Even the Wingless

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  "M-m-my-better, what would this one know of the secret heart of anything?" the Slave Queen cried. "She is but a thing, a play-toy, a non-person!"

  Second roared and threw her across the floor. She skidded all the way to the wall. "DON'T PLAY ME FOR A FOOL!"

  "Never!" the Slave Queen exclaimed. "Never, my-better, never, never, never—"

  "SHUT UP! STOP TALKING!" he lunged for her and grabbed her by her hair. "Your mouth has got us to this trouble!" She felt him shoving her tail out of the way. "Third was right. You forget your place! You must be reminded!"

  "My-better, please, this one knows nothing of value to any male, much less a fre—"

  "SHUT UP!" he cried again and slammed into her. He grabbed her mouth and forced it closed with one hand, pressing it to the ground as she writhed. Even shocked and wrenched into an agonizing position, the Slave Queen could watch the proceedings as if floating outside herself. Second was not himself. Even in the uses he'd had of her in the past, he had never been violent. Careless of her as a creature, yes, but never so violent. She bled beneath him as he cursed her.

  Eventually he spent his anger and pulled away from her. Too exhausted to move, the Slave Queen remained where he'd left her.

  "You can be replaced," he said, staring down at her with hard eyes. "Never forget."

  She whimpered, as much to please him as out of the surprise of her own pain. And it did please him, and he did leave... no doubt to bring evil to the Ambassador. And to her? Did he truly believe what he'd said? And worse, would he convince the Emperor, who had seemed so pacific in his daily visits?

  And even so, she would not change a moment of the past months for aught. The Slave Queen crawled to a space beneath the window and waited for the aches to release her limbs. She would clean herself of the evidence. It would not do for Emperor or Ambassador to find her thus and ask. If trouble came from this, it would be because of Second's rage, not her carelessness.

  "This is a whip-tail," the Emperor whispered into his ear. A knobbed leather end trailed across his wet cheek and Lisinthir jerked away from it blindly. A hand captured his head and forced him still. "We have been playing very tamely until now, Beauty. I have traced designs on your body with my claws, but I have been gentle. This... this is not gentle."

  Lisinthir said nothing, though he trembled. Of all the ways the Emperor had found to immobilize him, of the hooks suspended from the ceiling and arranged on the wall and the many ways he could be trapped on the floor, the rack was the worst. To be suspended by the weight of his limbs was nothing less than torture, and he hated how much of his strength deserted him without leverage.

  "So, shall we begin?"

  Useless to answer. If he spoke without permission, he would be gagged. Useless to anticipate. All he could do was bear each session, trusting each minute would lead him closer to the end.

  The edge of the whip traced his lips, then vanished. Before he could fear where it had gone, a white pain flared across his back and he twisted away from it. The second time it came he heard the rip of skin and smelled blood, felt it spatter in hot droplets across his side.

  Surely this too was bearable. Surely it was worse to be handled by hands that communicated all too clearly emotions of which he wanted no part. Surely he'd known worse pain. He gritted his teeth, growing more and more tense as his joints began to throb from the suspension. And at last, it ended.

  Then came the hands, with their terrible hunger, cupping his jaw and forcing his mouth up to meet a licking kiss that smelled like blood and need. One finger hooked beneath the edge of the collar that throttled his breathing.

  "I could keep you like this all night," the Emperor said.

  "No." The word came out before he could stop it.

  "Did I hear something from my pet, unasked?"

  "I am not your pet," Lisinthir growled.

  A hand trailed up his side, dragging blood with it. "You come meekly into my chamber and submit to whatever I please. This does not make you a male, Beauty. It makes you mine."

  "I belong to myself," Lisinthir said. He would repeat it until he remembered it. Until he could look in the mirror at his drawn flesh and haunted eyes and know it again.

  The Emperor laughed, a languid, treacherous laugh, and pulled Lisinthir's hair back around his shoulders until it could be held in both hands. "Say what you like, Beauty. I think I will keep you forever." He leaned forward until his breath warmed Lisinthir's ear. "You forever on your knees. You forever pleasing me. You forever serving me."

