Her pupils dilated, then she stammered, "You said to hide—"
"In the event of a challenge from someone who might actually win," the Emperor finished. "Yes. Those directions. That hiding place. Go there now and wait for me. Do not leave with anyone but me." He ran his thumb across the long rim of her mouth. "I gave you those orders then to protect my property. Now I give them to protect my Treasure. Go swiftly, and I will come to you when it is done."
Her eyes flicked toward Lisinthir, then back to the Emperor's, who released her and strode from the room, stiff-tailed and wings tightly furled.
"I go," the Slave Queen whispered. "And you? This is what you hoped for when you began this."
Lisinthir pulled himself from the bed and began dressing.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going down there," Lisinthir said. "I orchestrated this, in all my witless arrogance. The least I can do is witness."
The Slave Queen watched him dress, holding her arms. Sadly, she said, "Second was always afraid of you."
"Yes," Lisinthir said, understanding now, ages too late. Sympathizing now, months past any use. "Now go you to your hiding place."
She slipped out, swift and silent as a ghost. Lisinthir finished dressing and ran headlong down the long stairs with no thought to the safety of his pace, nor to the white pain that immediately sprang up along his side. He had once had the condition to fight several duels in the snow in succession and never pant, but what time and discipline had bought him, hekkret, alcohol and poor feeding had stolen. By the time he arrived the stage had been set. Against a star-filled sunset, cold and red, Second stood with outstretched wings, facing the Emperor as he descended from the table to meet him. Lisinthir didn't take his place on the second pillow but remained in chilled silence near the arch, steadying himself against it, little caring who saw him weak enough to need its support. In a few minutes it wouldn't matter anyway—either the Emperor would prevail and he would be shielded, or the Emperor would die and Lisinthir with him. He didn't need to look at the hostile, alien faces encircling the lawn to know what they wanted to do with him. To him.
"You came," Second said.
"You challenged," the Emperor said. "I give you one chance to take back your words and turn your back on this fight."
"I will not," Second said.
"Then you shall die," the Emperor said, and leaped for him.
Lisinthir remembered the Emperor's brutal vitality from earlier fights. He'd witnessed its effects on his own body when the Emperor had been holding back. Some part of him had believed in the invincibility of the male.
That part of him died when Second opened a gaping hole on the Emperor's back, separating part of the wing.
With a howl, the Emperor fell on him and they rolled to the ground, blood spraying from their ripping talons. Lisinthir clenched the stone, trying to gauge who was winning and seeing only blood.
"Give up this meaningless duel," the Emperor said, backing away. Both he and Second were dripping now. There were tears in Second's brittle wings that Lisinthir suspected would never heal.
"I shall not!" Second hissed.
"I am your Emperor! I command your obedience!"
"If you are my Emperor, then you will kill me for my insolence!" Second said, and dove for his neck.
With an elegance as feral as it was beautiful, the Emperor intercepted Second's lunge and tore out his throat. The other male landed hard on the grass and twitched. He tried to rise but failed, and did not rise again.
The Emperor rolled him onto his back, staring fiercely into Second's eyes as the life in them faded and died. Then he flared his black wings and screamed, and there was triumph and anger in his voice, and such was its power that a tense silence fell over the watchers.
"I AM EMPEROR HERE!" the male cried. "DEFY ME AND DIE!"
Lisinthir trembled at the Emperor's magnificence and at the depth of his own response. Lost. He was lost. Had lost everything—his way, his balance, his focus, his reason for being here. It had all been replaced. Beneath an unforgiving red light, he stared down the truth of his heart and gave in.
The Emperor's court—so very much his, now—was milling around him in uncomfortable obsequiousness. As they made their attempts to curry favor, Lisinthir turned.
Not fast enough to avoid the Emperor glancing in his direction; not fast enough to avoid meeting his eyes—
—challenge
hunger
resolve—
Almost, almost Lisinthir walked into that group to join him. Almost. He managed instead to turn and retreat to the tower, to the bed, to wait.
