"To change it?" the Slave Queen considered as dispassionately as she could. "I don't know."
"I have to try," he said with an ardor that frightened her. "I have to make him less interested in me. Or have him think less of me, without putting myself into a position where he can kill me."
"You could serve your purpose by being enslaved," the Slave Queen said, trying to think of the least dire possibilities. "That would mean he thought little enough of you to make you into a non-male."
The Ambassador shuddered. "No. If I become a slave here, I'll go insane. There has to be another way, but I don't know enough to tell."
The Slave Queen tilted her head back and closed her eyes. The ghost of war, the whispered promise of it did not seem so palatable anymore, but that left her with two equally unsavory choices. She swallowed, then picked a path. "There is the court's perception of his perversity."
"More, Beauty, I pray you."
She continued and hated it. "A courtier cannot rule the Emperor. But the court can, if it is united in its desire to kill him. The males admire power and understand that the language of power is cruelty. But too many indulgences in the flesh and an Emperor is perceived to be weak, and the court may move on him. The strong are opportunistic."
"So I have only to make it seem to the court that the Emperor has become too interested in fleshy pleasures, and they will force him to reform?"
"They will force him to be rid of you... or they will kill him," the Slave Queen said. "They are already unsettled at the Emperor's continuing interest in you, particularly since you do not seem broken. If you can lure him even further into your arms, then they will conclude that the Emperor is not interested in testing you at all, and his real reason for using you is because he is addicted to the pleasures in your flesh."
His gaze became intent. "So... to survive, I must challenge the Emperor in an arena in which he has no defense."
"If you can," the Slave Queen said, her voice uncertain.
The slow smile that touched the Ambassador's lips held secrets, and no mercy. Then, as if recalling himself, he reached for her. "This may involve you," he said softly. "For that I must apologize in advance."
"I do not want to hurt him or you," she said, trembling. "Please, do not force me to that choice."
"I will do all that I can to spare you," he said. "That I promise."
She closed her eyes, remembering misery. "How soon will you begin?"
"Now may already be too late," the Ambassador said.
He began it the following night in the Emperor's tower. They were standing face-to-face, naked and alone: Lisinthir with his bare hands on the Emperor's black chest and the Emperor with his fingers tangled in Lisinthir's long hair, wings arched around them both to trail along the Eldritch's thighs.
"You still have hollows in your cheeks, Beauty," the Emperor said.
"That happens when one fails to trust the food one should be eating," Lisinthir said with wry amusement.
"Ah, but I thought smoking the hekkret took away that fear," the Chatcaavan said, tracing one of the lines beneath Lisinthir's eye. The Eldritch didn't blink, though the talon came very close, brushing his lower lashes. "Did not the Surgeon approve it?"
"Yes. But the hekkret itself doesn't sit well in my stomach." Lisinthir smiled without humor. "The cure in this case is only an inch better than the disease."
"Perhaps I should prepare your food for you," the Emperor said. "I like you better healthy."
"I don't know why it matters," Lisinthir said, lifting his chin. "Well or sick, I'm still a wingless freak."
"True," the Emperor said with a grin. "But you're my wingless freak."
Lisinthir's brows lifted, and a lazy smile curved his lips. He'd hoped for just such an opening. "Not entirely."
"You still question this?" the Emperor asked. "Should I bring back the rack? I know all the ways to keep you in check, Ambassador."
"So you do," Lisinthir said. "But I still think in one way you remain a coward."
"Is that so?" the Emperor asked, but there was a sibilance to the words, a warning. "And why is that?"
"You've raped my body, but never my essence," Lisinthir said. "You can steal my very cells from me without my consent, but you haven't. I think you're afraid of the Touch."
The Chatcaavan's eyes thinned. "Your essence isn't worth taking."
"If that was true, you would have cast me off months ago when you tired of me in your bed. But you haven't... have you." Lisinthir pressed his hips to the Emperor's and bared his teeth. "I think you want my pattern, but you're afraid to take it. Do you fear that if you contest with me on a bone-deep level, you'll lose?"
"You'll never best me," the Chatcaavan said, tail lashing. "No matter what shape I wear, I am still your master."
"I think not," Lisinthir said, brushing the words with just enough nonchalance to be insolent. He'd calculated the tone so carefully that the violence it provoked seemed slow to erupt, and yet his heart raced when the Chatcaavan's dark arm lifted.
