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if you're a stranger to your soul [Magpie Ballads]
Title: if you’re a stranger to your soul
Author: Phnx
Series: The Magpie Ballads (Vale Aida)
Characters/Pairing: Emaris/Hiraen, Shandei/Iyone, Savonn/Dervain
Summary: Emaris receives a lot of unsolicited advice.
Read on AO3
“It worked for your beloved captain,” says Shandei, convincingly glib. She is knitting again, this time some sort of mess of roses and thorns and brown circles of dirt. It’s meant to represent protection, she’d told him. He suspects an inside joke, but he doesn’t want to ask. “If the great Lord Silvertongue can retire in luxury with his father’s murderer, why can’t his former squire do the same?”
There are many things Emaris could say to this. Our father wasn’t Lord Kedris, for one, or Hiraen isn’t Dervain, or, most importantly, I am not Savonn. There are many truths he could speak now, but a truth withheld too long turns viscous and is not easily shared. He is still too bitter at the truth Shandei kept from him to be willing to scrape at his own soul and feel its smarting wounds simply in order to return to the smooth flow of honesty they had once known between them. “I tried,” he says instead, “but the Empath wasn’t keen on sharing.”
Shandei’s lips press into a thin line, and her needles clack angrily.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than knit that”--monstrosity--”blanket? I suppose being the captain of guards for the Governor must not involve much work.”
“It’s a shawl,” Shandei responds coolly. “And it’s nice to know that the time I took from my extremely busy schedule to visit my only surviving family member during his brief visit home is so appreciated.”
“I just saw you weeks ago,” says Emaris, bewildered.
“Yes, well,” mutters Shandei vaguely, making a show of counting her stitches.
Hideous pattern aside, Shandei could have carried on with her “shawl” in her sleep, so the attempted prevarication is rather insultingly obvious.
“What are those brown bits again?” he finally asks.
“They’re dung, obviously.”
Emaris stares at his sister. “That’s… not for me, is it?”
“I don’t know,” replies Shandei, voice honey sweet. “Are you in the market for a dung-covered shawl, Emaris?”
Emaris sighs in relief. “Who is it for, then?”
Shandei blushes. “My lady Iyone.”
“You’re knitting the governor, who is also your lover, a shawl with a dung pattern?”
“Roses and thorns and dung, yes,” says Shandei happily.
“...Are you two fighting, then?”
Shandei scowls at him. “No, of course not, or why would I be going through all this effort?”
The siblings sit in silence for a long time as Emaris reflects on this. Love as Emaris has experienced it is a wild, frightening force that reshapes destiny until friends are untrustworthy, and the impossible is the truth, and your own soul becomes a stranger to you. For love, he has lied, and for love, he has killed, but at least love has never led him to make a dung-blanket and call it a gift.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” is the response he finally settles on. This time when Shandei smiles at him, some of her old sunshine leaks through.
---
“Back again already, Gazelle?”
When he’d squired for Savonn some short years and a lifetime ago, Emaris would have said that his captain was happy. It is mortifying to realise that he hadn’t known, back then, what joy looks like on this face that is so beloved to him.
“Don’t worry. I’m only here for a short visit this time,” Emaris replies, addressing the crown of auburn hair bent over the harpsichord in the corner of the room. The head lifts and reveals a face, and the face is smiling.
“Never worry that your visits are too long, little lion,” says Dervain. “You are always welcome here.”
Savonn’s expression grows soft and private as he looks to Dervain, and Emaris feels the familiar mess of hurtadmirationbitternesswarmth rise up within him before he can quash it down again.
“After all,” Dervain continues, “If not for your visits, I would never get any work done, busy as am I fending off this terrible thieving magpie that I’ve been saddled with.”
Savonn doesn’t even pretend at offense. He dances into Dervain’s arms, laughing. The two are slow to pull apart, caught in the thrill of this life they never thought they’d be allowed to live.
The sting of vestigial heartbreak aside, Emaris doesn’t begrudge them these moments, isolating and awkward as they are. Sometimes, though, Emaris wonders what it would be like to touch to their smiles and their embraces and their soft gazes with another, unearthly sense. He wonders what it would be like to feel their love for one another as though it were his own. Would that make these moments easier or more difficult?
