Not by Condition

by the-tzimisce (firstmaterial)

Summary:

The King in Red is standing at the stove, humming to himself quietly as he flips a pancake over on the skillet.

Notes:

• For Gileonnen.

Caleb opens his eyes to a world of red. Starts fully awake in alarm, just for a second, then his eyes take in the shapes of the pillowcases, the canopy, the embroidered throw pillows left all over and spilling onto the floor. He sits up.

Kopil’s massive round bed is empty, other than a heap of mass-market tomes piled in the spot where the skeleton had lain. Caleb glances at the open page at the top of the pile. Some sort of theoretical text on the principles of exchange, if he understands half the terms he thinks he does, which is a bet he wouldn’t take. He’s probably lucky that Kopil hasn’t left out a text that would burn the eyes of the un-warded reader, or something equally unsavory.

He throws back the crimson duvet, finds his pants easily enough but not his shirt. Well, Teo’s already been threatening to box up anything red in Caleb’s closet and send it back to the offices. One more won’t hurt. He rolls up the sleeves of the scarlet button-down, pokes his head tentatively out of the alcove and glances around the apartment.

The King in Red is standing at the stove, humming to himself quietly as he flips a pancake over on the skillet.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he says cheerfully, not looking up. He gestures with the spatula, beckoning. “Come in, come in. I wasn’t sure if I should wake you or not. Not everyone tends to take it well, you see.”

Caleb manages to stop gaping long enough to slide onto a stool at the counter. Kopil, he notes, manages to make even cooking breakfast flashy, sliding plates from the cupboard in large sweeping movements and whisking jars of toppings onto the counter in front of him. “Morning,” Caleb says vaguely. “I, uh. I didn’t realize you cooked.”

The sleeves of his robe whirl around as he turns back to the pan. Caleb cringes seeing them sweep so close to the stove - then again, he doesn’t think fire would dare burn anything the King in Red didn’t allow. “Eye of newt, horn of frog and a phial of hens’ teeth, stirred thrice at midnight,” he says, “Or corn flour, milk and a dash of sugar on hot oil. Don’t look so surprised, there’s no real difference. Besides, I needed to eat too, once upon a time.”

“That’s not actually—” Caleb laughs, nerves ebbing from him with the sound. It’s too damn normal to keep up any kind of tension. Teo’s probably wondering at this very moment if he’d come back with all his parts right-side out or something, and here he is eating breakfast. “I just figured you’d have, you know, other things to do, I guess.”

“I wasn’t always at the helm of RKC, either.” He slides the pancakes from the pan into a small stack on one of the plates, sets it on the counter before Caleb. “If you can believe it. I did have time to spare for - a moment of care, once..”

Caleb has mostly managed to put from his mind the image of a man smiling by Kopil’s side beneath a pyramid gleaming under the living sun. It’s hard to, here. A man he had shared one breath with, in the instant before the knife came down, and never mentioned it to Kopil. He suspects the King in Red can see it anyway, if he needs to.

Kopil pours a second batch of batter into the skillet, sizzling behind him as he speaks. “I’ve been doing some more research on your incorporation process, by the way. It’s absolutely baffling.” That must have been what the pile of books was about, then. At least that pile. “I know, Ilhuitl and his team are perfectly competent to do the work - and I’ll say again, I’m so glad you’ve decided to bring your business to Quechal Craftspeople, I’ve been thinking I ought to start some kind of professional support initiative for ages, but there’s always so much else to take into account - but it’s genuinely a new area of study. It’s fascinating. I’d be a fool if I didn’t keep on top of it. Go ahead, try them. They’re best hot.”

Caleb dusts the stack of pancakes lightly with powdered sugar, takes a bite. No feeling of obligation comes down to tug at his soul - not that he’d really expected it, just that he tries not to expect much of anything, at this point. “They’re good.”

