by L. K. Rigel
“Well. Goodnight then.” The lift had returned. There was no reason to stay and suffer their encouragement.
The guests broke out in applause. “Yeah, yeah,” He gave them an obligatory wave. As the lift doors closed, he saw Jannes kiss the shibbing honeybee earbob.
That reminded him of the object he’d taken from Mallory’s pocket. As the lift descended he stared at it his hand, confused. It was the earbob’s missing match.
Everyone’s Got Advice for Everyone Else
Lust wasn’t big enough. Some feelings refused to be reshaped or channeled into mere desire. Gratitude and admiration and delight made Mal want to give, not receive. She was on dangerous ground. She’d been on dangerous ground since she’d come to Allel.
Edmund lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. He seemed about to ask her something, and she stopped him with a kiss.
I am so happy to be here, she wished she could whisper.
Thank you for saving me, she longed to say.
But Edmund had had no thoughts of saving her or making her happy. He’d made it clear: he’d bid on her because she was a bargain. He’d be relieved when she was gone and he wouldn’t have to worry about keeping her safe. The best way to show her gratitude was to stay on track and follow the rules.
So she kissed him and teased him with her tongue, running it over his lips. She ran her fingers up the back of his neck and through his hair.
He murmured his enjoyment and opened her robe, his hands welcome on her bare skin as he pressed her body to his. She arched her back so the robe fell away. She was naked in his arms. Like a chivalrous knight in the old stories, he lifted her hand to his lips and touched the gold bracelet.
“I was honored you wore this tonight.” His voice was serious but gentle – and quiet. He wasn’t going to make this into a performance for the observers.
Ordinarily, she would undress him playfully, but he wasn’t in that sort of mood. She said, “I think of Allel when I wear it.” And of you.
He lifted her chin and looked at her doubtfully. Hesitation made him seem vulnerable, and her heart cracked opened a little further. Such very dangerous ground.
“Tonight you made a gift to Jannes.” He pulled off his tunic and laid it on the valet. His physique was as magnificent as she had fantasized. Elegant. That was the word. Not so huge to be grotesque, like a certain king of a certain filthy city of the middle northern hemisphere.
Great gods, Mal, don’t let that monster into your mind.
“A gift? Oh, no.” She could feel the Nights straining to hear from behind the gauze curtains. “That was a small subterfuge on my part. I acted as Counselor’s proxy.”
It was nothing, being observed. The practice was first started to certify that the king and brood queen had actually done the deed, to ensure no tricks were used to cover up undisclosed infertility. These days the ladies were there to ritualize the act and represent society’s interests. In a way, they legitimized the commercial aspect of the transaction.
Edmund loosened his pants. “Counselor?” He really didn’t know.
Mal put her hands around his waist and kissed his bare chest. She moved down, licking and tasting his skin, and sank to her knees. She reached up and eased his pants over his hips and down. He stepped out, and she cast them aside.
He was so beautiful. She rose to her feet, running her hands over his thighs, up his sides. He was ready for her now. She remembered how well they fit together. It might be nice to just climb on for a quick ride and then have another more leisurely go. She took told of him, and he grew larger and harder.
She stood up on her toes. “Counselor and Jannes are in love.”
“Never!”
Mal backed away, her body fleeing the violence in his response before her mind could process that Edmund was angry.
“But, if she loves him …”
“She has no right.” He glanced at the curtains and again lowered his voice. “We have obligations. She’s Allel’s counselor, as I’m Allel’s king. We’re not allowed the luxury of …” He wouldn’t look at her. “You better than anyone should understand.”
Of course. He was right. What had she done?
“I didn’t think.”
“Obviously.” She tried a cleansing breath, but it didn’t work. She felt miserable.
She saw it now. Edmund had the discipline to refrain from ever loving anybody – from loving anything but Allel. It was the obligation that came with the privilege of rank. He expected the same strength and sacrifice from everyone so high on the Great Chain.
