"Has he really?" the Emperor asked.
"It is sickening," Third said. "And he came to me, Exalted, and told me that had I kept my ships to myself we would not be having this problem... as if it is my fault that he cannot say no to an alien."
"Why exactly did your ships get caught on the wrong side of the border?" the Emperor asked.
"I am not doing anything differently now than I have in the past," Third said, voice hardening. "I search for resources for you, as you request."
"I wouldn't want you to stop," the Emperor said. "What I want to know is why you were caught, Third."
"A fluke," Third said. "They were lucky."
"Were they?" the Emperor said, his voice gone to musing. His focus sharpened again and he swung his head back to Third. "Or are they just better than you?"
Third laughed. "Of course they're not."
"Then you were lazy. I don't countenance laziness."
"This will be the last time they spot me," Third said with smug pleasure. "And I shall bring you back something worth having. But even so, Second will give away your Empire behind your back if you don't stop him."
"What Second does is not your affair," the Emperor said. "Tend your own burning house."
"Aye, Exalted," Third said and bowed. A pause. Then, "If I may...?"
"What is it?" the Emperor asked, sounding cross.
"Second has the use of the Slave Queen, as does the alien. May I not also?"
The Slave Queen's hands twitched on the Emperor's back. She forced herself to resume stretching the taut muscle she'd found beneath them.
"You have a habit of breaking things," the Emperor said.
"I would be careful."
"As careful as you were on the border?" the Emperor asked archly. "Remind me of your worthiness first, Third. Then perhaps I will let you spend yourself in my vault."
"Aye, Exalted."
"And don't bother me again with gossip. Come to tell me of your triumphs—or failures. Gossip is for females."
This time anger in Third's voice: "Aye, Exalted."
The male withdrew. The Emperor resettled himself beneath her hands and surprised her by chuckling.
"So the Slave Queen does not like her Emperor's Third, does she?"
The Slave Queen's body locked in position.
"Don't worry," he said. "You are a prettier picture torturing the Ambassador with your perfect obedience than you are being forced into the same tiresome acts with Third."
Timidly, the Slave Queen said, "Is this one to serve him more frequently, Master?"
The Emperor's eyes grew distant again. "No." Again, snapping back to himself. "Not for now. You will serve me in other ways."
"Yes, Master," the Slave Queen said, torn between disappointment and trepidation.
Lisinthir returned from his wrestling with the Emperor to a message from diplomatic corps that glowed satisfaction at his progress. More than satisfaction, if he read the emotion hiding in the text: they were gleeful. They hadn't expected him to win the import tax request, much less argue it down to the levels he'd managed. Could he continue to work these miracles now on the piracy issue? Fleet had observed more activity along the border and was desperate for intelligence, not just on the slave trade but on the possibility of war. Surely he could accelerate his program, whatever it was?
Could he! Lisinthir curled inward until his forehead rested against the tablet's screen. He could try, but that wasn't the right question. The right question involved answers he didn't want to face about his ability to use another person without her permission... and concerned his growing ambivalence over the violent attentions of another man—not even a man, but an alien. And whether the violence was consensual. And if that made it pleasurable. Surely the pleasure was only in being competent, in being successful.
Surely he wasn't changing so much. Surely he was still himself.
Lisinthir stripped off the remains of the night's shredded and sodden clothing and eased back on top of the bedcovers. His unbound hair he twisted into a coil out of his way, and doing that flashed a sullen red stone at him. His father's House ring. That its emblem was a creature similar to the Chatcaava had struck Lisinthir as ironic when he'd first been approached about this assignment.
It no longer struck him as ironic. It frightened him. Perhaps it was no accident that he'd been born from the House of the striking dragon; perhaps the universe had been trying to tell him something about his inner nature.
Perhaps he belonged here, with these depraved people and their emotionally bankrupt society.
