"Yes!"
"Even though he watched a female of his own species suffer beneath my hand for hours, in public, and did not flinch."
"It was an act, Exalted. Test him. You will see I speak truth. Devise a way to expose this weakness in him and you will see he is no different from those the Alliance sent before."
The Emperor turned back to the Slave Queen and held a ribbon up to her cheek. "Very well. I shall do so tonight. But I think you are wrong, Second. I think this one is different."
Second rose and bowed his head. "All you can do is test him, Exalted. The truth of the freak will be revealed."
"We shall see," the Emperor said, and Second excused himself. Slowly, the Emperor wound her more tightly into her statue. Each ribbon and cord increased her sense of desperation. Would that she could warn the Ambassador of his impending test...
The Emperor left her there, tied into an artful curve, and as the moon cut a shadow from her body and slowly trapped it against the wall, the Slave Queen whimpered into the silence.
That night the Emperor was not in the front room and Lisinthir investigated a series of opulent studies, libraries and bathing chambers until he discovered the protected room in the very center of the suite. There he found the Chatcaavan lounging on a bed twice the expected size. He was already drinking, and his eyes were on the door as Lisinthir entered.
"Serve yourself," the Emperor said. "You can pour a bottle."
Caught off balance by the unexpected intimacy of the room, Lisinthir glanced at its edges until he found the sideboard. The brandy in the decanter was twice as old as the one in the front room, if his nose was any judge.
"Disrobe," the Emperor said.
"I think I'll stay clothed, thank you," Lisinthir said, leaning back against the sideboard and taking a sip from his glass. "It's quite chilly."
"Did you think that a request?" the Emperor asked. "Or do you simply prefer your clothing in rags? I have been keeping track, wingless freak... I've destroyed twenty-four of your outfits." He grinned, all tooth and no good. "Perhaps your goal is to end up with a Chatcaavan wardrobe."
"I'd fill it better than most of your courtiers," Lisinthir said, affecting a casual arrogance he didn't at all feel. The longer the Emperor remained on that side of the room, the more ominous he seemed. The honesty of their violent confrontations before struck Lisinthir as safer than this building tension.
"It was not a request," the Emperor said after a silence that had seemed to vibrate.
"If you like my body so much, you can come disrobe it yourself," Lisinthir said.
But the anger he'd hoped to inspire never surfaced. The Emperor hissed a laugh and slid off the bed. He set his glass on the sideboard and caught a handful of the Eldritch's hair.
"Come," the Emperor said, and pulled him by it to the bed. Reluctantly, Lisinthir followed until they reached the edge. He did not realize how much he relied on the Emperor's touch to warn him of impending action until the Chatcaavan had thrown him onto his knees. The moment his knees hit the ground, Lisinthir struggled to stand again.
"Stay," the dragon hissed. "Or would you prefer I take my desires to one of the kept? You could watch me kill her, if you like."
Lisinthir froze, then said, "You would kill her anyway, at some point."
"That is provably untrue," the Emperor said, almost conversationally. "Consult with my court. Ask Second to show you the database. Of all the Emperors to claim the Throne of Thorns since we became an empire, I have been the least interested in killing my possessions. I do not kill without cause. But this—this is a worthy cause."
"You wouldn't," Lisinthir said, willing it to be true.
"I will. Shall we go now?"
"I won't come with you," Lisinthir said.
"The guards will solve that problem," the Emperor said and let go of his hair. "Let us go."
"No," Lisinthir said.
The Emperor lifted both hands and waited. When Lisinthir didn't rise, he laughed. "Ah... so it's true! Second was right. You have a soft core, just like all those who came before you. I can make you obey me just by threatening those you consider innocent. I am correct?"
Lisinthir stared at the male's thighs, fighting red fury.
The Emperor slipped a finger beneath his chin and tilted his head up, and through that one finger fed him such a barrage of lust and desire to dominate that Lisinthir swayed back.
"That was not a rhetorical question, wingless one. Answer your master."