These people in his life are so layered in masks. Savonn, Dervain, Iyone, even Hiraen. Even Shandei, these days. What would it be, to be able to hear their feelings, to know their truths? As it is, with no way to separate the lies and the not-lies, the only way Emaris can navigate his life is to cling blindly to his faith in these friends of his. They may be speaking truths, they may be speaking lies, but they are good and worthy of his love, and he must let that be the only truth he needs.
“My poor Gazelle,” croons Savonn, descending from his blissful state enough to speak and move once more. “What ailment has befallen you, that you are so full of sorrow? Nightingale, my nightingale, do you see those sad eyes?”
“If you’re going to sing about this, I’ll just leave,” Emaris deadpans.
Dervain’s eyes are laughing at him. “If you cannot bear to hear a love song, that may be for the best. But listen--son of Randell, brother of Shandei, once squire to Lord Silvertongue, now Captain of Betronett--you are surrounded by love songs that all have happy endings. Why are you so convinced your own will be a tearful one?”
He killed my father is not likely to be a convincing argument against these two. He doesn’t love me back holds an equal weight of truth, but it sounds so childish.
“We were all children once,” says the Empath gently. “We all still are. Do not be afraid of your feelings, lion cub, and do not be ashamed of them. They are what make you who you are.”
“How eloquent,” teases Savonn. “But where is this lion? The only one with us is my gazelle.”
“You,” says Dervain, pressing a kiss into dark curls, “have no vision, etruska.”
Sorcerous empathy or no, the mood in this house is sweet enough to choke on. Emaris doesn’t stay long after all.
---
“The High Commander looks very handsome today,” says Vion. There is no softness or wistfulness in his voice. Instead, he sounds sharp, as though he is pointing out something obvious to someone who shouldn’t need the reminder.
Emaris frowns at Vion, confused. “I suppose so.” Hiraen always looks handsome, after all.
Vion does not seem to be satisfied with this response.
Emaris tries again. “Would you like me to talk to him for you? Perhaps I could present him with a token of yours…?” The only tokens he can think of are dung shawls, and he wrinkles his nose.
Vion stares at him in horror. “For me? A token of mine?” He whirls to gesture absurdly at the other members of the patrol, who are all characteristically crowded around. Lomas and Klemene join Vion in loudly expressing their disgust, while Rougen simply shakes his head at Emaris, deeply disappointed in him.
Between bewildering sisters armed with knitting needles--not to mention arrows--and bewildering soldiers armed with disdain--and likewise with arrows--Emaris wonders if he wouldn’t prefer playing third to Savonn and Dervain’s endless reels of love songs after all.
But no, at least here there are no lyres.
---
“You’ve been avoiding me,” says Hiraen.
“My lord High Commander, sir,” says Emaris.
Hiraen’s smile, already weak, collapses. “I had believed, when you refused to claim your right to my blood, that we had come to an understanding. I see that was naive of me.”
“An understanding?” Emaris knows, distantly, that he feels hurt, and humiliated, and used, but he does not know why he feels these things. “An understanding?”
“I thought, I would work to be better, to fix the wrongs that I have done and the wrongs that I have been willing to do, and that in return, you would not hate me.”
Emaris’ jaw works uselessly for a moment. “The only understanding that I remember reaching with you was that I would not stab you with my father’s knife! I never said anything about what I would or would not feel.”
Hiraen stares at him for a long moment, his expression bleak. “If your hatred is the alternative,” he says quietly, “then I think I would prefer the knife.”
As if ushered in by a helpful stagehand, a soft breeze blows by, tousling Hiraen’s hair with an adoring hand and carrying the scent of summer flowers. Hiraen, already so unfairly handsome, is standing before him lit golden with the setting sun, looking like a hero from a story book, from a love ballad. Hiraen, who murdered Emaris’ father and has the nerve to be staring at him with such sad eyes, as though he is the one who is heartbroken.
Emaris thinks of Shandei, who tried in her clumsy way to grant him her acceptance, though she bears the twin to his wound. He thinks of Lord Silvertongue and the Empath, who spent so many years battling a love that would not be denied. He thinks of his soldiers, who are so stolidly determined to see their young captain happy.