"So it has come to this," the Surgeon said.
The Slave Queen bowed her head, hands fanned on her elbows and wings drooped.
"Come," he said, opening the clinic door for her. As she entered, the Surgeon said to Triage, "You will leave. Do not return until I send for you. Do not try to enter until I send for you. You will find the doors locked."
It was a sign of the Surgeon's stature that the male did not protest, but set aside the work he had been occupying himself with and exited. How that door shut with such finality, trapping her inside this place with its far-too-vivid mosaics of dying, mutilated Chatcaava! The Slave Queen shuddered.
A blanket dropped around her shoulders, bunching over her wing arms.
"Come," the Surgeon said. "You can wait in my office. Unless you must lie down?"
"No," the Slave Queen whispered. "I could not close my eyes."
He gestured assent and led her to his office... a place without windows, a fortress against hostility and changes in the dynasty. The round room held no books, no scrolls, nothing but more of the devastating murals, glittering with mica dust and gem chips in the low light of a lamp over a single desk. Several chairs were set against the walls. The room did not comfort, but neither did medicine with all its cruelties.
"Who was it?" the Surgeon asked, surprising her as much as the blanket had. She had thought him beyond such curiosities.
"Second," she said. Why could she not summon more volume from her throat? Her collar seemed to crush her neck, throttling her words there.
The Surgeon said, "It should not last long, then."
She glanced up at him. He looked at her impassively and said, "Second is old."
Wings rattling beneath her hands as she oiled them. Layers of tiny scales that had accumulated around his eyes. Striations in his brittle horns. But still he had fang and claw enough to kill.
The Slave Queen lit on the edge of one of the chairs, letting the blanket side down her back. She caught its edges at her waist and pulled them snug up around her body, hiding her arms beneath them. And still she shivered as she waited, forcing her mind into blank silence.
Footsteps in the hall. She looked up, held her breath.
The Emperor placed a hand against the door frame. He dripped blood and sweat, his torn wings flapping free of his sides. "I require your aid," he said.
The Surgeon glanced at him. "You are standing."
"Yes," the Emperor said. "Fix my wings, curse it."
Without another word, the Surgeon stood and walked through the door, and the Emperor followed. As if tugged by an invisible leash, the Slave Queen trailed behind them. She folded herself into a corner of the main clinic as the Surgeon worked in silence, without anesthetic, with the efficiency of one accustomed to far more grievous wounds. Beneath his ministrations the Emperor bared his teeth but made no noise. Only the wet sounds of flesh being sealed and blood spattering on the floor broke the quiet, and the Slave Queen imagined herself in a dream.
"You'll fly," the Surgeon said, putting his tools in the bath. As he washed his hands, he said, "Perhaps a week for the wings. The rest of you should be serviceable tomorrow." He dried his hands. "Congratulations."
"Does it matter to you?" the Emperor asked. "Who is king in this place."
"No," the Surgeon said.
The Emperor chuckled, but the sound lacked humor and soul. "Spoken
as one Outside."
"Yes," the Surgeon said. "You may go whenever you please, though you are free to stay, as always."
The Emperor said, "Thank you for the maintenance of this place as a haven."
"It is in my interests," the Surgeon said. "Do you have more need of me?"
"No," the Emperor said. "Go."
The Surgeon left.
The sigh the Emperor loosed deflated him entirely until he slumped, his hands bracing himself on the edge of the clinic table. She had expected fatigue, not this dejection. On hesitant hands and knees she crawled toward him, as quietly as possible so as not to disturb his peace.
Fluorescent eyes opened, met hers. "Don't," he said. "Stand and walk to me."
Startled, she hastened to her feet and did so.
"It is done," the Emperor said. "You are safe."
"And the Empire," the Slave Queen ventured.
He laughed, and she hoped never to hear such a laugh again. He touched her jaw. "None will lift a hand against me tonight. It is safe for you to go back to your tower."
