She reached between her legs and smoothed the silk up and down her sex. What would an entire man do, if he were to see such a thing? She knew what a god would do. If the Sun Lord was here, or the Thunder Bull, or Yami the god of Darkness and Fear, any of them would be stricken with desire and they would seize and ravish her – if they could. There were a hundred myths to tell her so. If she sought in her mind, she could remember every incident, every pursuit and struggle, every wooing and every surrender. All gods are one God, and she knew the history of each deity intimately. But the memories of her mortal lives were blurred and unclear; like her present incarnation, the days ran into one another without incident or differentiation. She could not remember what it was like to lie with a human man. She had hardly even met with any in this life, not counting the priests, until the Irolian general.
General Veraine, she pondered. What would he do if he saw her like this? Her hand, delving between her thighs, lost its languid rhythm. She pictured his face; the intent dark eyes, the sudden warmth of his smile when it broke through that serious mask. Would he grin at her if he saw her naked? Or would his lips set into that thin, hard line? What would he say? She could not begin to guess.
What would he be like if he took her in his arms and laid her beneath him? He would never be as good as the gods she had copulated with, she was certain; he certainly was not as beautiful as them. There was that long Irolian nose for a start. Nor would their mating be as perfect, as fiery, as effortlessly erotic. There could not be that blaze of spiritual ecstasy she knew when two divine essences merged momentarily, god. and goddess, each perfect in every movement and every word. If Veraine bedded her it would be clumsy and coarse like all mortal sex, an exchange of fumbling and confusion and sweaty contortion. He would not carry her up into the heavens, he would lie upon her like a dead weight, crushing her flesh against her bones. It would be more akin to two animals rutting in a field than anything else.
The Malia Shai suddenly became aware that she had fallen still as she kneeled, her lips parted and the hand that lingered between her thighs pressed firmly against her pubic mound. With the slightest shiver she managed to resume her washing. She detected no change in the priests’ demeanour, but that did not mean they had noticed nothing.
Despite resolving to contemplate the nature of the void in an unhurried fashion, she found that she finished her ablutions rather quickly. She crushed a handful of aromatic, astringent leaves in her hands, rubbed them through her scalp and bent forward to rinse the sap clear in the water. The curve of her back glistened in the lamplight. She flipped her long hair back as she stood and then stepped out from the basin. The water cascaded down her tawny body onto the bare stone floor.
A priest was instantly at her side, wrapping a robe around her slender figure. The cloth clung to her wet skin. Four more priests stooped to lift the bronze basin. The water she had washed in had started in the rooftop cisterns and now would be poured out into the public tank in the Citadel, thus maintaining the pool’s sanctity. Every drop of water she drank or used had fallen direct from the heavens, and now that it had touched her it would, she knew, make soil barren as surely as if it were brine, but for the pilgrims who bathed there it would wash away the accumulated worldly cares of a thousand lifetimes.
‘I have cleansed myself of all desire,’ she said, as she said every day over that water. ‘So shall you be cleansed.’ The words were in a dialect so ancient that common people would scarcely be able to understand them, devised in an age when temples were still open to the sky and the rich earth was pierced only by wooden ploughshares.
The priests chanted in unison the ancient response, ‘And so shall we be made free.’
Rumayn found the General that evening, staring gloomily out of the headquarters window and slowly running his knifepoint through the thick plaster of the wall next to him. The deep lines scored through the fresco, mutilating a delicate painting of blighted wheat, testified that he had been engaged in the practice for some time. He did not turn when Rumayn entered.
‘What’s happened?’ Rumayn whispered to Arioc, who stood in attendance just inside the door.
‘I have no idea,’ the youth shrugged, the crisp white linen of his tunic riding his bronzed muscles.
Rumayn frowned. There was a livid bruise on Arioc’s cheek and a bloody scab on his lower lip. ‘Has he hit you?’
Arioc cast the shorter man a look of undisguised contempt. ‘No,’ he said, and that was enough to close the subject.
‘Is there something wrong, General?’ the adviser asked, coming cautiously up to stand at his side.
