Loved Him to Death: Haru of Sachoné House

by K. M. Frontain

  Little Brother swam in a group, circling within the red stain he had created. Nothing solid of his victims remained.

  I lifted my eyes to Celestial Dome. There, on the closest balcony, men watched. “Intana, would you tie this sheet around my shoulders, please? Gari! My spyglass.”

  Gari fetched the instrument from my cabin, scampered back up the hatch and to me, and placed it in my upturned palm. By then, my sheet had been tied around a shoulder and beneath an arm, freeing the use of my good hand. I set my sight on the balcony.

  “Priests?” Kima asked from one side. He also had his spyglass and viewed the watchers as well.

  “Not all of them,” I said. “There are nobility.”

  “Yes, I see the ceremonial costumes. Do you think that’s the emperor? Seems a little sickly to me.”

  “No,” said Intana to the other side. “He’d never put himself that close to danger. That’s his chamberlain and various functionaries, who will take my message up the mount to the palace.”

  “It was a very clear message,” I said. “Now do you mind dumping yourself in the harbour to get the stench of my puke off?”

  He set a bare foot on the rail and heaved up and over. I had another delightful view of his bottom before he descended, and my heart gave a traitorous thump of appreciation. I put the spyglass back to my eye and focused on the dignitary in the centre of the group, an older man with greying hair and a somewhat emaciated body. He wore a flowing green tunic and loose-legged trousers, the colour signifying service to the emperor.

  “That must be the chamberlain. It seems to me the emperor works him down to his sinews and bones, poor man.”

  “Aye, he’s a skeleton,” Kima agreed. “A very worried skeleton.”

  “Hmm,” I murmured. The man looked perfectly distraught, this was true. He motioned in our direction and seemed to be arguing with the priests, who were shaking their heads, stolid disapproval making stone of their faces.

  “The priests look as if they want to cause more trouble,” Kima said.

  I agreed. I lowered my spyglass. “Intana, if you’re done…?”

  He came up directly before me on the outer side of the ship. Hands gripped the rail and toes found purchase on the deck. I blinked at a rivulet of water travelling down his throat, inhaled seawater scent, noted a haze of electrum developing, and jerked my gaze to his left.

  “What do you require?” he asked.

  The blatant mockery. I could bite him.

  An impression of spiteful satisfaction invaded my perceptions. “Yes, please,” Intana said.

  Damn it. “Would it bother you to create a new entry into Celestial Dome? Somewhere near the base?” I asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I doubt your message will be heeded and I’m disinterested in further bother. Go to the dome and inform the priests that it is to be vacated in a quarter hour. Deposit any stragglers on the shore at the end of that time. And then tear up Celestial path and store the boards somewhere safe until the new entry has been created.”

  “For what purpose will I be accomplishing this?” he asked.

  I smiled grim determination. “We are taking the dome as our house.”

  Chapter Eight

  Six days after I became Oradhé, I ordered Intana to fetch the seal that I might look upon it more carefully. He set down the mop he’d been holding and departed the ship, and I watched him—just to the side and not full on—soar into the sky.

  He was in the air much as he was in the water: mobile and fluid. He didn’t push the air with his hands or feet to get about. He simply leapt up and turned his head in any direction he wished to go, and off he went. Actually, I’d seen him do the same in water, when he’d been in a hurry to arrive at a destination, but otherwise he swam as we mortals did.

  After the assassination attempt, I ordered Kima to anchor the schooner near Celestial Dome. As long as my men remained with me, I had to see to their safety, and so I’d commanded Intana to remove the planks of Celestial Path from their original position and rearrange them as a floating dock to which we moored the ship. The dome had become our private playground, to use as we saw fit.

  The new entry, straight into the base, avoided the disturbing effects of the tunnels. On my orders, Intana created this portal a quarter turn from the original steps. A crumbling mess of broken marble littered the dome floor at first, but the structure healed itself, and the bits of marble disappeared. The jagged walls of the new entry smoothed out, and the damaged portions of amphitheatre seats receded and became new walls, with a bridge overtop to span the gap.

