by Jordan Reece
Westen’s gaze landed upon his exposed dragon’s eye. “Naturally there were pools for men of our sort. In the Nevenin bathhouse, if I wished to drink a goblet of wine, listen to music, and speak with men like me, I sat upon one side of the curved pool and did so. I made many friends there. If I decided I wanted sex, I simply walked around the curve and pushed beneath the fronds.”
Elario saw the fronds ahead, which spilled over a rocky archway and down to the water. He brushed aside the thick sheets of greenery and stepped within. Beyond them was a dimmer and more private part of the pool, enclosed and intimate. A blindfold slipped down over his eyes.
Then a multitude of slick male bodies enveloped him, hands questing over his chest and groin and buttocks, lips touching his in a kiss. His hands roved over them in turn, water lapping and churning as they coiled around one another like vines. Lifted to the rim of the pool, mouths closed hungrily on his manhood and bobbed there with wet entrancement. They took turns in tasting him, so that one minute Elario had his fingers wound into soft, curly locks as a tongue dandled along his shaft, and the next he was stroking shorter, spikier hair as the tip of him was lashed in a blissful punishment, and in another minute the head in his hands was shaven. That man took him in all the way, teasing Elario to the point of agony.
That delicious mouth slid away. A whisper in his ear and he stood on the bench, turning to let his hands see what was being offered. His hips rolled forward and he breached a tight, lubricated warmth. Elequa, more.
There was always more. More hands, more tongues, more buttocks pushing back to his groin, and then he was the one bending for the sweetest of intrusions. Seed pulsed within him quickly, too quickly, but no sooner had the man withdrawn than another took his place. This one was thicker, guiding himself in slowly. Powerful hands gripped Elario’s hips. The man rode him feverishly and tirelessly, their bodies coming together with erotic slaps. Another pair of lovers was beside them, Elario feeling the vibration of their coupling, hearing the delirious cries of the man receiving so close by that their shoulders brushed together. Finally, the thrusts grew erratic and deep, and Elario thrilled at the desperate shout of pleasure behind him.
A taste of mint was pushed through his lips, and he was hard as steel again, hard and pumping into a slippery mouth, hard and pumping between soft buttocks as hardness pressed to his lips and his mouth opened. He culminated in ecstatic spasms time after time, crying out and causing cries, swallowing seed and mint in turn, and his first attempt to leave was thwarted by hands which drew him back into the fold. Stay, no, stay, please stay.
To be wanted so intensely refreshed his passion and it began anew with fondling hands and warm mouths, mint making him stiff below the water. A man drew him away from the thrusting, grasping, grunting crowd. In a corner of the pool, they kissed and stroked, and then Elario lifted the man to the rim and mounted him. They kissed and kissed, Elario thrusting into the intoxicating tightness and warmth between two muscled thighs, dizzy from the heat and there was something about this man’s scent and sounds that made him not want to stop, not ever want to stop . . . His climax erupted, shattering and fulfilling, and a mouth came to his ear after he emptied himself.
Olan.
By the time he swept the fronds aside and staggered out, he could hardly stand for satiation. Suddenly, Elario returned to himself caught up in rapturous spasm, his seed pumping into the blue-tiled pool as he moaned. He had felt all of those sensations as his own, of taking and being taken, desiring and being desired, and his tongue tasted of mint.
Humiliated, he said, “You should not tell me of such things, Westen! The dragon’s eye gave me your memory of the bathhouse you patronized.”
Canting an eyebrow, Westen said, “Those are pleasant memories to share. Of all the memories that I possess, the dragon’s eye could have found no better.”
Drained from his orgasm, Elario sagged into the bench. “Will this eye drive me to madness by the end? Or sooner than that?”
“You are not mad to me. The eye just opens a conduit between you and the world. You are still you, as you have always been, a somewhat prudish and decidedly ignorant man of the south. But, I must admit, you did seem to enjoy the artwork on the walk to this room.”
“I will not dignify that with a remark.”
