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“You saved my lord husband, brave lady! How can I possibly thank you?”
Lady! It was all Jullanar's fault for insisting that they needed to dress up as guests to infiltrate the summer ball at the palace of an Ystharian prince, landing Pali in this ridiculous Astandalan dress that had done nothing but get in the way during the fight.
In fact, it was all Fitzroy's fault for declaring, starry-eyed and excited, that the best way to steal the ledger they needed was to infiltrate the palace.
Or perhaps it was Damian's fault for deciding that they needed to help the villagers in the first place. One overheard conversation between villagers who were certain that the Prince's tax collectors took more than they were due and sold the surplus in secret, and suddenly they had a quest – stupid Damian and his absurd sense of fairness.
(Possibly, she reflected ruefully, it was her own fault for her choice of friends, after all.)
Gritting her teeth in what she hoped was more a smile than a grimace, Pali bowed to the Prince of Cirida. “No thanks are necessary,” she assured him, her voice as smooth as she could manage.
Behind her, Jullanar, Damian and Fitzroy made their bows as well, Jullanar meticulously, Damian with sharp precision, and Fitzroy with an entirely unnecessary amount of flourishes and wrist twirls. (Jullanar had once confessed to Pali that she did not think Fitzroy had ever been taught to bow, and that it was probably her fault for taking him to see a play early on in their friendship, which had led Fitzroy to assume that a flowery stage bow was the way to do it.)
The Prince, still clutching the arm of his husband – a little singed and battered but otherwise hale and whole, if a little shaken and wide-eyed – looked distressed at the thought. “But that wouldn’t do,” he said, frowning. “A royal life saved is a royal life owed, according to tradition, and it would be tempting fate in the worst manner to attempt to shirk that duty. Surely there must be something…”
The Prince’s gaze slid from Pali and her companions to look over the marble hall of his gilded ballroom, taking in the mirrors and paintings, porcelain vases and spindly little chairs, chandeliers and crystals lining the walls along with the fluttering lace-laden guests. The guests, gathered around the dance floor with their small company in the middle, were making Pali nervous, but not as much as the Prince’s gaze finally settling on something and brightening.
Well, she thought with a sinking feeling, if she was going to be given a massive painting or a crystal vase as a reward for saving the Prince Consort of Cirida from an assassination attempt, at least she could store it in Fitzroy’s ridiculous bag.
“Delia, my dear!” the Prince called, looking relieved and delighted, and a young woman stepped out of the ring of spectators and walked over to stand before the Prince, near Pali. The Prince turned to beam at Pali. “There we are! A royal life saved is a royal life owed, and so, my lady, it gives me great joy to offer you the hand of my niece, Delia of Cirida, in marriage!”
What.
The crowd oohed and chattered excitedly. Speechless, Pali turned to stare at Delia of Cirida. Delia of Cirida twinkled a sweet smile down at her – she was half a head taller than Pali and in high-heeled silk slippers – and curtsied elegantly, all lace and silk and fluttering fan and gold-powdered dark skin.
There was an aborted wheezing sound and a soft thump behind her, which she assumed meant that Fitzroy had almost failed to cover up his sniggering and been discreetly elbowed by Jullanar.
It’s not funny! she wanted to scream at Fitzroy. The situation was, in fact, delicate and even desperate, for mere moments before the assassins' serendipitous attack, they had been recognized as wanted by the city guards in one of the Prince's baronies and surrounded by the Prince’s men-at-arms. Pali's daring rescue of the Prince's consort had pushed that aside and turned the Prince’s opinion in their favor only temporarily.
She needed to be as elegant as Delia’s curtsy to sweet-talk her way out of this. She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, cleared her throat, and prepared to decline the honor gracefully.
Somehow, what came out was a faint “ What?”, followed belatedly by “... My lord?”
(Later, she would insist that this paragon of an elegant response had come out in a perfectly deep and level voice, not in a frantic squeak, no matter what Fitzroy said. Fitzroy, in turn, would probably deny that the wheezing sound of barely smothered laughter had come from him.)
The Prince Consort, who appeared to be recovering from his ordeal with the would-be assassins, straightened at that. “Is the Prince’s niece not pleasing to you?” he asked, affronted on his husband’s behalf.
“I, uh,” was Pali’s carefully shaped argument. This time, she thought he heard Jullanar cover a giggle in a small cough. “That is… I could not possibly… I’m not…”
Her mind was scrabbling furiously for something to say, some delicate way to decline without insulting the Prince. They were , after all, trespassing in the Ciridan summer palace and crashing the party, and had just been in the process of being arrested by the Prince’s guards when the whole debacle with the assassins had occurred. Refusing what was clearly considered a great honor would, she suspected, land them in renewed negotiations over whether or not they would allow themselves to be escorted to the palace dungeons.
