by Addison Cain
Strong as she was, Sigil was lesser than the humans’ overlord.
And Sovereign paid for it. Frustration over such thoughts had cost the emperor a good deal of blood when he fucked her. Sigil attacked outright, dug in her nails, bit in her frenzy—as if to prove to them both she was strong enough to dislodge him should she want to. When he held her down, when he fought back and gnawed her nape, Sigil came so hard she blanked, and then she’d keep coming until he filled her with that poisoned ejaculate that altered her chemistry.
After that first morning she’d sucked Karhl’s pierced cock down her throat, she’d also rejected the Lord Commander’s advances—his company—for the last three days. That left her with the constant presence of Arden, who would sometimes just hold her hand, and pretend he could not see her searching out exits when she spent too much time thinking and not enough time reading.
This new person inside her, this acquiescent player on the stage, Sigil didn’t know her. This new person was almost always wretched, felt fear, worried. This new person found herself comforted simply being near the creature she hated most... a creature who was stronger than her, who had hurt her, who’d brought more misery into her life, but who could make her feel so very good.
“You feel suffocated with all of this.” Sovereign spoke as if he could understand her thoughts, rubbing at her nape until wild eyes lost some of their passion. “There is a terrace outside our bedchamber, secluded away from the eyes of any others. Fresh air, the sun, might be a welcome change?”
What terrace? There were no doors beside the vast archway that led to her chamber. There was only more of that jewel-toned, silvery stained glass Sigil could not break. She’d tried.
Uncustomarily quiet, she let him lead her from the room, through dark halls, to the place where the emperor had fucked her only hours ago. He waved his hand over carved wall and it parted, sunlight breaking through a seam so well crafted, Sigil would not have found the portal otherwise.
Back in the dressing chamber, Dryden snarled at Arden. “You are not doing well enough!”
Golden eyes snapped to the man swishing black embroidered robes in his pacing. “Sigil hates your contrived pageantry. Your attempt to force our female into the role of the Adherent’s crafted Imperial Consort bore her. The demigod you feed the masses does not exist, no matter how much you long to parade her about for humans to gawk at.”
Outranking the Herald, Dryden lifted his chin and spoke snidely. “What would you have her do? Walk the halls naked as she walks these rooms, as she existed in the Water Palace? Her success within the imperium requires assent to politics. Court dress displays power, rank. Centuries lie ahead of her, but her actions now will forever define the tenure of Convert sentiment, of alien regard. Adherents exist to assure her success. It is my duty to see her prosperous!”
***
The fourth day Sigil woke to the feel of Sovereign already inside her—his latest trick—so he might mount her before her full physical onslaught might begin. Rolling his hips, grinding to tempt her to sensuality, to coax a soft response, drew out a pleasured gasp and a few precious moments of Sigil’s compliance. He whispered in her ear that he loved her, fought to keep her between waking and dreaming so she might be taken without her penchant for violence.
Sovereign craved softer connection.
She refused. Understanding what she needed from the male to keep her mind sharp, even acquiescing to the act, was one thing. But she would not lay with Sovereign as she had sometimes lain with Que.
If she had to mate him, then they would fuck. Period.
By the time Sovereign came roaring, she had bitten him, torn off pieces, left marks around his neck from the powerful squeeze her grip offered his throat. As always, Sovereign had brought her body to a point that climax made her vision go white. She’d lay panting, sated and pleased, and let him pet her when she was too scattered to scratch or claw anymore. He’d kiss each wound their play had inspired, tease his tongue in her mouth until she was drunk on him, and if he was clever, slip his cock back into her body to ride her as a lover rode what he adored.
The claws would return as soon as her pleasure began to crest. Restraining her was the only way to take her gently. Even so, he could only manage a few minutes.
“Karhl longs to return to you Sigil. You enjoy his touch.” Warm words Sovereign cooed at her ear. “We could share you again.”
