“Sa-ha! Is that so?”Hadan slid his hand between her thighs. “So you find me unattractive?”
“I would not say so, Councilor.” She took a breath and then a chance. “But I do think on how fine you would look without your truss.”
Hadan nipped her hip gently. “You have succeeded in proposing something I have not tried. You intrigue me.”
Pimi reached back to touch a buckle of his armor. He slid across the couch to let her undress him. As she peeled the leather away, his crop sagged. The single day of food made a sad lump in skin that hung to his thighs.
Taking his face in her hands, Pimi lowered her mouth. He opened wide for her and accepted her offering eagerly. The nectar flowed into him until he tapped her arm. She lifted her head and put her hand on his crop, half-expecting him to not allow the intimacy. She pressed and the surface gave slightly. “You can hold more than that, I am certain.”
“You do not want me to overfill, do you?” He encircled his crop with his arms, as if amazed at his own girth, meager though it was to Pimi’s eyes.
She blanched at the memory of her embarrassment at harvest. “No. That was foolish of me. But I want you to be hard with my gift to you. It is what brides do for their grooms in my country.”
He let her push more food into him, until he broke gasping from her embrace. “Hell’s frozen gates. I cannot recall ever being this full, not even when setting out on a long campaign.”
Pimi slid a hand under his crop to the folds where his genitals were. She pulled the long forks of spiraling flesh out and held them, pulsing, lightly in her palm. Hadan stood to give her easier access, and staggered under his unfamiliar weight. He hissed. “How graceful I am. You see why we do not allow ourselves to be full. It would destroy us in battle.”
“But we do not plan to battle, do we Councilor?” She stroked his spirals until they writhed in her grasp. “Lie down for me?”
He gasped and lay down on the floor, then groaned. “The pressure…”
“Do you like it?”Pimi asked.
“I am surprised that I do.” He reached for her with a foot and curled his long toes around her ankle. “Show me what else they do in your country.”
Pimi let him guide her to stand over him. Her crop, so loose that it hung almost to the ground, required both of them to maneuver it onto him. She could stand, but not walk. As the weight settled and wrapped around Hadan he moaned with pleasure.
Pimi tucked his spirals into the folds of her egg chamber. She would not trigger ovulation for him, but still, she felt his flesh screw into her as if he could line the chamber with fertile seed.
As Maja had taught her and as Pimi had seen at the theater, she stimulated Hadan until he spasmed in ecstasy. At last, spent and sated, he lay on the carpet with his eyes half-closed in drowsy contentment.
Pimi waited until he fell asleep, and then shifted to grip his ankles with her toes. Sliding forward, she pushed her crop in front of her. It slid off the mound of his belly to cover his face.
He woke. Pimi leaned on him as Hadan struggled to free himself. Even half-empty, she still outweighed him and his own unfamiliar bulk fought him. He heaved under her, trying to disgorge.
Warm and sticky, the nectar stung the rug burn on the bottom of her crop. She felt him gag on the pap sealed around him by the skin of her belly.
Pimi held tight to his ankles as she clung to thoughts of her mother, of Duurir, and even of Keria. She leaned on him until he stopped struggling.
Holding as still as a river in Deep Winter, Pimi tried to feel for any sign of life, for any sign that he was not dead, that she had not killed him. Pimi retched at the thought, but held it down. For the moment, until she was certain he was dead, she needed all her weight.
She did not know how long she waited, but at last she was satisfied and released his ankles. Standing, Pimi tried to drag herself off of him. Her posture and weight held her pinned firmly. Panic flared in her lungs before she realized that she could simply disgorge. No one would care if she soiled the carpet.
She leaned as far over as she could, to avoid spattering herself with the nectar she spilled. The carpet was wet and thick with pap before Pimi could pull herself off Hadan.
With the excess skin of her crop bundled up and hidden in the truss of Hadan’s armor, Pimi strode with her best approximation of an Abarine warrior. Her legs trembled and cramped from the unaccustomed exercise. She would have to steal a varamid—two, with her mother—if they had any hope of escaping. She rested a hand on the satchel she’d taken from Hadan’s room. With luck, the maps would help them find their way home.
