[Closed] Made a Fool Out of Me

[Tom Cooke]

The Ecks Estate • Frecks

Evening on the 33rd of Achtus, 2719

T
here wasn’t much to see out the windows.

He held the missive in his lap, the seal broken, the envelope nesting in the loose folds of his scarf. Even through the thick leather and fleece of his gloves, his fingers ached; they’d ached in Kzecka and they’d ached since. He was used to the bracing air by now, the cold sharpness of it in and out of his lungs. He was still out of breath from the mooring mast to the coach: the air was heavier down here, he found, even after a week. Even still halfway up the Spondolas.

To the Anaxi Incumbent recently arrived in Frecks,

The presence of a foreigner here is unusual, especially one of your rank, and news of your arrival has spread. While we have some accommodations for outsiders, you are likely to find Hoxian hospitality as cold and thin as the air in our mountain city.

The sky was a thicket of white; the air was cutting. It was already beginning to cloud, to fill with little whirls of white. He knew well enough by now – well enough to know what it portended. There was a sore pit in his throat, and he didn’t know if it was the cold or the air pressure or the feeling that was beginning to worm its way up from his belly as Frecks slid by blindly past the coach window curtains.

... Instead, my wife and I open our home to you. A room will be made ready for you but at the very least, I would ask that you take a meal with myself and my family.

He’d little time in Frecks. The coach skirted the outside, and he got the barest glimpses of it out the windows, in-between staring down at the curling script and blowing warm breath into his gloved hands.

They were speaking of the storm by the time he reached Frecks, dizzy and tired and sleepless. They’d offered him lodging at the U’kzchk: a fine, warm, well-appointed hall just outside the mooring masts. They all spoke fluent Estuan here, and he was used to the stares by now, rendered strangely devoid of giggles – or anything like them – by the demands of rhakor. He’d been on the verge of shelling out the sujen for a room ‘til the storms blew over and it was safe to fly again. The quiet, matter-of-fact messenger came then, with his indectal static field, bearing the plain crisp envelope.

He had opened it, and he was still looking at it with faint surprise.

I enclose directions to my home but any local will direct you once you mention my name. I am known.

Jaydr Ecks

What surprise he could muster up, anyway. Underneath his Hoxian fur coat, he was wearing the robes they’d given him in Kzecka; all his Anaxi clothes were packed away, and he’d barely had time to get the luggage to the coach, shaking and with the help of a handful of other galdori. The weeks’ stubble was still all over his face, long enough now it was like a dusting of curly coppery snow.

There’d been no mirrors, but he was certain he looked like shit. He didn’t look much the part of an Anaxi incumbent, anyway. All the same, being honest, he didn’t know how concerned he was with disappointing this Jaydr Ecks.

Ecks, he mouthed, peering down. Ecks.

If there was a shiver of leiraflesh across his skin at the name, he quashed it; he’d met Ecks aplenty since he’d come to Hox. One of the aeroship attendants to Frecks had been an Ecks. He put it out of his mind, though he ran a gloved thumb over the curling ink.

He knew it when they passed into the shadow of it. His hip already ached; more than anything, he loathed the idea of putting his weight on it.

When the carriage finally rattled to a halt, it was a time before he emerged.

The quiet, terse driver got out finally to help him; the thick-feathered, tougher-scaled osta were scratching at the icy stones underneath their coverings, flapping long tails. “Thank you,” he rasped as he steadied himself in his boots.

“Do you need anything else, Incumbent?”

For a moment, the sight stole the breath he’d’ve used to respond.

Ecks’ house was cut into the side of the mountain. They were far enough from the city that the path behind wound into the thickening snow, and even now, he couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from it. Even now, as the rest of the mountain was blurring into the night sky, and all of him ached to get inside before the night got even colder.

It was little enough like the temples in Kzecka. It wasn’t a temple at all; it was plainer in some ways and grander in others. Grand in its blunt brutality and its artfulness both, and somehow smaller than he’d expected, smaller than a wealthy Anaxi’s mansion. It was all harsh-cut planes, standing strength. There were a few shapes of rooms outside the mountain, but they melted easily in.

He’d been in Hox long enough to know not to expect servants to come spilling out, not like in Anaxas. “Wait here a little, Rhek-vumash, please.” He smiled wanly over and down at the driver. “It shouldn’t be long, but I’ll need their help getting my bags.”

The man nodded, with a last uncertain glance at the Ecks house.

There were warm lights spilling out of the windows. He took what he could of his luggage - a big, soft bag under his arm, and his satchel of books. He moved up the walk to the front doors, his hands tucked back deep into his fur coat, and tried to take a deep breath through the cutting cold air.

