“My duty calls.” Duty is peculiarly heavy, spoken as though this is an iron umbilicus whose length stretches all the way from Mahakala to Anatta. “I’ll have to return home, deliver the news of our victory, see how things stand there and whether some usurper has risen in my absence, all that. Provided Lieutenant Taheen doesn’t decide they’d rather shoot me between the eyes and take over the paperwork.”
Taheen scoffs. “I’m not going to do your work for you, Warlord. The old Thorn had to meet her advisors five times a day, to which I say, fuck that. More importantly.” They put their hand on the small of Suzhen’s back, a touch light yet substantial. “I’ll go where you go, Suzhen. Here on Anatta, back to Mahakala, neither. That is up to you.”
This choice should bend her like a bow: the thought that anyone should be so devoted they’d follow her like this, the thought that Taheen in particular would. “About that.” She realizes she is not wearing anything. Despite the fact both warlord and soldier have seen all there is to see—at different times—she pulls the sheets up, covering her lap. “I’d like to apply for asylum on Mahakala.”
“Gladly granted.” Ovuha motions with her head. “Lieutenant, I had Klesa set up a channel so you can contact your mothers, if you’d like. A few cousins as well, I believe, and two or three siblings. The number might’ve grown while you were on Anatta.”
Taheen makes a face. “Fine, you want to get rid of me. My mothers are… not patient, so I better get to that. By the way, my lord, Suzhen and I will be marrying at the earliest opportunity. I expect you to officiate with grace and enthusiasm.” They bend down to peck Suzhen on the mouth, then breathe her in as though the scent of her might be a talisman against ill luck. They disappear into the next room, pulling clothes on as they go.
Ovuha takes one of the unclaimed glasses—black coffee—and sips. She studies the indentation where Taheen has been, the mattress filling out and the sheet straightening. Then she lifts her eyes to regard Suzhen. “You’re coping very well with all this.”
She passes her hand over the bed, still warm from Taheen, but cooling fast. “I survived fatal injuries and asked a person I’ve loved all my life to marry me, and they said yes. I can do anything.”
The warlord slowly blinks, as though she means to say something—a question—but she lets it go. “I expected they would say yes. On Mahakala there’s any number of faiths, you can have your pick of clergy, but it’s traditional for the warlord to officiate when one of the would-be spouses is a soldier. If that’s what you also want, I will be honored.”
“Taheen. What do you think of them?”
“They were interesting company in your absence. Loyal to you to a fault, and rather pleasant to look at. You have excellent taste.”
She desires, Suzhen realizes. Her entire life she has learned to accept what she has, what she receives, and seek not a millimeter more—anything suffices, so long as it means continuing, and continuing has been her entire mandate. The duty she owes Xinfei and the Mirror. But there could be more: she could have more than merely existing. She could reach out for more, and take. “You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?”
A turn of the steel-clad shoulder. The marks of office make Ovuha look even more imposing than she already is, broaden the mountainous range of her shoulders, the width of her biceps. “Ask for what, Suzhen?” Her voice is very soft, mismatched with the Thorn’s mantle. “I’ll give you anything.”
“Then be my wife.” Suzhen takes a small, quick breath. “I assume concurrent marriages are legal on Mahakala, we can keep the unions separate. I only ask that I’m afforded no particular title or influence—you would just be my wife, and I yours.”
A few seconds tick past. Then Ovuha laughs, a little too loud, as though she’s been bracing for impact that does not come, and is nearly braying in relief. “Even if it was illegal there, I’m the warlord and I do what I want. Fortunately I won’t need to be a tyrant about it, up to four concurrent unions are legal last I looked that up. I accept, Suzhen, and would be most privileged to be your bride.”
She says nothing for a moment, silenced by what is happening, the improbability. The sheer absurdity. “Brides. Yes. That’s… yes. Your bride. My bride.”
Ovuha draws a line between Suzhen’s breasts, the edge of gauntlet grazing Suzhen’s skin. “I’m getting the distinct impression, however, you’d rather your two marriages were not so separate.”
“I want,” Suzhen says, answering finally that question Ovuha asked her in her apartment, “to wake up between the two of you. That might make me an avaricious little beast.”
“Oh, I am an avaricious beast too, so that makes us two of a kind.” Ovuha leans in to kiss Suzhen’s bare shoulder. “I wouldn’t say no, exactly. It’s just that Taheen doesn’t have much reason to like me. I imagine sharing you with me already stretches the limits of their tolerance. For now I’d like to appreciate you, to dedicate my time to you, to cherish you, my would-be bride.”
“Ovuha. Stop that.”
“I like the way you say my name. No one else says it quite like that. You make fine music of it.” Another kiss on the back of her neck, dry, a little teeth. A long stroke down her spine, gloved hand curving around her haunch. “We’ll have a betrothal ceremony, a quiet one. I’ll wind a red thread around your wrist, and you around mine.” A pause. “Vaisravana. Do you want it back?”
Even the name lodges in her throat like a stone. She thinks of the scarlet sand, the frayed horizon. The things that, to her, were synonymous with both home and loss. Impossible to reclaim—time cannot be turned back; it moves in one direction, always has. “No. I’m not like the Warlord of the Mirror. I’m not even my mother.”
“I thought not. Then I hope to make Mahakala a good home for you. I’ll show you its jeweled forests, its pearled islands, its emerald seas. I’ll show you how to keep and fly a hawk. I will make of my world a gift and offer it to the altar of your arms.” Ovuha turns Suzhen around, arranging her in the armored lap. Smiling against her earlobe. “Or I could show you the bridge on one of my ships, and you could straddle me in the commander’s seat, there would be… a lot we could do. I recall you’d like enjoy the attentions of a fully armored, masked warlord—”
“Ovuha.” Suzhen combs her fingers through Ovuha’s growing hair. She wonders what length it used to be, at home. A bounty of it pouring down her hips like brocade. Or carefully shoulder-length. Or cut close to the skull. “That was just a teenage fantasy.”
“What greater honor could there be than in fulfilling just that?” Ovuha’s laughter thrums. “I look forward to this. I look forward to traveling home with you, to spending the rest of my life with you. To build something with you that’ll be just ours and ours alone.”
Klesa appears before Ovuha, one last time.
A detention center near Khrut, built not unlike the one that held Ovuha not so long ago. The complex is wide, the building itself no higher than three storeys, surrounded by high walls and a second roof: no view, here, of the sky at all. The premise has been emptied, inmates removed to a halfway house or some relatively more humane place. She goes past the courtyard, a place of barbed metal and baked stone, and into the facility itself.