Even the Wingless

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  "So do I frustrate him so much that he comes here to release himself? Is that it? Does he use you?"

  The perfume of bruised petals filled her nostrils. She was too terrified to speak and knew not why.

  "I gave him permission," the Emperor said. "Do not fear to speak the truth."

  "He-the-alien only talks, Master," the Slave Queen said in a small voice. She focused on the nearest lily. One of its cream-and-mottled-pink petals had creased and was already turning brown.

  "Talks," the Emperor repeated. "To himself?"

  "To this one, Master. He-the-alien talks to this one."

  The Emperor's brow ridges lifted. "For this he rises every morning, despite whatever I've done to him at night? To talk? To you? Why?"

  "M-master?" the Slave Queen stammered.

  "Why does he do it? Does he say?"

  "He-the-alien is an alien, Master. He-the-alien thinks of females as... persons."

  "So I've observed," the Emperor said. "But I thought it a general weakness, not something he held in specific with particular harem-members. Is it only you he speaks to, then?"

  She knew the answer. She did not want to give it. And yet he was her Emperor. "This one does not know everywhere the alien goes or to whom he-the-alien speaks, Master."

  "Mm. I should have expected not." She heard the scratch of his claw tips on stone as he walked near and tightly closed her eyes, anticipating a blow. Instead, she felt a caress on her brow, then a hand lifting her head. The Emperor studied her with his brilliant, unblinking eyes, and in them she saw only curiosity. "Not a scratch. You still fear me properly, so at least whatever nonsense he speaks has not been upsetting the order of things." Beneath her jaw, one of his fingers lightly scratched, soothing. "Every morning?"

  "Without... without fail, Master," the Slave Queen whispered.

  He nodded. "You serve me well in your obedience," he said. "And you have done no wrong. I allowed the alien the use of you, and if all he wants is your ears then that is his opportunity lost."

  She flushed hot at the words and her body grew pliable, awaiting the inevitable.

  But the Emperor stood and left her there, tail curled behind him, lost in his own thoughts. Astounded, the Slave Queen pushed herself onto her knees and stared after him. She began to shake so hard the lacquered edges of her wings tapped together. An Emperor who treated her as a thing to be used and then set side was an Emperor she understood. One whose cruelty and actions she could at least anticipate and prepare for. An Emperor she could predict for the Ambassador. An Emperor who could talk to her, consider her and then leave her without marking her... was a stranger. What he was capable of, what he would do to her or to the Ambassador she could not guess, and it frightened her. It frightened her the way the first day of her servitude had frightened her. When the Emperor had been new and each day had pulled her this way, that way, stretching her until her will and her hope had leaked out of the marks and left her bowed and remade.

  With trembling hands, the Slave Queen began to pick up the flowers.

  Lisinthir waited until he stepped outside Second's suite to start coughing. The tentative sip he'd taken in the Slave Queen's presence had not prepared him for the harder pull he'd drawn for Second's benefit, or the tickle down his throat that had made him want to choke. That he managed to exit with dignity and no haste was all self-control, and he was grateful to have managed. He wiped his watering eyes with a cuff and tried a second suck.

  He expected to cough. Instead, he began to feel fluid... almost watery. As if the world had softened around its edges and he was standing beneath the universe's most soothing waterfall. The stone walls seemed almost dreamlike. He dragged his fingers along them, and his skin tingled. From a distance.

  By the time Lisinthir reached the base of the tower and had started up his own, he'd gone through two more of the rolls. Somehow he'd expected smoking to be more difficult, particularly poison smoke used to pacify recalcitrant aliens. This, however, was pleasant in the extreme. It filed the edge off his sense of constant entrapment, one he hadn't realized still dogged him. The only troublesome part was how out-of-breath he was when he arrived at his suite. The weeks of constantly climbing had acclimated him to the towers; if only one afternoon could steal his breath from him, he would have to ration his hekkret intake carefully.

  He smoked another in his suite, feet propped up on his desk, and felt supremely calm about having been the intended victim of assassination that morning.