[Drezda Ecks]

Achtus 33, 2719 • Evening
Home, Frecks

T

here had never been a question of whether the Anaxi would appear or not; Jaydr would not have made him feel as if he had a choice in the matter. Drezda knew what her father was like, knew what kind influence he could command when he so wished though it came in many guises—some seemed softer than others. He had ways to get around people, even complete strangers; he should have been the politician instead of his daughter. Not that she was one any longer, and no wonder when she had failed to inherit her father’s ability to charm, to manipulate—and to do whatever was necessary.

The young woman didn’t know to whom the irrefusable invitation had been made, and frankly didn’t care which one of her former compatriots would be arriving at her childhood home. She didn’t care to imagine the response they’d have upon seeing her, or guess at what weaselling little schemes they might concoct as they tried to determine how to use the situation to their best advantage. Perhaps there would be some carefully hidden smugness, some covert sneering at her new status but then she didn’t know whether her resignation had been made known—frankly she didn’t care if it had, or how her government was handling it with their foreign allies.

The middle Ecks knew that their visitor was a man—unsurprisingly given how backwards Anaxas was regarding women having influence—and thus, she envisioned a less than enjoyable encounter and one that would not end soon enough. She would not help proceedings flow more smoothly—she lacked the natural grace of a hostess that her mother embodied so effortlessly—and it was sure to be socially excruciating for her. She could only hope that she’d be allowed to slip away at some early juncture to minimise the chance of upsetting her father’s dealings. Unfortunately, she couldn’t simply lock herself away and remain out of the way; her father would never permit it.

It was possible that their prospective guest would be staying longer than one evening. According to Jaydr, he had suggested that the Incumbent remain with them for the duration of his stay in Frecks, a possibility that Drezda secretly detested, and she hoped that an evening meal would be the extent of the interaction that she’d have to endure. While the man would feel obliged to come for dinner, she hoped that he wouldn’t be coerced into prolonging his stay.

The only other person in the household who might be less than enthusiastic about the stranger was her mother. The poet was well-used to entertaining others and was considered to be an exceptionally gracious and attentive hostess, quite complementary to her husband, but she wasn’t keen on foreigners, mainly because it influenced how she had to dress. By Ksjta’s standards, her manner of dress for the evening was quite conservative—by necessity.

The matriarch had opted for a deep red, black floral-patterned dress with a high collar and a skirt with a hem that fell to mid-calf. The bodice was relatively close-fitting, belying the modesty of the dress somewhat, and her arms were essentially bare, but with the slightest hint of a sleeve to cover the very tops. The skirt was looser fitting, slit from mid-thigh to reveal a black underskirt—or perhaps just a black panel—beneath instead of naked legs. Her feet were nestled in pretty silken house shoes, more like socks, that allowed her to pad around the household with silent grace. Her hair had been tugged back and plaited, creating a fetching nest of braids at the back of her head; there appeared to be something thin and golden threaded through the interwoven black tresses.

As usual, Drezda found herself envying her mother to some degree. Even when she was constrained, she managed to be incredibly comfortable in her own skin and effortlessly beautiful. Nothing about what she wore seemed to bother her and while she was quite conventionally feminine by Anaxi standards, the former diplomat knew that she could wear any sort of garb and exude femininity—if she so desired; Ksjta didn’t always appear concerned with being viewed as a woman.

By contrast, she felt incredibly uncertain no matter what outfit she had considered, disappearing into her room to mull it over and hide herself away as time slipped inevitably away from her. After so many years in Anaxas and doing her best to meet certain societal standards, the woman didn’t know who she was or how she wanted to present herself. Since coming here, she’d begun to grow used to wearing trousers again, first telling herself that they were practical and then reassuring herself that they were comfortable and that she had every right to wear them.

The prospective presence of an Incumbent, as well as certain expectations from her father, left her feeling obliged to ditch the wide-legged trousers she had become so attached to in the past couple of weeks in favour of a more typical womanly dress code. The idea of donning that gendered guise, which she had so carefully cultivated in the last number of years, was abhorrent to her. Bad enough that she must maintain rhakor, albeit more loosely in her home life, without adding a further artificial layer to herself. There was only so much that the Perceptive could manage at once, especially after being worn down as she had been. Besides, if she were to put on a dress and attempt something similar to her mother, Drezda would only highlight her own shortcomings in comparison to Ksjta.

Wide-legged trousers it was to be then!

Jaydr had made it clear that modesty would be best with the foreigner, impressing the need to properly cover her torso—as if she required such instruction from a man who had scarcely journeyed beyond his homeland! She knew all too well that Anaxi had a peculiar horror of a woman showing ‘too much’ skin as if all flesh were somehow obscene. Oh she had flirted with their notions of risqué before but this occasion called for something quite safe. Many Hoxian garments could fit her needs, worn out of necessity rather than modesty, the danger of exposing skin making it necessary to utilise long sleeves and trousers, even when layered.

