maculategiraffe

Wanted to get this posted before I go out of town for the new year-- could be a couple days without 'net access, not that I'm so on top of things right now that anyone would be likely to notice. :P

This story was prompted by

talomor messaging me a few days ago and asking, in essence, "So whatever happened to Pavel?"

Pavel stood at the altar, on the bride’s side, hand in hand with no one. (Opposite him, on the bridegroom’s side, Joseph’s parents held hands with each other; like their son, they were both tall, blond, sculpted-looking, serene, and unnervingly silent. They intimidated Pavel terribly, even though Lisa had assured him they secretly felt just as intimidated by his wealth and nobility.) Waiting for the bridesmaids to enter with their baskets of fruit and flowers-- real ones, not paper replicas, he‘d insisted on that; modern youth took far too many cheap, flimsy shortcuts-- he scanned the crowd, and his eyes caught on the odd little group, just as he’d stopped on their names when going over the guest list.

It was a somewhat shorter guest list-- and a rather less opulent wedding-- than Pavel might have preferred. He'd always meant to do his only daughter proud when the time came, and the fact that her choice of husband had no title and no inheritance to speak of didn't change that one iota. Let others' tongues wag-- Joseph Granger was a fine, hardworking boy, with a quick mind and a gentle heart that were worth more than all the coats of arms in the world when it came to Lisa's happiness.

But Lisa didn't want a lavish wedding, and of course that was what mattered. Pavel had left it in her hands and the hands of paid professionals, who had catered, decorated, organized, coiffed and otherwise attended to the details Lisa was too starry-eyed to worry over.

The matter of who should attend her on her wedding day, however, wasn't one of those inconsequential details. She'd been quite definite about the wedding party: Joseph's attendants were to be his brother Ben and her own brother David, while Lisa's attendants were to be Joseph's sister Susan-- and Valor Larssen.

So of course the family had been invited as well, and there they all were, sitting in a row near the back, dressed to the nines. Holden's wife Alix, looking prim and buttoned-up as usual, with her hair combed and pinned severely back from her face. Valor's mother Greta, the former slave, plump and dimpled and pretty, with red hair that was beginning to fade with age but still fell in abundant, unrestrained waves down her back. Valor's stunningly beautiful girlfriend and former slave, Inga. Holden himself, whose hair had a great deal more gray in it since the last time Pavel had seen him, but who looked relaxed and happy.

And, sitting up very straight between Holden and Inga, a handsome, bright-eyed young man whom Pavel couldn't identify. Maybe Inga had a brother Pavel didn't know about; he vaguely remembered that Greta had one, a twin.

A clear alto voice-- Susan Granger’s-- cut off his voice as it sang the first line of the wedding hymn over the hush: “Iphoi dae to melathron...”

“Hemenaeon,” Valor’s soprano chimed in, and the girls stepped through the doors, and as the boys’ voices joined in behind theirs in perfect harmony (“Aerrete tektones andres, Hemenaeon!”) Pavel forgot everyone and everything else, and watched for his daughter to step through the doors.

Afterwards, though, at the reception (he hadn’t used the big ballroom in his house since Anna’s death, and it was almost too big for the size of the party he‘d been allowed to throw), his eyes kept scanning for them, as if of their own volition, till he found them, scattered around the room. Alix and Greta were talking to Joseph’s parents, who looked as beautiful and inscrutable as always; Valor had gotten Inga off in a corner by herself and was talking and laughing with her, and Holden and the unknown boy were standing near the wall, watching the crowds without saying much. As Pavel watched, though, Holden leaned over to say something to the boy, who turned to him, startled. In the split second before the younger man's face was illuminated with laughter-- in that moment of uncertainty and incomprehension-- Pavel recognized Holden's youngest slave, Bran.

Free now, of course-- and casually splendid in a black tunic with slashed sleeves, trimmed in silver, with silver-buckled black belt and boots to match, and some sort of light-colored pendant or amulet on a silver chain around his neck. But freedom and finery alone didn't account for the change in him. Pavel remembered Bran as a shy, anxious boy, attractive in a colorless sort of way, who kept his back to the wall and his eyes down, or watched Holden surreptitiously, through lowered eyelashes, from the floor at his feet. Now, seven years (could it really be seven years?) older, he looked very nearly radiant enough to upstage Lisa and Joseph.

