I hear the cold click of her shoes on the stone floor, not coming closer but receding. Instead, the footsteps that come closer are heavy. With each one, I give a little jolt, remembering the Lemoran and trying to hold onto the somewhat goofy expressions he made, and not onto the very recent knowledge of his capacity for violence.
“You’re alright, Essmira. You’re alright. Still in one piece. Still alive to fight another solar…” Only the words die on my lips when I catch sight of the body in the doorway. It isn’t the Lemoran, but a Lemoran — a female. And she’s huge, almost as big as the male. She comes into the room and looks around, not seeing me at first.
Then, when she does see me, she gives me a bright smile and a tight little Lemoran wave — reaching up and catching the air with all five fingers before lowering her hand. I’m shaking but, with my bloody hand, I still manage to return the greeting.
She arrives directly in front of the green chair I’m hidden behind, glancing between me and it several times. “So um…” She scratches her head. Like the male, she also has no hair, but her lips are larger and so are her eyes, giving her a more feminine appearance, to me. Over her shoulder, she shouts, “You said the green furry thing, Raingar?”
Raingar. His name is Raingar. I mustn’t forget. The thought makes me snort. Forget? How could I ever forget a moment of this? I’ve never seen violence before. Against me at Tyto’s bloody hands, yeffa, but never between two males carved of stone. Never at this scale.
“Yeffa,” comes the male’s — Raingar’s — grunted response from the hallway.
She scratches her head for another moment, then shrugs, gives me another little wave and bends down to scoop up the chair just as it starts rolling away from her. Tossing it over her shoulder, she walks back the way she came and out into the hall.
“Well, here you…” I hear her say, but she’s cut off when Raingar’s burning, booming rage explodes through the world, the blast radius significant enough to shake me and make bumps break out over my skin everywhere. On the far side of the room, another smaller chandelier falls.
“I said behind the green chair! Not the green chair!” Another block of crystal falls from the ceiling and explodes in green magnificence. Like the center of Raingar’s eyes, they’re just that color. But perhaps those eyes were a deception. Perhaps, he cannot be trusted. Perhaps, my instincts made a mistake. I glance again to the window, dreaming of escape, but my limbs are locked in place and I’m shaking. When did I start shaking and why can’t I stop? Why can’t I move?
“You said the green chair…”
“YOU THINK I PAID FOURTEEN TUNS FOR A GREEN CHAIR!”
“Hey, you didn’t pay anything, so quit your yapping,” comes another voice, a softer one. Then laughter. More of it. It ripples through everything.
The female returns and sets the green chair down, giving it a soft pat that it seems to like because instead of scuttling away from her, it follows her towards me. I shudder, completely creeped out by it and because I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, I close my eyes.
“Hey, it’s okay. Are you hurt…”
“Hurt? She’s hurt?” Raingar’s voice is tinted with a touch of madness. He sounds farther away from the female directly in front of me, but not by much. And then by nothing.
I look up as he pushes her aside quite roughly and takes off his tunic. He crouches in front of me and hands me the balled up fabric. “For your hands,” he says, though he looks like he needs it much more than I do. He’s got blood all over him but…nothing swollen, nothing broken. And most of the blood doesn’t appear to be his, unless he bleeds green, too.
“Raingar,” comes the female’s droll, “you want her to use a bib you wiped Egama blood up with to clean her open wounds? Give me a break.”
“Pagh!” He grunts, snatching the shirt away from me and tossing it onto the floor. “Give me your shirt, Reyna.”
The female called Reyna opens her mouth like she’ll protest, but instead, sighs and rolls her eyes. She reaches for her tunic’s hem and whips it over her head before my mind catches up to my mouth. “Oh nob, please don’t. You don’t need to trouble yourself…”
She just smiles down at me and rubs her hand over her bare stomach. It’s ribbed, like the male’s, full of muscles that make me feel much softer than I did before looking at her. Her breasts are also high and firm and lack nipples. Unusual, but…I have no but, really. She’s just different from me. No less interesting. No less wonderful.