He thinks of Hiraen, trapped in the same endless and depthless love for Savonn as Emaris himself.
“I don’t hate you, sir,” he says, finally. “Hiraen. I don’t hate you. I maybe hate myself for not hating you.”
“If there is anyone under this sky who is undeserving of hatred, it is you,” says Hiraen, a hesitant smile forming.
“I am still recovering from one impossible love for a man who betrayed me and others in so many different ways,” Emaris continues. His voice is growing frantic, but he can’t seem to control it. “Must I go through all of that again?”
He hears Hiraen’s sharply drawn breath, but he can’t see his face. He realises dimly that he must have closed his eyes.
Soft footsteps and then a pause. A gentle touch to his face, finger sliding along the fading scars. “Not impossible at all,” Hiraen says. “And as to the rest--I must confess that I am far too selfish to advise you to find someone better to spend your love on.”
Emaris bites back a smile, feeling warmth rush through him. This must be what Shandei feels, he thinks, when Iyone tucks her hand into Shandei’s arm, wrapped in a red scarf. This must be what Savonn feels when Dervain offers a duet and Savonn is finally free to accept. This must have been what his father felt, all those years ago, when his mother shared as much of herself as could, though she was fated to roam and he to settle.
“I suppose you want a token.” Emaris opens his eyes slowly, flushes at the way Hiraen’s gaze traces so wonderingly over his features. “Shandei is making your sister some sort of rose-thorn-dung shawl, but I’m not much of a knitter.”
Hiraen barks a laugh. “The cannon guns?” he asks nonsensically. “As charming as that sounds, I think I can come up with something better.”
As Hiraen reels him in, Emaris lets himself forget about everything but his joy at being with the man in front of him. Even the obnoxious cheers erupting from his spying patrol can be dealt with later.
---
“Aren’t you knitting anymore?” asks Emaris when he sees Shandei next.
“No, I finished the shawl. Iyone loved it,” Shandei adds smugly.
Emaris shakes his head. The one constant in his life these days is that his sister will never make sense.
-END-
{Notes: idek
Title from Vienna Teng’s “Never Look Away.”}
Author: Phnx
Series: The Magpie Ballads (Vale Aida)
Characters/Pairing: Emaris/Hiraen, Shandei/Iyone, Savonn/Dervain
Summary: Emaris receives a lot of unsolicited advice.
Read on AO3
“It worked for your beloved captain,” says Shandei, convincingly glib. She is knitting again, this time some sort of mess of roses and thorns and brown circles of dirt. It’s meant to represent protection, she’d told him. He suspects an inside joke, but he doesn’t want to ask. “If the great Lord Silvertongue can retire in luxury with his father’s murderer, why can’t his former squire do the same?”
There are many things Emaris could say to this. Our father wasn’t Lord Kedris, for one, or Hiraen isn’t Dervain, or, most importantly, I am not Savonn. There are many truths he could speak now, but a truth withheld too long turns viscous and is not easily shared. He is still too bitter at the truth Shandei kept from him to be willing to scrape at his own soul and feel its smarting wounds simply in order to return to the smooth flow of honesty they had once known between them. “I tried,” he says instead, “but the Empath wasn’t keen on sharing.”
Shandei’s lips press into a thin line, and her needles clack angrily.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than knit that”--monstrosity--”blanket? I suppose being the captain of guards for the Governor must not involve much work.”
“It’s a shawl,” Shandei responds coolly. “And it’s nice to know that the time I took from my extremely busy schedule to visit my only surviving family member during his brief visit home is so appreciated.”
“I just saw you weeks ago,” says Emaris, bewildered.
“Yes, well,” mutters Shandei vaguely, making a show of counting her stitches.
Hideous pattern aside, Shandei could have carried on with her “shawl” in her sleep, so the attempted prevarication is rather insultingly obvious.
“What are those brown bits again?” he finally asks.
“They’re dung, obviously.”
Emaris stares at his sister. “That’s… not for me, is it?”
“I don’t know,” replies Shandei, voice honey sweet. “Are you in the market for a dung-covered shawl, Emaris?”
Emaris sighs in relief. “Who is it for, then?”