Thrown to the bed, Lisinthir grabbed the sheets and endured the rape. He cried his triumph at the sharp flash of understanding he felt through the Chatcaavan's skin as the Emperor Touched him and took his pattern. Tearing himself free, he turned to find the Emperor stumbling away, wings spread and hands outstretched.
"Did you like it?" Lisinthir asked, advancing on him. "Did it feel good? To be so far inside me? Now you know me. Now a part of me is in you. How did it feel?"
The Emperor looked up at him, pupils contracted to thin slits. "I boil," he hissed.
"Tell me," Lisinthir said.
The Chatcaavan tossed his head, shoulders high. His scales had grown slick with sweat. "Inside me is another me, now. A me that has the taste of you."
"Drink me," Lisinthir said, licking the dragon's cheek, then biting his jaw. "Change."
The Emperor trembled, then folded down, hugging his knees and covering himself with his wings. Lisinthir backed away, stomach clenched against the nausea he knew accompanied the sight of the Change, the strange glistening as the male he knew seemed to melt, grow indistinct, and then limbs reshaped themselves, clothed in pale flesh, white skin.
When the Emperor lifted his face, Lisinthir saw one enough like his own to be a cousin... save the eyes, a little too fluorescent a yellow, a little too large, and with pupils markedly slit. The Slave Queen's were properly rounded, but perhaps she had had more practice at the Touch. The Emperor wobbled when he stood straight, and moved little once he found his feet.
"No wings," he said, staring at his hands. "No tail. I feel like I will fall."
Lisinthir approached him, reining in his hunger. The Emperor's hair remained coifed like his mane, a fringe framing his sharp, humanoid face before falling over his pale chest. He was enough himself to entice... and fragile enough to beg for what Lisinthir planned.
"There are benefits," Lisinthir said. "Look at me."
The Emperor did so, his more expressive Eldritch face revealing wariness and unease.
"You have no scales to bar my touch from you now," Lisinthir said, and lightly trailed his nails up the Emperor's white stomach to his chest. He tweaked the man's nipples and laughed at how hard he flinched, then framed the Chatcaavan's face with cupped palms. "And feel. Feel me now."
"I... you... " The Emperor stopped, eyes losing their focus. Lisinthir smiled; through their skin he could feel the Chatcaavan's stunned understanding as Lisinthir's emotions ran through them. "It's like I have no skin at all!" the Emperor exclaimed. "The air will pass right through me!"
The Chatcaavan's dismay and uncertainty were a potent aphrodisiac. Lisinthir rubbed his thumbs over the Emperor's lips, felt the other man's shivers and almost purred his delight. "There are other compensations," he said, and kissed the Chatcaavan, long and slowly. His desire drowned out the Emperor's own feelings, and Lisinthir drew him to the bed... and raped him until he bled all over the sheets, howling curses.
They shared the hekkret rol
l afterwards, the Emperor still wearing his Eldritch facade.
"I admit to a certain fascination," he said, his reluctance a faint residue communicated through their bodies.
Lisinthir stroked the Emperor's side. "You've only begun to explore what you can use this body for."
"And you know all these things," the Emperor said.
Lisinthir grinned, eyes half-lidded. "It is my body."
The Emperor rolled onto his back. "You'd like that, wouldn't you," he said, running his own hands over his ribs and stomach. "To play teacher to the Emperor. I hope you haven't forgotten who I am."
"Never," Lisinthir said, blowing smoke. When he glanced back toward the Chatcaavan, he found a dragon, not an Eldritch.
"Just in case you forget," the Emperor said, teeth showing.
Lisinthir had time to put the roll on the ashtray before the Chatcaavan smashed him down and reminded him.
For days, the Slave Queen saw neither the Ambassador nor the Emperor. When the day stretched into a week, she admitted to herself that her listlessness was only the surface of a depression she was unaccustomed to. She feared that the Ambassador had somehow hurt the Emperor; she feared that the Emperor had killed him; she feared that they had both forgotten her.
For a brief instant she entertained the notion of seeking them out. Standing at her bathing chamber window, the distance between her tower and the Emperor's was a short glide. If she'd had working wings, she would have dared it... but the long walk beneath the scrutiny of countless guards, that she could not do.
