Freedom Rising 2: What Price Freedom?

by Willa Okati

  Silken huffed -- silently as possible -- but obeyed, gazing at the small crystal bottle. Capping it with his thumb, Nanashi shook the vial one, two, three times. The red of his blood swirled through the powder, dissolving it. The glitter brightened, then flashed, as would a shooting star.

  Silken cried out and covered his eyes, terrified the vial would explode. Moments later, he felt Nanashi’s hand on his shoulder, comforting him. “No, no, I should have warned you. All is well. Look again, Silken. Do you see? Magic.”

  Silken peeked out cautiously from behind his arm… then sat up, his lips falling open. The crystal vial of ink glowed sparkling red, as someone had made champagne out of the ripest strawberries. It cast a warming glow. One could have seen by its light if the room had been dark.

  “Magic,” Nanashi repeated, smiling into Silken’s face. Slowly, returning the smile, Silken reached out to touch the vial. It felt warm.

  “Lie down,” Nanashi instructed. He reached for one of the brushes and came up with a narrow-tipped example. Seemingly satisfied, he dipped the brush into the ink, and poised himself over Silken once Silken had arranged himself in the cushions. “Yes, just so,” he murmured. “I will paint you with patterns that please me, and I will tell you my story. The teardrop in your earlobe has marked you as mine, but this will show you as a free man to everyone who cares to look. Your skin, covered with glyphs. My forty gold well redeemed.”

  Silken gasped, staring at Nanashi. Decorated skin was the right of princes and great warriors, not Courtesans, former or otherwise. “I have no -- no right,” he managed.

  Nanashi bent to kiss Silken’s forehead, his lips cool and smooth. “You have every right,” he said. “You are the monarch of a great caste soon to be created. Listen as I speak, allow me to do my work, and soon you will begin to understand me. You will know at what price has come your freedom.”

  Silken swallowed hard as Nanashi moved back, dipped his brush back into the vial, and lowered it to one cheek. The soft hairs tickled as would the finest curls of a woman’s ringlets, caressing him with a lover’s touch. Up and down they moved, creating hypnotizing rings and whorls as Nanashi spoke.

  “On the day this story begins, it was snowing…”

  Chapter Four

  Reiji stared at the sky and thought, It’s snowing this afternoon. Snowing in the land of dust and cobblestones, where nothing falls from the sky but the sun’s harsh light and the moon’s cooling rays. Harm and healing, unequally measured. In the light, everything is held up to scrutiny. In the night, a man can hide.

  A person can do things he should never begin to consider. Do them, and feel no regrets. Feel nothing at all. Like me, and what I plan to accomplish before the rising of the sun.

  He could not help but stand in the emptied streets below the great mansion where he planned to intrude, holding his hands palms-up toward the sky. It never snowed in his country, not unless a gathering of shamans had danced for days, singing prayers to gods and goddesses whose names they had long since forgotten. Sacrifices of blood and tears were needed just to make the rains fall.

  What had moved a being beyond their comprehension to scatter the soft snowflakes down upon a normally busy city?

  Could it be they saw his plan and approved of what he meant to do? Reiji firmed his lips together, closing his eyes. Perhaps I have not been wholly abandoned then, he thought. He knew there had been no great sacrifices and no incantations to block out any ray of light that might blaze down upon his lover’s domain. Not in this land! Kaname would never allow such a thing.

  No, the Lord Kaname gloried instead in long, dry days, regardless of how thirsty his subjects grew. In the harsh light of noon, no Nightwalkers would dare to roam -- and above all things, Kaname feared those who were free by moonlight to hunt and devour men like himself.

  Yet perhaps there would be one reason for Kaname to seek a sheltering blanket, to hide away from prying eyes. Perhaps he made sacrifice in secret, spreading his royal blood over cobalt blue flames.

  Reiji could not help but wonder. And, thinking these things, he had to laugh. He, Reiji, had been the instrument behind this wonder! Kaname would have known nothing of snow if Reiji had not described the substance to him. Surely none had ever fallen before in this well-parched land. Rain, occasionally, but never the fluffy white flakes showering down around him at the moment.

