"Archaic, that's funny," she said without laughter. "We would just say hi, or good morning or good afternoon or good night, depending on what time it is."
"Then, good morning, Maeve."
Her single laugh was nervous, dry. He crossed the room to help her with the water pump and her shirt-fidgeting started anew. He ignored it and she skittered backward, out of the way, as he reached for the pump. The bucket below was dry. He pressed the pump up and down, up and down, until the water flowed out. He reached up to the shelf, took down a cup and handed it to her before he stepped away.
"Did you want a drink?" he asked when she didn't move.
"Uh..." She yanked at her shirt. "Yeah."
He waited, but she remained still. He realized at once what the problem was. To bend over for the water or to even squat down to reach it, would expose her. He turned away to give her the privacy of getting her drink. The cup splashed into the water twice before he spoke to her again.
"I have to visit Hold House," he said.
"Can you get me some pants first?" she asked. He thought on it. If he gave her pants, chances were, if he were gone long enough, she would find a way around the hens. But she wasn't going anywhere without pants. And no one was coming near the shack with the hens loose. He'd drop food around the outside walls to be sure they guarded the shack well.
"I will bring some back for you," he said. "And I will look at your wounds before I go, to be sure they're healing properly."
"Yeah right," she snorted. "You don't need to look at anything. They're healing just fine."
"You know that for sure? No blue lines beneath the skin? No pale sheen across it?"
"I'm fine," she snapped.
"Alright, then I'm going. Don't go out of the shack. The overseer was here this morning, but with the dragons out, he won't come near, so long as he doesn't see you."
"What if he does?"
"He'll kill you, or worse," Diem said. He was glad to see her shiver. It was the right reaction. To sledge the point in, he added the truth, "The Plutians are talking about trading humans, selling them as a commodity among the planets, for service."
"By service you mean..."
"Whatever service they want. To clean, to mate, to eat...whatever they want," he said. "So stay inside. It's not a directive that you have to fight, it's just to keep you safe. Stay in and I'll be back soon."
***
He went out the door and, after she felt Forge's departure rumble the Earth beneath her feet, Maeve tried to bring the bolt down over the door. What the hell was she going to do anyway? Run away through the woods half naked? When she couldn't lower the bolt, she still knew and hated to admit that even with the open door, Diem had won again. He'd trapped her so effectively, she didn't want to get away. She was humiliated to detect the grain of submission in herself.
She picked the scraps off the floor that used to be her pants. They were ruined. Damn him.
With nothing to do, Maeve spent the next few hours trying to inspect the healing cut on her thigh. It was in the worst place, so that no matter how she twisted and turned, she couldn't quite see it enough to really inspect it. By the end of an hour, she was concerned that there was some bluishness after all, and by the end of the second hour, she was pacing the floor, certain she was going to die from some bizarre dragon disease.
As the third hour ticked by, Maeve was beside herself, imagining slithering, milli-legged bacteria climbing all over her. She itched with it. Within minutes she itched so bad she couldn't stand it anymore. She rifled the curtained shelves beneath the counter for soap. Not trusting anything she found, she finally settled on dipping a plain cloth she'd found into the half-full overspill bucket. A water bath would have to be good enough.
Maeve stripped off her shirt.
***
Forge flew like a well-aimed arrow, cutting through the clear sky, toward the North West. It was a very short distance to the dividing wall and Diem was not surprised, as he approached it, to see the oyster-colored dragon shoot from a cloud. The creature dragged the brume along behind it, stretching and swirling the vapors like a shredded pillow. The underside of its wings glimmered like snowflakes. All, the Cirrus dragon, was a beauty, just as she had been when Diem had trained her.
But the way All came screeching toward the edge of her House's air zone, it was like she didn't recognize him at all. Ears tucked and teeth barred, Diem whistled his command to stop. The dragon blinked—her only sign of hesitation—before she let out another screech, warning Diem not to cross the invisible line extending up from the wall below.