“Tell me this: you are a very handsome man indeed. Why have you not had a lover more recently than last spring? Do you prefer solitude?”
“No. It is because I live in Alming.” Elario crossed the pool to take the jar that Westen was using for his hair. Since the moment for modesty was now in the past, he looked down, quickly but boldly. Westen was fully erect below in the water. But lazily so; he was doing nothing about it.
Helping himself to the jar, Elario doubled back to his side of the pool. There had been a brief temptation to touch Westen, to run a hand from his chest to his groin. Though he’d pushed the impulse away, now he wondered what it would be like to pleasure him. Could Westen feel that joy anymore? Or would he just mock it? Elario was never tired or bored with sex, but sex was not something of which he had ever experienced a surplus. No, only scarcity.
He swallowed a mouthful of water, his mind on the painting over the bed. To grip the post of the headboard in his fists as Westen drove in, or to be the one doing the driving . . . Shaking himself, he stammered, “Alm-Alming is small. Very small. I am the sole Dagen’s touched that I know. Many towns along the Hopcross are equally small, and some smaller. If I wish companionship of a like nature, I have to go to Ballevue.”
“Why don’t you move there?”
“How can I move there? My home is in Alming; my family’s graves are in Alming. All that I have known, all who I have known, are in Alming, and I am Alming’s herbal knacker.”
“Then you have consigned yourself to a lonely life. Homes can be found elsewhere. Do not stay in Alming because that is where the grave markers lie, and do not think I say this in disrespect. Life is not long, unless you are mechanical or myself. Let it not slip past you.”
Scrubbing the shampoo into his hair, Elario dipped his head in the water. To think of leaving Alming forever shook him to the core, but it was done. “I can’t go back home, so this conversation is meaningless. I am adrift because of this eye in mine. No place will ever be safe for me but a grave.”
Westen’s eyebrow went up again. “You are a downturned man, Elario Repse, but I am upturned. It may not go this way you think. Always make room in your heart for the chance that you are wrong.”
“Where is it that you are taking me?”
“You will fret and balk, and refuse to go, because in the limits of your time and place and being, you cannot see as widely as I. But there is something you must do where I am taking you, something important. It is a small thing, but a small thing that will in time have vast consequences for the country.”
“What does that mean?” Elario pressed.
A bell chimed in the other room. “That means dinner has arrived in the dumbwaiter.” Westen got up and climbed out of the pool, calling to Hobbe as he wrapped a towel about himself, and left Elario alone with his question unanswered.
Chapter Fourteen
“No.”
“You have to. It is the style.”
“I look ridiculous! I look like . . .”
“Like a man of mild means in the golden ring.”
Elario winced at his reflection in the tall mirror within the dressing room. They were in a shop of machine-made men’s clothing, and Westen had forced him into a ghastly pair of yellowish trousers. The legs ended in two pairs of those pointless, airy puffs he had despised on sight while traveling by crawler up to Drouthe. Looking down at them in disconsolation, he shook his head when Westen held out the shirt. It was the same jaundiced shade of yellow, with slashed sleeves from shoulder to elbow. Underneath was a pattern of sickly green diamonds on a white background.
“I have half a mind to think you chose the ugliest upon the racks,” Elario grumbled. His eye narrowe
d on Westen, who looked back with an innocence that confirmed it. “Oh, for the love of Elequa, spare me your foolish jokes!” Hobbe laughed dutifully outside the curtain.
Leaving Westen in a fit of snickers, Elario took himself to the racks. Everything was in such garish colors, yellows and reds and oranges and bright greens, with flounces numbering from two to four below the knee. Hating each pair of trousers more than the one to come before, he stalked from rack to rack as Westen looked on in amusement and Hobbe in benevolent incomprehension. An inattentive shop clerk was reading a newspaper at the counter in back, where he was standing beside a contraption of metal, levers, and buttons called a register. A register’s job was to perform mathematics for shop clerks, should there not be a mechanical worker on hand to do it.
