Istradez eyed him incredulously. “Are you kidding? You’ve been asleep all this time? Or sleeping with your eyes open, whatever. You’re ordinarily better about managing than this.”
“I can’t have been asleep that—” Mikodez checked the augment. Yes, he had, apparently.
Istradez’s voice softened. “Well, it’s not all bad. You missed the spectacular pissing match between Intelligence and Propaganda. I’ll fill you in later, promise. Just, you can sleep in my room, and I’ll cover for you until you’re fit for duty again.”
“Fine,” Mikodez said, since he was clearly losing this round. “Fine.”
“I’ll escort you,” Istradez said.
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
Istradez visibly wavered, then nodded. He stalked back to the table, snatched up a cold spring roll, then pressed it into Mikodez’s hand. “I don’t care if you’re going to look like a kid purloining this from the appetizer tray. Eat it.” And he stood over Mikodez until he did, in fact, eat it. Then he had to drink half a glass of water to wash it down because it’d gone dry. He made a note to himself to have a word with the kitchens about that.
Mikodez took the long way to Istradez’s apartment, on the grounds that he had no reason to hurry. He amused himself by affecting Istradez’s so-what-if-I-have-my-brother’s-face slouch and cynical smile. Istradez was the better actor, since his livelihood depended on it, but Mikodez liked keeping his hand in.
He trailed his hand along the green walls, livened up from time to time by paintings of cavorting foxes or, for variety, the occasional coy moon-rabbit. Sometimes he thought about taking a vacation. The sad fact was that he rarely left the Citadel, when the highest ceremonies dictated his presence. Otherwise, he did the most good here, in the never-sleeping Shuos headquarters.
When he entered Istradez’s apartment, he almost called for security. There was someone in the room already. But then she rose up from the couch in a whisper of languid silks, bronze pearls rattling around her neck and wrists and ankles, and he relaxed.
“Spirel,” Mikodez said as the door shut behind them both.
She floated up to him in a haze of perfumes and embraced him, not entirely with platonic intent. Spirel and Mikodez and Istradez had slept together once, because Spirel had expressed an interest, Istradez was drunk out of his mind and thought the idea was really funny, and Mikodez hadn’t cared one way or the other so why not. Curiosity allegedly satisfied, she hadn’t asked again, but Mikodez occasionally wondered.
“It’s you, isn’t it,” she said with that particular wry tone.
“I hate how you can always tell,” Mikodez said into her ear.
Spirel disengaged as neatly as a voidmoth pilot and smiled at him. “That’s why I get paid so much, yes?” In academy she had been tracked not as a courtesan but as Shuos infantry. He knew from experience not to get into an arm-wrestling match with her. Technically he was stronger, but she never played by the rules. (He had no idea why, that first time, he had expected a fellow Shuos to play by the rules, even a fellow Shuos who was his sibling’s long-time lover.)
She then gave him a critical look that was so similar to the one that Istradez had given him back in the conference room that Mikodez sighed and traipsed obediently to the couch. He began to arrange himself. Spirel cleared her throat. Meekly, he took off his shoes. Spirel had very strong opinions about shoes on her couch. It might be Istradez’s apartment, but Mikodez was sure that even in Security’s room roster the couch was listed as Spirel’s particular possession.
“I’m tired,” Mikodez said without meaning to, and was additionally horrified by how blurry his voice sounded. He’d better visit Medical again. They were always fiddling with the cocktail he had to take, but the meds hadn’t failed him this badly in a while.
“Sleep, then,” Spirel said with the brisk practicality he liked about her. “Scoot over.”
He did, even though it was taking an increasing amount of effort to get his muscles to respond. Spirel climbed in next to him and pulled the blankets over them both. Her heat radiated from her like a living thing in its own right, and she smelled of mint and citrus and an odd twist of lavender. She burrowed against him until he let her pillow her head on his shoulder. Great, was the last thought he had before falling asleep, I’m going to wake up with no circulation in that arm.
When he woke, though, his arm wasn’t numb at all. Spirel had already gotten up and was sketching at the window that opened up onto a view of one of the Citadel’s gardens. She liked drawing dragonflies. This particular garden had an abundance of them.
“Good afternoon,” Mikodez said. “Where’s Istra?”
“Right here,” Istradez said, emerging from the bathroom. He was still toweling himself off. He grimaced at the hexarch’s uniform that Spirel had laid out for him, then shook his head and stomped off to the closet. “No, no, no, no—hmm. I haven’t worn that one in a while.”
“You mean you haven’t worn that one ever,” said Spirel, who had nearly infallible skills of observation when it came to clothing and jewelry.
“How would you know?” Istradez demanded.
“Because I bought it for you two weeks ago, remember?”
Mikodez translated that into fourteen days. Spirel insisted on using the seven-day week even though it was, if not technically illegal, considered unlucky through most of the hexarchate. It came from her people’s traditions. She had remarked once that she had no idea what the rest of their old calendar had looked like before her people looked around and decided to join the hexarchate before getting wiped out as heretics. Mikodez had asked her why she had chosen this particular bit of calendrical minutiae to preserve, and she had shrugged.
Istradez changed his mind yet again and put on a set of robes in pink and yellow, a deliberately attenuated variation on Shuos colors. He was swearing as he tried to put on jewelry that went with it, rose quartz and heliotrope and the startling, contrasting pale flashes of aquamarine in glittering facets. Spirel pulled a face at Mikodez behind Istradez’s back and matter-of-factly went to help Istradez with the clasps.
“Thank you,” Istradez said.
“I could have sworn I paid you enough to afford real gems and not synthetics,” Mikodez said. He knew everything Istradez kept in his collection, all the careless strands of rose gold, the music boxes, the emergency hairpins. Mikodez and Istradez both wore their hair short in back, despite the long forelock, but Spirel was forever losing her hairpins.
Istradez shrugged with one shoulder. “Not like I wear these anywhere that anyone is going to find out and care.”
Mikodez hoisted himself off the couch and strode across the room to grab Istradez by the shoulders and force him to face him. “You are the vainest person I know,” he said, snatching up a comb and some mousse from the nearby dresser and beginning to fix Istradez’s hair. “Honestly, one of these days the details will get you.”
“Excuse me,” Spirel said. “Are you saying that he’s vainer than I am on account of a few bits of glitter? I’m clearly not trying hard enough.” She had laid her charcoal down. Her hands and sleeves were smudged black all over.
Istradez’s pupils had grown large, swallowing the amber-brown irises. “I like shiny things, all right? It’s not a crime to like shiny things. At least I don’t assassinate children with them.”
Spirel made a frantic shushing motion.
“All right,” Mikodez said, remembering what he’d jotted down in the notes to his own procedures for dealing with aggravated employees—except Istradez was also family. Deescalate. “What did I do this time?”
“Nothing,” Istradez said.