Knowing her resistance to soft touches aggravated the emperor only brought Sigil more joy in denying them. Furthermore, Sovereign wanted the Lord Commander there to further his own agenda, she was sure of it. No answer was given, only a groan when clever fingers pinched down each bone in her spine.
“He personally stands guard at the gate to this wing, has not slept in his vigil—allows none to enter or disturb your peace, though some have tried.”
Voice hoarse, Sigil refuted, “Dryden enters. The women enter.”
“They have never left, Sigil. They keep to their rooms when not in use to you. Only I enter and exit that gate.”
The all-important High Adherent was locked in with her? The concept seemed a bit ridiculous. Sovereign caught the twitch at the corner of her mouth, and gave it a lingering kiss. “Why do you dislike the Adherents?”
“I dislike you all.”
With a smug smile in his voice, Sovereign disagreed. “That is not true, beloved.”
His touch on her spine ended, the male rolling their bodies until the mattress was at her back. Eyes holding hers, he waited for an answer. Instead, Sigil chose a subject that made no sense, that pestered her thinking. “On the hologram, Corths holds Jerla’s hand. Does he do so because he knows I’m watching?”
Sovereign seemed to consider, lightly pursing his lips. “Corths is unusual. Though stronger than any human, comparatively he is physically inferior to his Brothers. Had he not been only a child when the Alliance fell, he would have died in battle. His strength lies in an intellect both creative and brilliant. He is one of the greatest medical minds in our universe.” Three awkward words summed it up. “He is soft.”
Weakness did not advance one through the ranks of the Brotherhood. “Yet he claims a high rank.”
Scoffing, Sovereign nuzzled her cheek. “Did you imagine I would leave you in the care of an unworthy Brother for forty-seven years?”
The tension left her limbs, Sigil went lax. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she kept her eyes shut. Face in a grimace, she longed to scrub her eyes with the meat of her palm, to roll onto her belly and hide in her pillow. “I want...”
Enthusiastic fervor came too eager in Sovereign’s voice. “What do you want?”
The obvious answers—freedom, Jerla, the death of the empire—seemed too simple. Like a rope pulled too tight, the fibers holding Sigil together snapped, the cord frayed, and a fragmented girl looked into eyes like the ocean. Impulse moved her when perhaps she should have been still. But it was too late. Sigil’s lips crashed into the surprised, parted mouth of a thrilled man, her hand cupped his cheek, and she acted.
A crack, a wheeze of breath, and Sovereign lay under her, his neck broken. Eyes rolling in their sockets to find her, the emperor took in her confusion. How she’d manage it, he was not entirely certain—how she seemed to hover, to lay his body in a position that might increase comfort, bizarre.
Pulling at her hair, Sigil sat on her haunches and stared down at the strongest of the Brotherhood laid out before her. It was hard for her to breathe, though not as hard as it was for him. Sovereign’s spinal cord, though not severed, was severely compressed.
He couldn’t move.
He couldn’t speak, lips parting like a fish out of water.
She could kill him at that very moment... and she wanted to—longed for it greatly.
“It would be so easy...” Her voice, the grain to it, sounded nothing like her. Tears fell down reddened cheeks to behold such a sight, the little rivers rubbed away by the back of her hand. “You cannot change what I am.”
; Icy eyes darted to the invisible door between her and the terrace, the one she could not open, though she’d tried in passing when watchful eyes might not notice. Sovereign was the key. Thoughts of gnawing through his wrist, of taking his hand for a trophy, were quickly abandoned, for Sigil did not know how long she had before the call to arms was made.
She hefted his dead weight, lifted the emperor’s limp arm, and heard the hiss of lock decompression when it was waved before the wall. Laying him carefully down, smoothing back tousled dark hair, she left Sovereign with a view of the broken sky over Irdesi Prime and leapt naked from the balcony and into the dark.
