The tiles and the angles of the turn combined with the rush of the fountains to effectively drown out individual voices or words. Sound washed the air in a continual stream that was not loud but still deafening. Mazhd would have had to embrace Fadurant and speak directly to his ear in here. Fadurant, imagining it as he walked, found the idea repellent at a visceral level – he had never felt any doubt or ambiguity about his own preferences. He always turned left off the circle, towards the only place in the house there would be women, never right into rooms where men sported with one another.
Today an impulse he did not want to examine too closely made him choose the room where the women kept their anonymity and offered themselves cordially to anyone. There was something egalitarian and kind in the gesture that touched him much more than being chosen from a crowd would have done. An honest appeal for sex from both sides and nothing to lose or gain but some moments of pleasure.
There were no recliners here, but many padded benches upon which the men sat and waited or engaged with their partner in full view of the others. It was courtesy not to pay attention to anyone’s identity here, for any reason, though all were free to look as they pleased. Many simply watched and took care of themselves as there were not usually enough women to go around. Women, Fadurant and every other man in Empire knew well, were spoiled for choice when it came to sex so that the bath house was only one of many possible sources of indulgence, whereas men had to know their place and compete successfully. This room, he supposed, had the gratification of virtue added to it in that the women were apparently offering a selfless service, although the anonymity meant there would never be public recognition of such a thing. In the spirit of the place, he knew most men attempted to repay the generous favours with competence, even reverence. What kind of man would do otherwise?
The girl at the fountain, turning as she bathed herself in warm water falling from above her, was a surprise even to him, and he’d seen every kind of woman in here. Not least because he’d seen her the week before. Then she had been quickly seized upon, but at this moment as he walked into the room she had just stepped into the flow through the central arch that led to the women’s exit. Her grey mask and golden braids stood out against her pale skin as rich colours. The white ribbon on her waist marking her was barely visible. Against the blue of the tile and the mosaic she was milk white, only her nipples standing out in dark coral on the new fullness of her unfinished breasts.
Purely by chance his pace and motion brought him to her first, before she had even turned once. He took her by her upper arm in a gesture so firm it surprised him. They both paused. The grip and the speed of it were unseemly. He was prepared to let her go if she gave him the signal, although a surge of ferocious possessiveness was already on him and a readiness to fight. In his hand she was smaller than he had thought and her flesh was soft, almost without muscle, it yielded around her bones so easily. For a moment he was worried that he had hurt her. He felt the eyes of the room on him, the rise in tension as she lifted her face to meet his eyes through the mask. One gesture from her would cast him in a shame that might bar him from here for ever. He felt desperate, foolish…
But she bowed her head demurely and put her hand on his chest instead, over his heart. Acceptance.
He swelled with pride and desire, rescued, a thousand miles high, a stupid lad with his heart beating, a blush on his face and a standing cock that raised a wry laugh of recognition from the benches. Friendly, that laugh, even when it was envious.
But now all his attention belonged to her as he escorted her to a vacant alcove. Through the eyeslots of the mask he fancied her eyes were dark blue as she watched him for the formal sign language which would let him tell her what he pleased without either of them having to betray themselves through their voices. His hands on her delicate, new skin looked huge, rough and powerful. The sight excited him beyond explanation. He was glad for the oil he’d bothered to use. It hid the callouses, softened them into things fit to feel with.
She looked down at them too, as he touched her waist’s slender, slight curve and cupped her breast. Her neck flushed a soft pink and a murmur of appreciation from behind them deepened the colour. Her nipple hardened and rose under his thumb and she placed her hands involuntarily on his shoulders for balance. Her responses aroused him painfully. He wanted to keep her. He wanted to show her off. She was rare. He wanted to give her and take her.
