by Jane Kindred
Cool water dripped against his lips. Pearl opened his mouth instinctively, and the life-giving element hit his parched tongue like a vetma handed down to a grateful supplicant from a Meer through the proxy of a templar priest. That the Meerhunter Pike stood in for the priest was of little consequence in the joyous partaking of the benediction. The water dripped in little drabs, squeezed from a rag, and Pearl opened his eyes, reaching for it to wring the water from it faster.
“Careful, now, boy.” Pike withheld the rag. “You’ll want to sit up. Don’t need you choking on it.” He helped Pearl to a sitting position and propped him up while he gave him a full glass of water and let Pearl drink to his heart’s content, even allowing him another glass when he’d emptied it. “No sense letting you get into a state where I end up having to carry you. From the peek I stole at old Nesre’s journals, I had the impression you didn’t need food and water like an ordinary child. Seems you need water. Was he wrong about the food as well?”
Pearl glanced up at him as he began to feel less lightheaded. He wasn’t certain what the true answer was to that. What constituted “need”?
The Meerhunter rephrased the question. “Do you hunger when you go without food?”
Pearl nodded emphatically. The smells of the Meerhunter’s breakfast were still hauntingly present in the room.
“But you can go without for several days without ill effects.”
The bit of hope he’d had at the mention of food died, and Pearl sighed and nodded once more.
Pike nodded to himself in response and straightened. “I’ve no wish to torment you needlessly, though make no mistake, I do not consider you a human child worth my sympathy at the prospect of a bit of hardship. Let’s say you’ll earn your food as a reward for good behavior.” He snapped his fingers at Pearl. “Get up, boy.” When Pearl scrambled to his feet, Pike gave him a nod of approval. “Not as if you can disobey me after your promise, but I appreciate the swift and non-defiant compliance. Unfortunately, I’ve nothing to feed you at the moment, so you’ll have to wait until we hit the road.”
Pearl’s bag lay forgotten in the corner of the room. He still had an envelope of dried papaya left.
Pike noticed his longing glance and strode across the room to take up the bag. “Got yourself some food in here, do you?” He rifled through Pearl’s belongings and found the paper packet. “I’ll just keep these for you for a bit.” He pocketed them, to Pearl’s disappointment—and to the disappointment of his stomach, which growled audibly. Pike smiled. “By the time we get everything settled at the dock, I think you’ll be most appreciative of a bite to eat. Give you a chance to prove yourself to me in the meantime, to be certain I can trust in your prompt, if not eager, obedience.”
The Meerhunter examined the rest of what Pearl had brought with him, holding up the paper-wrapped garment Ra had conjured for him when she’d first set him free from Nesre’s cage. She’d rendered the kaftan in a lovely pale blue silk, embroidered in threads of real silver and gold. The Great One, MeerShiva, had advised Ra not to dress him so ostentatiously. His hair alone, she said, might give him away as Meer.
Pearl’s hair had been long and braided then, the weight of it and its silvery platinum hue as it draped forward over his shoulder somehow comforting as he drew his pictures in Nesre’s cage. Merit had instructed his household barber to cut it just above chin length to avoid bringing attention to Pearl at Ludtaht Ra, leaving only enough to tuck behind his ears. Pearl missed it, as an ordinary child might miss a favorite blanket that had been with him since infancy.
Pike whistled, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. “Impressive. This ought to fetch a decent price at the docks. More than enough to buy our passage to Soth Szofl.” A stab of anxiety struck Pearl’s heart; Ra had given the kaftan to him, and he had nothing else of her. But Pike seemed oblivious to his turmoil. He rewrapped the garment and stuffed it back inside the bag, tucking the whole thing into his own duffel.
They departed for the dock with Pearl’s hands unbound and his mouth ungagged, but the collar still around his neck. Pike forewent the leash, at least, sparing him that humiliation. When Pearl kept fiddling with the collar uncomfortably as they walked, it drew Pike’s attention.
“Don’t like that much, do you?”
There was no reason to hide the fact. Pearl shook his head.
