by Daryl Banner
The rest of him just wishes very much to be back home. He’s so tired of being at the whim of these two brothers, both whom have claimed to know the best interest for him. His life is just a series of seeking men to follow … from his father, to his brothers, to Dran, to Baron, and now to Baal. When will he ever be his own?
“Water,” murmurs Link, thinking of what he saw. “Gold. Gold spilling from the hands of a young girl … a friend of mine, a friend I met in the Waterways, long ago. She stole a purse of gold from me.”
“A purse of gold?” It’s Baal’s turn to appear skeptical. “What is a slum boy your age doing with a purse of gold?”
“I had stolen it myself. She had stolen a stolen purse of gold.”
Baal thinks on that, the gears of his mind working. “Gold, twice-stolen. A girl thief in the canals … where you took my brother and his half-life boys.” Baal’s eyes search the air for answers. “Are we to go back to the Waterways, but now? Ten years ago?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I saw water because I … well, because I was being drowned. In the Waterways. That’s rather dumb.” Link swallows. “I’m not sure if it means—”
“You had the vision there,” Baal points out. “Perhaps you had the vision because you were closer to the Goddesses. Maybe it is in water that they lurk.”
Lurk, he says … like the Goddesses are creatures, lurking in the way a street dog does, or like an alley cat perched on a dumpster …
“I’m sorry,” mutters Baal with a lift of his eyebrows. “I’m not sure if we can go with just one piece of the vision. We need more.”
Link and Ames share a look once again, as if Link is asking through his eyes whether he ought to say anything more to Baal. Ames merely shrugs with his eyebrows and an unsure smirk. A lot of help you are, Link thinks sourly, returning his gaze to Baal. “I heard singing.”
“Singing? Go on. Whose singing?”
Link’s eyes drift, imagining that familiar, moving silhouette in the kitchen window. “My mother’s.”
“Yes? Intriguing. Beautiful. Your mother. What was the tune?”
Link chuckles dryly, staring at Baal. “You wish me to sing it? Put on a show for you here in this tunnel?”
“What is the song, my boy? The song.” Baal’s hands have found Link’s shoulders. “Does it have words? Tell us.”
Link shakes his head. “No. Just a melody.”
“Why would your mother sing it? Was it a favorite song of hers, or … or did she sing it to lull you to sleep as a little baby boy?”
“I wouldn’t remember that far ago. No. It was just a song she used to hum. I would sometimes hear it through the door … when she was …” Link turns his head, as if placing himself within his own house, years ago in his mind. He can see Anwick’s closed door. Why would his mother be in there singing to him the same way one would sing to a baby she was trying to lull to sleep?
“She was what?”
“Singing to my older brother.” Link stares at that door in his mind, hearing the tune.
“A mother’s love,” murmurs Baal. “And twice-stolen gold. And a girl from the Waterways.”
Link remembers that that very girl from the Waterways, Kid, is still clinging to him with a single hand. “Yes,” Link confirms quietly.
“We must search the Waterways then,” Baal decides suddenly. His eyes fall upon Ames. “And if we find another clue, perhaps I’ll take you back to your home to look upon your mother once again.”
Ames’ eyes flash. “Yes. Yes, good. Thank you. I would love that.”
“And you know the price if you act a fool in front of others and draw any undue attention, yes?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I won’t do it again.” Ames’ mood has taken a very abrupt change.
“Very good. It is the number one rule of time-walking, of course. You must never be seen. You must never be known. You must never cause a ripple in the waters of time. Tiptoe,” he whispers, lowering his head with a look of playfulness in his eyes as he repeats the word encouragingly. “Tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe …”
With that, the group moves down the tunnel toward the closest passage to the Waterways. Tiptoe, he says, and yet if we do what he claims we are here to do—find a Goddess, save the world—how is that leaving any water settled? To Link, they are preparing to cast the greatest “ripple” that he can possibly imagine—a ripple that, in ten years’ time, could become a tidal wave. And if I’m behind that tidal wave, will I even know it?
0169 Ruena
I could live this life. I could be in love. I could have no care in the world for the fate of Atlas. I could ignore the madness in one way and join it in another … the madness of passion, of lust … of happiness.
