Rogue

by Cheryl Brooks

  “I said I needed to sleep,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, looking a bit crestfallen. “Hey, I know I’m terrible, but at least I’m trying!”

  “I will close the door,” Tychar said, but I had an idea that he wasn’t doing it just to shut out the noise.

  Moments later I heard Trag running up and down the scale with more speed than accuracy. “How is it that you can sing so well and yet, your brother is completely tone deaf?”

  Tychar shrugged as he closed the door. “We’re brothers, not twins.”

  “True.” It occurred to me that by this time he might be regretting having given Trag his permission, and if so, I would withdraw my own consent, whether Trag liked it or not. My first responsibility was to the brother I loved.

  As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Tychar got me a drink of water and curled up beside me, purring quietly. “Thank you for allowing my brother to join us,” he said. “It was very kind of you to allay his suffering.”

  “He was pretty miserable, wasn’t he?” I said. “It was nice of you to let him, too. Not every man would do that.”

  “Our situation is unique,” said Tychar. “In other circumstances, it would not have been necessary.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s fairly obvious he did a bit of messing around before he was captured. Must not have had much trouble finding willing females.”

  Tychar grinned. “He used to laugh at the rest of us for being so… inexperienced with women.”

  “Well, I guess you’re one up on him, now,” I commented. “But I don’t believe you were all that inexperienced, yourself. You didn’t get that good just by thinking about it—did you?”

  Some other emotion washed over his features—one I couldn’t quite identify. “No,” he said slowly. “I have known others.”

  “On Zetith?”

  He turned away from me for a moment before returning his bright blue gaze to my own. “We were at war,” he began. “A war unlike others, because we were not fighting against each other, but against many worlds, and our defeat was inevitable. No one felt that they could love as was customary—one man, one woman, forever. We mated when we could, but it was seldom with love.”

  “Those songs you sang for me were love songs, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “They are the only songs I remember—perhaps because they are the only ones to have any meaning for me.”

  I now thought I understood why he wanted me to love him so badly—even if I lied to him and broke his heart—and also why he had charmed every female in the palace, whether he could mate with them or not. The kind of love he craved had been denied to him all his life, and he was starving for it.

  I was beginning to wish I hadn’t given in to Trag. Tychar seemed to be far more vulnerable than I would have guessed. Trag didn’t love me—he had said nothing of the kind—only remarking that I felt like love. Tychar hadn’t said he loved me, either—at least, not yet—but I had a feeling he was simply waiting for the right moment.

  “What about Trag?” I asked. “Doesn’t love have any meaning for him?

  “Possibly,” Tychar admitted, “But he is different.”

  “Well, I did notice that I didn’t have to tell him I loved him before he went ahead with it.”

  “No,” he conceded.

  “So that isn’t a Zetithian rule of some kind?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I… it was something I needed to hear.”

  “Even if I was lying and broke your heart?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “But why?”

  “Because I needed to feel something,” he said. “Anything—even pain.”

  “You two have been bored to tears here, haven’t you?” When he nodded, I went on, “So you charmed all the Darconians, just for something to do?”

  Smiling sheepishly, he said, “I suppose I did.”

  “And now you let Trag—? You could have said no, Ty, I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t agreed.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Of course I did! And I’m sure he did too, but no matter how good it feels, getting some out of pity now and then can’t quite compare with being with someone you love, can it?”

  Tychar’s lips twitched seductively as he began to purr “No, it cannot.” His fingers trailed over my shoulder and down to my hip.

  “Why is it that I think I’m about to get nailed again?”

  “Because you are,” he said. “My brother’s snard still fills you, and I am… intrigued… to discover what it will feel like to mate with you now.”

  “Sounds kinky,” I remarked.

  “You may explain that word later,” he said as he turned on his side and pulled my leg up over his hip.

  “Mmmm,” I sighed as he pushed inside me. “Feels really good, doesn’t it? Slick, creamy…”

  He nodded. “I like it.”

  The presence of Trag’s semen seemed to diminish the orgasmic effect of Tychar’s coronal fluid, but I didn’t mind a bit; I just lay back and let my lover rock me to sleep. No dream could have been sweeter than he, but they were still some very nice dreams…

  ***

  Uragus woke me up bright and early the next morning, saying he wanted to get an early start on his piano lesson. As he was hopping up and down with excitement, I didn’t have the heart to dissuade the little bugger. Realizing that I was still nude and had not so much as a sheet up over me, I sent him on to the music room.

  “Go for it, big guy,” I said sleepily. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I sat up and looked around for Tychar, but realized he must have gone to get breakfast. It was then that I decided that one thing they really needed on Darconia was coffee, at least in the morning—and especially those mornings after two Zetithians have had a go at you. Ordinarily, chocolate would have been my first choice of things to add to the menu, but with those two around, I’d probably never crave it again. I could vaguely remember being fed some supper at some point after dark, but that’s about all. Scalia’s wine had nothing on Zetithian snard for knocking a girl out.