They sat on the bench, him astride it and she with her soft round bottom tucked against his cockstand, her back cradled against his hard body, inside the embrace of his arms as she leaned back, turning her face to his neck. He spread open her legs, feet drawn high, knees up and wide, so that she was completely exposed as his fingers slipped down – the skilled swordhand caressing her smooth, naked mons and brushing her lips there, sliding between them, moving them softly apart whilst his shield arm braced her against him, claiming her breast, pinching that delicate, hardening flesh between finger and thumb so she gasped and moaned. He was so strong he could pin her effortlessly if she had not been completely submissive.
The girl wound sensually against him, reactive to his every touch, her skin sliding against him in the mix of oil and water with an effortless ease that threatened to undo his control. He held her harder to him, warning her not to, and lifted his swordhand once to flash a sign where she could see it. She turned her masked face fully into his neck where his head bent next to her, as if wanting to hide and held fast to his raised arm with one hand while her other joined his between her legs. She opened herself with her fingers to the gaze of the men before her and Fadurant slid his own slippery middle finger softly over her taut, swelling flesh teasingly until she arched her back and then he let the tip slide inside her.
Unbelievably he felt a soft, wet rush meet him. His first thought was that she was bleeding and lifted his hand but it was clear. She whimpered, a pleading noise. He understood that and put his hand back where it had been. One by one he slid his fingers inside her until they were coated. With each withdrawal she moaned and cried, her head free of him now, looking down at herself, her hand digging into his arm with a grip much stronger than he would have given her credit for. He watched with her his own thick fingers pushing effortlessly into her, sliding up and over the shocking red rose of her swollen lips, being enveloped by the thick petals of them as he teased her. She tried to wriggle, crying protest noises that were lost in the wash of the noise as he slid his first and second fingers into her with slow authority, much slower than she would have liked so that he could feel the steady swell of her inside, experience telling him it wouldn’t be much longer.
Beside them he heard a woman’s voice say something in a warm tone and a sharp sound of a man’s climaxing grunt. Vague movements, suggestive ones, were all around but he could see only her, only himself.
He pushed his fingers deep, all the way, careful because she was so delicate and he felt he could hurt her, eager because her body wanted it and he was intoxicated with what he could do to her and the fact that this girl wanted him to. He thought of the Empress’s runner crossing the baking square, trailing a wake of gleeful distraction, the Karoo ignoring her as if he were a stone. This girl was the same age. She wouldn’t be a runner, too slight. But she ought to be somewhere. He wondered why she was here but then she cried out as his hand moved and he felt a tremor around his fingers. She got up at the same instant he withdrew his hand, placed her hands on the bench before her and presented herself to him on all fours, legs as wide as she could make them, standing on her tiptoes. Her back arched, begging for it and as if he wasn’t going fast enough for her her left hand abruptly flashed out to sign at him; she asked, didn’t demand, even on the edge of her orgasm, and that was more than enough for Fadurant.
He took her by the hip, seated his cock firmly in her open rose and penetrated her with a thick slide, afraid he was going to be too much or too slow. She backed to meet him until he was all in and felt the end of her. It gave her pain, he knew by a moment of wi
ncing, but then she pressed back again and made a soft sound of despair as he made her wait, holding her there. He knew that if only he could time it right he could extend the moment on the brink, bring it to a rise and fall. No man wanted to be witnessed as incompetent. He couldn’t afford to be, even here, where the conspiracy of anonymity was so intense only a political play of real significance would ever threaten it, and even then such a gesture would have serious repercussions. The Empress would dislike it and her displeasure could be fatal. Even so.
This thought allowed him to keep control even as the tight press of the girl’s body was almost unendurable. She did not sign again. Another man walked close to her, stroked her under her chin gently, signed to ask if she would be staying. When she signalled yes he gave her his ribbon and she wrapped it around her fingers before he walked easily away to a seat beyond Fadurant’s sightline. The etiquette was precise, commonplace. Fadurant was surprised by the severity of the possessive urge that swept him suddenly. He was no boy. He knew the ropes. Why then this?