Forge reared up for battle, but Diem pushed his thighs flat to her plates. He released and pressed again. Forge banked to the right, just within the Fly House air space, flashing her mammoth, plated underbelly to the Hold House dragon. The iridescent plates clattered and shone with blinding brilliance in the morning light.
The rider hardly had to pull the Cirrus dragon up short. All's most valuable weapon was her ability to camouflage herself in the clouds, as well as being able to shoot a blast of flame the entire length of a training field, but those weapons wouldn't be near enough to engage in direct combat with a Samoan dragon like Forge. The Samoan breed were the most lethal of dragons. And, flashing her belly like she had just done, was the only warning Forge would give an opponent. The next strike would be the beginning of battle.
Both dragons parted and remained to their own sides of the wall. When the Cirrus's rider saw the respect, he called out to Diem.
"What is your business?"
Diem cupped his hands to call back, "To speak to Rha Shown—a private matter!"
The Cirrus swooped around, as did Forge, aligning to glide past one another as if flying in tandem. The two riders took a better look at one another, so they could verify identities. The whole custom had begun as a way to distinguish one another from Plutians, but since few of the Plutian overseers bothered to mount a dragon any more, it had become a ritual of respect.
Diem waved, recognizing the rider immediately.
"Mark!" he called. "Blessings!"
"Rha Diem!" the man called back. "Welcome! You can make it to the landing ground on your own?"
Diem nodded as he guided Forge over the dividing wall, into the Hold House's portion of the sky. Mark was there one minute and then, gone the next, disappearing into a string of clouds. Diem landed Forge on the empty field moments later, but, from the spindlings, a shout rose up.
"What is your business?"
Diem looked for a human, a shape amongst the trees, and could find nothing. He slid off Forge's neck with a whistle to pacify her, and shouted back, "Rha Diem and I am here to speak on private matters!"
A man stepped from behind a tree, separated from it, as if he were part of the bark. It always startled him when they did that. Diem blinked to recognize the face.
"Break," Diem greeted the camouflaged man. "Blessings. I am always amazed with your ability to be lost in the environment."
"Blessings, Rha Diem," the man returned. "Perimeter work. Done it all my life. I've had to find new ways to make it exciting. You could say I've gotten very good at blending in. But enough of this. What brings you? We have at least another five or so passes of the moon before we can expect a trans, don't we?"
"I have no concern with the shipment. I've come to speak with your Rha."
"Oh," the man said. "I would escort you, but I have to remain at my post. However, if you continue at a slight North West direction, excuse me, I mean, gait, you will reach Hold House and they will be able to tell you where to find the Rha."
"Thank you. I'll walk on then," Diem said, smiling at Break's archaic words that peppered into his speech. Posts and directions. The words sounded odd in Diem's ears and he remembered imitating the words as a Smaller, when Breathe would speak. But as he grew, he realized the archaic words weren't always as accurate or suitable to his needs. The gait of a dragon was a measurement he could relate to, whereas direction told him as much as pointing
an arm.
Diem secured Forge with a whistle and walked off into the spindlings, using the sun to keep his bearings. Only once, the shadow of the Cirrus dragon drifted overhead and cast a shadow, but otherwise, the woods were bright and quiet.
Until he reached a patch of fallen gorne. There was a mill standing beside a stump, the type of cranking mechanism that ground gorne to flour so it could be made into bread and cereal. A bag of the flour sat nearby. Some of the shaved gorne had spilled out and dusted the soil below it. Whoever had spilled the food was nowhere in sight. At least, that was the way it appeared, until Diem heard a woman moan.
He came to full attention at the sound. Diem spun in a circle to locate her. A compilation of rocks created a sort of sloping, low bridge to the left. It was a bridge over nothing but mud, but then angled upward, until it spilled out into an eventual dirt path that led off to Hold House. The woman could be lying on either side of the retaining walls, but with the next mew from her, Diem followed the sound off to the right, to a thick grouping of gorne trees.
