“If you’re busy—”
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “Kazimir’s on vacation this week and my supervisor’s been pushing me to take some time off. This one is a pretty big ‘hey, Elena, stop working so hard’ sign; I wouldn’t want the angels to decide they needed to find a bigger stick.” She grinned at him, lopsided, all her whiskers arching. “Besides, as presents to Kazimir go, ‘hey, brother, let’s go demonstrate kinky sex for a handsome Eldritch’ can’t really be beat.” She sighed and laughed. “Actually, I think I’m going to ruin every gifting holiday for years to come. There won’t be any topping it. Pun not intended.”
“That’s a ‘yes’, then,” Lisinthir said.
“That’s a yes,” she agreed. “And sorry about smudging your glass.”
Lisinthir chuckled. “Your instincts were good. And interested me.” At her glance, he said, “You moved to control the situation. Is this the part of your personality that makes you attractive to those who would kneel?”
Her eyes widened again. “I see that teaching you is going to be….”
“Interesting? Irritating? Difficult?”
She let loose a peal of laughter. “Fun! It’s going to be fun. So let’s arrange to meet, ah? Somewhere more private. You can tell us both what you need and we can tell you how long it will take to dump all that knowledge into your head, or where you can finish learning it on your own. If it’s as short a time as you’re suggesting, I’m going to assign you a lot of homework in simulations and reading... and I’m going to expect you to do it before you touch anyone.”
“You have my promise.”
She nodded and took out a pocket data tablet. “All right. Let’s talk schedules then.”
“Excellent,” Lisinthir said. “Whenever you’re free, I am at your disposal, alet.”
“Better call me arii,” Elena said, reaching for her beer and thumbing through her calendar. “If I’m going to be talking you through the fine points of kink, we’re going to be on more intimate terms than ‘hi, alet’ and ‘greetings, alet.’”
“Arii, then,” Lisinthir said, amused. “Let us make a plan.”
The first thing the Ambassador had needed, and the thing he had never ceased to thirst for even after he had come to her for other things, was information. Information was also what drove the Emperor’s endless curiosity—why ask so many questions if the answers weren’t useful for something? So, left to herself, the Slave Queen decided that she, too, would try to learn what she could and see what use she could put that information to. The Emperor had helpfully left her a tool for that purpose, so she settled in front of the rarely used console in her suite, slid her talons into it, and woke it.
The interface wasn’t unfamiliar, thanks to her upbringing. She’d had some freedom in the cage she’d inhabited as her sire’s offspring, before she’d become the pawn to be denied to the enemy and later the Slave Queen; while she hadn’t been able to do much with the computer available to her, she’d at least been able to use it to listen to music or look at pictures. The Emperor, though, had given her every access possible, and she found the limitless potential of it paralyzing. What should she do first? She’d spent her life starved for the outside world and this little square inset into one of her walls... this was a window out of her prison. She trailed her claw tips over her mouth, thinking. He’d given her more than the tools. He’d given her a suggestion for a beginning, and the gift of the Knife had implied another avenue of inquiry. This tower was now hers to oversee in his name, so... she began with that. How many inhabitants did it have? How many females shared this gilded cage? How many children?
When the Knife arrived in the late morning, as was becoming his habit, she was waiting for him. “What does it mean?” she asked. “When a number has scratches?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Here.” She brought him to the console and woke it so she could point to the data, still shining green where she’d left it. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, it is an estimate. The number of scratches gives you a sense of how poor an estimate. Three scratches are the most a number can carry, so those numbers have very poor confidence. You shouldn’t rely on them.”
“I don’t understand,” the Queen said, sitting back. “Those are the population numbers for the females and children in this tower. How can there not be an exact count? How can the males know if they’re all accounted for?”
The Knife lowered his head and wings, as if he was... embarrassed? “They can’t know, my Queen. Nor do they care to.”
“But... these individuals are the Emperor’s property!”
“Yes.”
“Surely someone would want to keep track of that?” the Queen said, bewildered. “Why, any of them could escape or be stolen by some other male....”
“And it would be accounted no great loss, I’m afraid. There is property that matters, my Queen, and then there is property that consumes resources, food, attention. Here, females and children are considered liabilities, not valuables.” Perhaps her expression was telling, because he said, “It is not like where I’m from, my Queen, where females and children are necessary to ensure the continuity of one’s livelihood and property. Here they are of questionable utility. Males come here to contest for power over multiple worlds, not just a small farm; females and children would be a distraction to them. The uses for females here are limited: a male can sate themselves with them, as all males have physical needs. He can lend them to allies to try to distract them with carnal adventures. Or he can give them out as rewards to be sent back to a male’s home: a male needs, at some point, to have an heir, and better his own blood than someone else’s, or so most of the system lords would tell you.”
It was nothing more than she had heard all her life, in some form or other, but somehow seeing it represented in cold green letters made it real to her in a way an entire life in captivity hadn’t. The Slave Queen stared at the console and drew in a careful breath, setting her dismay aside. It didn’t matter what the court thought of the females and children in the tower, if the Emperor now considered them something worth guarding. And he would not have given her a Knife if he hadn’t believed it.