"No man is my master," Lisinthir growled.
"No, every man is your master," the Emperor said, stroking the edge of Lisinthir's jaw. "Because you cannot stand to allow anyone to be hurt whom you can save. Is that right?"
That he was shaking surprised him; that it was rage, not fear, that made him tremble so hard did. He struggled to take long, even breaths and couldn't. Everything within the edge of his vision shook.
"Answer me, Beauty."
"Yes," Lisinthir said finally, then glared up at the Chatcaavan with such ferocity he summoned a curl of violence in the dragon. "Yes, I can be controlled by threats of harm to others. I am a decent man."
"You are a decent Alliance freak," the Emperor corrected. "No male at all." His hand glided past Lisinthir's ear and clutched in his hair, tangling it into a knot at his neck. He pushed the Eldritch's head down. "Bite me and die."
Lisinthir did as he was forced.
He also bit him anyway, on the thigh.
When the Ambassador stumbled into her chamber nigh unto dawn, she despaired of her state, unable to move to him. Indeed, it took him several moments to place her in the room and when he saw her he growled. His movements as he strode to her and began untying her were harshly controlled, but even so he yanked, and he touched her more frequently and with less grace than was his wont. She longed to care for him, to bring him something to drink, mound pillows for him to use... but the moment the last of her limbs had been released they gave beneath her weight and sent her tumbling forward into his arms. She hoped desperately that whatever he felt through her exposed skin did not worsen his situation.
"No," he said. "No, never fear that." He slid an arm beneath her knees and another in an awkward diagonal from her waist up between her wings and carried her to the same divan she'd used as an invalid Eldritch imposter. Once settled, he draped her own translucent shawl over her body. "Shall I bring you something?"
She struggled to sit up. "Ambassador—"
"Ssh," he said hoarsely, touching a finger to the tip of her mouth. "It looks worse than it is." His mouth twisted. "In fact, my body believes tonight was gentler than any other night I have been with him."
"Then why—"
"There are places no medic can touch," the Ambassador said softly.
"I don't understand," she said, desperate to. She had never seen that look on his face, could not even describe it.
"He has discovered, your Emperor, that my obedience to his whim can be compelled by threatening others with harm."
"It can?" the Queen asked, eyes widening.
He merely looked at her, and his stories of knights and princes and saviors rushed through her like water over parched earth. "Oh, no, my-better."
"I am here to do the business of the Alliance and to deliver my nation's citizens to freedom when they're enslaved. Of course I want to win no one harm."
"But there are no citizens left here!" the Slave Queen said. "Surely he has not found new ones... I would know. They would have to be fitted for collars."
He had turned his face from hers and closed his eyes, and in the anguished crease of his brow she read the unfathomable truth. "You mean to say us? Females? You would bow your head to save us? But we die, Ambassador! We live on our knees, we serve and we die when we are ordered. That is our lot! You cannot save us from it, not forever!"
"But for a little while," he whispered.
Heedless of what it might do to him, she grasped his arm. "Ambassador, no! You cannot allow this weakness to dictate you
r relationship with the Emperor, or he will—"
"—humiliate me? Use me? Force me to pleasure him like some piece of chattel? Your warning comes too late. I can still taste the blood in the back of my throat." He drew a long breath in through his flared nostrils. "If he were anyone else I'd believe it a bluff. But I've felt his callousness through my skin and I know he'll do it. He'd kill one of you." He lifted dusk-blue eyes to hers. "To avoid watching someone die because of my pride, I will kneel to him."
She struggled with a new and unpleasant emotion. Guilt. This was guilt. "A male must have pride. It is essential."
"If what I feel now is considered weakness rather than conviction, then I am lost," he said. "I cannot do anything else."
She rubbed her arms, seeing in her mind the Emperor's curiosity, his satisfaction. "Perhaps not," she said slowly.
"Lady?"
"You are not Chatcaavan," the Slave Queen said.
"Obviously," he said with a humorless smile.
