The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate...
-- James Shirley, Death's Final Conquest

Kilan woke up the next morning with a grimly determined air. It was far from easy, to know he and Qihadal were being forced into this fiasco. But he was determined that over the next few months they would become, if not friends, then at least better acquainted. Maybe this ordeal would be easier then.

It was an unfortunate fact that Carannish nobility allowed their children to associate only with people they had carefully selected -- usually cousins or people of a similar social standing to them. In many cases these children were able to interact easily with strangers once they were grown-up. But in some cases, like Kilan's, the children were left with very little idea of how to get to know people on their own. It was a flawed system, but it was the way children had always been raised. And if occasionally it didn't work, everyone shrugged and pointed to the cases where it had worked.

It occurred to Kilan as he finished his breakfast that Death was the only person not related to him who he knew well and with whom he could talk with ease. That did not bode well for his ability to befriend Qihadal.

Well, there was nothing else for it. He would just have to try his best. And putting things off never made them any easier. Kilan set off towards Qihadal's garden with an air of one facing an unpleasant task. If he had thought about this some more, he might have realised this wasn't the best impression he could give his wife of his attitude towards her.

~~~~

In Malish Qihadal had been expected to be quiet, demure and ladylike. She had been given no education in how to run a household, let alone a country. Her days had been endless stretches of boredom, occasionally interspersed with sewing meetings when the women of the palace got together -- ostensibly to sew, but mainly to gossip and grumble. She had been one of the Iqui's more than ninety daughters, born to a concubine who was not in royal favour. No nobleman would be interested in marrying her. She had had no prospects except a future of interminable monotony.

As Empress of Carann, however, she was expected to organise important events, to negotiate inter-province disagreements, to patronise charities, and to show an interest in the arts. If not for the existence of her husband in name only and the looming question of an heir, she would have enjoyed her new life.

From listening to her subjects' remarks when they thought she couldn't hear, Qihadal came to the conclusion that Tinuviel was seen as "weak-willed, not very impressive, reasonably competent, and at least he hasn't gone mad yet". The people's opinion of her was somewhat more positive. "Making an effort to learn our culture" and "not as barbarous as we would have expected" were the phrases that popped up most frequently. She got the impression that her people were judging her by a rather low standard, but at least she was surpassing their expectations.

Today she had a long list of requests made by various aristocrats, and had retired to her garden to read over them. A duke wanted money for a new factory. A baroness wanted more restrictions on the press. Several earls had gotten together and wanted a new medical school built that would serve students from all their lands. And a princess was complaining about the appalling state of the canals in her province, and asking for money to restore them.

Deciding which requests were important and which ones weren't took up most of the morning. She sat alone on a swing hanging from a tree branch, slowly and carefully reading the letters to be sure she understood them properly. The cool wind ruffled her hair and the birds sang in the trees. The scent of flowers filled the air. There was no one else in sight at all.

When she had first found this garden, it was overgrown and abandoned. Restoring it had taken months of hard work and frustration. But now it was flourishing. It was Qihadal's favourite place in the entire palace. Very few other people visited it. Occasionally her maids came to tell her something, and even more occasionally Tinuviel visited her there when there was some important matter he needed to ask her about.

She never expected Tinuviel to visit her today.

At first she didn't notice his arrival. It was only when he spoke that she realised she was no longer alone.

"Qihadal?"

She looked up from her letters to see her husband standing several feet away.

Oh no, was her first thought. What have the High Council done now?

"What's wrong?" she asked, and belatedly added, "your Majesty?"

"Nothing's wrong," Tinuviel said quickly. He hesitated, as if gathering his courage for what he had to say next. "The High Council have forced us into a... terrible mess." The tone he used suggested that he wanted to say something far stronger. "I thought it would be less awkward for both of us if we knew each other better before..."

He trailed off. Qihadal understood what he meant without him finishing the sentence. And she had to admit that it was quite a good idea. But... "What does Death say about this?"

Tinuviel winced. "Can we please pretend she doesn't exist? For today at least?"

Ah. "She is not happy then."

"She is," Tinuviel corrected her. "Well, sort of. She isn't angry about it. But talking about her will just make everything even more awkward."

~~~~

In the shadows between this world and the next, Death listened to this conversation. She facepalmed.

"Really, Kilan. Is this your best attempt at getting to know her?"

~~~~

By the end of a week, Kilan and Qihadal had discussed their childhoods, their former lives, the challenges of ruling an empire, and what they hoped for in the future. They carefully avoided the subjects of what had happened to Qihadal, and the daughter she had never seen.

They would never fall in love, Kilan had decided fairly quickly. But perhaps they could be friends. He was surprised to realise Qihadal was a better ruler than he was -- or at least a more decisive one. When armed with some background information, she could quickly deduce who was in the right in almost any dispute. No matter how nasty the disagreement between two aristocrats, she could negotiate an agreement that satisfied both of them. And perhaps most importantly, she knew how Malish worked. She could choose diplomats best suited to keeping the peace, and teach them what to say.

She was also the only person who had any idea of what to do about Gialma.

"You mean you knew your cousin was a traitor when you put him on the High Council?" she said when he first told her.

"Yes," Kilan said, expecting to be told yet again that he had been incredibly stupid.

"Then you should have your spies watching him at all times."

And that was how ten of Nimetath's spies found themselves assigned to keeping an eye on Prince Gialma.