  My men went to and from the dome at will, and swam in the larger pool without fear, for the bars healed as well and kept Little Brother out.

  The priests of the Ardu faith had conveyed the seal to the temple on the mount when they’d been ousted, but Intana retrieved it within minutes. He handed it to me, and I accepted it, my eyes resting to his right. He moved into my line of view, and my gaze snapped down to the holy relic.

  “You may return to mopping the deck,” I said.

  “I am beginning to really hate you,” he replied.

  “Good,” I answered and retreated to be alone with the seal. I turned the thick disc with my peeling fingers—all of me peeled, the damaged layer of my skin coming off in ugly flakes. I felt much better than I had two days ago, but I had never looked more disgusting in my life and knew it.

  The swelling of my feet had receded. My throat could sustain a long bellow to men in the distance or high in the rigging, and the itchy redness had left my skin. Aside from the pain medicine for my arm, I no longer required Tomi’s concoctions. I’d reverted to using my mother’s special mix of essential oils to ameliorate the flaking and promote healthy skin growth.

  Whatever had been in the oil of the dome, her formula didn’t include it. Of that I was certain, for I had been using it for years without ill effect, and unlike many men of the sea, my skin hadn’t taken on the lines of too much wind and sun.

  The seal. Such a heavy object. Hurtful because I used my right hand, despite the sling, to support its weight. It was too large for a one-handed grip. Surely this burden alone would have ended the old Oradhé, had no other illness done so. I was appalled the Ardu brethren had set this massive thing on his chest when he’d already been suffering and amazed it hadn’t killed him straight off.

  Surely it had helped force the need for a successor. I pictured it lying upon my chest, when I was old and frail, or debilitated and unable to send it crashing off, and what little remaining guilt I felt toward the people of Verdant faded.

  I canted the disc into the sunlight. Not solid, just as I had first observed. Gaps in the metal punctured its unity here and there. A twisted mess of creatures, aquatic dragons for the most part, formed the majority, but near the centre, one shark bit an eel-like dragon tail.

  “Intana?” I called. He was already behind me, because he’d taken mop and bucket to swab the deck nearby, though he’d swabbed that section already. I knew it and repressed a smile as he came to my side.

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t you remove this from the old Oradhé’s chest when he lay dying?” I asked. He hesitated, and I understood at once he worried that he was about to reduce his worth in my eyes. “Answer, Intana.”

  “He didn’t want to remove it,” Intana said.

  “He didn’t?”

  “It’s tradition, and it…”

  “Go on.”

  “It was the last fading sense he had of his connection to me.”

  Ah. I understood. Pitiful old man. Intana had likely given him nothing voluntarily. Ever. Including real affection.

  “Please. Don’t think so badly of me. Try to understand how I felt all these years.”

  “I comprehend your position.”

  “Do you? Then free me!”

  “Why is there one shark amongst all these eels?” I asked.

  A heavy sigh loosed from his throat before he answered. “Tho
se are ether dragons,” he said.

  I ignored his reproving tone. “Yes, but why one shark with them?”

  “If I answer, will you look at me?”

  I could have commanded him to answer, but the hope and the hurt washing out from him provoked a spurt of compassion. “Perhaps for a few seconds,” I said.

  “The shark is Vaal,” he said, “who I lay with before my nuptials to Blessed Land’s daughter. My father discovered me with him, and sent me into this exile for having dishonoured our family in such a manner.”

  Intana had been Vaal’s lover? What did this mean? Had Vaal brought me into harbour without Omos’s agreement?

  “You promised to look at me.”

  I raised my eyes and struggled to keep them focused, to even keep them pinned to his face. The electrum haze didn’t coalesce around him this time. I looked at him and saw Jumi torn apart.

