Shadowed By Wings

by Janine Cross

  Talons slashed air and scaled muscle slammed against stone. The bitter reek of agitated dragon fogged the air like smoke from burning oil.

  I collapsed across Dono’s calves. The violence of the dragon’s strike and the strength in her tongue shocked me. Numbness blazed up my throat, and my neck instantly began swelling with great bruises.

  “Idiot,” Dono gasped, and he shoved me off his legs and swiftly rose to his knees. With one broad palm he swiped the welt of venom from my neck. “They’re trained to go for the face; they’re destriers.”

  I couldn’t breathe. The swelling bruises were acting like a garrote. Wide-eyed, I clawed at my throat.

  “Hold still!” Dono barked, and he whipped off his loincloth and scrubbed furiously at my neck. “Don’t die on me, hear? The Komikon’ll kill me. Don’t die on me, Zarq.”

  His words became a roar. My vision tunnelled into darkness.

  I regained consciousness. Warm lips pulled away from mine. The taste of someone else’s breath lingered in my mouth like broth-scented steam.

  A face floated above mine, floating, fading, a strange demon moon.

  “Don’t move. Y’agitate yourself and your throat’ll close over again.”

  Dono.

  I closed my eyes, concentrated on keeping my breathing slow and even. Each breath was hard-won, felt as if I’d drawn it through the confines of a burlap bag held over my head and tied tight around my throat with wire. It would have been easy to panic, to succumb to the terror threatening to overwhelm me.

  But a growl in my ear stayed the urge. “Breathe, Zarq. So help me.”

  I focused on inhaling and exhaling in measured, even breaths. My lips felt foreign and partially detached, my cheeks as if cold starch water were hardening upon them. My ears hummed as though a swarm of insects clouded my head, and as the venom that had touched my skin sank into my bloodstream, I was filled with a familiar illusion of puissance, which had been my goal in provoking the dragon, understand. Though I’d not expected such strength, such violence, in her lashing, and I’d not expected her to go for my face.

  The earth beneath my back breathed with me, gently swelling with each inhalation and deflating with each sigh. The destriers in their stalls likewise began to breathe in harmony with me, and even the apprentices asleep in their hovel inhaled in accordance to my demand. Indeed, every man and woman, child and beast, within Clutch Re breathed in rhythm with me, blithely unaware in their sleep that I controlled their very air. Or so I believed, in my inebriation.

  I felt that even Dono’s breathing synchronized with mine. I glowed in the triumph of mastering his lungs.

  He broke the harmony. “What d’you do that for? No, don’t answer. Keep quiet.”

  I cracked an eye open, saw him sitting alongside me, one knee up, arm draped over it. He was looking down at me, running a hand through his locks. Sweat slicked his body silver in the moonlight, and stars like flecks of fine glazed porcelain glittered upon the dark table of night above him.

  I had a grunu-engros, then, a dragon-spirit moment. You know of what I speak, yes? That illusory feeling of having already experienced a similar situation, a situation that is a portent of your life yet to come, that muddled, powerful feeling of familiarity and omen.

  And I remembered, suddenly, when I’d last seen the sky so illuminated by starlight. It had been the eve following the Sa Gikiro of my ninth year, the night Mother broke Temple Statute for what was to be the first of many times, when she hid glazes and pottery tools in the jungle. On that night, like this, the sky couldn’t be described as black, for it was so bright with luminescence that it looked as if white liquid porcelain had been gently swirled through it.

  I shivered.

  “How come you know venom so well, Zarq?” Dono said, bringing me back to the present. “Onais aren’t allowed to touch the venom of the kuneus they serve. But you must’ve, hey-o, to have built up the kind of tolerance you’ve got. You should be dead from the amount of venom you just received, so close to your face.” He looked away from me, across the empty courtyard.

  After a moment, he spoke again. I realized, then, by the lilting tone of his voice and the unnaturally still focus of his gaze that he, too, was intoxicated by venom. Of course. With his bare palm he’d first scraped the dragon’s poison from my throat.

  “They always go for the face, Zarq. It’s instinct. Hatchlings right out of the egg do it. I’ve seen them. They always aim for the mouth.”