Shandei blushes. “My lady Iyone.”
“You’re knitting the governor, who is also your lover, a shawl with a dung pattern?”
“Roses and thorns and dung, yes,” says Shandei happily.
“...Are you two fighting, then?”
Shandei scowls at him. “No, of course not, or why would I be going through all this effort?”
The siblings sit in silence for a long time as Emaris reflects on this. Love as Emaris has experienced it is a wild, frightening force that reshapes destiny until friends are untrustworthy, and the impossible is the truth, and your own soul becomes a stranger to you. For love, he has lied, and for love, he has killed, but at least love has never led him to make a dung-blanket and call it a gift.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” is the response he finally settles on. This time when Shandei smiles at him, some of her old sunshine leaks through.
“Back again already, Gazelle?”
When he’d squired for Savonn some short years and a lifetime ago, Emaris would have said that his captain was happy. It is mortifying to realise that he hadn’t known, back then, what joy looks like on this face that is so beloved to him.
“Don’t worry. I’m only here for a short visit this time,” Emaris replies, addressing the crown of auburn hair bent over the harpsichord in the corner of the room. The head lifts and reveals a face, and the face is smiling.
“Never worry that your visits are too long, little lion,” says Dervain. “You are always welcome here.”
Savonn’s expression grows soft and private as he looks to Dervain, and Emaris feels the familiar mess of hurtadmirationbitternesswarmth rise up within him before he can quash it down again.
“After all,” Dervain continues, “If not for your visits, I would never get any work done, busy as am I fending off this terrible thieving magpie that I’ve been saddled with.”
Savonn doesn’t even pretend at offense. He dances into Dervain’s arms, laughing. The two are slow to pull apart, caught in the thrill of this life they never thought they’d be allowed to live.
The sting of vestigial heartbreak aside, Emaris doesn’t begrudge them these moments, isolating and awkward as they are. Sometimes, though, Emaris wonders what it would be like to touch to their smiles and their embraces and their soft gazes with another, unearthly sense. He wonders what it would be like to feel their love for one another as though it were his own. Would that make these moments easier or more difficult?
These people in his life are so layered in masks. Savonn, Dervain, Iyone, even Hiraen. Even Shandei, these days. What would it be, to be able to hear their feelings, to know their truths? As it is, with no way to separate the lies and the not-lies, the only way Emaris can navigate his life is to cling blindly to his faith in these friends of his. They may be speaking truths, they may be speaking lies, but they are good and worthy of his love, and he must let that be the only truth he needs.
“My poor Gazelle,” croons Savonn, descending from his blissful state enough to speak and move once more. “What ailment has befallen you, that you are so full of sorrow? Nightingale, my nightingale, do you see those sad eyes?”
“If you’re going to sing about this, I’ll just leave,” Emaris deadpans.
Dervain’s eyes are laughing at him. “If you cannot bear to hear a love song, that may be for the best. But listen--son of Randell, brother of Shandei, once squire to Lord Silvertongue, now Captain of Betronett--you are surrounded by love songs that all have happy endings. Why are you so convinced your own will be a tearful one?”
He killed my father is not likely to be a convincing argument against these two. He doesn’t love me back holds an equal weight of truth, but it sounds so childish.
“We were all children once,” says the Empath gently. “We all still are. Do not be afraid of your feelings, lion cub, and do not be ashamed of them. They are what make you who you are.”
“How eloquent,” teases Savonn. “But where is this lion? The only one with us is my gazelle.”
“You,” says Dervain, pressing a kiss into dark curls, “have no vision, etruska.”
Sorcerous empathy or no, the mood in this house is sweet enough to choke on. Emaris doesn’t stay long after all.
“The High Commander looks very handsome today,” says Vion. There is no softness or wistfulness in his voice. Instead, he sounds sharp, as though he is pointing out something obvious to someone who shouldn’t need the reminder.
Emaris frowns at Vion, confused. “I suppose so.” Hiraen always looks handsome, after all.
Vion does not seem to be satisfied with this response.
Emaris tries again. “Would you like me to talk to him for you? Perhaps I could present him with a token of yours…?” The only tokens he can think of are dung shawls, and he wrinkles his nose.