“When we’ve ... when this contract is complete, you’ll take a wife.”
“Yes, to provide Allel with a queen and to give the future king and counselor a proper mother.”
“Will Counselor be allowed to follow her heart then? Or is she to be your slave all her life, without even a dog to love?”
“You go too far. Counselor knows her duty.”
“And do you know yours?” This wasn’t how Mal had wanted this night to go.
“I’ll show you duty.” He swept her into his arms, ignoring the gasps from behind the curtains. He scoffed. “You’re heavier than you look.”
“Muscle weighs more than fat.”
His skin was smooth and taut over his chest, and she breathed in the smell of him as he laid her on the bed. He was still engorged. He climbed on the bed over her and kissed her hard, his lips hot and demanding, as if he was hungry – whether for her or for sex or who knows what. His tongue plunged into her mouth as he straddled her.
He cupped her breasts and squeezed, his breathing labored. “Gods, Mallory.” It was barely a whisper, full of need and anger and confusion. His kisses trailed down her neck to her breasts, and heat and desire shot through her.
She reached between his legs, and he made a sound between a gasp and a moan. She wanted him so much she couldn’t stand it, but first she had to clear the air between them.
“Counselor and Jannes know their duty as well as you or I. Neither will ever act on their feelings.”
“Yet that ornament in his hair will torment them both.”
“Not a torment.” She traced his eyebrow with a finger. He had such kind eyes, even when he was angry. Her heart pounded with such ferocity she thought she might be sick.
But it wasn’t sickness; when she spotted that lost jewel on the turret deck, something had shifted inside her. Give it to Jannes. The idea may have come from her heart, but it was as clear as a message from the gods. She would not regret this. She had done a good thing.
“A touchstone.” She showed Edmund her bracelet. “Sometimes you need a token, something real to touch with your fingers and hold onto with your heart. It only means: I am what I am. I exist as myself, apart from what I am to the world.”
Did he know what she was talking about? Did she even know?
“Let them have their earbob, Edmund. The fact is, neither will ask for anything more.”
He kissed her on the mouth and moved to her ear, her throat, down to her breasts. He wasn’t completely mollified, but some tenderness mitigated his anger.
She traced the honeybee tattoo on his clavicle with a fingernail. This was the exact place she was meant to be and the exact time she was meant to be here. She ran her fingers through his hair and arched her body against his.
She opened her legs to him and arched as he plunged inside, hot and hard. When he came into her, she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in. As in her memory, he filled her perfectly, as if the gods had designed him for her alone. They became one animal writhing in one rhythm. Duty and service didn’t exist.
She pressed her face against his neck and breathed in his smell, pulled him deeper inside and melted into his strength.
It wasn’t about pleasure now. The barriers between them dissolved, and she did nothing to stop it. It was like discovering air, water, light, and even darkness for the first time. It made sense to be alive now, here, with him. It was about necessity.
&nb
sp; After three weeks, she still wasn’t pregnant.
She told the KPs it must be because she’d been traumatized by Garrick. A useful story, but not true. She delayed because she was happy, and she didn’t want to leave Allel, despite the LOTHs irritating hovering worry.
One morning Counselor invited Mal to breakfast on the turret deck, hours earlier than she was used to. She hadn’t seen Edmund in several days, except during their appointments. She had hoped he might join them, but the table at the wall was set for two.
Counselor sipped her coffee and held the cup to her lips, steam rising from the hot drink. “Visitors rave over our sunsets, but I love the morning mist.”
Mal followed suit and kept her cup in her hands, for the warmth it spread to her fingers and for the rich smell of roast coffee and spices.
The ocean fog had not yet burned off, and the gulls’ screams seemed amplified over the pounding surf. Mist swirled and curled over the bay and the land, obscuring the north point peninsula and the bottom half of the lighthouse. It seemed there was no place for the cold to settle but in her bones.
Counselor preferred this chilly, mystic scene to a glorious sunset?
