When Derrek and I emerged in the morning, dressed in sao`ashan garb for the sake of wearing something clean, Volalli and Khiilitir were already giving Elana and Rennin a tour of the grounds. Crossing the rope bridge to the home-tree, we found Maosee and Nallaro lingering over their own breakfast of tea and scones, with more than enough set aside for us.
Maosee raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged, doing my best to keep my face composed. Maosee rolled her eyes; Nallaro covered her smile with her teacup. Derrek politely pretended to ignore the entire exchange, and presented them with a host-gift from his wizard’s chest: a hunting knife that he’d made, with a drop point edge and an ironwood handle.
We made small talk over breakfast, lingering long enough that Nallaro had to make a second and then third pot of tea. Derrek told stories about his life as a blacksmith in So’renner, anecdotes of human life carefully and skillfully chosen to be the most baffling and entertaining to elven ears, and about his time with the uurnigath.
Eventually, Volalli and Khiilitir returned with Elana and Rennin in tow. They each kissed me on top of my head before settling in on the far side of the table with my other mothers. Elana and Rennin hesitated at the door for a moment before joining us at the table, settling – for once – with Derrek between me and them instead of the other way around.
“How long have you known,” Elana asked him again, without any preamble or even looking at me, “that this was Khanaarre’s journeyman’s quest?”
She asked in the language of the Compact, which of all my parents, only Maosee spoke. It was rude, but I could guess her reasons. She needed to strip away at least one layer of potential misunderstanding, and to establish dominance, and for Rennin to fully understand what we said.
Derrek sighed, and adjusted himself on his cushion, cradling his tea in his lap. He looked to me before answering. I smiled, a little sadly, a little wryly, and raised my eyebrow at him. He laughed.
“I have only known,” he answered in the same language, and emphasized the word ‘known’, “since last night. But I will admit that I guessed it back in the Holy Lands, when I saw her don her Black Mask to open the Tomb of Xadaer.”
That answer seemed to confuse Elana even more, but it made me laugh.
“How was that what gave me away?”
“It was Elana who introduced you as Khanaarre of the Black Mask, you had never said those words yourself. We had been travelling together for months, and you never named your master or made any reference to your journeyman’s quest, no matter how I pressed or taunted you to prove yourself as a wizard. No, I didn’t ask, but so much of the competition between wizards revolves around the lineage of their masters and the vigor of their journeyman’s quests – no Vencari wizard could have made it from So’renner to the Tomb of Xadaer without bragging about their master and their quest. And yet you said nothing save that your master was an exile.”
I was glad that my position made it possible to watch all three of my companions at once. Derrek was at his smuggest. Elana looked frustrated. Rennin looked confused, like he didn’t understand how what Derrek was saying related to anything.
“I had, I’ll admit, come to believe that you were a hedge-wizard, the exceptionally gifted student of some idiot the Black Mask had banished for incompetence. Then we came to the Tomb and you donned a real Black Mask, and wrapped yourself in protective magics, and picked a five-thousand-year-old magical lock. Your master might have been an exile, but he was no idiot. And then I remembered Maris Pello and his puzzle boxes and the Emperor’s labyrinth. He was exiled, what, fourteen, fifteen years ago, now? With a lineage like that, what could you possibly have to hide? But you met Elana on the road, was it two, three years ago? And you had never been to Vencar, proper? I’ll admit, there are a dozen other possible scenarios, but … my guess was that you met Elana on your way to Vencar to be recognized by the Order of the Black Mask and begin a formally recognized journeyman’s quest, and that you got caught up in her charisma and the romance of her resistance, confident – and rightly so – that restoring Elana to her throne would be a quest of sufficient scale to convince even the most bitter Mask that an exile’s experimental elf apprentice was worthy of recognition.”
I stared at him. After a moment I realized that my mouth had literally fallen open with shock.
“Fuck,” I said, finally, startling a laugh from Maosee, and making Elana and Rennin jump.
“Is that,” Elana began haltingly. “Is that the truth of it, Khanaarre?”
“Almost to the letter,” I said, utterly stunned. “When you and I met on the road to Tanirinaal city, I was on my way to see my sorceress Aunt Neriishai. My plan, inasmuch as I had one, was to spend some time with family and see the great city before going on a quest to prove myself worthy of the title wizard and full membership in the Order. I presented myself as ‘of the Black Mask’ because it was true, but I never expected you to take me utterly on faith. I also, as much as I liked our week together on the road, never expected to become your constant companion, or a de facto representative of my people. I thought your court wizards would see me for what I was, either to decry me or take me under their wing. I never meant the deception to reach the scale that it has.”
“I maintain,” Derrek said, before Elana could respond, “that you were among the deceived, and that your old master failed you in refusing to properly recognize your mastery when you achieved it, and that you have proved your mastery retroactively a dozen times over in the last year alone.”
Finally, silence fell back over the room, and Maosee got up to take her turn at making tea.
“Fuck,” Rennin said into that void, shaking his head.
“I think I understand, now, Khanaarre,” said Elana, “how you felt when you learned that Derrek was raised by your people’s ancient enemy. All the reasons he had kept that secret made sense, but in your heart you could not accept them. I … I love you, but I don’t know when or how I will be able to forgive you for this.”