It was a while before Pavel could bring himself to walk over to them.

When he did, Bran was the first to notice him, and his face lit up with such pleasure that Pavel actually glanced behind him-- surely the expression was for someone else, someone Bran had more reason to be happy to see. But it wasn't.

"My lord Kareyev," Bran said. Pavel wasn't sure he'd ever actually heard Bran's voice before; it was warm and clear as a bell, and as filled with welcome as his expression. (Had the boy grown taller?) "How are you?"

"I'm well," said Pavel, managing a smile. "And you look well too, Bran."

"Thank you, my lord," said Bran, with a dazzling smile that made Pavel drop his gaze momentarily to the pendant on his chest-- a flat, polished oval of light-colored wood, inscribed with some sort of symbol that looked like a spiky double star. A strange thing to wear with such otherwise elegant clothing. "You're very kind to say so. We were just saying what a wonderful wedding it was. Her ladyship looked just like a valkyrie."

"Thank you," said Pavel uncertainly, looking at Holden, whose smile was as glad and unguarded as Bran's.

"You remember the stories about valkyries, don't you?" he said to Pavel, as if they'd parted, without pain, only hours before.

"I think I do," said Pavel, who remembered every word Holden had ever spoken to him, but didn't think it was necessarily the best idea to say so. "Weren't they-- some sort of warrior spirits?"

"It's a compliment, my lord," Bran assured him. "I just mean to say, she looks so happy, and so-- strong. And beautiful, of course."

Pavel nodded, his eyes on Bran's face: so happy, and so strong-- and beautiful. Of course. "She is. Have you spoken with her yet?"

"I haven't been able to get anywhere close," Bran grinned. "I'm going to have to leave my card to prove I was even here."

"You don't have a card," Holden told him, teasing.

Bran laughed. "Then I'll leave your card."

"Oh yeah? Who said you could use my card?"

"Please, kind sir, may I use your card?"

"No need," said Holden, turning his grin on Pavel, inviting him into the banter. "His lordship will testify for us."

Pavel blinked, caught off guard, and Bran added, smiling, “If we can’t get to her, my lord-- will you tell her we were here?”

“Of course,” said Pavel, too seriously; seeing that he wasn’t joining in their laughter, they both sobered.

“It really was a beautiful wedding,” said Holden. “It was nice of you not to disown Lisa when she fell in love with a commoner.”

“That would be a bit hypocritical of me, don’t you think?” said Pavel, and Holden smiled again, a little sadly.

“No more hypocritical than me becoming a slave owner,” he answered.

Pavel nodded. “I did think that was strange.”

“I didn’t,” said Holden. “Not until recently.”

“Bran!“

Lisa, lovely as a cloud in the traditional bridal gray, smacked both Holden and Pavel with her seven-tiered skirt as she ran to fling her arms around Bran, who hugged her back happily as she added, “You came!”

“Of course, my lady,” he said. “Since you were kind enough to invite me--”

Lisa pulled back, flushed and joyful, and said, “You have to meet Jo-- come, come, he’s dying to meet you--”

“Yeah, you two should have a lot to talk about,” said Holden, smirking.

Lisa turned scarlet and punched Holden in the shoulder in an extremely unbridal fashion-- though it did add to the valkyrie effect-- and then grabbed Bran by the arm. Bran seemed startled by the suddenness of the gesture, and again Pavel glimpsed the boy who had once watched him from the shadowy corners of Holden’s house, and smiled with heartbreaking shyness whenever Holden spoke gently to him. But it was only a moment; then he was laughing, pretending to struggle, as Lisa dragged him away towards her bridegroom, leaving Holden and Pavel facing each other.

“Thank you for inviting me,” said Holden after a moment, his dark eyes meeting Pavel’s with slightly unsettling candor.

“Thank you for coming,” Pavel answered. “I’m glad-- well. I know we’d agreed it was probably best not to see each other any more.”

Holden nodded. “I’ve been meaning to write to you.”

“Not at all,” said Pavel, in reflexive and meaningless response to a well-worn social nicety, and then blinked as he actually took in what Holden had said. “You have? Why?”

Holden‘s eyes were steady on his, too steady; Pavel looked away, across the room, at Bran talking and laughing with Joseph, and heard Holden say, “I owe you an apology.”

“For what?” Pavel almost laughed.