  "Never," Lisinthir whispered.

  "You forever here. Until the son you rescued takes my place."

  "Never," Lisinthir said.

  "You forever taking my lust into your mind until it becomes yours and we become one another and you learn my cruelty," the Emperor whispered. "Until you become one of us."

  "NO!" Lisinthir shouted, and thrashed against the rack. The pain became so excruciating he couldn't think past it, but that was his aim and when something near his wrist snapped, leaving him hanging by something no longer able to support it, he went gladly toward unconsciousness.

  But didn't quite meet it.

  He felt someone release him. Heard a staccato of a command. Then a wind over his wet back.

  "What did you do?"

  "It was unplanned."

  "They are more fragile than we are. If you wish to honor him, you might do it more carefully."

  "It won't happen again."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  And then a competent but too firm grip probed his wrist and the hovering darkness that had threatened finally encompassed him and he fell.

  The Emperor woke her with his arrival, so late that morning encroached. He did so with a gentle hand against her throat, so gentle she drifted out of her dreams and almost disbelieved his presence until it didn't vanish with her groggy blinking. Then, as hastily as she could with her body still recovering from Second's unexpected assault, she began to roll onto her knees.

  "No," he said, surprising her. "Stay there."

  She stilled and looked up at him. He examined her, brushing her cheeks with his thumbs, an expression on his face almost without name. If she had been forced, she would have called it... concern.

  And then his expression hardened. "Did I do this to you?"

  "Master, no," the Slave Queen said, hushed. If he could see the discolorations on her by moonlight, then they had grown worse while she slept, worse than she'd anticipated while powdering them with concealing agents.

  "Who did?" he asked.

  "S-second," the Slave Queen said.

  The Emperor frowned. "That is out of character for Second."

  She said nothing. He stood and walked outside; from the distance, she heard a hushed conversation but not what it was about. Then he returned and shocked her by slipping his arms around her and lifting her from her nest. He brought her to the couch and set her on it, then stretched every part of her body, trailing fingers over it or testing it for pain.

  Second arrived just as he'd finished his inspection. The Emperor turned from her and said, "I granted you her use, but this is not your wont. What troubles you?"

  Second bowed. "Exalted, that worthless creature has been talking to the Ambassador."

  "You have told me this already," the Emperor said.

  "Pardon my insolence, Exalted, but I must correct you. I said the Ambassador speaks to her, not that she speaks to him. And she does. It is how he knows what he knows about us. She has been guiding him all along."

  The Emperor twisted to face her. "Is this correct?"

  She had been dreading this moment, wondering if obedience would direct her actions or if she would prefer the uncertain fate that awaited her if she refused to reply. That she answered did not surprise her, but it also disappointed. "Yes, Master."

  Both of his brow ridges lifted. "Is that so."

  "She is a traitor, Exalted," Second said. "You would do well to kill her now."

  "Tra
itor is a strong title," the Emperor said. "We don't bestow it without evidence or cause. Just what has the Ambassador won that is so deleterious to the Empire that it merits re-titling the Slave Queen?"

  Second stared at him, his blue eyes luminous in the moonlight. "Exalted, look at what her words have allowed him to do to you! He traps you every night. No wonder he doesn't act like any other Ambassador before... she has been lending him a Chatcaavan soul!"

  "That presupposes that females have souls to lend," the Emperor said dryly.

  "Nonetheless. He could not possibly have known how to answer you without her help."

  "Is that true?" the Emperor asked her. "Without your aid would he be incapable of what he endures?"

  "Master, he is...," she trailed off, looking for words. "He is what he is. I could not change him."

  "Do you see that?" Second cried. "She speaks of herself as a person!"

  "Are you a person?" the Emperor asked.

  The Slave Queen ducked her head. "This one is yours, Master."

  The Emperor laughed. "She covers herself well, doesn't she?"

