Calliope's Wings

by Guin Archer

  With the exception, again, of Mari and Ruune, the women who served me chittered and fawned over me anew. They chorused how my cries of fulfillment could be heard throughout the Udonak and how savage it made the Zikta with their Pasha. Be it their voyeuristic tendencies or something altogether supernatural, me and Ruune’s not-quiet lovemaking had spurred other mated couples on.

  Shree tittered the most, apparently having gotten lucky with another slave she was sweet on. She thanked me profusely while she cleaned up my cuticles, stating that her man had never been more virile.

  Crap on a cracker…

  I slapped my hands over my cheeks, ignoring Tan’s horrified admonishment as I sunk below the water’s surface and dragged her latest hair-masterpiece out of her hands as I did so, then huffed out screaming bubbles where no-one could hear me.

  It looked like my plan worked a little too well.

  Gaddi ripped the shawl out of my hands when I groaned and tried to hide under it for at least the millionth time since breakfast.

  “You are being unnecessarily shy, uum Taytani! You have done a great service for Your Udon by claiming Your Xerbai last lune. All are thrilled with this!”

  No shit. Way to speak the obvious, Einstein.

  Not for the first time – not by far – since I emerged red-faced from my pillau, another Pasha came striding up to me to commandeer my hands so she could press her forehead to the backs of each in a sign of gratitude. I equated it to kissing the Pope’s ring. I didn’t know how the man could stand it. Then again, I doubted his received genuflection was due to screwing loud enough for his voice to be dubbed into a porno.

  Ruune, bless his hermaphroditic heart, was prouder than a damned peacock as the Zikta grunted at him with approval while the Pasha beamed at him around their daintier tusks. The Udon that had only so recently treated him as the lowest of slaves was suddenly overwhelmingly smitten with him. I liked that he was finally being treated well, but I hated that it was only because of my claiming of him that it was so.

  I also hated that everyone was treating my having sex like it was the coming of Christ. Or near to it, anyway.

  “Sit straight, my friend! You must be proud!”

  “Gaddi,” I hissed in reprimand even as I tore my shawl back for my own cowardly purposes. My young friend was in too good a mood to take offense to my dour manner. “I did not think so many would have heard me.”

  She tittered a laugh, swatting my thigh like she thought I was being funny and cute. I wasn’t.

  “Do not be foolish. Your voice could be heard, yes, but Your power was great!” She all but bounced off her damn pillow beside me. She was hopping like a jackrabbit on speed. Adis was situated to Gaddi’s other side, her pupilless eyes rolling at her friend’s antics. My ladies had set us up with tea and pastries before leaving us be.

  I didn’t let Mari’et get far. I snatched her tunic’s skirt and fisted it like a lifeline. My pursed lips told her that I wasn’t going to be left alone to these laughing hyenas who were my new peoples.

  Speaking of…

  Mari’s hand found my back and she slipped some much-needed healing heat into me. My body had been locking up since the first grateful Pasha found me to give her hand-kisses of thanks. The healing balm of her energies helped to keep me from exploding out of my skin.

  Yeah, my plan definitely had long-reaching consequences.

  I wanted to be welcomed back to the Udon. I made it happen.

  “Innintani,” Adis’s voice, calm and husky, drew my focus out of my hands. She wasn’t looking at me. Instead, she was staring into the yawning space between the front of my pillau and the other nearby pillau. Her lips were pinched straight.

  Uh-oh.

  Rohahn and Forte stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a lumbering-tall Mahzri male behind them. The Mahzri barked angry sounds until more of his kind padded closer. Sekhmet, who had been napping quietly nearby, lifted herself to standing so she could march up to the new male. I couldn’t believe it, but the male was bigger than her. He was more like a bull-elephant in height. Like, a foot taller than my Big Mama.

  Dayum!

  Sekhemt arched her head up while the male’s came down, they nuzzled, and then the two Mahzri disappeared. My girl’s bark was a little deeper and louder than the others. The ones that’d come at the big one’s call stayed, standing sentry around my pillau. She must’ve had queenly business to attend to.

  Then again…

  “Uum Taytani,” the two Zikta ‘bowed’ at the same time, their hands open and out while they dipped their heads low. When they met my eyes, I could see that shit had hit the fan.