“For some of the things I said to you,” Holden said. “Last time we saw each other. Will you look at me, my lord?”

Pavel swallowed, and made himself look back into Holden’s face, and answered, “Only if you’ll call me by my name.”

Holden smiled.

“All right, Pavel,” he answered “Thank you.” He added, “We don’t have to talk about this now. I didn’t mean to-- well. It’s your daughter’s wedding. Not a time to be resurrecting old ghosts. I’ll-- I’ll write to you, okay? It will make more sense in a letter. Everything I have to say.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” said Pavel, his eyes drawn irresistibly to Bran again; this time Holden followed his gaze. “Holden? Did they all-- stay with you? When you set them free?”

“Jer’s turned world explorer, and Yves is off at university talking languages I don’t know,” said Holden, after a long pause. “But they both-- they all-- still say home, and mean mine. So-- yes. In a way. They all stayed.”

Susan and Ben had come up to talk to Bran; as they watched, Susan put her hand on Bran’s arm, flirting, and Bran turned to glance, just briefly, at Holden. Holden lifted a hand to wave, and Bran grinned and said something to Susan, who went rather pink and removed her hand.

“Would you have stayed?” said Pavel, without taking his eyes off the young people.

“Pavel, darling,” said someone else, and Pavel turned, startled, to see a stout, beaming lady in feather-trimmed mauve velvet, “such a magnificent wedding. Lisa looks like a dream of loveliness. Excuse me, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“Lady Natasha Volkontzkova, may I present Mr. Holden Larssen,” said Pavel automatically. “Father of the bridesmaid. Holden, her ladyship is my first cousin.”

“My lady,” said Holden, with a little bow, and then Natasha’s husband was on them, too, and their son-in-law, whose wife was pregnant and on bed rest but who had insisted he attend Lisa’s wedding to that sweet boy because she wouldn‘t for the world have had him think they had any feeling about his lack of title, because things like that weren’t what mattered, were they, Mister Larssen, and wasn‘t it nice that a young lady could go off to college and meet so many different kinds of people.

It wasn’t until a good quarter-hour of pleasantries later that they moved on and Holden said, watching them leave, “Forever.”

“What?”

“Forever,” Holden repeated, turning to Pavel, looking directly at him. “I would have stayed with you forever. If I could.”

Pavel swallowed. “Holden-- I’m so sorry--”

“No,” said Holden, and his voice had the same gentleness he’d once used to speak to the old, meek, subdued Bran. “I‘ve got no right to blame you, Pavel. That’s one of the things I wanted to say. You didn’t make any mistakes that I haven’t made a thousand times over.”

Pavel wondered what he meant, but didn’t ask; Holden answered anyway.

“Like owning a slave in the first place,” he said. “Like underestimating how vulnerable a slave is-- no matter how much you love him. And I blamed you so I wouldn’t have to think about how I was doing the same-- Hi, sweetheart. Well done.”

Pavel turned and saw Valor, looking slightly self-conscious in the lacy white bridesmaid’s dress that Lisa and Susan had both liked; she was holding hands with Inga, who was even more ridiculously beautiful up close, with deep violet eyes, full sweet lips, and a soft golden glow seeming to emanate from her hair and flawless skin. Holden stepped forward and put his arms around Valor, hugging her tightly; she let go of Inga’s hand to hug him back, resting her head briefly on his shoulder.

“It wasn‘t exactly the hardest thing I‘ve ever done,“ she said when she‘d pulled away. “A little fruit-flinging, a little chorus-singing, a lot of frilly-dress-wearing. I’m tough, I can take it. So what are you two chattering about? Are you telling Lord Kareyev all about the new business?”

“No, he wasn‘t,” said Pavel. “But I‘d like to hear, Holden. Lisa says you’ve-- shifted your focus.”

“Yes,” said Holden. “We-- well, it’s really not that different--”

“Oh, no,” said Valor, rolling her eyes elaborately. “Not different at all. Except in the teensiest little detail of being something totally different.”

“Not really,” said Holden. “Your mother‘s trying to get your attention.”

Valor turned where he was looking; so did Pavel, in time to see Greta, who was now talking to another one of Joseph’s relatives-- an aunt, maybe-- make a peremptory gesture at her, beckoning her over.

