Calliope's Wings

by Guin Archer

  What a bitch. I was right.

  But…

  “What is Visivi?”

  Ruune’s shoulders sagged a fraction as he stopped walking. We were away from most others now with only a lagging troop of Mahzri at our heels. He looked down at me with a pensive expression on his dark, somewhat androgynous face.

  “The Three of an Innintani. Drake, Xerbai, and Muir.”

  “And? I am still confused.”

  “A Drake, as Tohtahk Kor is for You, is Your protector. He is Your kii against all foe. Xerbai, as I am, are tenders. Xerbai are the caretakers of our Innintani. We are Your hands and feet. Muir, such as Rahvashti Uptip’s brago, are the voice of an Innintani. They are the head of Your council and carry Your sacred word to all.”

  This was beginning to sound more and more like some trippy fantasy show that even Netflix wouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. No one would believe half this shit and it seemed like too much work for what it was worth. Too bad it wasn’t a TV show, though, and I was stuck living through it instead of just turning to a different channel.

  Hell, I would’ve given half my life-savings just for a commercial break!

  “The biis’a…Uptip…her brago is Muir?”

  “Yes. He curries favor with the Tohtahk frequently. Now that word has spread of Your coming, he will attempt to sway Kor into accepting him as Your Muir.” Ruune growled. “Our Tohtahk is likely to do so. Zek is physically weak, has no interest in fucking biis’a, and will not draw Your attentions away from Your Drake.”

  Did I say I sounded possessive? Yeah, no, Kor had me beat ten-fold. The only reason – and I didn’t care what argument he placed against it – Hulk-smash was okay with me fucking Ruune in the future was because he couldn’t get offspring off me. Supposedly. Plus, with me being afraid of him, Kor was dealing with the next best thing to making sure I was properly cared for.

  Ha. Ha ha. Snort. Guffaw.

  Cared for. What a pretty way to imply having another man have sex with me.

  “Where is this Zek now?”

  “With the Tohtahk. Preening to Kor’s kii, no doubt.” Translation; kissing ass or sucking his dick. That wasn’t going to fly with me.

  “Put me down.”

  “Why, uum Taytani?” Even though he questioned me, his body responded automatically to my command. I was lowered to the ground even before he called me queen.

  I brushed off my skirts.

  “I am going to my Dorai, of course. We have something to discuss.” Plus, I needed to scope out this new male I suspected was going to be an enemy of mine if only for his sister. I wasn’t accepting any more studs to my stable and definitely not any studs chosen for me by someone else!

  The battlegrounds were crude, but effective.

  The Zikta cheered and growled and roared with the best of them. Even the most vocal – and drunk – tailgaters at Superbowl didn’t get this rowdy. I felt a bit like a lamb walking into a wolf’s den. Even when they parted just enough to allow my slighter frame to fit through, they never ceased in their uproar.

  As I blazed – and by blazed, I mean tiptoed – through the throng, I looked into the ring set up. There were six warriors having it out. I couldn’t tell whose side they were on or if they were each on their own. All I know is that they were getting some phenomenal hits in against each other. When one was knocked clean out, his wrists were grabbed by the howling spectators and he was pulled bodily out of the ring.

  I found Kor sitting on what was essentially a crate while he sipped from a horn. I didn’t doubt it was the same slop the others were drowning themselves in. Luintak had one other calling card to it besides its red glass and the Udon. Aris was a super strong spirit akin to absinth. Some of my old Masters used to drink the shit. I was prone to Earth beers myself, but fuck! Aris could put hair on your chest, burn it off at the root, and come back again before you even managed to swallow one swig of it. Instant alcohol-poisoning.

  Tauren had to have radioactive livers to survive drinking as much of the aris as they did. God knew they would’ve been long dead otherwise.

  When his eyes found me, Kor smiled one of his barely-there grins. His new, silvered eyes glimmered, though. He held a hand out to me in offering. I was loath to take it, but it felt safer to be near him than getting jostled around by his warriors.

  “Biis’a do not often come to these hiskt. Too violent for their softer natures.” He drew me in and nuzzled my cheek for the barest of seconds. The Zikta were too consumed with the fight to notice us unless we put on a show. “There is something You desire, uum kisa-uu?”