  He shifted a little, still gazing into the dark. “Y’know how many inductees I’ve seen die that way? Dozens, most of them boys too young to understand what was happening. They convulse on the ground, blood streaming out of their eyes and noses, blisters erupting on their faces so fast it looks like something is crawling around underneath their skin.”

  A breeze pushed a strand of hair into his eyes and he brushed it aside, staring into his past. “You think you’ve seen people suffer, Zarq? You’ve seen nothing so far, not compared to what I’ve seen.”

  He fell silent. We breathed in synchrony.

  I closed my eyes against the brilliance of the stars and my mind against the images evoked by Dono’s words, and concentrated on breathing slowly, carefully. I envisioned the swollen welt across my neck unknotting, the way the muscles in a man’s shoulders loosen beneath the oiled fingers of a woman. I pictured my breath flowing like a ribbon of sweet, dark honey down my throat, smooth and unhindered, imagined the warm glow of it in my lungs. Around that pooling honey buzzed a horde of bees, their wings fluttering fast and furious, the hum of them vibrating my entire torso.

  The hum became a rhythm that rocked me slightly, as if I were in a cradle.

  No, the hum was more guttural than that, more urgent, and the rocking was something less soothing, something focused against one of my hips, not affecting my whole body. I opened my eyes.

  Dono still sat alongside me, one knee up. But no reflective look resided upon his face now, and he no longer stared into the dark. He was looking at me. Not me, the person, but me, the body. He saw only breasts and belly, vulva and thighs, body parts exclusive of a whole.

  He was stroking himself hard and fast as his eyes roved over me. His lips were parted, and intense concentration that could at any moment turn into profound frustration had set his features.

  He stiffened, suddenly. His head jerked back and his eyes snapped shut. A groan sounded from his belly like a thorn was being drawn from deep in his flesh.

  He began stroking himself anew, each move slow, teased out, full of savor, and a series of small grunts escaped him. He shuddered, glut easing the intensity from his face.

  Warmth and want bloomed in my own groin. I lifted a hand as cool and heavy as marble to touch myself. Dono’s eyes snapped open.

  “Don’t,” he said huskily.

  I let my hand fall back. By lifting it, I’d disturbed that warm honey flowing down my throat. It began forming a viscous clot, threatening to choke me.

  Dono cursed. “Breathe easy, Zarq. And don’t move, hear? I mean it: Don’t move.”

  I lay there motionless, his eyes upon mine. Self-loathing filled his face and he looked away from me. The air about him smelled different now, a bitter salt smell redolent of ocean weeds. The odor of his seed, that, spilled upon sanctified ground. An offering to Re: Temple Statute did not forbid such, for a man.

  I closed my eyes again and concentrated on breathing. After a while, when my breath flowed easier, Dono spoke.

  “The Komikon told me to wake you, hey-o. To help you rebuild the latrine. He gave me a potion to give you first.” A pause; I kept my eyes closed. “You keep your mouth shut and tomorrow morning I’ll let you drink the draft he bid me give you tonight. Understand? Or I’ll drink it myself. Re knows I’ll need it.”

  I gave a tiny nod. I understood.

  It was not my provocation of the destrier Dono wanted hidden from others, which was an impossibility, what with the turgid bruising across my neck, but his own reactions that he
wanted kept secret. That he’d given in to lust in my presence was something he wanted no one to know.

  He shifted and looked about the glowering courtyard. “You’ve got no idea what you’re taking on, Zarq. You can’t defy Temple Statute like this. You can’t defy the Emperor.”

  He rose stiffly to his feet and looked down at me.

  “I’ll carry you to your hammock when it’s safe enough to move you, and I’ll rebuild your damn latrine myself. Hear? I’m not getting whipped again because of your stupidity.”

  But if you’d given me the draft as the dragonmaster bid you, I wouldn’t have acted so rashly, I thought. I couldn’t say so aloud, though, not with my throat so swollen. Instead, I merely gave another infinitesimal nod.

  “If you’re clever, you’ll just disappear,” Dono grunted. “Tomorrow. Or the day after. But I don’t believe you’re that clever, are you, Zarq?”

