Olivia

by R. Lee Smith

  “She had a mate!” Olivia spat. “You took another man’s mate! Don’t you dare try to shrug that off!”

  “She didn’t want him,” he said quickly.

  “None of us wanted them! We were taken! But she had a chance to grow to like him and you ruined it!”

  “I didn’t ruin anything. She hated him before she ever met me.”

  “You still should have sent her away! You knew she belonged to another man!” A thought occurred to her. “A man who would never fight challenge with a castrated male! Was that it?”

  He shrugged his wings just a little. His eyes never left hers. It wasn’t the eyes she knew as much as the line of the brow, the curve of his cheek…and his horns. Rough horns, not smooth like most gullan’s. Striated, like a goat’s. She’d seen those before, too. Kodjunn’s horns were like that.

  “When I leave here and ask Karen if she went to you or if you found her, what is she going to tell me?” she demanded.

  His brow furrowed slightly. She could see thoughts and excuses moving behind his eyes, but at last he said, “She was looking for me.”

  “Did she find you?” Olivia pressed. “Or was she just alone in the tunnels next to your lair?”

  He said nothing.

  “You answer me!” she shouted. “I’m not one of your giggling little girls! You know who I am, so you answer me when I talk to you! Did she—”

  “She was alone.” He inched back a little more. “But she wanted me.”

  Olivia closed her eyes, too furious to look at him. Karen probably had gone looking for him. She could remember the interest in Karen’s eye when she’d first heard about the tribe’s lone eunuch.

  She opened her eyes again. “Did she want to go back to Bodual when it was over?” she asked, much more calmly.

  More thoughts, more silent excuses. He said, “Yes.”

  “Did you let her go?”

  “I didn’t hold her. She could have left if she’d really wanted to.”

  “But you told her that you loved her?”

  “Yes.”

  “That you would take her as your mate?”

  He started to shrug, then thought better of it. “Not in so many words.”

  “What words did you use?”

  His eyes flicked away from her, darting about the cave as if seeking help somewhere in its shadows. “I may have said something like…‘If you were my mate, I would never let you go.’ And…And maybe that if she were free, I would want to claim her. But she wasn’t free,” he added quickly. “And she knew it. Maybe she pretended to be, but she wasn’t. I didn’t promise anything!”

  “No, you just led her on so you could rut with her and then you threw her out when you got bored!”

  He started to say something, then stopped and began again, suddenly defensive. “It was just sex. I didn’t hurt her! I don’t understand why you care.”

  No, obviously he didn’t. And maybe she shouldn’t. She doubted Vorgullum was interested in the sex lives of his tribesman, provided they gave him healthy babies. But no, that wasn’t entirely true; if Vorgullum knew that Augurr had talked Karen into leaving her mate for a relationship that could never end in a baby at all, he’d be furious. Which was no doubt why Augurr waited for Vorgullum to leave before he put Karen aside.

  And he just lay there on his back, looking up at her and waiting for her to finish shouting and leave. Then he could go back to his Playboy and the next dumb women who wanted a turn with the tribe’s only safe male.

  Disgusted, Olivia remembered Crugunn telling her that Augurr had got a number of females pregnant, been sorry as hell, and gone right on doing it. Crugunn had made it sound tragic and even funny, but the truth was despicable. It wasn’t funny at all, but deliberate, indifferent, and unbelievably cruel. The only thing that remotely compared was—

  She stopped suddenly, gazing at him with wide, shocked eyes. At his horns in particular, horns that, like Kodjunn’s, were more heavily striated than the horns of other gulla. “Get up,” she said calmly. “And turn around.”

  His whole body tensed and his eyes dropped to her climbing spikes, tucked through her belt. “If I do,” he said, and his voice cracked just a little. “You must promise you will not kill me.”

  “Some men need promises,” she said viciously. “Turn around.”

  He did, shaking, his wings clamped tight around his body.