  “How can you watch this?” I jerked my head towards the combatants. I heard a bone break, but refused to actually look to see who suffered it.

  Kor boomed a laugh. “We are Zikta!”

  Cheers rang out and everyone not presently occupied with getting their teeth knocked out tossed back the entire contents of their horns. My throat burned and my stomach turned to acid just thinking about how bad it’d taste in my own mouth.

  “Sit. Watch.” I didn’t get a choice as the big guy hooked me around the waist to pull me up onto one of his thighs. Hard. His lap was as hard and uncompromising as the rest of him. His taut muscles hurt a little under my emaciated ass. I shifted to get more comfortable and ended up butting into him. He didn’t seem to mind the closeness.

  I didn’t watch the match even though he did. Instead, I looked around for the likely culprit to be Uptip’s brother.

  He wasn’t difficult to find.

  Zek was stood behind Kor and to his right, so I was able to have a clear, uninterrupted view of him from my spot on the Tohtahk’s left thigh. The ‘Muir’ was a tall, ‘gangly’ Tauren. Even Ruune’s leaner musculature seemed blocky compared to this guy. His mohawk was adorned by copper baubles and rings. His bullring was slender and the same copper tone. He didn’t have any visible skol. His tusks weren’t pronounced and he had skin nearly as ‘fair’ as his sister’s. They bore a remarkable family resemblance.

  And that smile. Ugh! It was a lecherous, conniving look.

  “Innintani,” he bobbed his head when he caught my eye on him and moved forward. I was tickled when Kor moved us so that I was more or less guarded by his opposite shoulder and strong arm. Zek glowered and I giggled.

  Hmm. So, maybe Kor isn’t so keen on Zek after all.

  “You have not been given permission to approach yuum Taytani, Zek,” ‘my’ bruiser growled to the other male. His big hand stroked my back through the unbearably thin gown I wore.

  “I shall be Her Muir, uum Tohtahk. We will need to know each other better. Intimately.”

  Both me and Kor snarled at that, but it was Kor that spoke up. He reeled me closer still and sneered his jeweled tusks at the fool. Maybe that’s what Muir really meant. Fool. He was a straight-up fool.

  “You, los’kah fucker, will never touch uum Pasha. You are not Her Muir yet.”

  “I will be.”

  “Like hell,” I muttered in English. Then, I flattened my lips out and glared at him. I slid a hand over Kor’s shoulder and unconsciously kneaded the hard muscle to one side of his thick neck. His body eased infinitesimally underneath me and it was a heady feeling to know that my touch could do that to him.

  “We have not been introduced,” I informed the male in the Tongue. I lifted my chin and did my best to look my nose down at him even though he was only a little shorter than Kor. I donned my new titles like a cloak of impenetrable armor. “Es’a Taytani Calliope, Innintani and Blessing of Intau. You are?”

  “Es’a Muir Zek. Your Muir, Innintani.”

  What was it about him and his sister that they didn’t prescribe to the same ‘uum Taytani’ or ‘uum Innintani’ that everyone else did? It was like they were establishing distance while still maintaining proper respect. I bet they’d spit my name if they could.

  “You are no los’kah of mine,” I returned blandly. The bastard sniggered.

  “You will become used to me, I am sure. Auu
m Tohtahk searched me out many seasons ago. I am the most capable and established Muir for You…Innintani Calliope.”

  That pissed the big guy off.

  Before I could blink, he was roaring. I found myself all but tossed into Sekhmet’s waiting arms while Kor set himself in front of Zek. He gripped the other male by his neck and squeezed. He squeezed hard enough that I could see blood vessels pop and change Zek’s black eyes to a greyish hue. Kor brought their faces together so their tusks clacked.

  “You do not speak Her sacred calling, Lorun-piss. You forget your place.” As though to prove his words, he forced Zek to his knees in the dirt. The smaller male hissed briefly when his trou-covered knees struck the cracked earth. Cheers rang out from the Zikta around us and I knew they were finally paying attention to us and this new, unfair match.

  “Beg forgiveness,” Kor ordered him savagely, spittle coming from his thin, split lips.