So saying, she rose and climbed back out of the home-tree. Rennin followed after. Neither of them spoke to me again that day. They did return for lunch and dinner, and spoke kindly to my parents in swiftly-improving elven.
My parents endured the tension with varying degrees of patience. My father was deeply embarrassed, and he apologized to me profusely and repeatedly. Khiilitir was disgusted with me – had I learned nothing from growing up with her sister Neriishai’s machinations? Nallaro took a more moderate approach, seeing blame all around. Whatever Maosee thought, she kept quiet in order to position herself as a font of support – a stance which clearly annoyed Khiilitir as much now as it had when Llaariiah and I had been children.
The next morning Khiilitir went on a hunt, unable to stand the awkwardness. The rest of my parents busied themselves in hospitality, alternating taking turns tending to the house and its guests, myself included.
“What’s the story with you and this djuunan wizard,” Maosee asked me that afternoon as we were tending to some of the party’s immense pile of laundry. “Did something happen between you and Rrii`aa?”
I sighed.
“The answer to both is the same,” I admitted: “A year-long quest beyond the edge of the world and back. I hope that Rrii`aa remembers me very fondly, though, because I have decided to propose to her when I return to Liddarn – within the hour, if at all possible.”
That was hyperbolic, but only by the finest of margins.
“And your djuunan wizard-priestess?”
That, I didn’t have a ready answer for. Fucking him senseless was the best decision I’d made in months, with the possible exception of deciding to let him return the favor. But he remained a vault of secrets and the object of very reasonable suspicions.
“I guess that depends on whether or not I can convince Rrii`aa to come home with me,” I said, because that made the better story. Whether or not I was still welcome among the loyalist court was also a factor, but I wasn’t quite ready to scrabble up that decision-tree. “One should keep her options open.”
Maosee laughed.
“Khiilitir and Nallaro will disapprove, of course,” she said as we hung the first round of clothes – the least-filthy, the things we’d only been wearing since Nagaan – up to dry. “Na`djuunaan children struggle in the world. But all that any of us want is for you to be happy.”
I decided not to further complicate the discussion by telling her that, if I – and hopefully Rrii`aa – formed a marriage circle with him, Derrek would be bearing halfling children, not siring them. It didn’t matter, not really, and I didn’t want to start the discussion of the wealth it would require to form a marriage circle with two husbands, even if one of them was djuunan, to say nothing of the reluctance of most elven families to let one of their few precious sons go to a marriage circle that included a djuunan of any sex or gender.
That afternoon, I looked for an opportunity to speak to Elana alone. I got my chance an hour or so before dinner, when I found her sitting at the base of the home-tree while Rennin had gone off to shower.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her without preamble. “And I apologize, also, for not saying so sooner.”
She looked up at me, straightening her back and frowning as she craned her neck.
“What?” she said.
I sat down in front of her, one leg crossed under the other. I was still taller, but at least I wasn’t looming.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, in the language of the Compact. I might have spoken in elven the first time. Elana spoke elven, yes, and had the diplomat’s tongues spell, but apologies in elven were baroque, and it was unlikely she had studied them. “I’m sorry that I approached you under false pretenses back in Tanirinaal. I’m sorry I never found the courage to tell you my whole story. And I’m sorry that, when you inevitably found out, it took me almost two days to apologize to you.”
Elana sighed, and settled back against the trunk of my home-tree.
“Fuck you, Khanaarre,” she said. “It’s so much harder to stay mad at you than it is with Derrek.”
“You have every right to be mad at me,” I said. “Though I’m not sure what you’re mad at him about, right now.”
She laughed. Not humorlessly, or in her court voice. The real thing, if a little ironic.
“For defending you so effectively, of course. And for seducing you away from me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I never had any idea that you…”
“No, no, no.” This time Elana’s laugh was wholly genuine, almost in spite of itself. “Your loyalty, not your loins.”
I reached out and touched her hand where it rested on her knee.
“I understand that you doubt my loyalty, right now,” I said. “Please remember that my greatest error in judgement was two years ago. My loyalty to you has only grown since then. You are my friend. I have followed you past the edge of the world and into the very lap of my greatest fear, and I would do so again. Derrek had no part in any of those decisions.”
I decided to take a risk with the conversation, and let laugh escape my lips.
“As for him seducing me,” I said, “whatever further doubts it may raise about my judgement, I’ll have you know that it has been entirely the reverse.”
Elana laughed, and then groaned, and held her face in her hands.
“Oh, Khanaarre,” she said. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”
“That’s what I came to ask you,” I said. “I am grateful beyond words to see my family again after two years adventuring and more deathly encounters than I care to recall. But you are needed back in Liddarn, and from there you must finish your quest. And I … well, I would understand if you preferred to leave me here.”
Elana didn’t answer immediately. She hid her face behind her hands for a moment longer, then looked away into the woods.
“Rennin and I have been discussing that,” she admitted. “The boat is, arguably, technically yours. And I’m not certain that the three of us could sail it downriver without you. Conversely, we were in no way certain that, having come home, having completed your journeyman’s quest, you had any intention of leaving.”
I reached out to her again, this time taking both of her hands in mine.
“If you will still have me,” I said, “I will follow you all the way to the palace and your final confrontation with the Usurper.”
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