Diem crept closer in silence. Another moan echoed. Diem was certain he was about to come upon a woman being planted unwillingly by a Houseman. His blood boiled at the prospect. It used to be that Diem correlated every woman with Karma, but it was Maeve that occurred to him now. His fists curled.
He didn't care if the Hold House's individual custom allowed for taking women with pain, Diem wouldn't have it. He knew that disrespecting another House's customs could, at worst, bring death upon him, but it didn't matter. Diem would beat a Houseman bloody if he had to, so the man couldn't recall the Rha's identity, and so the offender would think twice of ever abusing a woman again. It wouldn't be the first time Diem had taken matters like this into his own hands.
His arms quaked with the adrenaline and anger at what he expected to find. He prowled around the edge of the gorne thicket until he found a clear vantage point, near a huge boulder, to look in. A narrow path, only shoulder wide, led into a hollow center. The gorne stood tall, so the sunlight had to dance down from among the upper leaves to shimmy upon the Earth's floor. The soft light flickered across the bodies entwined on the ground. After a moment of deciphering the tangle of bodies from one another in the sporadic light, Diem realized there was a makeshift bed of blankets spread beneath the couple.
This was an intentional liaison.
Diem stood frozen, trying to allow the adrenaline to subside. He watched the man and the woman, who lay naked and kissing and completely unaware of Diem as he crouched behind the rock. Diem had come upon men and women before—it was common. The proper thing was to ignore it and move away, but, for some reason, this couple intrigued him. He hadn't spied on a mating since he was a boy, passionate to learn the mechanics, and then, the techniques, of planting a woman.
This coupling was tender. The woman on her back, the man's hips lay beside her even as he leaned over her body, locked in her kiss. The man's head churned sensually, as if the woman was a delicacy and he wanted to savor the taste of her. She slid her hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, holding him to her, deepening their kiss.
The sight spread tingles through Diem's legs. Observing a woman mate a man she wanted was powerful.
The man broke the kiss, sliding his lips down the sensitive expanse of the woman's neck. She arched to him and the hum of her enjoyment softly tickled Diem's ears.
The man eased down her body slowly, his black hair dusting the globe of her breast. The gentle sounds of his mouth suckling her, conjured other images in Diem's mind. He saw his own jaw on Maeve's breast. The woman in the clearing moaned again, but Diem only heard Maeve's timbre in the erotic sound. His flex punched to attention and Diem nearly gave himself away with his own heady groan.
As shameful as it was to continue watching, Diem could not move away. He was transfixed by the sight and mesmerized by the sound of them because, in his mind, all he saw and heard and felt was his imagination come to life—he and Maeve, paired on the ground before him.
"Garrett," the woman sighed as she gently grasped the man's black mane. Diem imagined himself laving the tender bud of Maeve's breast with his own tongue, licking her flesh, sucking up her nipple between his teeth. He wanted to make Maeve writhe like that.
The man's muscles moved beneath his skin like chain. He kneeled between the woman's legs. She drew up her knee, exposing herself, and Diem envisioned Maeve on his own bed, her legs splayed before him. He traced the petals of her intimate skin in his mind, recalling the bead of her own glistening lubricant that helped his fingers slip inside her.
Diem tried to touch himself, but the contact only jettisoned him out of his imagination, back to the couple in the clearing and back to the humiliation of his voyeurism. He could only get to his vision of Maeve without contact, so he stood in swollen misery, listening as the man whispered his adoration of the woman's body against her skin.
The woman drew a long, intoxicating breath as the man penetrated her. It was an unusual tenderness, the man's hips savoring each stoke into her with a sensuous rhythm. The woman called out the man's name, but Diem only heard Maeve calling his own.
The woman rose up on her palms, meeting each of the man's thrusts with a gratifying synchronicity. Perfectly fused, the man lifting her closer, her legs twining around his hips, her bottom balanced on his thighs. Her voice was soft as she begged him, and the man complied with thrusts so hard and deep, the woman's lips fell to his shoulder, tenderly biting his flesh.