He withdrew almost all the way and then with idle pace pressed himself back into her, knowing as he did it how much this gave away his feelings, their incorrect, incontinent power. The sensation was exquisite. She was delicious – hot, sweet – the best he had ever tasted. He could not fathom it. She was not even his type.
The girl made near inaudible noises of surrender, of pleading, though he heard them well enough. She pushed herself at him. To his right an older man snorted with amusement at her eagerness, surprised too, enchanted no doubt, Fadurant thought, because he was. Abruptly becoming aware that he was the target of too much interest he moved with speed, certainty and strength, doing hard to her what he would rather have done gently. It had the desired effect. She came near immediately with a series of sharp exclamations which she tried to bite back. He did not stop until his own climax came a few seconds later. Her knees gave way then but he was strong and let her down on to the bench gently, withdrawing in a gracious kind of ease that wasn’t his style at all, but was the style of the Circle. He would have kept her with him all day if she were a girl in his room and not left her body at all.
He had to make himself leave her there and go shower in the falling water around the central column. He didn’t look back at her – what was the point? He had no idea who she was nor was he meant to. His abandonment now marked the end to a perfect encounter.
His body burned with a feeling like trapped light low in his abdomen. It pulled towards where he knew she was behind him. Annoyed with this foolishness he stepped out, took a fresh towel and busied himself with drying. He looked up once, at the doorway just before he was ready to leave.
Zharazin Mazhd leaned there in the curved aperture. His field of vision held Fadurant within it certainly but the pits of his eyes were directed behind, at the girl and whatever was happening to her now. Fadurant passed him as he left. Neither of them made any effort to acknowledge the other.
ISABEAU
Isabeau, spread-eagled face down on one man while another braced himself over her from behind, doubly penetrated, fastened her hands on the unyielding stone of the bench legs as she rested her head on her supporter’s shoulder and closed her eyes. The pleasure she felt was enough to make her delirious but one fact stayed in her mind with uncomfortable resilience. She had some strange attraction to the man who had first claimed her.
This had surprised her enough to almost shake off his grip, because she felt these things for no men. If she had she supposed she would be part of some web like her sister’s crew, forever and exhaustingly embroiled in one pointless and gigantic drama tangle. Supposing it an accident of circumstance, but nonetheless interesting for that, she had decided to allow him to continue, with a scientist’s attitude to the results. She had expected a courteous, responsible kind of effort and had been prepared to act her part to speed his pleasure – her own pleasure being very much determined by exactly how grateful or how needy the man of the moment appeared to be. She was open to anything, so long as she felt that she was in the controlling position of the bestower; goddess of plenty.
Instead, what had happened? She didn’t know. It had been out of her control. She didn’t even know if it was him or the fact he had taken immediate command of her, or the fact that he had instructed her to open herself to the gazes of the others as if she was his and her body was something he could give or withhold from other men at will. That was a barbaric thing. In Empire it was out of the question. Why then had she felt impelled to watch him touch her and found the sight so exciting she could not stop herself? Only considering it from the cool distance of a rational perspective erased the alarm that it had made her feel. Only accepting these other men, feeling herself well and appreciatively used, restored the world to its even keel.
The man inside her ass came first and the strong thrum of it passing through the soft wall of her body caused his friend to trigger as well. The two of them spent strongly in her and she rewarded them with a bitten shoulder and muffled but genuine cries of her climax. In her mind’s eye she saw his rough fingers slip inside her, claiming her for the other men.
She felt that somehow his face was familiar although she’d glanced at it only for a second. Her train of thought was disturbed as her present lovers withdrew themselves, one or both of them setting her gently and alone upon the padded bench. As soon as they had gone she felt bereft and curled up. Another woman in a red headdress came up and put a hand on her shoulder to see if she was well.