Her heart whispered the words to her, and she spoke them. "Must I, Master?"
He looked at her.
"I... I would comfort you. If I could," she said.
Some wonder lifted the weight in his eyes... not much, but enough. The Emperor touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek, on the soft skin beneath her eye. It was not his gesture, but the Ambassador's, but somehow they had traded it, made it seem natural. "And I believe you would," he said. "But ah, my Treasure. There is something else I must handle first. Someone else."
The Slave Queen swallowed. "You will not hurt him."
"Hurt him? Should I?" the Emperor asked.
"He planned this," the Slave Queen whispered, knowing even as she said it that she shouldn't, but that there was no middle ground between the two males in her life. No room for dishonesty. "He planned your downfall."
"Did he?" the Emperor said, and now the amusement in his voice, so gentle and so tired, was true. Was unbelievable. "Did he truly know what he bought when he walked into that marketplace?"
She choked on her laugh, on its helplessness. "No," she said. "I do not think he knew."
"He couldn't," the Emperor said. "Just as I couldn't. None of us knew what would unfold beneath us when the wind bore us away." He brought her head to his, her forehead to his, warmth and patience and a stillness that she could not name, could only adore. "But I must still deal with him."
"Should I not be there?" she asked. "If we have all flown into the unknown... "
"No," he said and touched the tip of her nose. "No. He deserves this confrontation without you to distract him. For you distract him, my Treasure... oh, how you distract him."
"And you?" she asked, her heart fluttering.
"And me," he said after a pause.
She closed her eyes as the warmth spread from her face through her body, all the way to the ends of her fingertips and tattered wings. Almost she could imagine them whole, able to feel sensation again. "I will do as you ask."
"Thank you," he said. "Go now, then. Rest."
"And tomorrow?" she asked. "What shape will tomorrow take?"
"Would that I knew," he said. "Ah, my Treasure. Would that I knew."
How long he waited, Lisinthir did not know... only that the waiting was uncomfortable, but that he could not bear for it to end. Stretched on the bed he had spent so many nights on, learned so much on. It smelled of their sweat and pleasure, of hekkret, incense, spilled brandy. He had straightened the rumpled sheets so that the moonlight fell over it in straight lines, sliced by the narrow windows, but it held the memory still of their bodies. Beneath his back he could still sense the damp fabric, the spots chafed raw by friction.
Their bed.
He rested his cheek against an outstretched arm and closed his eyes, one bar of light across one side of his face, the other in the dark. A breeze, high and clean and promising autumn, occasionally wiped the room clear of scent and presence.
Perhaps that was why the voice at the door could surprise him, unheralded, disguised by the wind.
"You were waiting for me." So quietly.
"Did you expect me to flee?" Lisinthir asked without opening his eyes. He could see the shape of his heart's response better that way.
The bed dimpled, and a claw traced the underside of his arm from wrist to ribs before spreading there, bringing with it a solemnity, a composure, an exhausted tenderness that was too much to bear without sight to give it form. Lisinthir looked up at the Emperor and found him whole. He reached for the trailing edge of the wing. "The Surgeon reattached them."
The Emperor watched his hand move, and his thoughts turned bittersweet. "It is the easiest of injuries to heal to a vane. Even in his battle rage, Second could not demean me by ripping open my wings." His voice grew distant, the regret more defined. "Second has been Second since I began my tenure here. He was a powerful male."
"And now a dead one," Lisinthir said. He rose onto one elbow, far enough to grasp the Emperor's shoulder and tug it toward him.
"And now what?" the Emperor asked, though his breath caught and Lisinthir felt through their touch the helplessness of his desire. "I have not even washed the blood from my body and still you want me?"
"Yes," Lisinthir said, and let the truth of it open his throat around the word.
The Emperor bent over him, his hands pressing on Lisinthir's shoulders, black on moon-pale white. "And will you open my wings in our fight for domination?"
"No," Lisinthir said, hopelessly, calmly... openly. "You have won."
