by R. Lee Smith
He patted her head on his way to another shelf.
“I don’t have anything else he wants except sex,” she said, rubbing distractedly at her scalp to take away the unpleasant tingle left by his touch. “But what’s the point of withholding it when I know he can’t give me what I want?”
“Did I hear that correctly?”
“I like sex,” Mara muttered. “I like his kind best. Damn me, I want to be with him.”
“You’re actually withholding it?” Horuseps pressed. “You’ve been sleeping with him all this time—”
“It’s only been a few days.”
“Precious, that is a painfully long time to sleep beside a demon without either fucking him or dying.” He started to brush at the dusty sockets of a hideously malformed skull, then suddenly stopped and swung around to face her, both eyebrows twitching straight out, sincerely astonished. “Good gracious, are you here for advice?”
She looked away, blushing and scowling and unable to answer.
“Oh, the temptation to misuse this power is dreadful.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said furiously. “I know what you’re going to tell me.”
“Do you now?” The lights of his eyes dimmed and fanned out as his smile faded to one that was almost gentle. “There are only two ways to play the game, child: To win, or to lose. You can’t win if you fuck Kazuul and you can’t win if you don’t. Those being your only options, you’ll lose more comfortably if you submit to him.”
“I don’t submit to anyone.”
“I never said ‘Embrace him and rejoice,’ dearest.” He went back to polishing the skull.
“So you think I’m being stupid again,” Mara said, watching his hands at work.
“You have a certain tendency. Look, my darling heart, you admit you want the brute. You admit it gains you nothing to deny him. If you thought about it, you might even admit it is somewhat unwise to continue to bait him in this manner. No, you’ll never find your unfortunate Connie by thrashing in his bed, but neither will you lose her there, so take what you want from him. I hardly think he’ll protest.”
“It’s a distraction.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Kazuul. He’s only trying to keep me in bed so I don’t find Connie and leave. He still wants something from me.”
Horuseps glanced around. “Dearest, it would astonish me to learn that Kazuul ever thought of your poor, lost lamb at all, save as a rival to your affection. In fact, I would venture to suggest that your pursuit of this misplaced human is proving a singular distraction to him. That’s just the way his kind thinks,” he said with a heartfelt and cynical sigh. “If fucking you is all he desires, then obviously, fucking him must be all that you desire. I’m sure it shocks him every time you roll over and go to sleep.” He smiled at her, genially enough. “Now tell me you’re not doing that solely to spite him.”
Mara did not reply.
“I thought so. He’s never really had to woo a woman before, you know,” he remarked, running his fingers along the topmost curve of what appeared to be a rhinoceros horn mounted on his wall. They came away dusty, apparently, and Horuseps frowned as if deeply concerned. “I can’t begin to imagine how he must be going about it.”
“He took me for a sunset stroll in the garden.”
He looked at her again, far more sincerely surprised. “I confess I wouldn’t have thought it of him,” he said, and cocked his head. “How did it go?”
“It was fucking freezing. I thought my toes were going to fall off.”
“Ah.” Horuseps came over to where she sat and knelt down. He lifted one of her feet gingerly (amusement, curiosity, and a curiously gentle desire blew through his touch), inspected it, and began to rub away the lingering burn left by the ice. “Beyond that?”
“He offered to teach me more magic.”
“If only you would…?”
“I’m sure that part was coming.”
“Are you?” he asked, and picked up her other foot. “Kazuul believes in the overwhelming show of force, not devious finesse. You give him too much credit, I think.”
“I don’t think I give him enough.”
“Also true, from a certain point of view. But let me put to you a simple question.” Horuseps looked up at her, not smiling, his hands cool around her heel. “Would you be with him now if it weren’t for your Connie?”
Mara fought down the first word to leap to her mouth without exploring it and said instead, crossly, “If it weren’t for Connie, I wouldn’t be here with any of you.”
Horuseps waited, gently massaging her instep.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Even if he had nothing to offer you at all?”