“It marks you as my property. What a reversal of fortune, eh? Not for you, of course; for you, I dare say it’s a step up from your upbringing. But for your kind who ruled the Delta, used to having your every whim satisfied at a snap of your fingers, it’s quite a step down. ‘Poetic justice’, I believe they call it.” Pike seemed rather pleased with himself. If he’d been less distracted by the gnawing of his stomach, Pearl might have resented it more. As it was, he just wished that whatever amount of proving himself worthy was necessary, he could get it over and done with so he might at last have something to eat. Privation had been far easier to bear in Nesre’s cage with no physical demands on him and a pallet to sleep on so he could take his mind off it.
At the dock, Pike received offers of trade from more than one vendor for Pearl’s services. Pearl wasn’t certain what services the traders meant until he saw snatches of images with his Meeric eye when one of their thoughts was particularly loud. He moved closer to Pike, glad nothing of the sort had come from his new master’s head.
Thankfully, Pike declined all such offers, but traded Pearl’s clothes, as predicted, for enough coin for passage on a great ship bound for Soth Szofl, with plenty to spare. Pearl watched the bag of clothing go with regret, but was at last rewarded for his patience and his quiet resignation with a cold dinner of dried fish and fruit as the ship set sail.
The tiny berth Pike had purchased had only one cot, but Pearl didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. He’d done so for most of his life. The brief interlude at Ludtaht Ra, with its downy, overstuffed beds and priceless linens, seemed already like a lovely dream, or perhaps just images of another Meer’s life that had come to Pearl through the flow. He had always been content to see through the eyes of other Meer. He would have to be again—and content in the knowledge that he was leading the Meerhunter farther away from Ra with every league.
As he drifted off to the gentle creaking of the ship while it bobbed and dipped upon the waves, Pearl’s blood tingled with something unfamiliar and unsettling. He could taste it on his tongue, something ancient and dark. It came from across the waves, from the heart of Soth Szofl. But it also came from the land they’d left behind them, something waking and working its way through the waters of the earth as it traveled on the Meeric flow.
Eight: Beguilement
They might be outcasts, but the members of Mound Ahr were self-sufficient. If anyone in Haethfalt could manage to farm without the assistance of the rest of the collective, it was Jak na Fyn. It helped that Ahr had wanted his independent homestead and that Jak had worked with him to establish it. The seeds of last year’s crops had been collected and catalogued, thanks to Jak’s insistence. The plots in which Ahr grew his greens, root vegetables, squash, and stalks of beans and corn amounted to little more than a home garden, but it would be enough for two.
Ra kept protesting that she could provide more than enough for them, that Jak needn’t labor, but Jak stubbornly refused any such assistance. They would get by without magic, and prove themselves to their former moundmates. Not that Jak cared what any of them thought after how they’d treated Ra, but a bountiful harvest would be the best revenge.
Of course, Jak’s insistence on doing things the ordinary way didn’t stop Ra from adding little comforts to the mound, and Jak let it go, knowing it made Ra feel she was contributing something to the moundhold and being useful. Though Jak told her often enough that the breads and cakes she baked for them—Peta’s own recipes; Ra had learned from the best—were more delicious than any conjured food Ra might call up, there were spices and
essences in the baked goods Jak knew hadn’t been in Ahr’s stores.
Neither of them spoke of what had happened on that icy spring night when they’d first settled in, but things were good between them. Jak had never felt so relaxed with anyone before, and Ra was respectful of all boundaries, taking things much slower than she had at first.
While Jak worked Ahr’s land for the first time, preparing the ground in the early thaw, Ra had been busy with preparations of her own. Jak returned one evening to find the mound transformed, the floor tiled with a mosaic of aubergine and violet, a great bed piled in layers of lavender and down that nearly filled the mound, and Ahr’s broken windowpane replaced with a glass of deepest iolite as though it looked out onto the core of the ocean. It was thick and subtly faceted—a massive, solid gemstone. Jak gaped at Ra, seated upon a tiled divan where the kitchen table had been, her cobalt cotton-tangled legs and bare feet stretched out along its length. Before her, instead of the usual basin, was a sunken bath exuding delicate, indescribable essences from its mist.
“Sooth, Ra,” breathed Jak. “What have you been doing?”
“Come.” Ra smiled. “I want your mouth.”
Jak obliged, and Ra, in her layers of cobalt, undressed Jak while she held the lips captive. Jak shivered when Ra dropped the dungarees at their feet and slipped her hands into the cotton underpants.