  At supper, Lisinthir pushed his own plate away untouched and ate from the Emperor's. This won him a lazy laugh, and he started on his fifth roll halfway through the meal. This time, the Emperor did not send him a secret invitation, or tell him in passing to join him later... but pulled him out of the meal before it ended. They made the long walk together up to the tower, and there were times when the landings saw more use than typical. The guards moved hastily out of the way, and Lisinthir reached the top of the stairs with sharp lines crossing his ribs from the awkward falls he'd taken against them.

  The Emperor opened the door for him and pulled him inside, and they tumbled together, a feral game of chase-and-seek that took them through the entire suite. It culminated in the bedchamber, and this time it was not only Lisinthir's clothing that had been reduced to rags, but the Emperor's robe and the bed-sheets besides. Chatcaavan comforters were apparently filled with down.

  "And this?" the Emperor asked after Lisinthir lit a roll. He plucked it from the Eldritch's fingers. "Your newest affectation?"

  "My newest affectation is you, Emperor," Lisinthir said with a languid grin. "The roll is just dessert."

  The Emperor's fluorescent yellow eyes thinned to slits, then he laughed, flashing all his fangs. "I see." He pulled from the roll himself, its end brightening. The plume of smoke he blew out coiled like the tail of a female. "You are clever, Ambassador."

  "Perhaps," Lisinthir said. Their mutual satisfaction at the night's exercise oozed through their skins where they touched; he had almost become accustomed to being of two minds when they fought, his own and the Emperor's that forced through his thin shields. They shared the roll in companionable silence.

  "You make a good male," the Emperor said when Lisinthir gave up the last ashes for his snifter of brandy. "I admit to surprise."

  "And why is that?" Lisinthir asked, sipping.

  "You are too pretty," the Emperor said, pulling his hair and grinning. "All smooth, breakable limbs. Not a scale, not a wing, not a true fang or claw on you. Even your muscles are hidden beneath your soft skin. You can't hope to win against a true male, and yet you try. Why?"

  "Because I am male, no matter my shape," Lisinthir said. "Do you lose your maleness when you Change?"

  "I haven't had cause to find out," the Emperor said, sipping from his own glass.

  "You've never known the Change?" Lisinthir asked, quirking a brow.

  The Emperor slowly turned his face to the Eldritch's. "I have never wanted to descend to the level of the animal, the non-male," he said. "Nor have I ever wanted to sully my flesh with the cell-deep knowledge of wingless freaks."

  "Even if the cell-deep knowledge of wingless freaks would give you the key to understanding them?" Lisinthir asked. "I have observed you, Exalted. You have an almost scientific interest in the workings of aliens."

  "There is a difference between learning of something and allowing yourself to be subsumed by it," the Emperor said. "No person owns my soul. I will not embrace such filth." He canted his head, contemplative. "Though it might be interesting to learn to take patterns, simply to see how painful I could make it for the subjects of my interest."

  "I have no doubt you could beat any of your choices into submission," Lisinthir said. "Indeed, just hearing you put it that way... " He paused artfully.

  "Yes?" The Chatcaavan watched him with suspicious eyes.

  "I almost hear fear in your voice, fear of the experience."

  The Emperor snorted. "I fear nothing," he said.

&
nbsp; "And yet I don't see you seeking it," Lisinthir said.

  "Are you volunteering for my experiments?"

  "Are you hungry to learn?" the Eldritch asked, smiling with narrowed eyes.

  They both knew the answer, coursing through the Chatcaavan's skin.

  The Emperor glared, then pushed him away with a rough laugh. "You just want to yank my hair for a change."

  "You have enough of it of your own," Lisinthir said, putting his glass aside. "Enough for me, anyway."

  The Emperor shook back his mane, barely visible around the crest of horns that swept back from his elongated skull. He had a truly impressive rack, so much so that Lisinthir wondered if anyone had ever broken a horn off him.

  The Chatcaavan stretched. "So, my cozy Beauty... have they tried to kill you yet?"

  "Yes," Lisinthir said, folding his hands behind his head.

  "And have you had anything to answer to that?"