  "It's abomination," Second said. "See what this freak has done to the court, to you, to your own Slave Queen!" He took a deep breath. "When you came here, when you asked me to stay for you, Exalted, you tasked me with the assessment of threats to your being and to the Empire you represent. Hear me now: this creature is the worst thing to have come to us. Ever. Kill him now, Exalted. And kill her too, to stop the spread of this poison."

  "One fragile little alien," the Emperor said, turning back to the Slave Queen and studying her with distant eyes. "Whose arm I can break simply by telling him he might become like us."

  "He is not fragile," Second said. "He only looks fragile."

  "Yes," the Emperor said.

  "It would not take much," Second said. "You have only to make him bleed just a little more when you play with him. He would die beneath you, as he deserved."

  "I know," the Emperor said. And because he faced her, she could see his grimace. "You have warned me, Second. I thank you."

  "I live to serve you, Exalted. I believe in you."

  Even she could hear the unspoken words that followed: Don't fail us. Don't fail me.

  "You may go," the Emperor said.

  Second left them, then. The Emperor sat on the cushion next to her and scratched her jaw near her ear. "So, you tell the Ambassador state secrets, is that it?"

  She waited for him to go on, but he didn't. He stared at her as if expecting response. She said, "You-my-better... you address me-your-lesser, Master?"

  "Yes, pet, I address you," he said with a tired laugh. "As apparently everyone else is beginning to. And dispense with the female pronouns. You don't use them with him, do you?"

  "N-n-no, Master. They trouble him."

  "I imagine they would. Now answer me. Do you tell him state secrets?"

  "I do not even know what state secrets I would have," the Slave Queen said, beginning to shiver.

  "Sssh," he said, placing a hand on her flat chest. "Stop that. I'm not going to strike you. Tell me what you've told him."

  "I have told him... of our history. Of proper male behavior. Of you." She flushed. "I have told him how to guard against the hekkret. That Second fears him. And that he is not alone."

  "And he's not, is he? Because you are here," he said. "That is why he comes to you each day. You steady him."

  She swallowed. "Please, Master, do not punish him for seeking me. He does not know how wrong it is for him to use me for solace."

  "Is that wrong?" the Emperor asked. "I use you for solace."

  Stunned, the Slave Queen stared at him.

  "Are you truly so surprised?" the Emperor asked. He shook his head. "You need not answer that. But you do need answer this: you have told him of me. Now you shall tell me of him."

  The Slave Queen said softly, "He is male, Master. Just as you are."

  "With all these weak feelings, he's still male?" the Emperor asked.

  "He endures," the Slave Queen said. "He feels rage. His despair is so short-lived it rarely lasts. He wishes to best you in order to advance his people's aims."

  "He is a rival, as Second says," the Emperor said.

  "No," she replied, drawing the word out. "He does not live in the same world we do, Master. He believes that two such civilizations can co-exist. In his mind, striving for the good of his Alliance is not necessarily detrimental to the Empire. He imagines a world where both live alongside, in peace and prosperity."

  "He is mad, as the Alliance Ambassadors before him have been," the Emperor said. "This universe has limited resources, and we compete for them. How is his vision possible?"

  "I-I don't know," the Slave Queen said. "But he does not wish to see the Empire downtrodden."

  "Would you miss him?" the Emperor said.

  "M-master?"

  "Would you miss him," the Emperor said. "If I killed him."

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "Do you enjoy pleasuring him?"

  "Yes," she whispered. "But he does not allow it. It makes him feel ashamed."

  "Ashamed because you are female and he prefers the tests of males?"

  "Ashamed because he believes he forces on me acts that I do not desire," the Slave Queen said, lifting her eyes to the Emperor's and hoping he would not kill her for the words. "He would have me choose out of free will, and does not believe I can choose."

  The Emperor laughed. "What a strange beast, the Ambassador. And yet, he has you enthralled, doesn't he?"