  The day was already quite hot, and as I reached for my dress, which someone had laid over the back of a nearby chair, I wondered what would happen if I just didn’t put it on. Would anyone notice? I’d always worn clothing up to that point, but no one else around there did. They wore lots of jewelry, though. Maybe if I put on a necklace or two—a string of pearls, perhaps—and some bracelets as Trag had suggested.

  I tried it, but it felt weird. There was something strange about being naked with a child in the next room, too, though he’d already seen me once and hadn’t seemed to notice. In my dilemma over what to wear, I hadn’t been paying attention, but I could hear him playing, and it sounded almost too good to be true. I peeked in on him, and there he was, playing scales to beat the band, his nimble little fingers simply flying over the keys. I stood staring for a moment before exclaiming, “By George, I think he’s got it!”

  Uragus gave me a quick glance over his shoulder and smiled. “Pretty beads,” he remarked and went right back to playing.

  Well, obviously he didn’t give a damn…

  I was able to justify it further with the fact that when Nindala’s troupe arrived, there would be more skin showing than anyone around here had ever seen before, even if it was blue. I’d never go out of the palace like that, of course, because I’m sure the sun would have fried me to a crisp in minutes. Then it occurred to me that, since my arrival, I hadn’t been out at all, except for the occasional venture out onto the portico from the slave quarters. I couldn’t imagine running around it at night, let alone in the daytime. The tigers must have been bored out of their minds even to think of doing it themselves.

  I wondered what they would do if given the freedom to go their
own way, though it was a safe bet that they wouldn’t have remained on Darconia. Tychar claimed never to have been anything but a soldier, but with his voice, I thought he might have had a successful career as a singer. Trag had once been a pilot and given a ship of his own, he could roam the galaxy looking for other Zetithians. With any luck, he might even find a female…

  Tychar came in with breakfast and smiled his approval of my dress—or lack thereof. I took little notice, however, being more excited about Uragus.

  “Would you listen to that!” I said with awe. “He’s better than anyone I’ve ever taught!”

  Tychar listened closely for a moment. “He’s not playing a song.”

  “I know, but… wow!” I grabbed a crafnet (which were the closest thing Darconia had to apples) from the tray and hurried into the music room. I had to be sure this wasn’t a fluke. He might have been playing scales well, but could he also read the music?

  “Play this note,” I said, picking one at random on the pad.

  Uragus hit it without any hesitation whatsoever and picked up the scale from that point.

  I skipped ahead to a short song. “Try this.”

  His timing might have been off slightly, but he didn’t miss a single note.

  “Damn!” I exclaimed before remembering the “Great Mother of the Desert” thing. I guess there are some habits you just can’t change overnight. I flipped to the left hand scale of bass notes. “Try this.” It came as naturally to him as the other one had. “Uragus, how in the world are you doing that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I… had a dream last night, and the whole thing began to make sense,” he said in his squeaky little voice. “That’s why I came so early. I wanted to see if it was real.”

  “Oh, it’s real all right!” I assured him. “You’ve got all the makings of a child prodigy.”

  “What’s a child prodigy?”

  “A natural born musician,” I replied. “One that grasps the concepts at a very early age—and progresses much more quickly than other children.”

  He grinned at me. “I’m good, then?”

  “You are very good,” I said, sitting down next to him. My first impulse was to hug him, and I wondered if Darconian children liked to be hugged. Experimentally, I put an arm around him and squeezed. His scales felt surprisingly smooth and warm—not like hugging a lizard at all.

  He smiled up at me, but asked me why I’d done that.

  “That, my little prodigy, is called a hug,” I replied. “Humans do that when they’re glad to see someone, or happy for them—that sort of thing.”

  “I have never been hugged before,” he said. “But I like it.”

  “I like it, too,” I said. “So you can expect plenty of hugs from me from now on.” I scrolled ahead in the tablet and found the song I was looking for. “Now, try this one. It’s pretty easy, but you have to use both hands to play it.”

  He stumbled in a few places and didn’t quite get the timing then either, which was something I felt could be easily corrected, but still, he was nothing short of amazing.

  I couldn’t quite believe it myself. Here I was, a bazillion kilometers from Earth, and I had finally found my prodigy—and he was a lizard, of all things! My excitement was tempered by the fact that, as he grew, his fingers would widen, and he wouldn’t be able to strike the keys individually, which made it most unfortunate that the folks at Steinway hadn’t had Darconians in mind when they constructed this particular instrument. Then it occurred to me that his mother was the Queen, and as such, had the wherewithal to commission someone to make a piano with wider keys. In fact, considering the trouble that Zealon and Racknay were having, I ought to suggest it right away. I would have to measure Racknay’s fingertips to get an idea of just how wide they needed to be, but I thought it was possible. For all I knew, such a thing might have already been made, for there were keyboard instruments all over the known galaxy. Just because I had never seen them didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

  I hadn’t noticed a Musician’s Friend or a Zzounds catalog lying around anywhere—the interplanetary versions, that is—which meant that I’d have to get on a computer and check out the Net. I hadn’t seen many computers since my arrival, but I knew Wazak had one in his office. The funny thing was that after being so intimidated by him on that first day, I now had no qualms about cornering him in his den and asking him. I couldn’t remember where his office was, though, so I’d have to get Tychar to take me—or one of the guards. I wondered what they would think of my new wardrobe.

