Novels by Jessechi

ORIONThe third morning he went back to the war room.Not because there was urgent work. The dispatches had been managed by Caius and the garrison was running its standard protocols and the allied pack communications were in their normal processing channel. He went because the war room was where he worked and he was a man who worked and doing anything other than working felt wrong.He sat at the table.He looked at the pile of dispatches Caius had organized.He looked at her side of the table.He thought about how long it had been since someone else had a side of his table.He thought: she is going to be back at this table before I think she should be back at this table and she is going to have opinions about every dispatch in that pile.He was correct.She appeared in the war room doorway on the fifth day.She was in her working clothes. She had her small book. She had the pen in her coat pocket. She had the specific quality of someone who had been patient for the required amount of

NYRAI woke up on the second morning and I ran a diagnostic.Not literally. I did not stand in the east wing and formally assess myself the way I assessed new intelligence. I sat in the chair beside the cradle with a cup of tea that Lena had left on the table and I went through things methodically and checked what was different and what was the same.My thoughts were the same. The way I organized them, the way I moved from observation to conclusion, the filing system, the small book on the writing desk that I was going to want as soon as I was ready to use it — all the same.The senses were different.I had known they would be different. Seraphel had told me and the precedent cases had documented it and I had been building my expectations for months. But knowing a thing is coming and having it arrive are different experiences. The east wing was acoustically complex now in a way it had not been before. I could hear the garrison rotation in the outer yard. I could hear Lena in the adjoi

ORIONHe had said her name seventeen times.He counted afterward. Not at the time — at the time he had not been counting anything except the distance between one breath and the next, between the room going bright and her eyes opening. But afterward, in the quiet of the morning with her asleep and Caela asleep and the east wing settled, he sat in the chair beside the bed and he counted and the number was seventeen.He had not planned to say it at all. He had been holding her hand and reading Seraphel's face and then the room had shifted and he had looked at Nyra and seen the tide coming in and he had started saying her name and he had not been able to stop.Not a prayer. Not a strategy. Just her name, because it was the only thing he had.It had turned out to be enough.He thought about the Moon Goddess.He had been a man of practical things. Of intelligence and garrison reports and political calculations and the specific mechanics of running a kingdom. He had not been a man who though

NYRAThe pain came in waves and between the waves I was still completely myself.That was the part Seraphel had not told me. That the clarity would be there even inside the worst of it, that the two things would sit alongside each other without canceling each other out. Pain and presence. Both at the same time.Lena was on my left. Seraphel was on my right. She had arrived at the Keep at the third hour of the night, coming through the gate before Orion's runner had reached her which meant she had felt something, or known something, or simply understood that tonight was the night and had come.She said: "I am here."I said: "Good."That had been four hours ago.Orion was in the corridor. I had sent word when I was ready for him to come inside and I was not yet ready. I needed to get through the first part alone. I had always gotten through the first part of things alone. It was how I was built.Between the fourth and fifth wave I said: "Tell him to come in."Lena went to the door.He c

ORIONOn the fourteenth day after Caele's birth, Nyra came back to the war room.He was already there. He had been there since the sixth hour.She came in at the seventh hour with Caele in one arm and a morning dispatch in the other hand, set the dispatch on the table, set Caele in the chair beside her where a cushion had been placed at some point in the past two weeks, and sat down and opened the dispatch.He looked at her.She looked at the dispatch.She said: "Crest's response arrived."He said: "What does he say."She said: "That he congratulates the Fenwick Realm on the birth of an heir. That the eastern alliance is fully committed. That whatever Caele turns out to be the Crest Pack looks forward to knowing her." She turned the page. "And that the spring conference's agenda should include a formal announcement and a celebration and he would like to host it."He said: "That is a significant offer."She said: "Yes." She set the letter down. "He is committing his pack to the Fenwick

She said: "I will not come again unless you call for me."She walked out.He heard her footsteps going through the corridor and the outer yard and then the sound of the gate.The east wing was quiet.He looked at Nyra.She looked at him.She said: "She said the wolf who loved the mountain became part of it."He said: "Yes."She said: "To Caele."He said: "Yes."She said: "She knows what Caele is going to be."He said: "Yes."She looked at the baby.She said: "So do I."She looked at him.She said: "Something new."He said: "Yes."She said: "This whole Keep has been building toward something new."He said: "Yes."She held the baby in the morning light.He sat beside her.The east wing was warm.The fire was burning.The child was here.After Seraphel left he sat beside Nyra in the east wing for a long time.Not working. Not discussing strategy or correspondence or the Varro monitoring or the allied pack communications. Just sitting.Caele was asleep.The morning was doing what mornings