Even the Wingless

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  What was she becoming?

  What did it matter?

  The Ambassador was alive.

  "How long do I have to stay here?" Lisinthir asked, prowling from one end of the room to the other.

  "Until you stop having relapses," the Surgeon said. "Sit down, before you fall."

  "I'm not going to fall," Lisinthir said, though his legs trembled.

  "You should be glad you're even on your feet," the Surgeon said. "Gel-healing works far better on us than on you soft-skinned."

  "I'm tired of having fevers," Lisinthir said.

  "And I'm tired of you having them. And the seizures as well," the Surgeon said. "Sit!"

  Lisinthir sat, bracing himself on the edges of the table as he leaned forward. This was the first day he'd been able to get out of bed; the Surgeon had warned him between deliriums that gel-healing often caused a conflict between the body's memory of injury and its healed state. He had shrugged it off until the first bright pain had seized his joints and run away with them, plunging him into darkness and fever. Fighting his way out of those states gave him a new appreciation of his body's injury response; when it triggered in a healthy body, it created appalling results. The episodes had waned in frequency and strength, but still he found himself struggling past the occasional relapse, surprised by their intensity.

  "Now," the Surgeon said. "As long as you're not moving and not seizing, you can answer some questions."

  "Like?" Lisinthir asked.

  "You can explain to me how you managed to become addicted to hekkret," the Surgeon said.

  "By smoking it," Lisinthir said. He could call his humor foul and understate the matter. He felt vulnerable and anxious locked in the clinic.

  "You did understand that hekkret is a poison for people of your body chemistry?" the Surgeon asked.

  "Yesssss," Lisinthir said, drawing the word out. "But it was thought I could build an immune response with micro-doses."

  "And you have," the Surgeon said. "Congratulations. Now you have a physiological addiction."

  "At least I'm alive," Lisinthir said.

  "And how long have you been vomiting blood?"

  He shrugged. He'd lost track of the days. "I don't know. A while? It's not frequent."

  "Even once is too much," the Surgeon said. "I'm astonished you haven't died."

  "Me too," Lisinthir said and rubbed the back of his neck. "And the longer I stay here, the more likely it is someone will kill me. Forgive me, Surgeon, but I don't want to become someone's easy target."

  "You are safer here than you are anywhere else," the Surgeon said. "Particularly with the Emperor touring the naval yards. The clinic is Outside because it is my establishment. No one is allowed to harm you here."

  "I'm tired of being here," Lisinthir said. "Gel-healing put the Emperor back on his feet in a matter of hours."

  "The Emperor was not as sorely injured as you were," the Surgeon said. "Nor was he malnourished and toxic. You will stay until I release you."

  "When?" Lisinthir asked, hating the plaintive quality in his voice.

  The Surgeon hesitated, then shrugged. "Half a week, perhaps. When the Emperor returns."

  Something in his expression prompted Lisinthir to ask, "But I'll be better before then."

  The Surgeon waved a hand.

  "Why are you protecting me?" Lisinthir asked, bewildered. "You're Outside and I'm a freak."

  "Because when he returns the Emperor would be better pleased to find you on your feet rather than dead at someone's hand."

  "I'm not planning on dying that easily," Lisinthir said.

  "I thought not," the Surgeon said, then drew a roll out of his pocket and handed it over. "Here."

  "You want me to smoke this?" Lisinthir asked, startled.

  "Didn't I say you were addicted?" the Surgeon asked. "I am not interested in weaning you. But you will take them exactly as often as I prescribe in order to maintain your immunity, and not a single roll more. And I caution you that this immunity is limited. If you receive a large enough dose of the hekkret, nothing will save you. Is that clear?"

  "Yes," Lisinthir said and laughed. "Now pass me a flame."

  The days that followed had hours. The Slave Queen could count them, so slow did they pass, and the novelty of being aware of time wore off quickly. The Emperor was gone—the Ambassador in the clinic. And she had the feeling that the tacit invitation extended to her by the women of the harem on the birth of the Mother's baby had been rescinded. A female who worked for the good of other females through her cunning and wiles was one matter. A female who showed, however briefly, the power and resolve of a male... that was something else entirely.

