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Triumvirate




It was over. Two hours of lecturing and oath-swearing, the longest ceremony he'd participated in since his graduation from the Academy, and it was over. There was a ring on his finger that said so.

Aleksandr Belikov stared down at it, a braided band of three strands of different colors of synthetic platinum. One for each of their nations, but he didn't know which was which right at that moment. He'd known a moment ago.

Someone said something and his head lifted and he said something in return, asking for a few more minutes. He was supposed to report to the Great Hall for pictures. Did he know where the Great Hall was? He should have, he had been there at the start of all this to sign the papers. But he couldn't even remember where the restrooms were and he shivered with a sudden need to find his coat. That might be the shock setting in.

"Are you all right?"

That was his new wife. His mind focused on that and repeated the two words more as sounds than words themselves, new wife, new wife. He nodded anyway and said something about being fine, just a little chilled, and he'd catch up with them all in the Great Hall. She nodded and moved ahead, her bridesmaids and retinue following behind her like obedient little flowers on the deep blue carpet. Blue, that was the color. Her nation's color was blue, his was gold, and the other man's was silver.

And that was the other sticking point, the real sticking point, the fact that made his mind shut down and every movement feel stilted and unreal. He was married to another man, not to protect a heritage or raise their cousin children but for real, to seal an alliance.

Aleksandr shook his head, grasping on that. Marriage to seal an alliance was acceptable, at any rate. As long as he wasn't expected to behave as a wife with a husband.

"Right," he straightened, and the four guards who had been assigned to him discretely straightened up as well. If they disapproved of his panicky behavior, although they might well considering they were from the host nation that had come up with all of this nonsense, they didn't show it. Trained professionals. Like he was, and he should damn well start behaving like it. He tugged down the front of his jacket yet again. "The Great Hall, they said?"

The man up front, the highest ranking by his bars, nodded. "This way, sir."

He followed. Like a good little lamb, he followed the soldier to the Great Hall where they were all lined up for pictures. Beata was in front, of course; her wide dress and short stature made that necessary. They arranged him and the other man, Andreas, behind her, standing one slightly in front of the other and at an angle. It made sense in terms of height, but his skin prickled to be so near the man everyone called his husband. And that make his skin prickle, too. He was sure he was flushed, pink and scowling. Husband, he didn't have a husband, the very word sounded like a collection of syllables that made no sense in that particular order. He didn't have a husband, though he might have a wife. He had an alliance. That was all.

Beata reached around behind herself and fumbled for his hand, meeting his fingers with her own. It helped, at least a little.

"Now, stand still, please, sir."

He stood still. He couldn't do much else but stand still, there were photographers after photographers, all of them wanting pictures of this historic event. Photographers from all three of their nations, from independent consortiums more bent on making money than covering politics, everyone who had the clout and wherewithal to get a press pass. It was demeaning.

He wondered what they would think back home. What headline this would be printed under. If he would be ridiculed or saluted or some strange combination of both. Could he even go back home? Did he want to?

The photographs were done. They had a little time now to themselves and then they would be expected to turn up for dinner. He pled faintness from all the commotion and fled to find a restroom.

Even there, of course, he had no privacy. There were others there doing their business, though at least they were more occupied with privacy than with invading his. He realized, belatedly, that he could have gone over to his guest suites and had complete privacy, but by then he was splashing his face with cold water and staring into the mirror that helpfully read off his ambient temperature from the sensors at the front of the sink, his pupil dilation and what it all meant. From the pallor of his skin to the trembling in his hands.

"Voice off," he muttered. The next person who came could turn it back on if they wanted to know what their pulse rate was. But it was still talking. "Voice..."

He was speaking in his own language. He had to speak in theirs. "Voice off," he muttered, giving it a bit more focus to his accent and now he wondered which language he had been speaking all along. If he spoke his language to his countrymen who were there, or to the guards, that wouldn't be so bad. If he slipped up in front of the press he would look like an idiot who didn't belong there, and if he slipped up in front of either of the other nations... well, depending on who it was would determine whether or not he screwed everything up.

He took a breath and recited one of the epic poems of the nation all the way back to his suite. By the end of it he had a renewed appreciation for the simplicity of the speeches in modern times and a greater confidence in his ability to say the right things to the right people at the right time. So, there was that at least.

It didn't make him feel any better about this dinner. His feet had taken him to the door of his rooms and he didn't remember any of the features of the halls he had passed through on the way there, and to a trained mind like his that was unnerving. Were people always like this on their wedding days or just when they were married against their will? "No," he muttered to himself as he flopped backwards on his bed. "Not against my will, just against my better judgment."

Why had he accepted this assignment again? For the prestige? The dubious honor of being sacrificed upon the altar of dignity and personal comfort so that the nations could stop warring on each other? Stop the killing, the waste of resources, and all right, when put like that it made more sense.

"Not that that makes it any better."

His voice echoed in the empty, arching chambers. He had never been in rooms so big. They had arches to the ceiling. He had never been in rooms with arches to the ceiling.

"Messire Belikov?" a voice came, disembodied voice from all over the walls. He didn't jump, his body remembering that he hadn't disengaged the phone because someone might want to reach him even if his mind didn't, and for a second he lost not only the words in their language but also the relevant words in his. "If you don't mind, the protocol officer would like to go over the place settings with you before we begin."

Aleksandr muttered something about where the protocol officer could place his settings, but not so loud that the mic could pick it up. "Yes, thank you, that would be fine."