  The Slave Queen trembled as he stroked her cheek. The answer came unbidden. "Yes, Master." She braced herself against the blow that never came. Instead, the Emperor licked the top of her forehead and said with a suddenly somber voice, "Me too, pet. Me too."

  He had no idea how long he'd been on the rack.

  The Emperor behind him—

  —before him—

  —trembling limbs, trapped, bottling his screams—

  —no longer able to hold in his spirit the alien desires and internal antipathies that each night seemed to build, further and harder, until he thought he would split in half—

  The Emperor's next touch, heavy with lust, undid him. His body began to spasm, and he thought with disconnected relief that at last it was over. He would die, and there would be nothing more, no suffering, no pleasure, no shame—

  The sharp snap of release freed his limbs, shaking too hard to control, to hold him up. He was caught in cradling arms that whispered suddenly of shock and concern. Silk sheets covered his sweat and blood-soaked body, harsh contrast to the cold floor. Then he was pulled into a warm embrace, held fast by legs, a tail and trailing wing-tips; fingertips lightly stroked his face, holding him fast as he shook, full of nothing but tender worry.

  Sometime later, Lisinthir opened his eyes and found his head in the Emperor's lap. He focused blearily on the space where he'd been hung and found it devoid of leather and metal. Nothing pressed on his throat. Nothing gouged at his wrists. He was naked beneath the sheet.

  "What... "

  "It's enough," the Emperor said roughly. "We're done with it."

  "No more bondage?" Lisinthir asked, voice husky.

  "We're done with it."

  Lisinthir stared at the empty space, knowing he should swallow the question that rose into that space, but failing. The Emperor had found a way to control him completely... to break him. And yet he had stopped. "Why?"

  "Because I like you better sane, Beauty," the Emperor said, leaning down and licking his cheek with a slow and sensual lap. In that moment, so brief he almost missed it, Lisinthir felt an echo of something profound and gentle. Then, with the casual violence he remembered so fondly, the Emperor flipped him onto his back and assaulted him. Lisinthir fought him all the way. Somewhere through it, he remembered how to laugh.

  The click of claws on her landing woke the Slave Queen just before dawn. She drew herself upright warily, pushing the hair from around her eyes. This late he
r visitor could be anyone, though not the Ambassador whose booted footsteps made a distinct clack on the stone. Her brow furrowed as the sounds grew longer: not just one set of feet, but many.

  When Third crested the landing the Slave Queen struggled to remain in place. His last visit, obviously meant to entrap the Ambassador, had lasted far too long and no one had punished him for it. She had reason to fear his arrival... until the Hand followed him into the suite, leading a parade of aliens. Wretched aliens, beaten and bowed and obviously abused. She thought there would be no end to them, but the last one struggled up the stairs and into the room. They totaled sixteen, more aliens in one place than she'd ever seen in all her revolutions. Seven were male and the rest female, and among them she recognized humans, the long-eared furred Aera, the heavy-muzzled Hinichi and one single peculiar creature, centauroid with wings and stripes and fur and feathers. The guards that had control of the chains linking their bound hands were impassive, but Third and the Hand were anything but.

  "Have these collared and stripped for presentation this afternoon," Third said to her. "And clean up the evidence of their use."

  One of the humans was in such pain she could barely stay upright. The Slave Queen looked at her with narrowed eyes, then said to Third, "You forget your place, using what belongs to the Emperor."

  She expected the hand that knocked her head to one side and rode it with enough softness that it could have hurt worse.

  "And you forget your place, you-my-lesser," Third said. "Do as I have commanded!"

  "Yes, my-better," the Slave Queen said, licking blood from the inside of her mouth.

  Third backed away from her, eyeing her, then headed down the stairs with his Hand in tow.

  The preparation of new harem members had always been a duty of the Slave Queen, even when that female had been called the Queen Ransomed and the harem had been a more pleasant duty. Usually the Slave Queen had only one, or at most two new females to take down to the preparation rooms, no more than she could easily handle. But sixteen?