“So I’ve always been told. Don’t you think you could promise something? That corn spirit you spoke to last week, for example. About that, by the way, I can’t recommend that you start work before the incorporation documents are signed, just as a precautionary measure, of course, but I understand the circumstances. Couldn’t you turn that work a preliminary agreement to start from? It’ll be easier to expand your business model from there once you’ve been incorporated, and if we can use even part of the land that’s been fallow this season it’ll be a great deal of help, as I understand it—”

Caleb winces, shakes his head. “That’s exactly the thing. If I sign my name to freeing up farmland for RKC - or for any outside interest - whatever I do in support of that is going to be a bargaining piece. Even if I don’t make it explicit, or have any Craft to seal it with - it’ll show.” It tastes different, he wants to say, moves like barbs under his skin, and the idea of accepting souls from Kopil with a price attached sets him on edge in a way he can’t explain, or at least doesn’t want to see Kopil’s reaction when he tries. It’s too close to sounding theist, a taboo his father might have recognized, even if he knows everything he feels is metaphysical fact.

“What’s the difference?” Kopil says. His voice casual, but the kitchen seems to grow dark around him, yawning blackness crowned by a single red star. “Souls for rain. It’s the same equation. Only now my people live to see return on their investment.”

Last week Caleb had stood in a barren corn field, empty from horizon to horizon, dry grasses cracking in the breeze. Power swelling from him in dazzling green light, and flooding back to him changed. A gift like a knife in his throat. The sudden knowledge, as clear as though the thought had been his own, that this was all he had to offer. His fist clenches against the table.

“It’s not like that,” Caleb says. “It’s not, and you know it or you’d never have agreed to work with me in the first place. You’d have called down the fire and the steel, no matter how you might say you want to do things differently.” Caleb waits for the King in Red’s protest, feels relieved when he makes none. “It’s just like…it’s like pancakes.” Caleb mops up sugar from his plate with his last bite, chews slowly as he considers his words. “You don’t do it because it’s owed. You do it because it makes you more, for having done.”

Kopil’s voice is like ancient sand shifting beneath his feet. “Is that why I did this? As you see it?”

A night full of stars, and fine points of glory amidst terror, and before the feeling ends the knife sweeping down. “As I see it - it’s been a very long time since you’ve had the chance to choose to. Since any of us have, maybe. And yet I think we still remember.” Hopes Kopil remembers, outside this windowless room and the memory of a smile. When there are more than lovers’ tokens at stake, or else all this will have been worse than meaningless. But Caleb can’t change that, only lay his bets and stick with them. And let the King in Red determine that himself, in his own time.

“I’m not asking you to trust any gods,” he says slowly, every word a cautious choice. “I’m just asking you to trust me. To give me a chance to do this my way. Let me do what I have to.”

“You’re asking more than you know,” says the King in Red.

Caleb only nods, and Kopil turns in a swirl of crimson robes, slides the rest of the pancakes onto a plate and extinguishes the stove with a sweep of his hand. He sits across from Caleb, takes several of the jars and pours syrups over his breakfast until the entire plate is a sticky pool. “Ah,” he says, taking a bite he doesn’t seem to need to chew. “It has been a while. I’m glad I thought to make these again.”

The sparks of his eyes gutter and wink out, just for a moment, and his knobby fingers alight on Caleb’s arm, trace the patterns of his scars all in the wrong order. One motif runs into the next still half-completed, and even if Caleb looks away he can feel each line standing out against his skin, green light followed up by red as though it were being devoured. Once in this room priests had bled themselves near dry, crying out with the vicarious glimmer of sacrificial ecstasy. He’s still not sure he wants to understand that, even after the serpents. He just doesn’t want to turn away.

“The Two Serpents’ Group will have full operating independence, of course,” he says at length, and the words sink into him, ephemeral as a thread of silk compared to the tethers that coil around him from all directions. “That’s only standard, after all, from a member of an advisory board. I’d still like to see Ilhuitl’s work on the incorporation agreement, if you don’t mind. Or get it looked at by an independent expert, if you must. I could suggest one, if you like, though I’d feel better if I could be sure that all its wards were in place—”

Caleb lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, closes his eyes and lets the electric force of Kopil’s touch run through him. It’s enough for Caleb, as much as he can ask for. Maybe one day, it will even be enough for Dresediel Lex.

“Thank you,” he says. “For breakfast.” And lets the King in Red’s hand fall into his own.