  “What is wrong?”

  “Come forward, kut.” At Rohahn’s command, a badly-beaten woman limped forward. She kept her face pointed towards the ground and wouldn’t meet my eyes even when she hit her knees to prostrate herself at my feet. “This was the only surviving kut of Uptip.”

  Fucknut.

  I pushed out of my seat so I could kneel over the slavewoman. She shook in fear of me, but it wasn’t surprising given her prior Mistress.

  “I will heal you,” I told her gently. Then, just as I promised, I bathed her aura with mine and began to fix her hurts. I grinned when I heard her relieved sigh and skimmed my fingers across the backs of her hands when she curled them around my ankles desperately. The poor female was a mess.

  “Yakpa, kut. Yuum Taytani waits.”

  “What is your name?” I used a hooked finger to pull her face up to mine from beneath her chin. Her eyes were watery with tears.

  “I have no name, uum Taytani.”

  Rage curdled in my guts. I tempered it enough that I wasn’t going to curse at her. Not when she wasn’t the one my anger was aimed at. She wouldn’t be the first slave I’d ever met that wasn’t given the right of a name. God knew my own Masters often changed mine to derogatory ones for their sick pleasures.

  “You will think of one. Choose a name and claim it as your own. For now, I will call you Bess. Is that to your liking? It was the calling of someone I knew in my home who looks much like you.” She did, too. She was definitely orc, yeah, but she had the same brow-structure and cheeks as a boisterous woman that worked down the road from my shop. She was the one that gave me my fix of coffee every morning and an overstuffed éclair.

  I missed ole Bess and her shamelessness.

  “I am honored, uum Taytani.” She sounded it, too. Then, she gulped and grew timid again.

  “What do you have to tell me, Bess?”

  “Rahvashti Uptip…”

  “She is Rahvashti no more,” Forte snarled down at her. I glared at him and Rohahn pivoted to fix a deadly look onto the other warrior. Forte wasn’t bothered by our censor. “Auum Taytani commands it.”

  “A-aichi, Zikta.”

  “Look at me, Bess.” When she did, I nodded once. “Continue. No one will interrupt you again.”

  “Uptip is a bad Mistress. Cruel. She has owned me since I was shimi. Treats me like I am drogba.” Intau’s version of a dog. She was treated like a dog. “I am overlooked because I do not speak. I do not fight. I just am. But I see. I see what she does to other kut. I hear what she says. She has seen Innintani before. I do not know, I vow on the One I do not, but I think she has slain them.”

  Well, there was a bit of vindication there for my own thoughts on the matter.

  “Mahzri do not like her. Pasha do not like her. Los’kah do not touch her.” Bess gulped. “She is touched by her brago.”

  Eww. Okay, I saw that one coming, but it’s still fucking disgusting.

  “How did you survive if her other kut were killed, Bess?”

  “I hid. That big Mahzri, I call him Unker, allowed me to hide behind him while Uptip killed the others. He kept me safe.” She let go of my ankle with one hand to graze her healed cheek. She blinked in surprise. Her wounds were old, likely made just before she ran from Uptip and had been healing on their own while we travelled. “Dashka, uum Taytani.”

  “Continue,
Bess.”

  She did. Dear God, did she. She rambled and rambled about Uptip. Ruune came over at some point and reseated me on my lounge. My bells emitted an incongruous melody that didn’t match with the fucked up things Bess was telling me.

  Uptip was a lying twat who lived in her illusions of grandeur. She hadn’t been accepted by the Rahvashti – which was a given title, not a born one – who came before her. They were so few and far between, though, that Uptip could play off her appearance to the betterment of her status within the Udon. It helped, too, that her brother was a Muir.

  Still didn’t understand how anyone knew that someone was born as a Muir, Xerbai, or Drake, though.

  Either way, Uptip played a good game. She may have been hated, but she was smart. Too smart. She slunk in and out of camps and towns, spouting the supposed word of the One. All the while, she gained possessions and power. Twice according to Bess, Uptip met with females who looked like me. They were unprotected and hiding away from this harsh world like I had. Only, they fell prey to the megalomaniac duo that was Uptip and Zek.

  I felt a little queasy by that point.

