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Of course there's no justice.
When a mother dies for her daughters (and they tell you over and over that she would have been glad, proud, and happy to save you but you saw her, you saw her, all bloody and burnt with sizzling wires sparking white, white magic, her mouth a little open and her blue eyes wide and glazed in death and who could be glad of that), where is the justice?
When you fight and fight and make yourself beautiful and brave (and make yourself sleep even though he could be coming back any night in the dark, in the shadows, and you haven't been able to tell the strong friends who could protect you), when you make yourself graceful and you still fall from trees, your boots still manage to catch on every pebble and crack in the pavement, and you still haven't learned to land off your face, where is justice then?
When your beloved uncle and your best cousin try to kill your glorious and loving father in order to take away the worthy job he's worthy of (without knowing how to do it, without even thinking that he's doing it wrong, without having the slightest complaint about him, without even having a goal to justify their naked ambition), and when your friends only sigh and wince without indignation because if it's associated with you it must be a little mad, where is the fairness in that?
When you love with worship and love with adoration and protect with ferocity and heal everything you can touch and you're the only cheerful voice and they ravage your purse and burden your back and hit you for your figure and make snide remarks over your head and then pat it, there is certainly no justice then.
But there could be. If you're good enough, if you're strong enough, and certain, and brave and determined, then there could be.
And so when your uncomfortable hero 'suggests' in her fearless way that, since your oblivious love's quest has brought you to the southern edge of the Alliance of Coastal States (a nerve-wracking location, since the word Alliance has been used only politely in political circles lately) off the Demon Sea, the object of your concern and some suspicion should bring you all home to his island to meet Mother (after all, you yourself set the example by being such a gracious host in your own home territory), you don't complain or protest, but follow cheerfully along.
And when you're in that comfortably elegant parlor with its homey rusts and greens, with the evil musky, leathery rankness insinuating its way around the incense, you're polite to your enemy and smile, and sit on your urges to make speeches. One doesn't lecture one's host unprovoked.
And so, even though the worryingly cheerful one who flits through life with the effortless happiness you try to ape is kneeling before her dainty anklets looking somber and sedate and more than a little worried himself under his smile, you plaster your happy visiting face on and say nothing but social graces.
When the interview is over, your sometime traveling companion escorts you each to your separate rooms, and you last of all. He turns to you then, the two of you alone in the candlelit hallway. Opening eyes of dark, chiseled rose quartz, he says in the voice of a messenger, "We are concerned with the future of your city, Princess."
Fear slams down your spine, because when a mischief-making demon concerns himself with your future or the future of your people, the time for fear is now.
But he's speaking now the tones of one of the old counselors back home: grave and calm, less persuasive than informing.
"With your father's regency, Sailoon's history of dictatorship has turned benevolent, and believe it or not, Princess, we are pleased. War is not our concern, nor the misery of the badly-run city. My Lady Lord and I prefer to feed on different stuff. Like your soft serve," he adds, in a lighter tone. "I would personally prefer that it remain available."
You risk a smile, but no words. You know this game. His making himself more human (ha!) will not, will never affect your judgement of his position. It isn't supposed to. You are not a Miss tonight, you are not a girl who can lift her chopsticks with breaking force to slap the wrists of the stupidly powerful who are stealing her dinner and laugh when they sulk and try again: a working soldier has called you Princess.
"Such lovely stuff," he goes on. "If only life itself could be black and white like that. But then there would be no humans, would there? Only my people and Miss Filia's. It's with humanity that grey comes in. You know that, don't you?"
You tell him, cautiously, that you have heard the view expressed. His face, that terrifyingly appealing face, lights, and suddenly he's your traveling companion again, laughing with crinkled eyes, confidingly wicked as though you're allies not-quite-against a delightfully silly world: another face he's never shown you. "Oh, you can have an adult conversation if I get you away from our adorable Miss Lina and her so-confident ways! I'm so glad. After Miss Filia and Mr. Gourry I had held little hope of it. Maybe it's a height thing. Or a blond thing. Where was I? Oh, yes.
"You see, Princess, we are concerned for you," he says, back to his usual offhand tones, and the fear crawls up your neck and scalp and raises your trembling black hair. "For your people, under you. Don't think we're dishonest or trying to fool you with false selflessness; this is a genuine concern of ours. War, you see, especially a holy war, will feed and strengthen Gaav's underlings, and aid his return. The dull misery of the oppressed will do much the same for Dynast, as the corruptions and too-sophisticated pleasures of a rotten court aid Phibrizzo, while the bright madness of the unchecked tyrant gives Dolphin much pleasure.