She had proven it to him herself, hadn’t she? She had shown everyone that females could be more than decorations. She had a brain, thoughts of her own...
“So the system lords would tell you?” she asked, puzzled. She waved a hand at the pillow across from hers. “Do others disagree?”
“The Emperor’s navy is different,” the Knife said, sitting across from her cautiously. “There he allows the sons of lords and the sons of crofters to rise according to their ambition and ability. In such a system, your heir might not be your blood, but a protégé with whom you share something more important: your beliefs and your goals.”
Had it only been a matter of time before the Emperor remade the Empire in the image of the navy he’d already reshaped? Perhaps before it all ended, they would not call him Emperor, but Change itself. “That is....”
“Outrageous.” The Knife smiled. “And yet it works.” He hesitated, then offered, “It is so with the aliens, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. But... more so there than for us, yes. That I believe.” She studied him. “The Emperor says only the best of the Navy draw the duty here, to guard. That it is a reward.”
“It is so, yes, my Queen. The duty is limited: usually we serve only a year before we return. But it remains on our record. We earn more pay because of it, and are promoted faster because we have shown we can be trusted.”
“With the Emperor’s property,” the Queen said, frowning. “Which is considered so valueless it isn’t even properly counted in the records.”
“It doesn’t make sense from the surface, does it? But if you see it from overhead, it does, particularly in the context of history and its changes. It isn’t that we have guarded the property that makes us trustworthy. It’s that we respect that it is the Emperor’s and neither touch it nor a
llow it to be touched by others.”
As usual, it was about the males. And yet... “The females and children in this tower are no longer valueless by the Emperor’s reckoning, Knife. He wishes them guarded because they may become assets.”
The Knife leaned back. “That is... that is revolutionary, my Queen. And yet, it makes perfect sense.”
She eyed him. “Yes. I am surprised you think it so.”
“It is how he has always worked,” the Knife said with enthusiasm. “Taking what other males assume to be useless, looking at it differently, and discovering how it can become a tool for domination. He is a brilliant thinker, my Queen. Do you know what he intends for the harem populace?”
“No.” And then, seeing the Emperor’s face searching hers in memory, she added, “He intends me to decide what they can be used for.”
The Knife’s fingers tightened on his knees. “And what have you decided?”
“I have decided that I do not know enough about the tower, the palace, and the throneworld,” the Slave Queen said. “The Emperor has granted me access to the computer so that I can mend this fault.”
“Information is always important,” the Knife agreed. “One cannot win wars without information... information, and logistics.”
“Logistics,” she murmured.
“The details of how things are accomplished,” he said. “It’s no use to command a thing to be done. You must know how to do it.”
“And to know how to do it, you have to learn,” the Slave Queen finished. “So perhaps you can begin my education?”
“Gladly, my Queen.”
A beginning, she thought, with a final glance at the console. Perhaps not the triumphant one she’d hoped for, to divine all the information she required without external aid. But if the Ambassador had not scrupled to accept the help of a slave, she would not turn away a male eager to serve her need. There was more than one way to fly a storm, and given the size of the one facing her, she would use every tool at her disposal...
...as her Emperor did. She smiled and bent toward the Knife to listen.
The summons came late, but come it did. Jahir was working through yet another lesson on Chatcaavan grammar on the day it arrived, and after reading it went to the kitchen to place a pot on the stove. There was not a day he was not grateful for the full kitchen in their apartment…and while he had initially used cooking and baking as a tool to help his partner past personal turmoil, habit had long since solidified the association in his own head as well. The kitchen was safety. Looking at his reflection in the bottom of the empty pot, Jahir wondered what his household would have thought of it: the future lord of the Seni Galare, cooking like a menial, and preferring it. If he looked at his hands in the right light—he twisted the left one until he could see it—he even had a burn scar from handling a pan, there in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. A minuscule patch of skin slightly less bright a pearlescent white, so easy to overlook… unlike the ones he now had on his side. The healers on Veta had offered to abrade those off and resurface the skin, but he’d declined. Partly because after Lisinthir’s near death in surgery, he no longer trusted Alliance medicine to know enough about Eldritch physiology to address even the most casual of issues, and partly because… they were his scars.
He touched the worst of them, between his ribs. Shifted the topmost layer of fabric, felt it crinkle. Then, resolute, went for the cream.
Fifteen minutes later, when Vasiht’h padded in the door, the kerinne had been simmering long enough to have perfumed the air with the scent of cinnamon. Jahir had tried adding a little cocoa… then a little more… then he’d given up and started a second pot of kerinne because the first had become something like hot chocolate, if hot chocolate started with a cream base and became denser from there.
Stopping short, Vasiht’h said, “We should dip something in whatever it is I’m smelling.”
Lifting a spoon from the pot and turning it upside down, Jahir watched the chocolate cling without dripping. “Some sort of pastry?”
“Beignets? Churros? Sweet bread?” Vasiht’h shucked off his messenger bag and hung it by the door. “We’ll have to genie it.”
“Whatever you think would work?” Jahir offered him the spoon.