“Okay, okay,“ said Valor, and grabbed Inga’s hand again. “Don’t hog the father of the bride too long, Dad.”

As she departed without further ceremony, Holden reached into the pouch at his belt and produced a business card, which he handed to Pavel; it read, “Jamesen & Larssen, Slave Salvage and Rehabilitation.”

“What was it before-- Slave Training and Breaking?” Pavel asked, and Holden winced and said, “Retraining. But-- yes. They called us the slave breakers.”

“I like this better,” said Pavel, looking back down at the card. “What do you do now?”

“It’s not that different, really,” said Holden again. “We buy slaves who aren’t working out for their owners, for whatever reason-- and some fifteen-year-olds whose parents are selling them into slavery for the first time-- and we keep them for a while. Work through things. Talk through, mostly.”

“So you talk for a living,” said Pavel. “It‘s nice to find work that suits your talents, isn‘t it?”

Holden blinked, and then he blushed, and snorted, and said, like the teenager he‘d been when Pavel had first known him, “Shut up!”

Pavel laughed, and for a moment he, too, was a teenager again, living every day in anticipation of the few all-too-brief moments when he and Holden stood crushed together in the shadows of some tree or alleyway, their lips swollen and raw from the ferocity of their kisses, groins thrust together, fingers bruising each other’s shoulders, don’t go, please don’t go yet, please not yet, not yet, and always the whisper, from one or both of them: soon, wait, be patient, soon we’ll be together all the time, forever.

“Anyway-- and we’ve got a list of people we resell to,” Holden had resumed, still smiling a little, his face slightly red, “like we did before. But it’s-- well, it used to just be a list of people we were confident would treat the slaves well.”

“What is it a list of now?” Pavel asked.

“People who‘ll set the slaves free.”

“Oh,” said Pavel, taken aback. “That’s-- different.”

“A bit,” said Holden, grinning. “Takes a lot of the same skills on our part, though-- except instead of figuring out how to make the kid a good slave, we’re figuring out how to make him a productive member of society. That’s kind of the hard part-- at least the nobles think so. You know. ’I’d love to help the less fortunate, but where to begin?’ So we do that part, and figure out what needs doing, and then we do a sit-down with a noble who’s interested, and the noble does the part that involves money and influence. We’re making it a status symbol. It’s very in right now to have an ex-slave protegé by Jamesen and Larssen. We give out certificates and everything.”

“Are you making money?” Pavel asked, and Holden said, laughing, “Well. Good question. Turns out the nobility aren’t willing to fork over quite as much for a warm sense of altruism as they were for a warm seventeen-year-old in their bed nights. But yeah, we’re getting by. We get donations, too-- we’re officially a charity now, so it’s a tax write-off. The excessively wealthy have started giving our certificates to each other as gifts. You know-- what to get the guy who owns his own yacht.”

“Let me help you,” said Pavel, impulsively.

Holden smiled at him.

“You don’t have to do that, Pavel,” he said, with that gentleness to his voice again. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“It’s not because of that,” Pavel protested. “But I’m excessively wealthy. And I’d like to-- help the less fortunate. I’m serious, Holden. I‘m not-- I don‘t know how much influence I have-- I‘m not really good at-- networking. But if you need money-- if your business needs money-- please, I’d be honored to be a part of something like that.”

“Okay,” said Holden finally. “I’ll send you some information-- when I write to you. Thank you, Pavel. That’s really generous of you.”

“I like to think I’m as trendy as the next ‘guy who owns his own yacht,’” Pavel answered, and Holden snorted with laughter again, and said, “Pavel-- listen--”

But he didn’t say anything after that for a while, and then he said, “No-- nothing. I mean. I’ll write to you, okay? I have to stop-- as Valor put it-- hogging the father of the bride. Your cousin keeps looking at us and then saying something extremely significant to her husband.”

“Oh, dear,” said Pavel, looking up for Natasha, but instead his eyes snagged on Bran again; the young man was standing by Holden’s wife Alix, and watching Pavel and Holden. When he saw Pavel looking at him, he looked away quickly, back at his former mistress, who smiled and said something to him; he smiled back, though it wasn’t quite as radiant this time.

“Is he waiting for us to be done talking?” Pavel asked Holden.

“Yes,” said Holden. “I believe he is. I’d better--”

“Of course,” said Pavel. “Thank you for coming. Go.”