The instant Mal put down her cup, Day Two jumped up from LOTHs’ table. “Is there anything I can get you, my lady?” So much for mystical allusions.
Counselor stopped Day Two with a look. “Enjoy your meal, Lady Helen. We’re well cared for here.”
“Thank you,” Mal said. “I know it’s wrong to complain, but sometimes I feel suffocated.”
“It’s a trivial thing to you or to me.” Counselor refilled their cups from a matching pale yellow ceramic pot. “But they worry.”
“That I won’t get pregnant?” The impertinence.
“That you won’t approve them for your second phase. The shame would ruin their families’ standing in the city.”
And why wasn’t this information in the chalice orientation?
“No one questions your ability to bear a child. You proved out for Garrick, after all. What did it take, one or two meetings?”
The sun popped up behind them over the eastern foothills and began to burn off the fog. Inwardly, Mal laughed. It was a perfect metaphor for her foggy-brained self-absorption. The Allel’s were anxious for their king. Edmund was taking longer to impregnate her than Garrick had, and they didn’t like it.
“You’re right, Counselor.” She dipped a strawberry in yogurt sweetened with Allel’s honey. “Breakfast on the turret at an ungodly hour, blinded by fog and blasted by cold. It’s a fabulous thing.”
They both laughed. Nothing more needed saying. The shroud of mist dissipated and then disappeared altogether, and soon the city was shining and ready for the new day.
That afternoon at the change of shifts, she ordered the hot Brazilian chocolate the LOTHs loved and invited them all to drink it with her. She told them how pleased she was with their service and that she hoped they would all be with her for the second phase of the contract.
When everyone had relaxed, she added, as if she were just thinking aloud, “I’ve been selfish. Allel is so beautiful, and I’ve been made so welcome, I’ve longed to extend my time here. It’s a tonic to me, after ... well.”
“You don’t have to talk about it, my lady.”
“Beesboom, we understand completely.”
“Not that it’s been easy.” She lowered her lashes and tried to blush. “I’ve had to use everything in my training to delay the inevitable. King Edmund is amazing, if you know what I mean.”
The LOTHs flipped from anxious to giddy. Their service was renewed! The king was a stud!
That night, Mal visualized the green light, regulated her temperature, modulated her hormones, and performed her duty in accordance with the sacred Triune Contract.
A week later, she walked out of the citadel proper onto the steps where she’d been welcomed. It wasn’t two months, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Once again, the boulevard was crowded with citadellers who’d come out to see her.
“But everyone was so wonderful last night,” she said to Counselor. The theater had been packed to standing room for the formal announcement. The rahs seemed to go on forever – even her LOTHs got a rah.
“The theater only holds so many. All of Allel wants to send their good wishes with you.”
Counselor rode with her in the powered carriage to the docks, and Edmund joined Jannes and his guard detail on horseback. The guards flanked the carriage, creating a barrier between Mal and the people. Edmund barely looked at her; he and Jannes both focused on the crowd.
They went at a walking pace due to the crush of well-wishers. Vendors hawked their wares with gusto. The Horus tent was still in place with the 60% OFF TODAY ONLY!! sign and the Ptery and young woman with the child.
As the carriage drew close, the young woman again jumped out of her chair. This time Mal saw her clearly. She was athletic, with dark blond hair cut short to her jaw line. She turned and looked at the carriage, her eyes completely covered by white, gauze-like pterygia.
It was Kim. Kim at a Horus tent, where baggers paid to have their souls confirmed in an attempt to escape the liminal gauntlet. At the tent flap, she paused. She gave the carriage a stunning look of contempt then disappeared inside.
Céilidh
Every week, Jannes found more of Garrick’s spies inside the wall. He had them watched and planted false information to let them think they were successful. It had been his idea to have Counselor invite the young Ptery Kim to a dinner on the turret deck and “accidentally” let it slip that Mallory would wait the full year of her recovery before returning. In fact, at that moment the Golden Wasp had been on entering the Bay of Allel with Mallory on board.