  With nothing to fill her hours, she attempted to resume her habit of staring out the window, only to find that neither sea nor sky could comfort her now. She wondered how long it would take for the Ambassador to convalesce... or had he suddenly died of some complication unforeseen by a Surgeon more accustomed to Chatcaavan bodies than alien ones? And the Emperor... when would he return, and why did she think of him at all?

  Had she been wise, she would have called herself truly lost. To be a Slave Queen while entertaining emotions, thoughts, wishes, desires... it begged tragedy. And yet she could not set any of it aside. It was too late. Somewhere in the past weeks, her secret heart had decided she was a person.

  That night, she curled up on her nest in the shape of an Eldritch, just so she could mourn with proper tears. Even so, she barely wept. Just a sniffle or two, a sound she found ridiculous and an act that made her nose tight and head ache. After a time, she closed her eyes, her hands stroking her fragile, translucent skin over ribs more solid than her own.

  The following morning she shifted back to herself and returned to the window. She knew then why she'd been unable to calm herself long enough to watch... she had forgotten the loveliness of dawn. Had missed the sullen darkness of the sky clearing at the horizon's edge until there was room for color. Had yearned to see the rose flush, a hue that seemed so impossibly weak to rise with such triumph through lifting clouds. When the sun broke entirely from entrapment she lost a breath to its magnificence. After that, the pale and dazzling rays entranced her, so much so that she had no warning to prepare herself for the long hands that smoothed over her shoulders. A narrow cheek, shielded with hair as heavy and warm as satin, pressed against the side of her head. She closed her eyes and trembled and wondered if she dreamed, but when the hands moved down to her waist to steady her against the windowsill, her heart soared and she twisted around, clumsily swiveling her wings out of the way so she could see him, and he was real and alive and breathing and she shook with happiness.

  "Oh, Master!" she exclaimed.

  "Do you have to call me that?" the Ambassador asked, but he was smiling.

  "I can think of no other title to honor you with," she said. Her hands had found bare chest, for he stood before her dressed as a Chatcaavan male, in a long dusk-blue robe and loose black trousers that fell to the floor. She pressed her head against his chest and felt the flex of hard muscle, heard the music of his pulsing heart. "Oh, you live. You live."

  "Yes," he said, holding her against him. He laughed. "Did you miss me so much?"

  "Yes," she said and did not mind that it was true. "I feared you dead." She swallowed. "When I heard what you'd done... I thought you had died. But the Emperor spared you."

  "Yes," the Ambassador said, fingers curling against the base of her neck. "I think he did." His voice warmed, though she couldn't see his face. "I missed you as well. And for any grief I may have caused you, I am sorry."

  She laughed, a breathy, halting sound. "You still apologize for strange things, Master." She pulled her head back so she could look up at him and found his eyes somber. Her shoulders fell.

  "You forget," he said, touching the edge of her mouth. "You are skin to skin with me."

  "I do not regret anything," the Slave Queen said. "And you were only part of the grief. I brought these things on myself."
She took a long breath, then said, "I drove Third away from the harem. And I left the Tower to see the Emperor in the clinic. I am... I am not what I was. But your stories could only suggest, Master. Only I could have affected the change in me."

  "The change," he said, cupping her head in his hands. Even though he seemed to ask, his eyes knew the answer.

  "I am me," the Slave Queen said simply. "A person. Like you."

  "Oh, Beauty," he said and laughed, pulling her toward him, leaning his forehead on hers. "Oh, Beauty. How proud you make me."

  She flushed and closed her eyes. She was Chatcaavan in shape and yet her ribcage twitched and her lashes fluttered, and some part of her remembered how to weep and wanted to. But she felt no grief, only transcendent joy, joy that made sense of the white light of the morning and the warmth of his skin and the tenderness of his hands on her. "This is why," she whispered. "Isn't it? This is why people become people. For this."

  "Yes," he said.

  Content, she rested in his arms, and thought between the heat of his embrace and the brilliance of the light that she would melt.

