by R. Lee Smith
He saw it too. He glanced at the lamp beside him and, with insolent slowness, dipped his finger in the bowl and passed it over the flame. It didn’t catch.
“Animal fat is far too valuable to burn,” he told her. “We use xuseth oil here. It burns clean, as you see, but catches slow.” He dipped his fingers again and rubbed the wick itself; the light guttered and nearly went out. “Learning to make wicks and seeing that I have enough light in my chambers will be part of your duties.” He knelt to unbuckle the belt that held her ankles, the belt at her knees, the belt at her thighs…and there he stopped, gazing speculatively at the mound of her pubis.
“Easy now,” he murmured, raising his hand.
Her thighs clenched, but she made that be all as he worked his finger between her folds. Well-oiled by xuseth, he moved back and forth along her opening several times before finally pushing up and inside her. Amber heard the angry sound catch in her throat and made it be the only one; felt her body tighten in a vain effort to force the invader out and made herself relax. It was going to happen no matter what she did, and the harder she fought before she lost, the more weapons she’d give him in all the fights to follow.
Zhuqa grunted pensively, questing deeper but with caution, until he withdrew and simply turned her around to unbind her arms.
“I keep my promises, Eshiqi, do you see?” he said, and straightened up to watch her rub painfully at her wealed skin as he coiled his weighted cord and set it aside. “I am told I’m not a hard man to serve. I won’t hurt you unless you demand it of me.” He studied her for a moment. “Say something. When I speak, you answer.”
She rolled her eyes. “Four-score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty. Fuck you.” She turned away.
“I doubt very much any of that wished me well. Watch yourself, little one. The day I learn that tongue may well be the day you lose yours.”
Amber licked her bloody lips and was quiet.
“The fact has not escaped me that you must have learned our words from someone. And the things we found at your fire were man-made. Where is he?”
If they were asking, they hadn’t found him. Amber hesitated, then glanced back at him and drew her finger across her throat.
He grunted, eyeing her with a smile. “You are going to some lengths to convince me that you are a dangerous slave to hold, Eshiqi. I appreciate your efforts, but I do mean to hold you. So. Here we come to it, little one. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if that’s the only way you’ll have it.”
He began to unfasten his harness.
Someone knocked.
Amber didn’t bother to look around. It wasn’t word of Meoraq, she knew that already. If her man were killing his way through the lot of them, no one would bother with this hesitant triple-tap. But somehow, the fact that they knocked at all came with its own vague feeling of offense, as if knocking were some fundamental human behavior they had usurped.
Zhuqa finished removing his harness before he answered it, letting his half-nakedness make a silent point to whoever stood beyond. He gave no word of greeting, not even a ‘What do you want?’ He held the door and waited.
“I interrupt you,” said an unfamiliar voice, amused but not apologetic. “Shall I wait in the hall?”
“Do you have a report?”
“I have the seeming of one. The bones of it are: No change. How many did you—What is that?”
“That is what you are interrupting. Get on with it.”
The raider in the doorway visibly wrestled with a remark, then apparently decided not to test his leader’s good humor any further. “Our westward patrol encountered some of Ghelip’s men the day after you left. They denied they were sent as an attack party at first—”
“Attack party? From Ghelip? How many were there?”
“Three, sir.”
“And they were killed?”
“Yes, sir, after interrogation. Salahkthu will have their full confessions—”
“Three.” Zhuqa gave his brow-ridges a knead. “Tell Salahkthu to resume normal patrols and to make his miserable skin available when I come up. Any other deaths to report?”
“No, sir.”
“No?”
“Only slaves.”
“How many?”
“I…”
“Make Hruuzk available as well.” Zhuqa started to shut the door, then opened it wide again, catching the other lizardman just about to slink off. “Zru’itak.”
It wasn’t a word she knew and the answer was no clearer when the other lizard said, “Not yet.”
