by R. Lee Smith
“I? I live here. Just beyond thee and to thy left hand, the first door past the third lamp is mine own.” His muzzle split in a wolfish grin. “I am among those hungering things of mention. Therefore, swiftly go, lest thou attract my ravening eye.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then thou art a fool.”
“Am I? When you’re so much less than I am? You admit it every time I see you.” And she thought bitterly of Kazuul in the dining hall with his foot on her neck, Kazuul throwing Devlin down before the Black Door, Kazuul in his theater calling her his dog…Kazuul smiling into his cup while Letha slid sensuously down his body. No, she wasn’t jealous, but—
“Bow to me,” said Mara.
Suti’ok leaned back, his light eyes narrowed. He did not speak, but after several long breaths in perfect stillness, put his hands together at the level of his heart and coldly bent low.
“Not like that. The way you did before. On your knees.”
The hound sat, panting as it watched its unmoving master, and when Suti’ok at last swept back his long skirts and lowered himself to kneel, the hound rose up to dance. It laughed insanely while Mara and the demon ignored it, then dropped onto its belly and crawled up to rub its head on Suti’ok’s thigh. The demon placed both fists upon the damp stone floor and bowed low.
My dog…to stand when I will it, heel when I will it…
There was a powerful sense of vindictive pleasure in watching Suti’ok submit, but somehow, she could only think of Letha going slowly to her knees, the ribbon of her tongue trailing down his hard stomach while he smiled.
He made her promise to be faithful. He made her swear it with his foot on her neck and the whole time, he was fucking around. She wasn’t jealous, but she would not be humiliated, not by him, not by anyone. She was Mara, she was always in control…and she’d gone to him for a reason tonight, hadn’t she?
Mara walked toward him, stopping only when the hem of her gown brushed at his knuckles. The gown he’d given her. For all she knew, the gown he’d made for her. Dressing his loyal little dog.
She raised the heavy fabric, stretched out her bare foot, and Suti’ok wordlessly bent still further and touched his brow to her ankle. She could feel his breath against her toes, steady and deep and slow.
He was difficult to read, but one thing was certain: He wasn’t doing this because of Kazuul.
Mara pulled her skirts up around her waist. She didn’t think about what she was doing. Her heart still felt too hot and her mind sunk in some internal mire. She decided it must feel like being drunk, and she could understand for the first time the appeal if that was so. It was astonishingly liberating to be so freed from all sense of responsibility or consequence. Her body acted; she merely watched.
Suti’ok could hear what she was doing, but he did not move. The pale burn of his eyes bored over the floor, making the damp rock shimmer with reflected light. He did not say a word, although he knew that she was bare above him, bare to her belly and filled with rage.
“Kiss me,” said Mara.
She saw his eyeshine flicker, his glance darting left and right, a trapped animal seeking escape. Then he raised his head.
Mara’s neck beneath Kazuul’s foot and Letha pouting on his lap. Morality did in fact begin to pale.
The hound watched incuriously as its master rose onto his knees. Suti’ok touched one hand very lightly to her hip, the other encircled her thigh. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips firmly to the crown of her sex.
That was all. She could feel him breathing, and through his steady hands and unswerving touches, felt his mind leaping without thought, knowing they might at any moment be discovered. Then his mouth parted. His tongue slipped between the folds of her labia, snaking down to penetrate her, and then up again to tease at her clit. He sucked it between his lips with a ragged groan, and Mara shut her own eyes, breathing just a little faster as he serviced her.
Several minutes must have passed, uncounted by either of them. The hound dozed at Suti’ok’s side, whining now and then to protest this delay, but the demon was lost inside his own skin. Every thought that escaped his strange mind was devoted to her—her bittersweet taste, the silken feel of her petals against his tongue, the firmness of the thigh beneath his hand. He moved his mouth on her with great passion, but without urgency, drinking from her as from a cup and savoring every drop.
“Lie down,” said Mara, breaking the trance she held him in.