  "I wish I could stay," he said.

  "Is your business so pressing?" the Slave Queen asked, reluctantly freeing herself from his grasp. His hands dropped down to her arms, cradling her elbows. "It will be morning a little while yet, and the Emperor will not be back before supper. You could tell me stories."

  He grinned, but she sensed a dark in it that dimmed the shimmering of the sun. "Soon, Beauty. But not today."

  The third use of the word pricked her curiosity; she asked to assuage it and to keep him near just a little longer. "Where did you learn that?"

  "Beauty?"

  "The word," the Slave Queen said. "'Beauty.'"

  "Oh! I hope it's not an offensive thing," he said. His smile grew sardonic. "The Emperor uses it on me."

  "He does?" the Slave Queen asked, amazed.

  "Lady?"

  "It is an old and strange word," she said. "From religious texts. In the first days, in the beginning of everything, the Living Air held all the things to come in its invisible, ineffable body. Those things existed in a state of Perfection—holy, pure, and consistent. All things that exist were said to be memories of those Perfections made manifest... imperfect themselves, copies that aspired to their origin. A thing that is close to that Perfect version of itself has Beauty."

  Rarely had she seen the Ambassador speechless. She set her head back against his chest and said, "We do not have many sacred words anymore."

  Slowly his hand lifted and cupped the back of her head. Then he rested his cheek between her horns and said softly, "I shall still call you Beauty."

  She had thought there no more room in her heart for joy, but she was wrong.

  The trip back to his chambers took longer than usual, but not for the reasons Lisinthir expected. He walked in a gentle dream and he had no desire to part with it. To have the Slave Queen in his arms filled with such radiant bliss... to know that he had helped her meet it...

  If he died tonight, as he knew he might, it would have been worth it. To free two sets of slaves from the Empire and transform its Slave Queen into a person... he would endure all that he'd endured, twice again. Suffer beneath whip and violent attention again. Just to have accomplished this much.

  The state of his chambers collapsed that mood as abruptly as the swing of the door that revealed the mess. His jackal chest had been broken open, all the way down to the empty trick floor. The contents of the chest had been scattered all over his rooms. His papers and notes, all shredded or in wet tatters—so it had rained while he'd been in the clinic—his mailbox tumbled and split in half. In the middle of this wanton destruction, one single untouched spot: on his side-table, his claw-knives had been cleaned and arranged on top of a note that read: /By my hand I put these here./

  The note needed no signature.

  Grim, Lisinthir looked for his swords and did not find them. He'd left them in easy view on top of the desk. The rest of his armament he'd hidden... and that cache, he found with relief, had not been ransacked. He still had a few knives to his name. Clothing, however... all that had remained that he'd brought with him had been destroyed. He looked himself in the mirror and supposed the robe and trousers would be sufficient to hide the throwing knives.

  It was while evaluating the sleeves that he realized his amulet was gone; his ring remained but not the pendant. His hand stole to the naked spot between his collarbones, but he couldn't remember if he'd lost it during his fight with the Emperor or if it had been removed. Perhaps it had spent itself in keeping him alive during that encounter and dissipated back into some spiritual ether, where Perfection awaited.

  All that remained now was the proper time. Lisinthir sat in his study chair, which now creaked, and propped his feet up on the table. As the sun drifted down behind the clouds, he lit a roll and smoked it, and enjoyed a glass of brandy. He took his time. Then stood and walked deliberately out the door, closing it behind him. He wondered what kind of censure he would earn with the action he was about to undertake. He wondered if he would survive it.

  His reappearance at supper, insolently late, inspired a hush throughout the entire court. Even the servants stopped moving as he walked with confident grace to stand in front of the Emperor's table. He stopped across from Third.

  "You," he said. "Come off the pillow that you do not deserve."

  Third glanced at Second and his Hand, then smiled at Lisinthir. "Well, if it isn't the wingless freak."

  "I was born to a race without wings," Lisinthir said. "But you were born to one with them, and you are more a wingless freak than I am."

  Third bristled. "Are you insulting me, freak?"