“Don’t you have to select an outfit for yourself?” Elario griped at Westen, who was now fingering a shirt of livid purple fabric.
“It will take me but a moment,” Westen said mildly.
“Because you like this?”
“It is just the latest fashion, and a harmless one. I have seen worse fashions come and go over the years, and worn them all. The humiliation belongs to the time period, not the wretched individuals trapped within it.”
“I will look like some pea-brained, prancing peacock,” Elario mumbled, swiping in surly triumph a pair of light gray trousers from a rack. Two flounces ran from lower-calf to ankle, but he would overlook them in exchange for the neutral color. Hanging from pegs on the wall were shirts. He took down the white with gray-slashed sleeves.
“How drab,” Westen said. “Well, you try it on, my pea-brained, prancing peacock, and I shall find my own.”
Elario changed in the dressing room as the other two wandered about the shop. “What about the orange, Hobbe?” Westen asked.
“It is lovely, sir.”
“What about this brilliant blue?”
“It is lovely, sir.”
“Will you give that response to everything I hold up?”
“Yes, sir. Would you like me to memorize a different response?”
“No, it will do. Let’s check on Elario.”
The curtain was yanked aside as Elario was still doing up the hidden inner hooks of the shirt. “There’s another dressing room. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” Westen strode past with an armload of clothing to try on.
“You look lovely, sir,” Hobbe said to Elario.
“Be careful, Hobbe. He will fry your circuits with that murderous, one-eyed stare.”
“I do not think that is possible, sir.”
The fit was right on the trousers, but the shirt was roomy. Elario went out to inspect the selection of shirts that matched the trousers: one was going to swallow him whole, and the second throttle him like a snake. “Shall I have this tailored?” he asked.
“Not unless you wish to spend another night at the brothel.” The curtain wide open, Westen yanked up a pair of wine-red trousers. The fabric of the four sets of flounces was the same wine-red, but with golden sparkles. The shirt was the reverse in golden fabric with sparkling, wine-red slashes. Doing up the hooks, he said, “How do I look?”
“You look lovely, sir,” Hobbe repeated.
“You do not want to know what I think,” Elario said.
“I will tell you what I think. I give the impression of a man who owns a well-trafficked shop, and is on the road to greater financial success. This is what people read into four flouncing puffs. Amusing how they police themselves to not dress above their station. It is a small social crime for a two-flounce man to wear four-flounce pants; a far greater one were he to patronize a better store and walk out in six-flounce or ten-flounce.”
“This is the stupidest conversation in which I have ever taken part,” Elario grumbled.
“Then again, he could not afford either the six-flounce or the ten-flounce, let alone the jewelry expected to accompany a low noble’s ten-flounce garb, so this concern is moot. As for you, you will be taken for the son of a somewhat successful shop-owner, or a well-paid clerk at a high-end establishment.”
“All of this they will read into these unsightly flounces?”
“Perhaps he is your employee, sir,” Hobbe suggested to Westen.
“Perhaps he is! That is what we shall say, should anyone inquire, which I doubt will occur. I sell . . .”
“Sexual stimulants,” Elario said sarcastically.
“Yes, that will do.”
“I was not serious!”
“And I am on an adventure through the cities with my stock-boy and mechanical man to visit the herb markets. Sourcing my supplies through the Grand Market is costly, so we are seeing what can be gleaned from local venues.” Westen preened in the mirror with a twinkle in his eyes upon Elario. “Senert is what I shall call you. Senert the stock-boy, young yet very capable in herbs. Everyone knows a Senert.”
It had to be the northern equivalent of Ild. “Senert is a horrid name!”
“Good, then you will glower all the more,” Westen said. “Well, come along then, Senert, Hobbe.”
“Do I need a new name, sir?” Hobbe asked.
“No. You are Hobbe forever and always. Fortunately, Hobbe is a common name for mechanical men of older vintages. No one should blink twice at it. Take out your purses, Senert, Hobbe, and pay for our purchases; it will not do for me as a successful businessman to carry my own purse when I have two underlings to do it for me. Don’t haggle about the price, even if it horrifies you; this is not the street market in Ballevue, Senert.”