“I’m deeply honored, of course,” she lied desperately, the thought of Jullanar in a dungeon – of the guards attempting to persuade Damian into going quietly – finally spurring her words to line up in an acceptable order, “but I’m afraid I’m unable to take you up on that offer. You see, I am already married.”
A collective gasp and a murmur of whispers went through the crowd. Pali ignored them to turn briefly to her friends, quickly considering and dismissing Damian (who looked affronted at the mere thought) and Fitzroy (who looked delighted and did not need any ideas) before holding out her hand to Jullanar of the Sea, her first and dearest friend.
Pali was not Fitzroy, who could spin a story from thin air at a moment’s notice, but Jullanar, blessedly, excelled at simply playing along, at taking an idea and running with it and making innocent comments that made the listener suspect there was much more going on. She stepped up, as she always did, with a secret smile just for Pali, and a flustered grin at the whole room, as if delighted and a little embarrassed by the attention.
Her hand was warm in Pali’s, her fingers trembling with hidden laughter, as she came to stand by Pali’s side and curtsied neatly to the Prince. Pali bowed again.
"My lord, may I present my wife?"
The Prince and the Prince Consort stared at them in stunned silence for a brief moment before apparently remembering their manners and gesturing for them to stand up. “Well!” the Prince said, clearly baffled. “I – why, I had no idea, or I would have never suggested – my deepest apologies…"
Jullanar smiled and lowered her lashes demurely. “It's quite recent, and it was all very quiet, my lord,” she lied smoothly. “Only our dearest friends. We did not want any undue attention, you understand.”
She flicked a shy little smile up at the Prince, and even Pali was suddenly captured by the imagery her words conjured: the romance of a young couple on the run, a secret wedding between dodging the soldiers of the Empire. It did not matter that the Prince, as a vassal of the Empire, was technically on the side of those soldiers. All this bloated little court of provincial nobility cared about was entertainment.
The Prince was utterly charmed; the Prince Consort tearfully wished them a "union as blessed and joyous" as his; Pali gracefully accepted a vase of exquisite quality in lieu of a bride; and Delia of Cirida bid them farewell with a genteel kiss on both their cheeks, during which she whispered, dark eyes twinkling, that while a wedding seemed to be off the table, a version of a wedding night didn't have to be. Pali's face was burning as she walked out of the palace, Jullanar's hand on one arm and the ridiculous vase on the other.
As expected, Fitzroy spent the next half hour making dramatic wounded noises about how he had been right there for a pretend spouse, and the rest of the evening in their camp composing a romantic epic of a desert warrior who was in love with the sea. Damian assured Pali that Jullanar had been a sensible choice for a bride over both Fitzroy, who simply could not be associated with the word sensible, and the Ciridan princess, who most likely did not possess Jullanar's level of skill with the sword. At this point Jullanar had to clarify that they had not truly gotten married without his knowledge (to which he simply shrugged and asked "Why not?") and Pali had to pause in her efforts to stuff the reward vase into Fitzroy’s bag to just breathe for a moment.
“Alright there, dear wife?” Jullanar asked her blithely, taking a seat on the ground beside her, while she was still contemplating screaming into the vase and then stuffing it into the bag. Perhaps then Fitzroy’s bag would scream at him every time he opened it.
Pali groaned and looked up at her. “I suppose my choices could have been worse,” she admitted grudgingly, gesturing at Damian and Fitzroy, who were now arguing over Fitzroy’s depiction of his protagonist’s sword, which Damian found unrealistic and Fitzroy an evocative metaphor.
Jullanar gave her that slanted smile of conspiratorial joy, the one that had caused Pali’s heart to flutter all the way from the tip of her braid to the tips of her toes on that fated day she had first walked up to her, with a sword in her hand and her hair in an unraveling braid. "It is the culmination of my ambition to have been deemed a sensible bride for you," she said, handing Pali one of the tea cups she had brought. "You do remember, of course, that our plan was to sneak in, find and steal the steward's ledger, and sneak back out without being noticed."
"I was being perfectly sneaky until Fitzroy started to recite Isabella and the Pot of Basil to that lady and she recognized us and called the guards—"
"... At which point you and Damian started throwing punches and drawing your swords…"
"I was not about to let them take us to their dungeons!"
"And to make sure that absolutely everyone at the ball would not only notice but also remember us, you rescued the Prince's husband and declined an offer to marry into the royal family."