If he'd thought he might have had a few minutes he was sorely mistaken. He had just levered himself up off the bed when the knock came at the door.



---

Dinner. At a table so large it could have seated most of his graduating class. He walked down towards the head of the table, followed by Beata in an evening dress and Andreas in what seemed to be a different style of the same uniform he had worn at the wedding. The wedding. Not his wedding. When Andreas Zakarios was involved it was the wedding.

"Are you holding up all right?" Beata whispered through her smile as she waved to some functionary or another, again for the press. They stood in front of their places and smiled and stayed still for yet another round of photos before they could sit down again.

Aleksandr shook his head slightly, not in negation but in disbelief. "I bet they'll take a picture of each dish before it comes out, too." And then he sighed. "No, I'm all right. I'm just a little ... overwhelmed, is all."

Even aside from the wedding, he was, a little. They didn't have events on this scale of grandeur back home, everything had been streamlined and modernized. Simple and featureless, nearly, was the new rich and elite. If you were rich enough you didn't need details to proclaim it. Here, everything was as ornate as it could be made, thrown back to the days before space flight, before the advent of AI, before a lot of things. Not, he noticed, before wireless. All the little necessities of ancient technology like clicks and hums were subsumed under the aesthetic. But the ceilings were still vaulted and the carpets were still so plush you could sink into them.

"To be honest, so am I," she admitted. Even after they were seated they had to wait for everyone else to sit down, and then there were the toasts. "This isn't exactly what I expected."

In a week's worth of preparation, two or more weeks' worth of journey here, he hadn't thought to wonder if this was what she wanted for herself. She was a princess and a figure of the state, somehow he had translated that to mean that not only was she constantly int he public eye, she didn't have the freedom of a private life, herself.

"Someone else? I mean," he added, clarifying when he realized that was neither clear nor grammatically correct. "Did you want to marry someone else?"

"No," she shook her head, laughing softly and leaning in for the benefit of the cameras or to give them some illusion of privacy or both. "No, no one else, just... entering into a marriage with two men I barely know and neither of whom probably want to be here wasn't quite what I'd had in mind."

Aleksandr wanted to protest, but it would have looked unseemly. Even the frown his face seemed determined to crease into existence probably looked unpleasant to the viewers, wherever they were, now that he saw the motion cameras out there. And she was right. He didn't want to be here. "Honestly..."

"It might be better to start off a marriage with honesty, yes."

He slipped her a sideways half-glare. "if that was your way of reassuring me, it didn't work." No, not her fault. He should relax. Needed to relax. "Honestly, no. I don't want to be here. This isn't what I expected either and it seems like a strange way to settle a war to me, but..." He shrugged slightly, spreading his hands in a fatalistic gesture of assumed unconcern. "If this is what the politicians and leaders want, it's not as though it's unprecedented. In all of our cultures. It's just... I guess it's not something I'm used to, is all."

She slipped her hand around his arm for a moment, patting the back of his wrist. "We'll have time to get used to it, I think. I tried to get mother to arrange that."

Aleksandr frowned again, this time in perplexity. He hadn't thought, also, that she would be that forward thinking and expecting her husbands to be at best, reluctant, and at worst downright belligerent at the idea of the marriage. Was it something typical of all princesses, because he did know her nation had several of them, or all women in her kingdom or nation or whatever it was, or was it just that he didn't know much about women? Because he didn't. He had been, for a long time, a bachelor. And up until several weeks ago he had been content to remain that way, even if it did hamper his assignment to certain key positions.

"And look," she continued on, either ignorant of or ignoring his confusion. "We've talked right through the before-meal toast."

That got him to smile, straightening up a little. "Bring on the chicken-shaped protein."

"Oh, no," she laughed again. "We made them kill real chickens for this one."

Andreas disapproved of their giggling, he saw it in the glances the older man gave them down the table, but there was nothing that could be said at such a distance between the two men, and definitely not before the first course was served.

He might be grateful that the courses were such small portions. He knew he was grateful that they were expected to take forever between each one. Right now, Aleksandr didn't have much in the way of appetite; he barely had anything in the way of animation to his body. The protocol officer had made sure he knew which knife and fork to use, and how to position himself and where to put his elbows. Reminded him to sit up straight until he'd snapped at the man that he sounded like his old grandmother, which somehow hadn't had the insulting effect he'd wanted.

But bit by bit, the sensation of prickling on his skin eased. The sounds resolved themselves into actual words again, language took on meaning again. Instead of a babble of half-familiar noises he could hear the conversations, and did a bit of eavesdropping when it became apparent that the rest of her countrymen weren't so familiar with his command of their language. Evidently, no one was happy about this marriage. Except maybe Beata herself. It was only the best of a bad situation, and the best way to arrange a treaty that had a hope in hell of lasting.

Reversing the decades of propaganda, that was what it was. The war had raged on since he was a child, but peace had only been talked about within the last five or six years. Five or six of his years, anyway. Hard to say how long it had been for anyone else, but long enough that everyone was used to the idea of peace between the nations and yet no one thought it would actually arrive.

Well, they were making it now, all of them. With a little food inside of him and a little conversation just between him and Beata, he was starting to defrost from the inside out. If not to feeling as though he could do this, at least feeling a little less out of place and completely alone in a position he had never trained for, in a place he had never wanted to go to begin with.



---

"Try not to be so stiff, would you?"

