by Lisa Cach
I wouldn’t dishonor her by claiming to be her friend. As she’d pointed out, I’d soon leave just as my mother had. “Sometimes talking to a stranger helps, too.”
She leaned back against the wall and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter.”
Clearly it did, but there was no point in pushing. “Una, if I ask you something, could you promise to keep it a secret and not tell anyone anything about it?”
Her eyes brightened. She gave a last swipe at her face and sat up straighter. “Who would I tell?”
“I mean it. No one can know about this.”
Una tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “Why are you trusting me?”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice to a whisper. “I saw you in a vision.”
“Doing what?”
“That’s the secret part. Do you promise not to tell: not your mother, not your grandmother, not anyone?”
She gave a fierce nod, then uncurled and sat forward on her knees, leaning close to me to whisper in my ear, “I swear on my life. You have to talk very, very quietly, though, because the acolytes are always spying for Mother.”
I put my lips near her ear. “In the vision, you had a green stone.”
She jerked back, staring at me with wide eyes.
“You know what I’m talking about?” I asked.
She shook her head.
I raised a skeptical brow, and waited.
“Maybe I know about it. What do you want with it?”
“I need it. Is it something you can help me get?”
Una moistened her lips. “Maybe,” she said, and then in a worried rush, “Don’t ask my mother about it. She’ll never let you have it if she knows you want it.”
“No, I’d figured that out already.”
“She thinks she knows everything, sees everything. Controls everyone. And she does. Most of the time.”
“She told me that she lets you do as you wish.”
Una smiled crookedly, the angle of her lips more bitter than amused. “That’s what she tells people. She doesn’t want them to know the truth.”
“Which is?”
“Her daughter is the one person in the world she can’t control.”
“The blond boy, there. He’s the lucky groom, and will do very well for your lesson,” Tanwen said. “His name is Pyrs.”
I looked where she was pointing. Pyrs was probably sixteen or seventeen, his skin cream and pink, his mustache too thick and masculine for his uncertain, effeminate face. It looked like he’d glued a squirrel tail to his upper lip. Maybe he really had. “He looks like a virgin.”
“I’ve been told it’s so, and so much the better: think of all that pent-up energy, waiting to burst free!”
“Burst will be the right word, probably the moment he sees a nipple.”
“He’s young enough to go again, before you’ve had time to wipe his seed off your chest.”
“Ugh.”
“Come now, Nimia. The seed is a fine thing, and someday he may lead his clan—although he has older brothers better suited. Get Pyrs’s seed while he’s yet a youth, and you’ll have years of use from him.”
I couldn’t imagine ever learning a single useful thing from the boy: he had the look of a perpetual follower, not a leader. Still, he had an acceptable body, with square shoulders and tight buttocks, and although he was too lean and delicate for my tastes, he looked healthy, and eager enough.
Not that that was a great recommendation. Young men were always eager enough.
It was the evening of the banquet, and we were watching from behind the curtains at the back of the great hall as the male guests came in. Acolytes in filmy garments greeted them, their hair worn down in ringlets, their lips rouged, and their upper faces concealed behind painted masks. Their costumes turned what I knew to be average, homely girls into a gathering of forest nymphs, all breasts and lips and flowing hair, their sheer clothing offering glimpses of the dark valleys of promise between their thighs. The braziers burned high, the thick scents of smoke and incense hiding any lingering odor of banquets past, their orange-yellow light making even the roughest skin look like honey. A trio of poor musicians piped and thrummed from a corner, the sound filling the nervous spaces of quiet from men newly arrived and not yet drunk enough to be easy in the presence of tempting women.
Maerlin had not been happy when he learned I was going to take part in the banquet, and even less so when he heard that Druce was a guest. We both suspected Tanwen had something planned; we both knew she expected to get something from this night. I only hoped that I’d get what I needed—a basic lesson in using my powers—before she got what she was after.