Pali tried to glare at her over the rim of her teacup, but just then Jullanar's mock-stern expression melted into side-splitting laughter that rendered her unable to hold on to her cup, and Pali had to snatch it away from her before she spilled the hot drink on her lap.
"Yes, well," she grumbled, despite Jullanar's laughter tugging at the corners of her lips, too, "now that I know what sort of dangers one faces in a party in the style of Astandalan court, you may rest assured that I shall do my best to avoid them in the future."
***
It became a running joke that was half a safety net.
"I'm flattered, but my wife simply does not like it when I'm courted by strangers," Jullanar would say innocently to the fairy princes courting her, pointing at Pali, who made sure to make a show of examining her sword in detail every time that happened.
"I am married," Pali would snap at the matronly laundresses and well-meaning innkeepers who saw her scowl, took it for loneliness, and tried to assure her that she, too, would find her special someone and settle down soon.
"Have you seen your lady?" and "Hey! That's my friend's wife you're talking about!" the growing Red Company would say, in jest at first and then, as their fame grew and the Empire strengthened its efforts to capture them, as a way to avoid using their names in delicate situations.
Pali enjoyed the fame, enjoyed being part of something larger-than-life, being admired as something nearly legendary, but there were times when the admiration made her uncomfortable.
“I’m married,” she told the group of starry-eyed young men and women who had finally nerved themselves to ask her to come sit with them in the large table by the fire, the best table in the taproom. They were all perfectly polite, not the slightest bit threatening or crude, and barely even tipsy, but at least three out of the five seemed to have been hoping that a conversation begun at the table might have continued upstairs in their rooms, and the thought made her skin crawl.
Fitzroy evidently had no such qualms; he had been eagerly courted by a blue-eyed man with hair the color of hay ever since he had stopped playing, and appeared to be flouncing up the stairs arm in arm with the man at the moment, only pausing to throw a wink at Pali as he noticed her looking up at him. Damian and Pharia had disappeared quietly already during Fitzroy’s performance. Sardeet was ensconced in a corner table with a wide-eyed young man. She was holding his hand between hers and explaining something to him in earnest detail; the spellbound young man looked like he was not retaining a single word, but was nodding eagerly.
Jullanar, at least, was still at their earlier table, sipping her cider thoughtfully as she listened to Masseo and Ayasha converse in quiet voices, heads together. Pali beckoned to her and she came, as always, smiling and reaching to take Pali’s hand even before she was close enough to hear herself being introduced as Pali’s wife.
“But that’s wonderful news, Lady Avramapul!” one of the young men said. “Congratulations! Or is that Ladies… Avra… mapul?” He squinted at Jullanar, clearly trying to remember if he had ever heard of a last name attached to this young up-and-coming rebel wandering the countryside trailing after a bard and a bunch of warriors, crashing princely parties, having improbable adventures in strange realms, and repeatedly slipping through the fingers of imperial soldiers.
Lady Avramapul! Pali could just imagine her mother’s expression of affront and her sisters’ snort of laughter if that ever made its way to their ears, and glanced quickly to make sure that Sardeet was still occupied with filling her admirer’s ears with some other nonsense.
“Just Jullanar will do,” her brilliant faux-wife assured their group of admirers, gracing them with a dimpled smile, and if Pali was just as captivated by the play of firelight on her freckles as their audience, well, that was perfectly normal.
***
Sometimes, it was simply a necessity.
“Please remain calm, Saya Thistlethwaite,” a cool, controlled voice instructed Pali when she surfaced from what felt like a long blood-black nightmare with a gasp. She trashed against unfamiliar hands trying to push her back down, howled in pain when something in her back protested vehemently both at her own struggles and at the insistent hands pressing her firmly against the soft mattress. “You’re safe, you’re in the Imperial Hospital of Kavanor – if you’ll just calm down, I’ll let your wife know you’re awake…”
The words “Imperial Hospital” froze her in instinctual terror for long enough that the healer decided that she had, in fact, calmed down, and Jullanar had rushed to her bedside by the time she had managed to slow her breath down enough to take in the airy, marbled room full of beds around her, the high ceiling above her, the bandage around her midriff and the distinct pull of still healing skin on her back.
“Jullanar,” she murmured, grasping for her friend’s hand, and squeezing it with all her terrified might upon finding it. Jullanar looked distraught and frazzled, her pale face tear-streaked, a convincing worried spouse, and she gripped Pali’s hand back with such ferocity that Pali knew that this had been a very close call. There was blood drying on the front of her dress, a cut on her lower lip, and a bruise forming along the edge of her jaw; Pali could only imagine what she looked like.