Andreas glanced at his new wife for a brief enough moment that it must have seemed he hadn't looked away from his conversational companion at all. A skill he had learned at awards dinners, while she must have learned the art of talking without moving her lips from her own state functions.

Unfortunately the small skills he'd learned didn't translate to facility with social interaction. He wasn't comfortable at events like this, where everyone was so concerned with fashion and who was sleeping with whom and everyone's place in the overall mechanism of society. In the military, your clothes were dictated by your rank and achievements and the formality of events, and your place was determined by your position in the hierarchy. The gossip was mostly work-involved, and the few stories about who was sleeping with whom or similar were passed around by people he hadn't associated with anyway.

"Stiff?" He excused himself from the conversation and plastered a smile on his face, pretending to turn his attention to his new bride and to be happy about the prospect. Not that he was unhappy about it, exactly. But she was so young, and he barely knew her.

They were both so young, and that was the other thing. He understood the concept of an alliance of convenience, of politics, but they were actually expected to hold down a marriage of three people, something that he had never been led to believe was possible to do in any equitable fashion.

"Stiff. You look very..."

He knew she meant to say military, and that she was too polite to say so.

"Closed off. Unapproachable."

He managed to approximate a smile, but he knew it wasn't what she was looking for. "I'm afraid being approachable is not a skill I've had occasion to practice, my lady."

She wrinkled her nose at him; just for a second it made her seem like a person instead of an elaborately constructed doll here to move and pose for the entertainment and viewing of the masses. "Well, now you do. And don't call me my lady."

"Apologies." Beat. "My lady."

With his usual straight-faced gravity, too, so she might know he was doing it on purpose. And she did laugh, though he knew the extra delight and charm in it was for the benefit of their audience. Even if the press wasn't permitted at this dinner, the other nobles from her world, the delegations from his and that young man, Aleksandr's, they would be watching. All three of them were under deep scrutiny to see if this was a solution that would work, if they could be the figurehead for a lasting peace. Not the architects, that was left up to the politicians who spent long days, a year and a half by what he had heard, negotiating every detail and every sector of disputed space, mining rights on one planetoid and settling rights on another, trading forgiveness for one attack for a concession of arms in the prospect of future defense. But the figureheads. Everyone looked to them to be the symbol of peace, and if they could maintain that illusion it might be the salvation of all of them.

If not, there could be more deaths. More pain. More families separated from their loved ones, more loved ones separated from their health. Medical technology could do amazing things even these days, but there were rumors that he couldn't entirely dismiss about the efficacy of replaced limbs and organs. There was the problem of rejection, which many veterans' hospitals weren't set up properly to handle because of the discharge process. There was the still-lingering stigma against psychological recovery procedures, which he couldn't entirely ignore even if he, too, wondered if it might not be some weakness better left to civilians to handle.

The Tiberian Empire was his home, but even he wasn't blind to its faults, not entirely. One among many reasons why they had chosen him for this particular assignment. Sacrifice. One or the other. He was a moderate, someone less likely to cause antagonism by insisting that his home nation was correct and the other two merely lived on sufferance.

Which didn't prevent him from, as Beata put it, appearing stiff.

"I'll try to do better," he murmured, keeping his attention on the young woman who had caught him up in conversation, slightly older than Beata herself, one of her sisters, he thought. It was a serious statement while the supposed sister was thanking a servant for the next course plate, eyes barely moving.

Beata nodded her head, one very slight incline, which might have been part of a movement indicating to another person except it wasn't. Message received and understood.

He was starting to like this young woman he found himself married to. At least, they were getting along for the moment. Time would have to tell.



---

The idea that everyone had left was laughable. The guests who had traveled there had retired to the guest quarters, and the guests who were from other nations had retreated to their drop-ships. His old friend Cosca had retreated up to command of the fleet in orbit around the planet. The servants were still around, most of them, those who were attached to the regular palace staff and those who had been brought in from the village to supplement for the added strain on palace resources.

And still, Andreas thought, it looked empty. The palace halls were tall and echoed and full of draped tapestries and plush carpeting and still very empty. The carpeting, he thought, was so the footsteps of whoever walked the halls late at night didn't hear the echo of their own footsteps. Conversational echo would at least have held the reassurance that there was someone else he was talking to.

Maudlin thoughts. Derisive thoughts; he wasn't used to this kind of functionless opulence. The late night corridors he walked had deck plating on the floor and no more ornamentation than was needed to direct people to where they needed to go. Nothing hung from the ceilings, among other things because it was a ship and if the ship listed or was knocked to one side or the other you didn't need things swinging in people's faces. No big ornamental objects in corners to slide around, to take up space that could be used for bodies or extra personnel to bunk.

This was a different life for him. So different. He would have to have time to get used to it before he could be of any use to anyone as a political figure.

"Sir?"

Andreas didn't even know where he had wandered to, but there was a functionary, a manservant, he thought, at his elbow. Who hadn't been there before but must have stepped out of one of the hidden panel doorways he could see out of the corner of his eye. The thin line of separation between wall and door was barely visible.

"Sir..."

"Yes. I'm sorry." Andreas straightened to military precision, bringing his focus to the other man. "Was there something?"

"We were wondering what sir's usual bedtime habits were. So that we might do our jobs accordingly."

And just like that, the last of his privacy eroded away. Even his branch of the service was less intrusive. He shook his head; the man had a job to do and as he'd said, he wanted to do his job properly and according to Andreas's own habits rather than the way he was accustomed to. He tried to think. His bedtime habits weren't usually what he thought of as scintillating or interesting.

