by L. K. Rigel
When Mal found out what those two were planning, she organized the rest of the hub to bring a picnic and join them today on Corcovado.
She and Nin spread a blanket over the ground and helped Claire and Roh unpack the food. Kairo was no help. She kept scanning the airspace over the bay.
“So you don’t bring the bleeders up here at all now?” Claire asked.
“Not since one wandered into the Empani nest,” Roh said. “You weren’t here.”
“She wasn’t hurt.” Nin sounded defensive. In addition to being Sister Marin’s research assistant, she taught an occasional seminar in special species. She had decided to become an expert on the Empani, and today she was going to do something crazy. “Not physically. She wasn’t even hungry.”
“Yeah, but she was loco in her cabesa for a couple weeks.” Roh made a circle in the air near her temple and crossed her eyes.
Kairo opened a bottle of wine. “We forgot to slap the Redeemer’s foot!”
“Then none of us will have bad luck,” Mal said. She missed Beastie. The dogs were all at the groomer today so they’d be out of the way if the hub had to rescue Nin from the Empani.
Nin laughed and tossed Mal a blood orange. Mal had to admit Nin was happy. She had kept her hair short and spiky, which gave her a powerful but impishly perverse look. And she was back in shape. It was hard to believe she’d ever been sick in her life.
She’d given herself a completion tat, a pink rosebud on her left cheek. It made Mal want to cry.
“Who’s unlucky?” Nin said.
“Not Kairo with her mad red king.” Roh grinned. “Talk about loco in the cabesa. He sends her a new load of presents every other day.”
Kairo wrinkled her nose, but she looked happy too.
“Tell him to send more stout next time,” Nin said.
“Ack, that stuff is horrible!” Mal would never get used to the bitter drink.
Roh just laughed. “Speaking of sending stuff, look who’s here.”
The Golden Wasp, the great square-rigged steam and sail frigate from Allel, was anchored in the harbor. This wasn’t an odd thing; under the perennial obligation of Celia’s Triune Contract, Allel replenished Red City’s beehives every year.
“It’s come to deliver the tribute.” Claire sniffed. She was always sensitive about the hormone controversy, and she was always snide about Allel. “I’m told they sent Napa pinot noir in addition to the hives this year. Is that what we’re drinking?”
“Hardly.” Kairo held her glass up to the light. “This is Pomerol. Harold sent a case.”
“I’ve always wanted to travel on the Golden Wasp,” said Sister Marin. “Too bad Ninshubur and I can’t hitch a ride for our trip to Allel. But it would be a conflict of interest, I guess.”
“Why are you going to Allel?” Mal shot Nin a look that said and why didn’t you tell me you were going?
“They have an Empani nest in the forest outside the citadel.” Nin was really into this stuff. “We’re going to check it out.”
“What’s the conflict?” Mal said. “Won’t Allel welcome your investigation?”
“Of the Empani, yes,” said Sister Marin. “But we’re also going as a Team of Inquiry. It’s very low level, nothing serious. Allel’s energy readings have been strange lately. Their usage level has dropped off a cliff, but their hospital hasn’t had an outage in eighteen months.”
“Voila!” Roh pointed again, this time at the sky above the bay. Hibernia’s airship, the Angel’s Harp, emerged from a puffy white cloud and pulled up to the dirigidock. “More loot for Kairo?”
“Actually, it’s come for me. I’m leaving for Hibernia tomorrow.”
“But you haven’t been in recovery even two months!” Mal immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
“She doesn’t want to risk breach, like some people.” Claire gave her a sideways glance. If Mal didn’t enter quarantine in the next four weeks, she’d be in violation of her contract.
“Harold is ancient,” Kairo said. “I’m not taking any chances. I have to complete this contract while he’s still able to do his part. If you know what I mean.”
Time to change the subject. “Ninny, show us the scarves.”
Sister Marin nodded agreement, and Nin pulled a leather pouch from her backpack. Everybody drew closer.
