"What's your lawyer going to think of this?" Harri mutters, sitting awkwardly in a comfortable chair. Vespidine's family lawyer works from an uptown office, overlooking the smog-collecting basin of downtown.
"Firstly," Vespidine says, leafing through the day's newspaper while they wait, "he will think you are my indecorosa, and all of this has been done before by many people. Secondly, Harika: I do not care what he thinks."
"The korvu by-Tenstone korvu Overmore kanru Tjenwater heir has to care about many fewer opinions than I do," Harri says, looking at her hands twined in her lap, and Vespidine folds the newspaper, lays it on the small table between their chairs, puts one hand over the other, both on her knee, and purses her lips.
"Harri," she says, and sighs. "I believe this is the best thing to do," she continues eventually, in a soft voice.
"I'm sure you're right," Harri says.
Vespidine looks at her for a few seconds, then gently extends a hand, palm up; and after a few seconds of her own, Harri puts her own hand into it, sighs deeply, and attempts to relax her shoulders.
It takes nearly two hours in the lawyer's office, during which Harri gamely tries but fails to pay attention to a papery old lawyer explaining technicalities and directing them to initial or sign an astonishing number of papers, for Vespidine to press a small ring of neat brass keys on her and offer her hand once more, to help Harri to her feet.
"I'd like to show you around the apartment," the elf murmurs, on the way out, "if you'll allow it?" and Harri thinks of the value of being seen entering a secluded property together, and the fact that she has yet to set foot there at all, and briefly experiments with the taste of no, ready on her tongue anyway.
"Please," she says, tucking her hand into Vespidine's crooked elbow.
The apartment is on the ground floor of a terraced row of one-up, one-down residences, neatly kept and dripping the invisible lustre of money from their staidly painted individual front doors and window boxes of decorative flowers.
Inside, everything is spotlessly dust-free and ringing with the silence of emptiness. Harri wonders how long it's been since Vespidine set foot here; thinks housekeeper. Wonders how many other upkeep expenses Vespidine doesn't even notice, that could be used to bring her to her knees, if the bills were no longer paid.
Vespidine walks her around, pointing out the kitchen fittings, the sitting-room with its bay window, various storage closets, the back door into a tiny enclosed yard, shared with the dwelling above. The elf opens the door to the bedroom and simply makes an noncommital noise before motioning Harri onward; Harri gives her an arch look.
"I've seen bedrooms before," she says. "Yours, even. Slept in it."
"I'm attempting," Vespidine says, with dignity, "to maintain the...proper attitude."
"You are the thoroughly proper sister," Harri agrees.
"I cannot imagine a lower bar than to demand I treat you better than Cosimisa," Vespidine says, scowling. "And yet—"
"Oh, I don't think I recall her ever having me in a bed," Harri says, watching the pinch and darken of Vespidine's expression. "I think she reserves that for equals—"
Vespidine cuts her off with a hand under her chin and a thumb across her lips. "You're teasing me," the elf says stiffly, looking away. "Testing me, to ensure that I'm safe to speak freely to, and I hope — I want to be. But that's a subject I can't find tolerable, Harri."
"Your sister?" Harri murmurs, watching the roil of Vespidine's fury as she attempts to tamp it away.
"Oh, frequently," Vespidine says, and snorts. "But you know perfectly well what, Harika."
Harri hums, feeling the vibration of her throat against the brush of Vespidine's hand. "Jealous?" she says lightly, and Vespidine's gaze pins her.
"Guilt, perhaps," Vespidine says coolly. "Not that her — attitude, as much as her treatment of you, has been despicable; but that I allowed it."
Harri smiles. "Jealous," she repeats, lowering her voice, "Signore?" and lets the tip of her tongue graze the thumb still futilely hushing her.
Vespidine steps back as though Harri has burst into flame, eyes comically wide. "Best I go," she chokes, and hurries herself to the door, taking her fog coat from the hatrack and clutching it to her chest with both fists rather than attempting to put it on. "I'll see you tomorrow? Lunch? If you'd like—"
"I'd like that," Harri says, and watches the door close, and makes a private wager.
Less than five minutes later, she wins it, as she opens the door again at Vespidine's brisk knock.
"Tell me," the elf demands. "Tell me you never called Cosimisa Signore." She's flung her coat on, in the interim, visibly carelessly; her fists are clenched, face red.
Harri looks her up and down as she stands outside the door, visibly dragging it out. "Tell me you're jealous," she counters finally.
"Yes," Vespidine says immediately, her eyes diamond knives, and Harri smiles at her.
"Not for all the coffee in the End," she says. "Not once, Vespidine."
Vespidine stares and stares, none of the tension in her visibly abating. "This is an ugly mood on me," she says finally, abrupt, and turns to go.
"You can be angry without immediately visiting it on me," Harri says softly. "Do you not know that I find that reassuring, after Cos?"
"It's not anger," Vespidine says shortly, "that I worry about visiting on you."
"I'll never be permitted any other lover," Harri says, "so that, too—" and breaks off as Vespidine's posture finally breaks into something slumped and stricken. "Did you think I don't realise?" she adds gently. "Did you think I'd simply resign myself to an empty bed for the rest of my life? Vespidine, you know you're hardly a punishment."
"You didn't ask for this," Vespidine whispers.
"I didn't know I could ask to be rescued from your sister," Harri says. "No, don't look at me like that; I know that's not what you meant, but it's what you've done." She steps to the threshold, and reaches over it to cradle Vespidine's face. "Ringrazio, Signore."
"Mille volte," Vespidine mumurs fervently, and reaches in return.
Harri catches her hand, presses a kiss to her knuckles and, turning it over, her palm, then looks back up at the elf.
"No," she says, soft and smile unwavering, "not today," and steps backward into the apartment, letting Vespidine's hand slip from her own.
Vespidine takes a deep, shuddering breath.
"Testing?" she croaks.
"Practising," Harri says, holding her gaze.
The elf runs her hands through her hair, eyes closed; squares her shoulders; reopens her eyes. "Well done," she says, and produces a wry but sincere smile.
"Nobody taught you to hear no, any more than they taught Cos," Harri says. "Well done both of us."
Vespidine grimaces a little, and shifts her weight. "I wish I could tell you there's some noble reason," she says, "but Cos and I have defined ourselves by being whatever we saw the other wasn't," and Harri gives her a wry smile back.
"Well done," she says.
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