  Between them, running in a stiff line down to his hips, he had a kind of bristly, black mane, frosted at the very tips. In all the time she’d spent in this mountain, she’d seen only one other mane like it: the one that ran down Kodjunn’s back. Or two others, if you counted the one on the back of the male she’d seen with Bolga.

  “I know you,” she said softly.

  He glanced at her.

  “I saw you.”

  His brows began to knit.

  Her face flushed with rage and now she did haul back and punched him in the kidney as hard as she could, sending him crashing down again. “It was you!” she shouted. “It was you with Bolga that night! I saw you with her!”

  If he’d protested, if he’d looked confused, if he’d even cocked his head…but his eyes flashed wide and the look in them was all the guilt he hadn’t been able to dredge up for his confrontation over Karen. “I can explain,” he said rapidly, backing away. “It wasn’t my fault! She…She was in season!”

  “Take it off, take the goddamn loincloth off!” she roared, grabbing a good handful of his fur and yanking him into the candle’s glow.

  He fumbled at his belt, begging her with every breath not to do this, and when he realized that she would not be moved, his legs seemed to give out. He sagged to his knees, staring up at her with both hands pressed over his groin until she seized one of her climbing claws and raised it. Then and only then did he take his hands away, revealing his fear-shriveled penis and the thick, taut sac of his perfectly-sound scrotum.

  She was too astonished at this proof of her suspicions to feel anything at all for a while. Augurr was castrated. Everyone knew that. How could he hide something like this from the dozens of women he must have been with? And what about the story? The old leader taking him up to the top of the mountain, getting him drunk…

  The story…which hadn’t come out until after the old leader was dead. Ostensibly because Augurr wasn’t the only one making babies and he was afraid to provoke a rebellion. And because…what was it Crugunn had said? Because Augurr was a full-moon’s child. Behold his crest! Horumn had cried at Somurg’s birth. That crest, so like Kodjunn’s…so like the Great Spirit’s. The children born at the full moon were sacred to the tribe; perhaps Augurr hadn’t liked being forbidden anything at all.

  “You made it all up,” Olivia said, stunned. “After the old leader was dead, you came up with that story and made sure you spread it around to all the right people. And they believed you. Why not? What kind of man would make up a lie like that, knowing every other man would feel nothing but contempt for him for the rest of his life?” She shook her head, anger filling all the dark spaces inside her that shock had carved. “But you got all the women you wanted.”

  “I never hurt them! I never forced any of them!”

  “Get up,” Olivia said coldly. “Get up right now and walk.”

  He started to fasten his loincloth on, shaking so badly he was only tangling it, but she slapped him again.

  “Leave it,” she spat. “I think it’s high time your tribe found out just what kind of man you are.”

  4

  Gullan saw them, ran before them, and by the time Olivia reached the commons, the entire tribe had gathered to see Augurr’s deception with their own eyes. There were no discussions, no accusations, no questions. The males wanted to take him out of the mountain and hack him into pieces. The females, mostly silent, huddled together and watched, sick realization on too many faces. Karen had started crying again the moment she saw Augurr. Carla, brought from the women’s tunnels with the rest of the tribe, went to comfort her,
and astonishingly, Karen threw her arms around her and clung to her like a sister.

  Head bent and hands at his sides, Augurr allowed himself to be displayed on the center rock in the commons while the entire tribe howled for blood. He never raised his eyes.

  Olivia stood off to one side of the rock with Sudjummar, staring dully out at her tribe and wishing she’d handled this another way. Most of her anger had bled out of her by the time she’d reached the commons and what little remained had been slapped cleanly away by the first roaring demand for death. Now she stood, as still and silent as Augurr himself, struggling with the sick realization that she was about to order a man’s execution.

  “What are you going to do?” Sudjummar murmured.

  “I don’t know.”

  Sudjummar cut his eyes at her warningly. “I hate to say it, but that’s not good enough, Olivia. So let me put it another way. Are you going to have him killed or merely castrated?”

  Olivia closed her eyes and turned to face the wall so that no one could see the agonized expression on her face. “I don’t want to do either.”