And I most fervently hoped that Druce’s presence was only a coincidence. Even if he found out Maerlin was here, he wouldn’t do anything, would he? It would spoil his son’s celebration.
Although, come to think of it, a good brawl never seemed to dampen the spirits of warriors. A few dead bodies might, however.
“Tanwen could have set this up, just to do you harm,” I’d said to Maerlin.
“Would she have told you he was coming, if so?”
“She would have if she wanted to put us off our guard about her plots. She’d know we’d have this very conversation, and that we would conclude she had nothing planned with Druce. Oh, goddesses.” I’d rubbed my forehead in defeat. “I’m starting to sound like a scheming Frank.”
Maerlin had laughed and, in an uncharacteristic display of playfulness, tugged on my hair. “Let me worry about Tanwen and Druce. You need to focus on learning everything you can from her, as quickly as possible. As soon as we find the green stone, we’re leaving.”
I nodded. I had had enough of this place.
Maerlin had promised to keep watch during the “banquet,” and I trusted that he would, and that I would not see him while he did so. With Druce here he couldn’t stand over me with arms akimbo, making sure no one took advantage. Even without Druce it wouldn’t have worked, a glaring sorcerer being a bit of a mood spoiler for tender young virgin boys. Wood would wither. Snakes slither hissing back into their holes.
Unlike my talk with Una, Maerlin hadn’t learned anything of use from his conversation with Akantha. It was only when I insisted on hearing everything she’d said that he told me she had apologized for what happened between him and Tanwen. “ ‘Una was a mistake,’ Akantha said,” Maerlin told me. “ ‘If I’d known we’d get her, I would have stopped Tanwen from forcing you into her bed. We were hoping for so much. Instead we got that . . . aberration.’ Not much of an apology, was it?”
“Was Una in the room while she said this?” I asked, thinking of Una’s tears.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I would have noticed.”
“Would you have?”
“What does that mean?” he snapped, annoyed.
“Nothing about your powers of observation. But Una . . .”
“Sneaky, dreadful, unnatural creature.” He shuddered, the corners of his mouth pulling back in a painful grimace.
I said no more, not wanting to upset him further. It had occurred to me that Una might be a little too good at going unnoticed when she wanted. Given those shimmers of cold, Phannic sensation I’d gotten from her, I wasn’t as convinced as the rest that she was without powers. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a gift for not seeming present, and no one had realized it—not even her. How did one notice that which wasn’t there?
It would be a cruel joke, if true. The child who Maerlin had so fervently wished would never exist might have a talent for erasing herself from people’s awareness. She might have been born to be invisible.
I was not going to be so fortunate as to be invisible, though, during this evening. I didn’t much like the idea
of Maerlin watching while I did whatever I did with blond-boy, but I couldn’t see a way around it, if I wanted his protection. I wasn’t even sure why the thought of Maerlin watching embarrassed me. Maybe I thought he’d be judging my technique, saying to himself, “No, no, don’t hold his balls like that. Turn yourself the other way; your waist looks thick from that angle. Make more noise; moan to show him how happy you are with his sad little cock.”
Perhaps I didn’t want to look ridiculous in front of Maerlin, my fellow practitioner of the sexual arts. My equal. Tanwen would be my teacher, and I would be expected to follow her instructions; for this one evening I’d admitted my inferiority to her. But Maerlin . . . I’d seen enough to know that men and women always looked ridiculous during sex, when viewed coldly from the outside. Dignity was not compatible with a thorough fucking. What would he think of me?
Or maybe that worry was a lie I told myself, and the real truth was that I wanted him to watch, and wanted him to get hard, wishing it was his staff thrusting inside me, and knowing he had to wait until we were back in Corinium and it was time to call the storm, before he could spread my thighs and plunge inside. I wanted him to want me, even though I didn’t want to want him back. I wanted him to lust for me, past all reason. I wanted him to fall before me, a slave to his need, his strange metal heart finally beating to life with the blood of lusting humanity.