"Reading, I suppose. I don't take any late night meals, I..." No, that wasn't entirely true, was it. "Tea, sometimes. Or a glass of water. I lay my clothes out for the next day, go over my schedule and then sit and read." And that was as much as he could remember. His own habits didn't come under scrutiny, not by himself at any rate. He was pretty sure military intelligence could give a rundown on his evening habits.

The idea that someone else might lay out his clothes for the next day was disconcerting at best. Would he be allowed to choose his clothes or would they be chosen for him? He'd never before had a choice of clothes except in formalwear or working, casual wear, and even then he hadn't exercised much of his power of choice. And yet every morning for almost sixty years he had laid out his own clothes. Would they discuss it before it happened?

Not that the functionary, the manservant knew any of this. He nodded in quiet satisfaction. Andreas thought he might be pleased with someone whose needs were simple and functional and easily fulfilled. "Thank you, sir."

"I'm sorry. This isn't coming as easily to me as I think it might be to..."

"To some of the others? To be honest, sir, I don't think it comes easily to anyone who isn't born to it."

Andreas frowned at the man. Their stances were similar, the set of his shoulders was broad and rigid. Not something he would have learned as a manservant. "You were in your country's service."

"For twenty years, sir. Were you going somewhere?"

He shook his head. "Back to the rooms, I expect." The rooms. His rooms. He wasn't sure whose rooms they were, a whole suite that encompassed the three of them, and while they weren't expected to sleep together the first few nights at least he imagined they would soon be sharing quarters and a bed. Awkward.

The manservant whose name he still didn't know nodded. "This way." Gestured with an arm and started to walk with him. "Yes, for twenty years. Until I lost a leg in the Battle of the Magdalene and the replacement limb was rejected. I have a cybernetic implant now, but those aren't encouraged in the military."

The military. His military. In Andreas's service a cybernetic implant would have disqualified him for some positions but most definitely not all. Only those who couldn't make a lateral transition dropped out or were discharged for medical trauma and subsequent behavior difficulties.

It was the aesthetic of it, he guessed. "So you entered palace service?"

He nodded. "The Princess Imogen took pity on me and brought me in as a favor, and her uncle was in need of a caretaker. I was a medical technician in the service, so I was suitable. And since then..." A slight shrug, hands spread, implying something Andreas didn't have the experience to comprehend. He nodded instead and a part of that something clicked.

"So they assigned you to me, reckoning that we would be able to talk to each other based on our shared history." With a slight smile, even. That did show foresight.

"Exactly."

And now they were at the grand doors to his suite and he didn't know what to say to dismiss the man. Other than a simple command, which seemed abrupt and hostile. "I don't believe I'll need any special..." Services. Attentions. "I mean, if you have other duties..." What other duties could he have? He was Andreas's personal manservant. The former commander shook his head, irritated with himself. "What's your name, soldier?"

To his credit, the man's mouth didn't even twitch. "Liev, sir."

"Liev, if I could have the evening to adjust myself to my new standing, I'd greatly appreciate it." There, that didn't sound too stumbling or too aggressive. Liev nodded.

"I'll see to it, sir." And then there was a smile, or at least the polite echo of one. "If I may say so, you're adjusting better than many."

Andreas's wry snort accompanied a short bow, Liev's return bow slightly longer held and deeper. This formality and idea of compartmentalization, everything in its place, that was familiar. It was the idea of having his every need attended to instead of doing for himself what he could that was going to take some getting used to. Still, Liev was true to his word. No one tried to shadow him into the suite, and there was no one waiting for him when he reached the bedroom designated as his. He had the night to figure out what this meant for him, and how he would approach having not only a new young wife, but a new young husband as well.



---

He had managed to immerse himself in an overview of the Vandari medical system when there was a knock on the frame of his door. "Come."

She poked her head around the corner, smiling. "How is it that you can make one word of very few syllables sound like a command from a soldier in wartime?"

Andreas considered for a moment whether or not to take offense at that, before he realized that he didn't intend, really, to be offended. "Possibly because I spent most of my life as a soldier in wartime," he replied, offering a smile and setting his reader aside. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm your wife. You are my husband. I thought maybe we should get a little better acquainted now that we don't have to be in even the private-public eye." She came over, he thought, to flop on the bed next to him. Instead she pulled a chair over and flopped into it, curling her feet almost underneath her. She was, he realized, dressed in a long nightgown. "Not that way, before you ask, which it looks like you're going to."

He tried to think what he looked like at the moment before he decided it was because he had expected her to get close and intimate. "You don't believe we ..." But he couldn't think of a graceful finish to that. "You have no intention to consummate the marriage yet."

Beata's young, pink mouth twitched. She hadn't yet washed her face. "I don't think any of us would be comfortable with that."

And with a few words she had encompassed all of them in this ideal unit that she had in her mind. Andreas sighed.

"Do you think this is going to work?"

Her face fell a little. Less a disheartening of spirits and more of a coming down from whatever daydream she imagined and back to the reality where they had all met earlier that morning for the first time. Mostly for the first time. He didn't mean to bring her spirits down, she seemed like a lovely girl, but she did seem like a girl. And he was skeptical of the whole arrangement and how well it would prevent yet more senseless death.

"I think," she started slow, with a deep and heavy sigh. "I think that if it doesn't, we should keep it to ourselves as long as possible. I think it is more likely to work if we at least try a little bit to get to know each other, come to like each other as friends."