“I don’t know. Probably.” Mara scowled and pulled her foot back. “He says he’d never use that Dominion-thing on me, but I don’t know if I believe him. He’s done something.”
“Has he?”
“I…I think about him.”
“Hardly the Killing Curse, my dear.”
“I don’t think about anyone!” Mara insisted as Horuseps stood up to loom over her. “I don’t think about my mother. I didn’t think about my father, before or after he died. I don’t even think about Connie unless I have a reason to. So why do I think about him? He’s done something to me.”
“Oh hush, my darling one, hush.” He bent to lay his hands upon her shoulders, and for a moment, she was afraid he’d kiss her. It took a lot of effort not to cringe, but he only said, “You would never be here speaking to me if you really didn’t know what you were going to do, now would you?”
The question, gently-spoken as it was, caught her entirely by surprise. No. No, of course she wouldn’t. Mara dropped her eyes, confused, and he caught her chin and brought them back up.
“You only want me to tell you to go to him so you can use me to talk yourself out of it,” he said. “I’m sure I could convince you in the end—I’m very good at that—but I won’t. You are what you are, Bitter Waters. You take what you want, and for you, asking for reasons would be like asking permission.”
She frowned.
“I’m glad you appreciate the likelihood of that,” he agreed and, smiling, released her. “So ask not, dear heart. Morality is mortality. Take what you want.”
And then he beckoned beyond her to the first uncertain student to open his doors, inviting him in, preparing his next lesson, dismissing her. Mara retreated to the first ring of risers, but didn’t sit. She watched Horuseps bring the student down onto the dais with him, unabashedly flirting as he listened to whatever difficulty was being described. He’d chosen his next Proteus, it seemed, a handsome and not-too promising old man with a young face who believed he could use his Allure against a demon (he’d heard the rumor that Horuseps was male, but he’d also heard that he was in the habit of letting his favorite students borrow books, and for the chance to read The Fallen Son and Voices of the Flame outside the Scrivener’s keeping, he was not opposed to buggery). Horuseps had no conscience when it came to grooming his next bedmate. Pleasure was a rarity in the Scholomance and it was worth pursuing.
And perhaps it was at that.
Mara left the two of them talking, tapping lightly at the demon’s mind for goodbye and receiving a wordless farewell like a caress in return. She climbed the winding stair to the top of the lyceum, and before she reached the last of them, her body was already alive, as if it were a sentient thing separate from herself that knew what waited for her at the end. The lamps in the hall that led to his door were still glowing, but as abstract carvings became an orgy, they began to flicker and fade, giving cold stone the illusion of movement, and her anticipation grew.
It didn’t have to mean anything. It could be sex for the sake of sex, it could be hers just because she wanted it. He could be a man like any other man she’d ever had, and when it was done, she could sleep beside him again and know that nothing had really changed. She was in control. This was her decision.
She hea
rd his voice before she reached the curtains at the foot of the stair, just Kazuul’s at first, rumbling too low to determine speech. So she stopped, and her immediate impulse was to retreat before she was noticed and thought to be eavesdropping on him in whatever private conversation he was having. Then she decided that anything he felt he had to say in private was probably a good thing for her to know, and she moved forward again. And then she heard the mocha-rich and melodious tones that could only belong to Letha, and for the second time, Mara halted. This hesitation didn’t last long. She came the last three steps to the curtains and through them without attempting to hide herself.
He was sitting on the arm of his throne in obvious good humor, his cup in one hand and the other drumming lightly on the tabletop. He paid no attention to the demoness who straddled him, her slender arms around his neck, her hips moving in graceful circles against him. Letha moaned, long fingers caressing the shell of his pointed ear while her other hand dragged slow across his chest, her palm turned inward so that her short quills gouged him, drawing delicate beads of blood for her to lap at with kittenish pleasure.
Mara felt her eyes narrow. Her gaze dropped to Kazuul’s hip where, beneath the mellow curve of Letha’s enwrapping thigh, the many layers of his heavy loin-skirt seemed intact. She had begun to feel something, but wasn’t sure yet exactly what it was.