He dropped back upon his aching knees, passing a hand before his glazed eyes in something very like horror. Now he thought of Kazuul.
“Get on your back,” Mara ordered, and put her foot on his shoulder to start him moving.
He went, not quietly but trying to be, and the hound came up at once to lick his face and shiver adoringly. “Away with thee! Ska!” Suti’ok cried, and slapped his hand across his face, raging, “Would that thee had come at me with daggers!”
Mara pulled her robe off and dropped it. She rested her foot on his chest briefly, feeling each ragged rise and fall of his breath, and then stood astride his arching neck and knelt. He caught her hips, brought her back to his hungry mouth, and ravished her while she undid his belt and brought his rigid cock free. He groaned into her when she took him in her fists and that was the end of his restraint. With every breath that came to him after that, he groaned louder and louder as she sucked and squeezed at him, until he could do nothing but toss on his back and buck up at her, filling even the sound-swallowing tunnels of the lyceum with his haunted, deafening roars. It was not entirely wordless; twice, she heard him bellow in that other unknown tongue, and once, she heard the meaty smack of his fist as he drove his obsequious hound back, shouting, “Away, I say! Away, thou cur! Always thee to vex me!” but the rest was tortured wolfsong.
Finally, she rose up, ready to take him and ride him to the completion she had denied Kazuul, not because she was jealous, but because it was what she wanted and no one controlled her.
“Nay! Pray God, nay!” Suti’ok snatched at her, dragged her back and thrust his mouth against her in something like desperation. His arm cinched tight around her waist. With the other, he plunged two long fingers into her and pumped them fast.
She came, and, “Nay,” murmured Suti’ok, suckling and savaging at her as she slowly relaxed into his grip. “Hold thy killing will, I beg thee…hold…show some mercy.” He worked her to a second climax, a third, and finally, falling back with an anguished grimace, released her to take himself in his fist and join her in the last. Her ears rang with his hoarse howls. The hound, sulking a short distance away, added his madhouse baying to his master’s cries, then came sidling over for praise.
The demon, sweat-slick and thoughtless, reached out to catch the beast before it could insinuate himself between them, but rubbed the thing’s head with despondent affection. He did not open his eyes, even when Mara stood up and stepped away from him to dress, but he did mutter, “He’ll kill me,” in a low and emotionless tone.
Mara adjusted her gown, thinking of Kazuul and Letha. “You all promised not to kill each other.”
“So we swore, not he. And thou art his beloved prize.”
“His property!” Mara spat, and the hound shied back with a nervous snarl. “And never again!”
Suti’ok opened his eyes and looked at her. Slowly, he sat up. He stared for a long time without expression, and then gathered his loincloth around himself and began to fasten his belt. He did it all without speaking to her.
“I don’t intend to tell him,” she said, her cheeks burning.
He still did not reply. He stood up, summoned his hound with a low word, and finally faced her. “I have seen ages enough that the rivers of my youth hath worn great chasms in to the Earth,” he said, “and never have I been used so well…or so cruelly. Thou hast proved thy bloodline beyond all doubt and at last exceeded mine every expectation of thee.”
He bowed to her again, his back stiff and eyes snapping, then called h
is hound and left her to find her way out alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
She went back to her cell. It was someplace to go, someplace to sit and stare and try to feel nothing. She was there when third-bell rang, sitting on the side of the bed she’d made, and she was there when the bells rang again, warning all the students to return to their cells. The blister-lamp in the hall faded now and then, as irregular in its habits as the shadows that moved across its face. She tapped at it without moving and the light came back, allowing her to clearly see all the nothing surrounding her. Her red robe and all the extras Devlin had brought were gone, and the comb Desdemona had given her that day in the bath, Devlin’s cup, the chamberpot, all gone. Even the Transmuted sand had been scooped out and carried away by some scavenging student or another.
