voice. 'We will establish a greater Hold here in Osrakum. You will see, Carnelian. Soon you will call Coomb Suth home.
And there, with all our people, we both shall begin a healing.'
He stood up. 'Get your household ready. With the next rising of the sun we will return to the earth below.' His father started walking to the door. He came back. He smiled. 'I almost forgot to give you this.' He gave Carnelian something small and hard. Carnelian looked in his hand. It was his blood-ring. He clutched it as he watched his father leave, tighter and tighter until he could feel it cutting through his skin.
Carnelian put the ring on when Tain returned. He could see his brother had something in his hand. 'What's that?' 'A letter.' Tain gave him it.
It had been sealed with a blood-ring. He saw the two-face House cypher, the name glyph 'Nephron', the blood-taint with all its zeros. He stared at it.
'What's the matter, Carnie?'
Carnelian looked up, thinking to send him away. His brother's face was filled with concern. Carnelian would do nothing to damage their delicate re-emerging intimacy. 'Let me read it and then I'll tell you.'
He broke the seal. The paper bore only three glyphs: 'I must see you.' Carnelian read them over and over again.
'Perhaps you'd rather be by yourself,' said Tain warily.
Carnelian put out his hand to take his wrist. 'No, stay with me. It would help me to talk about it.'
Carnelian told Tain of his meeting with the strange boy in the Library of the Wise, their expedition to the Yden. Tain could see the brightness of the lagoons in his eyes as Carnelian told him everything. The tale brought Carnelian and Osidian back to the Halls of Thunder and the long days of separation.
'And you hoped to see him at the election?' asked Tain.
Carnelian nodded. 'Did you?'
Carnelian's glower made Tain flinch. 'Oh yes, he was there.'
Tain waited for the words to come. 'He is the one we chose to become the Gods.' Tain gaped. The actual, the very Gods?' Carnelian shook the letter. 'And now, he writes that he must see me.'
'Are you going to?'
'No,' cried Carnelian. 'I won't be his plaything again.'
'Carnie, are you sure that's what it was?'
Carnelian glared at him. 'What else?'
Tain lowered his eyes and played at interweaving his fingers. He kept snatching glimpses at Carnelian's face until he could see that he had sunk back into sad introspection. There's one thing you should think about, though, Carnie.'
Carnelian impaled him with his jade-green eyes.
'Once he becomes the Gods, you'll never see his face again.'
Carnelian's eyes went out of focus; his head shook. 'So be it. I can't see him. I'll never see him again.'
Something was tickling his hps and Carnelian brushed it away. The tickling returned. He opened his eyes, irritated, and looked straight into familiar green eyes. He lashed out, punching bone, pushing himself away up the bed.
Osidian was there as tall as the sky and as beautiful, even as he grimaced holding his face. 'You hit me.'
'What did you expect?'
'Anger, I suppose.'
It welled up so strongly in Carnelian that all he could do was glare.
Osidian took a step back, his palms in front of him in a sign of appeasement. He looked so funny that Carnelian had to frown really hard to stop himself from smiling. Osidian's hands dropped slowly. For some reason, that made him the enemy again.
'What do you want, Nephron?'
To explain,' said Osidian, dropping into Vulgate.
Carnelian crossed his arms and continued to glare at him.
'You aren't going to make this easy, are you?' Carnelian glowered more darkly. 'OK, OK.' Osidian scratched his head. 'I meant to tell you.' 'When?'
‘Several times. Before the election I even thought of sending you a letter, but…' 'But what?'
'You were deep in the Sunhold. I was reluctant to give it to your father and afraid to give it to the Ichorians in case it should fall into my mother's hands.'
'It wouldn't have made any difference even if you'd sent it. By then it was already too late. You had plenty of time to tell me.'
Osidian looked at his hands, then up again. 'I did tell you my name. Well… one of them.'
'Am I supposed to be grateful?'
Osidian's face darkened. 'You could make a vague attempt at seeing it from my point of view.'
'Your rank, you mean, Celestial?' asked Carnelian, returning to the Quya.
'No,' replied Osidian, grimacing.
Carnelian could feel his anger cooling. 'What then?' he said, trying to reheat it.
Osidian grew taller, stiffed out his heavy-sleeved arms.
'Everyone has always known who I am.' He let his arms drop to his side. 'When you obviously did not… well, I went along with it.' 'Playing with me.'
Osidian's chin dropped to his chest. 'No,' he groaned. He looked at Carnelian. 'No. No. No. It was that… that you allowed me to forget who I was… to forget the election.'
The election.' Carnelian thought about how close the result had been, how even now, Molochite was under sentence of death. He lost his grip on his anger and let it leak away.
Then we went down to the Yden,' said Osidian, light seeming to shine from his face.
Carnelian saw again the glittering lagoons, the smell and touch of him.
Osidian looked at him with longing. 'After that, the fear of losing you was greater than my fear of losing the election.'
'You were so cold when we were coming back,' said Carnelian.
'My father was dead,' said Osidian, a note of pleading in his voice.
'I didn't know that.'
They were both measuring the space between them. 'You know it now.' Osidian looked at him with hunger. 'But..Carnelian was overwhelmed by grief. Osidian came closer. His hand touched Carnelian's shoulder.
Carnelian looked up at him. 'But you're to be-' Osidian interrupted him by covering Carnelian's mouth with his own. He lay down on top of him. The sharp brocades of his court robe scratched into Carnelian's skin but Carnelian did not care. Osidian pulled up to look at him. His eyes and breath were fire. Carnelian buried his face in the small part of Osidian's neck that was exposed. He drew him closer, gasping as the metal brocades bit deeper into him. He pulled him closer still. It was an exquisite pain.
When Osidian saw the weals his robe had gouged, only Carnelian's smiles allayed his remorse. 'I would bear much worse for you.'
Osidian kissed the pain away from each wound. Then he straightened up and began to struggle out of his robe. Propped up on his elbows, Carnelian looked on entranced. 'Are you just going to watch?' grimaced Osidian with his head caught.
Carnelian grinned and nodded. Osidian looked like a white butterfly pulling itself from the crusty prison of its chrysalis. Once free he unfolded his arms like wings. Carnelian sighed as Osidian slipped his warm alabaster skin past his.
They lay intertwined like sun-warmed serpents, firm and hot against each other.
Osidian lay in Carnelian's arms as peaceful as a sleeping child. Carnelian touched his body with wonder, examining the vessel that would hold the coruscating energies of the Twins. He shuddered at the thought, and Osidian nuzzled closer. Carnelian ran his hands over him as if he were feeling the pale yielding marble for hairline cracks that might allow the ichor to weep through.
Carnelian stroked Osidian's birthmark. 'It really does look as if it was left by a kiss.'
'Some of the Wise have argued that it made me unsuitable for the double Godhead.'