“Happiness is a kind of madness,” the To-Be-Queen reasons to the two people rested against her, Rone leaning back on one side, Erana curled up upon the other.
Rone slides his hand up Ruena’s side, cupping her bare breast. He brings his lips upon it, suckling the nipple with a smile on his lips and eyes closed, as if caught in a dream. Erana has her fingers at her own mouth, but it’s more in a gesture of wonder, her gaze lost somewhere on the ceiling of the main den in which they’re lounged, her glasses making her eyes look enormous. Her mind seems to be occupied entirely with a deep, complicated thought.
Rone bites suddenly and Ruena flinches, surprised, and then both her lovers jerk back from the shock that emits through them. Erana finds it funny, giggling as her dark hair starts to curl upward from the static charge. Rone grins devilishly, making Ruena suppose that he’d startled her on purpose.
“Bad boy,” Ruena teases. Rone seems to change his mind about torturing her nipple and, instead, brings his full lips up to crash into hers, breathy and full of need. Ruena reciprocates, hungrily returning the kiss open-mouthed. When she feels the little nibble at her ear, she turns to find Erana’s big eyes waiting for her there, and so she shares a kiss with her too. Ever generous is her love. Rone, their own kiss ended, slides back down her neck with his tongue and returns to her breast, greedy to make work of her already-sensitive nipple.
The morning sunlight finally breaks through the window at the end of the house near the bathing atrium. Even with Erana’s lips lost on hers and Rone’s tongue giving a bath of his own to her nipple, the light catches her eye, and suddenly Ruena finds herself wondering who occupied this house before them. Did they die in the sacking of Sanctum? Were they unfortunate enough to be in the other half of the house when it collapsed? Are they eating and resting and biding their time in a house that still carries the dead previous owners?
She feels Rone’s soft hand sliding down her naked stomach and, easy as a drink of cool water, his fingers find her entrance. She shuts her eyes tightly, feeling him enter her with one finger, then two. He draws them out again and brings them to his lips, wetting them, and then they return to their second home between her legs, sliding in with such ease that it makes her squirm against Erana’s lips, who still kisses her with desperate, insatiable longing.
Rone moves to the other nipple, shifting his body so that he’s on top of her. Round four already? Ruena would ask if her mouth wasn’t already occupied with Erana’s unending lust. Tongues meet one another, and then a second set of hands begin to work her body—Erana’s exploring the feel of Ruena’s skin—and it’s all Ruena can do not to explode already all over Rone’s fingers.
And then Rone draws kisses down her body, and where once fingers were, now an expert tongue finds its place.
“Rone,” she breathes against Erana’s mouth, pulling away from the sudden assault of glorious sensations between her legs. Instantly she feels nauseous with the pleasure of being totally at Rone’s whim. His tongue becomes the master of her, dictating every second of her pleasure that she’s allowed. Her breath quickens, and in a matter of seconds, she feels how drenched she’s grown below.
Erana pulls away to watch, her eyes huge with wonder. Black hair sticks to her face from the sweat, some strands in the back still f
loating and coiled from the earlier shock.
“Rone,” breathes Ruena, reaching down to grip him by the little bit of hair he’s grown on his head over the months. “Sh … Share.”
Rone lifts his face from between her legs, his bright sapphire eyes shimmering drunkenly. When he turns his head and observes Erana for one lustful second, he understands. His fingers replace his mouth again—giving Ruena a groan of delight—while he slithers his lips up to between Erana’s thighs, diving right in. Erana lets go, her hands up in the air, and then she rocks her head back, emitting a short, jagged shriek of yearning.
Back and forth Rone is tossed and pulled, like he is just a toy for the two women’s delight. His mouth is full of Erana. Then his mouth is full of Ruena. Then Erana again. Ruena. Erana. Ruena. His fingers are put to work on whoever’s pussy he isn’t drowning in a sopping wet wonderland of. Rone is never allowed to catch a breath. His forehead glows with a desperate sheen of sweat from his efforts. His eyes are drunken with joy, with blissful exhaustion, with a disbelief that pours from his deep blue eyes and seems to say—I can’t believe this is happening to me.
