"Expulsion. That's a laugh."
"That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about! Sirin, look, I've got problems of my own, I don't dare get too deeply involved in yours. Understand? If I try to help, it'll just drag us both down together. But I'm your friend. At the very least I can warn you of what everyone but you can see coming down."
Still as a pillar Sirin sat. Her face was white as salt. "I'm marked," she said. "For the Teind."
You don't know that, Jane almost said. But something in Sirin's expression convinced her otherwise. "How can you be sure?"
"I scryed it. Three times. Once in a virgin speculum. Once in a pool of ink. Once in a cupped double-handful of my own blood."
"You can't be certain! Prediction is an imprecise science, after all."
"Three times? That's pretty damn sure."
Now at last Jane began to cry. She couldn't help it. "Oh, Sirin, how could you? You know as well as I do how dangerous scrying the future can be. Half the time what it shows you wouldn't happen if you hadn't foreseen it." She released Sirin's hands, intending to hug and reassure her. But her feelings welled up and instead she punched her in the shoulder, just as hard as she could. It was all too awful. "Damn you! Why?"
Emotionlessly, Sirin said, "I didn't have any reasons. I've never had any reasons to do anything. Maybe other people have reasons. But when I look inside myself it's like there was an emptiness inside where something ought to be but isn't. Why? I don't know. Why not?"
The crocodile leered down at them both. An ironic sparkle glinted in one dull glass eye and a silent chuckle threatened to stretch his grin so wide all his gray cotton stuffing would fall out. Mastering herself, Jane wiped her eyes against her sleeve. "You can still take steps to protect yourself."
"I've already done everything. I even looked into buying an exemption, that's how desperate I was."
"You could—"
"But since I'm not going to, what would be the point?" Suddenly Sirin laughed, shook her hair, and said, "Not another word. Let's go hang out in the student center. We'll have a soda, play a few hands of cards, dish a little gossip. That would be fun. But with so little time left to me, I don't want to waste any of it just talking and talking and talking about this thing."
Jane bit her lip and nodded. Together they started down the stairs. The crocodile dwindled above them. She could feel its scornful regard shrink to a hot point source of emotion and then wink out.
"Sirin? What you said about an exemption. You mean I could buy my way out of the Teind?"
"Forget I said anything. It's more money than you've got anyway."
* * *
As it turned out, the money an exemption from the Teind would cost was exorbitant and then some. Jane stopped by Dr. Nemesis's office for information, though she doubted she could hack the cost. She had the brochure in her purse the afternoon when Ratsnickle came by to ask after the gloves.
He caught her as she was leaving her dissection lab. The metal door clicked softly shut behind her, closing away the chill rows of cadavers on chrome gurneys. The refrigerator rooms were at the bottom of an obscure cul-de-sac, and so late in the day there was very little traffic. The halls were quiet.
Ahead, where the corridor turned, Monkey wheeled her bike into view, blocking the way. Ratsnickle strolled alongside her.
Jane stopped.
Leaving Monkey behind, Ratsnickle approached Jane. She waited, ready for anything he might have to say.
"Have you heard?" he asked. "Sirin's on the bane."
"What? I don't believe you." Flustered, because it fit so well, Jane said, "She wouldn't. Sirin's not like that."
A shrug. "Believe what you will." Down the hall, Monkey leaned against her bicycle, eyes two burning smudges of hatred. "You and I have things to talk about."
"I'm not going to steal for you. Not now, not again, not ever."
"There are ways and ways to make us even."
"I don't owe you a thing."
"Oh?" Ratsnickle's eyebrows rose. He held out his palm. "Give me the faun-skin gloves and I'll call it quits. I'll walk out of your life and you'll never see me again."
Jane said nothing. There was nothing she could say.
Ratsnickle glanced over his shoulder to determine that nobody but she and Monkey were about. Then slowly he unbuttoned his trousers in what he obviously thought a seductive manner, and hauled out his penis.