Veraine seemed to rouse himself out of a daydream. ‘No.’ He sighed down his nose. ‘I was thinking about the Imperial Virtues. You know?’
‘Of course, General. Loyalty, piety, pride. Courage in warriors, ambition in men, compassion in women. Personally I think a little of each is not a bad mixture in anyone, but I know that most people won’t see it like that.’
‘You’re right, Rumayn. You do talk too much.’ Veraine smiled bleakly, adding, ‘I was wondering, could indifference ever be a virtue?’
Rumayn raised his eyebrows. ‘Indifference? I don’t see how. Fortitude, perhaps. But we only have one life, General, and it’s a short one at that for most of us. We have to shine.’
Veraine nodded, though his expression was far away.
‘I was thinking, General, that I would go into Mulhanabin tonight. Loy has been checking up on the facilities for the men. He says there is a silk-house just a few streets down that would do for officers. A bit expensive, he says, but dean and you get quality for your money. I was going to try it out tonight. I thought, if you were interested, you might want to come too?’
Veraine snapped his fingers. ‘That sounds like a very good idea.’ He raised his voice, a little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. ‘What about you, Arioc? Want to visit a silk-house tonight?’
The handsome chariot-driver shook his head. ‘No, thank you, sir.’ His dark eyes were unclouded by embarrassment.
Veraine nodded, unsurprised. ‘Let’s go then, Rumayn.’
Rather to Rumayn’s alarm, Veraine refused to commandeer a full bodyguard and enlisted only Captain Sron for their recreational trip into the night. The three men walked down into the city armed with no more than the officers’ own swords. The establishment they sought was easily found; light streaming into the narrow street from an open door illuminated also a swathe of red silk that fluttered from the lintel. Two Yamani men hung about in the doorway, arms folded over their chests, but they pulled themselves back out of the way after a moment’s startled scrutiny of the visitors. Veraine took the lead up a narrow flight of stairs, encouraged by the sound of music spilling down from above.
He emerged into a large room, warm and humid and perfumed. A swift glance around took in a panorama of low couches with men sprawled or sat upon them, rather more young women attending the men, brass lamps, polished mahogany chessboards, a trio of seated musicians, rich embroidered drapes, all wrapped in a haze of blue smoke. The glitter and the colour was Yamani to the core, but the scent and the sound and the atmosphere of the place – musk and hashish, vibrant music and pleasant chatter, the open proffering of sexual pleasure – was nothing like the temple at all. Praise all the gods, thought Veraine.
Several young women, their long hair unbound, started forward from their places near the door, where they had seemingly been waiting with no other intent than to welcome him. But when they saw who it was that had entered, they hesitated and fell back. Veraine wondered whether it had been the best idea to bring the hatchet-faced Sron, whose right eyebrow was bisected by a thick white scar and who would never look anything but menacing.
Rumayn spread his hands appeasingly and smiled. ‘Ladies!’
Several of the clients on the couches turned to look at the new visitors and a ripple of unease ran visibly through the room.
‘May we be seated?’ Veraine asked the girl nearest to him, as gent
ly as he could. Her eyes were huge with consternation, but she managed to force a smile.
Then another woman walked across the floor straight up to them, inclined her head and spoke directly at the General. ‘Honoured guests, welcome to the House of Jilaya.’ She spread her hands gracefully. ‘I am Jilaya. The comforts of this house are yours tonight.’
‘We’re delighted to hear it,’ Veraine replied. ‘Thank you.’
‘An evening in the public room here will cost you six silver moons apiece. We serve delicacies spiced for the palate and the soul; our pleasure is to stimulate the appetite and inspire the senses. If you should require a private room to satisfy more demanding requirements, there will be an additional charge; ask any of my girls.’
‘That will be fine,’ said Veraine, as Rumayn winced at the price and Sron, who could not follow any of the conversation, looked blank. He dug into the pouch at his belt and paid the madam for all three of them. She smiled at him as her fingers closed over the coins. Although she was, he guessed, slightly older than him she was still good looking and had a wide, appealing mouth. She reminded him of someone, but he did not have time to pursue that thought.