She pressed on. "He has never been so serious with a male from the Alliance, Ambassador. The dignitaries who filled your position before he ignored, save to frighten them enough to drive them away. The females he enslaved and used as casually as he did Chatcaavan females, or to slake a purely scientific curiosity. But you... " The good humor of the Emperor's comments to Second filled her with wary hope. "You have become more. It is different with you. He finds you fascinating."
He looked up at her. "I am new enough to him."
"You have not broken to him completely," the Slave Queen said. "He will want to see you to that desolation before he gives you up. That has been his pattern before. Still... " She studied the circles beneath his eyes. "Is this healthy for you? I can see no obvious marks on you, and yet you look worse than you have in weeks."
He took another long, measured breath. "I can no longer distinguish easily, lady. Between his feelings and mine when he assails me. Is it my anger? His? Is the hunger mine? What of the pleasure? Are we equally savage, or does he re-make me with every touch on my body? Sometimes... I question myself."
She canted her head. "That you should not, Ambassador. As long as you are willing to bow your head to spare the pain of the worthless, you are no Chatcaavan. No matter what you feel when you are defending your life and your honor. It is what moves you that makes you who you are."
He looked at her then. Touched her cheek with the backs of two fingers and smiled with such frailty that she wanted to hide before she could accept the burden of his trust. "Thank you," he said softly. "For reminding me of that."
"You will not thank me the longer you stay, realizing what a weakness it is," she said.
His smile grew stronger then. "I will live, lady, truly. These fragile bodies are compensated by strong spirits."
"He will grow crueler," she said. "It is his way, if ferocity alone does not win him what he wants. Particularly when he has exposed a weakness he can use."
"And yet you are still supple, lady, who have been his all your life," the Ambassador said.
The Slave Queen tucked a strand of hair behind a horn, her hand brushing the broad silver collar around her neck. Her muscles still felt weak but now she could no longer tell whether it was the aftermath from being bound or if dread stole her strength instead. "It is not so hard for females. Not even winged ones. We are born stripped of any threat to a male, so they waste little energy on us. We are objects for use, not rivals. You do not crush an object so long as it serves the use you intended when you obtained it." His eyes grew hard. She continued. "I know it pains you to hear it, but it is the only thing that keeps us safe from the killing games the males engage in with one another. In that it is a blessing." She sighed. "And so no advice I can give you will help you. You do not want to react to the Emperor as a female would. In no way."
"I hope I already haven't."
The Slave Queen glanced at the length of his body. "You fight him," she said. "That at least is male. Is it rage? Do you try to overpower him? To anger him?"
"I wear his anger at my insolence," the Ambassador said with a thin smile. "I hurt nothing he really needed. But he needed to be reminded that I am no pet."
His voice was a hunter's, and she shivered. "He will think you no pet if you wear savagery that blatant in his bed."
He looked away and the flame in his voice guttered, leaving it low and tired. "I do not enjoy it," he said. "Anger whittles at your soul. It becomes you. It moves you to acts you would otherwise abhor."
Daring, she asked, "Perhaps you could come to enjoy it?"
He shook himself. "No. I am no Chatcaavan to be aroused by pain and violence."
"We are not all the same," she said.
He smiled then, a delicate thing, swiftly passing. "So I have learned."
Her skin grew warm. "Is there some way I may help? You cannot bear stress so great, Ambassador. It will unmake you. If there is some way this unworthy one could aid you—" To pay recompense for not having been able to warn him, some part of her whispered.
"To come here to you, to find a quiet place where the emotions are healthier," he said, and hesitated before continuing, "to touch someone whose mind is not a maze of violence and depravity. That would help me beyond measure."
She reached for his hands and cradled them in hers. "Then come here to this. Unless you can meet such quiet alone?"
The Ambassador shook his head. "No, lady. I fear you are my best anchor."
"Then use me," the Slave Queen said. "This use, at least, I give willingly, and takes nothing from me to provide."
