“It’ll be more convenient. I won’t have to roll you over if you fall asleep,” he said.
This seemed reasonable. I shifted onto my left side and gave him access. His fingers touched my flank. “My right arm itches abominably,” I said.
He hesitated.
“Intana? Is something the matter?”
“I’ll do the arm first, then. Roll to your back again.”
He slipped the sling off my arm as gently as he could, but I still gritted my teeth against the pain.
“We should have waited for the pain medication to take effect,” he said.
“I know, but it truly is very itchy.”
He applied the cream over my arm and beneath the splint as far as he could. Putting the sling back on was less excruciating because the medicine had at last permeated my body. Feeling sleepy, I rolled to my left and put my good arm under my head.
I didn’t pay much attention to Intana’s touch after that, grew drowsier, swam the sea that spanned the waking world and the realm of dreams, but I only swam in circles. Fuzzy thoughts flitted over the waves past me, tried to draw me onward, but a provocative touch spun me back to the waking shore, again and again.
I called to the distant shapes of my dreams, a farewell, a groan, and returned to the tangible. A moan came out of me again, this one stronger, and I squirmed onto fingers dipped into my body.
“That’s it,” Intana whispered. “Show me how much you like it.” He did something within me, twisted fingers, lunged inward, up.
“Hyaah!”
Confusion, passion, hindered protest and dismay. The last tentacle of lethargy loosed its grip on my mind. I remembered. He’d come to my front, lifted my leg, set it on his thigh, and circled and circled his fingers upon my anus until I’d relaxed and let him in. I realized it all, now that I no longer drifted between worlds.
He’d used the massage to mesmerize me.
Damn it, I was stupid, but not enough to rest my gaze on him. I took in our positions with a glance and slid my focus onto my desk chair.
“Look at you,” he said. “See how hard you’ve become, and I haven’t touched your shaft yet. It’s weeping for me.”
“Don’t mock me,” I whispered. He curled his fingers up into the root of my sex, and I clutched my pillow and cried a wordless plea for mercy, eyes shut tight.
“You think I’m mocking you? It’s beautiful to see a man this sensitive.” The fingers rubbed into my root again. “You’re incredibly tight. Do you squeeze toys to stay that way?”
“Aah!” Toys?
“Such erotic sounds. Do you make them for Kima?”
Kima? My eyelids fluttered up. Suspicion cast a pall on my pleasure. I questioned his motivations for doing this.
My gaze lit upon his right knee, slid up a cream and blue thigh, fixed on the grey cloth over his genitalia. No evidence of excitement. None at all.
I couldn’t credit that his penis would be so small it could not make a notable tent were he aroused. So that meant…
“I disgust you.”
His fingers stopped moving. I shut my eyes again.
“I completely disgust you, the way I am now. Why are you pleasing me when I disgust you?”
After a second, he said, “It’s my duty to please you.” The amused tone had evaporated. Guarded stiffness clipped his words.
“Did the other Oradhé force you to please them? You may take your fingers out of me, thank you.”
“Don’t you want me to keep them there?”
“No. I don’t think I do. Will you answer my question? Did the other Oradhé force you to please them?”
“Sometimes.”
“You were treated like a whore.”
He didn’t reply, nor did he withdraw from my body. I rolled to my back to free myself, gasped because his fingers wrenched the delicate skin. He loosed his grip at once.
“You didn’t need to do that,” he said. “I would have finished.”
“I refuse.”
“Why?” he snapped. “Because I’m a whore?”
“You misunderstand.” I gathered my strength and slid my legs into a more comfortable position.
“What don’t I understand? Are you going to pretend you want to do what’s best for me? That you’re going to treat me nicely? With dignity? I can do without more sanctimonious pretensions. It all becomes lies as the years wear on.”
“No, no. I don’t mean that either,” I said, very tired and deflated, literally.
“Then what do you mean?” he demanded.
