Even the Wingless

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  The Emperor's hand slid over his shoulder, up to his neck, and pressed. Lisinthir allowed him to bear it down to the mattress.

  "Let me put leather around this long neck of yours," the Emperor whispered into his ear. Lisinthir could feel the hot pulse of the drake's racing desire clashing against his own growing apprehension. "Let me mount you on a rack, with all your limbs immobile. Let me rig you for assault, as I would a female, or a particularly intractable male. For that is what you are proving to be, Ambassador... a very intractable male."

  "Only in this chamber," Lisinthir said fiercely.

  "Only in this chamber," the Emperor said, and squeezed his throat.

  He could be at peace with this. He had gone through so much to accomplish what he had. Surely this would be no worse. And yet, lying flat on the bed Lisinthir could not control his skipping heart, he had chills that owed nothing to being on top of the covers and when the Emperor returned with duplicates of the sinister gear that Lisinthir remembered from the Slave Queen's closet, he backed away, unable to help himself.

  "This will make it easier," the Emperor said, and blindfolded him... except that only made it worse. Never knowing what was coming. Not being able to center himself, prepare himself. And then to be tied down—as the Emperor locked each of his limbs in place, his panic became overwhelming. He had sweat in pain before, and from exertion, but never from terror.

  What had seemed merely difficult when he'd been able to resist was now unbearable, interminable. When the Emperor was satisfied, he came around before the Eldritch without unbinding him and stroked his chin. The blindfold hid him from sight but Lisinthir could still feel him through that gentle touch, feel the satisfaction, the repletion and now an attentive focus.

  "There," the male said. "Do you know your place now?"

  Lisinthir said nothing, but trembled, unable to stop himself.

  "You may ask me to release you," the Emperor said.

  "Please," Lisinthir said, feeling no shame at all, only desperation. "Please."

  "Please what?" the Emperor asked.

  "Let me go," Lisinthir said.

  "And you recognize that you are at my mercy? And that I have none?"

  "Let me go," Lisinthir said.

  The Emperor traced his lips with a claw-tip, pressed the bottom one down. "And if I left you thus all night? To hang in silence while I slept?"

  "I would keep you up," Lisinthir said fiercely.

  "I would gag you," the Emperor said. "Trust me, there are gags sufficient to keeping even your able mouth out of play."

  "What do you want me to say?" Lisinthir asked. "What do I have to do?"

  "Tell me your place," the Emperor said.

  He would rather die than be here again, and yet he found himself saying, "I am the Alliance Ambassador ad'Chatcaavan Empire... and I will never be anything else, not even chained to your bed!"

  The Emperor laughed. "Very good. Then tomorrow we will do it all again. And the next night. And the next. And we shall see how long it takes for you to understand that you cannot cow the Empire." He stripped the blindfold, giving Lisinthir a good look at his toothed grin and hungry eyes. "Today there was only humiliation. Tomorrow... tomorrow there will be honor wounds." He undid one of Lisinthir's hands, which dropped, numb to the ground. "Undo the rest yourself, if you are so powerful."

  The Emperor left him there, with one hand still too weak from immobilization to undo the rest. When the feeling returned to his free arm, he released himself, one aching limb at a time. The collar came off last, requiring far more dexterity to undo than the cuffs. He threw it across the room, then dressed in clothing that had remained whole, that he wished had been shredded to confetti if only it could represent a normal night in the Emperor's company. The air of dignity he summoned to let himself out of the male's chambers lasted only as long as it took him to stumble into his bedchamber and grab the damask bedcover; he wrapped it around his body and the weight bore him onto one knee. He pressed his forehead to the edge of the bed and shook with the force of the sobs he refused to release.

  He could still feel it around his neck, around his wrists, his ankles, his waist. The rack the Chatcaavan had found had been built for bodies with wings, but the Emperor was nothing if not creative. Lisinthir wondered if he would ever swallow again without feeling that pressure against his throat, so uncompromising. Worse was the sure knowledge that their encounters would continue to involve the items the Emperor had sent for. More of them as time passed. There were those who enjoyed what he'd been through, who would even have paid to have it done to them... but he was not one of them, and imagining them gave him no clue how to handle it.