Chapter 7
During another burst of short-lived rain, Sigil found cover beneath a sand colored awning. At her back, the air was warm and smelled of freshly baked bread. But it was not the rain, or hunger, that drove her there. It was a mind almost as vacant of emotion as Que’s—serene—amidst a flock buzzing in a tune she could not ignore. There she found a woman who appeared somewhere between young and old, almost ageless despite the light creases proving time marched on.
Leaning against the wall, arms casually crossed over the brown, stolen raiment of the lowest caste, Sigil watched the woman hum and knead dough.
She felt unharried, oddly comfortable.
After walking much of the city, merging with the pilgrims who moved from holy site to holy site, her bones were tired, her dread disconnected, and a moment’s quiet the most precious commodity she might steal.
The city was beyond her. A place like Irdesi should not exist, let alone serve as the seat of Imperial power. Hours searching, and Sigil had found no ships, no cruisers, no modern transportation in the capital. Converts moved by ancient means—walking until one’s legs ached, carrying burdens on their backs through the city’s avenues. Stranger still were the hover-carts pulled by four-legged animals that stank and shit in the street.
Life was lived as if all collected were primitives. Even the woman was making bread when machines could produce food in seconds.
“You may come inside.” The baker’s voice matched the mind, calm and even.
Sigil’s attention left the crowd to make cruel eyes at the baker. “I have no currency.”
Freckled cheeks fattened into a smile, left the woman beautiful. “There is a bench there. Sit.”
The bench in question was worn smooth from use, carved of wood, and most certainly from off-world. A swish of dirty robes, and Sigil sat, adjusting the hood concealing bright hair and the unnatural vibrancy of her eyes. “Am I to thank you?”
“You’re new to pilgrimage, I see.”
Lying seemed best. “I am.”
The woman’s eyes went back to dough braided between precise fingers. “The sensation, assimilation discomfort, will pass.”
Humans were no more assimilated than a swarm of mosquitos. “And what makes you so wise? You must have been born here?”
Unworried, a temperate answer was offered. “No. I was purified on Gvtiin IV.”
Shoulder blades pressed against the bakery walls, Sigil gripped her cloak tight around her. “And your family?”
“My family lacked the strength to surmount Conversion.” No trace of sadness echoed from the woman with flour embedded under her fingernails. She even had the audacity to gently smile.
“I lost my family too.” Her mother, her friend... Taking her eyes from the cracked tile floor to once again view the woman making bread, Sigil muttered, “but not to Conversion.”
A dark hand lifted a fresh bun from the pile at the baker’s elbow. “Here.”
Gifts were never freely given, of that Sigil was certain. “What do you want for it?”
“Your opinion.” The smile in her words lightened the air. “This is a new recipe I was hoping to take in offering to the palace. Do you like it?”
It smelled good, sat warm in Sigil’s grip when she snatched at the treat. One taste was better than all the confections piled high by the Brotherhood up in their bastion. But when Sigil swallowed, the dough sat thick in her throat. Her eyes watered. “I like it.”
Sagely, the baker filled an earthenware cup with water and left it on the counter where her guest might reach. “Where are you from?”
Sigil was unsure what an honest answer to that question might be. Condor? The lonely planet where she hunted humans for food? Que’s ship? Pax? “I was born on a moon hovering over an enemy world very different from this place. I never liked it there.”
“I can’t blame you for that. Sounds like the stage for a great deal of discord.”
Smarter words no human had ever spoken. Looking to the cup, Sigil took it. The water had a mineral taste, another bite of bread a hint at honey, both softening Sigil’s next words. “I have never seen a living being create bread.”
“Simplicity is the key to bliss.” Thin shoulders shrugged, the woman winking as if her words had been a gentle jest. “It’s an art form, I think, to work with one’s hands.”
Maybe that was why the people in the strange human city seemed to prefer an antiquated lifestyle. “I used to dance,” Sigil found it hard to say aloud, “before Sovereign came. I think I understand what you mean. Now I have nothing... to do.”
But there were always things the Brotherhood wanted her to do, not one moment of their schedule interesting in any way.