I cracked my lids up enough to see fists resting on the silvery blue parts of his thighs. “I won’t have you treating me like a whore,” I said.
“What? How can you say that? It’s the reverse!”
“Did I ask you to touch me in that manner? Did I? Answer me!”
“No,” he bit out.
“You’re trying to use me, aren’t you, to get the thing you want. I feel very dirty just now. Is this how you felt, all these years servicing men you despised, who grew old and ugly, and more unlovable as the decades passed?”
“That’s not how I see you.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can do without your attention. Go away.”
“You can’t make me,” he said.
“Oh. Yes. Then… Then I will give you this command—”
The bed shuddered from a sudden move forward. A hand touched my chest. I knocked the arm away. “You are—”
“No! Don’t send me away! Please, I’ll be good. I’ll make you feel good. I don’t mind.”
“—never to touch me again in a sexual manner if you’ve no desire to enjoy the act with me,” I finished. “Now get off my bed. I’m tired, and you annoy me.”
His body jerked, but he didn’t move from the bed.
“Do you fight my commands?”
“Yes!” he gritted out. “I won’t leave you!”
“Not even to get off the bed? Shall I give you a task?”
“Please! Don’t.” His hand reached closer again, but hesitated and withdrew. “Please. I’ll be good.”
“I’ll think of something truly annoying, Intana. If you don’t want to upset me, then you will voluntarily remain outside my cabin until I have need of assistance.”
“I’ll get off the bed.”
“Not enough. Your presence disturbs me. I should like you to respect my privacy.”
“I’m sorry. Please let me stay.”
“Your task this night shall be—”
“I’m leaving! I’ll wait outside the door!” He scrambled off the bed, lunged for the entrance, and whipped the door shut behind him. Most regrettably, I caught a delightful view of his bottom when the cloth over his nether end lifted up in the wake of his swift passage.
“Damn,” I whispered. A quarter hour later, I repeated the word and topped it with a second expletive. “Damn fuck!”
I couldn’t sleep, because I couldn’t get Intana’s adorable cheeks out of my mind, or the way his fingers had felt inside me, rubbing up against the root of my shaft.
“I can come back in,” he called through the door. “You can rescind your command about touching you.”
“No, thank you.”
“I can feel your need,” he said. “It’s my duty to know what you require. Let me in.”
“Do be quiet.”
“We aren’t meant to ignore each other. Let me see after your needs.”
“I’ve had sufficient attention from you until the next scheduled medication.”
“Don’t be stubborn.”
“Dive into the harbour and search every oyster within for pearls!”
“No! Ple—!”
“Go!”
He went. I heard him thump up the hatch steps, splash into the bay, shout an insult at me outside my starboard porthole. Grinning malice, I set my left hand on my shaft and commenced to stroke.
“No!” Intana howled.
“Yes,” I whispered, ignored the crunching noise of something hitting the
hull of the ship, rolled foreskin over the head, rolled it back, squeezed down and squeezed up, and spilled despite my clumsy wrong-handed efforts. Spilled because of him, Intana, whose adorable bottom deserved a hard spanking.
Kima knocked on the door only seconds after I had expended my last.
“Yes?”
“Sorry to disturb you, Lord,” he said, opening the door. He looked at my mid-section, blinked, raised his eyes again. “Uh... The Verdant god just punched a hole into the hull.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you want a cloth for that mess?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
Kima crossed to my wardrobe. He fetched out a square of silk from the second drawer and brought it to me. “Did he punch a hole into the hull because you did for yourself?” he asked. He handed me the cloth.
“It would seem so,” I said. I rubbed at an itch on my nose first, blew, blew again, glanced up, saw Kima grinning. I laughed, squeezed the cloth in half and swiped semen from my belly. “The damage to the ship? Not too great, I hope?”
“No. The shipwright is seeing after it now. Men are manning the bail pump.”
Yes, I could hear the hammers banging. I set the soiled cloth aside. “Will you pull the cover up to where I can reach it?”