  Dragging himself to his feet, Lisinthir left for the sanctuary that was the harem. Halfway up the final landing, he heard scuffing and growls. Abandoning the blanket, he vaulted up the last steps and into the antechamber, where he found Third on top of the Slave Queen. He lunged for the male, seizing him by the arm and jerking him backward. The spear of lust and frustration seemed a pale and vacant thing compared to the hurricane force of the Emperor's emotions.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Lisinthir demanded. "You were not given leave to use her!"

  "How would you know?" Third replied. Beneath them, the Slave Queen had gone completely limp.

  "Because I do," Lisinthir snarled back. "Now get the hell out of here! And pray that I don't mention your transgression to interested ears, or your horns won't be the only thing ripped off your body!"

  "It is right for her to be damaged and the Emperor has not been showing her the proper attention," Third said.

  "The only person here I see who deserves damage is you, Third." Lisinthir advanced on him. "Are you going to leave or will I have to convince you?"

  "With what claws, wingless freak?"

  "With the Emperor's," Lisinthir said. "Or have you forgotten that I am further in his favor than you?"

  "I have not forgotten," Third hissed. "But I have also noted that you are soft and fragile. If you were to die here, none would be able to come to your aid in time."

  "Go ahead," Lisinthir said, his voice gone cold and deep. "Kill me. See what happens to your life afterward."

  Third studied him, wings twitching... then laughed and walked to the stairs. "This has been most instructive."

  Lisinthir watched until Third walked down the stairs and vanished out of sight. Then he dropped down beside the Slave Queen, gathering her into the circle of his arms. "Lady, lady, say you're all right—"

  "—Ambassador!" the Queen cried in a voice tight with a pain and a fear he felt like knives through her skin. "Why, oh why did you do that?"

  "He had no leave to use you," Lisinthir began.

  "—but it is immaterial! Immaterial! You have given him all that he needs."

  "You're overwrought, lady," Lisinthir said, helping her to a heap of pillows. He laid her gently across them. "Now speak your piece. Calmly, please, for I cannot endure much else tonight."

  "You showed him your weakness," the Slave Queen whispered. "You told him that you cannot bear the pain of others you consider undeserving."

  "I thought that was rather clear to everyone already," Lisinthir said wryly. "Particularly after I stole away the Emperor's slaves."

  "No! No. You affected such nonchalance over their suffering that the act would more easily been interpreted as one male asserting challenge over another," the Queen said.

  "The Emperor knows it's not," Lisinthir said.

  "But he has not told anyone else," she said. "Oh, Ambassador. They only guessed, they did not know. They were given to understand that you were different from the other aliens!"

  "I'm not," Lisinthir said gently, but her apprehension was seeping into him.

  "But your life... now they know. Now they can manipulate you directly," she said.

  "They can do nothing to me that the Emperor has not done already," Lisinthir said, and cleared his voice when the words came out hoarse. He felt the change through her skin as
her alarm became sharper, more personal, more curious. Her fingers rose to glide along the edge of his jaw... then down to his neck, to the red ridge there.

  "He collared you," she whispered.

  "I had no choice," Lisinthir said, closing his eyes. "He threatened to kill you."

  "Oh, Master," the Slave Queen said.

  Lisinthir let his head fall against her stomach and wept.

  If the Emperor were to enter now and find them thus, it would end... she knew it. For if the Ambassador was not broken now, she did not know broken. With gentle arms she held his head against her stomach and rested her head against his, shielding him from view. Too well she understood him. The first time she had been ushered into the world that gave Moon and others like her such pleasure she'd left it wanting to die. Fortunately, the Emperor had not required such acts of her for long, and it had been many revolutions since he'd used her thus. Still, separated so long from the experience, she remembered. What must it be like to be male and to go through it?