"We don't expect much out of you for ourselves once you take the throne, you understand," he condescends to assure you. "You're not much of a hunter, for all that you fall on injustice when it mugs old ladies in front of your nose, and the aggravation you'll birth in your subjects is small fry, compared to your other potentials. Still, we can at least hope to stop you from strengthening our competitors in a way that you yourself wouldn't approve."
Angry now, you protest. You want no war. You want the best for your people and of them, not misery. It isn't fair of him, accusing you this way when you've known each other so long.
"Have you ever heard of a kingdom called Zephilia, Highness?" he asks in the sweet and pleasant tones he uses on the dragon when she's on the verge of abusing him beyond endurance, beyond courtesy. "The White Knight rules there, and everyone is good and law-abiding and terrified. Dynast's priest has a residence there, and he's grown fat off this good and regulated community."
"That's where Miss Lina is from," you venture.
"Very good. Yes. That's where Miss Lina is from. That's where she escaped from, when they tried to scrub all the wit and heart out of her with fear. That's what forced her to look to gold in the dark as an alternative to blindingly dull brightness."
You remember the terror of the Knight's sister at the Knight's name, and say nothing.
"Is that what you want for your city? Dim and constant dread lacing the streets? Fear of you?"
"My people will have nothing to fear from me!" you avow. "I will show them the light, and they--"
"Will you," he interrupts you, his smooth voice stretched tight over the thrumming vibration of a checked laugh. "And what is light, Princess? Is it light in here, right now?"
You look at the candelabras in the dim hallway. "No, not very."
He snaps gloved fingers, and the candles die. You bit your lips on a scream, and wish fervently for a chair to stand on. His long digits trail unerringly over your shoulders and arms, and brush your cheek.
You think they're fingers. You hope they are. You think they're his.
"Would you care to change that answer, Highness?" he chuckles lightly into your ear. "Yes. You'll come with me now. Because you can't tell grey or even white from dark until you've walked through midnight."
"I can scream very loudly," you tell him staunchly, filling your lungs.
He only laughs, touches your cheek fondly in the dark, too-cool cotton (is it really cotton?) against your skin. "I'd let you fear me longer, little hammer of the White God--a lovely, delicate flavor. But we should be going, and this sort of feeding is an unaffordable luxury when I'm on errand-duty. So please be assured: you won't be harmed tonight, nor will your friends be harmed tonight for your edification. It's our wish to show you darkness that you may use it as a measure--that it may be distinguished in your mind from mere shadow--not to immerse you in it. Whatever our more personal wishes may or may not be, they are fleeting and, as you know, must take a back seat to politics."
His tone is businesslike, and you're reassured. Somewhat. For tonight. A little bit. "What are you going to do?" you ask.
"I haven't been informed," he confesses, unconcerned, as the light flickers back on, and you both disappear.
He's behind you, his hands firm on your shoulders, and you're back in the rust-and-green room, with molten rose-gold eyes even and benign on your face. They are ruthless but, for now, not displeased, set in a perfect face. The bold symmetry of its scars only add to its ferocious loveliness, the delicate strength of pointed chin, the wild knives of her cheekbones. His heart of a face, but her bones more robust and all the lies of his shadowed forest softness burned away in harsh and brazen desert noonlight. You draw your courage around you like it would look weak and timid to do with your cloak.
Suddenly he's stepped gracefully out from behind you and is at her feet, not sitting this time but crouched huddled on his elbows and knees. His face is pressed into the furs beneath her dagger-heeled sandals, their dozens of straps gleaming creamy white against her smooth tawny shins, and his cloak makes him part of the floor, a puddle of shadow.
With a shock, because it's him, you realize what only a courtier can understand about someone so quick and bright and strong and sure: here and now, he might as well not be there, for all he matters. You turn your eyes up (and up, and up) to the feral woman in the armchair, and she smiles at you as a queen smiles at a princess. She offers you a chair and asks, with a solicitous manner, "Has my slave been polite?"
The shock of the word, by itself and as applied to such a free spirit, widens your eyes, and she smiles approval. "I see that he has. And such good timing, too! I'm so pleased with you, child," she addresses the purple and black lump at her feet. It doesn't move. "You've done so well. Sit up and let me kiss you." He obeys, blankly, and she does, all over his pale face with cloyingly possessive tenderness. She glances at you occasionally, to make sure you're watching.
You are, your face as blank as his. What you see is that when his face is at rest he's beautiful in the firelight, like a statue, like a ghost, and his jaws are clenched tight. A wiry muscle at his jaw stands out, still and tense. And yet he sits still. He never stands still. He never stands for anything, unless he's too busy laughing to move.