“We all have our place.” The baker reached for another lump of dough. “That is the beauty of our society. If you cannot find yours, the Adherents will assign you a role that suits the needs of the collective. Enriching the whole will enrich you.”
The idea was not appealing. “Did they order you to make bread?”
“No. I was originally tasked to supply and clean a warship’s galley. In my work, I discovered a talent for enhancing soldier’s provisions with things collected from various stations and planets we passed. When my service contract was up for review, Admiral Gethman approved my request for access to Irdesi Prime. Transfer was granted. Now I make bread, I have a shop.”
Mention of a Brother chipped her calm, Sigil confounded that even something as insignificant as a woman making bread had been hand selected. “You were placed here as if part of the scenery. A puzzle piece. The Emperor wants the city this way...”
“This is holy ground, care must be taken in who is allowed to cultivate it.”
The conversation could not have been more foreign to Sigil. “I saw many holy sites today—tombs, statues from other worlds, monuments to battles, even the water that runs down the mountain you call holy.”
Brown eyes sparkling, the baker asked, “Did you see the Adherent’s Cathedral?”
“No.” And Sigil had no plan on approaching anywhere near it.
“The emperor’s lady has awoken. We live at a time in our empire when the miraculous has begun. Celebrations like Irdesi has never seen clog the square before it. I’ll sell my bread there later, and if I am lucky, tonight she’ll show herself to us.”
The joy in the stranger’s voice lessened the baker in Sigil’s eyes. “I understand she is reluctant to bear that title.”
Humming as if she too had heard such a rumor, the baker said, “Humility is her greatest attribute. The Consort’s example shames those who try to reach too far.”
Here was Sigil’s chance to see what effect a taboo word might have. “Like the Soshiia?”
Spitting on the floor, the baker lost the internal peace which had attracted Sigil in the first place. “Unsalvageable are a taint she has already begun to flush out. The Imperial Consort will cleanse the ranks of those who refuse all which our lady’s suffering has given us.”
Face emotionless, Sigil stared. “...and you will make bread.”
“And one day my offering may sit on her table.”
The amount of food left ignored each day on that long, black table—how much of it had been made by the hands of people who revered a monster? “It was kind of you to give me something you intended for her.”
The baker’s smile returned, as did her
tranquility. “She would not want one of her people to go hungry.”
All her life, Sigil had walked through suffering masses and had little interest in those around her. She was nothing like what this woman described. “And the emperor,” the one Sigil had left hardly breathing, “What of him?”
“Incorruptible.”
A bit of water caught in Sigil’s throat, a cough—almost a laugh. “Next you’ll profess that Tessans don’t strangle their yellow hatchlings at birth, pretending golden scales denote a child that will be mentally unstable and dangerous to itself and others.” Lips curved, white teeth on display. “Have you ever seen a yellow scaled Tessan?”
“...no.”
“I have.” Dirty hood hiding the majority of her expression, Sigil cooed, “Their genocide is not due to mental instability. The Tessan Authority has them secretly murdered because yellow scaled males possess the same prowess as their superlative female counterparts.”
“I know nothing of these things.” Another smile, apple cheeked and glowing was offered. “My concerns hardly extend beyond the making of bread.”
Too much time Sigil had spent in one place. Standing, she sighed, “And that, lamb, is why you are happy and I am in misery.”
Sigil left the kind baker alive, a decision regretted almost immediately when Imperial soldiers grew abundant on the terrace mileage she was confined to.
Enough time had passed. Sovereign had healed, his anger roused. When they found her, he would punish her...
He would lock her away in a jail even darker than the city under its clouds and rain.
And this place—this kingdom—was where Converts aspired to be? So they might be some part of a commune specially selected to what? Impress her? Where their dwellings lacked the gaudy opulence in her palace prison? A beacon in the human universe...
What of the sumptuousness on the top of the mountain? What of the Great Houses lurking at court and married to her Brothers?