The galdor had no notion how either of her parents would feel about her choice of clothing: loose white upper garment with pretty floral embroidery tucked into black, wide-legged trousers; and a light pink sash looped around her middle to soften the line between upper and lower garments. She wasn’t too dissimilar in appearance to Mko, their servant. That particular galdor kept her hair so short that it barely covered her scalp, any bodily curves she might have were well-hidden, and her face was such a pretty mix of angles and curves that she could be classed as androgynous. At least Drezda intended to be seen as a woman, something that wasn’t true of Mko, who had greater flexibility in her presentation and her gender identity.

The Perceptive wasn’t afraid that the passing similarity would make it difficult to distinguish between the pair. Drezda’s hair was considerably longer, even if it was mostly plaited back, albeit some locks hung loosely on either side of her face, and warm pink coated her lips, while a touch of dark powder shadowed her cheekbones. The former diplomat was also much younger than Mko, who was closer to her mother’s age, but with a few more subtle lines on her face than Ksjta’s.

She had to wonder how the Incumbent would react to their non-binary servant. Mko didn’t fit into the system of gender to which the Anaxi clung so rigidly and so the servant might present something of a shock.

No doubt, the other reason that Drezda kept to her room would also come as a shock—a large one—which she imagined her father intended; Jaydr had loosed his spinewolf.

Llara was a tamed huthah, taken from her pack as a pup and reared by Jaydr, but that didn’t mean that his daughter wasn’t terrified of it. She’d never seen a wild one—not up close at any rate, only from an airship—but it was impossible not to view Llara as being closer to that state rather than true domestication. She might stretch out before the fire like a big shaggy rug, but it was far too easy to imagine her ripping a person to pieces, especially considering that she’d seen it eat and knew how casually it could reduce a creature to flying fur or feathers, and blood.

While it was fiercely loyal to Jaydr and seemed to consider those in the household to be part of his pack and, by extension, its own, Drezda was a relative stranger and she couldn’t suppress the fear that it would turn on her. The fact that she was level with its shoulder when they were both standing also didn’t help her to feel less like prey. Llara was ‘small’ according to her father and she wasn’t the first one that he’d kept as a pet during his daughter’s lifetime, but her terror endured and had done so since childhood.

Llara did have her own room where she could be shut away and Jaydr often spent time alone in there with her, usually guaranteeing that he would be left undisturbed, but he was often content to allow her to roam around the house in his wake, and to strike awe and fear into family and visitors alike. Considering that she’d been unleashed on the household in the mid-afternoon, Drezda felt certain that the beast was being used as a power move. She couldn’t keep away from it herself forever but she could keep away for as long as possible.

* * *

The value of having a beast with acute senses was that you didn’t need people to announce themselves to know that they were there. Llara had been lying beside Jaydr’s chair, her head pillowed against his knees when the carriage pulled up outside. The huthah’s head lifted, ears pricking up as the ivory spikes around her neck lifted and began to fan out. A ripple went through her body, hair raising slightly as she leaned away from her master. The galdor’s own posture stiffened, the Hoxian growing alert as his gaze fixed on his pet. The mona in his field quivered slightly, questioning. Llara’s eyes found his as she sat up, her head drawing level with his own. He put a hand on her neck, above the spines that had now gone into full bristle.

"Our visitor is here," the man intoned. “At least, a visitor.”

His wife was seated in another chair, feet folded neatly beneath her as she composed poetry in her journal. She must have noticed the response of the spinewolf, if not the change in the Static field of her life partner, but she scarcely looked up. In fact, she sighed, scribbling with greater fervour.

“Are you certain?” the poet asked softly, gaze still fixed on her work. Her own field seemed absent, the Clairvoyant mona only whispering in and out of perception every so often.

The man raised his brows, switching focus from his wife to his huthah.

"Llara?"

The animal growled, the pitch growing higher so that it changed from an ominous rumble to more of a whine.

"Go!" he commanded in Deftung and the wolf propelled herself to her feet, loping towards the main door, the spines calming and then going to full fan again.

"Zjai," he responded flatly, a minute warmth entering his field.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Ksjta retorted dryly in Estuan, dashing off a few more scribbles before lightly fanning the page and snapping the journal shut. She unfolded herself gracefully and stood. She bumped her hip against him as she passed in a manner that could only have been intentional.

“I’ll fetch the children.”

"I’ll make sure that Mko can exit without being skewered—and that our guest isn’t devoured."

Ksjta snorted as she went to alert Rhozdr and his wife, followed by Drezda.