~~~~

Gialma knew perfectly well what was happening. He had noticed the sudden increase in people who mysteriously just happened to be standing around where they could see his every move every time he stepped outside. But what could he do about it? He could hardly complain to Tinuviel. His cousin clearly knew about his treachery.

So what could he do?

At present, the answer was "nothing".

One would think that this would put an end to his dealings with Nalginton once and for all. One would think wrong. Trapped by promises to a man who could reveal his crimes at a minute's notice, afraid of what would happen if this became widely known, resentful because of the spies watching him, Gialma only became more and more entrapped in this tangled web he had woven for himself.

The infamous Caranilnav madness was always a spectre lurking in the shadows of his mind. Under this new and constant stress, it crept closer and closer to the forefront.

He could never tell, when he looked in a mirror, if that blur behind him was only a shadow, or if it was a hand reaching for him. Nightmares tormented him every night. When he woke up there was always a minute when he couldn't tell if he was still dreaming. And worst of all, he had begun to see... things.

Gialma didn't know what these things were. At first he thought they were birds. But after several days of seeing them everywhere, he began to realise that they were much too humanoid to be birds.

All of them were identical -- black-robed, black-winged figures eternally swooping by on their way to some unknown destination. Sometimes he saw whole crowds of them gathered on a roof. Many of them lurked around the palace. He had only to look out the council room's main windows to see at least five in the gardens.

No one else could see them.

He realised this after the first few weeks. No one panicked or reacted to their presence at all. Everyone continued with their lives as if there were no winged creatures near them. It was painfully obvious that he was hallucinating. If he told anyone, he would be locked away as the latest insane Caranilnav.

So what could he do?

The answer came two days later. There was only so much anyone could take. Invisible bird-people flying overheard was one thing. Invisible bird-people sitting on his library windowsill was another thing entirely.

Gialma's parents had warned all their children years ago. There is a madness that runs in our family. If you see anything unnatural, don't look at it, don't acknowledge its existence, and whatever you do, don't speak to it. At the time he had dismissed their words as just a way to scare him. Now he was going to ignore what they'd said in another way.

The prince looked around to be sure none of the servants were within earshot. Then he threw the window open. The bird-thing fell off the window with a startled yelp. With a quick beat of its wings it stopped itself from falling into the flowerbed below.

"Go away!" Gialma shouted at it. "Go away and leave me alone!"

He tried to slam the windows. The bird-creature grabbed his hands before he could. It certainly didn't feel like a hallucination. Its grip was real enough, even though it wasn't.

Now that he saw one up close, they didn't look much like birds at all. They looked like normal, if abnormally pale, people with wings. This one was female, and looked disconcertingly like his deceased cousin Varan.

"Gialma?" the creature said. She sounded as surprised as he was. "You can see me?"

He glared at her. Normally he would never glare at anyone but his siblings, but he made an exception for figments of his imagination. "Of course I can see you. You're my hallucination. And I want you and all your friends to leave me alone! Right! Now!"

Gialma tried to pull his hands out of her grip. She let go, then fluttered through the window to land on the carpeted floor. By now he was in a fine rage. As if losing his grip on reality wasn't bad enough, his imagination hadn't even the courtesy to listen to him!

"Get out of my house!"

She paid no attention to him. "You shouldn't be able to see me. You aren't dead, you aren't mad, and you aren't Kilan. So why can you see me?"

Gialma felt a headache form. He was not going to argue with something that wasn't there. "Please, just go away."

The creature sat down on the windowseat and stared at him. "You don't know who I am."

"You're proof that I've lost my mind," he said wearily, half-sitting and half-falling into the nearest chair.

She shook her head. "I'm Varan. Don't you remember me? I'm your cousin!"

Why would he imagine his cousin was haunting him? They hadn't been close. "Varan has been dead for seven years."

Not-Varan nodded. "Dying wasn't a pleasant experience, but I got used to it quickly."

"Really." By now Gialma had lost all hope of ever being rid of this hallucination. "And now you're a ghost."

She made a noise suspiciously like a suppressed giggle. "No, there are no such things as ghosts. I'm a Reaper. That means I help Death collect souls."

He nodded absently, hardly listening to anything she said.

Not-Varan stared at him thoughtfully. "You still think I'm a hallucination."

"Of course," Gialma said. He buried his head in his hands. "This is just what I needed."

Someone grabbed him and pulled him out of his chair. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself in mid-air, hovering at least six feet above the floor. Not-Varan's arm around his chest was all that held him up.

"Oh yes," she said dryly. "A hallucination can carry you up here and keep you from falling." They descended to the floor far more quickly than Gialma would have liked. A beat of not-Varan's wings slowed them down just before they landed, and created a strong gust of wind that knocked over several empty bookcases. "And a hallucination overturned those."

Gialma stared at her, then at the bookcases lying on the floor. She was right. His imagination couldn't have done that. His imagination couldn't fly him up to the ceiling. And he could still feel the pressure of her arm digging into his ribs.

Which meant...

"You're real?"