  "I'm am ambassador," Lisinthir said. "It is not a good idea for alien dignitaries to kill the natives."

  "Perhaps in your Alliance, where everyone is soft," the Emperor said, trailing a talon's point up his ribs. Gooseflesh pebbled in its wake, and Lisinthir resisted his shiver, uneasily aware that he couldn't tell whether it was cold or pleasure. "But here we do not respect a male who does not eliminate his rivals."

  "Are you saying the Empire would not retaliate against the Alliance if I killed one of your courtiers?" Lisinthir asked, suddenly realizing just what the Chatcaavan had said.

  "You know that you are at risk for death," the Emperor said. "You observe, then, that my courtiers are willing to kill you. Why should you not defend yourself?"

  "Because I am the representative of my nation," Lisinthir said. "And we do not kill people without cause."

  "Your weak people," the Emperor said. "I had entertained notions that you were more than that."

  "There are more ways to retaliate against a man than to kill him," Lisinthir said, hiding his startle at the statement. He affected a disinterest he did not feel. "In this case, I'm not sure if I should bother. If I attempt to kill my enemies, I only create more resentment. I have what they don't. Let them squirm in their envy."

  "You shirk from conflict," the Emperor said with a sneer.

  Lisinthir kicked him in the stomach. Their fight took only a few minutes and had a playful edge to its viciousness that surprised the Eldritch.

  "I don't shirk from anything I want," Lisinthir said, lying on his stomach and feeling each single bead of sweat as it evaporated from his shivering skin.

  "And you want me, like a female would."

  Lisinthir snorted. "I don't want your body. But your mind is of great interest to me."

  The Emperor slid out of bed, long tail the last to fall from the sheets. His wings flexed before he tucked them close to his back and reached for a robe. This usually signaled the end of their interaction, but the Chatcaavan said, "My mind, is it?"

  "Our bodies are unevenly matched," Lisinthir said. "The test of them is meaningless. But the testing of our minds against one another... that, I have interest in."

  "Once again, this perverse desire to overlook the obvious," the Chatcaavan said, turning and resting his hands on the edge of the service table. "Without your body, your mind is nothing. It has not saved you yet from my attentions."

  "That makes the assumption I want saving," Lisinthir said.

  Again the sneer. "Only females seek the beds of males."

  Lisinthir grinned. "I do not recall seeking, Emperor."

  The Chatcaavan scowled and threw a pewter cup at him. "Get out, wingless freak!"

  "Aye, Great One," Lisinthir said.

  "I am not certain the hekkret agrees with you," the Slave Queen said, handing him a cup.

  The Ambassador took it and sat across from her, hunching forward. Exhaustion on his pale face was far easier to read than in a Chatcaavan's; the lower half of his eye-sockets became discolored, there was more white in his eye to check for broken blood vessels, and his skin when healthy seemed to glow, a pale but brilliant white. Now it had no luster, and the veins she spied on the insides of his wrists were nearly purple, they had grown so dull.

  "I am certain it doesn't," the Ambassador said. "But the alternative is rather more unappealing." He ran a hand through his hair. "Worse, it has a psychoactive effect. It makes things seem more bearable."

  She leaned back on her heels and studied his face. "Yes," she said after a moment. "I can see how that would be bad. Things continue to be so difficult? The pain should be better by now."

  "The pain isn't the problem," he said. "It's how little the pain bothers me anymore." He shook his head.

  "Then let us speak of other things," she said. "You look too tired for stories. Will you tell me instead about the jewel on your hand?"

  He looked down at his hands as if only then remembering he had them, turning them. "The ring you mean?"

  She nodded. "The previous Alliance ambassadors also seemed to wear jewelry. Among the Chatcaava it is a thing reserved for kept females."

  The Ambassador's brow furrowed. "So I shouldn't wear it... but I can't part with it, so that's a foolish line to follow." He rubbed the finger above the heavy ring, then slid it off and offered it to her.

  The Slave Queen blinked. "Did you not just say you couldn't part with it?"

  "Oh, I want it back," he said with a laugh. "I only offer it to you for examination."