  “Forgive me,” Zek capitulated with a wheedling, falsely sincere expression. I felt his gaze on me even though his lack of pupil – like all the other Tauren – kept me from seeing the action. I knew that look meant trouble for me.

  I’d need to watch my back from both him and his sister.

  I didn’t give my forgiveness. With anyone else, I’d have wanted them to use my name, but not this letch. No, a leech. He was a leech looking to suck up to the highest power to elevate himself. I knew that instinctively. And, not liking fake, I turned my attention to Kor’s back. His muscles rippled there with his controlled breaths and his skol glimmered in the firelight.

  “Let him go,” I told Kor even as I gently eased my way out of my girl’s arms. She let me down with a chitter and took a ‘seat’ beside Kor’s makeshift chair. She petted my legs through my skirts. “Come back to me and we will watch these hiskt together.”

  I would’ve bet every dollar to my name that he wouldn’t be distracted that easily. I thought he would’ve stayed right where he was, strangling the power-hungry asshole and forcing him to be subservient to me and him, but he didn’t. Instead, he thrust him away so forcefully he hit the ground and kept going. Only a pair of Mahzri bronze legs with their three toes stopped his momentum. The male Mahzri in question kicked Zek away from his feet.

  When Zek turned his head back up, he was frowning and had a cut over the bridge of his nose. There was a promise of retribution in him and I could see his previously subdued aura of sage green tint with brown and black as it flared angrily. It matched his sister’s almost exactly.

  Oh yes, I needed to keep from turning my back on this one.

  The Zikta closed ranks again, blocking Zek from sight.

  “Here,” Kor rumbled in a much softer tone. He retook his crate and waved simultaneously for me and to one of the waiting slaves. These slaves were all women wearing streaks of dark paint over their limbs and torsos, bandeaus, and the shortest leather wraps I’d ever seen in my life outside of the miniskirts most girls wore to clubs back on Earth. They were serving aris – and their bodies, apparently, when I saw one get bent in half to have a male rut her like an animal – to the reveling Zikta.

  I sat on Kor’s knee gingerly, stiffening when he used both of his huge mitts to orient me all the way across his lap, my head against a bicep and my feet balanced precariously on the crate by his hip. This was an oddly tender arrangement for our settings.

  “I have a gift for uum kisa-uu.” He grinned down at me even as his warriors geared up for another match. “You may only use it while with me.”

  “What sort of gift is that?” I sounded petulant and a little ungrateful. It made me wince. What kind of vapid witch was I turning into?

  Kor didn’t seem to take offense, just like he rarely took offense with me. It was like I couldn’t do anything to overturn the proverbial apple-cart of his not-so-delicate sensibilities.

  Okay…no. Liar liar. I could piss him off. All I had to do was run off into a pen of deathly ill slaves and use my power to heal them while also draining myself dry of energy. Or accuse him of trying to rape me again. That tended to work like a charm to crack him.

  “It is a gift to encourage closeness between You and I.” The free hand he didn’t have under my hip and ass stroked languidly down my legs. He rumbled a purr. “You fear me. You fear my touch. The way to get beyond this is for You to be familiar with my hand and my body.”

  He had a point, but it didn’t mean I wanted to reach that stage with him.

  The slavewoman returned, only she didn’t hold a crude tray of horns and sacs anymore. Instead, she had a beautiful bolt of material in her meticulously cleaned hands. I knew she had to have purposely and recently cleaned them because the paint no longer smeared lower than her elbows and she kept the bolt held well away from the rest of her body so it didn’t get sullied with her paint, sweat, or…

  Oh God, are those cum-stains?

  Kor took the bolt from her and barked in his savage tongue to get her going again.

  “You are tired,” he told me simply as he shook out the fabric, then spread it over me. Like my blankets, it had a ridiculously cool feel to it, even through my dress, that I sighed in comfort. The Southlands were hotter than a blister bug in a pepper patch. Even the nights tended not to get very cool. With my new, snowy white skin and a wimpy constitution, it was a wonder I didn’t turn into a walking, sun-blistered raspberry.

  “What is this?” I fingered the silky material of silver and electric blue even as I yawned.