Isabeau nodded, signed that she was only resting, but then got up and removed her ribbon. She showered and permitted a tall and dark-skinned man to oil her body. He was very muscular and agile looking. His hands were slender, long fingered, graceful as silk. He looked at her with large dark eyes, liquid blackness ringed by dense lashes. Plains eyes, emphasised by the pulled back hair, the shadow of stubble on his jaw. His touch was as caring as any Isabeau had ever felt. He made no effort to be sexual although he was erect and his mouth was full with the telltale swelling of desire. He was the most beautiful man Isabeau had ever seen. He anointed her and smiled at her and held her hand so she did not slip as she passed through the exit door and out of his existence.
What did that mean? What was it for?
The confidence she had come with and had come to reinforce was gone. She understood nothing.
After she had dressed she went out and tossed her notebook into the first trash bin she passed on the way to the Library.
CHAPTER FIVE
MINNABAR
Minnabar Huntingore pushed her way to the front of the crowds at the barracks’ yard using smiles and elbows and a natural otter-like grace to reach the heavy black iron bars of the gate. She was vaguely aware of the others in the web moving with less verve behind her but they didn’t matter. She closed her hands around the cold iron – why was it cold even on a sweltering evening like this one? But mercifully it was. Cool smoothness flowed into her blood as she was pressed up against the rods. The crosspiece cut into her waist as she put her foot on a low horizontal and stepped up to gain a vital extra ten centimetres of height. As she flexed her legs she felt her strength and beauty completed with victory over all the other poor fools gathered there to catch a glimpse of this rare, this fabled exotic creature. She didn’t care whose feet she’d trodden on to get here nor what anyone thought of it. She would be first. She would be centre. If there was something to be had here, she would have it.
The bars were deliciously cold against her face. She felt Marina arrive beside her, knew her by the smell of expensive old perfume and the sudden rustle of taffeta silk from Marina’s dress. To the other side and behind them the odours of hot flesh, soaps and fabrics briefly rose over the hot dry dust smell and the rich stink of horse dung, freshly dropped by the cavalry passing out of the yard on their evening tour of the city periphery.
‘Oh, nobody there yet?’ Marina sighed. She was permanently anguished by the shortfalls of life in Glimshard.
‘W
rong, caballero. They’re staggering in right now…’ Minnabar pointed to the corner of the yard which led via a long staircase to the Soldier’s Gate in the city’s wall. There several young men in sweat-stained and dusty cloth armour were resting in the shadow of the wooden gate, sides heaving as they caught their breath. But in spite of this nobody was waiting for them. The rumours that had flown from wall to gate to street to Minnabar’s ear said quite clearly without mistake that there was a tiger man in the army, a creature, a beast, and that he was running around in the countryside with a group of recruits, back and forth through the fields like a shepherding dog, sometimes on all fours, while men of reasonable fitness threw up their guts in their efforts to beat one another into his good graces. He was handsome, he was vile, he was monstrous, he was incredible – Minnabar longed for it all to be true. She wanted badly to be thrilled by being scared out of her wits, shocked by the improbability, the daring, the sheer unexpurgated and delicious outrage of such a being entering Glimshard at all. They were fables. They were not real. She would have preferred a unicorn but if this were true then it would seem that their small, ordinary lives were about to be lifted into the miraculous realm of magic and not the shambolic engineering or piddling alchemy of the high city and all its boring drone of war.
Around her, the press of people increased all the time so that when finally the last grey-faced recruit staggered through the gateway and collapsed at the feet of his squadmates in a heap of Steppe-brown rag she was almost crushed to the bars. Marina was nearly in tears although she kept her position. Minnabar felt a quick hand pick her pockets, but it hardly mattered. Across the vast, empty dust of the training yard the last recruit was being inexplicably pelted with boots. Meantime, the officers, notable by the red and gold trims and their tabards bearing the golden web, were shaking heads and knocking their knuckles together, handing over bets in pay scrip. One, she fancied the highest rank present, his cowl tasselled, was laughing, collecting the most and then he raised his arm in a half-salute half-huzzah as the object of his successful gamble came loping through the shadows and into the last light of the dying sun.
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