No romantic dreams of neverending. He wasn't sure, given what he understood of her culture, if he was surprised, relieved, some combination of the two. "Is that the most you hope for?" he persisted.

"That's the most I want right now. When we've achieved that, then I might think about wanting more." It was a politician's answer, one that didn't require him to commit very much to anything and provided the expectation or promise of future gains. But, he thought, it was also a real answer.

Which left the question of what he wanted out of this, and that was a question he wasn't sure he could answer yet. He folded his hands over his lap and crossed his legs at the ankle beneath the bedcovers, staring down at the blanketed peak of his feet.

She didn't seem inclined to press, either. This late-night meeting was turning into a long string of pleasant surprises at her youthful wisdom or good instincts. "This isn't something that we do in my country, which you must already know. We ... we always know that marriages like this, if they are ... they aren't true marriages. They're economic alliances. Or family affairs." And he did not mean in the sense of business affairs, which he supposed she knew. "To make matters worse, I don't have any experience in a marriage. You may find that I'm not the husband you expected."

"I'm sure you're not the husband Aleksandr expected either," she pointed out.

Andreas winced. "That's another thing that will need to be addressed." In his most dispassionate voice possible. He couldn't say how he felt about Aleksandr's prejudices, except that it hardly came as a surprise. But to consider it as a given was one thing; to be forced into marriage with someone who hated a part of what made you who you were, and to be forced into confronting that person with that part of you was more than a little brutal. Addressed was the mildest term he could think of for it.

"Aleksandr will need to overcome his assumptions and his ... his prejudices. We all will. I'm sure I'll have prejudices you find appalling, and you'll have beliefs neither Aleksandr nor I can understand or..."

He frowned at her. "Condone? Approve of?"

"Accept, at least at first," she settled on a less confrontational word than he had thought of. "I'm sure we'll all run into that problem. Whether or not we can do anything about it... whether or not we can make anything of this, that doesn't have anything to do with it. We will deal with what we are, on our terms, or we will not make this work."

Andreas leaned back against the pillows and looked at her. She had uncurled from her chair, feet crossed at the ankles and almost touching the floor, now, arms loose on the rests of the chair. She leaned forward with her shoulders but not her back, not feeling the need to push her position so much. It was interesting that a woman so young and, he had thought, so sheltered in the palace life, could be so passionate and knowledgeable about the way people worked. Or at least, the way politics worked.

Perhaps she hadn't been sheltered. He'd assumed, from the Vandari love of beauty, that that meant they valued style over substance. He should have known that style didn't persist this gracefully without substance beneath it to bolster it up.

It was too soon to ask what she thought their chances were, knowing that and having had this conversation. He shook his head, reaching for the light at her querying look. "It's far too late in the evening to have this conversation, I think." And he mustered a smile for her again. Not that it was late in and of itself, but it had been a very long day. "Tomorrow? Over breakfast, perhaps?"

"I'd like that," she smiled. A smile that broadened slightly along with gaining a mischievous sparkle. "Aleksandr won't."

"That's too bad," he said, brusquely enough for her to lose a bit of that spark, for which he did feel a pang of regret. "These are questions he'll need to answer, too."

Beata nodded. "We'll find the answers. In time." Her hand brushed over his shoulder before he could pull away, and then she started out. He watched her go, wondering if he should come up with something to say but unable to quite formulate the right words before the door closed behind her.



---

Beata brushed her hair and washed her face, scrubbing all the public-face off. Beneath the makeup she looked very much as she did for the cameras and the press, young as she was. And beautiful. All but two of her generation of the royal family had been blessed with good features, and those who hadn't had discretely had that "problem" corrected. Whatever she thought of that, it wasn't her place to comment.

Just as it wasn't her place to comment on the beliefs of her husbands, no matter how strange she found them. Not the idea that a small number of people, three or even four or five, could enter into a binding arrangement of love and trust that most peoples called marriage. Nor the idea that two men or two women might love each other and want to express that love. Not her place and not fair of her to call those beliefs strange, come to think of it. Her beliefs had to be equally strange to them.

Except that they were hers, and comfortable in herself as in her own skin. And thinking of her beliefs as strange made her feel like a stranger in her own home. She leaned on the edge of her sink, eyes prickling with tears.

This wasn't how she'd imagined her wedding night would go. Admittedly, when she'd imagined a wedding night a year ago, it had involved someone from her own people who she knew. Who she cared about and who cared for her in turn, even if it wasn't undying love or something. Even if it was a political marriage. Which this was, but it was a political marriage to strangers. People she had never met before, whose tastes she didn't know, how they slept, the little noises they made to themselves when they were deep in thought, what order their morning ablutions went in. And even apart from those details that came with shared living, she had no background on their political leanings, their taste in music, or what colors they liked to wear. Basic things one might know about a friend.

Her husbands weren't friends. Not to her, not to her family.

"Don't be stupid, Beata, you knew what this was when you agreed to it." She dashed her tears away with that self-admonishment, hoping it would do the trick. It didn't.

She tucked herself into bed with the chilling and empty awareness that she should have been doing it next to Andreas, perhaps, curling up with her cheek on the pillow while he read whatever it was he read at the end of the day next to her. She didn't know what Aleksandr did at the end of the day; he had looked so sick and confused she hadn't dared approach. Let him have one last night thinking that this is all just some strange dream. She understood the desire for that illusion better than she thought she would.