  The heat of his body as he leaned over her to put his mouth against her ear was a very welcome if deceptive imitation of privacy. “If you do nothing, two things will happen almost immediately. First, someone is going to rip Augurr open, and I mean that literally. Right open, right with his bare claws. I have a damned good idea how you figured out that Augurr might not be as safe as he has claimed to be, and I can’t be the only one. So unless you want to see Augurr’s living organs spilled out in front of you, you must give some sort of order. And secondly, Olivia, if you command us to do nothing and you are disobeyed—as you will be disobeyed—a large number of gullan will refuse to concede to your leadership any longer. There are many who resent following a female anyway, even if that female is under the Great Spirit’s hand, and those who remain loyal will almost certainly be forced to defend you, and that sort of defense gets bloody in a big hurry. People are going to die, Olivia. So I ask you again, will you have Augurr killed, or will you have him castrated?”

  She looked at him weakly. “Can’t you tell them?”

  “I will,” he said. His eyes were grave and troubled. “But they don’t want to hear it from me.”

  They looked at each other in silence as the tribe continued to snarl epithets behind them.

  “I can’t have him killed, Sudjummar. I can’t do that.”

  He nodded as if agreeing with her, unsurprised but unrelenting. “Then you’re having him castrated. Publicly?”

  “No.”

  He nodded again. “That’s for the best, I’m sure. Some of these here might think otherwise, but no one really needs to see something like that.” He paused diplomatically. “Who did you have in mind?”

  “Oh Jesus, I don’t know. How many will I need?”

  “Three, at least. One to hold the knife and two to hold him down.” Another tactful silence. And then, he softly added, “And one of them needs to be Bodual. Karen is his mate.”

  Instinctively, Olivia turned and sought Bodual out in the crowd. At first, she thought he must have snuck out, but then saw him leaning heavily against the far wall, both hands pressed to his stomach as though he were fighting not to throw up. Doru stood close to him, his hand beneath one of Bodual’s arms, holding him more or less upright. The big hunter was leaning close, saying something Olivia doubted she’d be able to make out even if she were in arm’s reach of them.

  As if he could feel her watching, Bodual glanced around, unerringly locking his eyes with hers. They looked at each other with sick helplessness across a sea of enraged gullan. Then Bodual closed his eyes and said something. Doru glanced back at her, patting Bodual’s shoulder, and gave her a grim nod.

  “Okay,” she breathed, more in answer to Doru than to Sudjummar. And said it again, louder. “Okay. All right. Bodual. And Doru. And…and you.”

  “Hell, I knew you were going to say that.” Sudjummar rubbed at his eyes wearily and nodded. “All right. Great Spirit help me, I’ll even hold the knife. Okay.” He looked up again, his eyes locking with hers intently. “You know that no matter what, Vorgullum will kill him when he returns.”

  She couldn’t answer that.

  Sudjummar straightened and stepped back from her. “Then make your command, leader, and be quick before things get out of hand.”

  Olivia nodded and numbly pushed herself up onto the rock behind Augurr. Silence dropped over the assemblage as swiftly as if someone had thrown a switch, and she faced the tribe.

  “Sudjummar,” she said quietly, and Augurr’s back tensed. “Doru. Come and take him.”

  The metal-maker put one hand on Augurr’s arm and waited until Doru had threaded his way through the crowd to take the other. They lifted Augurr between them and set him on the ground.

  “Bodual,” she said. “Take him out to the peak of the mountain and make an honest man of him.”

  Bodual’s eyes slid shut and for a second, she thought he would faint. But he opened them again and his eyes were hot. “I’ll do it,” he said, and yanked the knife from his belt with a vicious jerk, pointing the blade back into the crowd at the women clustered at the far end of the cavern. “But I want her gone when I come back. I have no mate after this day!” He swung around, shaking on his feet, to glare at Karen. “Do you hear me, you water-blooded bitch? This is what you wanted, is it? Now you have it! You’re none of mine!”

  Karen wailed and began to sob into her hands once more.

