(2023-05-01) A Homecoming

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Author:	inkie
Summary:	Siamus Fallon is home. Sintha Fallon has plans.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: Ringside Seats

Sintha rapped sharply at the door, exhaling a sigh. Trust the man to be home at last, for the first time in months, and cloister himself in his rooms for hours.

She tilted her head toward the door. “Shay?” she called, and rested fingertips lightly on the door-handle. “You have one minute until I come in there, so if you’re doing something untoward, you’d best finish it now.”

The door opened immediately and she stepped back. Her brother gazed down at her with weary, good-humored patience. He was damp-haired, wearing a clean shirt and trousers with an unbuttoned blue waistcoat and freshly-polished boots. “Tides spare me,” he said. “First of all, ye’re a filthy little creature and no lady, and second, I didn’t miss ye a bit.”

She stepped forward to wrap her arms around him and rest her head on his chest. He smelled of soap and cologne and — faintly, pervasively — still of salt. “I was brought up by sailors,” she told him contentedly. “And yes, you did.”

She felt him sigh, and then his arms closed around her and he squeezed. “I did, little moon. Don’t be smug.”

Sintha stepped back and smiled up. “I’m naturally smug. Also, I’m coming in.” She slipped past him and into his room.

To her mild disappointment, he did not appear to have been doing anything untoward. The bathroom door was ajar, the air still suggestive of steam and soap, and his footlocker stood open beside the bed; he’d unpacked clothes and books into neat stacks atop the coverlet. On his desk by the window, the pile of letters that had accrued in his absence was now two piles, one of still-sealed envelopes and one of neatly slit ones, a silver letter opener resting atop these. The cylindrical leather case containing his charts was propped against the wall beside the desk.

“You ought to work in the study,” Sintha chided him.

“It’s a perfe’tly good desk here,” he told her, and crossed back toward it. “Gi’e a man time to get used to the bloody space in a house again. I feel like a stone knocking about an empty boot.”

“You ought to use consonants,” she suggested, and he glanced up to scowl at her. She smiled sweetly back at him, and then took another survey of the room. The little box she’d left by the bedside was gone. “I repaired his watch,” she said.

Her brother smiled at her, his dark eyes warm, and reached into his waistcoat pocket to draw out the brass pocketwatch. He flipped it open and gazed down at the face of it, then back up at Sintha. “I found it.”

She smiled back, caught in an undertow of warmth, and then she dropped her gaze and slipped around him again to settle in the desk chair.

Siamus snapped the watch shut and dropped it back into his pocket. “Did ye need to come in for a reason, or did ye just feel a need to plague me?”

Sintha crossed her legs and slid down partway in the chair, exaggeratedly comfortable. “Well, first of all, you only just got home and I’ve no idea why you need to close yourself in your rooms for eleven hours straightaway.”

“Three,” Siamus corrected. Sintha ignored this.

“Second, dinner will be served soon and Cook planned a special one for welcome home, and she and I will both be very put out if you forget to come down.”

“I will not forget,” Siamus said. “I have a good watch wi’me now.”

“And third, we haven’t begun to talk about the House of Nobles, or about any of the things you’ve missed while you were gone. And there are loads. Scandals, even.”

He took a step toward where she sat and leaned over her to the desk, to shift the letter opener and rifle the stack of open envelopes. “I’ll marry ye off, Sintha Mairead, so help me. There’s an offer here somewhere….”

She swung her foot to kick his leg lightly. “Beast.”

“Monster.” He straightened and reached down to muss her hair. “Pour me a drink and maybe I won’t.”

Sintha rolled her eyes but rose to her feet. “Someday I’ll poison it.”

Siamus claimed the vacant chair with satisfaction, stretching his legs out. “Aye, and gi’e me some blessed relief from ye?”

“Consonant,” she reminded him as she lifted the whiskey decanter from the small sideboard and poured. “Give. Givvvve.”

“Give it a bloody rest.” He reached up lazily to take the glass from her, and flashed a smile. “Obliged.”

“You are,” she agreed, and perched on the edge of his bed, feet on the floor, folding her hands in her lap. “I expect Lord Tennerow will announce. Ridgewell’s been making noises about Redridge representation. And Ference has announced, to his own people at least. Westbridge goaded him to it, it seems.”

Siamus lowered his glass. “Sir Elohad? Cobalt Company?”

“That’s right.” Sintha paused and watched her brother knit his brow; he had that faraway look she disliked, because it meant he was calculating something without her. “And I expect,” she interrupted his thoughts, “that you know Morgauna will be in contention as well.” She arched her brows at him.

His gaze warmed slyly, speculatively. “Will she, now?” He had a thoughtful sip of whiskey, tipped the glass idly from side to side. “She’s a brilliant candidate. Do us well to have a friend in the House.”

“I am going to shake you,” Sintha informed him, “if you insist on saying things like that aloud. The point is that we are running for the House.”

Siamus snorted and had another sip. “The point is that Shaw is running for the House. When am I allowed to accede?”

“When I say so. And I am extremely serious about the shaking, Shay, I warn you.”

He smiled crookedly up at her. “Terrified, little moon.”

“You will have to meet people, glad-hand, that sort of thing,” Sitha informed him. “By which I do not mean flirt with all of them. You will have to give a speech or two, I expect. With consonants.”

“Perish it,” he muttered, and tossed back the rest of his drink.

Sintha leaned forward and asked in her velvetiest voice, “And Shay — what if we don’t accede?”

Her brother glanced up at her sharply, his eyes a warning shade of black. “Sintha Mairead. What will your Master Shaw say to that?”

She spread her hands. “He couldn’t be displeased. It would give him an even closer view, if anything.”

Siamus rose wearily to his feet and pointed at her with his empty glass. “I expect the man knows his mind, and if he wanted a closer view, he’d’ve said it.”

“We’re fully entitled to run in our own right,” she told him.

“And I am entitled to marry you off,” he told her right back. “Ye plague mouse.”

“That is really getting to be the most tiresome threat,” she said. She paused and then added, with a hint of sly satisfaction. “You, on the other hand — there are important connections that could be made out of all of this, you know.”

He’d gone to put the glass down by the decanter, but now he spun back toward her. “Oh, no ye don’t,” he warned.

She smiled at him. “You’re thirty-two.”

“I could be forty,” he observed frostily. “Forty-five. A man’s age does no harm.”

“What if the man is a military officer, at constant risk of his life, with no heirs to his name?”

He came over to stand at her feet, staring darkly down at her. “I have an heir to my name. Hers is Sintha Mairead Katherine Westry Fallon, and she will be the death o’ me before any Scourge or orc ha’e got the chance.”

“Consonant,” she reminded him.

“Murder,” he suggested.

Smiling, Sintha got to her feet and wrapped her arms around him again. “You are absolutely impossible.”

“You are e’en less,” he said roughly, and hugged her back.

Sintha rested contentedly for a moment against the solidity of him, so reassuring after vaporous months of worrying and waiting. He smelled like himself; he smelled like the sea. He smelled like their father. She felt the scald behind her eyes that presaged tears, and straightened again smartly to smooth the lapels of his waistcoat; she began to button it. “Twenty minutes, or you will be late to dinner.”

“Twenty minutes,” he grudgingly agreed.