brand new colony

It's the first night he's spent with Gwenore in more than a month -- they've both been busy, particularly him, and it's been as hard to make time for her as to find a night he doesn't think she's already planned to spend with Lanse. So it's a relief, a pleasure he wasn't expecting. He makes love to her earnestly.

He's thrice grateful when the next morning finds him so dizzy he can hardly stand. Gwen is already up, her duties don't let her linger in bed with him, and he staggers to his feet, focusing hard to get into his clothes.

(It's not so bad but he wishes Marguel were more circumspect. It's hard enough defending her to Cai and Gwen and Lanse every month, swearing up and down that she won't let anything bad happen to him, that it'd be worse to do something about it. He's toyed with the idea that maybe she wants him to do something about it, maybe it's some kind of test, but he can't reconcile himself to punishing her, and maybe he's thinking of Anna, maybe he's just got something to atone for, but that's the way it is.)

He's not entirely sure what time it is, though he hopes it isn't too late. He could ring, he knows -- there's an emergency alarm next to his bed, the same one sewn into the lining of all his street clothes. But he feels strangely anxious, and instead of doing any of the sensible things he slips out of the room, sliding along the wall for support, until he gets to Lanse's room, where he rings the bell and then leans against the door, pressing his sweating forehead to the cool metal.

It's a long shot. Lanse should be out on the parade grounds by now. He concentrates on breathing slowly, trying to wrap his head around the idea of what he'll do if Lanse isn't there.

It's been three days since Medraut Lloyd arrived in Camallate, and Athyr has been unusually quiet and introspective. Usually he's a model of exuberant energy, bounding around the practise yards and conference rooms, greeting his staff cheerfully and laying plans. Recently, however, he's stayed mainly in his office, and he seems subdued when he's out.

Earlier that evening there was a state dinner to welcome Medraut officially. Athyr presided, of course, in his yellow silk, but when it's over and the guests have begun to disperse he makes right for his and Gwenore's rooms. By the time she gets there, he's stripped down to his underclothes, bent over a pile of papers, signing them furiously and with intense concentration.

There comes a point in every celebration when, barring emergencies, it will run itself. The guards know their places and the caterers have handled the food and the music has all be arranged. Cai has tripled checked the amount of wine, and has made himself available to every person that he's spent weeks planning with, but they all have one answer: they'll call if they need him. Go enjoy the party.

Unfortunately, Cai suspects he's lost the ability to enjoy parties. Even his brother's wedding.

In fairness, he doesn't look unhappy, he just looks out of place. There's a reason why Cai has the job he does; take him out of his element, and he's left with a wretched lack of talent for small talk and a decent ability to hold his liquor, both of which conspire to end up with him watching, on the fringes, even if he's mostly pleased with how everything has gone.

He won't leave early, in case anything does go wrong. But Aythr doesn't have eyes for anyone but Gwen tonight, so he's left mainly to his own devices.

[Open to anyone who'd logically be at the wedding.]

Athyr is still rather drunk, from his conversation with Lanselos, but he manages to find his way back to his own room, hitting the wrong keycode twice before he gets into his and Gwen's quarters. The yellow silk jacket that goes with his official clothes is gone, abandoned over the back of one of Lanse's chairs, and once inside he starts looking for it, mildly bewildered.

He needs to talk to Gwen, and he knows that. He knows what he decided with Lanse. The hard part is changing something he's spent all his life taking for granted. With a small sigh, he goes back to looking for his jacket and hoping Gwen won't get back for a while, so he won't have to deal with it right away.

By the time she leaves to head back down to her own quarters, Gwenore is back in control of herself, although she's not unscathed. She takes the pins out of her hair as she goes, and pushes her fingers through till it's ruffled as ever, and makes her a little more recognizable; the soft blouse and skirt are less uncharacteristic than her expression, distracted and a little pained.

The trial of Lamerok is a disaster.

He knows it very nearly from the beginning, from the moment Dr. Shea brings her husband into Camallate in stasis -- from before that, when he gets the wire from the Bredigan sheriff that Anna Lloyd is dead. But first he's too angry, and then he's too heartbroken, to stop and think, and he doesn't wait for evidence (it doesn't help that Gwalchmai's as angry as he is, in a different kind of way), he just tells the judge they'd damn well better find Lamerok guilty and get him shot as soon as possible. And the judge does as he's ordered by his king.