The Glaseah trailed a finger through the chocolate, licked, squinted. “Mmm. Churros. The cinnamon is barely tangible after everything else you’ve added to it, so I bet it would be good to have the flavor in the dough to pull it out.”
“Churros, then,” Jahir said. He hesitated. Nothing in the mindline suggested his news should wait, but….
“He sent for you?” Vasiht’h asked, pulling the plates out of the pantry.
Jahir exhaled. “I thought you would be distressed.”
Vasiht’h snorted. “I’d be more distressed if he hadn’t. He’s overdue, isn’t he?”
“Somewhat, yes.”
“I’m hoping there’s a benign reason.”
“It is probably administrative.” Jahir ladled the chocolate spread into a bowl and checked the kerinne. Too heavy for him—he brought down a mug for Vasiht’h and said, “Would you ask for an espresso for me?”
“Black, I assume.”
Looking at the contents of the pots on the stove, Jahir said ruefully, “Nothing less will serve.”
Vasiht’h chuckled.
Over drink and churros dipped in chocolate cream, they spoke of normal things: the errands they needed to spread between them, their caseload, the gifts they were to send to Vasiht’h’s nieces and nephews for the cluster of approaching birthdays. It was only after they’d put paid to the meal that Jahir broached the topic. “What will you do while I’m gone?”
He’d been expecting discomfort. The level of uncertainty that clouded the mindline surprised him. Looking up, he said, “Arii?”
“I thought I’d go home while you were away,” Vasiht’h said, threading his fingers together on the table. A deep breath, more felt via the mindline than heard. “And talk to a priestess.”
Impressions of children. Of babies. Of his partner’s babies. Stunned, Jahir straightened. “You want to start a family?”
“I think it’s past time,” Vasiht’h said. Shyly, “You don’t mind?”
“No,” Jahir said, his gladness swamping them both, and his shock. And pain, that too. He wanted very badly for his partner to have children, when he’d always been so good with them. That it would change their lives bothered him not a whit; it was for lack of change that his people had been strangulating, and he’d fled the homeworld in search of change because he’d known it to be difficult but necessary for growth. But these… these would be the children who would help him bury Vasiht’h, and their arrival inevitably heralded that future, no matter how far over the horizon it lurked.
“I know,” Vasiht’h said, voice husky.
Jahir reached over and set his longer hand over his friend’s clasped ones. “How will it work?”
Clearing his throat, Vasiht’h said, “I go there and apply at the temple. That might take a while; they have to work me into a queue, and how long I wait depends on how many people are in line in front of me. After that, I find a priestess whose genetic profile works well with mine, we make arrangements, and when she’s done gestating I end up with children. Everything else we have to figure out. I’m thinking I just want to raise them here with you.”
“You can’t marry this priestess,” Jahir guessed.
“No. They’re there to… well, to breed. Our priesthood is basically a network of surrogates, serving Her by creating in the flesh on behalf of those who can’t bring themselves to do it.” Vasiht’h freed one of his hands for his mug, but left the other under Jahir’s, palm up. “After I sign up I have to stay for the educational program, which is about taking care of children and… basically a how-to for being a parent. Since that takes a few weeks, I thought that would be a good thing to do while you were gone.”
“And then I’ll be… an uncle? A… foster father?” He
found the idea wondrous and strange. He had only barely begun to understand who Jahir the future husband might be. Jahir the parent was an entirely new frontier.
“I know,” Vasiht’h said. “Me too.” And then added, with a humor that did not obscure the cautious note that shadowed the words in the mindline, “But Sediryl might like having a suitor with experience raising children. It’ll look good on your list of marriageable qualities?”
“I don’t even know if she wants children,” Jahir admitted. Not just to the obvious question, but to the tacit one as well. He had never been willing to acknowledge his desire for Sediryl, even to Vasiht’h, who’d met her. Especially to Vasiht’h, who’d met her. But confessing it to Lisinthir had made it ridiculous not to admit it to his dearest friend, and saying it now made him wonder why he’d waited so long. It felt natural. A relief.
They looked at one another in silence, savoring the strangeness of the ease of it.
Vasiht’h sighed a very, very long sigh. “Goddess, Jahir. We really did come out of all that changed.”
“For the better, I hope,” Jahir murmured.
“I think so.” The Glaseah curled his fingers around Jahir’s. “When are you leaving?”
“There’s no urgency, or at least, none that I can read from the note. We have time to arrange our caseload. A few days?”
“Sounds good. I can leave at any time too. My sister wants to see me, so I’m going to stop by Tam-ley before I head home to Anseahla.”
For a long moment, Jahir savored the warmth of those fingers in his, the brush of the alien palm, so familiar after so many years... and so unlike the one he would shortly be touching. Vasiht’h was the beloved Other who had drawn him from his first stasis, the one inspired by his homeworld’s calcification... the partner who had given him a stable base from which to grasp the stars and make them home. Lisinthir was the beloved Known, and from that touch, he thought he would be ready to launch into sharing that home with an extended family. A wife, if Sediryl would have him when her human lover passed away. Adopted children, when Vasiht’h returned with his kits. Eventually, he hoped, children of his own.
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