Kima grasped the huddled end of my blanket and drew it up my legs. I grabbed the border and settled the cover over my lap. “The mast?”
“Waterlogged, but otherwise in good shape. It’ll take a few days to dry out. The yards should dry quicker.”
“Very well. Thank you for the report. Do you think there are pearls in this harbour?”
“I doubt it. The harbour has been overfished. I’m sure the same is true for harvesting molluscs. Why?”
“I sent Intana to search every oyster for pearls.”
I grinned. Kima grinned.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said and left me to rest.
Intana, when he returned with his harvest of seven pearls, waited outside my door until my needs as a convalescent warranted his intrusion.
***
In the morning, I issued from my cabin into a fine day and survived an assassination attempt.
Two steps away from the hatch, wrapped in a silk sheet and smiling to see the world again, I stumbled to a halt and gawped at Intana, who seemed to have produced an arrow in his grip—an arrow pointed at my heart, a mere thumb length from my body.
Intana dropped it and snapped his fingers over a second. This time, I understood my peril.
“Back down the hatch!” Intana said. He pressed me toward Tomi, who laid hands on me and forced me to retreat.
Another arrow arrived in Intana’s hand. This one he splintered before he dropped it. Kima charged in front of me, then Gari arrived, and other men of my crew. I fumbled down the first few steps of the hatch, but resisted going farther, for Intana had just leapt from the ship.
Between my men’s legs, I strained to follow his flight. He landed on the docks, seized a man and leapt again. The assassin shouted for clemency, but Intana dropped him fifty cubits from shore.
I shoved Tomi off, lunged back up the hatch, pressed through my men and caught a fleeting glimpse of Little Brother closing in on the assassin. My men bunched around me again and cut off my view. I ducked into a crouch and looked between a pair of knees. Yes, Little Brother, more than one manifestation of him, circled the swimmer. An arm lifted and flailed his bow at the closest shark, and then there was blood, and screaming.
The screaming ended abruptly. A few seconds later, it started again, but this time came from more than one throat. I watched in horror a woman splash down where the assassin had been.
“What’s happening?” I said.
“Intana punishes the people of Verdant, Lord. He just dropped a woman in for Little Brother.”
I jerked upright, tried to get through my determined guardians, failed. A man plunged screaming into the spreading blood.
“Intana!” I shouted.
“I don’t think he heard you,” Kima said. “Too much screaming from those on the dock.”
“Intana! Return!”
“Ah, he’s chosen a child this time.”
I coughed, wheezed inward, tried again. “Inta—!”
Haru!
I shut my mouth. Kima looked back at me, and his angry countenance softened into a concerned frown.
“Lord? Shall I take you back below? You should go. It’s safer, and you aren’t well.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “There was only one bowman, or Intana would have dropped another man the second time.”
“Yes, no doubt.”
“Did the child go in?”
Kima peered across the water. “Yes, and Little Brother accepted him.”
I shut my eyes, leant my forehead on Kima’s broad back, and listened to shouts of terror coming from the dock. The commotion seemed to be receding.
“They flee, but Intana chases them and chooses more,” Kima reported.
“Vaal wants feeding,” I said.
“Is that why you left Intana to his revenge?”
“Yes.”
I listened for a time longer, to the shouts and cries from victims of either gender and any age, and waited for the question I knew Kima would ask. It arrived.
“Lord?”
“Yes?”
“I just…”
After a few seconds, I realized he wouldn’t finish. “Say it,” I prodded.
“I just wondered how you knew Vaal wanted feeding. He left no message in the hull.”
He meant a shark’s tooth. Little Brother would occasionally bite the hull of a ship and leave a token behind for those captaining the vessel. The captain had only to scrape a line of blood into his skin with the tooth to know the will of Vaal.
