The dream of posing as a real woman and being treated as such seemed ludicrous sometimes. It was so much more than getting false papers. It meant pretending she had a family, and acting as if she expected to be treated like a real woman with rights. It meant never slipping up and mentioning the House or anything about her childhood.
“Always buried in that book,” Rawly said, sitting down next to her and taking a swig from a canteen.
“I’m almost done.”
“And have you learned anything about Fanarlem life? It seems to me you could write the book yourself.”
“No, I don’t really know anything.” It was always fun to rile Rawly up so she said, “I learned how lifelike skin spells are made. Take the flesh from one freshly deceased Daramon or Miralem, boil it for an hour and then strain out the solids…boil until reduced for ten more hours…”
Rawly almost spat out his drink. “Just when I was starting to think you were attractive, Velsa, I find out you’re made from corpse juice.”
“Not just corpse juice. You didn’t listen to the rest. The reduction is then added to a fresh pot of water with rose petals and birch bark and boiled down again. Just a small amount of this potion is needed, it says. You would never know if I didn’t tell you. I don’t feel corpse-y, do I?” She squeezed his arm. Rawly was the only person besides Grau she would dare to tease like this.
“I suppose not, but I have a rule to never touch a corpse, so I can’t say for sure.”
“Trying to steal her away?” Grau had come over to sit with them too. “I can’t leave you two alone for a second.”
“Nah, I prefer a really buxom girl.” Rawly held up his hands like he was groping large breasts.
“Good luck with that,” Grau said. “Sounds more like a Miralem than a Daramon.”
“Well, maybe you don’t get out enough, Grau. I have a girl at home just like that. Have you ever seen her?” Rawly took a tiny painting in a frame from his pocket, of a girl with curly hair, large breasts pushed up above the edge of her waist sash, and an awkwardly proportioned face.
“Are her eyes like that in real life?” Grau asked.
“Like what?”
“One higher than the other.”
Rawly squinted at the painting. “No. I painted it myself.”
“You detailed her breasts very nicely,” Grau said. “I can see where your focus was.”
“What’s she like?” Velsa asked. She was growing more curious about real women. She had only ever spent time with Preya and Grau’s mother, and the House-mistresses, and none of them seemed much like her or each other.
“She’s loads of fun,” Rawly said. “You remind me of her a little, sometimes.”
“Do I?” Velsa said, excited.
“Only when we’re talking like this, though. You’re very quiet in groups, which I guess is only proper, but it’s too bad. Grau, did you know she’s made from corpse juice?”
“Can’t be much. She’s not very juicy,” Grau said. “Look what I found.” He held up a shimmering blue thick sliver of something about the size of his palm.
“A crystal?” Rawly asked.
“No. A dragon scale.”
“Really?” Velsa reached out to touch it. It had a comfortable weight, and a satisfying shape that could have been a small plate for holding bread at dinner. “Where was this?”
“In the grass.” He looked up. “Maybe the rumors were right. A dragon did pass through here.”
“You’re making me nervous,” Rawly said. “Patrol is boring but that doesn’t mean I’d want dragons coming around!”
“It was dropped months ago,” Grau said.
“Months? That isn’t enough distance between me and a dragon.”
“Hmm.” Grau turned the scale over. “I think it’s long gone,” he said, but he sounded wistful.
Weeks passed, each day the same. She understood now why the men were happy to see Flower’s flute performance every night, and why Dlara’s harmonica brought such excitement, even though he only seemed to know five songs.
The longest day of the year brought celebration. The Daramons in the city usually celebrated Ancestor’s Day with their families at this time, but the girls at the House of Perfumed Ribbons had never celebrated because they had no ancestors. No one had family at the camp either, but a wooden crate had arrived at the base, wrapped in red and black ribbons with the seal of the Wodrenarune.
The men clamored to see it opened. The camp had no room large enough for an assembly, so they stood out in the cold. Grau and Velsa were close to the front because of Grau’s rank as a sorcerer. Two of the men gently pried open the top. Lieutenant Dlara lifted out a large painting of Kalan Jherin himself.
Everyone gasped.
The painting was utterly lifelike. The tiniest detail of Kalan Jherin’s proud, beautiful face was so perfectly captured that it might be expected to speak. He wore his black winged headdress and a sharply pointed collar that framed the graceful shape of his cheeks. His expression was noble, his eyes looking off into the distance. Really, it was disturbing—almost like the real Kalan was trapped within the frame. He never seemed to look older, in all of his two hundred years—not in paintings, at least. She wondered how long a Daramon might live, if they could afford to have healers tending to every small sign of age.
Velsa kept thinking with a shudder of his Treatise on Fanarlem, but she couldn’t deny that he looked like a great sorcerer should.
Next, they unwrapped a protective cloth from a curious object, a wooden box with a crank on the side and a large, beautifully painted purple horn mounted to it. A magical implement of some kind, no doubt. Velsa stood on her tiptoes to see.