‘This way,’ she said, and led them through the shoals of couches to an empty one near the open space in the very centre of the room.
‘Loy wasn’t wrong about this place,’ Rumayn murmured in Irolian. ‘Have you seen the clients? This is for people who only count the gold coins.’
‘Which is why Loy isn’t here himself,’ Sron laughed, low in his throat. ‘I saw him head off to the House of the White Goat hours ago.’
‘Well, they’ll have to close the place down once he’s finished,’ Veraine smiled, ‘to give the girls time to recover.’
Jilaya swept her hand over their couch, which was big enough to accommodate them with room to spare. At her signal several of her girls duly appeared, and the three men found themselves, as they sat down, the centre of a small flurry of attention. Sron was joined on the cushions by two young women – presumably operating on the theory that there was safety in numbers – while the superior officer and the civilian adviser merited merely one smiling houri apiece. Veraine turned to take stock of the one who had materialised against his shoulder. She was very small, but, in that way that Yamani women seemed to have, her slenderness was offset by a curvaceousness of hip and breast that was quite enchanting.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Vandi.’ She faked shyness rather well. ‘Would you eat, lord?’ She indicated a tray of sweetmeats that was being presented by yet another girl kneeling in front to him. The array included silvered almonds, paralysingly sweet cakes of pistachio, honeyed fennel seeds and tiny leaf parcels decorated with slivers of fruit peel and petals carved from nuts, that looked appetising but were actually paan, a mild narcotic commonly used across the Empire. Veraine did not much like it because it stained the teeth red. He picked out a syrupy dough ball no bigger than a knuckle bone and waved the tray away.
‘Would you like a water-pipe, lord?’ Vandi asked.
‘No.’ He put the sweet between her lips and watched as she ate it. ‘I had something more energetic in mind.’
She slid one hand up his thigh as she licked her lips. It brushed his sword-hilt. ‘Are you going to wear that all night?’
Smiling, he unclasped his sword-belt and tucked the weapon away at his feet. Vandi giggled with satisfaction and went back to tracing playful patterns up his bare leg. She wore her hair loose and uncovered; something no respectable Yamani girl would do in public. In fact the only woman in the room who affected a headcloth was Jilaya herself, and hers was little but a token veil of silk designed not to conceal anything but to mark her out as a woman of rank. Vandi’s hair was thick and as dark as the kohl around her eyes. Her dress, in contrast, was a pale lemon silk and, he noted, woven of so sheer a material as to be almost completely transparent. This seemed, he decided after a confirmatory glance around the room, to be the uniform of Jilaya’s girls. Although the rainbow-hued dresses were worn in the normal style, even the double or triple layers of sash-over-shift did not conceal the coppery flesh beneath. And the single layer of the skirt, he was delighted to see, did not hide at all Vandi’s nest of curls.
A very young girl, barely more than a child and ornamented with ankle-bracelets made up of scores of tiny silver bells, bowed gracefully in front of them and offered him a tray of drinks. Veraine chose a brass goblet of wine, took a few sips and then amused himself by brushing the cold metal against Vandi’s nipples. He could see as well as feel them harden. Vandi giggled again.
‘I hope I am not tickling you, lord,’ she said, her dextrous fingers stroking further and further up the inside of his thigh.
‘No, I’m not ticklish,’ he said. ‘Not there.’
‘Oh. That’s good. I just thought I felt you shiver, lord. Shall I stop?’
He hissed a wry acknowledgement of her talents. ‘No . . . I find it quite pleasant. Please carry on.’