In the lower replete chamber, Pimi found her mother in the third alcove she entered. Kejari closed her eyes and turned fear-red as Pimi crossed the room. Moaning, her mother pushed back on her couch as far as her crop would allow her.
“Mother?” Pimi whispered.
Gasping through her muzzle, Pimi’s mother opened her eyes wide. Pimi undid the buckles and peeled the fetid leather thing off her mother’s face. The skin underneath was pasty and stank like the dead leaves on a watervine.
“Speak, wraith-child. Why do you haunt me?” Her mother touched her thumbs together in the ancient sign to ward off foul spirits. Pimi had not made such a childish sign since she was an adolescent passing under the burial nets.
“I am not a wraith. I am your natural daughter.” Pimi grabbed her mother’s hand, trying not to flinch at the stubs of thumb and finger. “Truth. Feel the warmth in my bones?”
“But you ruptured.”
“No. I over-filled and vomited.” The rest would have to wait until they were away. “I need you to disgorge.”
“Oh no.” Her mother reached for the muzzle with her free hand. “No. It would make Councilor Hadan angry.”
Pimi dropped the muzzle on the floor and captured her mother’s other hand. “He will not hurt you again. That is truth.”
Pimi did not have another set of armor for her mother, though she was able to fashion a truss from a hanging she had brought from Hadan’s apartment. Her hope was that her mother would be taken for an Abarine woman, perhaps a Councilor, but the hope was only a small one. In truth, she had thought of how to kill Hadan and find her mother, but the likelihood of her scheme succeeding had seemed so remote that she had been unable to imagine their actual escape from the compound. She knew only that on foot they did not stand a chance.
The sandstone labyrinth of halls threw the sound of every footfall back at Pimi, shattering her nerves with each blow. At her side, her mother followed with the blind trust of an infant.
Pimi stopped outside the pool of gaslight at the intersection of two halls. Behind her lay the replete quarters. The varamid stables were above ground and the hall to her left sloped up. In the absence of other clues, she steered her mother that way.
The light in the intersection blinded her to the dim hall beyond for a few steps. The man coming toward them might have materialized out of the wraithworld for all Pimi could see.
Toes clenching the floor with each stride, Pimi tried to effect the easy swagger of a warrior. Her legs trembled with every step closer and Hadan’s swords slapped against her back as if mocking her. What could she do with a sword?
Then they were abreast.
The man inclined his head, as to a superior, but gave no other indication of her passing. For the length of the hall, Pimi listened for some sound that he had realized her deception. Only gradually did it occur to her that perhaps his nocturnal errand was also something he did not want discovered. There was little reason for anyone to be active in the quiet of night. Still, with that encounter past, Pimi felt more secure.
Three more turns, following slopes and breezes led Pimi to an exterior hall. Through the small rounded windows that pierced the wall every arm’s span, she could see the fenced paddock of the stables. She slipped through the first door she found onto the Deep Yard fronting the buried city.
Her mother hung back at the door, staring up at the sk
y. Pimi glanced upward. What constellations would Duurir have seen there? “Mother, we must hurry.” It would be hours before anyone visited Hadan’s apartment—Dama was regularly gone until late morning on the nights that Hadan took her—but still Pimi did not want to stargaze.
Her mother’s tongue flicked out to wet her lips. “You go without me.” She still stared upward, backing into the hall.
“No and no. What sort of daughter would I be if I left you here?” The time in the replete caves must have addled her mother’s brain. Pimi reached for her hand.
“You would be a living child.” Her mother waved her mutilated hand in protest. “I do not want to go back. What is there for me?”
“Your family. Your duty.”
“Neither of them saved me here. Why do I owe them?”
“I have saved you.” Pimi drew herself up, praying that it was true. She saw though, that her mother had lost her sense of self. She needed a purpose. “And now I need you to save me.”