Zhuqa grunted and shut the door. He stood, deep in thought, then strode past Amber to collect the waterskin from the hook on the wall. He uncapped it and drank, glanced at her, then held it out.
She shook her head.
He continued to hold it, now beginning to frown. “Come and take it, Eshiqi. You are for my comfort, not I for yours.”
She started to shake her head again, but then just went over and put out her hand. She was thirsty. If that made her a coward or a traitor or a weak little girl, too bad.
She drank. It stung her lips badly enough to bring tears smarting to her eyes and tasted so fantastically bilious that her first swallow came retching explosively back out of her. She heard him cough out a curse as he snatched up the waterskin she’d dropped, but he didn’t hit her and he even grabbed her by the arm when she staggered, supporting her until she knew she wouldn’t fall over.
“Don’t do that again,” he said coldly. “This is difficult to come by and I punish those who waste it out of spite.”
“I didn’t want it in the first place!” Amber spat, wiping her mouth, but she didn’t get in his face and shout it, and when he started to cap the neck, she reached out her hand again. She knew what was coming and as foul as the drink was, she sure wasn’t going to face the rest of this night sober if she didn’t have to.
Zhuqa studied her for a second or two before relinquishing his grip on the flask. She took three deep swallows, paused for a shudder and a grimace, and took one more. A smarter girl would start ingratiating herself now, thank him, maybe even flirt with him; Amber couldn’t, not yet, but she wasn’t going to fight him either.
Zhuqa hung the flask back up, then unfastened the ties of his breeches. Amber watched him undress without flinching, letting her head swim comfortably out of this moment, this room. Meoraq was coming for her.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said when he turned, naked, to face her. “I’m not afraid of this.”
“Fierce little thing,” he murmured, taking her chin in his hand. He stepped forward, pushing her before him until her back struck the wall. “There is not so much as a spark of fear in these eyes. I think you may have done this before. Ah, so you have.” He released her to brush her hair back from her shoulder, revealing Meoraq’s bite-scars. He traced them, then stroked his way over her smooth skin down to her wrist. He brought her hand between them to the slight swell of his loins. “Gently now,” he murmured.
She closed her eyes and let her hand lie limp in his grip as he made her stroke at his scales. Once. Twice. The drink, whatever it had been, made it easy for her mind to drift out beyond these ruins. He could do what he wanted with her; Amber didn’t have to be with him.
“You are determined not to make this easy on yourself,” Zhuqa said, somewhere in the world. “So be it.”
His hand became a fist around her wrist. Tendons creaked. Bones ground together. Amber let out a startled wail, her legs buckling instinctively. This time, he let her drop. Cold stone sent shockwaves of fresh agony up both knees, but all she could do was scratch at his restraining hand while he gazed coolly down at her.
She didn’t know how long it lasted. Probably not long. A minute, maybe. Maybe only half that. When it finally stopped, the relief was enough that she sagged gasping against his thigh, actually clutching at it like a lifeline, her hate like shards of glass in her chest and pain like throb
bing hell everywhere else.
He gave her a moment to recover. Then, the lightest of tugs. “Up, Eshiqi.”
She got up, climbing his hip and then his chest, hating him.
He moved her hand back between his legs. “Gently now,” he said again.
“I’m going to kill you,” she whispered, cupping and kneading at the hard lump she felt beneath the cover of his scales.
His head cocked warningly even as his spines flexed in mild good humor. “Was that a threat, little one? I think it was. You’re fortunate I’m feeling so forgiving, but if you want to keep me there, you’ll have to make an effort. Find my slit. I’m ready for you, but I think you need the practice. There you are. I want to feel your hand through my belly-skin. Good. Now, carefully, get a good grip. Squeeze. Gently. Release. Now squeeze again. Steady. Like the beating of a sleeping heart.”
“I’m going to put a knife through yours.”