  I left Uragus playing his little fingers to the bone, and Tychar and I went down to find Wazak. On the way, we passed Dragus, who was guarding The Shrine. I must have been there long enough to change my opinions about Darconians, because while Wazak was just plain big, I thought Dragus was a hunk. Now, I know he was a lizard, but he was still a handsome devil in his own way.

  “You have adopted our manner of dress,” he remarked. “I approve.”

  “Thanks, Dragus. I wasn’t sure it would work for me. I may need a few more beads, though,” I admitted. “I’ve never been one to wear more than one strand at a time, so I don’t have many. By the way, what does it mean when you wear a lot of them? That you’re rich, or what?”

  He smiled. “It means that you have many admirers.”

  “Ah,” I said archly. “So they’re like Mardi Gras beads, then.”

  Not surprisingly, he didn’t know what I meant, so I had to explain, but anyone from Earth would have understood the reference right away. Women had been flashing their boobs at men to get a string of beads on Bourbon Street in New Orleans for nearly as long as the city had been in existence. It was a great city for musicians, too, and I thought Uragus would fit right in with all the jazz pianists, though he’d have to learn from someone other than myself, since I’d always tended toward the classical or pop styles. I could just picture him playing the blues in some backstreet café—he would give the term “lounge lizard” a whole new meaning.

  We arrived at Wazak’s office to find that he did indeed have a computer with which we could access the Net. It was an older model, but usable. When I told him what I was looking for, he seemed pleased that I would consider the needs of the male children.

  “It is good of you to teach them your music,” Wazak said. “Males are not considered to be… musical… on this world.”

  “I’ve heard that before, but it’s a bunch of Saturnian bunk, if you ask me,” I declared. “I mean, you should hear Uragus! That little bugger would make a believer out of anyone, and I think Racknay would be a decent pianist if he had a piano that fit him.”

  Actually, Racknay tended to lean more toward the hard rock end of the music spectrum, as did most Darconian music, though it was performed exclusively by females. I had played him some songs from my collection and discovered that he liked Aerosmith a whole lot better than Mozart.

  Wazak seemed even more pleased by this and offered the use of his computer without hesitation.

  The connection was slow, but I finally got Zzounds online, and yes, they had a keyboard with extra-wide keys, though it was a synthesizer rather than a grand piano. The price wasn’t bad, either—only fifty credits. Shipping was pretty pricey, and even though it wouldn’t be coming all the way from Earth, it would still take quite a while to reach Darconia. I had no fears that Uragus would outgrow the one we had before then, but the price was a lot more than I had in my pocket. Someone else would have to pay for it.

  “I will authorize the purchase,” Wazak said, punching in some numbers. “I believe the Queen will be pleased that you have suggested this.” Wazak, himself, appeared to be tickled to death by the notion, and I could only assume that it was because I was helping to dispel the myth that Darconian males were good for nothing but being grumpy.

  On the way back to my quarters, I discovered that Darconian males were good at something else
, too: they could make a Zetithian jealous.

  As we passed The Shrine, Dragus smiled and waved us by, but after a moment, he called me back. I thought he might have looked a bit sheepish, but, being a Darconian, it was difficult to be sure.

  “I would like for you to have this,” Dragus said, holding out a string of beads. “And I would be honored if you would wear it.” As he focused his attention on the necklace, I saw that some of the beads were beginning to glow. I stared at it in awe, realizing that fully a third of the beads were glowstones! What the other stones were, I couldn’t have said, but his gift was easily worth far more than my pearls—on Darconia or any other world.

  “Why, th—thank you, Dragus,” I stammered. “It’s very beautiful, but are you sure you want me to have it? I mean, isn’t there someone else you’d rather—”

  “No,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height—which was considerable—his earlier sheepishness seeming to have vanished completely. “It would look best on you.”

  I didn’t know whether to take it from him or let him put it around my neck, so I just stood there, staring back at him.

  “Will you wear it?” he asked.

  I peered up at him suspiciously. “This doesn’t mean we’re sweethearts, does it?”

  “No,” he replied. “Only that I find you to be as lovely as the stones.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought that maybe on Darconia, comparing someone to a stone was a compliment. “That’s very kind of you,” I said. “Yes, I will wear it.”

  With that, he placed it around my neck with an almost ceremonial reverence. I got a little choked up there for a second, but then I remembered all the jewelry Dobraton wore and almost laughed out loud, for I couldn’t imagine anyone, Darconian or otherwise, doing this same thing with her. The exchange with Dragus was sort of romantic, and Dobraton was anything but. No, what I could picture was Dobraton snatching the beads and then giving the man in question the boot for taking liberties.

  As we walked on, I was fingering the beads, wondering if they would be worth as much as Tychar. Considering how much it had meant to Dragus for me to wear them, it would probably be tacky of me to trade them in for Tychar, but I was toying with the idea when he spoke up.