Two days later Gadriet's stable enough to pull out of stasis, and when he says he's the one who killed her and Athyr realises he's misjudged it that bad --

But they hush it up; Gwen and Lanse help him, like they always do, and even Bedwyr spreads a few unkind rumours among the barracks about Lamerok's conduct, which is a sacrifice Athyr never meant him to make.

In the aftermath, Athyr turns solitary. Between the way he all but murdered Lamerok, and the realisation that he's never going to see Anna again (as if some part of him really believed that if he just waited long enough he'd get the chance to apologise to her, to tell her he was a stupid boy and if he weren't married now, if he didn't love his wife, he'd beg her forgiveness, he'd tell the world Medraut is his son, his own beautiful child -- a thousand fanciful ideas that would never have happened even if she had lived), he doesn't feel fit for the court. He shuts himself in his office and keeps the door locked, and has meals sent up to him.

He can't bear the thought of talking to Gwen. It's as much a betrayal of her. Lanse is even worse, because he's always been honest with Lanse, but he can't be about this. He can't tell anyone. Five years ago he might have confided in Cai, but Cai is dead.

So he shuts himself up and tries to hide from all the responsibilities he owns as king, breathing out the sorrow gingerly: his lungs ache.

Everything aches.

The Queen is likely to turn up almost anywhere in the Hall on a given day, checking on various operations, making sure everything is running smoothly. The library is not one of her more common stops, being both nonessential and outside the main compound, but it's not unheard of for her to drop by to check some record that's not in the main computer, or just to see that things are as they should be.

Today her reasons are not entirely administrative, however. She stops a moment to talk with the staff member on duty -- there's never more than one at a time -- and then goes to lean in the doorway to the hard-copy room. She moves softly, and for a moment she studies the young man at the desk in silence. Then she straightens up a little, scuffing deliberately against the threshold. "Auelon?"

They've been sleeping together for a while -- probably not exclusively, Athyr figures, though he doesn't like to think about that; the idea of another man with his hands on Gwen makes him feel queasy in a way he doesn't understand. He hasn't been with many women since Anna. To be honest, he's been half-afraid, even if it is statistically unlikely that he'd end up sleeping with another long-lost half-sister -- but he can't shake that feeling that when he finds someone he wants to love Merdhin's going to take her away from him again, hit him with some out-of-the-blue bullet that makes him lose her, or talk him into selling her to a political rival without evening arguing, like the ignorant little coward he was then--

It makes him sick to think about Anna, so he doesn't.

But Gwen he can't get out of his head, and every time she's on base in Camallate she spends the nights with him, even when they aren't fooling around. He's used to waking up to find she's come in sometime in the early morning and settled into his bed, and to burying his face in her short blonde hair, his arm around her waist. It's a good feeling. It's -- gorram it, it's a feeling he doesn't want to give up, he wants it to be every day, he wants it to be a sure thing.

He's getting dressed slowly this morning, throwing glances over his shoulder to her lying in the bed, stripped of all her guns and leather and just as strong and beautiful for that. It smarts. It smarts that between Merdhin and the way she reacted last time he doesn't have the guts to ask her.

Athyr swears and starts to button up his doublet. He'll put in an order for dinner with her, just the two of them, no work to-night. Get Cai to clear his schedule. Dammit. To-night. It's time to stop letting the past hobble him like a dog-bit horse. He isn't going to lose her the way he lost Anna, and no matter what Merdhin says he'll go through with it.

It's not as though he makes many decisions any more for things he wants. He deserves the chance for Gwen.

It's the fifth year of his kingship, and Athyr is used to Marguel's attempts to kill him. It's a sort of a game, to be honest, one that he almost enjoys -- she plots, he escapes, the same pattern. Usually the escapes are due to Cai or Gwenore's good sense, although Athyr has caught one or two of them himself.

But this one he missed. In fact, this one was bio-engineered and came in an envelope that he made the mistake of opening himself (honestly, someone else is supposed to open his mail for him, but he thinks this is a stupid idea and tries to steal it first whenever possible), and the next person who comes to his office finds him facedown on the floor.