Four times Erana reaches her climax. Four times Erana screams her delight all over Rone’s awed, incredulous face.
And when Ruena makes an orgasm of her own, she can’t help but clamp Rone’s face tightly between her thighs, pulling on the back of his head with her hands to get him—and his tongue—as far into her as possible. He moans against her, sending shockwaves up her body, and nothing she seems to do gets him close enough. I have never wanting anything so badly. Not the throne. Not my grandfather’s lordly advice. Not my Aunt Kael’s approval. Not the millions of silks in my palace. I want Rone and I want the eruption that only his wicked, expert, slum boy tongue can give me.
And then she gets that eruption, and it’s all over Rone’s sweaty, drenched, panting face that she comes.
“Put it in me,” she moans, out of breath. “Do it. Do it.”
Rone slides inside, every pulsing, throbbing, hard-as-stone inch of him. He pushes into the back of the couch, his body over her and his breaths cast desperately down upon her face. They look into each other’s eyes as he invades her furiously, a sort of horny, pent-up rage driving his every thrust. The blues of his irises are fierce against the rich, dark bronze of his skin and make the whites of his eyes glow.
“Spill inside me,” she begs. “I want to feel you fill me up. Rone. Rone. Oh, Rone.”
The slum boy’s mouth crashes into hers, shutting up the woman who was almost Queen of all of Atlas. She howls against him as he empties himself inside her, nearly causing her to tumble over the edge again.
In time, the three of them are tangled in each other again in a calm, relaxed stupor, but this time they are among a pile of pillows and blankets upon the tile floor near the tall back window which overlooks the slums. The morning’s sunlight pours over them like a thick golden syrup.
“Every day,” Ruena murmurs dreamily. “It could be like this.”
“For a long while, at least, yes,” says Erana, having to interpret Ruena’s statement literally, as usual.
She likes that about Erana, how precise she is, and how smart. With Rone’s slum boy sensibility and carefree way of thinking, it is the perfect marriage of recklessness and caution that makes Ruena feel so perfectly safe between them. She has the fire in one arm, and the winter in the other.
Rone slips from her arms, rising so quickly that his limp cock bounces. “I’m going to make us a snack,” he announces as he hops away, his feet slapping the tile as he heads for the kitchen.
Ruena and Erana lie side-by-side on the blankets. After a quiet moment of lying there, Erana puts an arm around Ruena, cuddling into her side. Ruena smiles.
“I never thought I would be with a woman in this way.”
It’s Erana who says it. “Oh?” prompts Ruena. “Well, that makes two of us, I suppose.”
“I never thought I was a woman of other women. I simply … I always craved the attention of a boy.” Erana shifts her head, getting comfortable as she rests it on Ruena’s belly, turning perpendicular to her and staring out the window thoughtfully. “Wick was a beautiful boy. And then I met his friend Rone. And now … you.”
“It is quite likely you’re a woman of both men and women,” she tells her, bringing a hand down to play in Erana’s dark hair, combing through it playfully with her fingers.
“Yes, yes. King Michold—the one before Greymyn—I heard that he had male lovers and female lovers, both. For all the information I know, I feel so confused when it comes to feelings.”
“You can know a million things without understanding them,” reasons Ruena. “I suppose your Legacy stops assisting you when it comes to actually interpreting all those thoughts you retain.”
“I might be in love with you.” She purses her lips. “I might be in love with Rone, too,” she then adds.
Ruena smiles, her fingers still dancing in Erana’s hair. “Yes. We can both love him,” she decides. “I’ve never really known love before. I’ve always doubted boys’ intentions when it comes to matters of … intimacy. I always felt like boys wanted to kiss me so that they could one day kiss me as I sat the throne. Or girls, feigning interest in my silks to gain access to Sanctum archival vaults. They just want the power, the prestige that comes from knowing a Netheris girl.”
“I would love very much to see those archival vaults,” murmurs Erana dreamily. “Oh, the things I’d learn. I wish I could go there.”