He drew back then, just a little. "You jest."
"No," Lisinthir said. His defenses against change, against pain, against everything had fallen.
"The Slave Queen tells me you planned this," the Emperor said, tracing his cheekbone to his ear. "That you plotted my downfall."
"Yes," Lisinthir said.
"Just like this, you admit it," the Emperor said. "With my talons near your throat."
Lisinthir closed his eyes again. "It is a night for candor." When he opened them, what he felt through their skins steadied him, stripped him bare. He could name it, though still he could scarcely believe it. "Ask all that you wish to ask."
"Why?" the Emperor asked. "Why did you do it?"
"When I began?" Lisinthir replied, letting the talons stroke his throat, his forehead, his ear, knowing the gesture lacked the anger that would have made it a threat. "To save the Alliance. To have your own depose you in disgust so you would not live to test the Empire's strength against the Alliance, as you did against me."
"Would that have been so bad a thing?" the Emperor asked gently. "If it had resulted in what we share now? Revolution can be transformative. In a good way, Perfection."
"There is never a guarantee," Lisinthir said, and the Emperor stopped him with a tap to his lips.
"And that is a reason ever to stop," the Chatcaavan said. "To never try. To never risk. Such a wingless thought, my Perfection, my Beauty."
Lisinthir kissed the fingertip. "Perhaps," he said. "But that was only in the beginning. By the middle... " He drew in a long breath, found his ribs shuddering, "by the middle I saw what you could become, and I wanted to see you to that end."
"Thinking that end would soften me," the Emperor said.
"No," Lisinthir replied. "By that time it didn't matter that it might have consequences. It was so important... it was so beautiful, so Beautiful... it couldn't be stopped. I couldn't stand in its way."
"And this change," the Emperor said. "Tell me. What you see now, with those strange, twilight eyes."
"You took me into yourself," Lisinthir said. "And now you have the best of me."
"The best of you," the Emperor murmured.
"Perhaps that is the point of the Change," Lisinthir said. "Not to lose yourself in others, not to contest with aliens at a bone-deep level... but to learn them, understand them, and encompass the best of them."
"And this
I have done," the Emperor said, and nodded, an entirely Eldritch gesture that still suited him. "So, you sought to bring me down, and then you lost your way."
"I did not just lose my way," Lisinthir said. "I lost. I thought to make you less than what you were, and instead I have made you more. I thought to destroy you, and you are uplifted. I thought to rid the Alliance of a potential enemy... and I have made her a new friend." Some spark of their previous challenges lit in his eyes and he grinned at the Emperor. "I dare you to disagree."
"I could not," the Emperor said softly, stroking his collarbone. "So, I have won."
Through that finger, that self-conscious finger tracing the length of the bone, rang a helpless vulnerability... and through it, Lisinthir felt the warmth that had no name in modern Chatcaavan. Fortunately, Universal named it. As did the Eldritch tongue. Stories had turned on it, had driven its legendary heroes to despair and saved them from the consequences of their crazed acts in its name. And the thought that it could kindle here, in the heart of the most brutal, the most depraved court in all the known worlds....
Lisinthir took both the Emperor's arms in his hands. "We have fought the war between the Alliance and the Empire," he said. "Now claim the spoils."
The Emperor laughed... but also bore him down and took him. And perhaps the Alliance claimed victory for the next encounter. And then again, a defeat, and a victory, and they mapped the battles as they'd fought them for months, from the beginning to the end, save that all the fighting was blunted by tenderness and understanding, so hard-won. They had not finished this history until near dawn, when they were both sated and exhaustion blurred Lisinthir's vision. Still he felt the Chatcaavan slowly running a hand through his long white hair, and with every brush of fingers to scalp, Lisinthir tasted his despair and did not have the words or the energy left to ask. He slowly passed into the realm of dreams, and found light and running water there, enough to last him until he drifted awake and found the sunlight real, embracing his body with warmth and well-being.
Even the Wingless Page 40