Jullanar was talking, frantic whispers jumbled in chronology, and Pali tried to focus on her words. “They – they would only let immediate family to see you, and neither of us could pass for a sibling, so I – I told them you’re my wife – oh Pali, you were bleeding so much, and Damian looked so very grim, I didn’t know what else to do – I told them my old name, I panicked, you don’t think anyone knows that, right? I should have thought of a completely different name, I can’t believe I was so reckless…”
Pali licked her dry lips and tried to ask after the others, managed enough that Jullanar caught her meaning. She threw a fleeting glance at the healers pacing around the room, talking quietly with the other patients and their loved ones, and leaned closer to whisper.
“We… we got separated when the bounty hunters appeared…” She looked a little calmer now, but her red-rimmed eyes betrayed her concern for both Pali and their friends. “I heard Fitzroy chanting, but they had a mage with them, too, and there was so much black mist that we lost sight of them when we escaped. A few of them caught up with us, Damian and you and me, just before we made it outside the city walls, and we almost made it still, but then one of them got behind you and – Damian was so angry at him, it was such a cowardly move – I thought you were going to die and all our supplies were with the others…”
A healer walked up to them; Pali squeezed Jullanar’s hand in warning, and she swallowed and fell quiet. The healer spent a moment questioning Pali, explaining to her (rather smugly, Pali thought) that without their spells and potions she would have died or at the very least lost the use of her legs, and giving her an overview of a recovery program they had planned for her once she was well enough to get up and start moving. He then left her to have “a private moment with the wife”, with a condescending smirk down at Jullanar, who gave him her best watery smile.
Pali murmured, “Imperial Hospital. Jullanar, we need to be careful, need to try to make it out before we are recognized.”
Jullanar stroked the back of her hand gently, almost apologetically. “I know. I know. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I thought – oh, I thought that if they could save you, it was worth getting arrested. That surely our friends would come for us before… before they took us to the Emperor.”
It was true that while things had grown more difficult for them as the Empire redoubled its efforts to capture them, at least it meant that there would be no quick and tidy small-town hanging waiting for them, should they be caught. The rebels of the Red Company would be presented in front of Emperor Eritanyr and paraded before his nobles, made into examples of what fate befell those who defied the might of Astandalas. That, in turn, would give the rest of the Company time to come up with a rescue plan – had, indeed, allowed them to come to each others' rescue already on several occasions.
The healer came by again to solicitously suggest that Saya Thistlethwaite, meaning Jullanar, might be more comfortable waiting in the cafeteria. Pali did not know how, considering how ragged they must have looked when they had come in – how ragged Jullanar still looked – but somehow she must have convinced the healers that the Thistlethwaites were very wealthy indeed. She had to have; otherwise Pali would not have received such excellent care, if any care at all.
"Jullanar," she said quietly when the healer's attempts to escort Jullanar to the cafeteria had been gently but firmly rebuffed. "Even if we are not recognized, we can't afford this hospital. We’ll be caught when it’s time to pay, if not before, you know they’ll call the guards when it turns out we don’t have the money. What are we going to do?"
Jullanar's pale eyes were anxious, her fingers warm around Pali’s chilled hand. "I don't know. Oh, Pali, I don’t know. Damian's gone to the nearest safehouse to see if the others made it there. I hope they did, and find a way to come get us before you're discharged. If not…"
She trailed off and then shrugged, her face and shoulders set and determined. Pali had no doubt that this ordinary-extraordinary woman would attempt to carry her out while fending off a dozen or so imperial guards.
At that thought, Pali found the strength to raise her other hand and cup it around Jullanar's jaw, gentle around the bruise forming on it. "We'll figure it out," she promised.
***
But there came a time when they did not figure it out, a time when something shook the whole Empire.
A time when magic grasped Pali mid-laughter and yanked her from her seat on a log beside Jullanar.
A time when she blinked her eyes closed on a campfire and a beloved face crinkled with an impish grin, and blinked her eyes open on northwestern Dair, alone and cold and without her supplies.
A time when she could no longer find any of her friends, despite searching the lands and the seas and the stars for them.
“Name?”
Pali stared at the open window in the office of the Head Librarian of Arkthorpe. The sky was a pale blue netted with a hazy cover of clouds, and the ivy leaves making their bid for the sun past the Head Librarian’s window swayed in the gentle breeze.
“Ivy,” she heard herself say. “Ivy, hm, Black.”
“Place of origin?”
“Kaphyrn.” She had no need to lie, there. Kaphyrn had never been conquered. The sands of her home were wide and protected their own, at least from outsiders.