Jane felt an involuntary thrill of revulsion. Penises had never exactly impressed her as things of beauty, but Ratsnickle's was particularly ugly and faintly green as well, doubtless because his standards of cleanliness had allowed some mold or microscopic moss to establish itself there.
He watched her avidly, an electric grin splitting his face. Down below, his penis was hardening in small jerks, like some ludicrous rubber toy being inflated by a hand pump.
"Better put it away before it starts to draw flies," Jane said.
Ratsnickle's face twisted with anger. "You hypocrite! I was watching—you liked what you saw. You couldn't get enough of it. You wanted to go down on me right then and there." But he scooped it back into his trousers and rebuttoned them anyway.
"Funny. I could have sworn what I was thinking was that there's never a pair of pruning shears around when you need one."
Ratsnickle drew himself up and for an instant she thought he was going to hit her. But instead he seized her hand in both of his and kissed her knuckles. "Touché, sweet lady. But one touch is not a duel, nor does a single skirmish determine the battle. We shall meet again on the field of combat—dearest enemy."
He swaggered away, without even looking back to see if Monkey would follow.
* * *
As soon as he was gone, Jane ducked into the nearest bathroom to wash her hands.
The bathroom was tiled and painted a glossy black. Graffiti were painstakingly carved into the paint. Several generations of angular runes were visible through successive coats, palimpsests of anger and flip obscenity. Curved mirrors leaned over the sinks, so that Jane had to stare up into a distorted image of herself to check on her makeup.
The bathroom door slammed. A ballooning and deflating Monkey swam toward her in the mirror.
Monkey was in a state, her face red and her fists clenched. Her hair was a mess. "You bitch! You cat! You get your fucking claws out of my sweetie!"
"You can have him. I don't want any part of him." Jane went on washing her hands. "Goddess knows, the two of you deserve each other."
"Cute. Very cute. I know your devious little ways." Monkey began to cry. "I've done things for him that you never would. Not in a million years. I degraded myself for him."
Jane finished rinsing her hands. She cranked a paper towel from the dispenser. "Well, good for you."
"Don't give me any of your lip. Don't you fucking dare. I'm warning you." Suddenly Monkey staggered and lurched. She grabbed the edge of the sink to steady herself.
"Are you okay?" Jane asked cautiously.
"I thought for a second I was having a—" Monkey shook her head. It was obvious she'd lost the thread of what she was saying. She shivered convulsively. Then from a jacket pocket she removed a tissue-wrapped bundle. "Look at this." She peeled away the tissues to reveal a blown-glass unicorn. She set it down on the cosmetics shelf. "Ratsnickle bought me this on our first date." The sad little trinket caught the light and made it dance. "What did he ever buy for you?"
"Nothing."
"Damn straight, nothing!" Triumphantly, Monkey picked up the unicorn.
It shattered in her hand.
Jane stepped back, startled. Monkey stood as if transfixed, arm extended. Blood ran down her fingertips and dripped to the floor. "That's one small step for man," she said, "one giant leap for—" She gagged, and a spume of fish eyes poured from her mouth. They spilled down the front of her blouse.
"Monkey?"
"The surface is fine and powdery, it adheres in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the soles and sides of my foot." The voice that ca
me from Monkey's mouth was unlike anything Jane had ever heard, harsh and broken by static, as if she were speaking from somewhere hundreds of thousands of miles away. "I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles."
With the onset of the awen her pupils had clenched, sucking in the irises, and disappeared, leaving her eyes a hard milky white. She did not resist when Jane, mastering her horror, guided her to a sink and ran cold water over her bleeding hand. "It's a very soft surface," she said. There was a clean handkerchief in Jane's purse; she used it to bandage up Monkey's palm, hoping there weren't any slivers of glass in the cuts. "But here and there, where I probe with the contingency sample collector, I run into very hard surface."
"Hard surface," Jane repeated. She moistened a paper towel and wiped the vomit from the corners of Monkey's mouth. A toilet flushed and a rusalka emerged from a stall. She gave the two of them an odd look and left without washing her hands. Jane realized that she had to decide whether to leave her roommate here for the night or not. She started for the door, came back to the small figure slumped on the floor, started for the door again. She could not leave. Finally she sighed. "I'm taking you home, Monkey." Her roommate nodded dreamily. "This certainly has to be the most historic phone call ever made."