  After only a few seconds, I turned and vomited over the rail. The seal I dropped in the harbour.

  “Do I disgust you so much?” he whispered after I’d finished heaving.

  “No,” I answered, feeling his despair like a serrated blade upon my soul. “You don’t understand.”

  “Then tell me so I will.”

  “Do you love Vaal?”

  He didn’t answer. My attention settled on the silver and white hand that gripped the rail. He’d squeezed the wood until it had splintered.

  “When you are at last free, will you return to Vaal, or your father?” I asked. My gaze travelled up his arm. The sun fired such sparks on his scales, and the blue hue where his skin curved made a luscious blush. Better when he was in motion. The blush travelled with the light. Truly not toad skin.

  “Why must you think such a thing?” he cried.

  “Think what? That you will return to Vaal instead of your father?”

  “That my skin is like a toad’s underbelly!”

  Patchy, my ability to keep him out of my head, and lately he seemed to catch only the worst facets of anything I thought. Truly, I was a cruel master, and about to be crueller. I have a nasty sense of humour at times.

  “Oh. Well, because it is,” I said, and my gaze veered back to the water. “You’re a dead toad’s underbelly, with little grey crusts protruding all about, and with a sickly blue vapour running along the bloated carcass of your ugly self.”

  “Damn you! Mortal puke with shit-coloured skin!”

  I laughed. “Good, godling. Did that make you feel better?”

  “Not hardly.”

  I laughed again. “All right. Let’s see if I can best my last description. You are a slug’s slimy foot. Your scales are the dullest bits of pyrite I’ve ever seen, and that blue ugliness that comes over your otherwise revolting skin makes the eyes water.”

  His next response revealed he understood at last. I meant none of it.

  “This isn’t the least funny.”

  “You’re rotten at this game. Try again.”

  “Corpse the moment you were born, with skin of mould and a scent that makes rotted fish seem the perfume of gods.”

  Sniggering, I looked full at him and became so dizzy I toppled forward. He caught me and held me tight to his chest. The shock of contact stopped my breath.

  “If you don’t find me so ugly, why does looking at me hurt you?”

  “How could it not hurt?” I managed to whisper.

  His body was very stiff against me. “But seeing me as I am shouldn’t hurt you,” he said after a moment. “It should be a joy, if you love me.”

  “It shouldn’t hurt me?” I repeated. A low burn of resentment strengthened my legs. “I look at you and you fade, and then I know I’m about to die with no chance of ever being happy.” I jerked free and walked away.

  “It won’t kill you to see me as I am,” he said, coming after me. “Why do you think such a thing?”

  “Go away. I cannot look at you and like you. I just cannot.”

  “What happened to you to make you this way?” he demanded.

  “Fetch the seal and put it in the very centre of this island! In the earth! Twenty cubits down!” I shouted at him, rushed into my cabin, and slammed the door shut. I could not order him to go away. I could only make him perform tasks. But the moment he finished, back he would come to my side.

  For the rest of that day and the next two, I would not speak with or look at him, but on the night following this protracted silence, he attempted to persuade me another way.

  ***

  Since realizing how easy it would be to feel affection for Intana, I slept badly, like a man with a sword to his neck, always waiting for the blow that would end me. I awoke at the least noise and could not sleep again, and would wander back and forth in my cabin, knowing Intana waited outside the door, listening to my movements. On the night Intana overcame his disgust for me, I all but collapsed from exhaustion and had the dream I most dreaded.

  No, I did not revisit Jumi’s death. Into the last time we made love my sleeping mind drifted. I could not have this dream without awakening the next morning and remembering despair.

  Every second as it had happened then, every scent and touch the same; only the sounds were absent. His voice calling my name. My small noises of pleasure. Missing, but remembered.