“I call this one the hydroponics cloth.” She spread a two-foot-by-six-inch gray rectangle on the picnic blanket. This was the cloth Mal had found during the rites of May after the Empani had been with Edmund. “The other one is the Lily cloth.”
They were all suddenly quiet, remembering the last time they’d been on Corcovado together. As far as Mal knew, none of them had written to Kim since that day. It would be cruel to remind her of what she’d lost.
“How does it work?” Roh’s question saved them from their thoughts of Kim.
“Empanii are shapeshifters, so we think the cloth is effective for them no matter which part of their body it touches, but a human has to wear it over the medulla oblongata.” Nin touched the back of her head where the skull met the top of the spinal cord.
“If you wear the cloth, an Empani can’t read your mind, so it can’t find a shape that will put you in thrall. But it has another effect. It makes humans not pay attention to you.”
“It’s all to do with psychic boundaries,” Sister Marin said. “For the Empanii, we are pretty sure the cloth lets them withstand the desires of humans. Wearing it, even in the presence of a human, they can take whatever shape they choose. We think they’ve been coming into the compound with more frequency.”
“Sting me.” Claire’s use of the slang reminded Mal of Counselor – and Edmund. Nin would see them both when she went to Allel. That’s where Mal wanted to go, not to Garrick.
“Who is making this cloth?” she said. “What is it made out of?”
“We don’t know where the cloth comes from,” Nin said.
“But Ninshubur worked it out that the thread it’s woven from is spun from a mutation of cotton.” Sister Marin was obviously proud of Nin.
“What’s cotton?” Roh said.
“It’s a plant that was used to make cloth before the final world war. It was banned because its cultivation required so much water. But apparently a remnant survived.”
“What city would allow this?” Kairo said. “Who would risk losing contract privileges with Red City or fuel from Garrick?”
“Maybe it is Garrick,” Roh said. Everybody looked at Mal.
“Don’t look at me.” She held out her empty hands. “I’m not saying I trust Garrick, but this isn’t his style. If he wanted to do something, he’d just do it. He doesn’t care what anybody else thinks.”
They should all know that from his princess story.
“But what do they want?” Roh said. “The Empanii.”
“That’s what Ninshubur is going to ask them today.”
“Ninny, I wish you wouldn’t,” Mal said. “Cancel the experiment; don’t go.”
“Has an Empani ever hurt anyone?” Nin jumped to her feet in one springing move. “No.” She flashed a goofy grin as she flung the cloth around her neck.
“Are you leaving in the morning?” Roh asked Kairo.
“I might go tonight.” Kairo glanced at the Angel’s Harp at the dirigidock. She seemed actually eager to go. “I’m packed, and Delilah will be ready this afternoon. There’s nothing keeping me here.”
Everybody wanted to go where they were supposed to go. Everybody else.
The sun was past the midday point, and they were full of wine and pasties and oranges and conversation. They packed up, and started down Corcovado.
“Sister Marin,” Mal said. “I talked with the prince of Allel when he was here for the Rites.” It was only right to defend Edmund. After all, he had bid on her. “He told me that Allel’s hospital had an outage once where they lost almost a hundred children, and when he was king he meant to require stricter conservation by his people to make the power grid secure.
”
“Thank you, Mallory. That helps.”
Mal slowed her pace and fell behind. She stopped at an alcove protected from the wind by a few boulders, large enough for two or three people to watch the bay and the dirigidock.
She sat down and pulled the stone Asherah out of her pocket. It always felt warm in her hand, and made her think the goddess was aware of her and knew who she was among all the people in the world.
The Angel’s Harp was a sleek green machine with airjets, rudder, and polished brass fixtures which gleamed like gold. Its crew crowded the dirigidock gangway loading Kairo’s boxes and chests.
The crew of the Golden Wasp was just as busy, but they were unloading the hold instead of filling it, carrying the hives tenderly. The ship bobbed on the water like a pleasant haven. A person might want to return to her contract early, if the Golden Wasp was waiting to take her.