  He picked up his venom-soiled loincloth and disappeared into the far corner of the courtyard to wash it free of the dragon’s poison. Unlike me, his tolerance of venom was low, for he’d not had unwatched, free access to the substance as I had had as an onai. No, I imagined that the dragonmaster kept a very close eye upon his apprentices, that they not partake of the dragon’s fire of their own accord and thus not only flout Temple Statute but descend into the dizzy world of addiction as well.

  I stared at the stars, feeling their white twinkle like cold water droplets upon my belly. From the corner where Dono had disappeared came the grating squeak of rusted iron, followed by the gush and splash of water pumped forth. I shivered.

  Dono returned moments later, his damp, wrung-out loincloth knotted back around his hips, Kratt’s cape in his hand. He draped the cape over top of me and started pacing. He studied the stars, studied the stables. Time slid on, unhurried. Equally indolent, the moon and stars drifted languidly through the sky. He paced some more.

  Finally, his patience wore thin. He crouched on his haunches beside me, face drawn from exhaustion despite the venom in his veins.

  “I’m going to lift you now,” he said. “I’ve still got that damn latrine to build. Just relax and keep breathing. Hear?”

  I nodded.

  His hands slid beneath my back and rump, his calloused palms strong and warm against my buttocks. The muscles in his arms flexed as he tugged and hefted me against his chest. I felt the unleashed strength that lay coiled within him, like the muscles in the haunches of a wild dog poised to fight.

  This man lifting me was no longer the orphan who had nursed alongside me as a babe. He was something else entirely, and the heat of him, his musk of sweat and semen, made my pulse race.

  He pulled me close. My cheek lay against his muscled chest. I could feel his heart beating. My forehead rested against one of his nipples. I stayed the urge to lift my mouth to it.

  He inhaled and tensed, and I felt the wild dog within him coil tight, ready to leap into action, teeth bared. Then a grunt reverberated from beneath his ribs as he rose with me in his arms. He started back to my stall.

  With each step that he took, the effort of carrying me quivered up his body from his thighs. A muscle in his lean jaw twitched as he concentrated on his destination. I wondered what he felt, carrying a naked woman in his arms. Even one such as I. I could not resist; I couldn’t. It was the venom that made me do it, venom and the giddy pluck it always inspired in me: I parted my lips, lifted my head a little, and closed my mouth around his closest nipple.

  He froze. I didn’t release him. No. Instead, I sucked. A gentle pull, as if I were nursing.

  His larynx punched up and down.

  “I’ll drop you,” he said hoarsely.

  I continued suckling, slowly, evenly, in rhythm with my frail breathing.

  “Zarq.” His eyes closed; he was pleading with me. I slowly let his nipple slide from between my lips.

  Then I bit it.

  Not hard, understand. But not a nibble, either. I drew no blood, but I did cause pain. Pain, to a veteran apprentice, is oft mingled with pleasure. It’s the way of venom.

  He sucked in a breath, sharplike, and his hands on my back and beneath my knees tightened. I sucked anew, harder now, insistent, in full control.

  “Zarq,” he hoarsely gasped, only the word was a cry, a sigh, a request, an ache, a contradiction. He wanted me to stop, yet he wanted me to continue.

  I stopped and blew gently on his nipple, firm now as a green flower bud.

  Slowly, his eyes opened again. His breathing was ragged and uneven, as if he were the one with bruised and swollen flesh obstructing his throat. He swallowed and refused to look down at me. Trembling, he resumed carrying me to my stall.

  I think, perhaps, he longed for more, for as he lay me in my hammock, his arms and hands slid out from me slowly. Our eyes locked, his inches from mine. Our body heat merged. My breathing quickened. That was enough to send his lust scurrying away.

  “No,” he said thickly. “It’d kill you, like this.”

  He withdrew from me and stood up. Once the contact was broken, his will was no longer mine. Not completely. He looked away and his nostrils flared like the nares of a dragon in distress.

  “Leave the stables, Zarq. Or Temple’ll kill you. And if they don’t, you’ll die in Arena. You know it.”