* * *
Monkey's bicycle was leaning against the wall outside, and Jane's was in a locker not far away. Monkey was in no shape to ride, but luckily there was a conversion kit in her saddlebags. Jane got out a wrench and deftly connected the two with crossbars, matched gears and slaved the pedals, and shipped one set of handlebars. Before long she had a four-wheeler with a sling seat low in the rear and the driver's seat high at the front. Her roommate reclining in deathlike languor behind her, Jane started off.
Two changes of elevator later, they were back in Habundia. When they got to their room, Monkey climbed weakly from the tandem, stumbled, and almost fell. Jane unlocked the door, seized Monkey by the nape of her blouse, and guided her toward her bed. One shove and she tumbled facedown on top of the counterpane.
Jane swung Monkey's legs onto the bed and rolled her over on her back. Monkey's face was gray, but when Jane laid a finger under her nostrils, there was a warm touch of breath. She yanked off Monkey's shoes and began to undo her clothes. Then she thought better of it. There were limits.
It took ten minutes to disengage the bicycles and put them away. When she was done, Jane found herself too worked up even to think of studying. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she stared at her roommate with loathing.
There was a knock on the door.
"Won't this stupid day ever end?" Jane strode to the door and flung it open. "What!"
A buxom little spunkie grinned up at her. "Billy Bugaboo's waiting for you in the lobby. He's got a banana in his pocket that I think he wants to give you."
"Yeah, well, you can tell him—"
"He said to tell you that he got the thing you wanted."
"Oh."
"So what should I tell him?"
"Shit." Jane was tired. She was feeling ill-used and angry and distinctly antisocial. The timing was pure Billy Bugaboo. "Tell him I'll be down as soon as I can put together a change of underwear."
* * *
"Do you want me to wear this?"
"No, I will." She laid her blouse aside, turned her back to Billy. "Help me with this bra, will you?" While he fumbled with the little hooks, she asked, "Did you have any trouble stealing it?"
"What does it matter? I got the fucking thing."
"Why, Billy," she said in surprise. "That doesn't sound a bit like you."
"I'm sorry, it's just—I don't know." Confused and embarrassed, Billy busied himself undoing the buttons of his shirt. Briefly, he had loomed larger in Jane's sight. Now he dwindled to his former stature. "I just kind of wish it didn't have to be like this."
"That was the deal, remember?" Jane looked at him with mingled guilt and scorn. What a wet, hopeless thing he was! But she was careful not to let it show. Gently, she said, "Sometimes people want things they shouldn't. I'm trusting you, Billy." Then, when he did not reply, "It'll be nice. I promise."
She kicked free of her jeans. Billy folded his and put them on the dresser. They were both naked now. "Give it to me," she said.
Billy's was a box of a room, as sparely arranged as a stage setting. No rugs on the floor. No posters on the wall. It had a bed, a dresser, a chair, and a lamp—one of each. A short stack of textbooks rested on the dresser beside the lamp. With the curtain drawn and the overhead dimmed, it felt like the hushed moment before a performance begins.
Billy went to his closet and brought out the jacket.
It was the right one for sure—she recognized the patches and the worn and frayed places as well. This was Puck Aleshire's own jacket. The smell of it was unmistakable.
She draped it over her shoulders. It was heavier than she'd expected, and she liked that. It felt hot against her flesh, and the fact of being partially covered made the rest of her seem exposed and vulnerable. The mingled scents of Puck and leather wrapped themselves about her. She closed her eyes. "C'mere," she said.
Billy bent, slid his arms under the jacket, and hugged her close. Jane raised her mouth to his. She stood on her tiptoes, so that Little Jane rubbed against his cock. She could feel his veins hammering. He was ready to pop already, and rather than try to nurse that first anxious orgasm along, she decided to see how quickly she could bring him off.