His hand clenched in the satin cover, creasing it. The Queen had given him to the Alliance out of kindness, he'd thought... to give him legitimate exit from the drama of his family's attempted rise back to power and dignity. He'd come here to make a difference, and the communiqués he received indicated he had.
Now, though... now he wondered. Why had they chosen him?
Who would save him, if this assignment destroyed him?
A fitful sleep overcame Lisinthir, riding his troubled thoughts into dreams of home.
He wore a black robe and matching pants and boots, but no blouse... none of the elegant formal wear of his people, which emphasized frills and draperies that concealed the body's lines. The robe was of Chatcaavan make, and this did not bother him at all; though he had no wings, he felt no draft through the holes in the back.
Accoutered in this way he strode through a pastiche of landscapes, winter, spring, summer, fall, flowers floating from trees, fruit ripening and rotting, snow smothering the ground in thick, wet blankets. In the strange logic of dreams, he was inside the palace at Ontine without ever entering it, bowing before the queen he'd seen only a handful of times in his life. As with all the times previous, she sat on the throne in a gown so heavy and so voluminous it dwarfed her slender body. Where her face should have been, he saw only haze and smudged features.
Lisinthir rose from his obeisance and walked up the dias. He found the dark line of a tarnished silver collar around her neck, and traced her lips before he kissed her.
"You are nothing," he whispered to her tenderly as she spread her hands over his bare chest and licked his skin. Her fear lapped at the edge of his mind.
"This is nothing," he said, hooking a finger beneath the strap of her bodice. When she froze, he stroked her hair and said, "do you think it will protect you? From someone who really knows you? As I know you?"
She shook her head without looking at him.
"You are a fraud," he said, and slapped her. And then again, more frenzied. "Why aren't you real? Why aren't you real?"
Lisinthir jerked awake, panting hard. His heart pounded in his ears, pressing out all other sounds. He was aware of fear and horror in the trembling of his body, but it was not until he felt the wet covers beneath his hips that his reason returned, and shame pricked tears from his eyes, and he wept.
He came on slow feet to her the following morning and upon seeing their table said with a voice hoarse from poor sleep, "Do you have anything stronger?"
Silently, the Slave Queen fetched a bottle of tea-wine and poured him a new glass. He took it from her and held it near his heart, his head bowed and eyes closed. After his first sip, he looked at her and she couldn't bear what she saw in his eyes.
"No, Ambassador," she said, reaching for him, placing her hands on his forearms so he could feel her sincerity. "No. I spoke truth yesterday. You did not set me away from you by complying with the Emperor's command."
"I have fallen so low," he said. "To have used you like an object with no thought to your feelings at all. I am so sorry, my lady. I should have fought him."
She stroked his arms. Through the thin fabric of his blouse she could feel the tension of his muscles, so hard they felt like bone. "You did as you must."
"That is no excuse," he said, shaking his head.
"Ambassador," she said, then squeezed his arms. "I did not mind the task."
He did not look at her, and so she allow
ed the feelings she had been avoiding to rise back to her skin, to make her flush and steal her breath. The feelings that had risen in her when she'd first taken Eldritch shape and seen him through her doubled-eyes, alien and yet her own, that had only grown more insistent with each kindness he insisted on dealing her. Swallowing, she said, "It was... it was pleasant."
At last he met her eyes. "You can't be serious."
"To give you a moment of happiness and peace in this place?" the Slave Queen said. "You asked so little. Of all the things you could have chosen, you chose the one act that did not demean me. Even in extremis, you tried to protect me."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, this is craziness. This is Chatcaavan insanity, to turn what was unspeakable into an act of mercy."
"But it was," she said softly. "You have not lived my life, Ambassador. I have been the Emperor's tool in such requests before, and no male has ever chosen so gently." She lowered her head. "Is it so hard to believe that I might find joy in duty?"
He laughed, a halting, bitter sound, and his breath smelled of wine and hekkret. "No. Not at all. Not when I can no longer tell if I hate him or I want him or if I still deplore all he has done even while I laugh to be beneath him and cry out to be above him."