Lieutenant Archel held up a letter with Kalan’s seal and read it aloud. “‘There is no greater strength among the Daramon race than our fighting men. I know how difficult it is to be far away from your families for months and years on end, and I hope you will take some joy this afternoon in this taste of the wonders of our clever people. Here in Nalim Ima, we have been developing all manner of devices that will change our world—and they don’t rely on sorcery at all. They can be used by anyone. First, there is the ‘pho-to-graph’ which captures a picture of the world exactly as it looks to our eyes. I have had a photograph taken of myself to demonstrate to you all.’”
“That’s what you need,” Grau told Rawly, who stood near them. “Kalan’s eyes are right on the level.”
“You’re a cruel man to knock another man’s artistic skills, Thanneau,” Rawly said.
“‘There is also the ‘pho-no-graph’ which plays music over and over again, without wasting a single crystal’,” Archel continued. “‘They are already popular in Nalim Ima and soon will be all over the Daramon nations. The music is contained within cylinders, much like a singing crystal, to hold different songs. A cylinder is included with a song called a Cake Walk that I hope you will enjoy.’”
The room was tense with anticipation as the officers read the directions. They took the cylinder from a little paper box and mounted it at the base of the horn, and turned the crank.
After all of this, Velsa expected to hear the most glorious music of her life.
Instead, it was a strange tinny noise, like it came from far away.
“What is it?” Grau asked. “If these things don’t work with magic, how do they work?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Is it like a clock?”
“But even clocks are powered by magic crystals,” Grau said.
“Some things work without magic, don’t they?” she asked. “What about the wheel of a mill?”
“Hmm.”
“Maybe we could look at it more closely later.”
Lieutenant Dlara played the Cake Walk several times through, until many of the men began to wander back to their tents, some of them muttering that they’d expected the crate to hold something a lot better. Others had come closer to poke at it.
Later in the evening, Lieutenant Dlara permitted them to inspect
it. The phonograph had been moved into the library. Velsa looked through the manual at the instructions for disassembling some of the parts while Grau ran his crystal over the horn and box. “It’s true,” he said. “No magic at all.” He wound it up again. “No wonder it sounds so dead.”
“I think it sounds a little better now, without so many people around, when we can really hear it. It reminds me of ‘Oh Su-za-na’ in a way.” Velsa couldn’t help pumping her hands up and down to the merry beat.
“Why would it be called a Cake Walk?”
“Maybe it’s how you walk when you’re excited to have cake.” She offered him her hands. He laughed and marched her across the room.
“It lends itself to a very different sort of dance, doesn’t it?” he observed.
When the song finished she followed the instructions in the manual to turn the crank backward and release some sort of mechanism made of metal parts. They were unusually smooth and uniform, as if shaped by a sorcerer, but she didn’t sense the slightest trace of magic clinging to them either, besides what remained from the material itself. The phonograph reminded her of the diagrams inside Fanarlem Life showing how to put a skeleton together.
“What is going on in Nalim Ima?” Grau asked. “Who is figuring out how to make this magic? It has to be magic. There’s no way you could make music and pictures the same way you’d build a mill wheel.”
“What about…a printing press?”
“Tell me how you could make music with a printing press! No, this must be some sort of magic that can’t be sensed with a crystal or with regular sorcery. Some test he’s sending out to military camps to see if we understand what it is, that will eventually lead to cloaking weapons of war.”
“Maybe it really isn’t magic, though,” Velsa said. “Look at the label. The Victor Talking Machine. It’s a machine. I really think so, though I have no idea how it works…” She couldn’t imagine anyone would put so much specific detail into a mere test for a war weapon.
Grau scratched his head, sliding his hat sideways. “Maybe you’re right. But it still doesn’t make any sense and there’s something about it that makes me uneasy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s the same feeling I had in my gut when I saw that the Marnow house was gone,” he said. “Still, before we go, we can do that Cake Walk dance one more time.”
Chapter 13
Velsa remained fascinated by the Talking Machine. She dreamed of taking it apart and putting it back together again, to see if its mystery might be revealed. No one would permit the gift from Kalan Jherin to be disassembled, however, so she had to content herself with listening to the Cake Walk, inspecting all the phonograph’s parts, and reading the manual over and over.
Certainly, besides the books, the phonograph was the most interesting thing around. The very nature of patrol life kept her close to Grau but far away at the same time. The only place they might be alone was in the washroom or the latrines. The washroom was just a thin door away from the beds, and thus not really private at all, and Velsa refused to make love inside a latrine.
Grau liked to tease her every evening by reminding her how much time they had left.
“Only four and half months to go,” he said, as they climbed the stairs to their barracks after a pleasant evening around the fire.
“Four and a half months is an eternity.”
“And then maybe we’ll go buy ourselves a barn. Seems to be all we need.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you not miss me at all?”
“Oh, I miss you. I’m just a very patient man. All good sorcerers must learn to be patient and controlled.”
“Your father wouldn’t approve of all this patience and control, wasting your money…”
“You’re the one who wants privacy. I’d be willing to try finding some out of the way spot…”
“So we can run into Flower again? No, thank you.” The wall where they had found Flower with the other soldier was certainly one of the most private spots, but Velsa had never even walked that way again.