Mko had appeared in the entry passage, carefully keeping her distance from the gigantic animal that moved around it in agitation. It wasn’t a massive space, certainly not large enough to accommodate the spinewolf as she turned circles and rumbled menacingly, warning the person on the other side of the door that they were in trouble if they weren’t expected. A sharp, snapped command in Deftung made the animal whine and hunch, head dipping low as she retreated out of the way, spines flush against her winter-white fur so that the small domestic could squeeze past and open the door, releasing a gust of hot air.

If the stranger had knocked then he’d be surprised to discover the immediacy of the response, as well as the aloofness of the diminutive domestic—she was shy of five feet—as she slipped out past him with a quiet ‘ziedek’ and faint field twitch of greeting. Mko glanced at the luggage he’d carried to the door with him and then trudged to the carriage. The greater surprise would be the stony-faced galdor man who was visibly looking Tom up and down, and the large cainid that seemed uncomfortably close to knocking its head on the ceiling.

The cowed beast had taken a few steps forward when Mko made her exit and had resumed her deep rumbling growl, the spines at her neck beginning to raise anew. Jaydr made a short, snarling hiss that whistled through his teeth and raised his hand as if to strike it. Once more, it hunched and on his orders retreated to the main room.

“Incumbent Vauquelin. It is good that you have come. Allow me to help you with that.”

The Static field caprised the raen’s one briefly, almost curt before Jaydr reached for the satchel of books, toned forearms exposed to the Achtus bite. His tone suggested that the politician must hand over the satchel, despite the room for refusal that the words themselves seemed to suggest.

“Come, Mko will see to the rest of your belongings. I am sure you are eager for the warmth of the fire,” Jaydr explained, leading the way down the passage and leaving the foreigner to thump the snow out of his boots on the metal-gridded mat inside the entryway.

In his absence, the rest of his family had assembled. Rhozdr had seated himself on the couch with his wife, Vjsi, who sat quite rigidly beside her husband; Ksjta was carrying a tray laden with tea things, which Mko must have had ready, to a low table and tsking at the spinewolf as it crossed her path; and Drezda was standing with her hand on the back of a chair, looking uncertain what to do with herself.

Truthfully, the young woman had no notion what to do. She didn’t think that she ought to be sitting as her brother had done—hardly a good position from which to greet someone—and she felt too uneasy to seat herself in any case. She’d only gotten into the room when Llara had come barrelling down the hall to rustle her hair with fetid, hot breath and leave her too frightened to move. With her father out of sight, she couldn’t trust the animal’s feral instincts not to rise and drive it to snap her face off. Honestly, she was doing her best to keep her legs straight and firm so that her knees wouldn’t start knocking together; the muscles in the limbs seemed to have grown quite soft and useless though. A predator like that would probably love it if she ran so it was probably a good thing that she was utterly incapable.

Jaydr’s appearance changed the huthah’s focus, even though she was quickly ordered to sit, remaining near her master as he dropped Tom’s satchel against a wall for Mko to handle. There were introductions to be made.

“I will introduce you to Llara properly in a moment but first—my family. My son, Rhozdr and his wife, Vjsi”—he gestured to them on the couch and each nodded in turn—“my own wife, Ksjta Tzacks...”

Off to one side as she was, Drezda could not immediately see their foreign guest. Her father appeared ready to take the man’s coat, her mother had set her tray down and approached the men with minute signs of surprise on her face, as well as a more noticeable—to her daughter’s eyes—sadness?

Why was her mother sad?

She could feel the mingling of belike mona between her mother and the comparatively weaker Clairvoyant field of the Anaxi, which the former diplomat felt before she saw its owner, and there was something familiar about it…

"Ziedek! A pleasure to see you again," Ksjta intoned with the hint of a smile on her lips; she’d edged her top eyelids with something golden, Drezda noted dimly.

Her father beckoned her nearer and she moved into a position where she could finally see.

“... and you may already be familiar with my daughter, Drezda.”

“Oh it’s you!”

She couldn’t stop herself from blurting it, even though it earned her a darting glare from her father, and what might have been the softest of sighs from her mother—or perhaps just a quiet exhalation.

“I mean to say, welcome, Incumbent. I hadn’t expected to see you here.”

It was a wonder that the Perceptive didn’t laugh. Really she should almost have expected this. They had a habit of meeting each other unexpectedly and it had occurred far too often in the most unusual places so why hadn’t she considered that it would happen here as well. It was surprising, it was a relief in many ways but it was also… awkward considering their last encounter.

Leaving things hanging uncomfortably between them also seemed to be becoming something of a habit.

Tom Cooke. At least she hadn’t blurted his true name and had managed to gather the sense to avoid using his borrowed one—although she wouldn’t be able to abstain from it indefinitely.