  In the boy’s fort we built amongst the small palms, within the dappled shadows of a hot summer day, we moved together, groin against groin, sweat and the juices before orgasm making us slick. And I wanted more in my dream, like I had wanted more then. I began to move down his torso, taking kisses, tasting skin, nipping the muscles of flank, making him jerk and demand what I thought I was doing. I saw his mouth move, didn’t hear his voice, but remembered the words.

  “Haru? Where do you think you are travelling?”

  “South,” I answered.

  His expression so puzzled, and then amazed when I took his shaft into my mouth. We were too young to know these things yet. I only knew I must have Jumi’s taste forever, to take with me to my death on the morrow, the day of our swim in Blood Bay.

  Jumi’s mouth moving again. “It must be a sin. It feels too good.”

  I started to laugh, but his hips rose and he filled my throat until I almost choked. I experienced such a shock in my groin.

  His hand touched me, pulled, demanded. I felt myself groan without hearing it. The end approached, the frantic pumping of his hips, my limbs shaking, his grip now almost hurting me, but feeling so good despite this.

  The dream changed. The light of the sun faded until only shadows remained. In this dimness, the warmth of summer fled away and became a softer heat close about me. Jumi’s taste abandoned my mouth and left it open and empty, and the small noises of my pleasure were audible once again.

  Jumi’s hand no longer existed where it belonged, fisted hard upon my erection. Instead the warmth of his mouth had travelled lower and settled where it had never been before, and the dream shattered.

  In the dark of my cabin, only starlight coming through the porthole. The sheets around me, the bolster warm and soft beneath, the body next to mine, but further down, under the covers. Intana’s mouth on my shaft and Jumi’s words in my memory. It must be a sin. It feels too good.

  I heaved away, scrabbling up toward the head of my bed. Intana’s palm came down on my belly and pressed with unyielding determination. The other hand gripped my hip, and his mouth rode my shaft all the harder. He took all of it, deep into his throat until he’d buried his nose in pubic hairs. He ground his lips against the base, swallowed as if he would take me further, and the sensation of his throat tightening and loosening shot straight into my groin and up my spine.

  I banged the back of my head on the headboard, but didn’t feel the sharp knock. I shuddered. My hips rose and fell, and he rose and fell, and took all that I gave him.

  I lay shaking after, the words of reproach in me, but not coming out. In the dark. In the dark, I could not be hurt.

  His head jerked up and the covers went flying off. “In the dark!” he cried.
“Is that all you can think the first time I come to you while actually wanting you? That it was fine because it was dark?”

  He’d wanted me? Despite the ugly flakes curling from my body in all directions?

  Difficult to credit.

  “It’s true!”

  Perhaps, but he’d had other, stronger, reasons motivating his actions, and he’d intruded on my dream of Jumi. Unforgivable.

  “My mind is not your playground. Nor are my dreams. If you touch me without my permission—”

  A light came, and it rose from his skin. Not exactly white, some sort of incandescent blue, like a light from the depths, as I’d seen in small sea creatures following the deep oceans currents at night.

  I threw my good arm over my head to stop the vision of him. He jerked the limb down, but I shut my eyes and turned my face away.

  “Who is this Jumi to whom you speak each night?” he demanded. “Where is he if he is so important to you?”

  At least, by his question, I knew he could not rummage through my slumbering mind so very easily as I had thought, but it disturbed me that I visited the dream every night without remembering each occasion. The revelation explained the general sadness I always suffered on first awakening.

  “Leave go my arm.”

  His grip only became tighter, harsh enough to hurt.

  “Go to your seal and—”

  His lips clamped over mine. The command ended, unfinished. For the next few minutes, it was a struggle without words, of heads moving, lips twisting, teeth gritting, his erection grinding into my hip and giving proof that he wanted me. But I would not relent, and he ceded the physical skirmish, but only to attack with words.

  “Why do you do this to me?” he cried. “Is it so very much a sin amongst your people for a man to want a man?”

  “You misunderstand a dream, and dreams are not to be taken literally.”

  “Then what is it? What has this Jumi done to you to make you so inflexible?”