No, she had known what this was when she agreed to it. She had known it wouldn't be easy, and that she would be going among strangers in a far more personal sense than she ever had before.

Which didn't mean she didn't have the urge to go call for her mother. At least on the intracom.

Her fingers hovered over the keypad for a second before she slapped her palm on the off switch, folding it back up into the wall. There was no need to call for mother, she was a grown woman. She could deal with this. They were all adults, they could deal with this like rational, mature adults.

Which didn't stop her rational, mature self from only falling asleep as the false dawn started to color the horizon.



---

The guests all left a week later.

They spent that week getting to know each other in subtle ways, in stolen moments before the day began or after it concluded, with the rest of the time taken up by pretending how happy they all were with the arrangement. There was a limit, of course, to how much they had to pretend. Everyone knew this was an arrangement. That none of them had met each other before the day of, nearly, but they all pretended they had late nights up talking and laughing and getting to know each other like new old friends. Well, Beata and Aleksandr up talking and laughing, no one would believe it of the stoic old military commander.

Eventually, they left, and no one had to worry about what they were reported as doing anymore.

They departed the grand palace for Beata's summer residence, her new summer residence, an estate that had been given to her by her father for herself and her new husbands. She hadn't been there since she was a girl, and the first day she spent quite inadvertently ignoring her new husbands in favor of wandering around the grounds, the house, taking in the scenery.

Andreas caught her, midway through the next morning, going through the garden and noting down the layout and locations of all the kitchen's herbs and spices and flowers and fruits. "Somehow, when they told me I would be married off to a princess, this is not what I expected."

"Well, what did you expect?" Beata smiled. She had an idea, at least, of the answer to that question, considering he came from a more republican nation with a strong military and senatorial presence and no royalty to speak of. It wasn't a bad way to do things, she supposed. On the other hand, it also meant that you had a number of interests jockeying for power and no from-birth training and experience in how to be a leader of your people. Well, there were advantages and disadvantages to both sides.

He shrugged, admitting the usual pre-conceptions. "More lounging about and less elbows-deep in mud?" he offered, which was at least more entertaining than the usual litany of sybaritic pleasures. "I didn't know you enjoyed gardening."

"I don't. Not exactly. I haven't managed a garden myself, although I've done a lot of reading. We didn't have extensive gardens like this in the city. Well," she corrected herself. "We had extensive gardens, but they were all flowers."

"And you prefer herbs." Which seemed to please or at least amuse him.

Her face flushed a little with embarrassment or shyness or both. "I like it. The idea of... of having your hands on something that will later feed and nourish people. The idea of being a part of that process. We don't do nearly so much of that anymore, not with everything done by machines and computers."

He crouched down beside her and looked around at the stakes and twine, the small squares and the big ones all of it overlaid by a holographic display of what should be planted where. Up above their heads, the generator buzzed quietly. "Are you going to take this in charge?"

She chewed a little on her lower lip. "I was thinking about it? I'd have to leave it up to the head gardener, of course, for final decisions at least at first, but I was thinking I could talk to her and the cook and see if there was a place for me to get my hands on things..."

It was strange, the things that made her feel like a young woman or even a little girl again. Maybe it was coming back to this place after so long, but she was now feeling every year that stretched between her and her older husband. As though he was chastising her gently for something, or maybe trying to find out whether this desire would be worth the trouble to grant. Something between the two. And more likely he wasn't doing either but she felt very small at that moment, and went back to digging through the earth for old seeds.

"When I was in training, we had a commanding officer who kept shaped arborea." he mused, running his fingers through the earth. "He said that we should never forget the impact our actions out there in space had even on the smallest thing down on the worlds. And that the shaped arborea would remind us of that."

"He sounds like a wise man," she said softly, and wondered which of their nations had fired the shot that had killed him. Andreas had the sound of someone who was speaking of a dead comrade, not someone who he might one day introduce her or Aleksandr to. "Is he..."

"Yes. In the siege at Nijinski Station." Nothing more than that. They seemed to have agreed by mutual silence not to talk about specific battles in the war or the loved ones they had lost.

Beata curled her fingers through the earth a few more times, then stood up, not bothering to brush off her knees when her dirty fingers made that ridiculous. She did, at least, shake out her skirt. "We have berry bushes over here," she said, leading him over to where the stakes were laid out for tying up the bushes. Not that the letters on the holographic display weren't clear, nor that he didn't know how to read her language, but it was a good change of topic. "Whistleberries and redberries and ..."

"Why do you call them whistleberries?" he interrupted. "I've never understood."

She smiled. This was so much more comfortable. "Have you ever tasted a whistleberry?"

"No-o?"

There were still a few left on last year's bushes that had come into season, albeit weakly, which was why they were being replaced. She plucked one and popped it in his mouth before he, or maybe either of them, could think about what they were doing. His face instantly puckered, and she laughed.

"Because when you eat one, you make a face like whistling." A sound like whistling, too, at least for his first taste. She hesitated, then. Maybe he was allergic. They should have had him tested. If they hadn't, they should definitely have him tested now. And Aleksandr. And herself, for their homeworlds, and was he all right. "Are you..."

"Those are some... powerful berries." He coughed, but smiled a little when he could do more than make faces again. She relaxed, smiling back.

"I'm sorry. I should have thought to ask if you've been checked for allergens on our worlds."

Andreas nodded. "And on... on the Republic, yes. I was tested before we all converged on your palace."