“Don’t fear,” said Ra in Jak’s ear as she nudged the garment over Jak’s thighs. “My touch replaces any that has come before. Only I will have touched you.”
“Any place but that,” said Jak, eyes on Ra’s. “I’ve thought about it, and I can’t. It’s what poisoned Geffn for me.”
Ra smiled and unbuttoned Jak’s shirt, letting it fall away. “Nothing will ever happen that you do not allow, Jak. You are the Meer of your body.”
Still clothed, she led Jak to the stone bath, and Jak, after a brief hesitation, climbed in. Ra reclined beside the bath on the dark mosaic, her convoluted skirt now trellised with dark vines of water. She loosened Jak’s hair and eased Jak back against the slope of the stone, the water skittering over Jak’s breasts.
Ra kissed the top of Jak’s head. “I shall bathe you as I was bathed.”
Jak relaxed as Ra leaned into the warm water, her dark lengths of hair sinking into it and partially submerged as she trailed Jak’s body with the leaves of soap. The steam pressed Ra’s bodice against her breasts, revealing the peaks of her nipples, and Jak put a wet hand playfully over one rounded slope, making her smile. Ra had been bathed by servants as a man, not a woman, Jak realized, trying to imagine Ra with a firm, flat chest and a cock flowering from between her thighs instead of the more secretive vulva. Surprisingly, it wasn’t difficult.
“I don’t want you to misunderstand me.” Jak’s eyes closed under Ra’s indulgent touch. “I’m not the way I am because of it.”
“What way is that?” Ra’s voice was a soothing lullaby.
“Ungendered,” murmured Jak, falling under the spell. “I’m not trying to change what I am to get away from it. It’s—” Jak’s voice faltered a moment at the touch of Ra’s soap against one nipple. “It’s what I’ve always felt.”
“It isn’t relevant, lif.” Ra kissed Jak’s nape. “Kuhntramaísch ahn ahnna? Errh maísch. Ma naiuhnt kesuth.”
Eyes open once more, Jak turned and studied Ra’s face. She seemed to forget in what language she spoke, increasingly slipping from Mole into Deltan.
“I don’t speak Deltan,” Jak reminded her. “You’ll have to translate that.”
“Don’t you?” Ra seemed momentarily perplexed. “Oh. Deltan. What did I say in Deltan?”
Jak smiled and played with a lock of the damp hair. “I don’t know, Ra. I don’t speak Deltan.”
“Ai,” said Ra.
“Contramish?” Jak prompted. “It was something like that. Contramish anana?”
Ra laughed. “Kuhntramaísch ahn ahnna,” she said again. “What makes me a woman? Errh maísch: I simply am. Ma naiuhnt kesuth: I don’t ask why.” She gathered her wet skirt and slipped her long limbs into the water. “The ra,” said Ra, “the reason, the cause, is irrelevant. You are what you are. I don’t misunderstand you.”
She lowered herself into the bath fully clothed, the cobalt folds of her garment swirling about her, and pressed her wet self over Jak. “Whatever I can have of you, I will have.” Prodding Jak’s legs apart, Ra positioned her thigh firmly between them, and Jak trembled, delightfully at Ra’s mercy.
“The ra,” Jak gasped, as the Meer, with a rhythmic motion of her hips, began to rock her thigh against the sensitive part she held captive. “Your name means reason?”
Ra stretched Jak’s arms against the rim of the bath as Jak began to cry out in rhythm with the quickening strokes of her powerful thigh. “If you have the presence,” Ra said, punctuating each phrase with a thrusting motion, “of mind—to think—and speak”—Jak’s moaning was in staccato now—“then I am not doing this right.” Ra withheld her thigh a moment in exquisite torment and placed her mouth beside Jak’s ear. “Tell me what you want.”
“Your skin,” Jak moaned. “I want—” But this was all Jak could manage, as Ra had resumed her rocking strokes.
“Again,” Ra scolded, without missing a beat. “Talking. My skin?” She brought her lips close to Jak’s ear as she continued her physical punctuation. “You want my skin? Mene tams?”
“Yes,” Jak breathed.
“Dai,” said Ra. “Say dai. Speak to me in my tongue.”
“Dai,” Jak agreed, the word a shaky exhalation.