"He's my very favorite, you know," she confides. "I was lucky to find him, lucky to get to him when I did. Such a fine mind, so powerful, and such devotion! I had to catch him when his soul was screaming too loud to hear his heart or mind or faith and lock it away. Not a simple procedure. By no means. But it was worth it. A good hunt. Do you know, he's quite the only servant I need? I really ought to treat him better than I do," she laughs lightly, and that muscle in his jaw jumps again. His closed eyes tighten, too: perhaps a millimeter of resignation.
"But I'm a little peckish tonight, darling," she goes on, speaking to him now, "and of course, as you pointed out, I can't eat my guests, can I? So sit up solid for me, darling, and don't look away. For you, Princess, there is a charming assortment of cheeses and fruits on the table to your left, and a glass of excellent sherry. It would, after all, be the height of discourtesy to eat alone in front of a guest."
You don't look at it.
He bows his shining head once and scoots backwards, arranging his legs so that he sits crosslegged before her, leaning forward with his pristine gloves draped across his ankles. His eyes are loosely open, and blunt resignation dims them.
She has taken out a golden whip, with a little golden starburst at the end.
One lash, kissing the curve between his eyes, and you nearly start out of your sinfully comfortable chair. His hands haven't even tightened on his ankles. He hasn't blinked.
Two, caressing the upper lines of his cheekbones, and you're huddled back in your chair, biting your knuckle.
Five, outlining his face, and your eyes are swollen and prickling with tears. He is still and calm.
Three, lashing in to tickle his neck, and his fingers tighten on his boots.
"You flinch from me, pet?"
Six, hard and angry in quick succession for that lapse, three on each lip, and his eyes are blank and staring, and you're sure, you're sure, you know that he flinched because she wanted you to see what she would do when he did. What you don't know is if she knew she wanted it before he did it. Your father has servants like that, who have what you want on a platter before you, before the idea of it has occurred. But he is not enjoying this pain, and you know he hadn't lied to you in the corridor, because he doesn't.
"Open!"
He obeys, and black ether floats away from his parted, swollen lips, rolling over them from inside.
Mollified, it is with less fury that she commands, "Wrists."
He pulls off his gloves, revealing their necessity in the form of short copper claws, gleaming liquid in the candles. He pushes up his sleeves, showing three long, bloodless, unhealed gashes on the soft underside of each arm, disappearing under his shirt. He holds his hands up steadily, palms up.
He holds them high, and still as your breath, and she bathes them in their own black ether.
"Steady," she warns, as the darkness boils and drips like the fog of dry ice, pooling in his cupped hands and leaking away into the air. "Eyes front."
The hollow of the cheek facing her is pinched, caught in his teeth. The muscle jumps again, tightens, holds firm. It doesn't matter that he isn't sweating, because they don't.
The whip leaps and licks his white face like a snake or a playful puppy, and her bronzed arm flashes in the firelight. When she finally coils the whip and tucks it away, his face is flecked all over with cuts, and the mask of skin around his eyes is completely black, like a raccoon. So are his eyelids, slack in emptied sockets.
"You may heal your eyes," she concedes graciously.
There's a purple-black shimmer. He blinks for the first time, with whole eyes. But his lids are still blackened, his eyes are still dull and glazed. Like your mother's. Like Mr. Gourry's once or twice, dead and exhausted, when life has no distractions and he's looking at Miss Lina and thinks no one's watching. And it could be that in the grand scheme of things the demon deserves this, but no one could argue that Mr. Gourry does, and it's exactly the same expression.
"My good boy," she coos. "You see, Princess? Here's devotion. Now come here, darling. Come rest on my lap and finish while I speak with my guest. I'm still a little hungry, a very little," she explains. She winks at you, but she's lost you.
He moves forward, not rising, and lets his head fall to her shapely thighs in a gracious concession. He has arranged himself so as to be masked by his hair; you cannot see his face. You expect a snap of his fingers and a tray of the wine she is famous for.
Instead those bare, copper-tipped fingers slide between her thighs, and you gasp. You're not sure what you're seeing, but you're sure you don't like it.
She sighs with a purr, and shivers as though at the touch of sunshine, and chides, "Why, Princess! You haven't touched your tray."
Unable to form words, you force a polite smile, and shrug dismissively.
"Try the sherry. It's really an excellent label. A little harder, darling, a little higher. He doesn't appreciate this properly, you know," she confides, like a schoolgirl. "It does burn his hands, poor thing, when they're raw like that."
"Why are you doing this?" you blurt finally, as a lock of purple hair falls and you see that his ever-smiling lips are pulled tight, their curve overcast, shadowed and grim.
She smiles like a cat, complete with neat little white fangs peeking out from her lovely lips, and shivers again, luxuriously. "Because I feel like it, lamb. Because I can."