She was still engaged in the dextrous exploration of his groin when the trio of musicians in the corner suddenly fell quiet, and the cessation of noise distracted Veraine where none of their melodies could have. He looked round the room, aware once more of the presence of others. The buzz of conversation seemed to grow louder. Sron, he noticed, was flat on his back with his head cradled in the lap of one girl, while the other fed him dates. Rumayn had his companion sat in his lap and was clasping her tightly, all the better to squeeze her breasts. Veraine was pleased for his sake that the girl was quite plump and that she kept wriggling pleasurably. But some of the regular clients were sitting up or easing themselves to their elbows with an expectant air. Veraine’s gaze was drawn into the centre of the room, where there was an open space free of couches but circumscribed by a number of tall brass lamp-holders. Jilaya was currently walking that perimeter, carefully lighting each lamp in turn. As she bent over the flames the uncovered ends of her hair turned from umber to mahogany, and Veraine felt his heart turn over.
‘Ah, you’re feeling quite lively tonight, lord,’ said Vandi, whose hand was by now on his cock and who could hardly have failed to notice.
‘What’s happening?’
She eased her fingers under his balls and rippled the fingertips experimentally. ‘Some of the girls are going to perform a story-dance,’ she murmured. ‘Our clients expect entertainment. You’re a big handful, lord.’
Veraine made himself more comfortable by putting his right arm around her and slipping his palm over the curve of her breast. She nestled in closer to him. The musicians, after conferring, struck up again, drum and flute and some lap-held stringed instrument the General couldn’t identify. The drummer also began to sing, though there were no words to his ululation. Jilaya finished with the lamps and stepped back out of the lit area.
Her place was taken at once by a tall woman dressed in a tight silk sheath that had been put on wet; it clung to every line of her body. She raised her arms over her head, tilted back her chin and began to dance, her feet hardly moving but her body undulating with serpentine flexibility.
The caressing of Vandi’s fingers was sending little bolts of pleasure up Veraine’s spine and this new apparition did little to soothe him. His cock was already pushing up hard against the cloth that constrained it. ‘What is she supposed to be doing?’ he murmured.
Vandi glanced at the tall dancer then snuggled her chin onto his shoulder and said, ‘She’s a tree. This is the story of Goppi getting lost in the forest. Do you know about Goppi?’
He did. Goppi was a folk-figure who was the subject of every Yamani risqué story and the butt of almost every dirty joke. Eternally naïve, she blundered into unlikely sexual encounters over and over again with an expression of pained surprise.
‘That girl is the forest,’ Vandi breathed into his ear. ‘She’s dancing the trees. Do you see?’
It took concentration, but he could see it. Not precisely imitative, the dance somehow suggested the swayi
ng of branches, the slender pillars of the tree trunks. But it was a lot easier to see only the way the transparent silk clung wetly to the dancer’s breasts and arse, to her firmly toned legs and the taut convexity of her belly. Her nipples were big and hard, rubbed into alertness by the moist cloth. She moved with a confident sensuality that made Veraine’s cock dance too.
‘It’s night,’ Vandi translated as the dancer’s hand described the moon rising over the trees. ‘The forest is very quiet.’
The tree-dancer grew still. Veraine could feel his breath pulsing all the way down to the root of his cock.
‘Here’s Goppi. She’s lost in the forest.’ Another dancer emerged into the centre of the room. This one moved quickly, her every action suggesting nervousness and confusion. Her small breasts were high and pouting under the same wet silk. ‘She was looking after the cows and one has strayed into the forest. She doesn’t want to go back to her mother without it. But she has forgotten the way back, and it has grown dark. She’s afraid of the forest.’
Goppi circled the tree, looking this way and that but failing to find any comfort. Eventually, exhausted, she leaned against the tree. The taller dancer undulated against her, but Goppi did not seem to notice. She rested her head on the tree’s breasts.
‘She’s tired. She lies down to sleep.’
Goppi slid very slowly down the other woman’s body to the carpeted floor, rolling over onto her back in a pool of her own dark tresses. Once she had grown still, the tree-dancer took a step back and lowered her arms, twisting sideways, and her legs, suddenly splayed in the exaggerated step, split the fabric of her dress to the thighs.
‘In the forest is a tiger-spirit.’ Vandi’s voice was a tickling murmur in his ear as her palm rubbed over his cock. ‘He’s hunting.’
Divine Torment Page 9