She could Transmute more. She could Malleate herself a new cup, a new comb, and for that matter, a table, a chair, and a statue of Atlas shrugging off the world, but who cared? This wasn’t really her room. She wasn’t staying. Not here, not with Kazuul, not at all.
Kazuul. She’d thought enough about Kazuul. Mara closed her eyes and turned her mind inward before the anger could come back and ignite the embers that always seemed to be burning in her these days. She didn’t want to think about Kazuul, she wanted to find Connie. But one was as frustrating as the other, wasn’t it?
Never mind. She had exhausted her limited imagination as far as the search went, but the search wasn’t everything. She pushed it all aside now and focused instead on the next step, the last step: How to get out.
It was a comforting thought, and if it was less about taking Connie away than leaving Kazuul behind, so be it. At least it didn’t make her angry. She was so tired of always being angry.
How was she planning to leave, anyway? She’d made it out as far as the pblister-lamportcullis before. She could do it again, Malleate herself an opening, and climb down the way she’d come. There might be nephalim on the mountain. If she believed Kazuul, there surely would be, and they’d be the starving, savage reavers. She hadn’t been able to sense it, but she guessed she could kill one. As long as they didn’t overwhelm her—
Mara looked back bleakly to that grueling midnight climb and tried to imagine it again in the snow, every hand- and toe-hold coated in ice, with Connie perhaps clutching at her all the way down, and suddenly a reaver leaping out of the howling wind. Who was she kidding? She’d have two or three seconds to regret her decision as she plummeted to the ground, and maybe a few fragments of dying thought before she went to the place all would-be wizards and orange cats ultimately go.
Where then? Behind the Black Door, presumably, there lay some safe passage down and out of the mountain, but the Black Door could not be opened. Not by her, at any rate. It might be possible for her to tunnel under or around, but Mara was not so unimaginative that she couldn’t picture those black fireworks spraying out of the wall or the floor as lethally as they had from the door.
Perhaps there was a passage leading to the garden from the kitchens. Those doors weren’t much different from the ones on the students’ cells, and she’d only have whoever or whatever worked on the other side to deal with. Of course, assuming she survived that fight and found the passage, where would it lead but up to the top of the mountain, not the bottom? She’d still have the climb to deal with, and the weather, and Connie, and the reavers.
Maybe she could find the source of water that flowed through the garderobe and follow it out.
She thought about that, picturing in perfect detail how it would be to kneel beside the foul opening of the garderobe and Malleate it wide enough for her and Connie to drop through.
Ugh.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe everything dropped into a river and was carried right away.
Maybe.
Why the garderobe, Mara wondered suddenly. Why not the baths? The water poured through that room too, and it was a hell of a lot cleaner when it passed through those vents and away into parts unseen. Why did her mind always go first to the garderobe?
Because of the sound it made, she realized. The water fell into the bathing pool and out through the overflow vents, which sounded like nothing but a channel to take the water away, but what fell out of the garderobe fell into someplace big. Not just a cistern, but a room, maybe. And where there was one room, there could be others.
That was something worth investigating.
She really, really didn’t want to crawl through a latrine tonight. That she was considering it at all seemed to her less of a plan than a rare moment of regret. She’d probably set the Master of the Hounds up to receive a spike through his chest, but that was no reason to jump in a puddle of shit.
Probably. There was an interesting choice of word. There was no ‘probably’ in what she’d done with Suti’ok, no blurring of possible outcomes, no spreading of blame. The whole reason she’d tried to put Devlin at arm’s length had been Kazuul’s possessive temper. She didn’t mind so much using that temper against Argoth for feeling her up under the dinner table, but what had Suti’ok done except turn the wrong corner to find her in a bad mood?
It was the first time she’d ever used sex as a weapon, and for that matter, it was the first time she’d ever aimed any kind of weapon at a man just for screwing around on her. On the contrary, a man who didn’t believe in monogamy was prime meat when Mara went prowling. There was never any annoying clinging-on or awkward attempts at meaningful conversation with that sort, just sex.
