Obligation
another one of those conversations
Mithrigil Galtirglin
"For how long have you been bedding my wife?"
Basch's helmet hit the clothed coffee-table with a dull thud. It had only dropped a quarter of an inch, but the vacuous silence that filled the solar sent the noise echoing, like a heel clicking against porcelain. "…Your Highness—"
"First let me make it clear that I do not take offense." Al-Cid offered a regal palm to the Judge Magister as they both sat down on opposite couches, Basch's horned helm on the table between them. At perhaps fifty, the Judge's face was a sight gaunter than it had been at thirty-six, his smoky eyes decades older still and his fair hair beginning to silver. Unsurprisingly, the Rozarrian man proved more youthful; his full head of hair was still an inky black, his brown cheeks smooth but for moustache and goatee, and though Al-Cid had put on civilian weight he carried it acceptably and his inclination toward clothing that exposed his chest was not quite offensive. "To be sure you know the idiosyncrasies of my homeland."
"That the men of the upper classes are often polygamous," Basch rattled off as if apologizing to a teacher for something he wasn't quite sorry for.
"That is correct. And my wife, you see, she is a bit like a man." Al-Cid smirked easily. "Even makes love like one."
Basch felt his cheeks beginning to heat and wished he was still wearing his helmet.
Amused, Al-Cid chuckled and tossed his head. "I do not begrudge her in the slightest for turning to you. It is not even a stain on my own honor; if there is one thing I have learned, years at loggerheads with intractable, obdurate warmongers it is that I cannot please everyone all of the time. My wife is a formidable creature, and deserves every happiness, and I only regret that she cannot find the happiness in me that she finds in you."
"Your Highness," Basch said again, bowing his head.
The dark man waved a dismissive hand in Basch's general direction. "It is not of consequence to my honor, nor my pride, nor my culture. After all, I have proven that I can satisfy her; there is a crown prince, and he is healthy, and she is healthy for having him, and the realm is healthy, and the war is too fresh in the people's minds for someone to dare conspire against him. Besides, you would find the conspirators and hack them limb from limb while I discredited their families," he seemed to conclude, and his palms were turned up as he shrugged. He took off his glasses and rested them at the vertex of the open neckline of his shirt, the black lenses refracting pinpricks of light onto the exposed skin of his chest. "But even then," he added, leaning toward Basch and frowning dramatically, "there would be a slight problem."
Basch, fully aware of what was coming, sat silent and immobile, gauntleted hands resting on cold, armored knees.
"You have an obligation now, Judge Magister." Al-Cid's posture, not-so-suddenly intensifying, became all low angles and a marked stillness, just as the merging of his narrowing eyebrows into one admonishing line. "I claim your seed as my own son;" he began, "I love Reks, and will continue to love him, and perhaps he will never question the color of his skin. And perhaps he will, and by all rights you may tell Reks that he is yours as well, but after my Rasler has sons of his own."
With a slow exhale, Basch drummed his fingers against the rim of his greave in one terse arpeggio.
"He finds out before that, it is on his own head, and the Gods keep him," Al-Cid went on. Urgency, perhaps even anger, deepened his accent and quickened his delivery "And until that day, you will protect Rasler, as you protected his mother, and with the same goal, for if Rasler does not live to continue the direct Dalmascan line then I or whoever succeeds me will be powerless to stop my homeland from immolating that kingdom and throwing all we have worked for to the curs. Am I understood?"
"Your Highness," Basch said, the third and loudest time so far.
"So for how long have you been bedding my wife?"
"Since the Marquis' funeral," Basch answered quickly, and the exhale that Al-Cid had been delaying escaped his lips hotly. "Two and a half years," Basch clarified, the relieved atmosphere chilling the back of his neck.
Al-Cid slid his sunglasses back up his nose. "Certainly she is the one to come to you."
"Aye." Basch reminisced, and restrained his smile and pride as best he could.
With a chuckle and a smirk, Al-Cid leaned over the coffee table, gesticulating and looking the Judge Magister in the eyes. "Does she do to you that delectable thing with her bottom teeth?"
A blushing heat assaulted Basch's face and his chin thumped against the neck of his cuirass.