  When they first became lovers, Reiji used to speak to Kaname of things he had seen in the colder climes where he originated, from whence he had traveled to find the man who won his heart. Landed lord and foreign prince or no, both had known from the first meeting of their eyes they were meant to be.

  All the same, Reiji soon realized Kaname did not like to hear tales of weather. The whims of the sky’s bounty bothered him. He preferred to think of things firmly under his control, and so Reiji ceased describing showers and especially snow.

  How he missed the white frostings of ice from back in his homeland -- fluffy white flakes drifting down to coat his bared head and the shoulders of his tunic. Snowballs and a delicious sort of pudding made from the fresh drifts, vanilla beans, and milk. Lying on his back in the yard, atop the white inches of fluff, and making butterflies with wide swoops of arm and leg.

  He ceased any talking at all when he lay beneath Kaname’s larger bulk. He never said a word again as they played before lovemaking, not teasing him by mimicking the movements of playing in the snow, but not plying him with words of affection either. Though he had savored the way wicked words spoken in lusty breaths made the lord gasp and grip him tighter, their cocks rubbing together, Reiji stopped telling any tales at all for the sake of peace outside their shared bed.

  But Reiji still loved snow. Raising his face to the sky, he felt flakes settling on his cheeks and wondered: was it a blessing showered down upon him? Goddess of Love and God of Revenge, be ye with me now, he prayed, drawing a holy rune on his throat with the tip of one cold finger.

  The snow, seeming as if it would soon turn into a driving blizzard, was both blessing and curse. A gift, for it would allow Reiji the secrecy he needed to betray his lord, his lover, and the keeper of his heart.

  A curse, because it meant that behind the snow’s cloaking gales, Lord Kaname would be able to slip out of his palace to meet with the Lady Sadako. She who had won his heart from Reiji’s hands with one coy glance from beneath her thick eyelashes. A woman, and a possible wife, a potential mother of heirs, a lover who Kaname would take seriously as Reiji now realized he himself never had been…

  Sadako, who had returned from her travels in the furthest Southern reaches to find Kaname raised onto his father’s throne. Alive and unopposed against countless others who craved his power. She saw how he ruled with an iron fist, and fancied she could learn to control the hand inside. If Kaname had other lights-of-love, well, what did they matter? She saw what she wanted, and like any sensible woman, sought to take it into her hands.

  Reiji, whose curse was to be fair even when it pained him, did not believe Sadako harbored any particular hatred toward himself as Kaname’s lover. He was more of the opinion that, after the struggle to establish herself as a power, she saw joining her forces with Kaname as a way to take some of the weight off her delicate shoulders. Women thrived on power, truly, but Sadako grew weary underneath the burden of manipulating her people. Not shallow, but tired, she had turned to a canny method of doubling her power and halving her responsibilities. With paint, and scented oils, with embroidered silks and musical laughter, she fought to win her ultimate prize.

  A battle all too easily won.

  Reiji knew from the moment he saw Sadako enter Kaname’s court and caught the look between them, his rival and supplanter had arrived. All the same, for weeks as they lay in bed at night, Kaname held Reiji close and promised his faithfulness. His fidelity. Swore he would explain to the beautiful porcelain princess how things were between himself and Reiji. Tell her there were unbreakable if informal vows of fidelity and firmly let her know that they
couldn’t -- wouldn’t -- change.

  Terrified of losing his lover, Reiji had believed Kaname. More fool him. His lover had already been long lost.

  And so, watching the snow fall, Reiji knew himself to have no choice. Kaname might be a Lord, but Reiji was a prince and a mage besides. The man would have to know the error of his ways.

  Pride would not allow any other ending to their love affair.

  With that knowledge, a cold part of Reiji’s mind accepted that he had to pack away the deliciousness of long nights rolling in the sheets, tangling limbs and devouring Kaname’s mouth with kisses. Scraping his own swollen flesh against the lord’s and spreading himself with the abandon of the lusty lover. All gone, and never more to be again.

  It was time to make Kaname pay. The man had to know Reiji would not lie back and accept trickery or betrayal as meekly as a mouse. Reiji had gained the help of another, with as much reason to hate Kaname as himself, who waited just down the street for Reiji’s signal.