I wanted that strange creature to worship me.
It was a cruel, unreasonable wish, when I had no desire to return the devotion. (Did I?) It was his brother I wanted. Sane, sad, honorable Arthur, who couldn’t allow himself joy if it might come at the cost of others, yet made all those around him feel that they basked in the warmth of his perpetual fire.
What a selfish, twisted mess I was.
I glanced at Tanwen, her rosy, cat-claw nails holding back the edge of the curtain, her eyes bright as she watched the men come in. They thought themselves fierce warriors, strutting and laughing too loudly (still nervous, though the cups were being refilled) and accepting the homage of the fawning, traipsing acolytes as their due. They didn’t know that in this hall they were no mightier than wrens, stalked by a cat who purred in anticipation of getting her paws on them. They wouldn’t know they were being disemboweled when it happened; they’d groan their pleasure while the pretty kitty drank their blood.
It would be so easy to become like Tanwen. Clovis, Sygarius, Mordred: they had all tried to use me, and they would not be the last men to try. Why not pretend to let men do so, and take advantage of their arrogance by using them for my own ends?
Maybe Maerlin was wrong, and Akantha and Tanwen had more right to call themselves Phanne than he knew. Maybe this is how the tribe had survived over centuries, with fiercely independent women taking what they needed from men and then throwing them away. My mother had been loving toward me, but she’d left Brenn alone on a mountainside as soon as she’d sensed herself pregnant. She’d gotten what she wanted, and had no further use for him.
My thoughts were stirring a cauldron of unpleasant doubts and emotions, and doing nothing at all to prepare me for seducing Pyrs. I tried to remind myself that what I learned tonight might lead to my being able to reach Theo’s mind, no matter the distance that separated us.
But would any son want a mother like that? I had admired, even envied, the strength of Clovis’s murderous mother, Basina. But surely there were more ways to be powerful than to become like her or Tanwen. Could there not be strength built on kindness, rather than on betrayals and blades?
“There’s Druce,” Tanwen said. “The bald one in green. Once he catches sight of you he’ll want you for himself, but I’ll tell him you’re a special gift for Pyrs. He won’t argue with that.”
“Druce would be more useful to me than the boy.”
“His will is too strong; it would make for a disastrous lesson. And you don’t want him, trust me: he has a thick, nasty stump of a cock and fucks like a rabbit.” She fisted her hands in front of her, bent forward, and vibrated her arms as if she were a male, thrusting too fast to see.
I giggled.
Tanwen’s eyes danced as she put a hand over her loins and pouted in a little-girl voice, “I’m still bruised from last time.”
“When do we start?” I asked, looking back at the hall. Since she’d slept with Druce, that meant she had access to his thoughts.
“I do so like your enthusiasm,” she said.
“More like nerves. I’ll stop fretting once I’m doing something.”
She’d known we were on our way to Mona; that knowledge had surely come from hearing in Druce’s mind that Maerlin had killed men in his territory, and was heading her way. And she would have guessed I was his companion, due to the message I’d sent a few weeks earlier asking about my mother.
Her connection to Druce could be dangerous to Maerlin and me—did she have something planned for tonight? Should I call this off? Beg illness, find Maerlin and escape while we could?
But the men were already drinking, had already discarded their weapons; the acolytes were helping them disrobe. The men were leering at breasts, making jokes, spanking passing bottoms. They didn’t look intent on causing harm—and soon they would have no capacity for it.
Fuck it. Thinking and worrying and wallowing were for later. If I was going to do this, it was time. “That acolyte has her hands on my Pyrs.”
“And he looks as ready to spout as you feared.” She took my hand and led me out from behind the curtain and up the steps onto the dais. “I hope you’re not shy, Nimia.”
I looked at the huge couch spread with silks and cushions, and my stomach sank and my knees turned to jelly. “You don’t mean I’m going to be up here.”