He closed his eyes and allowed his head to drop until it rested against the arm of her chair. Gently, she set a hand on his shoulder. In the other hand, his fingers tightened, squeezed. She almost missed his words then.
"I fear the coming weeks, lady. By God, how I fear them."
Silently, she agreed.
"How kind of you to see me," Lisinthir said, standing in the door to Second's office.
"It was not my intention to delay our discussion," Second said. "I have been concerned with other matters."
"No doubt," Lisinthir said. "Though you leave me somewhat perplexed. Is the relationship the Empire sustains with the Alliance so low on the list of your government's priorities that you cannot make time for its ambassador?"
"The Empire must exist in order to sustain this relationship," Second said and indicated a chair. "For that, it must be run. Surely you understand, Ambassador."
Lisinthir had not yet been inside Second's office. With its balcony and open doors, it did not look dissimilar from his guest suite's, but it was twice as large and lined with bookcases. Books, scrolls and tablets filled the shelves with an occasional decoration—here a jagged amethyst formation, there a globe of onyx. The only free wall, the one directly in front of Second's writing desk, was taken up in its entirety by a viewscreen that currently displayed a map of the Throneworld's solar system. The room gave an impression of a studious man... one with no other personality. Lisinthir wondered if Second had other passions or if he was as simple as his office suggested.
Taking the offered seat, Lisinthir said, "There are so many things for us to discuss it seems reasonable to address them one at a time. I will be here long enough to come to each."
"Is that so?"
"Why wouldn't it be?" Lisinthir asked. Second's face was far less mobile than the Emperor's, but he could read Chatcaavan faces well enough to know a guarded expression when he saw one.
"The previous ambassadors have returned to the Alliance after only a few months," Second said. "I thought perhaps this was common practice."
"We thought we'd attempt a new approach," Lisinthir said dryly. "You'll be dealing with me for at least two years. Possibly longer. But two years is my specified assignment. Which will give you plenty of time to explain to me, for instance, why Chatcaavan military vessels were spotted on the Alliance side of the border near the colonies of Far Hearth, Genevis and Karritwen."
"I assure you, there are
no military vessels in your space, Ambassador."
Lisinthir's brows rose. "Do you suggest I lie, Second?"
"I suggest nothing," Second said. "I only state a fact. No military vessels were authorized to enter your space, which as I am certain you will remind me would be a breach of the treaty terms."
"And yet, the evidence is there," Lisinthir said.
"So you say." Second folded his hands on the desk top.
"I thought perhaps it was an innocent mistake," Lisinthir said. "A charting database that had not yet updated. A navigational error. Perhaps a training exercise by the uninitiated."
"We do not make such mistakes," Second said.
"How comforting for the colonists," Lisinthir said, trying to stare past the wall in Second's eyes. "Shall I go back and tell them that they hallucinate?"
"It is natural to assume the worst when one has partial data and lives on a border with an ally of the Empire's power," Second said.
"We do not make such mistakes," Lisinthir said.
"We have not broken with the treaty terms," Second said. "I cannot say it many more ways. But I can try."
"And if I bring you proof—"
"—sensor data can be falsified," Second said. "You would have much to gain by such a claim, would you not?"
"That is quite an accusation," Lisinthir said.
"And yours is not?" Second shook his head. "No, Ambassador. There is nothing more to discuss on this issue. You impugn the honor of the Empire. Did I not know it to be a lie, I would be offended." He thinned his eyes. "And now my time is very valuable, Ambassador. You will permit me to return to my duties, I am sure."
"I would not dream of keeping you from them," Lisinthir said, rising.
"Good afternoon, then."
Lisinthir backed out of the room, then turned and strode back into the hall and started down the stairs. He shouldn't have been surprised, but he was. He'd expected more malleability, particularly in response to direct confrontation, something the Chatcaava appeared to approve of. If all his negotiation with Second went this way, he'd accomplish nothing. It made him wonder if the previous ambassadors had experienced similar meetings... if that was why nothing with the Empire seemed to ever change.
Even the Wingless Page 22