The first three people the medical staff notify are Gwenore, Cai, and Lanselos. Athyr is in the Menw, in one of the suites, hooked up to an IV and doped up to the ears, humming tunelessly along to the radiator. When the nurse comes in to tell him that Lanse is there, he just grins.

"Yeah, yeah, I want to see him. Send him in."

She turns up in Lanselos' doorway the night before he leaves for Escalot, leaning there with her arms folded. Her fair hair is coming out of its pins, and the leather jacket -- Gwenore sticks stubbornly to offworld style -- hangs a little loosely on her shoulders; but there is nothing waifish in that steady look.

"Hey."

Athyr is down in the training grounds, cleaning his pistol, a lone figure sitting in the open space wearing the same clothes he's been wearing for three days now.

A part of him is saying he should have been expecting this all along. He couldn't just go on pretending that Lanse and Gwen were only good friends for the rest of his life. And part of him is saying it's his fault, it's his fault that Geffreyn and two of Gwalchmai's sons are dead and buried in one of Camallate's dusty cemeteries, because he wouldn't break down and admit it was going on himself.

And part of him is saying his heart is going to break from losing Lanselos, but it's the only thing he can do now if he really wants to prove Camallate isn't just built on nepotism, favouritism, and corruption, which God knows is getting to be popular opinion. Medraut hasn't done anything to calm those feelings, especially not since the farce that was Lamerok's trial.

Besides, the last part of him is furious. A little rutting discretion, just a little--Lanse had to have known he knew, but that's no gorram reason to get so careless even Geffreyn Lloyd could figure it out.

He's going to have to challenge Lanse. He knows how their skill compares, he knows he'll probably lose unless Lanselos feels sorry for him, wángbā that he is, but it doesn't matter, he's running out of options. He has to issue a statement to-day, and it's going to have to include a challenge.

Athyr closes his eyes and feels the sweat running down his back in the hot-grit sun.

It's not until that evening that Gwenore finds a moment to go looking for Lanselos. She doesn't bother this time to change out of her everyday clothes, or take down her hair; just cuts down the corridor to his door at the end, and taps lightly: twice, three times.

"Hey, you."

It's late when Athyr gets in. The conference lasted another three hours, Esmeree fighting the whole time, and when he finally got out he couldn't find Lanselos, so he bothered Cai for a little while, to no real purpose. By the time he got a message from Lanselos begging off, it was time for the official dinner with the delegates from Glamorgan, and that took another two hours in and of itself.

He finally keys open the door to his quarters with Gwenore, rubbing the small of his back and unfastening the toggles of his dignitary robes and jacket.

"Lăotiān Yé, it's like negotiatin' with a randy bull," he mutters, raking a hand through his hair. "Gwenore?" then, raising his voice a little. "You in?"

Lanselos has been out of Camallate for about a fortnight, on the King's Business. Which makes it sound so much more official than what it is, which is mostly making sure that folks see that their government is functional and busy, and picking up some parts & supplies while he's being visible. It's nothing special, really, but he does his best to make it look like it is. And if he has a few somewhat rowdy nights in backwater bars, then so much the better for him.

This trip, he's managed to avoid starting any trouble -- he's been known to jump into a bar fight or two -- and he's been successful in getting a few second-hand parts for the transports and generators, as well as a good lead on some potential livestock coming up for auction. But it's what he's got tucked away in his own pack, a gift for Gwenore, that's got him anxious to get home.

Once he's back, he gets the goods for Arthur squared away and most of the dirt out of his hair before he goes looking for the Queen.

Lenomie's arrangement with Medraut means that a lot of the time he's out in Bredigan working on his building project and she's out in Til Tomeil working on her sheep project, and they don't cross each other's paths real often in Camallate, though they have a permanent apartment in the royal hall.

She's in the city this week to pick up supplies and download more information to her holo console; then she'll stop by Bredigan briefly to coax Gadriet to Til Tomeil to look at one of the sheep she thinks has scrapie. She's staying in the hall, but she doesn't expect to be noticed especially--just because she's married to one of the Dragon's (infinite number of) nephews doesn't mean her social status is anything special.

So when someone sends her a notice that the Queen's got an engine problem and will she come look it over, she's almost nervous. She hasn't really talked to Queen LeGuin since her wedding, and she tries surreptitiously to straighten her hair and her vest as she goes down to the motor shed.