  A Nightwalker. One whose own lover had been slaughtered by one of the lord’s edicts for a murder he did not commit. A Nightwalker, beautiful and pale as the moon, with silver-blond hair and alabaster skin marked only by his blood tattoos.

  The time had come, and he was ready to act. It snowed today in the Lord Kaname’s city, and Reiji was ready to exact his vengeance. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and broken trust for trust.

  No one would ever forget what he would do that day.

  Servants, their loyalty easily bought with the promise of half a copper, had reported to Reiji that Kaname and Sadako had been seen leaving earlier, together. Walking demurely side by side and speaking archly of the burdens of rulership, and all but hand in hand while in the public eye. Then, as soon as they thought themselves hidden, falling immediately into one another’s arms. They folded into one another, she on tiptoes and he bending down. Mouths joining. Bodies molding. Embracing long and hard, with a passion given free reign.

  They parted reluctantly to get into Kaname’s carriage, one that could run by magic alone, with the illusion of a coachman, who would tell no tales. They would not have gone far, and surely retreated as fast as possible from the thick flakes that were turning gray as they wafted down through smoky city air, most melting immediately on byways and roads.

  Reiji considered it likely that the pair would be gone for hours. Doing what, he had plenty of ideas, but he found himself oddly numb, unable to care. This was his chance.

  No one questioned his approaching Lord Kaname’s private rooms. Their relationship was not quite mocked openly, but certainly no secret to gossips and gigglers, and those who sought to climb higher by trading on the knowledge. The cloaked and hooded man by his side drew a few curious eyes, but whole coins pressed into hands guaranteed their silence. Reiji was known for being kind to servants and canny as to their needs whereas Kaname was more often than not likely to deal out warning with the sharp edge of his tongue.

  The sole burly guard outside Kaname’s private chambers, bored with nothing to protect, and a friend of Reiji’s, raised an eyebrow as he saw the two approach. “You know?” he asked, quietly as such a large man could, his voice like the rolling of muted thunder.

  “I have heard, and I have seen,” Reiji replied, his eyes downcast. “She is with him. The game goes to Lady Sadako.”

  “T’isn’t right. Isn’t fair. I’ve heard his high-and-mightiness promise you fidelity sufficient times to make a dozen sets of marriage vows.” The guard was angry enough to let his carefully crafted mask slip. Reiji knew this man had a fellow of his own at home, a slender scribe with deft hands and an easily bruised heart. Knew he had no stomach for traitors and deceivers. Knew that whatever happened, Kaname had made an enemy of his chief protector as well as… well.

  He laid his hand on the guard’s bristling arm, bulging with muscles. “Peace,” Reiji said quietly. “It is well. Let this Nightwalker in when I call for him, and if anyone asks what we might be doing inside, say nothing.”

  The guard eyed him up and down, wary of anything a mage might have planned -- but, in the end, nodding, his disdain for Kaname paramount. “I’ll keep to my post,” he said, firm as the mountain he resembled.

  Reiji smiled at the man and reached out to grasp his hand, sliding a silver coin into his palm. “I cherish your friendship,” he said as the money slipped away from him. “May you be rewarded for your faithfulness.”

  He wondered, as he slid past, if the guard’s eyes lingered on him as he went. With sorrow, with curiosity, or with regret? Reiji had felt all three so keenly he had passed through to oblivion. He could spend the day mourning the loss of love and Kaname’s greediness for heirs and soft woman flesh, but he could not forget what had been done to him, and he could not forgive what Kaname had proposed to do: keep him as a dish to be savored on the side while he sported in Sadako’s marriage bed.

  Reiji would not be anyone’s concubine, waiting for the nights when the mistress was weary or confined. He was a prince and a mage, not a toy. He did not “share.” Kaname would learn that soon enough.

  Reaching for the cold ivory lock to Kaname’s chambers, carved with elaborate filigree, Reiji shivered. He had made this lock with magic, knowing how it would please his lover. Kaname adored ivory -- the smooth coolness of it, the ways it could be sculpted, and how it warmed in the hands.