“Just so,” he told her, color rising in the thin scales along his throat. “Keep your hand at work, but move your thumb up along my slit and when you feel moisture, push inside. It was easy, wasn’t it? I could have been freed well before now, but then how would you know the way to do this? Someday, I will come home to you in Gann’s own humor and you will be glad that you know how to do this, glad that all it takes is a skilled hand to coax me from a killing mood. Ah!” He closed his eyes, spines rigid and neck striped with brilliant gold, and in a strangled voice said, “What you feel beneath your thumb is my sa’ad. Stroke. Use small circles. Gently.”
And before she’d made a single revolution over the prominent nub he meant, his cock shoved itself out in slick insistence.
“Enough lessons,” he grunted, pulling one of her thighs up and around his hip. “You are easily the most deviant—” He broke off with a tight rattle as he penetrated and shuddering with pleasure when their hips finally met. “—thing I have ever done,” he finished, and drew back his head to grimace at her. “How does that feel, Eshiqi?”
How did it feel? How else could it feel with his oils hot inside her and the blunt hook of his ridged cock rubbing insistently at the soft place just beyond her pubic bone? She bared her teeth at him like a dog, hating that she could feel him this way, hating that it didn’t at least hurt. He grimaced back at her in good humor as he began to move, working in curt punching movements that drove her up along the rough side of the wall until her scrabbling toes lost contact with the floor entirely and it was either hang suspended on his stabbing cock or put her arms around him.
“Ah, that’s good,” he murmured, nuzzling at her while she twisted her face away. After that, there was no more speech, no more instruction, only his body like a spear inside her and hate, helpless hate, bleeding out into the wound it left.
* * *
As a child, Bo Peep Bierce’s little girl discovered the elastic quality of Time. Until that golden summer of state-care, Time had always been a constant—precisely measured, easily predicted, immutable. Only after the lady in the flowery dress sent her and baby Nicci back to their mother did she understand that Time was more like a faucet, that it could run hot or cold, pour out fast or drip out slow, and that, if you knew the trick of it, you could put your hand on the knob and shut it off entirely.
Little Amber sat in non-Time in the closet at Holland Mills while her mother fucked men in the bed where she would have to sleep that night. Teenage Amber made it through two years of high school one non-Time class after another before giving up and getting a job. Grown Amber worked non-Time shifts at the factory, unaware of her aching back and feet and head until she had to walk to the bus station afterwards. And in Zhuqa’s lair, Amber drifted in non-Time until he was done with her and tied her up again.
He left her on the floor and after he was gone, Time came creeping in again. The anger came with it and then the tears, which accomplished nothing except to make her head feel thick and heavy. Eventually she slept. It was not a restorative sleep. She woke when the door opened, feeling more exhausted than before, as well as sore and hung over and dried out. She raised her head and saw him in the doorway, holding a covered bowl in the crook of one arm, and suddenly she was hungry too.
Amber tried to sit up, wiggling worm-like in her bonds in an effort to get her back against the wall and lever herself up it. Zhuqa bumped the door shut, set the bowl down and came to help her. His hands were rough, but he was gentle. She hated him all over again, for what he’d done, for what he was going to do, and most of all for not being entirely hateful when he did it.
When she was sitting up, Zhuqa went back for the bowl, then came and knelt beside her. He lifted the cover, releasing a small billow of steam, but no smell. What at first glance appeared to be stew or cereal proved in the next to be a rag floating in water. He took it, squeezed it in his fist and began to wash her face.
Not soup. Just hot water. Tears stung at her eyes. She refused to let them fall.
“How long will you be angry with me, little one?” he asked tolerantly. His hands were gentle as they daubed her cheek, her brow. There was blood on the rag when he rinsed it, and soot and sweat and all kinds of scum she’d picked up in her travels. “A day? A year? You can be angry all you like, of course, as long as you’re obedient, but you will find that hate is heavy. Too heavy, I think, for your little body to carry.”
“I’ll still give it the old college try, motherfucker.”