Ruena feels her first pang of regret all day. She wonders, with a sick twist of her stomach, what Mad King Impis might have done by now to Cloud Keep and all its secrets, all its items, all its repute and treasure. A man with such little regard to Sanctum could very well burn the whole Keep down. He’d even laugh as the flames ate it up.
“Do you think the world would hate us?” blurts Erana.
Ruena feels her heart sinking. “Why?”
“We are here,” she answers in her flat monotone. “We may be the only people in all of Atlas who are safely so close to Impis, and yet we choose to do nothing. In fact, we downright couldn’t care less. We’re having copious amounts of sex. We’re eating plentifully, in a half-fallen mansion on the edge of the city where not even Impis’s people can find us … all while innocent people starve … and die.”
These thoughts are not new. They are simply ones that Ruena hasn’t thought upon since a month ago, before Rone ever touched her with his soft, sexy fingertips and introduced her to a world of comforts she never knew. She’s deliberately suppressed the worries, pushing them far away, declining any responsibility for the citizenry she was seconds away from being Queen over. That’s the very same citizenry she was prepared to devote the rest of her life to protecting and ruling. In one quick, stupid instant, it was all taken from her.
And now, she acts as if she never wanted it in the first place.
“I’ve never known any other options,” Ruena says softly, her eyes drifting across the white ceiling, so far above them. “My whole life, I’ve been shaped to be a Queen. But no one stopped to ask me as a child if I wanted to play in the yard with them. No one invited me to their birthday parties, not unless there was a political angle in it, or some advantageous ulterior motive. Aunt Kael groomed me to be a Queen someday after her, not to be a person. She—”
“So this is your other option?” interjects Erana, getting to the point faster than Ruena was. “To live a life away from all the heavy responsibility of running your Queenship?”
Ruena shrugs. “I’m certainly having a taste of it.” She thinks on her words. “Well … there was one other person who made me feel like a normal human being.”
Erana turns her head, lifting her wide eyes to Ruena’s.
“Sedge,” Ruena answers herself.
Erana nods knowingly. They had all talked about it a number of times before—the great mystery and ultimate betrayer that is Sedge, Ruena’s childhood friend (and admirer) who was appointed
as her Marshal of Legacy after Impis was arrested, only to turn on her, free Impis and his Posse, and steal the Queenship out from under her startled, electric fingertips.
Ruena cannot, with any semblance of understanding, grasp the reasons or the motivations behind Sedge’s duplicity. Did he resent her the whole time? She had sent him to the slums to spy on Impis, and many times since she has wondered if it was that particular trip that twisted his mind against her. But Sedge is just a child, she has to keep reminding herself. The boy is hardly even twelve years old yet.
“I’m sorry,” murmurs Erana, studying Ruena’s face. “I’ve sent your mind on a dark path.”
“You know,” says Ruena, shaking her head of all errant thoughts of Sedge, “even if we did decide, just the three of us, to take on the usurper that is Impis, we wouldn’t be able to get close enough to him without succumbing to the mania ourselves.”
“This, I know.”
“But I also realize that we … can’t hide here forever.” Ruena’s eyes close, almost of their own volition. She feels so tired suddenly, her mind exhausted the moment it lets in any of the due obligation that she’s been so adamantly pushing away, the duty of doing what must be done—and being aptly equipped with a formidable Legacy—and yet having no will or strength to do a thing at all.
“He also has countless others at his disposal,” murmurs Erana. “So many Legacies at his fingertips. So many loyal, dark-hearted men and women.”
“And girls and boys,” adds Ruena, picturing Sedge in her silks and jewelry and makeup, dancing around the foyer of her palace.
“It is not something that just the three of us can do. It will take an army to bring down the usurper.”
Ruena mumbles her agreement. “He even had someone who can neutralize my ability somehow. I still remember the feeling of helplessness I had in that Crystal Court … reaching for a storm, for a charge, for anything … and it was so late to come to me.”
“And mind readers,” Erana says, remembering it from a thing Ruena had mentioned. “A mind reader and a mind writer. That is a very, very unfortunate pair of powers for a usurper to have. I am terrified of the thought of them.”
