The provincial governor's palace hums with gossip at their approach, whispers racing before them; two paladins of battle, on the road! and Eislyn smiles at being only their charge, some lone traveller under their protective hand, her own particulars not worth mentioning; even as the two grumble a little between them at it.
Even as they're received at the palace itself, she can feel the anticipation mixing with confusion, ink in milk; that the battle-paladins' anonymous road-waif is still at their hand, treating with them easily, without deference. A mystery. An aberration.
They're shown to guest quarters, hot food and hot baths and the soft promise that the governor will receive them as part of his official morning engagements. And then, before they have a chance to actually sleep, soft knocks and the invitation to speak to someone about their business now.
"Politics," Kada says under breath, as though cursing, as they wend their way through endless twisty corridors; and Eislyn can only wearily agree. At least she is fed, and clean in a way she hasn't felt for weeks, even if her hair is wet and they are about to be inveigled into whatever murkiness happens here behind the scenes.
There are people she is sure she should pay attention to, when they are led into a room of serious faces and a table of maps and letters. But there is nothing in the room for her save a single face, and she brushes past their guide, unseeing, unhearing.
She steps around the table. The figure on whom her attention rests pales and drops a stack of papers, nervelessly unheeded; she gently takes up the newly empty hands in her own, sinks to a knee, bends her head in supplication over the fingers shivering between hers. Raises a helpless, beaming smile to a face that has populated so many dreams that she has long dismissed it as a never-omened phantom figment of her own longing heart and nothing ever more.
"Ever at your service, in the name of Blue-Winged Sleep," she says, hearing herself bell-bright and honey-laden. "Sword-Arms, I would present to you Annen of Tienadell, to whom I forever owe the very breath of life in me, whose very presence here warms and reassures me, no matter what awaits here."
"Aiya, what are you doing," Annen squawks, finally. "Get up, no, get up," and Eislyn lets herself be pulled to her feet, laughing breathlessly — so breathless she must lean hard on the table's edge, dizzied.
"A chair, I think," Kada says wryly at her elbow, and steers her to one before clasping Annen's reluctant hand. "I call any friend of the Dreamsinger's one of my own; I am Kada, this is Marcus, we are here to add something in the way of weight to the Throne-on-the-Water's polite request your governor not start a war with the fae. The Dreamsinger, as I'm sure you know, goes where she wills; we're fortunate for her company, for now."
"Lucky," Annen says, a little broken note of bitter amusement. "Luck, yeah, that's what would bring her here, now. Paladin, there's something wicked in the woods; it's not the fae we're rightly set against. I didn't think—" her voice fails, for a moment. "Didn't want to think it was what I fear. But you're here." She turns her head to Eislyn, even if her eyes stay fixed somewhere on the floor as she does it. "You're here," she repeats, quiet.
"Here I am," Eislyn agrees, and sips at the cup water pressed into her hands by some concerned-looking stranger, and breathes carefully with the heel of her hand pressed to her sternum. "Here we are." She cannot stop the smile on her face, at the sound of it.
She should pay attention to the rest of the meeting, but she cannot, and does not.
"Stay a moment?" Annen says, afterwards, when the room is emptying. "Eislyn? Paladins?"
Eislyn remains in her chair, Annen pacing, while Kada looks between the two of them, one eyebrow lifted.
"She doesn't know what happened, out in the east," Annen says finally, throwing one hand out in a desperate gesture, the words bubbling out with some force; directing it not at Eislyn, but at the paladins of battle. "We barely staggered out of the desert, and she was half-dead, delirious. Wouldn't pay to see a doctor, and I couldn't — couldn't watch, man, so I stole from her to pay for it, and then abandoned her so I wouldn't have to face her."
"I know all that," Eislyn says cheerily. "Of course I know it; I came back to myself alone, and I spent so long looking for you."
"Back home I'd hang, by rights, for stealing from a paladin," Annen says bitterly. "Too much of a coward to confess, either."
"I'd have died," Eislyn says, and levers herself out of the chair. "Fool I might have been, but not so much I'd rather be dead in the desert. You were dear to me before it; you've been dear to me since, even if I thought I'd never find you."
Annen screws her face up, shaking her head. "I wanted—" she says. "I just wanted to be good enough. And I wasn't, I wasn't so I said, fuck it, I'll just get it done, then—"
"It's a hard thing," Kada says, still watching them both shrewdly. "To measure yourself against someone taken into the god's service, enfolded in the god's power. It's why the order never stations us at any of our temples too long; people setting us as a standard for themselves, or competition with us as a goal — it happens, it breaks people. Ruins good soldiers. Better not to let them get attached to any of us in particular."
"I don't desire to compete with her," Annen says, half-angrily, half-despairing.
"No," Kada says. "I don't think that's what you desire," and stretches ostentatiously. "Marcus," she says, "I think it's time for the two of us to be abed, and guests in Eislyn's own Blue-Winged Land. Eislyn, love yourself enough to rest, now we're here, aye? Don't spend all night smiling at your friend."
"Who knew paladins of war are such grandmothers," Eislyn says, dimpling at her.
"Grandmother, Sergeant, what difference," Kada says, grinning back. "Goodnight, Dream-Knight."
"Be welcome in the Monarch's Land," Eislyn says, bowing a little to them as they exit, Kada closing the door gently behind them; and there's a silence.
"We killed him, in the desert," Annen says miserably. "We tore the heart out of his resurrection device. Why isn't he dead? Why is he haunting us? Why did you come here, Eislyn; why did you come."
"I was a fool, and I asked myself the wrong questions, in the desert," Eislyn says steadily. "Where do you get a perfect human heart made of gold, Annen? Do you take gold and make it into a sculpture of a heart, or do you take a heart and make it into gold? We didn't kill him; we only took his device away, and it only made bodies for him. He's lived, alive and bodiless and angry; that's why he haunts us. I came because I am, still, a paladin. He's my duty. And maybe this time I'll do it right." She touches her chest. "And he's not done with us, whether or not I came. He wants another heart; it's his key to having flesh again. If I didn't come, he'd have yours."
"Then let him," Annen says, in a choked voice. "Not again, Eislyn. Don't die on me again."
"He's not having any heart," Eislyn says. "But especially not yours, and I would gladly die to keep it beating in your chest. I looked for you so much, Annen."
"I stole it from you," Annen grates, refusing to look at her.
"And probably, that ended it; melted down into jewellery settings, I should think, and all the better for it — see him take those back! I had plans for it, aye. A delirious fool's plans, and almost a dead one's. Do you regret that I live?"
"Never."
"Then stop regretting that you caused it. I forgive you, if you think it needs forgiving; I absolve you, if you feel burdened. Look at me and feel what I do: joy, that I see you, when I never thought to again." She reaches out, tangles her fingers in the other's sleeve. "I was so young, Annen, and so desperate for you to be impressed with me in spite of it. I made mistakes, and paid for them."
"Mine wasn't a mistake," Annen says. "I knew what I was about."
"Aye," Eislyn says, and gently tugs. "You saved my life," and finally Annen turns toward her, clutches at her arms, and weeps into her shoulder.