“I have received seventeen offers for you, fierce one,” he said, now wiping at her throat. Beads of water fell away, cutting an itchy path between her breasts to her belly. “More coin than I have ever been offered for any other prize. More coin, to say truth, than I knew some of these men even held. But for now, you remain my Eshiqi. So. What shall I do with you?” He swished the rag through the water, wrung it out, and put it between her thighs, gazing meditatively into her eyes as he scrubbed the raw well of hurt he’d used all morning. “Let us play a game.”
Amber looked away, staring into the wall until her eyes hurt. Meoraq was coming. He couldn’t be that far away now. He’d find her (and never mind that he’d never found nicci never mind that at all this was different he was coming and he’d find her) and all she had to do was live long enough for him to get her out of this. She could do anything for one day, right? Right. Suck it up, little girl.
She looked at him.
“I was not always the man I am now,” he told her. His hands were gentle, always gentle. “There was a time I too stood in the sight of God, a time when I sought nothing greater than to serve in His name. A moment’s doubt…” He withdrew, placed the rag in the bowl and the bowl to one side. “…and that life was ended. If it had not, I would be the steward of my father’s House. I would have a woman who was my own alone. I often wonder what that would be like. So let us play a game.”
He untied her ankles, turned her around and unfastened her wrists from her elbows. “We will play a game I like to call ‘Zhuqa’s House’,” he said, helping her to rub feeling into her numb, cramping limbs. “I admit that I have played before and have some advantage over you, but I trust you will learn quickly and make as formidable an opponent as you did in battle. I will come home to you, my Eshiqi, and you will play that you are my happy woman.”
She spat laughter at him, unwise as that might be. She wanted to live, she did, but her ability to suck it up had limits and that was well, well beyond them.
“The woman of my House, who kneels at my side in meek obedience, her outstretched hand open at my foot.”
“You can make me be here, you son of a bitch, but you will never make me like it. Fuck you.”
“Who opens herself to all the fires of lust Gann can give me and pretends a loyal woman’s pleasure in her man’s desire.”
She shook her head, tight-lipped.
“Who drinks from my cup when we share our meals and unfastens the armor I don with solemn duty each day. It’s a simple game,” he said with a careless flick of his spines. “And in the playing of it, you may note my
obedient woman does not require binding.”
Amber turned her face away and stared into the far wall, ignoring him.
He waited.
So did she.
“It is not the only game I play,” he said at last. “Merely that which I have most fondness for. The other game—” He rose and casually knotted a hand in her hair, yanking her forward onto her knees and dragging her toward the door with her first startled screams of pain just whooping out of her. “—I call ‘Zhuqa the Warlord’. It, too, is a simple one. In it, I am master of a band of ruthless men, much like those above us even now.” He opened the door and flung her out into the hall. She banged into the wall and fell, but couldn’t right herself fast enough. He had her by her ankles next, pulling her over the filthy stone and speaking loudly, but still calm, always calm, to be heard over her howls. “In my game, I have a number of slaves who I provide to these men as whatever amusement they wish to take. For example.” He heaved her around, swinging her completely off the ground (used to do this with nicci didn’t i airplane we called it do me airplane amber) and letting go so that she crashed and slid into the first crossways, rolling and wailing to land at the feet of two curious guards.
“For example,” said Zhuqa, striding down the dark hall toward them. He ignored their salutes and hunkered down to catch Amber’s chin and force her eyes to his. “It might be the day in the game of Zhuqa the Warlord when I say, Uruul?”
“Sir,” said one of the guards immediately.
“Get your cock out.”
The second guard backed up a little, but whatever Uruul felt about this order did not make him hesitate. He shucked his breeches, slipped a finger into his slit and out came the dark thrust of his cock. He wasn’t ready, was dry as sunbaked brick, but it was there and it was hard.
“And then I would say,” said Zhuqa, not even looking to see if he had been obeyed, “Uruul?”
“Sir.” The word was a grunt of some effort. His finger was still in his slit.
“I am going to count to six, and when I say the number six, you are going to put your cock in that hole and fuck it until you cum three times.”