Diem felt the moan of their combined release rip through his own chest. The man finally laid her back, tenderly, on their makeshift bed. He collapsed beside her and the two of them murmured softly and laughed to one another, as his finger lazily traced patterns on her belly. He bent to kiss her.
Diem stumbled away quietly, ashamed for having watched, excited for having seen. He felt as though he'd just witnessed his first own mating with Maeve, and he was both confused and anxious that he could want anyone so much.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Hot Season Six, Year 2095
Thankfully, the walk to Hold House was long enough that Diem was no longer showing signs of having viewed the tryst in the woods. But, unfortunately, a nagging anxiety took its place as Diem wondered how he was going to convince Rha Shown to vouch for Maeve. He understood that what he wanted didn't always happen, but this was no longer a trivial desire. The oracle of his soul whispered that he needed her and it unnerved him.
Worse, the corroboration of Maeve's fabricated ties to Hold House wasn't all Diem needed Rha Shown to agree to. He needed an alliance that Shown had no reason to give. Diem needed to secure surplus dragons to cover any shortages in his quota, but since Hold House was the only House without quotas, it was likely that all the other Houses would approach Shown for the same alliance. Diem wondered what the others would offer and if he could offer anything more. Fly House would no longer be the most prosperous House. That title would belong to Shown now.
Diem finally spotted the Hold House in the distance. House grounds were fairly the same. The house was the epicenter of each lot, a bustling conglomeration of rooms, tacked to the main house, with children scurrying from corners, women tending to food and cleaning inside, and Housemen coming and going between shifts of work.
Life buzzing around made the Houses always appear welcoming, even if the inhabitants weren't always so. Like the woman on the porch who saw Diem coming and began to scream at him to go away. She flailed her arms as if she could scoop his direction away from the front porch, and as he came closer, the woman continued to shout at him.
"Git! Go on! We can't feed you! Go back to where you came from!" she shouted through the long strands of her hair. A man wandered around the corner of the porch, apparently summoned by the tone of her voice.
"Share...Share," the man tried to soothe her. The woman didn't respond until he said, "Charlotte, it's okay."
The man spotted Diem and once the two met eyes, they knew each other immediately.
&n
bsp; "Ah! Blessings, Rha Diem!" the man said.
Diem returned, "Blessings to you, Rha Shown!"
"Give me just one moment," the Rha said. He turned to the woman, who was humming through pressed lips. "Go on in the House, Share. Iris is in the kitchen and she'll get you something to eat. She'll let you hold the baby, if you go."
The woman grunted at Diem, but finally hobbled off, the door slamming behind her. Rha Shown turned back to Diem once she was gone.
"Sorry about that," he said.
"What is wrong with her?" Diem asked. The Rha sighed.
"She is...oh, what's the word? Loose? Loose in the mind. No worries, though. She's harmless. We just don't let her hold the babies. We do, however, let her hold a gorne stump in a small dress and it satisfies her. I suppose that is why she came with us."
"With you?" Diem shook his head, confused, but Shown just harrumphed.
"She chose to come with us...uh...through the Scorching, I mean," Shown said, but it didn't sound like that was what he meant. It was things like that that always made Diem a little anxious when visiting the Hold House. They were all a little odd here and had never eschewed the archaic, as the other Houses had.
But, when it came to business, Hold House was always honest and reliable, whether or not those traits were appreciated by the other Houses. Diem hoped Rha Shown's honesty wouldn't get in the way of the favor Diem had come to ask.
Shown pulled up two chairs with upward-angled crescent moon slats instead of peg legs. Shown motioned to sit and Diem complied, but the chair lurched beneath him. Diem planted his feet down hard, so he wouldn't fall backward on his head. He'd never seen a chair like this one. Shown chuckled.
"Never sat in a rocker before?" he asked. "You won't tip over. It's called rocking, like what a mother does with the babies. You don't have them over at Fly House? We'll have to have Brandon...Break...make you one. They're the bomb. Watch. This is how they work."
The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Page 25