{ history } it makes one feel as you might when a drowning man holds unto you
In some ways, bordering Elenia was more excruciating than living there; information came to her through biased third parties, if at all. Gatas was too far away to smell the rot, but the broken wax seal on the table across the room told her that no where would be far enough to escape it. She left behind whispers when she should have been worrying about civil war.
What Davidias worried about, she wasn't yet sure. He sat by that letter (a briefly informative summons) instead of coming to bed, watching her where she sat bolstered by pillows and left a book she wasn't really reading up between them like a shield. Quiet, she had learned, wasn't trustworthy on its own. Quiet only meant something was coming, and tonight she was less than optimistic that she'd like it when it arrived.
"You've read it."
"I glanced."
Petra reevaluated their 'quiet' when it fell again; oppressive, taut. "When will you go?" she asked, breaking it herself when he failed to.
A moment, and then, skeptically: "That's all you have to say on the matter?"
"What more would you like me to say, Davidias?"
"Speak to me and not your bloody book," he demanded, provoking a matched gaze that could not be easily described as 'obedient'. He hadn't married her wanting an obedient wife, she'd once reasoned, with her ankle twisted and her dress ruined and very well, the weather hadn't settled into the land enough to take a dog of Bachund's size to walk...
He'd worn a very different expression, then.
The book shut with an audible snap. "Do you want to know what I think?"
"Yes, Petrana, I want to know what you think."
"I think if Lord Vanion sanctioned it then he had a reason to. And I think if he didn't tell your Lord then he had a reason for that, too. I have faith that he acted as he knew best and if anyone is to condemn him for it, let it be God. I trust him and I will trust his men. That's what I think."
In the hollow softness that lingered after her short, sharp outburst, Davidias's voice was controlled. "Two of my fellows are dead."
Her eyes dropped. "I know that."
"They're dead because they became tangled up in some Pandion scheme-"
"It's a scheme when it inconveniences you, then you know exactly where to point your finger, there and no further!" she was halfway across the bed, then, kneeling at the end by the post pointing her finger-
"Inconveniences? Is that what we're calling corpses now, Petrana? Inconvenient?"
"He shouldn't have sent for you," she shot back with no answer for that, "he did because of our connections and your diplomacy suffers a marked lack of respect."
"I respect men when they've the worth for it," he snapped, on his feet and pacing. The letter that had captured them was ignored where he'd been sitting, and it felt as though they were having the same argument, again and again. The same ugly politics. He should have married a Deiran, she thought, viciously. Someone who would never bring any of Elenia's reality to muddy his waters-
"They were worthy enough when my father had something you wanted. Oh, then you couldn't imagine why people would say such things about their Order. Then you agreed with him plenty."
"Are you calling me mercenary?" The case he'd picked up broke open easily (she knew which one without looking to see it fall) and he flung out his fist illustratively, the jet locket in his grip. "Did you forget which one of us you married? You are my wife."
It was grief, and anger, and an inability to understand politics he couldn't see as well as personal he'd never wanted to; it was neither of them right or wrong enough and it hurt just like it was meant to. The book hit him in the head only because he couldn't believe she'd thrown it long enough to move just an inch or so to the left.
"Petra-"
"Put it down," she said, carefully. "Put it down and go away."
"I didn't mean that-"
"Yes you did." And she'd heard so much worse, she knew there were things said she didn't hear that were unthinkable, but none of those had come out of her husband's mouth.
He paused. "I don't understand how you can give your loyalty to an Order that produced...I don't understand it."
"Well, I imagine it will be rather like the way that I stand next to you tomorrow. But tonight, Davidias, go away." (Tomorrow, she'll feel awful for turning him out of his own bedroom with the weight of two friends dead on his shoulders and a wife who gives her faith to God's darkest sons, miles away from where he could've been any use, but for some reason she never gets around to reading the rest of that book and it still takes weeks for her to be under his eyes and not brittle.)