They couldn’t keep her presence a secret now that she was in country, but Garrick had had no advance notice that she was coming.
Garrick meant to have Mallory killed, and Edmund was never at ease unless she was in his sight. He was aware that he was becoming too close to her, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d worry about his heart later.
Edmund had been brought up to know not to spend any more time with his chalice than necessary. At this point, the second phase of Mallory’s contract, they should have one or two more meetings and a soul ceremony, and she’d be out of his life forever.
But these were far from ordinary times.
“You named the female.” She lay on a blanket spread over the wild grass not far from the pond. Her hair was free of its braid, the way he liked it.
“I’ve broken a Concord or two before.”
“This is different, giving your counselor a name.” She rested her head on her elbow, and the hair cascaded over her shoulder like a shimmering white-gold veil. Was she trying to drive him crazy? “For a gesture, you risk having a Team of Inquiry brought in.”
“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” He brushed the hair out of her face and kissed her. “Forgive me?”
She smiled, proving his point. But she wouldn’t let it go. “This isn’t on the same level as planting tomatoes or electrifying raptor nets. Lady Bron had to renounce her name to become Counselor. Counselor of Garrick, I might emphasize.”
Fair play, as Harold would say. But on his daughter’s name, Edmund wouldn’t move.
“Why did you do it, Edmund?”
“One day as I watched Counselor play a game with her, she laughed. A full-on belly laugh out of a ten-week-old mite, the sound of pure delight at being alive in the world. I knew then she had to have a name.” He stretched out on the blanket. “Céilidh. It means celebration with music and dancing. My sister thanked me for it.”
“I thank you too, Edmund. It frightens me, but I admire you for it.”
She kissed his cheek. He turned to meet her lips, so soft, inviting him to take more. She ran a fingernail over the bee on his clavicle, a little habit of hers he had grown to love. He pushed his tongue between her lips, and she murmured her enjoyment. He slipped his hand inside her robe. She
wasn’t wearing anything else.
She pushed him onto his back, and her hair fell all around him with the scent of ylang-ylang. He rolled her over on her back and kissed her neck, her breast, and traveled down her body. He didn’t want to take any more time; he had to have her now.
And she was ready for him. Mallory, Mallory. He drove into her, pounding at her. She pulled him closer. From out of nowhere, a wave of fury washed over him. He pounded harder, and he felt her anger too. It didn’t make sense, but the rage coursed through his veins.
She thrust her pelvis upward and grunted, wrapped her legs around him and pulled him deeper, not as if to please him, but to take something from him. She grabbed onto his shoulders and buried her face in his neck with an urgency he’d never felt before.
Something clicked in his mind. This was wrong. The Golden Wasp was still at sea. Mallory wasn’t yet in Allel.
He was in the Empani nest, the mad bog.
“Edmund.” Her voice, and not her voice. Too late. He gave way. He poured everything he had into her, in a confused blend of orgasm and terror. The rational, banished part of him called out from behind a wall in his mind: get out!
“Edmund.” The voice was mix of Mallory and something else. “No matter what happens, I could never mean you any harm. I’m not sorry.”
“Shibbing shibadai!” He flew away as if she’d turned into a pillar of fire.
Her skin had gone gray – and not hard, exactly, but inhumanly firm. Her face was not Mallory’s or the face of any human being. Neutral, neither male nor female. Expressionless.
And yet emotion lay behind the impassive, entirely gray eyes. Not visible, but he felt it.
It stood over seven feet tall, naked but for a dull gray-brown scarf draped over its shoulders. It was hairless and had no sexual organs. He kept thinking it should have wings.
“I’m not sorry,” it said again.
The sense of Mallory’s voice was just an afterthought in his mind. He had to get out of here.
The Empani’s lips didn’t move. “I will never mean you any harm. You should go. Now.”