“They’ll want to watch their princeling deflowered—every glorious moment of it.” She patted my cheek. “Don’t be frightened. You’ll love it. I promise.”
An acolyte rang a bell, and all eyes turned to Tanwen. And me.
Tanwen was worth looking at, wearing a loose, flowing green gown in the Roman style—though the neckline was so low, one could almost see her nipples. Gold bracelets covered her tattooed arms from wrist to shoulder; a diadem of gold and crystals sparkled in her hair, which had been curled into dozens of tiny ringlets. More gold and crystals sat in a tight collar around her neck, drawing attention to the bareness of her bosom beneath, the astounding pillows of rosy flesh held up high and full by some magic I could not name.
“Welcome to the College of Mona,” Tanwen said, her voice carrying with the power of a practiced performer. “Tonight you shall be apprentices of pleasure, studying the mystic powers of man and woman, cock and cunny, suck and fuck.” She paused, and the men laughed as she intended. “Those of you who have been here before, I hope you remember your lessons well, for you shall be tested. The acolytes will be expecting your best, and will be so very disappointed and forced to punish you if you fail to please them.”
Raucous hoots and taunts met this threat, complete with crotch-grabbing and hip-thrusting. The energy of their response alarmed me, and I scanned the shadows, looking for some sign of Maerlin. I felt like a piece of meat about to be thrown to the wolves.
“Like any good teacher, I have rules for my classroom,” Tanwen went on. “Obey them, and your pleasure shall be tenfold. Disobey, and you may find your joy in the sheep pen, but not in the dampened, fragrant folds of the beauties who surround you.” She told them they must obey every instruction an acolyte gave; they could not force an acolyte to an act she did not wish; they would pay ten times the value of any thing (or anyone) they damaged; and all bodily wastes were to be spent outside, no matter the weather.
“They like being told what to do,” Tanwen said in an aside to me, in Phannic. “They’re terrified of looking like fools and being unable to please a woman, even when they’ve paid for her.”
Her confidence bolstered my courage. She knew how to handle them, and
as long as she was at my side I would be all right.
Assuming she wanted me to be.
“Tonight is the most important night of one man’s life: the night he first sinks his sword into the scabbard it was born for.”
Cheers, and Pyrs’s face going scarlet. I felt a stab of pity for him. Poor kid, his first time with a woman put on display, to be gawked at and laughed at by men he’d likely known all his life. I’d wager some of the men were his brothers, and that they’d been giving him a hard time the whole journey here.
“And because we are so honored to be given the task of plucking his flower”—she was interrupted by more cheering, and when it had calmed went on—“we offer our own new flower, for him. My lady Nimia, fresh from far Byzantium, schooled in the arts of pleasure long known in that ancient, perverse, and eternally erotic capital.”
All lies, but that was the nature of a performance. I stepped forward and executed a rapid twirl, my short, sheer, cloth-of-gold gown flaring to give a glimpse of tattooed loins, my hair a swirling river of black. I’d had kinks set in my hair via dozens of tight braids worn all day, then combed out before I dressed. I’d tied a black mask over my upper face and rouged my lips, and when Tanwen had come to get me she’d had a handful of jewelry to drape upon me. When she saw the gold labyrinth and garnet bee hanging across my sternum, however, she’d frozen, and for the first time since we’d met I’d seen uneasiness in her gaze. She’d studied me and then said slowly, “That’ll do, I suppose.” There’d been no time for her to question me on it, for which I was grateful.
“Go fetch him,” Tanwen told me now, in Phannic. She would use our language to guide me through the evening; it wouldn’t do for anyone—be they acolytes or Druce’s men—to understand what was happening below the surface of this “banquet.”
As I moved across the dais, I felt myself slipping easily back into the familiar role of being a performer. So many times, I had danced and acted and played music for the entertainment of others. Even the promise of a sexual lesson in front of others was nothing new to me: Sygarius had done the same to me, and made me enjoy it despite my embarrassment.