“I’m not jealous,” Mara muttered, and no, she wasn’t, but she was fairly annoyed with herself. After all, what difference did it make in the matter of the ultimate goal who Kazuul slept with, as long as he still wanted her? Wasn’t the whole damn point keeping his good favor so that she could find Connie? Wasn’t she supposed to be willing to do anything to keep it? And if she wasn’t, well for God’s sake, what did you call that but jealousy?
“Go away,” Mara said loudly, alone in her empty room.
Horuseps opened her door anyway. He looked around at the cell as he pushed it gently closed behind him, and then he folded his hands and offered her a smile. “You’ve made some changes since last I was here. Very well done.”
“Since last you were sent to extort me back to him, you mean.” Mara gave him a hard stare. “Has he decided to put me in chains after all?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.” Horuseps seated himself beside her, crossing one leg gracefully over the other in a distinctly feminine fashion. “I doubt he’d approve if he did. You left him in something of a passion, I’m told. I’m sure he thinks you’re apt to leap on the first man you see and take the most petty possible revenge.”
The demon chuckled while Mara stared straight ahead and said nothing, did nothing. The cell was larger than it had been, but was not big enough to smother her silence. Horuseps quieted, ran a finger along one of the seams of his armored leg-plates, and finally sighed.
“We can only be what we are.” He glanced at her. “I said that to you earlier.”
“I remember.”
“It’s very true, you know.”
“Are you going to tell me it’s just Kazuul’s nature to be an unmitigated ass?” she asked sourly.
He looked at her, both eyebrows spiking straight out from his head, and then laughed. “No,” he said finally, still smiling. “I can honestly say that I would never dream of telling anyone that. But neither is it in his nature to refuse or even question the tribute that is offered him. And it is very much in Letha’s nature to offer such tribute, particularly when she feels threatened. She will always use her body before she bares her claws.”
“I don’t care if she fucks him,” Mara insisted, no longer absolutely certain this was true.
Horuseps smiled at her. “Make up your mind, precious,” he said, not unkindly.
“What I care about,” she said slowly, “is that he fucked her.”
They sat together in silence that was not quite quiet. She could feel him thinkin
g about what to say next, stirring through arguments like they were pebbles in his tombola, hoping for one to shine out brighter than the rest. It had to be the truth, that was the unpleasant thing. It had to be the truth, because she was well beyond the point of forgiving a lie.
“Would you like to hear something funny?” Mara asked.
He gave her a cautious look. “All right.”
“From the day I met him, I knew better than to ever be with him,” she said. “When he told me to come back that very first time, I knew to stay away.”
Horuseps shrugged one shoulder and nodded.
“But he kept after me and kept after me…so I gave in, hoping he’d get what he wanted, and even if I didn’t get anything in return, at least he’d leave me alone. And I guess he did, but only because he was too busy mutilating anyone he thought could come between us. That’s a bad sign in any new relationship,” Mara said dryly, and Horuseps smiled. “But I went back to him. I went back so that he could call me names, call Connie names, and run me out of his room laughing at me, and I never should have gone back again, but…you convinced me. You really are good at that.”
Horuseps rolled his hand modestly through the air, then patted her knee.
“So I went back. But I wasn’t abject enough in my devotion, and he was forced to humiliate me over dinner. I never should have gone back after that, and I never would have, if I hadn’t gotten hurt. He seemed to think that looking after me gave him the right to keep me, and when I walked away, he went after Devlin.” Mara glanced aside at her empty bookshelves where Devlin had put her food. There was nothing left now, of course. Not even crumbs. “I don’t care how many days of lessons the man missed, that was still a dirty trick. Was it your idea?”
“Mine? Oh dearest, no. I tried to talk him out of it.” His hand was still on her knee, telling her it was the truth. He rubbed it back and forth in a distracted sort of way, then noticed what he was doing and took it back. “I might have had some success if only you hadn’t let him sleep with you. Honestly, Mara.”