“Ma—aovet—tene—tams.”
Jak whimpered. “I don’t—”
“Say it,” Ra ordered, withholding her thigh.
Jak’s wrists jerked within Ra’s hold, but Ra was unmovable. “Mowvet ten tams.”
“Ma aovet, Jak. Ma a-o-vet.”
“Ma aovet.” Jak thrashed, trying to reach Ra’s body.
“That’s ‘I want’.” Ra placed her thigh once more between Jak’s legs.
“Ma aovet,” Jak agreed, melting against her. “Ma aovet!”
“Tene tams.” The wet-fabric-covered thigh was still motionless.
Jak repeated the words in a plaintive moan. “Tene tams.”
“That’s ‘your skin’.”
“Ma aovet tene tams.” Jak squirmed against her thigh in desperation. “Ma aovet tene tams!” Tears spilled down Jak’s cheeks from a torrent of emotions, not the least of which was frustration. “Ma aovet ta,” Jak pleaded, recalling from somewhere that ta was “you”. “Ma aovetta.”
“Ai, Jak, mené lif, ma aovettá.” Ra reached into the swirling water and tore the hem of her constricting gown up the middle, rending it until not only her legs but her breasts were freed from it. “Mene tams.” She offered it at last, bare flesh slipping against bare flesh, to Jak’s immense relief and delight. “Maísch tené ra,” she whispered as Jak’s legendary control slipped away into a delicious, unstoppable release. “I am your reason. I am your Ra.”
She released Jak’s arms, and Jak slid them around her, melding into her like slick seaweed beneath the water. Ra fell backward under Jak’s enthusiastic embrace, and they both plunged for a moment into the heat. As they came up, Jak kissed Ra hungrily, climbing her body when Ra stood and leaned back against the side of the bath. When Ra took a breath, Jak let go and sank into the water, knees on the tiles at the bottom of the bath, and dipped beneath the surface to reach for Ra there. A fleeting kiss against the dark moss was all Jak got before being dragged up and away.
“Please,” Jak protested through the streaming tears of bathwater as Ra thwarted any movement with a tight grip of her fingers in the hair at Jak’s forehead.
Ra’s refusal was firm. “I have not entered you, and you will not enter me. Not even with your tongue.”
“But why? What difference does it make
? I don’t want it, and you do.”
“Penetration,” said Ra with an apologetic kiss as she relaxed her grip, “is for you a balance of power. Until it isn’t, nai bessmaport. I won’t.”
Ahr dreamt of Ra, the dark god he’d been before renaissance, taking Ahr, as herself, on the bed where he now slept. He was weeping, overcome with a tide of emotion as Ra had often left her, and climaxed as he woke. The sensation was rapturous, and he moaned Ra’s name, clutching the sheets, before he remembered this was now and the copulating ghosts were no more.
He rubbed his hand against his softening cock, expecting to feel an embarrassing damp through the cotton fabric, but there was none. But he’d come, he was sure of it—though it had felt not like ejaculation but like the internal thunder of his once-female sex.
Nine: Abstraction
Rhyman was bustling. Ume had made good time, fortunate enough to find a caravan heading for the Delta a few towns south of Stórströnd, and had reached the city in just over two weeks. She remembered the Deltan center from her brief stay here with Cree on their way to the falend, but those memories were marred by their arrest and return to In’La on Nesre’s orders. Still, she was shocked by the difference in it now. Few women wore the veil here, and no one questioned a woman traveling alone—even one in the veil, which Ume couldn’t resist, despite having not been a maiden since—well, since ever, she supposed. She’d lost her virginity as an adolescent boy.
She had to admit, it felt good to be back among the customs she’d once revered, even if those customs were rapidly changing. She’d gone for subtle with her garb, not wanting to attract attention, but it seemed Ume’s subtle was another woman’s flowering invitation to copulate, for she received plenty of offers for the latter.
One could take the courtesan out of the temple, she supposed, but one could never really take the temple courtesan out of the woman. Nor could she imagine why anyone would want to. They might not know her as the illustrious Maiden Sky here in Rhyman as she had once been known in Soth In’La, but the offers she was receiving were couched in the old ways, mostly respectful. It was clear they took her for a courtesan of some status.