“Never did thee offer to let me sleep in thy chambers,” Letha said with sulky sensuality.
“Thou dost not sleep.”
“Be that the only reason?”
“Nay, but ‘tis a pressing one.” He sipped at his wine.
“Can she give thee more than I?” Letha murmured, cupping her breast winsomely as she combed at Kazuul’s hair. “Truly?”
“Aye.”
“Beyond that. Oh my lord, say it not so that I have been so utterly replaced!”
“Thou art.” There was a smile in his voice, even if Mara couldn’t see his mouth through Letha’s head. “Utterly.”
“I am stabbed. I am slain. That mine ancient place could be usurped by such a child!”
“Ancient indeed, first-born. I have had millennia to learn thy simple tricks.” He set his cup aside and put his arm around her, stroking down the long quills of her back before gripping her buttocks, stilling her playful writhing to bring her right against him. “Thou hast never come to me save that thou hast some demand to make.”
“Demand? Request! The humblest request of thy most faithful and devoted servant!” Letha pouted, running her fingertips across his lips. “Surely more than could be said of thy clay-born plaything. Tis she who maketh demands of thee!”
“Never,” he said placidly, moving her against him. “Never once.”
“With words, nay. With the mark of thy lenience upon her, what need hath she of words? Nay, she wieldeth thee as a babe’s rattle! She raileth at thee at her will and thou art made her fool!”
“Mind thy tongue.”
Letha obeyed at once, but chose an interesting interpretation, snaking out a startling length of flexible black to lick at him, twining down his body in serpentine passes until she knelt on the floor, kissing at and stroking her cheek upon the bulge at his groin. “Do not disgrace me so, I beg thee,” she moaned. “Thou wouldest place mine hand beneath her foot, oh cruel master! I, who have loved thee throughout the ages!”
“At thy convenience.”
“At my pleasure.” Letha’s hand caressed the buckle of his belt, then slipped beneath the many layers of his skirts. Her arm began to work. “At thine.”
He rumbled contentedly, smiling even as he said, “Out with thee.”
“Hast thou not vigor enough for two, my lord?” she asked, pouting. Her hand kept moving. He wasn’t slapping it away, either. “Must I smell thee daily on her skin and know only hunger?”
“Slake it with another.”
“And with whom shalt thy hunger be relieved?” Letha countered. “For ‘tis not slaked in thy white-eyed creature. Come,” she purred. He sipped his wine and watched her as she kissed a slow trail down his chest. “Thy pretty bird shall not return to roost for hours yet. Let me tend thee. Therein lieth mine only love. Let me honor thee as thy precious toy doth not and desireth not to do. Should not my love, my service, have some value greater than her cold cunt?”
“Nay.”
“Oh tyrannous lord!” Letha cried, turning her face away as though she’d been slapped. And that was when she saw Mara, and her expression melted at once from tearful entreaty to very mild consternation.
Kazuul looked sharply around in the next instant, warned either by her stillness or by some psychic flare which eluded Mara’s senses. Then he seized the demoness at his feet and flung her away so that he could leap up unimpeded.
She decided she knew what she was feeling after all. She decided it was anger.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she said. “I was just leaving.”
Even sprawled across the floor, Letha’s voluptuous body gleamed with seductive promise. She brushed her hand across her cheek, smoothing away some unseen bruise, and watched without distress as Kazuul stepped over her. He moved toward Mara, and she threw out a mental punch which may not have delivered any damage to his fortified mind, but which did stop him.
“You can have her,” Mara said, not as calmly as she would have liked. “And she can have you.”
She left them, left Letha’s wary murmurs and the answering snarl with its brutal punctuating slap, but when she reached the theater at the top of the stairs, he was there, reaching out to take her arm.
Rage took her at once, and this mindslap did land and even drove him back, if only half a step. “Don’t you touch me!” she shouted. “Don’t you ever touch me again!”