Such feelings were familiar to her. She eased the wine out of his hands and pulled at him until he rose and followed her to the couch. There she arranged him with pillows and a blanket. When he tried to rise, she pressed a hand down against his shoulder, wondering where she found the audacity.
"I should see Second. Or Third. I should do work," he said.
"You should rest," she replied and kneeled beside the couch. "You are out of sorts. Can it be so terrible a thing to sleep in the middle of the day? Second will still be here tomorrow, as will Third and the Empire."
"Sleep will not solve my dilemma," he said.
"No, but it will help restore your balance," she said.
He reached for her, trailed fingers over her face and cupped her cheek. She leaned into the caress and closed her eyes, content. It seemed strange after so many revolutions of being handled by males to think of touch as a comforting thing, a positive thing... to welcome it as a sign of gentleness rather than dread it as a presage to pain and fear. But here she was. In her heart, she gave herself leave to admit that if the Emperor were to ask her to please the Ambassador again, she would go to it willingly. The realization should have terrified her, but it didn't.
His fingers stroked down her neck until he hit the lip of her collar, which he traced. She heard the occasional scrape of his short fingernails against the raised patterns. "This," he said softly. "Does it... does it pain you?"
"It is very comfortable," the Slave Queen said. "Our necks are not like yours. They are stiffer."
"That's not what I meant," he said huskily. "Does it bother you to wear it as a symbol?"
"Of the ownership of the Emperor?" The Slave Queen shifted. "I was not raised as you were, as your people are, to know and desire freedom."
"And yet you do," he said. "I have seen you looking out the window."
"To long for flight is not the same as to long for freedom," the Slave Queen said, looking up at him without lifting her head. "I do not know what I would do with freedom, Ambassador."
"But surely anything is better than bowing your neck to the Emperor," he said.
"Is it?" the Slave Queen asked, knowing he asked himself.
After a moment, he returned to his gentle exploration of the designs. "How did they get it on you? It has no catch."
"It is soldered on," the Slave Queen said. "There is a seam, it is just difficult to see. They are skillful with the irons." At his expression, she said, "I came to no harm. They place a thin sheath between my skin and the metal until they finish. Such is the wonder of technology."
"So it cannot be removed," he murmured, scraping a nail over one of the stones.
"Not easily, no," the Queen said. "But this will be my lot for life. I am ransom for the behavior of the lords of the Empire."
He looked at her then, rather than at the designs. "How can that be, when no one considers a female a person?"
The Slave Queen felt her smile becoming more fragile. "Because even though the Slave Queen is a custom older than what we've become, Ambassador, we still bow to those customs. Or why do you think the males land on the floor beneath this one and walk up to my chambers?"
"They act as if women are valued for more than their use, even though no one believes it anymore."
She nodded once, dipping her head.
"We come again to this," he said and shook his head. "I am so sorry."
She lifted his hand to her cheek and pressed her head against it. "No more apologizing, Ambassador. Do you ask to be forgiven for something that did not offend me?"
"If you're certain," he said.
"He will ask more of you," she said. "Much more. You should rest against the efforts before you. Perhaps when you wake you can teach me the words of equality. Such words here have long since fallen into disuse and I would have them from the mouth of one who thinks them no different from other words."
"I would have to teach you the word for trust," he said, eyes steady and regretful. "And understanding. And love. What do Chatcaava know of love?"
"There is love still, somewhere," the Slave Queen said. "Or so I have heard."
"But not here," he said, stroking the bottom of her chin.
Her eyes fluttered closed. "No," she said. "Not here."
"Our tussles begin to bore me," the Emperor said.
"You're lying," Lisinthir replied, reaching across the bed for his roll.
The Chatcaavan watched him with narrowed eyes. The sheets hissed beneath his body as he shifted, and candlelight picked out blood-bright highlights in the aubergine silk.