Vion stares at him in horror. “For me? A token of mine?” He whirls to gesture absurdly at the other members of the patrol, who are all characteristically crowded around. Lomas and Klemene join Vion in loudly expressing their disgust, while Rougen simply shakes his head at Emaris, deeply disappointed in him.
Between bewildering sisters armed with knitting needles--not to mention arrows--and bewildering soldiers armed with disdain--and likewise with arrows--Emaris wonders if he wouldn’t prefer playing third to Savonn and Dervain’s endless reels of love songs after all.
But no, at least here there are no lyres.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” says Hiraen.
“My lord High Commander, sir,” says Emaris.
Hiraen’s smile, already weak, collapses. “I had believed, when you refused to claim your right to my blood, that we had come to an understanding. I see that was naive of me.”
“An understanding?” Emaris knows, distantly, that he feels hurt, and humiliated, and used, but he does not know why he feels these things. “An understanding?”
“I thought, I would work to be better, to fix the wrongs that I have done and the wrongs that I have been willing to do, and that in return, you would not hate me.”
Emaris’ jaw works uselessly for a moment. “The only understanding that I remember reaching with you was that I would not stab you with my father’s knife! I never said anything about what I would or would not feel.”
Hiraen stares at him for a long moment, his expression bleak. “If your hatred is the alternative,” he says quietly, “then I think I would prefer the knife.”
As if ushered in by a helpful stagehand, a soft breeze blows by, tousling Hiraen’s hair with an adoring hand and carrying the scent of summer flowers. Hiraen, already so unfairly handsome, is standing before him lit golden with the setting sun, looking like a hero from a story book, from a love ballad. Hiraen, who murdered Emaris’ father and has the nerve to be staring at him with such sad eyes, as though he is the one who is heartbroken.
Emaris thinks of Shandei, who tried in her clumsy way to grant him her acceptance, though she bears the twin to his wound. He thinks of Lord Silvertongue and the Empath, who spent so many years battling a love that would not be denied. He thinks of his soldiers, who are so stolidly determined to see their young captain happy.
He thinks of Hiraen, trapped in the same endless and depthless love for Savonn as Emaris himself.
“I don’t hate you, sir,” he says, finally. “Hiraen. I don’t hate you. I maybe hate myself for not hating you.”
“If there is anyone under this sky who is undeserving of hatred, it is you,” says Hiraen, a hesitant smile forming.
“I am still recovering from one impossible love for a man who betrayed me and others in so many different ways,” Emaris continues. His voice is growing frantic, but he can’t seem to control it. “Must I go through all of that again?”
He hears Hiraen’s sharply drawn breath, but he can’t see his face. He realises dimly that he must have closed his eyes.
Soft footsteps and then a pause. A gentle touch to his face, finger sliding along the fading scars. “Not impossible at all,” Hiraen says. “And as to the rest--I must confess that I am far too selfish to advise you to find someone better to spend your love on.”
Emaris bites back a smile, feeling warmth rush through him. This must be what Shandei feels, he thinks, when Iyone tucks her hand into Shandei’s arm, wrapped in a red scarf. This must be what Savonn feels when Dervain offers a duet and Savonn is finally free to accept. This must have been what his father felt, all those years ago, when his mother shared as much of herself as could, though she was fated to roam and he to settle.
“I suppose you want a token.” Emaris opens his eyes slowly, flushes at the way Hiraen’s gaze traces so wonderingly over his features. “Shandei is making your sister some sort of rose-thorn-dung shawl, but I’m not much of a knitter.”
Hiraen barks a laugh. “The cannon guns?” he asks nonsensically. “As charming as that sounds, I think I can come up with something better.”
As Hiraen reels him in, Emaris lets himself forget about everything but his joy at being with the man in front of him. Even the obnoxious cheers erupting from his spying patrol can be dealt with later.
“Aren’t you knitting anymore?” asks Emaris when he sees Shandei next.
“No, I finished the shawl. Iyone loved it,” Shandei adds smugly.
Emaris shakes his head. The one constant in his life these days is that his sister will never make sense.
{Notes: idek
Title from Vienna Teng’s “Never Look Away.”}