  "I'm challenging you, idiot," Lisinthir hissed. "You stole slaves from my people and brought them here as chattel. You marked them as yours, when they belonged to themselves. You did it to provoke me." He grinned without humor and said, "Well then, I am provoked. Come down here and fight me."

  Third chortled. "Surely you jest, freak."

  "I don't think he is," the Emperor said casually.

  Third glanced at him, taken aback. "Exalted?"

  "The "wingless freak" wants to fight you," the Emperor said. "He's challenged your maleness. Surely it won't take you long to dispatch him and then we can continue with our meal."

  "But to fight with a non-male—I would not taint my honor that way!"

  "Coward," Lisinthir said. "I give you ten beats of my heart to jump over that table and join me, or I will come over it myself and slit your sorry throat."

  Third hesitated, and Lisinthir counted, and on the tenth beat he launched, tackling the Chatcaavan and pinning him to the ground. He expected the foot that thrust him back and dragged Third after him by the throat. They smashed through the table, scattering its dishes, and onto the grass in the center of the lawn.

  Third scrabbled to his feet, panting, and stared at him. "Are you mad, freak? I am Chatcaavan!"

  "How many times am I going to have to say this?" Lisinthir replied, crouching across from him. "I am the Alliance. You have offended me. You will answer to me."

  The Chatcaavan snorted. "And you will die." He lunged for Lisinthir, claws outstretched.

  Lisinthir put a knife through his throat.

  The entire court leaped to its feet as Third gurgled and slid downward, grabbing at his neck. As the Chatcaava wheezed for air, Lisinthir calmly stretched his claw-knives and ripped open Third's wings from body to tip. A horrified sigh ran through the onlookers, one that waned to silence as Lisinthir began breaking off the horns. It took more effort than he'd thought from watching the Emperor and he had to reposition his hand several times to get the leverage, but he did so calmly, without haste. As Third gasped through the blood bubbles around his mouth, Lisinthir denuded his head completely. By the last crack, Third was dead.

  Lisinthir tossed aside the horn, picked up the bloody knife and searched the lower tables until he found who he sought. He walked t
o that table, stared Third's Hand in the eye, and said, "I challenge you for having the poor taste to serve a foul master, and serve him with pleasure."

  Third's Hand leaped off the pillow and dove for him, but Lisinthir already had his knife ready. It thunked into the Hand's thigh, cutting him down before he could reach the Eldritch. Lisinthir leaped for him and caught him by the horns and gave him metal claws against his neck.

  He did not even bother to humiliate this body, but left it bleeding to death.

  Presenting himself to the Emperor, Lisinthir said with a trace of a growl, "My honor is satisfied."

  "Very good," the Emperor said. "Rejoin us."

  Lisinthir took the pillow between Second and the Emperor. There was no table left, so the Emperor fed him off a dish on his scaled lap. Into his ear, the male whispered, "Soon the tests."

  "When?" Lisinthir asked, high on adrenaline and hunger. Let the mood last long enough to get him through the night. Let the morning be soon enough for cold examination.

  "Tomorrow, Beauty. Tonight, you will bring that ferocity to me in my bed."

  Lisinthir bit the Emperor's fingertip and said, "Always."

  The Slave Queen woke when clawed fingers curled around her jaw and lifted her head for her. She blinked open eyes heavy with contented dreams and found the Emperor across from her, invisible in the dark except for his glowing eyes and the light they somehow gathered from the remote corners of the room.

  "Go bathe yourself," he said. "It is time."

  Puzzled and still bleary from sleep, the Slave Queen rose and obeyed, keeping her ablutions short. Why was he here? And what did he mean?

  When she presented herself to him, folding herself onto her knees, he had found and spread out a selection of jewels. Orange amber ones, to match her eyes and collar, with opals and tarnished silver settings that seemed to keep the secret of their brilliance to themselves. When he took her by one of her horns, she expected him to use her... but instead he hooked one of the horn dangles on. He did the other side as well. As she remained carefully unmoving, he decorated her from horn to tail-tip, threading chains through the perforations in her wings and adding a single bell to the back of her navel chain.