It was good that he tacked that warning on; Elario was duly horrified at how much money went to purchase their new clothes. He reminded himself that the money came out of the purse of Westen’s coins, not his own.
Their cover identities were more for Westen’s benefit than anyone else’s, Elario thought when they left the shop. A man with money had servants to tote his belongings, so Westen was walking blithely along with nothing to burden him, and Hobbe was stuck balancing two satchels with the straps crisscrossed over his chest.
Westen was hoping to catch one of the underground snakes to ferry them rapidly across Cathul. But every time they approached a staircase down to a station, he sent Hobbe ahead to scope out the terrain and the mechanical man returned with a shake of his head. There were too many jacks and soldiers down there to risk it. It was not normal to have such numbers guarding the stations.
“How do they know I am going this way?” Elario asked as they walked away from the third staircase.
“They do not suspect; they brace for a slim possibility,” Westen said. “It works in your favor that they believe they killed me before you could arrive in Drouthe. These are precautions. However, if any of the surviving men from Sable got a good look at you to know who you are for sure, it will swiftly be communicated through the soldiers’ legions that you were traveling south to Cathul.”
Elario hated to have so much uncertainty. Were the survivors of the search party still upending Zavane, or had they trailed the stolen horses? Were they already in Cathul? Why did the dragon’s eye drop him into a bathhouse to relive an old sexual encounter of Westen’s over giving him useful information?
“-between the cities from here to Ruzan?” Hobbe was saying.
“It would not surprise me, so we’ll take measures when going from one city to the next,” Westen replied.
“We’re walking to Ruzan?” Elario exclaimed, fighting to keep his voice low. “That must be one hundred miles away!”
“Which is why they watch the snakes, crawlers, and aerials, and not so much the streets,” Westen said. “This is the safest means of travel for us. We can at least take the trolleys where available; I have not seen a single soldier upon those, or showing interest in them. It is hardly eighty miles.”
Elario had some dark thoughts about this, but resolved to let them go. There was much to look at, and it distracted him. Cathul was as different a place from Alming as could be. Every street was flush with traffic. There we
re inns and boarding houses aplenty, wedged into an endless district of commerce that never became homes. It was block after block of shops and offices and clinics, game houses and taverns and brothels and theaters and bakeries and groceries. Older models of mechanical men worked as barkers and street-cleaners; newer ones accompanied nobles in their fineries, carrying their belongings and driving their carriages. Oversized droids pulled carts, the goods hidden beneath pinned sheets. Blocky and faceless, they rolled upon a tread through the streets and saw through a single, revolving lens atop their mechanical frames.
Elario wanted to see everything, but to gasp and gawk here would mark him just as the country clothes in his satchel had. None of these things were anything new to the people of the golden ring cities, so he walked along like he had no care for any of it until he spied two low-ranking Dragons of the Blood at a building at the corner.
Catching up to Westen, Elario whispered, “Should we take a side-street?”
Westen glanced to them. “No, they are mere bank guards.”
“Oh.”
“I see from your expression that you have no idea what a bank is, dear Senert. A bank is where people keep their money, rather than behind a knothole in the wall or an empty bean can in the cupboard. Every bank is assigned a squad of ensigno to assist with security; money of higher amounts is not entrusted to the care of common jacks.”
Why would Elario stow his money away from himself? He looked at the bank suspiciously. Then he let out a yell as a dervesh passed him on the road. Strolling along as casually as anyone else, the creature had a face carved from bluish rock, and spikes of hair standing out immovably. All of its body was crafted of blue rock, all but the nails upon its fingers and feet, which were black and razor-sharp. Two red eyes stared out to the tall, bulbously muscled nobleman that the dervesh was following.
The yell attracted the man’s attention, along with the attention of his bodyguard and pedestrians nearby. In a lightning-quick move, Westen seized Elario by the upper arm and steered him into an alley. “What is wrong with you?”