He stopped in the hall and ran a hand through her hair. “You just need to concentrate on your magic lessons more and less on…” He trailed off as she slid her hands along his back, drawing him closer to her. “Just who is the concubine around here anyway?”
He kissed her, her back pressed against the wall, and she wrapped his arms around his neck. He lifted her legs so they were wrapped around him, his pelvis against hers, nudging her, stirring her desire. She had to shake off the bad memory of Flower in the same pose. It certainly felt nice when it was Grau.
The door swung open and Rawly whistled.
She dropped her feet to the floor.
“Can’t anyone have a moment around here?” Grau said.
“Nah,” Rawly said. “Sorry. I need to go use the can.”
“Yeah, right,” Grau said. “Why didn’t you go before coming up here?”
Rawly threw up a hand and went to the stairs.
Velsa looked at Grau miserably. Even if they had a tent, all those bored soldiers who always milled around outside would probably come snooping if they heard any interesting noises or noticed any interesting silhouettes.
They climbed into their bed, and in a few more minutes it was lights out. Rawly returned, banging his foot on the bed frame in the dark. The usual sounds of snoring resumed.
Grau slid a hand between her legs, nudging aside the fabric of her chemise. “Shh,” he whispered in her ear. “You don’t have to breathe, so I think you can be very quiet, can’t you?”
She spread her thighs, with the smallest sigh of relief, and pressed back against him. He hadn’t touched her like this in weeks.
She could be quiet, but that didn’t mean it was easy. His fingers moved in firm, deep strokes, and she chewed on her lip.
The bed creaked if she dared to move too much, and oh, he knew just how to tease her by now, how to coax her hips into movement. She wanted to help him but she didn’t dare. Instead she pressed her buttocks against him, trying to stay still although she felt his own arousal, trembling against her.
His other hand moved to plump her breast, then pinch her nipple so the skin tightened. It always amazed her, how her body seemed to come alive when he touched her. This was what she yearned for, more than anything.
He nibbled her earlobe, sending a shiver all the way down her back to the spot where his right hand stroked faster.
She wanted so badly to moan, to say his name. She leaned her head back, drinking in the sensations washing over her in waves that came ever stronger. Her mouth lolled open and she wanted to kiss him but not at the expense of losing the tongue grazing the edge of her ear…
He drew his hands and mouth back all at once.
“What?” She turned over.
His dark eyes were just glints of mischief in the moonlight filtering through the curtains. “I’m making a better, more patient sorceress out of you.”
“Oh, no. No.” She shoved his shoulders.
He pulled her on top of him, his hardness nudging her. The bed squeaked and one of the snores stopped.
She drew back, embarrassed. She had gotten caught up for a moment, but no, she was not about to make a spectacle of herself.
“Meet me in the hall…if you dare,” Grau said. He climbed out of bed and crept out the door.
“You!” she hissed, wrapping the blanket around her body like a cloak. It sounded like everyone was awake now and someone laughed as her stocking feet rushed past them in the dark.
Grau was waiting outside the door and grabbed her, tightening the blanket around her. She was torn between laughter and protest when he slung her over his shoulder and carried her to the stairs, down to the flight between the floors.
“I think we have the stairwell to ourselves,” he said.
“I hope it stays that way. Everyone heard us.”
“I was kidding about patience.” He held up the jar of oil. Usually that was tucked away in his ba
g, and she gave him a smug smile.
“You planned this little strategy, didn’t you?”
“Sorcery is one thing. You are another thing.”
The look in his eyes, hard and soft all at once, never failed to thrill her. It was difficult to believe, nowadays, that she had ever been afraid of him, even from the first time she saw those eyes. But her time at the House already seemed so long ago.
He dropped the waistband of his pants just enough to slick himself with the oil, scoop her up and push himself into her. She battled the blanket off of her arms so she could wrap them around him, finally letting out the moan that had built up from all of his earlier attempts to provoke her. She still found some tiny, cruel part of her mind wandering back to Flower. Flower had probably never felt like this, like she truly wanted the man inside her. It was hard to believe the same act could be so sweet or so abominable.
“My beautiful wife,” Grau said.
“Oh…” She never tired of those words. “But not yet…”
“Soon,” he said. “I can’t wait to whisk you away from here…and find a place where we can be happy.”
She was almost in tears from the joy of it all.
From downstairs came the sound of a terrific crash and several loud bangs. They both jumped, and she cried out from surprise and pain as she knocked her head against the wall.
They broke apart, quickly fixing their clothes back to decency and rushing down the stairs. Grau pulled his magic light from his pocket. Nothing was apparent from the bottom of the stairs, but then, it had sounded a little farther away than that.
Like it came from the library.
The library had a door with a lock, but Velsa couldn’t say for sure if anyone really locked it. Either way, it was wide open now, and Velsa quickened her steps, knowing what was kept inside the library, what would make such a sound when it fell.
The pieces of her beautiful phonograph were scattered all over the floor. The wooden case had busted, the mechanism broken apart, and the horn was cracked and dented. It looked as if someone had dropped it and then taken a hammer to the pieces, to be sure no repairs were possible.
The Sorcerer's Concubine (The Telepath and the Sorcerer Book 1) Page 15