Drawing back, she cupped a hand about Billy's stones, squeezing them slightly, balancing two against one. She licked his nipples, sucked them hard, teased them with small bites. Billy's hands clutched her head, and he made a low noise at the back of his throat, like some marsh beast calling across the night for its mate.
Jane slid her hand upward and squeezed. The jacket started to slip from her shoulders, and she reached around quickly to lift it back. She began moving her hand, long hard strokes up and down. "You like that?"
"Yess."
"Good." She kept stroking. Up and down. Faster.
With a small cry of dismay, he spurted. Warm sperm gushed over both their bellies and down the side of her hand.
Jane hooked a leg behind him and toppled him over on the bed. She crawled after him. "What a mess," she murmured. "What a sticky, sticky mess." Seizing hold of his softening member, she shifted herself around so that her crotch was level with Billy's mouth. Then she began to lick his belly clean.
By the time she had worked her tongue all the way down that long, long torso, Billy was hard again. Without her having to tell him to, he began to lick her abdomen, performing the same service for her that she had for him.
"I left a pair of aviator glasses on the chair with my blouse," Jane said after a while. "Be a sweet and get them for me, will you?"
Obeying, Billy grumbled, "I like looking into your eyes."
"It's three-quarters of my final grade," Jane lied. "You don't want to see me flunk out, do you?" She fit them on. "Can you see anything?"
"Of course I can't," he said. "If I stare real hard I can see that your eyes are shut."
"Then don't. Now you have to promise not to say another word until we're done." Forestalling his protest, she added, "This is for my thesis, remember? I'm not asking much. And tonight, anything you want, I'll do. Whatever you want, wherever you want it—go right ahead. But you can't speak. That's just the way the esoteric arts work."
The truth was that esoterica was strictly brew-your-own, irreproducible, a set of techniques and skills without recipes, rituals, or road maps. Half its power came from discovery, from meeting and overcoming one's embarrassment, fear, and even disgust. But some of the things Jane had in mind to do tonight, she could only enjoy if she pretended Billy B were somebody else.
She rubbed the side of her face against his cock and thought, how smooth and silky. So hard, she thought, so big. She closed her mouth about its tip and thought, how salty my Puck tastes!
Time melted away.
; Through most of the journey she was like the navigator of a small ship, moving surely with the currents, trimming the canvas to catch more wind, running before the squall. She was skimming over the surface at fantastic speed, the water hissing, the sails creaking with the strain. Then suddenly, all the oceans united to surge up beneath her, and she lost control. Billy was on top of her when it happened. She began to struggle wildly.
Alarmed, Billy started to pull back, but she grabbed him and slammed him back down on top of her. Puck wouldn't pull back. He'd be relentless. He was pounding away at her—"Faster!" she muttered—like a wild animal in rut. She raked his back with her nails, hard enough to draw blood. It only made him hotter. He was mad with lust. His passion was so great now that he'd lost all track of her identity. He no longer cared that it was her beneath him. It could have been anybody. The fury of his need obliterated all thought.
She was close to it now. Jane wriggled down inside the jacket so she could bury her face in the collar. She breathed in the smell of leather. Puck's scent imbued the jacket. It rose most strongly from the armpits but the tang of him was everywhere. She was slippery with sweat herself. Their smells mingled and rose in an alchemical marriage, forming something rich and wild. She took the jacket between her teeth and bit down hard. She was going to come.
Sex energy was most accessible at the moment of orgasm. This was why adepts were usually female. Where a witch might have a string, a series, an archipelago of orgasms to work with, the warlock was (usually) limited to one. Males tended to gravitate to the necromantic arts, it taking no special talent to kill things. Jane knew, though, she'd have to work with the one. Inexperienced as she was, it was first time or never.
Marshaling her resources, she concentrated on identifying, isolating and distancing herself from the power rising within. Her mind closed about it like two hands trapping a thrush. A perfect and universal stillness seized her. Briefly, she was free of all bounds.
The Iron Dragon's Daughter Page 27