“We just paid two rotations’ worth of kintarr for you, heelee,” she says with a smile so I know she means heelee as a term of affection and not as the bug that it is in reality. “We’ve got a vested interest in getting you back to Lemora in one piece.” She winks and tosses her shirt down to me. “Staunch those cuts and we’ll get them cleaned up on the ship.”
Disbelief rolls into pure excitement dashed with a heavy dose of fear and an even weightier dose of exhaustion. “I…” My voice cracks and I flush, ashamed. A female is always eloquent, even when she’s in pain. “I’m going with you all?
“You,” I say, directing my stare to the male crouched at my feet scowling around at everything. Only…he isn’t scowling right now. Right now he’s looking at me like he’s a little unsure. Maybe even terrified. Oh nob. Perhaps he’s regretting his purchase. Can he return me? I pray to the suns that he can’t return me…
“You paid for me?” I ask him. I lick my lips and his gaze drops to my mouth before he grunts noncommittally.
It’s the female, however, who says, “Nob. Raingar didn’t pay for you. We did.”
I don’t understand. “We?”
She gestures over her shoulder where three other Lemoran females stand in the center of the room. I hadn’t heard them enter. They all wear smiles, ranging from stoic to excited to incredulous.
“We,” the stoic female answers. I notice that, unlike all the other Lemoran in the room who sport grey horns, the color of charcoal, her horns are ivory. “We all contributed. All of us except for Raingar.”
I don’t understand. “But…” Eloquence! Eloquence! I clear my throat as daintily as I can. “If you all contributed, then who will be my master? Who will I serve?”
Raingar visibly winces at that. I didn’t see him flinch half so hard when he had the full weight of an Egama giant barreling towards him.
It’s the one who gave me her shirt, Reyna, who says, “You won’t have a master. You won’t serve anyone.”
I won’t serve anybody… “But if I don’t serve anyone, then who will I be?” I meant to say what, not who, but the word just slips out and, judging by the look that the females share at my expense, it embarrasses all of us equally. A female who brings shame onto herself is meant for the pleasure houses. A female who brings shame onto her master is not even meant for that.
“Forgive me. What I meant to say was…”
“Who? Did you just say who?” Raingar growls, pulling my attention back to him.
My jaw snaps shut, teeth clacking together. I shake my head. He looks furious at my question, so I quickly open my mouth to retract it further but the female who gave me her tunic lowers her hand to my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll find you a role in the clans you’ll be happy with. In the meantime, just focus on serving yourself and being you.”
“Oh. Oh yeffa. Thank you,” I say aloud though I don’t really mean it. The thought of this thing — this unknown role — I’m meant to be stepping into, or perhaps letting go of, is daunting. I don’t even really understand what she’s asking of me, but I don’t resist — a female never resists — and let the female help me to my feet and guide me out into the hall and eventually, onto a ship.
It’s translucent, the Lemoran ship, tinted purple and blue, green in some places, pink in others. That’s all I notice. I’m in a daze, not thinking about anything but the order I’ve been given. The only one I was never trained for.
As I step to the bac
k of the ship and watch the females take their places at the controls, a strong and sudden fear shoots through my toes, making me wonder why they purchased me at all if they don’t intend to use me as I was trained my entire life to be used.
Is there something worse than being a pleasure female to an Oosa colony or an Egama horde? These Lemoran seem nice, kind…well, except for the male. He doesn’t seem to like me at all, which is at odds with the vision I keep close to my heart of him stepping in between me and the Egama warlord. Maybe he isn’t cordial, but that act was a kindness in itself. He also seemed to have brokered the deal with Igmora — stars, if I understand how when all he told her was that he did not negotiate — but then he didn’t make the purchase himself.