  And he had let himself be collared—for her. Unbelievable, insane. She was not worthy of this storm of emotion. Not worthy of the damage he did to his own reputation. Not worthy of the danger he invited on himself to protect her.

  "Sssh," she said, feeling his back heave beneath her. "Let it pass, let it pass."

  "How do you stand it?" he asked. His voice was nigh unrecognizable; she had never heard him after such weeping. There was so much gravel in his voice it was more rasp than music.

  "I have no choice," she said.

  "And neither do I."

  She wrapped her hands over his shoulders and gently shook. "You do. All he holds over you is me."

  "And you would have me see you killed?" the Ambassador asked. He forced himself upright, hair tangled and shirt half-undone, and she saw anger in his face, a flash of it. "Have you learned nothing, lady? Nothing of me? Nothing of what I've taught?"

  "What is my life measured against the lives of millions of others?" she asked.

  His anger collapsed, leaving him shaken, wide-eyed.

  "I do learn," she said. "Perhaps I have always known what you have tried to teach me."

  "I can't let him kill you," the Ambassador said, reaching for her face and cupping it in long, warm hands. She could smell his tears on them, feel the stone of the ring, turned toward his palm, beneath one eye. "You, who have been my grace and my anchor. For you to die for my pride is more than sin. It would be evil."

  "Surely the Alliance and the Empire and their relationship are more important," she said.

  "Surely they are," he said. "But I can't... I just can't do it. Don't ask me to sacrifice you."

  She sighed and tucked herself up against his chest, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. After a moment, he folded his arms around her and set his chin on her head. Beneath her his body still shook, tiny tremors undetectable to the eye.

  "Oh, my-better," she said. "Did I not say this road would lead to a terrible end?"

  "It's not over yet," he whispered against her hair, and amazingly, though he still trembled, she heard resolve in his voice. A calm settled over him. Could he? Somehow he had. He'd marshaled his strength back to himself, drawn himself clear of the brink. The Ambassador took a deep breath and said, "Not yet."

  So the new period of his testing began, and during it Lisinthir renewed his commitment to the alcohol that was conveniently delivered whenever he was quit with the previous bottle. He also became accustomed to the aftertaste of hekkret that lingered after he ate what few meals he allowed himself. That the rest of the court periodically attempted to poison him, he was certain; that the hekkret he smoked kept it from killing him, he had even fewer doubts. He found himself enjoying the acrid flavor, imagining it strengthening his veins against disaster, but did not trust it entirely. Not eating as much reduced his chances of dying untimely. And if in the mirror his ribs began to cast too deep a shadow, well, what did he need with mirrors anyway? It was a better end than sending an awkward request to his contacts for more of the food he was hoarding in his jackal chest. A diplomat he might be, as dragons counted them, but he could not imagine a delicate way to ask the Alliance for more food, "because the people here are trying to kill me with such regularity that it is required."

  Third had gone missing lately, but Second remained and their conversations were unpredictable. Sometimes they went well for the Alliance; other times, Lisinthir wondered just what kind of leverage Second was planning to use against him. Too often he knew that the fault was his... that his nights were beginning to push him toward the edge.

  The morning before his latest appointment with Second, Lisinthir abandoned his honey bar half-eaten to run for the water closet. With his hands clenching the edge of the toilet, he vomited until his stomach failed him and shudders wracked his body. For several minutes he leaned against the hard stone in a clammy sweat, struggling with the weakness that mastered his limbs. To lie here trembling invited a knife, and with effort he pushed himself back upright and leaned over to flush the waste.

  Bright crimson blood caught his eye. Lisinthir touched his chest, his stomach with cold dread.

  Poison from his food? Or poison from the smoking? Had they finally slipped enough into his meal to make a difference?

  The nausea subsided. He ordered twice as many hekkret rolls, lit the first and ignored the low-level nausea it instilled. He reached for the decanter of brandy to dull the awareness of the stomachache.

  It also masked the faint cravings he had decided to ignore.

  Let them try to kill him. He forewent the rest of his breakfast and headed for Second's office, and his anger woke. If he was to die soon, there was one issue he had yet to raise that wanted raising.