  When she mentioned how Uptip only recently was able to insinuate herself into the Udon proper, I was fighting a migraine. And horror.

  The Mahzri, as Bess said, hated Uptip. I thought that they couldn’t have known about the other women like me or they’d have killed the bitch themselves. Instead, they treated Uptip and Zek as their titles demanded because the Lubrei they trusted thought Uptip was something she wasn’t.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that’s where Sekhmet went. She was gathering her ‘troops’ to hunt Uptip down.

  I shouldn’t have let the defunct Rahvashti go.

  “Call for the Tohtahk,” I demanded once Bess was out of breath. I fisted my hand over my chest and tried to steady my heartbeat. “Use the Horn. Call him back here.”

  “It will be done, uum Taytani.” Rohahn grimaced even as he loosely shackled one of Bess’s arms to bring her to her feet. Curiously, I saw how gentle he was with her. I saw the way he looked her up and down and knew it wasn’t a clinical examination. The warrior was interested in the slave.

  Shit, shit, hairy monkey balls. I was praying he didn’t rape her.

  I wanted to think, though I didn’t know them well, that the Lubrei who were a part of my guard were better than that. If I didn’t, it’d crush my faith in their humanity at least a little bit. It’d lower them and make them more like the fiends I suffered at the hands of in the North.

  “It will take time,” Forte grunted. He shook his head at his fellow Tauren.

  “He has been gone a sol. Two. He would not be far.”

  “You misjudge the Mahzri. Unburdened by the itchto, they are able to travel much further than they do under our weight.” Still, he bobbed his head in a curt nod. “The Horn will summon him, but it will be sols before he is returned. If the One is favorable, he will not be on raid. Retreat from the cities is not a quick task.”

  Fucking shit! Why’d I have to hook up with a barbarian warlord? He’s out vikinging it up while there’s danger afoot.

  …wow. That sounded asinine even in my own head.

  Before I could open my mouth, the Horn was blowing. It scared the shit out of me because the first bugle was barely a few feet behind me. I slapped my hands over my ears and wondered how the fuck the Tauren and their big ears didn’t bleed from the volume of it.

  “Ido, Innintani,” Mari’et whispered to me. She helped me to my feet and steered me towards my pillau. Her gaze was sketchy as she looked around us, clearly on guard now that we were calling Kor back and the psychotic Uptip was on the loose. “It has been a long sol. You should rest.”

  It figured that Karma hated my ass. Now that I was finally looking on the upside and had had the best fuck of my life in this shit world, this bullshit sprung up.

  Just fucking peachy.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Four days.

  The Horn had been blaring for four days and still we had no sign of Kor cresting the horizon.

  I tried not to let that bother me.

  I was back in the lake and swimming in a tight circle. It was nearing nighttime and I’d skipped dinner. I was too worked up – and upset – to eat. My attendants didn’t like that. Ruune especially didn’t like it. He’d been on the shore only minutes before, trying to lure me in with uropa and Sky-nectar. His newly-changed, silvered eyes all but glowed with pleading. When I ignored him and dove back under, he took off in a huff. I breeched the surface with just enough time to see that tight ass of his marching away, two male Mahzri dogging his heels.

  He’d be back with reinforcements. As in, Mari’et and possibly even Gaddi.

  Whatever.

  Sekhmet was in the water with me, but she was a little further away. She was drinking greedily from the lake, her whole neck and most of her upper half bowed to reach the water. It was at times like this, I could almost mistake her for an animal and not a fully sentient creature. She wasn’t, though. She was as smart as any human or Tauren I’d ever met and I was beginning to contemplate teaching her sign-language.

  Well, maybe not ASL proper. I only knew a couple signs and those were a hold-over from when Mac would occasionally bring one of his work-buddies over who was chiefly deaf. Still, I figured I could teach Sekhmet what I knew and we could fill in the gaps and make up signs of our own.

  Seeming to feel my gaze on her, she stood back up straight and padded out to me. Once she was close enough, I moved so I could vault over her lower back. As I came out of the bitter lake, the serah made funny little chimes that were almost too low to be heard before the excess water sloshed out of them. Then, I was back to sounding like a walking, talking wind-chime.