They must want me for something truly nefarious. I shudder as I glance around. Unwilling to take one of the empty seats in the center of the transporter, I sit down on the floor against the far wall and take deep breaths, trying to cool and calm my mind.
It doesn’t help because all my thoughts scatter when the doors close and we take off of this planet — only the second place I’ve ever been outside of the fort Igmora and Tyto hold on Eshmir, the reavers’ trading planet. We rise up into the stars and I would ordinarily look up and out of the window, focusing on them and the beauty they bring, but I can’t. Because the male who likes me enough to defend me, or maybe doesn’t like me at all, takes up position to my left and proceeds to stare at me with such intensity it makes my stomach churn and every word I thought to say to break this awful tension dies in my stomach before ever even reaching my lips.
I can do this. I have not forgotten Tyto so quickly. I know how to respond during punishment, and that must be what this is because that’s what it feels like — his gaze cutting into me harder than any whip.
The idea that this is punishment makes me feel…better. I almost relax. I might have…if one of the females hadn’t chosen that moment to get up from the controls and approach me. “Hi, I’m Bebette.” She moves the bulky item in her grip up and down. A healing torch. That’s what it is. I’ve seen one before just like it many times. “Now why don’t you let me take a look at those hands.”
I glance down and see red that I don’t understand.
I look up and see a smile that I understand even less.
I glance to the grumpy brute, glaring at me and only me and entirely ignoring Bebette and I realize that I am quite close to losing my grip on the shores of reality and these kind, or perhaps very frightening creatures, are going to watch me drown. I was taught to swim, but without the anchor of being a pleasure female, I’ve entirely forgotten how.
3
Raingar
I don’t like it. My horns are throbbing. There’s a tightness in my chest and for the past quarter solar, I’ve had to poop. Not poop so much as explode. And maybe not out of my ass but out of my chest, for certain. My heart is hammering, throwing itself against my ribs and always in the same direction — hers.
Merquin is smiling though she’s trying not to show it. I catch her smiling when I rip my gaze away from the female long enough to meet her stare. But the pain of looking away from the female is too much to bear, so I don’t bother trying again. It’s enough to know that Merquin is smiling. Reyna, Tana and Bebette, too. They’re all smiling. And I know why they’re all smiling.
They’re all smiling at my doom.
Merquin is standing behind Reyna and Tana at the controls. The only difference between the way we arrived and the way we’re leaving now is Bebette at the back of the transport on her knees in front of the female with the brown and red skin, doctoring her wounds with a healing torch.
The torch will clean and seal her cuts, but the sight of the bright red blood on her hands still makes me want to shatter something. The Egama, perhaps. He wanted her. He wanted my female. I want to go back there — need it. I want to plunge both my hands into his face and rip out his one great big eye and stomp on it.
My forehead erupts with a fresh bout of sweat, which is almost painful. We don’t sweat as a general rule of thumb, not even in the mines where we, well…mine. I shift and my tough skin ripples when I shudder. I feel panic and pain grip me in tandem. She hurt her hands. She hurt her hands and now she’s bleeding and I can see the blood and there’s nothing to do to stop it and I hate that and I hate that I hate it and most of all I hate that I let her hurt herself and that I let my horns and their pressure and her incandescent beauty rob me of fourteen tuns of kintarr…
“How could I let this happen!” I bark. The problem is that I’m speaking to Merquin, but my inability to look away from her means that I’m now shouting at her and it makes her jump.
She glances around in confusion and presses her lovely lips together. The worry on her face makes me grumpy and that’s a problem because I’m already feeling panicked and enraged. “I’m not talking to you! YOU ARE FINE,” I shout at her again only to realize how odd that sounds. Fine? I mean she’s doing fine. Performing adequately. Not that she looks fine — because she doesn’t.
Her eyes are large in her face and her pretty, dark brown lips are trembling and her trembling hands are bleeding and the sight of that blood is jacking up my pulse. Should I tell her this? What? What am I saying? Nob! I want her knowing nothing. Pagh!