Pimi’s mother tore her gaze away from the sky. “Do not think to play my emotions. I have none left.”
“I am not playing. Look at me.” Pimi held her arms out, so her mother would look at the distinctive inlaid spirals of metal on Hadan’s armor. “You took me for Councilor Hadan. I am his match in build and coloring, but not in voice. If you tell the stable clerks that Councilor Hadan requires two varamids, do you think they will dare say no?”
Some of the life came back to her mother’s expression as she considered Pimi’s words. “Would they not expect you to ask for the steeds?”
Pimi pulled a scroll from her satchel in answer. “Not if I am occupied studying our plans for another raid.” The effort of keeping her voice to a whisper made her sound calmer than she felt.
Her mother’s face was unreadable in the shadows. “I would not have expected such plans from you, Pimi-min.”
“I’ve had nothing to do but plan and think.” Pimi pointed at the stables. “Now, we must go.”
The night sounds filled the space between them with the creaking cries of stargliders and the buzz of hairyworms burrowing in the rock cliffs. A varamid’s sleepy chirp seemed to break her mother’s daze. She adjusted her headscarf and stood straighter to show her full height. “Truth and full. You are truly my Councilor.”
With that, she led Pimi across to the stables moving with the magnificent swaying confidence of a matriarch. Pimi stopped at the edge of the paddock, and turned as if to allow the gaslight from within to fall on the scroll she held, but really so that her face was shadow obscured. Her gaze darted from the map to the great yard. The dim gaslights showed but a single guard at the main gate. She supposed that more would be in the gatehouse.
Behind her, the sharp clap of her mother’s hands broke the night quiet. “Councilor Hadan needs his varamid. You there, show haste.”
“Wha—” A young man’s voice, still muzzy with sleep.
“Did I invite you to speak?” The smack of flesh on flesh and the grunt that followed spoke the man’s answer for him. “Would you care to speak to the Councilor? Go and bring the steeds for which I asked.”
No response then but the man’s footfalls as he raced into the stable. Pimi’s hands shook the scroll she held, blending the words to a meaningless blur. What if he saw their lie and had gone to raise the alarm? The two swords strapped to her back would give her no aid if her treachery were discovered.
Her mother paced to her side and stood with head bowed over the scroll. “He is bringing them now,” she murmured, then pointed at a line on the page… heightened activity in the border… as if they were conferring on some important point of policy.
Pimi grunted, the only sound she trusted herself to make. Unrolling the scroll to another portion she pretended utter absorption while listening to the young man bring out the varamids. One of them squawked in protest.
“Councilor?” Her mother gestured to the waiting varamids. Pimi rolled the scroll, stuffed it back in her satchel and turned to mount. The boy kept his eyes downturned, as she had been taught to do. He never looked at her, but even so, it did not seem possible that she would get away.
Then, she was mounted and her mother rode beside her toward the front gates of the compound. Pimi strained to hear past the sound of her own pulse. The night sounds contained no surprises. The scrape of talons on gravel gave the only indication of their passing. Pimi could not draw breath for fear of destroying the silence.
At the main gate, a single guard waited, leaning against the armored wood, her head tipped down in half slumber. Other guards would be in the guardhouse, no more than seven arm’s spans away. Pimi’s mother pushed the varamid in front and said, “Sleeping on duty?”
The guard straightened abruptly, her blanch of embarrassment visible even in the dim gas lights. Her face whitened more when she saw Hadan’s armor, but she did not speak.
Pimi’s mother did. “Open the gate. The councilor and I are going out. I caution you to tell—”
An alarm undulated in a rising wail, echoing off the face of the sandstone cliffs so that it seemed to come from everywhere.
Gas lights flooded the Deep Yard with their bright hiss. In the barracks a clamor arose as warriors raced outside, some still donning their armor.
It had been too much to hope that Hadan’s body would stay undiscovered until morning.
As if unwilling to admit defeat now that she had committed herself, Pimi’s mother bellowed at the bewildered gatekeeper, “Open by order of Councilor Hadan.”