  "No," Second said.

  Lisinthir's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, no?"

  "No, I have no idea what you're talking about," Second replied. "If you wish to conceive of our occasional acquisition of your citizens as something as formal as a "slave trade," then that is your choice, but I know of no such thing."

  "You must be kidding me," Lisinthir said, voice hardening. Second had balked at every topic he'd brought for discussion throughout the entire session as he'd worked toward the one he'd really wanted addressed. When he'd entered, he'd expected a resentful but amenable Chatcaavan, not this iron wall.

  "Would I do that?" Second asked, brow ridges rising.

  "You wouldn't have before," Lisinthir said. "What's changed, Second?"

  "I can't think of what you might be referring to," Second said. He even smiled. "Perhaps you could ask the Slave Queen for an explanation. Or do you at last keep her too busy to talk?"

  Lisinthir slammed the table back, pinning Second to the wall, and vaulted over it to grab the male's neck.

  "You want to toy with me?" Lisinthir hissed into Second's ear as the male struggled violently to free himself from the space between wall and table's edge. Lisinthir grabbed the joint at the apex of his wing. "You dare to toy with me?"

  "Let go of me," Second snarled, but Lisinthir could feel the worry and fear beating through the inside of his skin.

  "I seem to remember being in this position before," Lisinthir said conversationally. He twisted just a little so that Second froze, pain and panic flashing through his mind. "Oh, yes. It was when you sent your unmarked servant to poison my breakfast. I compliment you on recognizing me as a threat so early... a pity you haven't succeeded in neutralizing me."

  "If you kill me—"

  "I would never do something as gauche as killing you," Lisinthir said. He loosed Second's throat and grabbed a horn. "But there are other ways of putting you in your place."

  "You wouldn't dare. Your heart is too soft."

  "You shouldn't believe everything Third tells you," Lisinthir whispered. "I may have a soft spot in my heart for some people, but you're not one of them."

  They hung that way, Second tense but unmoving in his grasp.

  "Are you going to do it?" Second asked, dread, anger, fear,
respect.

  Lisinthir let go. "No." He grinned without humor. "Not this time." He stood on the table, looking down at Second. "But you were about to tell me something about the slave trade."

  "I wouldn't bother looking on our side," Second said after a moment. "The amount of people we steal ourselves is negligible compared to the amount of people your own citizens sell us."

  A cold wave dashed over Lisinthir, but he didn't allow it even a heart-beat to cloud him. "And you, of course, will be able to give me a list of places and people."

  Second vacillated. Lisinthir didn't have to touch him to see him wavering. The Eldritch put all his condescension into his voice and said, "Or are you so convinced you will be incapable of doing your own theft that you fear to turn in those who make it easy for you?"

  "You'll get your list in the morning."

  "Good," Lisinthir said. "Very good."

  When Second arrived before supper the Slave Queen presumed it was for a short session with oil and cloth. She began to rise from her knees to fetch the stool and tray...

  And found herself bent nearly backwards, one clawed hand at her throat and the other trapping her wrists against the floor.

  "YOU!" Second cried, pupils slit-thin with rage. "It's you, isn't it!"

  "My-my-better!" the Slave Queen cried. "This one knows not what you mean!"

  "YOU talk to him!" Second said. "You tell him how to win his way through our court. You help him to understand our ways. It is YOUR doing!"

  "My-better!" the Slave Queen said, quaking. Second in a rage was beyond her experience. "This one has no control over the actions of an alien—"

  "Do you deny that you talk to him, slave?"

  "N-n-no!"

  "That's why he's always here, isn't it? He's learning! All this time I wondered how he could possibly know the things he does. How he could understand that the tests are honor and not something to flee. How he could continue to bewitch the Exalted Emperor. It's YOU!" He kicked her side near her hips, stealing her breath from her, and she curled into as much of a ball as his hands would allow. "What do you tell him? Do you give him the keys to our country? Do you tell him about the secret heart of the Emperor? WORTHLESS SLAVE!"