“Merquin! How could I let this happen?”
Behind me Merquin just tuts. “If you think you had anything to do with this, then you are just as stubborn as I thought you were and twice as foolish.”
Ignoring her barb, I chuff, “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t?” Tana scoffs. “I’d say many males in your position would be pleased.”
Pleased does not begin to describe it. She’s the most beautiful creature in the whole of the galaxy — in the whole of history — and I’m sure that there will never be a female who comes close to rival her. She’s taken the top position as most beautiful creature in the history of the cosmos and shattered it so that all others who come next will only ever be able to hope for second place. A very distant second.
But the thought that I’ll have to take her back to Lemora where there are other males — and females — who would look at her and be pleased by her makes my bones ache.
My face heats as I stare at her, wondering how much of our conversation she understands. It’s clear that she speaks Lemoran flawlessly — a fact that I would have thought was bizarre if Igmora hadn’t said what she had.
“I’m pleased that this worked out as I planned for it to three rotations ago.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what she’s ohring talking about as we wait for the other clan chiefs to arrive so we can get this ghastly sum sorted out.
She doesn’t need me to reply, however, she just crosses her arms over her chest and looks down the hall where her mate just fled. “Tyto had no faith in me either.” She laughs softly, “Males. You all are easy to manipulate and even easier to anticipate. I knew she’d be your mate the moment I showed her your image.”
“What are you talking about?” I grumble.
“She smiled,” Igmora’s eyes flash with something that horrifies me. It’s emotion. She doesn’t have emotions. At least, she isn’t supposed to. She glides one hand back through her hair, pulling a tangle absently out of the sleek black mass. “You were almost three rotations her senior — fully grown to maturity, then, and she’d been but a youngling. But it did not seem to matter. She liked your eyes. She said they looked kind. And I had a sense that Xana and Xaneru were looking out for the little female. And for me, too.” She laughs, and this sound is crueler. More like her. Callous in every way.
“Because I knew of your reputation, even then. That you do not negotiate. And I planned to be able to extort you for everything I could. It has worked. I am now a very wealthy female. And my progeny is now in the hands of a male with kind eyes who will want her for more than her ability to breed little hybrids for him.
“It is a good thing I managed to place her in your path. Had this n
ot worked out, I would have not succeeded in deterring Tyto from claiming her.”
“TYTO!” I shout and all the blood rushes from my horns’ base to my big blocky toes encased in big blocky sandals. “Tyto is…he’s…he’s…”
“He’s lusted after her since she received her first moon tide.”
An urge to slaughter ruthlessly grips me. By it, I am nearly undone. “But he’s your mate!”
She looks at me as if I’m the most foolish creature in all creation. Moving with the elegance of water, she crosses her smooth, lovely arms. “It is only a matter of time, clan chief.”
“Time? Time for what?”
She blinks at me. “It is only a matter of time before I kill him or he kills me. And I assure you, it will not be the latter.”
I did not doubt her in the least.
Fighting off the sour taste in my mouth that this female was groomed for me by the two most abhorrent creatures across all kingdoms, I return my focus to the female who speaks Lemoran as if she were born and raised on planet. Clearly, the language isn’t an issue, but if the subtleties of my actions were lost on her, then maybe — just maybe — Igmora did not prepare her for what it means for a Lemoran male to see her and for his horns to begin to flake.
I can’t decide if I’m relieved, or if that makes me want to give into that base rage all over again. I’ve never been angry like that. When the Egama looked at her and staked his claim, I knew with certainty that I’d die before I let that happen. And I’ve never wanted to fight anything ever in my life and I never want to fight anything ever again. Unless it’s for her. That I’d do without question.
I look down at his dried blood on my fists and shake my head gruffly, wishing I could somehow resurrect him and start our war all over again. This time, I’d win. I want her to be sure I can protect her. I hate this! I hate feeling all of these foreign emotions! Pagh!
Taken to Lemora Page 5