"Not my palace," she corrected, quickly but subdued. Not her palace any longer, for all that she'd grown up in it. And she'd never thought of it in the possessive anyway. Her home, maybe. But not her palace. It belonged to the reigning King or Queen, not to her. She had never been a serious contender for the throne.

He watched the expressions on her face, the passage of thoughts she hadn't realized were stamped there until she saw the question in his eyes. Rather than answer it, she shook her head to put it off to another time and looped her arm through his. "I want to plant berry bushes and herbs for cooking, spices. I want to replace all this here, and the seeds and bushes that can be salvaged will go to the farms around us that might need some new plants..."



---

Gardening, of all things, proved to be a wealth of exchange of ideas between the former commander and the princess; the very next day they found themselves chopping vegetables and picking out seeds for three hours.

"My mother never entirely approved of my spending so much time reading about the out of doors, but since I didn't do any of the actual grubbing in the dirt and since growing things was a valued and virtuous past-time there wasn't much she could say about it," Beata explained with a giggle towards the end, snuffling her nose and dragging the back of her hand across it to still the itching. Something about one of these plants made her nose itch. Maybe it was the onion one of the under-chefs was chopping a table or two down.

Andreas shook his head, chuckling. "Why should she disapprove? It's not as though there's anything wrong with a princess who can grow her own food."

"Not in principle, but princes and princesses aren't supposed to have to do for themselves. The idea is that we spend so much time worrying about the problems of the people as a whole and sorting them out that we don't have time to do things like garden or cook or clean, so in exchange for our careful stewardship we have people to do those things for us."

"But you feel differently." And by the sound of his voice, cautious and curious, he wanted to know more. Which she took to be a good sign.

Beata shrugged. "I find it relaxing. Getting my hands dirty, and I find it needs me to concentrate just enough that I don't have time to worry about ... things." Like her marriage. Like the treaty failing. "And then when I go to bed at night I'm too exhausted to lie awake and think about it, either."

His gaze went away for a moment. "I can understand that part of it." No doubt he could; basic training, she guessed. Or other assignments where there was as much an aspect of physical labor as there was at commanding or piloting a starship. She wondered if it was all right to ask, now. Maybe she had better not.

They chopped in silence a little while longer. After the first few demolished vegetables he had become quite expert at filleting vegetables and divesting them of their seeds. She'd almost made some comment about it being something he learned in the military, then when she looked at his hand and the knife and the meat of the vegetable and thought of it as the meat of someone's flesh she decided against it. "Do you do much cooking for yourself, instead of using the synthesizers?" she asked instead, finally coming up with a way to inquire that didn't involve bloody images.

He shook his head. "Not anymore. I used to, a long time ago..." and he trailed off again, but this time it seemed less melancholy and more distracted.

"When you were younger?"

Andreas looked over at her, then he even smiled. "When I was your age, I think. Or younger; when I came home on holidays or leave I would help my mother in the kitchen. We didn't have a large family so it wasn't anything like the meals ..." one hand gestured around the extensive kitchen; this was just the preparation portion of it, and at that, just the chopping vegetables and fresh ingredients before they went into the pots. "But she preferred to grow her own vegetables too."

Beata's smile broadened, but before she could say anything to that Aleksandr walked into the kitchen, making a face immediately as he got a mouth and nose full of onion smell.

"What on... are you making the food by hand?"

Andreas and Beata exchanged a look. Aleksandr's tone was less than friendly, incredulous and dismayed, although if she were being generous she would put that down to her younger husband's eyes watering and him almost walking into that table in particular. The under-chef scowled, said something under his breath and took his bounty to the stew-pot. Beata nodded, made herself smile for him.

"We were just talking about how we seem to have that in common, enjoying a hand-cooked meal instead of one made by synthesizer."

"I wouldn't know," Aleksandr snorted, then sneezed. Someone immediately threw a cloth at him, which he used to cover his face. "I don't think I've ever had a hand-cooked meal."

At least he sounded less angry about it when his eyes were done watering. Beata handed him a glass of water; Andreas looked as though he might have done it, but they were still getting used to each other and far behind she and Aleksandr. "Well, you're about to, tonight. We're making a stew, and there's some kind of roast involved, and..." Aleksandr just blinked at her, bemused. "Never mind. It'll be delicious, you'll see."

He shook his head. "I don't believe in it, you know," he said, then clarified. "This idea that hand-cooked food is somehow better for you than filtering the exact same components through a synthesizer and programming it for whatever recipe you want, minus the diseases."

"Cooking eliminates most diseases the food could carry," Andreas pointed out with a slight rumble to his voice. "That's the point of cooking."

"Also the act itself," Beata added, sort of hastened to add. "There's a... it's meditative. You have to put the right ingredients in the right order at the right time or it doesn't work, but once you get into the rhythm of it you can let your mind drift a bit, and it helps."

He still looked dubious. "Well, if it helps you..." Aleksandr took her hand in his non-filthy one and bowed slightly over it, smiling. A diplomatic smile, though, not his real one. "Then I look forward to the meal."

The younger man practically fled the kitchen, with Andreas and Beata exchanging a look in his wake. "He doesn't like the kitchens," Andreas observed.

She sighed. "That was his diplomatic face on." Which meant that he wasn't happy, although he wasn't trying to stop either of them from being happy, either. That was progress, right? "Maybe he'll come to appreciate it, if not participate."

