Time passes.

In Savannah, he answers to Professor Lefevre and they wonder at his decision to adopt his wife's surname when they marry, at the expense he went to for a computer that looks at home next to his grandfather clock and antique fountain pens, at his blend of accents and casual assertion that as a lapsed Catholic he's switched his fealty to good red wine.

In Arum, he answers to my lord and they puzzle at his seeming lack of a history before this land he wasn't born in, at his foreign methods of warfare and its tactics, at his willingness to become their own myth, at his unhurried and patient route to influence, at his vast library and enchantments, at his eccentricities and unselfconsciously solitary faith.

At the end of the day, Martel shrugs his shirt from his shoulders and feels the pull of scar tissue over his heart, because he will carry the end with him until there's no where left to go.

In ten, twenty, thirty years they will not forget the crunch of metal and bone before Martel went to his knees in Zemoch, breathing blood; he was blessed and then he was dead, and what followed is burned into memories not belonging to him. The city fell, then, taking its dead with it - and there were many of them.

And yet here he is, as if untouched, and once again standing at the end of his brother's sword with a dry smile and cold, dark eyes. Ultimately it's almost impossible to say which of them wants this less.

The masquerade is nothing that Martel has any interest in attending - but Petrana gets wind of the fact he's been invited (which means she's been invited, and he suspects his mother pointed this out), and then he really doesn't have as much say in the matter as he might have liked. Despite the effort on his part that would be required to give any less of a damn about the proceedings of some courtier's melodrama-laden royal anniversary celebrations, he submits to a few fittings and the bare minimum of input into what exactly it is he's being wrestled into for the evening. There are stars, silver and ivory silk, sewn into the black velvet doublet that Petrana was utterly convinced would be a good idea, and he takes comfort in the fact that very few of his fellows are going to be able to witness this indignity.

The mask is a little more tolerable; modestly sized, admittedly because Romiar glimpsed what they were planning in the first place and pointed out that Martel's hair is probably sufficiently reminiscent of moonlight without any encouragement at all. (Veleda commended her husband for his poetry of thought, and Martel got his father another drink for sparing him what he'd seen on paper.) All the same, when he waits impatiently for Petrana to come down the stairs so he can hustle her into the carriage waiting outside, it has more to do with a desire to get this evening over with and less to do with anticipation of the costume that matches and opposes his.

That, he reflects, as he takes in the gold chains knotted into braids holding the translucent yellow fabric that is her sun's halo and the skirts flaring out from her tightly-laced waist, may have been an error on his part.

"You're going to have a terrible headache by the time we leave," he predicts, even so.

"Thank you, dearest," she replies - sunnily - as she sails past him to the door.

Of course.

The phrase I would give anything to make this better is a fascinating one - I've certainly always thought so. What a grand demonstration, a suitably tortured self-flagellation, and in its way it absolves you from amends. No gestures grand enough, no sacrifice that will grant more than a hollow sort of satisfaction. How charming! How pointless, in the end. Would it make my brother feel better if I let him poison my wife, too? I doubt it. Shall we spill more blood, where we've already torn apart nations in an unfortunately literal sense?

(Zemoch, I aside, was no great loss.)

What great respect we have for the merchant in front of the church, ensuring that God and all his creatures know his piety, his generosity. How well we think of the man whose soul is so clean he'll cry to the heavens what's wrong with yours. And how suited to their ranks is the penitent most concerned with a witness to his guilt, the absolution of their pity.

All I have to offer is this: understanding, respect, and utmost patience. Forgiveness is neither a right nor a prize, and my reform doesn't carry with it a bounty. I give my time and the ability to keep my occasional idiocy to myself.