Ack. It did no good to think that way. And really, the sooner she got it over with at Garrick, the sooner she’d be free of him forever.
When she’d returned for the lying-in, he paraded her through the city to show off her belly. The streets were obsessively clean and well-ordered beneath the filthy skies and the blaring streetlights, giving off a feeling of sterile sadness.
The raptor cages on the citadel walls were made of gleaming dark gray metal. Along the streets, the aristocrats had looked bored and entitled anxious to get back inside, and the bureaucrats had been mindlessly approving.
The impoverished citadellers were happier about the candies and protein lozenges Garrick’s guards threw into the crowd than any news about heirs and a smooth succession.
Garrick – King Garrick now – had acted like the man she’d known before the ceremony. He shone like the sun, silly with good cheer. He kissed her cheek and called her our wonderful lady of good fortune. Then when they returned to the citadel, his demeanor went cold; the actor had left his stage. He handed her off to the Days like he was turning his dogs over to their groomer and was gone.
The good news was that she didn’t see him again.
She set her labor in motion at the earliest safe moment. The LOTHs swooned over her and drove her crazy, and the KP’s brought out the good drugs. Then the great dancing lump in her belly was gone and she was, once again, merely one human being.
Garrick didn’t even see her to thank her when she left for her recovery period.
“Yeah, he’s pretty much a jerk, isn’t he?”
The high-pitched, child-like voice belonged to a tiny woman standing on the granite slab just above Mal’s spot. She had an aura of massive power, but she was less than five feet tall. Though thin, she was curved like a breeder, with full breasts and rounded hips.
Her wild blood-red hair appeared dyed, except that the curls were streaked through with silver. It was piled on top of her head, held in place – not very well – by dainty gold and pink cords.
She looked the opposite of fearsome, but Mal trembled.
“But a very pretty man. As was his father.” She didn’t wear sunglasses, and she had a dreamy, lustful look in her eye that didn’t match the little-girl quality of her voice. Mal had heard that voice before. As young as it sounded, it felt as old as Corcovado.
“But you think that in a good way, don’t you.” She squinted playfully and jumped off the rock.
She wore two pieces of flimsy cloth held together at her shoulders, and Mal caught a flash of a perfect body and creamy, pale skin before the outfit settled. The cloth was some kind of shimmering pastel silky stuff that changed colors according to no apparent pattern. The two pieces were held together by – well, it looked like it was held together by dragons. Fantastical, tiny little living dragons as long as Mal’s finger.
“Are you an Empani?” Mal shook so much it was hard to talk. This wasn’t an Empani. She didn’t feel like this before, even when the Empani had touched her. Also, this shape didn’t exist in her memory.
“What an idea,” said the creature. “Creature? Be careful, Mallory. My love for you is not never-ending. Yes, I can read your thoughts, dense as they are.”
“Are you a special species?”
“I am that I am.” The tiny dragons hissed sparks. “But don’t confuse me with Samael, the blow-hard. I’m no creature, and I am no creator, either. But you’re distracting me. Always with the questions! It could be endearing – except that it’s not.”
Great gods. Asherah!
Mal prostrated herself before the goddess. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Suddenly, that theory about the gods being jealous of humans didn’t sound right.
“I am no Samael. I’m perfectly willing to be seen – when I’m willing to be seen. So get up and look at me.”
She had a cherubic face with round cheeks, a pouting mouth, and cute blue eyes with wrinkles at the corners. Mal felt wobbly. She remembered now where she had seen the hair. Not the hair. Think of something important. What is it you’re supposed to ask when you see a god? What do you – that’s it.
“What do you want of me?”
Asherah’s expression softened. She held her palm a few inches over Mal’s heart. The trembling stopped, replaced by utter serenity and contentment. Her voice was serious, compassionate. “For now, I want you to know that I am with you always.”
The world went woozy. When Mal regained her balance, she was alone. Everything had changed. The world was the same; it was completely different. She had no fear. Asherah knew who she was, and had spoken to her.