  When Reiji had made him a special dildo, double-headed, engraved with their names entwined along the length of the shaft, he had been rewarded with heated kisses over the whole of his body. It had once been a favored memory of the mage’s. No longer.

  The lock, though, received more reverential treatment. Kaname wore his private key around his neck and trusted no one with the spare. Even when Reiji had been sure of his welcome, he’d had to go through the bulky guard to gain entrance to his lover’s chamber if the man was not by his side.

  Perhaps he had given Sadako the second key. But such a fool, Kaname! He had never questioned whether or not Reiji might have made a third, kept by in case of emergencies and hidden it from any man’s sight. Withdrawing the sliver of rococo ivory from its hiding place up his sleeve, Reiji slid it into the lock, murmuring a word to mollify wards he himself had set in place.

  The doors opened smoothly as a breath of the west wind, the one which had brought them their snow.

  When Reiji entered the ornately gilded, velvet-lush chambers of his lord, he felt an odd sensation of vertigo as if he were doing something wrong. Perhaps setting off one of the security spells he himself had put in place. But no -- after a moment’s consideration, he decided it was not so. There was no tingle of magic to the air washing over his robes and skin. Merely emptiness, and the buzzing of his blanked-out brain filling the dead silence of the suite and his heart.

  He stared around himself, momentarily uncertain. Where to start? Each and every part of Kaname’s chambers held some sort of memory. The pair of them, in their whimsical moods, had taken it upon themselves to christen every surface they possibly could. Reiji could still feel the chill of sideboards beneath his back, the soft warp and woof of carpets scraping his hands and knees, and the groaning, squeaking yielding of a suede pad surrounding him. The freezing cold of a window against his bared shoulders. The iciness of glass beneath his palms. The burning heat of water jetting down upon them in the small adjoining bathing room.

  Reiji remembered it all, every squeezing and tightening and burning of orgasm after orgasm. There was no place where they had not been, had not taken one other. The memories all but choked him. He staggered back, pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes.

  Calm, Reiji, calm. Do what you have come here to do.

  His eyes drifted, unwilling, toward the broad and luxurious bed of Lord Kaname. The nights spent rolling around on the soft goose down and embroidered silks…

  He could still smell raw sex in the air from the last time he and Kaname had come together -- overlaid by the scent of a woman’s perfumes and delicately fragrant oil
s. His stomach twisted. Sadako must have smelled Reiji’s own essence, yet had not stopped. And Kaname? He had not even had the courtesy or foresight to air his chambers out.

  Had he and Sadako planned together, perhaps, planned, a future wherein Reiji would be his midnight snack or second-hand-man? Sadako was cunning enough to allow Kaname his indulgences so long as she might have a wedding vow and rings upon her fingers and in her ears. Reiji fancied if he shut his eyes and listened, he could almost hear the sounds of their whispers and her giggling, teasing Kaname for being so virile and mocking Reiji as a weak slut…

  Damn both their souls to the Pit!

  His jaw tightened in anger as he stared at the rumpled, stained sheets that had once been works of art. A pair of soft leather cuffs dangled open from the iron latticework of the bedstead, an opened bottle of lubricating oil on the night-stand, and dark, dried stains of release on the satin quilt. His own or Kaname’s? Reiji could not remember.

  He wondered if Kaname did.

  Had they come together last only two nights before? So much had come to pass in between times. It took so very little to turn a man’s world upside down…

  Reiji shook himself. Standing still, he called back to the man waiting with Kaname’s guard. “Enter.” He heard the guard’s apology as he began to search Reiji’s fellow conspirator and prayed his Nightwalker would have the common sense not to reveal his fangs. Even the guard would only go so far to see Kaname got what he deserved.

  He had little time to act then. Fortunately, he knew what he wanted and where to find it.

  His hands felt like foreign objects to him as they plundered through the drawers of a wardrobe, shifting aside black silk robes and thin satin trousers jumbled together. He’d grown careless, Kaname had. Once upon a time, he’d have made certain everything lay arranged in neat rows. But then, he’d lost his concentration of late, hadn’t he? Mismanaged his grasp of what was important and what was real. What mattered.