  Bodual stabbed the knife back through his belt. Took a breath, nodded again. And finally started moving, like a marionette being tugged along by an inexpert puppeteer. Doru and Sudjummar went before him, and a large body of the crowd moved at once to follow.

  “They go alone,” Olivia said sharply. She steeled herself against the immediate outcry that billowed up after this statement, but Doru and Sudjummar never even slowed down. “It is not your right to see justice done. It should be enough for you to know that I have done it.” She raked her eyes across them as Augurr was carried away and was inwardly relieved when no one turned his back on her and followed.

  “That’s enough,” Olivia said when they were gone. “Now I want every male in this cavern to leave us, please.”

  After a moment, amid much muttering and dark talk, the males obeyed. Alone with the women, Olivia relaxed slightly. She climbed down from the rock and drew them into a tight circle.

  “You never noticed?” Amy hissed immediately, staring into Karen’s anguished face with open incredulity. “How could you not notice? What did you think was slapping at your ass, a little bag of peanut butter?”

  “He never gets undressed in front of us,” Carla said. “Christ, not even I knew, and he should have known I wouldn’t say anything even if I had.”

  “He only does it from behind,” Sarah J. said. She didn’t look at them. Her eyes were huge, glassy, horrified.

  “Or on a bench,” said Thurga faintly. “When your wings are fit…you can’t see…”

  There were mumbles of agreement. A lot of mumbles.

  “I’ve seen him in the baths,” Ellen ventured, plainly baffled. “He must…He must tuck them between his thighs or something because when he came on to me, those were not there.”

  One of the gullan women gave her a sharp look.

  Ellen noticed and uttered an incredulous, angry little laugh. “Oh my God, Duruna! Of course I haven’t been with him!”

  Olivia looked around at them, dread sitting in her like a hot stone. “Who has? Raise your hands.”

  There were thirty-three gullan females and seven humans other than Olivia herself. Olivia counted twenty-one hands.

  “Keep them up if you have ever been pregnant.”

  Twenty hands. Jesus.

  “Keep them up if there is even the most remote possibility that Augurr fathered that child.”

  Fifteen hands, but the only that belonged to a human was Carla’s.

  “Keep them up if the chil
d is still alive.”

  One hand.

  “Who?” said Olivia.

  The female with the upraised hand took a deep breath, and laid the hand on the shoulder of the female to her right. Mother and daughter looked ill.

  “All right,” Olivia breathed. “All right.” She pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes and tried to think. Several long minutes crawled by and she kept arriving at the same conclusion. “He’s a pervert, isn’t he?” she said without opening her eyes.

  Strengthless whispers of assent.

  “What is usually done?” Olivia asked.

  Crugunn looked around helplessly and then spread her hands. “I don’t know. When has something like this ever happened? We all went to him willingly.”

  “He’s a full-moon’s child,” another gulla whispered, and several others voiced murmurs of concern. “If you mutilate him, the wrath of the Great Spirit will fall upon us all!”

  “You were all thrilled with his mutilation before,” Amy snapped. “And I doubt the Great Spirit is jumping for joy to know his kid is fucking his own daughter!”

  Olivia thought of the tale of creation as Vorgullum had told it, of the Great Spirit’s willingness to breed a daughter just to throw to his sons, and said nothing.

  “Our leader is merciful!” Thurga was insisting, bravely standing against her sisters. “And the punishment is just! She does nothing more than what he has proudly claimed for years!”

  “If Vorgullum were here,” another said hesitantly, “he would kill Augurr. I think perhaps it is better to mutilate a full-moon’s child and give him a chance to restore his honor than to kill him.”

  “Vorgullum will kill him anyway,” argued a third. “So now we have mutilated and killed one!”

  “But Vorgullum is not here yet.” This statement, delivered in a flat, contemptuous, and blessedly familiar tone, silenced all the others. Horumn rose from her place on a bench and limped over to them, striking her crooked staff into the ground extra-hard to show her displeasure. “And those who stand tall in his absence have made their will known. How dare you question it, here, before Olivia herself!”