"I trust you understand now," he says later, escorting you back to your room. He wears the courtly air he usually saves for Miss Filia, when the arrogance she draws over her nerves drives him to a distraction of matching superiority, and he has on his regular face again, cheerful and undamaged. "You see the line, don't you? Between mere humanity and--"
"Why did you let her do that to you?" you demand, cutting him off. He's nearly a head taller than you, and if that's short for a man, which it is, it's never slowed him down. His shoulders are nearly as broad as your oblivious love's, and he carries confidence with him again, he oozes invulnerability. The evening might not have happened, for all he seems affected.
"Because I'm owned," he says simply, calmly, brutally, pausing in the hallway to look at you with sharp-edged eyes like yielding violets. "As you own your peasants and your ministers and all the rest of your subjects in between. I could stop her, but I don't. It will never happen. I'm hers. I am Metallium. They could speak up against taxes or whathaveyou and leave, they could take up pitchforks but they don't, because they're yours, yours and your father's. They are Sailoon. It will never happen. The difference is I know it, and know what it means."
He cocks his head and looks at you with a smile that invites you to share a joke, and you're not laughing. "You know, she wasn't starving. She wasn't even very hungry. If she had been, the kitchen and dungeons are both well stocked. And I am unable to refuse her, and have pleased her greatly of late."
"That's... evil," you say helplessly, knowing he would only laugh at 'unjust.'
"So it is," he agrees placidly, and starts walking again. "Could have been much worse, of course. Much worse. But we did promise not to hurt you, and scarring you for life would probably count. Just be grateful you didn't come during Worship Week. My master is really quite gentle with me."
Your mouth falls open, and then your brain catches up. "What's Worship Week, Mr. Xellos?"
"Well, it wouldn't do for us, we generals and priests and lesser minions, to lose respect for any of the Lords, now, would it?" He sighs. "Gaav was very direct, very straightforward. I almost miss him. And Dynast... well, no one but Dolphin was as bad as Phibrizzo, and he's gone, thanks to... well, I don't know who, really," he said thoughtfully, smiling whimsically. "He more or less brought it on himself, and who else could have, after all? Ironic, that. Poetic, even. He told you, I think, that he had enlisted my help, since he was so low on his own servants, to bring the War Dragon down?" He sighs in contentment, and although his placid smile is made with closed lips, somehow you can see his even teeth, with their very blunt and harmless canines, glint beneath them, as sharp as any needles. "I don't know what I've enjoyed more."
He's looking at you with easy conspiracy, quiet and inviting, as though it's your turn to comment on the weather. There is nothing, nothing, nothing to say, nothing to think, nothing to feel but the phantom prickles crawling ferociously over your spine. Your courtier's training would like to decide what he'd just told you, with that light and friendly ease, but the waters he moves in are too deep and too murky, and you can only guess at whose greater influence is hidden lazily in them, and your daring is daunted by the task of the surmise.
"Well, here's your room again, Miss Amelia, and I hope you'll find it comfortable. But may I leave you with a thought?"
Unwillingly, you nod. Certainly he may, whether you would permit it or not. Unquestionably he can.
"Neither you nor I would have thought my master's actions tonight so very terrible if she'd been actually starving. If she'd even been hungry, you'd be telling yourself right now that I'm a demonic creature of evil and probably had it coming, and after all she couldn't help herself, poor thing."
It's sometimes a very fortunate thing to have the Sailoon complexion, and to not be an easy blusher.
"So please remember that when you're a great queen sitting in judgement," he smiles, and you catch a lacing of distaste in his undertones. "Or even a reactionary princess standing and pointing and dropping out of trees. Life's a grubby thing, and it imposes all kinds of needs. Real needs, not just desires. And sometimes the world doesn't deliver, so one has to go out and grab, and others lose and shatter. You can change the world with power, Miss Amelia, but people are people, and people do what they need to do, and someone always pays. Focus on what you can change, will you? For me? Dissonance is shown up best in a harmonious melody, after all, and I do like to have my work set off properly."
He opens the door and ushers you into the dark bedroom, and pauses before he shuts it in front of him, his thick lashes, black against pale and perfect skin, crushed into familiar cheery fish-shapes by the soft, low rounds of his cheeks, by the blithe smile calm and confident as ever in the fine-boned heart of his face. "Oh, one last question, Highness. Is it light in the hallway?"
No, it's not, you insist grimly to yourself, as the door closes, but you have to admit that he has a point. Dim as the hallway may be, it's pitch black in here, and who knows what lurking in the depths of a demon's guest-room.
You clench your hand, and open your hand, and bring light.