The words were leaving her like a fading dream, but she knew she that Asherah would be with her always. Garrick was nothing.
There was something in her hand – the carved stone Asherah. Yes, that was the hair exactly. But the grotesque breasts were all wrong.
A cleansing breeze flowed through the trees, and sunlight on the bay made the water sparkle. Seagulls begged the crew for scraps at the Golden Wasp. Their noise blended with the chirp-and-click song of purple martins on the mountain.
She should be terrified. But her heart was lighter than it had been – ever. She’d been in the presence of a god, her personal god. Talk about hierophany. She could face Garrick now. And Father Jesse. The Samaeli could shout one god, one god until he lost his mind; it wouldn’t make it true.
She inhaled and blew it out. She felt like she could explode with energy. A run down the mountain was just what she needed. She rounded a bend in the path and nearly crashed into Edmund.
As she scrambled backwards, her heart pounded so hard she could hear it in her ears. All right. All right. Nin always insisted the Empanii never hurt anyone. It would be all right. But she should just keep running, just go now.
On the other hand, it did look so very much like him. How could she have forgotten how good-looking he was, what kind – and sexy – eyes he had? How could she have ever preferred Garrick’s looks to Edmund’s?
All this built-up energy from encountering Asherah needed to go somewhere.
“Mallory?” Yes. That was his voice. She loved the sound of her name rolling over his tongue. She sensed no danger; in fact, she felt quite the opposite.
Why not? Edmund – the real Edmund – had been no worse off when he was with the Empani that had taken her shape. Why shouldn’t she find out what it would be like? She longed to feel him inside her again.
“Edmund.” She barely whispered. He took a step toward her, and she ran to his arms. It felt wonderful, leaning against his chest, into his strength, his steadiness. His kindness. She never wanted to be anywhere else.
The Empani was just reading her own desire and feeding it back to her. She knew that. She didn’t care. She tilted her head to look at him. His dark eyes were so kind. There was lust too, but also respect. She saw everything she wanted to see. But so dangerous. She shouldn’t even pretend at this.
It took her face in its hands and kissed her mouth, then her neck and throat and murmured oh, great gods in a deep, breathy voice. It unhooked the fasteners of her vest. Much better
. Forget respect, friendship, care. Lust is permitted. Lust is safe.
It took off its cloak and spread it on the ground. It opened her vest and slipped it off, the only thing she was wearing on top. She untied her gi pants and stepped out of them. On its knees, it pulled her hips close, kissed her belly and put a hand between her legs.
She ran her fingers through the dark hair and down over the shoulders and the honeybee tattoo. She traced it with her fingernail, and she felt happy just looking at it.
It stood up and lifted her off the ground and she wrapped her legs around its waist. It kissed her and said mmm. The purple martins sang, and a breeze caressed skin on their backs.
It laid her down on the cloak. There were no words between them, only a few groans and gasps. She let it caress and suck and lick and rub until she lost herself in the pleasure, and it moved her knees further apart and came into her.
Yes, this was exactly how he had felt, so right, a perfect fit, as if the gods had made him for her. It drove deep into her, and she wrapped her legs around it again and believed it was Edmund.
How could it not be? How could this not be what all her senses told her that it was? It shuddered and let go and surrendered to her, and all was satisfying and right. Tears ran out the corners of her eyes and got her shades wet, and she laughed at herself.
It pulled out of her and moved down, lying quietly in her arms. She listened to the wind in the trees as the Empani’s body grew heavy with sleep, its head between her breasts. It started to snore! That was funny. She’d have to tell Nin about that.
Oh. Nin. Wasn’t there something about Nin and the Empani?
This Empani, at any rate, had fallen asleep. She eased out from under it and put her clothes on. As she jogged down the path, the sun slipped behind the mountain. How did it get to be so late? She took off her shades.
At the bottom of the mountain, Nin was alone near the compound gate.
“Ninny, wait!” When Mal caught up to her, she looked disoriented. “Oh, Nin, are you all right? What happened?”