  "Oh!" She took it then and turned it in her fingers. For a ring it was heavy and broad, a silvery-pale metal inscribed with different things on either side: two swords on one, a wreath and some sort of wheeled vehicle on the other. Words in Eldritch she didn't understand wound along the inside of the band.

  Its centerpiece was of course the sullen red jewel with its carved, inlaid dragon. No wings and no second set of arms put it outside her ideal of a Chatcaavan, of course, but it still amazed her that a creature from such a far-flung planet could dream of dragons.

  "It is a symbol of a family," the Ambassador said. "The striking drake."

  "Your family?" she asked, curious.

  "No," he said. "My father's. Among the Eldritch, the mother passes down the family name."

  "What is a family name?" the Slave Queen asked. She tried the ring on and found it too large for her fingers.

  "It is... " He stopped, groped for words. "You have no surnames? Your mother, your father, what were their names?"

  "Mother and Father, of course," the Slave Queen said. "Father was also the holder of a planetary estate, which gave him a different title to others. That is a small part of why the Emperor executed him."

  He looked aggrieved. "I am sorry to have reminded you."

  "It is not something that pains me to remember," she said. "He was my sire, nothing more."

  "Among my people, your mother and father are supposed to love you as well as take care of you," he said. "And they bequeath to you land, wealth and connections based on the relative worth of their relatives. That comes to you with a name, a sigil... and a ring."

  "This ring," she said, trying to understand. "This ring means you have power?"

  "That ring means I am a joke," he said. "It is the ring of my father's name, and my father's name was devalued long ago."

  "Your mother's name has the value," the Slave Queen said and remembered the night of the escape. "That name makes you a prince. Why this ring, then?"

  He took it back from her, each motion slow, and studied the signet. "Because to be a prince among many princes is not as fine as to be a solitary king."

  "When you come home, that name will mean something," the Slave Queen said.

  "I hope."

  She nodded. "That, at least, can be understood."

  The Ambassador laughed and reached for his cup... and froze. His transformation from tired and unguarded to wary hunter startled her and she lifted her head to find Second mounting the final stairs onto the landing.

  They stared at one another, Second and the
Ambassador.

  "I have come to make use of the Slave Queen," Second said finally.

  The Ambassador turned from him and resumed drinking. "I am not done with her yet."

  In the ensuing silence, the Slave Queen struggled not to fidget.

  "She does not belong to you," Second said. "You do not have exclusive claim to her."

  "No," the Ambassador said, "but the Emperor gave me leave to use her, and I am using her. You may have the use of her company when I am done."

  "You look done," Second said, eyes thinning. The contempt in his voice was unmistakable. In response to it, the Ambassador rose with a slowness that owed nothing to exhaustion and everything to menace.

  "Was that an insult?" the Ambassador asked. "Some slight to my prowess?"

  Second lifted his chin. "You hear much that I do not intend, Ambassador."

  "Is that so?" the Ambassador asked, drawing the words out with such a growl in his voice that Second stepped back.

  "I meant no insult," Second said.

  The Slave Queen ached in fear of the impending violence, particularly upon Second who, though male, had never been mean with her. But the violence did not come. The Ambassador stepped back and said, "Her mornings are mine, Second. Come back later."

  Second hesitated.

  "Go," the Ambassador said, and somehow made the word a command without lifting his voice.

  Second vanished into the stairwell, claws clicking on the stone. It wasn't until the sound vanished altogether that the Ambassador's shoulders relaxed and his body lost its feral intensity. He sank back to the floor and picked up his glass again, but his eyes remained distant and hard.

  "Ambassador?" the Slave Queen asked cautiously.

  "Does he hurt you?"

  "Second?" the Slave Queen said, startled.

  "Does he hurt you. Cause you pain or humiliation," the Ambassador said, his voice too intense to be speaking of her.

  "No," the Slave Queen said. "He comes to have his wings oiled. He asks no other service of me."

  That shook him out of his strange and unnerving mood. "That's it? And he was insulting me for not tumbling you hard enough?"