"You can't lie to me," Lisinthir said. "Not when I'm touching you." He pulled from the roll and offered it to the dragon.
"I'll keep that in mind," the Emperor said, flashing his fangs. He took the hekkret.
"Is it my imagination," Lisinthir continued, lying back on his elbows, "Or does Third not feel obliged to grace us with his presence at supper anymore? His appearances have become quite erratic."
"Third has other obligations," the Emperor said.
"Ah, so you've sent him away," Lisinthir said.
The drake snorted. Arabesques of smoke drifted from his nostrils. "No. But I have not shown him the favor to which he has become unwisely accustomed. Indeed, I am discovering with great interest that testing you is a test for the court."
"And how is that?" Lisinthir asked. "Have they never been jealous of one another before?"
"Oh, they've known jealousy for other males," the Emperor said. "Never for something other."
"So they persist in considering me a non-male," Lisinthir said.
"Well they should... for you are not one."
Lisinthir awarded him a lazy stare. "Don't make me rip your chest open again."
"Enough for one night!" the Emperor said. He hissed a laugh. "They do not like giving up my interest for an alien. All save Second, who seems to think of you as a dangerous male."
"Second," Lisinthir mused.
"Yes, Second," the Emperor said, and grinned again. "I was amused to hear that you cowed him in his own office. Were you a proper species, I might even say you had horns."
"Second inserts his tail in my way," Lisinthir said. "I'm here to do a job, and he needs to help me do it, not obstruct me." He stretched. "Though I admit my heart softens on his behalf at the news that he, at least, knows that I'm male."
The Emperor leaned over and traced the line of a long white throat. "You will only win yourself hurt if you continue insisting on something that isn't true, Ambassador. As long as you bow your head to me on behalf of the welfare of others, you are too weak to survive here."
"Watch me," Lisinthir said with a snarl.
"I am," he said. "And I see that you would crawl into a harness to appease me."
"No," Lisinthir said, suddenly tremblingly alert. "I would never let you tie me down."
"Fear!" the Emperor purred. "Delightful." He slid forward. "I say to you that you will let me. And tonight."
"I thought you said we'd had enough for one night," Lisinthir said, backing away on the bed.
"Enough of what we've done," the Emperor said. "But I told you before... I am growing bored. I would like to experiment."
"No," Lisinthir said again.
"And if I threatened someone?" The Emperor rolled his eyes upward. "Perhaps the Slave Queen?"
"As much as I'd like to save the Slave Queen from pain," Lisinthir said, voice hardening, "there's nothing you can do to her that she has not already endured and will not endure again."
"She hasn't died."
Lisinthir froze.
"You want to know if I would kill her?" the Emperor said. "My treasure, the crown of my harem? You think I do not know what she is worth, but I do." His wings spread slowly, blocking away the ceiling. "But there is something worth still more to me, Ambassador."
He barely breathed as the Chatcaavan flowed toward him, one achingly slow step at a time.
"You think I do not know the concessions you have won from my people," the Emperor said. "You think I do not see your power and your confidence growing. You would be wrong."
Instantly, Lisinthir understood, and realized he'd underestimated the Emperor's involvement in the governing of his court... and that the Emperor had underestimated him in turn: his stamina, his violence, his ability to work the government's highest officials. And because of these mutual misunderstandings, the Emperor had no choice but to make sure his grip on Lisinthir was firm, for he could allow no one to be more powerful than him. Not without dying in the arms of an ambitious courtier who saw his weakness as opportunity.
"You really would kill her," Lisinthir stated, breathless with horror.
"I would make you drink her blood," the Emperor said, baring his fangs.
Lisinthir hung for a moment between panic and resolve, between a screaming, absolute negation and capitulation... between what he saw himself as and what he saw in the future. "What...," he licked his lips. "What would you require?"
Even the Wingless Page 29