Beata felt the warmth of a large hand on her shoulder, turned into Andreas' arm to find him staring quietly down at her from very close indeed. And for a moment she completely forgot that he was her husband and therefore now entitled to such proximity; her heart pounded out a fearful, thrilled staccato. She blinked slowly, once, then slid one arm around his waist and turned it into a hug, burying her face in his chest in silent apology for not being able to properly act like a wife. She just wasn't there yet.

That moment of tension, though. That had, at least on her part, been the closest she had come to feeling like a proper wife. Someone who might have a connection with her husband, something deep and personal and intimate. Something passionate, at least in some ways.

And so, maybe this hadn't been such a terrible idea after all. Or at least, maybe the candidates hadn't been so precariously chosen.



---

She found him in the library, staring up at the various media and frowning at the titles. Not because he couldn't read them, which he could, but because he had no context from which to judge what was what. Presumably a place this size that was lived in this seldom stocked the classics, the books and films her people had gotten used to seeing and reading and hearing but were never tired of, so that someone would always have something to select when they were in residence. But did he start alphabetically? By subject? He was on the verge of pulling out his reader and looking them up individually when she cleared her throat behind him.

"Sorry," she murmured when he jumped, catching her lower lip in her teeth again. "Didn't mean to, um."

"It's all right, you didn't." He blinked a bit at her, trying to recover from the abruptness of not being alone and put on his public face again. "I was just, um..."

"Could you not do that? It's just the two of us."

He blinked again. "I'm sorry?"

"Make believe you're on some sort of diplomatic assignment or whatever it is you're doing. It's not ... at least, I don't think it is. Is it?"

"I don't think so," Aleksandr shook his head, surprised that she had noticed. Or that it had been so noticeable. More the latter than the former, he thought after a while. He hadn't realized that his public face was so different from his private one. "I didn't mean to. I'm..." He sighed. "I'm afraid I'm not very good at this."

Her smile was small and tired and sad, but the corners of her eyes crinkled a bit when she did. "Being a husband or being the center of a peace treaty?"

"Both," he laughed, but there wasn't very much humor in it. "More the second one. I sort of expected to be a husband eventually, but I thought..."

"That it would be someone you already knew? Someone you cared about who you wanted to be with very much."

Aleksandr nodded. Of course she had thought of that before, everyone thought of that, didn't they? If only to discard it as something they wanted to do. He hadn't discarded it so much as postponed it till after he reached a certain point in his career, that point having been yet to be determined. Until it was determined for him. "I don't ... I didn't think I was going to have to deal with this. Not that I'm having to deal with it, I mean, that's not..."

Now she did laugh, and it was a shy sound. His mouth curved up as she hid hers behind her hand for a moment, which was also a delicate gesture. And a public face sort of a gesture.

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

He mirrored her. "Cover your mouth when you laugh. Like it's embarrassing to laugh."

She gave him a look that suggested he didn't know what he was talking about, or at least didn't have the same experience. "Have you ever been a woman letting out a good guffaw in a court function?"

"But we're not in a court function, are we?" He took a step towards her, since they were doing pretty well in conversation. She looked at him, but didn't back away or push him away or anything. Her head was tilted up at him and her expression thoughtful. "It's just the two of us."

That came out far more sexualized than he had meant. Also far more school-aged.

"For now."

He wasn't sure what that meant.

"Did you... anticipate someone else joining us?"

Beata frowned, thinking about something that she discarded before she spoke. "Not right now. I... I'm sorry. You're used to behaving as though you're at some sort of diplomatic function and I'm used to behaving as though I'm a princess, and not a woman at her home, which I should be."

"Yes, you should be. This is your home, the Commander and I are just guests in it." He had to include the Commander, though he didn't really want to think about that aspect of things before he absolutely had to. He hoped no one would insist on their consummating that part of the marriage. "If you want us to sleep in the stable or the garage or the airport or whatever, we will. We have to, don't we?"

She laughed. A real laugh, this time. "I don't think so. I mean, a marriage is an equal partnership, isn't it? I don't think kicking you out of the house would help."

"Probably not." She had taken a couple steps closer, too, and now she reached out and curled her fingers around his.

"I don't know what I'm doing either, Aleksandr. I truly don't. I mean, I can act as though I do and I can pretend, and when I'm being a princess I know exactly what I'm doing, I've done that all my life. But as a wife, or a woman in an equal partnership... I have no idea."

He shook his head, though he appreciated the honesty. Appreciated it very much, more than he'd realized at first, because he did feel more able to say something else. "I have no idea either, you know. I mean... no, of course you know, I said so, didn't I. I just don't want to do ... or say anything to offend you."

"If you do, I'll tell you. And if I should do, you'll tell me, right?"

"I think I can manage that."

She smiled. "There. So we've made some progress already. Feel better?"

Aleksandr frowned a little, then nodded, face clearing. He did, really. Even with that simple agreement. "I think so. You know it'll take a while ... of course you know. You're more prepared for this than we are, aren't you?"

"I've had more time to get used to the idea of an arranged marriage, maybe. Even if it isn't mine. I've ... I think I'm the only one out of the three of us who's been able to observe their parents' marriage? A marriage based on agreement and communication, talking and coming to some arrangement. I don't," she added abruptly, as though she thought he mistook her meaning. "I don't mean I want this to all be about talking and negotiating like making trade agreements. I just think it'll be easier if we start with that?"

He smiled a little, squeezing her hand. "I think I can manage that."