“Marital status?”
Pali could not breathe. She fought it for a moment, conquered her tears, and eventually, finally, managed, “Widowed.”
***
Jullanar had married.
They had been apart – oh, for a quarter of a century, or a millennium if you believed the stories you heard from Zunidh – but only apart, not… well, only apart, and in the meantime, Jullanar had married.
“Are you married?” she asked Pali, that first, precious day, after their long time apart, feet pushed together in front of a fire, fingers cupped around a hot cup of tea, as if no time had passed at all.
Pali stared at her, baffled. “No, of course not,” she said.
Jullanar seemed to take that to mean Fitzroy. It irritated Pali for days, but she could not quite put her finger on why.
***
“Of all the ridiculous worldviews… They will only allow married couples in, Pali.”
Pali glared, arms crossed over her chest. “I see your Viceroy is still trying to get in regardless. Is he arguing that he should be allowed, because he’s married to your entire government?”
She had expected Fitzroy to frown and glare back, but, infuriatingly, he just sighed dreamily and leaned on the wall beside Pali. “Oh, no. He’s arguing that as fanoa is a legal relationship of an equal status as a marriage, she has no grounds to refuse us entry. We should settle in; he’s working up to a magnificent set-down.”
Jullanar snorted at that. She was leaned against the wall on Pali’s other side, her shoulder pressed up warm and comfortable and softer than all those years ago against Pali’s (and oh, it was good to be adventuring together again, good to be where she belonged, even if Fitzroy’s stupid Viceroy had somehow managed to invite himself along as well and had, annoyingly, made fast friends with her Jullanar, too).
Jullanar poked her head around Pali to peer at Fitzroy with narrowed eyes. “Fitzroy, my dear, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you technically quite married according to several traditions by now?”
Pali turned to look at Fitzroy as well, and their friend heaved a deeply put-upon sigh and slid down the wall onto a low stone bench meant for petitioners. “Well, yes, but it’s important to Kip that our relationship as fanoa be recognized first and foremost, and especially that it not be overshadowed by, and I quote, ‘any archaic and obsolete requirements for two people to be considered a family unit’, which apparently a lot of the marriage requirements we have accidentally met are, according to him.”
“Accidentally,” Pali repeated sardonically.
Fitzroy blinked up at her, perfectly innocent. “It’s not entirely my fault that running an entire world for a thousand years seems to count for a lot of traditions, Pali. Besides, you two can hardly talk.”
Jullanar snickered softly on her other side, but Pali frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He looked surprised. “What do you mean?” He raised a finger. “You claimed Jullanar as your wife in front of a representative of the Emperor of Astandalas,” he raised another, “you’ve saved each others’ lives multiple times,” a third, “Jullanar invited you to live with her family for a period of time, and you invited her to live with yours for a period of equal length. Shall I go on? You’re as married as they come, according to at least five different traditions.”
Pali opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and looked at Jullanar, whose freckles stood out in her blush charmingly.
Then, with a faint grin, Jullanar shrugged, and, ignoring the backflips her stomach seemed intent on performing, Pali shrugged back.
Fitzroy blinked up at them, golden eyes wide and delighted, and reminded Pali of a baby owl like he hadn’t for at least twenty-seven (and a thousand) years. “You mean you did not realize?” He didn’t have to sound so gleeful, though.
“Shh, Fitzroy,” Jullanar told him gently, and the Last Emperor of Astandalas stood, performed a flowery bow (still all twirls and flourishes, although Pali supposed no one taught the Emperor to bow any more than anyone had taught their strange bard), and wandered back down the hall to pester Mdang, with one last madcap grin thrown over his shoulder.
Left alone, Pali and Jullanar stood staring at each other, arms carefully crossed until Jullanar suddenly made a move to reach out and Pali reacted, causing their hands to smack against each other before they settled, Jullanar’s hands resting on Pali’s elbows and Pali’s on Jullanar’s waist.
Jullanar said, “Well, I suppose I am a divorced woman now.”
“Technically,” Pali countered, “and assuming that Fitzroy is right, which one should rarely do,” they paused to giggle at that, like young girls, “you are nothing of the sort; we married long before your supposed marriage to… that person.”
“True, true.” Jullanar nodded sagely, but Pali could see the anxiety, the hesitation in her eyes. “What does that make me, then? A bigamist?”
She was soft and yet unyielding between Pali’s hands, grounding and steady and ordinary and extraordinary.
"I think the experts would agree that," Pali said, serious and solemn and exhilarated, "that makes you a sensible bride for me."
Jullanar grinned.