My family bracelet carried twenty-seven such tokens. Vaal’s messages had sent me to ports here and there, harbours I wouldn’t normally have visited, and in each case I had discovered an item worth trading. Others had been messages for me to pass on to Chief Grandmother, about impending tidal waves, monsoons, disasters from which we were to uproot from our homes and flee. Some had been demands for brides, none of whom had been seen again after swimming out to marry Vaal.
Twenty-seven teeth were an unprecedented number of talismans. Most men have only the tooth given them the evening they celebrated their manhood. Kima had two teeth, but never related to me the message of the second. The day he received it, twenty-one years ago and before I had received the second in my collection, he’d turned grey beneath his skin, gazed across the water from his small fishing vessel to mine, and become cooler in his friendship toward me. But he’d been the first man to sign on as crew when I’d gained my schooner.
Vaal had given him a command concerning me. I had guessed this much, but I regretted, even now, that it had bled most of the warmth from our relationship.
“Lord?”
I had been silent for too long, and Kima had found it necessary to prod me.
“Since we came into harbour, I have felt things,” I said.
Presentiments weren’t unusual for me, but Kima didn’t accept the suggestion this time. “Haru. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I heard Vaal call my name,” I said.
A hitch in Kima’s breathing, audible enough to hear, strong enough to vibrate against my forehead, which still leant on his back. I looked up at him.
“It’s all right, Kima.”
He pivoted to face me. “Those that hear Vaal are eventually called to His teeth,” he said.
“I know the legend.”
“It’s no legend. His favourites over the years have greeted His teeth.”
“Kima, our ancestress entered the water to marry Vaal, and He sired Little Brother and our race on her. She died of old age. Only her dead body met His teeth.”
“But she was the only one.”
I couldn’t confront his certainty and lowered my head. For a moment, Kima remained motionless. Then he set his hands on my
shoulders. “Come back below, Haru. Intana’s punishment of his people is not a rite you must confront without flinching.”
“Is it so obvious what a coward I am?” I said.
“You’re no coward, my friend. But these people don’t deserve your compassion.”
A hard thump against the deck sounded, followed directly by a shout.
“Get your hands off him!”
“You will not lay hands on my crew!” I bellowed, and only just in time. Intana jerked his fingers away from Kima. Kima retreated a step. I stumbled, sagged to the deck, and loosed a small grunt on impact. Intana rushed in and put his arms around me.
“I told you! Your feet are still too swollen for walking!”
True. My legs ached up to the knees, and I wanted to vomit. “Take me to the rail,” I said.
“I’ll take you below.”
I spewed breakfast onto Intana’s abdomen and lap. His body went rigid. I vomited on him again. Someone laughed. I wheezed a breath in, turned my head, spat to the side.
“Sorry. I thought I had more time,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Do you mind moving off? You smell disgusting.”
I gagged, almost heaved again. Another snigger lit the air, and I realized it had come from Kima. I gave him a sickly grimace. “Old friend, are you daring Intana to harm you?”
“I’ll take my chances if he drops me in with Little Brother,” Kima said. He sent Intana a scathing look, then ordered Gari to fetch me another silk sheet, for I’d splattered the one I wore.
“What makes you think the sharks won’t eat you?” Intana said to Kima. He still hadn’t retreated from me.
“Don’t answer!” I said before Kima spoke. I would not have Intana knowing my men would simply duck underwater and swim below as much as possible until they’d come to the ship’s side. Little Brother is most dangerous when a man swims on the surface. At these times, he sees us as food. But under the waves, we are kin.
Intana scowled at me. Kima nodded and moved off. I looked at the dock and noted that no one, dockworkers or otherwise, remained thereon. Gari thumped back up the hatch steps bearing a clean sheet. My skin was just too sore for clothing.
I gave to Intana the dirtied one, and he swiped most of my vomit off with it. Gari dropped the fresh one over my shoulders without touching me and retreated to stand with Kima. I clutched the sheet one-handed and rose on shaky legs. I approached the rail.
Loved Him to Death: Haru of Sachoné House Page 8