  I probably should’ve taken a nap earlier like everyone wanted me to. Hell, my body wanted me to. I couldn’t, though. Maybe it was my mile-long stubborn streak, but I didn’t feel right lazing around and napping like a pampered princess. It made me feel weaker and more pathetic than I already did.

  “It is Your yist. It is a…shroud of sleep.” He loosely palmed the hood and rubbed the silken material against my chin. “You are a headstrong biis’a. You do not like to take rest in Your omma as You should. So I have had this made for You. It is an old tradition, one not seen often in these sol. Once, when the Udon was small and the Mahzri not so fond of the Lubrei, Pasha rode on the laps of their Dorai. He kept her safe in his arms and shielded her body with her yist while she was vulnerable in sleep.

  “Now, Mahzri are plentiful to the Lubrei and well-bonded. We serve their Vashti, so they ally with us. Los’kah and biis’a do not often ride together. You and I will. We will do as our ancestors once did. You, cocooned on my lap in Your yist, and my body to shield Yours.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, especially not with how rock hard he was and ungodly uncomfortable to serve as my own personal mattress, but he had a point. As much of a point as he had in me becoming familiarized with his touch. The better I knew him, the better off I’d be whenever he decided he’d had enough of my shying away from sex with him. It was just a matter of time.

  I also didn’t want to admit just how good the yist felt over me.

  I moaned against myself, rolling my face into his chest. He tipped it back with a thumb to my chin before flicking the hood up and over my head. Though it was magically cool to the touch, the fabric was heavy and thick. It was instantly pitch black under the hood, the roar of the hiskt dimmed through the fabric at my ears and entirely gone from sight.

  I started to fall asleep almost immediately. With no light coming in and the sound really no worse than Spike and Bomber playing Call of Duty at my place – I had the biggest TV of the four of us – I felt at least a little like I was at home. On Earth.

  Kor chuckled at the loud, huge yawn I made under the yist and into his chest.

  It was the last thing I heard before I dozed off.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Udon spent maybe another week and a half traveling through the desert before we reached the Sky-Grass Sea. Kajuke, they called it.

  Let me just say… Holy. Shit.

  I all but stood on Big Mama’s back, my hands braced on her shoulders, and looked out over the ‘sea’ of gently rustling grains, stalks, and grasse
s. The top of the endless field of grasses was taller even than Sekhmet’s plated head. The blades were a peculiar shade of greyish-green that flowed into the charcoal sands and smaller, blue-black dry grass elsewhere. Flowers with blooms bigger than I was tall stood even higher than the grasses. Their indigo-to-navy colorations were breathtaking.

  Best of all, there was a lake beneath the cliffside marking the edge of the desert. The Udonak was being set up on the desert side of the cliff. From what Kor told me, we would be camped for at least a couple of weeks. Weeks in which he’d be gone on raid and I’d be staying wrapped up all nice and pretty in the Udonak where it was ‘safe’.

  Ha ha. Yeah. Safe. Safe was a questionable term when I had a Rahvashti that was sniffing around the Tohtahk like he was fresh meat and her brother that was sniffing around me like I was, too. I didn’t trust those two. At all.

  Uptip couldn’t leave me well enough alone after our fateful encounter that night over a week ago. She kept trying to coax me into sitting and chatting with her – practice in becoming tersti, she claimed – every time we bedded down for the night. The way she looked at Ruune, too, set my teeth on edge. She wanted to fuck the poor Xerbai and other, more dubious things. I’d seen the condition of her new slaves. Uptip wasn’t a benevolent Mistress.

  Zek was worse. He constantly tried to ride up to Sekhmet’s side on ‘his’ Mahzri. Three times he got himself bucked from his saddle by the beastie because Big Mama conveyed with harsh shrieks that Zek wasn’t welcome near me. His Mahzri now never allowed his rider anywhere close to me while we were afoot.

  He still tried to corner me with his sister at nightfall, endeavoring to hear from me about all the edicts I would have to hand down once we reached Mel’lau. I didn’t miss how they pushed agendas. They spoke with fervent voices about things that sent shivers of revulsion up and down my spine. Things like ‘cleansing’ Luintak of the sullied and lesser. Things like ushering us into a new era for the ‘greater good’ of the Lubrei. Things like bringing death to the doubters in the Northlands.