  I pulled on the tunic I’d taken from one of Kor’s trunks to stave off the cold of encroaching night even though the fabric was going to be quickly saturated. It fit me like a super loose dress. It was a sack over my smaller frame. Still, it was a hell of a lot easier to get on than my dresses.

  My hair fell in a heavy braid down my back and the added chains of my bakal – which hadn’t been taken off since the night of the comet – were pressed against my skin by the tunic. Fingering one of the chains attached to my wrist, I marveled at the fact that I couldn’t get the damned things off. It was like the metal fused with itself.

  One of Sekhmet’s claws grabbed one of my feet and squeezed. I looked up at her and forced a smile. She knew what I was doing. I was trying to think of other, mundane shit so I didn’t keep wallowing in my pathetic feelings of abandonment.

  Kor had been gone for six days now, the first of which following my meltdown. That still chafed me. I know I freaked out, but if he really cared about me at all beyond my status as a supposed fallen angel, wouldn’t he have at least stayed to say goodbye? Moreover, he should’ve been back after so many days of the Horn blowing. It wasn’t like they were sounding without reason. The only other time they’d ever blown was when I was discovered in Blackburhn.

  Him being gone was eating at me.

  Ruune and I, bless that tusked male, spent all our nights together. I’d opened Pandora’s box by initiating sex with him. Now, we couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. There were times that my anxiety and fears crept up on me and Ruune always backed off, handing over control to me so I could feel better. It was him, I thought, that was keeping me grounded. Without him, I’d be going stir-crazy.

  Mari’et did her best to distract me during the long days. I’d taken to helping her again with the serums and poultices she made for the Udon and, when Gaddi and Adis visited, I chatted with them. Gaddi was on a kick thinking she was pregnant, sure that her Dorai had knocked her up. I hoped she was right because I’d hate to have her enthusiasm snuffed out by disappointment. She was ready to have a baby.

  The distractions only went so far, though.

  I hated to admit it, but I was missing Kor. The psychotic beast of a male that liked to growl at me more than anything a
nd I missed his ass.

  I wanted his run-from-a-crying-woman ass back.

  A distant howl caught my and Sekhmet’s attention. We turned as one to look up the cliff only to see reddish-orange light filling the sky. It wasn’t from the sun setting. No, the cliff was in the East and had the dark of night behind it. There shouldn’t have been any light up there unless…

  “Fire,” I whispered in horror even as the Mahzri, who’d been mostly milling around the lake, began trumpeting in fury. Sekhmet barked long and loud before taking off for the Udonak. I gripped her back tightly so I wouldn’t jettison off and watched as the herd charged for the cliff.

  Now that I was paying attention, I could hear the unearthly silence that’d taken over while I was in the lake. The Horn was absent and, now that I wasn’t stuck in my own head, I could hear the crackle of flames. The air was permeating with the scent of smolder and ash, too. I couldn’t believe I missed it.

  The howling, as we drew closer, became more intelligible. They were war-cries. Bellows of outrage. Curses.

  I yanked my blade out from Sekhmet’s saddle and tossed the sheath. I hoped it landed back in the satchel, but if it didn’t, there were worse things I could lose. Like my own life.

  Or my friends’ lives, I thought angrily as Big Mama crested the ledge with an almighty bugle.

  And unholy fury blazed in me when I saw the Hordesmen doling out death to the raiding interlopers. Even the females, some of which were Pasha, held weaponry with clear familiarity. Other, unknown Tauren, a gangly army of males wearing battle armor and leathers, stood against the Horde just barely because of their protective gear. I figured they had to have been mad to have invaded the Udonak as they had.

  It was like seeing Blackburhn burning all over again. The only differences being that the Horde didn’t scream in terror and hide and that, now that the Mahzri were involved, the invaders were being felled quicker than they could retreat.

  Still, when I saw a slave being run through the back with a spear by one of the fuckers that’d dared to charge on us, I saw red.

  I threw myself off Sekhmet as she ran, oblivious to the risk I was putting myself in, and dropped onto the foreigner’s back. My blade sunk between his shoulders, through his ribcage, and into his heart – or close to it – and he crashed to the ground. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. It wouldn’t be long for that end to meet him if it hadn’t already.