Emen Stattenholme and Festus Detrich as unwilling soulmates (post-revolution. semi-canon)

[guardiansverse]

"I expect you will undo this at once."

Duke Stattenholme's voice, cold and imperious, echoing from the doorway into his office. Festus did not look up from his work. "I don't know what you mean, Lord Regent."

"You know precisely what I mean," you lowborn dog, the Duke's tone put the finish on the sentence, but he gritted his teeth and addressed instead: "Land's Own Guardian."

Now Festus raised his eyes to the other man. Emen Stattenholme, average in build and delicately handsome, would never command a room with his physical presence alone. He substituted nobility. Every move as he stepped up to Festus's desk was measured and calculated, every last degree in the angle of his proud head. Even in his icy rage he was splendid, in his storm-gray eyes, the darkness of his hair against the gold at his collar. Festus considered standing up, to tower over the Lord Regent, show his soldier's dress against Emen's gold-threaded finery, but it occurred to him that there was no need. As it just so happened, he knew that Emen could feel every shade of his defiance, just as he could feel Emen's outrage and shame.

Ah... shame.

"You know that the bond isn't my doing," he said smoothly, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk. "Didn't your tutor teach you about the properties of souls? All souls in the country are bound together in the web. It happens that some bonds become specific. Thicken. It's nothing to do with the Land's Own."

"And ours just happened to do so." Emen's mouth was much too noble to twist, but his lips tightened until they paled.

Festus grinned. "We do have much to do with each other, Lord Regent."

There it was again, flickering like gold in the depth of the whirlpool of Emen's frustration and displeasure. Shame. Disgust. Betrayal, as though the world had turned on him specifically. Festus drank every bit of it in. Yes, you spoiled parasite. I see your soul. Me, the lowborn dog, your Land's Own Guardian! I've taken the hearts and minds of your subject, and I will take you. Your passion, your obsession, your life's aim. He didn't even care if Emen saw all of it. Let the duke see clearly once, instead of his endless politicking, his confidently slippery court wisdom that Festus would never have, could never match, however far out of the gutter he would rise on blunt force and daring. Festus had no shame. Had no need for shame. Destroying Duke Emen Stattenholme and all his ilk had been his cause openly from the day of his ascension.

The man ought to be grateful, really. As Land's Own Guardian, every soul in the country opened to Festus should he focus on it, will it, hard enough. But only to Emen did his own soul open back.

"I have a wife," Emen said softly. Not a plea to Festus himself, oh no. A plea to common decency, surely. "I will have a child soon. I am a faithful son to my lord father. I am the young Kaiser's most loyal man. Why must it be you?"

Festus answered the plea with a shrug. "Do you believe in fate, Lord Regent?"

"I believe in the Sun's just providence."

"Then that may have to be your answer." Hah. Just.

"Fated to be bound to you." The Duke stepped back from the table. When he looked Festus up and down, it was suddenly with a pang of bone-deep sorrow. "You rabble-rouser and warmonger, with all the blood of the revolution on your hands."

Festus leaned back in his seat and took the words like badges of honour.

Emen continued, "of course you take no shame in it. You are nothing and no one, raised well above your station. This is but one more gift that you know you are unworthy of."

What?

He straightened, but the Duke, standing up, was still looking down at him. That flash of thought had slipped through into the bond, had shifted something within it. And in that bond, Festus suddenly realized, he was not the Land's Own, with his power over souls. He was only another man. In that bond, they were equals.

As if they could ever be equals.

"I am the Land's Own Guardian," he said coldly. "And I've earned that well."

"You are a drunkard footsoldier's boy, and you will always be that."

"My birth is just as meaningless as yours."

"So you say." Emen came forward. He put both palms on the table; now it was he who leaned in. "But I see your soul, Land's Own. I see that you know what you are."

Festus did not recoil. He would not recoil from Duke Stattenholme, the Lord Regent, protector of the young Kaiser and the most powerful man in the country. But Emen was all too close. Beautiful, imperious, hated. "You think this gives you power over me?"

"Not me, Festus." The tips of Emen's lips curved up. "It is you who have given me power. You in your obsession."

He would not recoil, but Festus's power flared, slipped from his grasp and lashed out and up, not through the bond but through the webwork of souls in which they were both rooted. Here he could push against Emen, could send him reeling back, pale, as any man would under the power of the Land's Own's presence. The Duke took a moment to recollect his bearing, toss his hair out of his eyes and raise his chin. He was no longer smiling.

Festus didn't look at him. "Go. Get out of here, Stattenholme."

"You will undo this."

"I told you I can't!"

"You will find a way." Emen's look, too, was elsewhere. "I know you meddle in forbidden arts. Seeking power over souls that even a Land's Own Guardian should not have. You will find a way... for both our sakes."

He turned and walked out of the room, every move calculated, tense with brittle grace.

Festus dropped his head into his hands. The desk hardly felt solid under his elbows. He opened his soul wide, to take in the webwork of his country. The countless people who had raised him up, who loved and respected or feared and admired him. All the souls of a country ought to be louder than the soul of one man.

"I will find a way to undo this," he muttered, but knew that undoing the soul-bond would really solve nothing at all.