  SEVEN

  Did I still fear my lust for venom, still fear that I might descend, completely, into addiction? Oh, yes. If I’d had an alternate means of obtaining the strength necessary to get up the following morning and fulfill my responsibilities as an apprentice, I would have chosen it. But in my condition, with my neck so tight with bruising it felt as if sinewy hands were wrapped about my throat and relentlessly squeezing, I needed the medicinal properties of venom.

  So as much as I had resisted the dragonmaster’s drafts only days before, I now sought the same.

  I joined the apprentices for the morn’s repast, the massive bruising across my neck tender and pulsing. I ignored Egg’s gawping mouth and ogle-eyed look as he stood behind the cauldron, ladle hanging loosely from one paw. I reached forward, placed a hand over his, and scooped gruel into my bowl. He barely noticed my touch, just continued to stare.

  “I’m waiting for bull wings to bless Clutch Re,” I said. The ritual greeting came out hoarsely, as if I’d just gargled raw, minced chilies.

  Egg gathered himself. “May your waiting end, may bull wings hatch.”

  I moved away with my bowl of gruel and stood at the edge of the unwashed pack of boys. Nudges and stares followed me.

  I slid two fingers into the gruel and scooped some into my mouth. I let it rest there, a clot of broth-swollen grain. With difficulty, I swallowed it.

  Overhead, the dawn’s light tainted the pearly sky pink. Dew glistened upon sandstone wall and tiled stable roof, turning as red as fresh blood the rufous dust that coated everything. The citric tang of venom lay so heavy in the chill morning air, it was as though the dragons’ poison, not the sky’s clean dew, slicked roof and ground.

  Slowly and steadily, I finished eating my gruel. Morning noises rose and fell about me: The clunk of ladle in cauldron, the slurp and burp of food being ingested; hacks and nose clearings, ritual greetings exchanged. A hungry dragon lowed. A tail thwacked stone in impatience. Snouts snuffled audibly through empty mangers in search of stray nuts.

  Soon Egg would herd the inductees to whichever section of the stables demanded our labor. I needed my venom draft.

  I scanned the yard for Dono, saw him returning from a visit to the latrines in a stiff, lurching shuffle, still using the shovel as a crutch. The latrine he’d rebuilt during the night, aided by venom-induced energy, was a ramshackle affair, sloppily cobbled together and unlikely to withstand the first monsoon. But it was finished, roof perched askew on top.

  I detached from the milling boys and intercepted Dono.

  He came to a stop and swayed briefly. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

  “Give me the draft,” I murmured. “Give it to me now and I’ll shar
e a little with you.”

  He paused. Swallowed.

  “What’ll it do to me?” he asked hoarsely.

  He’d not swallowed diluted venom before. Yes, as a veteran apprentice he’d been exposed to venom via the Komikon’s poison-saturated whips, and yes, he’d accidentally received venom-slick tongue lashes from the destriers, but no apprentice would have ingested venom before. Of course not. Against Temple Statute, that.

  “You’ve tolerance enough; it won’t harm you,” I murmured. “The impact of venom is a clawfold more intense when you swallow it. Your pain will disappear for the day. Well into the night, too.”

  The poison had certainly given him the strength to rebuild my latrine last night, for under normal circumstances, he would have been prone on his belly, groaning from the whip welts upon his back.

  He tottered briefly upon his crutch. He needed venom as much as I did. “Fine. Come back here after Egg leads you all out.”

  He turned and lurched away from me. I averted my eyes from his back.

  Shortly after, Egg led us inductees through a side door in the second courtyard. It opened onto yet another courtyard, a small one with but a few stalls, each filled with dragons convalescing from wounds, intestinal trouble, or some such malady. A low wooden building ran two-thirds of the way round this courtyard. The building’s worn wooden verandah squeaked underfoot as the inductees followed Egg along it. Unexpectedly, the lot of them moved slowly, matching my careful pace.

  Egg chewed a callus on one palm as he shifted his weight from foot to foot beside me. “Eidon didn’t say nothin’ about you not workin’ today, so you have to work, y’hear? It ain’t often we work in the Tack Hall, so count yourself lucky he gave us such an easy job today.”

  He ducked through a creaky door into a dark interior. I and the rest of the inductees followed him.

  The smell of brass. Beeswax. Stiff new leather. Oiled wood and dry hemp cloth.