The gatekeeper, isolated and still groggy, slid back the massive steel bar that held the gate shut.
Before she had it fully open, Pimi’s mother pushed her varamid forward; its long taloned feet threw the ground behind it with each stride. Behind them, the din of warriors rose as they mounted varamids to chase Pimi and her mother.
Pimi squeezed the flanks of the varamid and leaned forward over its long neck, urging it to speed past the gate and down the twisting canyon road that lead from the mountain city. The road, so simple for the Abarine to defend, gave no easy egress; the first bend lay a scant thirty-four arm’s spans past the city gate.
As Pimi’s mother rounded the bend, she pulled back on her varamid’s reins. Four strides more and Pimi could see around the bend.
An army of men and women filled the pass.
They were trapped as surely as an irarad snared from the sky with a net. Pimi pulled her varamid to a halt, having nowhere else to run. Beside her, Mother half stood on the back of her varamid.
She would not be returned to the seraglio if she was caught. Neither of them would be allowed to live. Pimi reached over her head and fumbled a sword free of its sheath. Holding it aloft, she bellowed as if disgorging all the helplessness she had held inside.
An answering shout rose from the throats of Abarine men and women as they raced forward to pin Pimi and her mother between the two forces. How had she thought this would work?
In that frozen moment, an officer broke from the ranks of the soldiers behind them and brought his varamid beside hers. Not until he was close did she recognize him as Uramikk from Hadan’s apartment.
Uramikk kept his attention on the force facing them, watching for some signal. “Councilor. Did you plan to parley?”
She whipped around to face him. He still thought her to be Hadan. Pimi turned back to the front, as her mind caught up with her body. The troops in front of her must be from Repp-Virja. Flashes of Hadan’s conversation crystallized… other sorties might... stay within their borders…. The Abarine had not been chasing fugitives, they had been following their leader into battle.
If Uramikk thought she would parley, then that is what she would do. Pimi grunted, and kicked her varamid into motion. Her mother’s varamid followed with the flocking instinct of its kind.
The ranks toward which they rode leveled their weapons at her. Sweet goddess on the mount—the Repp-Virji thought she was attacking them. Pimi pulled up her varmid sharply.
Beyond what she had seen at the theater, she had no idea how someone would signal that they wanted to parley. And she could not say anything without Uramikk realizing that she was not who he thought she was; only the night and the armor hid her identity.
She swung off the varamid.
Uramikk said, “Councilor—”
Pimi held up a hand to stop him, keeping her face turned toward the Repp-Virji. Her legs wobbled as she strode forward four paces. The soldiers kept their weapons aimed at her, but made no move to attack, though surely they would willingly kill her at the slightest signal.
The line of men and women stirred and a group of four tall women stepped out to meet her. They stopped eight paces away. One said, “Speak, Councilor Hadan. I have at my back the combined forces of four of the Deep Houses of Repp-Virja with a warrant for your execution. Will you surrender for the sake of your followers or will you force us to lay open your gates by force?”
Pimi did not speak. Her voice would carry to the man behind her, as clearly as to the women in front. She dropped to her knees with Hadan’s sword held out in front of her and tilted her neck so far back in supplication that she stared at the sky. The cold stars glared back at her.
Someone pulled the sword from her grasp. Pimi squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the sword to come down on her own neck. If they killed her and her mother lived, it would be worth it.
“Wait!” To Pimi’s right, her mother said, “I beg you.”
Pimi opened her eyes and spun to face her mother. If she told them who Pimi really was, then the entire host of Abarine would fall upon them.
Her mother’s neck was tilted back in supplication, with her hands pressed to her crop as if ready to void all for them. Pimi gestured sharply to her mother to kneel. After a moment of hesitation, her mother lowered her eyes in submission and knelt.
Without looking at him, Pimi repeated the gesture at Uramikk. Her toes curled inward as she sought something to grip in her fear. The wind carried the sounds of armor creaking as the Abarines waited with her.
The Book of Apex: Volume 2 of Apex Magazine Page 25