“Mara—”
“Oh, I’m your possession, am I? I’m your property! You can throw me down in the dining hall in front of everyone and step on me! You can ram a spike into Horuseps and make me give you promises while everyone laughs at me! You can mutilate any man who’s ever looked at me, you can even get rid of Devlin, and then you can take yourself off to fuck Letha!”
He drew back, then actually started to smile. His hated smile, his most triumphant smile. “Nay,” he said, not quite laughing. “Lay aside thy woman’s jealousy—”
“Jealousy? I’m not jealous, you son of a bitch, I’m pissed off! I don’t care if you fuck her and every other person in this school, but how dare you, how dare you, cut me away from everyone else in this mountain while you dip your dick with anyone you please! No!” she shouted, slapping at him with hand and head together (and this time, she even saw him wince). “I’ve come back to you and come back to you for Connie’s sake, but I won’t be your dog even for her!”
“My dog is just what thou art at my command!” he bellowed back at her. “To stand when I will it, and heel when I will it, and lie upon thy bitch’s back when I will it!”
Her temper was right on the edge of flying out in killing chaos, and his was nearly a mirror of it, once again lit up and showing every vulnerability with burning clarity. Seeing that, knowing hers must be doing the same, Mara wrestled her emotions under control once more.
“I came here to fuck you just now,” she said, only said. “But you’ll never touch me again. I’ll make you kill me first.”
He recoiled.
She moved past him and out of his theater.
He didn’t follow, but not even the sealing of his doors behind her could muffle his roars or the red light of his rage in the Mindstorm.
* * *
She did not go to her cell, knowing that he would only look for her there, or send Horuseps to talk reason with her again. Rage was empowering. She wasn’t ready to embrace common sense just yet. So she did not go home, but deliberately lost herself in the lyceum, drilling herself deeper into the twisting tunnels without paying any conscious attention to which turns she took, until she was well and truly lost.
There she stood, her back against the rough wall, carefully stoking her
anger to keep her at a high blaze.
She wasn’t jealous. She believed that. She really didn’t care if he was fucking someone else, and she knew perfectly well he hadn’t been living the life of an ascetic before she’d come along, but his arrogance, his proprietary arrogance, infuriated her well beyond the power of reason. Oh no, he’d make no more demands of her, there was an easy promise for him to make with Letha coming to him every day that she went out. And no, she wasn’t jealous. She refused to give him the satisfaction of that.
A lamp came on in the distance, filling the farthest hook of the tunnel with sickly yellow light. Mara raised her head and watched coldly, drawing back her mind like a bowstring. She honestly didn’t think it was possible to kill him…but she meant like hell to try.
But it was not Kazuul who lit the next lamp ahead of him and stepped nonchalantly into its glow. Neither was it Horuseps, hands raised in conciliatory peace and the light of weary exasperation swimming through his eyes. It was not a demon at all, and not a student.
It was a hound. Skulking low and copiously drooling, it came several steps toward her before it stopped. It growled once, panted, then pushed itself up on its hind legs, forepaws dangling, to howl at her.
“Ska. Ska shu’nodan. Thou pest,” Suti’ok grumbled fondly, unseen. “Thou biting flea. Always thee—”
And then he came around the corner and saw her as well. His broad smile slipped away. He glanced around sharply, then back at her, now frowning. “—to vex me,” he finished in a thoughtful tone. He put his hand on the hound’s neck and it dropped onto all fours, tongue lolling, to grin at her. “Mara. Thou art wandered to dangerous depths indeed. Come. Let me lead thee out.”
“It’s all the same,” said Mara.
“Truth, and yet, shouldst thou encounter some hungering thing, he that would mourn thee may seek someone at fault. It shall not be me. Fool of Suti that I am, low-bred and scorned by my brothers, still I know better than to walk on and leave thee here behind me.”
“I doubt he’ll mourn me long,” Mara said with a hard smile. She looked at him, ignoring the hand he stretched out to her. “What are you doing here, if it’s so dangerous?”
