothing about her seems soft, save for her lips; that much Suzhen knows for a fact, and she is thinking that still—about truths and facts—when they kiss, finally realizing that moment beneath the grapes, that moment which has consumed her dreams. There is no excuse this time, no wine to blur the senses, no circumstances to bend reason. It is a conscious and intentional thing, and Ovuha does not taste sweet as she might have tasted on that day. Her teeth are very sharp and the gentle biting goes straight through Suzhen’s nerves, piercing her harder than it has any right to.
“You don’t use your tongue,” Suzhen says.
“I’ll use it elsewhere.” Ovuha has put one hand on the base of Suzhen’s spine. “I just don’t like sloppy kissing.”
Suzhen rises, pulls Ovuha up with her. “The bed.”
They fall down on each other, by each other, every centimeter touching. She bends down to Ovuha’s breasts, feeling the puckered texture of areolae, the brown nubs of nipples. She sucks at the taste of perspiration. “There’s so much of you,” Suzhen says against Ovuha’s belly, the hard muscles beneath it, the broadening that descends into hips. The scar tissues that denote where implants have once been—and there were many—in little craters, indentations and ridges. An infinite territory which no single explorer may chart or comprehend. “So much history.”
Ovuha’s chuckle is brief, startled. “Is that a compliment?” She reaches for Suzhen, pulling open the sash that holds her robe shut. Underneath she has not put on much, and even that is soon gone, leaving her bare. Suzhen closes her eyes, curls her body, still straddling the woman who was once a warlord, whose fingers are dipping inside her. A flick of thumb, a knot of knuckles.
“Hold yourself like this,” Ovuha instructs, a command almost, and she obeys. Suzhen holds her weight on her knees to either side of Ovuha’s face, gasping, balancing herself with difficulty. Ovuha’s mouth is so hot, that tongue, that tongue. Suzhen hears her own voice climb, monosyllabic, the noise of yes—yes—
She falls backward, her body loose and shaky, her knees without strength. All of her is liquid, her head is light. When Ovuha slides up beside her and strokes her breast, biting the back of her neck, she shudders: she is that sensitized, like a vast and ecstatic wound.
“I hope,” Ovuha says in her ear, “it was as good as you sounded.”
“You know it was.” Suzhen shivers again. “You must have had a thousand lovers to practice on.”
“Please. I’m more discriminating.” A laugh, smooth and warm in a way she’s never heard Ovuha laugh before. “I’ve been wanting to do that for quite a while.”
“Being eaten out by a warlord seems so extravagant.” Suzhen turns so they face each other, lying on their sides. “Your face.” The chiseled handsomeness, the stunning symmetry, that would have elevated the drabbest personality. “Was there really a surgeon?”
Ovuha smirks. “What a way to start pillow talk. Yes. I had to have my face modified from the ground up. It was delicate work, and Dahaan was self-indulgent; he claimed it was his masterpiece, the most exquisite face he’d ever crafted. I would have opted for something more nondescript… Do you like it?”
This avalanche of intimacy, the ease with which they talk of things that should have required years to make comfortable. But it is merely what they have been waiting to say. Suzhen lightly scratches Ovuha’s stubbly, shorn scalp. “It’s almost too perfect. But it is you. I’d like to—” Wake up to it, wake up beside you. She collects herself. Just the oxytocin speaking.
Perhaps Ovuha senses this withdrawing, the stiffening of Suzhen’s limbs. She removes her hand from Suzhen’s hip, her smile small, rueful. “We moved fast, didn’t we.” And just like that the spell breaks, the reprieve ends.