So when she heard footsteps, she held her breath. And when they crested her landing, she felt her world once again settle into stillness and perfection. Kneeling before them, she could sense their complete focus on one another in their frequent caresses, the absent touching they could not seem to control. They even stood close enough to brush hips, and if they could bear to look away from one another, it wasn't for long. There was a quality of helplessness in the Ambassador's face when he managed to avert his eyes, and an infatuation in the Emperor's that almost made her stare at him directly.
Had the Ambassador's plan worked? And did he now regret it?
"Change," the Ambassador said.
"Here?" the Emperor looked around the topmost tower of the harem, empty for now.
"Here."
The Slave Queen drew in a breath, waiting for confirmation... and then the Emperor shrugged a hand and ducked, enveloping himself in his wings. A few minutes later he stood, and though he stood with confidence the Slave Queen recognized the slight weave of his body and the hesitance in his hands. She remembered it intimately herself, how entranced she'd been by the soft touch of the air currents on Eldritch flesh, the sensitivity of finger and skin.
"And now what?" the Emperor said.
"And now I show you something delicious," the Ambassador said, looking now at her. Dread suffused her. "Come, lady," he said, and she could do nothing but obey, hoping she would not be asked to do ill. But no, the Ambassador only looked at his pale twin and said, "Touch her."
The Emperor leaned down, curled his preposterously white fingers beneath her chin. A shiver of delight ran through him. "Her fear is like wine."
Was it? She only worried that this plan was flawed from the start. But the Ambassador was speaking again. "Sink deeper."
The Emperor closed his eyes. As she watched, gooseflesh rose on the exposed skin of his arms. When he opened his eyes, he looked at her and said, "If fear is wine, then supplication is beyond description."
The Emperor's rapture ensnared the Ambassador at last, who leaned and whispered into one delicate ear, "You should try having her this way."
The Emperor pulled the true Eldritch's head around, cupping the back of it and licking his lips. "You with me."
"Of course," the Ambassador breathed.
The Slave Queen no longer knew whether the plan would work; that the Emperor had been enchanted was beyond argument, but that the Ambassador had fallen with him seemed evident as well. And that she did not mind that he had involved her...
She was glad to serve them, and the Emperor's borrowed shape made him so sensitive that he lost himself in her. He barely grazed her, astonished by the depth of her response. And perhaps she was proud of that as well.
From then on the distraction of the Emperor from his duties required no effort. The Eldritch had centuries of life and rigorous training to inculcate the behaviors that made their touch-empathy unpleasant. The Chatcaava had no such puritanical beliefs about emotions, and to be able to feel someone else's was not only exhilarating, but voyeuristic and, in some fashion, a shameful pleasure.
Few in the Empire shied from pleasure of any kind. Shame only gave it an exotic savor.
Very little of the day was Lisinthir's. He spent most of his waking hours with the Emperor or the Slave Queen or both. What little sleep he took often found him strewn on the couch in the Emperor's suite, alone... or tangled with another.
Oh, it was easy to distract the Emperor, when the distraction was so satisfying. And if the Alliance communiqués he was surely now ignoring and the curious silence of Second disturbed him, they did not disturb him enough to draw him to investigate. The Emperor was not the only one who had been led from his duties. And if Lisinthir comforted himself with the knowledge that what he did, he did to preserve the Alliance against future war... it was poor comfort when held against his entrancement with the inexhaustible passions and curiosity of his victim, his test subject, and the male upon whose whim he lived.
One summer evening found all three of them in the Emperor's chambers, the Emperor wearing his borrowed shape and the Slave Queen eternally herself, demure and silent at the foot of the bed. Lisinthir was working on a hekkret roll when the Emperor said, "So then, Beauty. As you challenged, I have contested with you on a cellular level and taken from you your very self. Do you concede your place, then?"
Now the game was to keep the Emperor interested, off-balance. "No," Lisinthir said. "There are parts of me you have yet to conquer."
The Emperor's pleasure at the response radiated through his sweat-cooled skin. "Continue. This should be interesting."
"You have yet to win against my mind," Lisinthir said, knowing he strayed into fell territory but knowing no other place to go. "I have known things that would unmake you to learn."
The Emperor sat up, setting aside the glass with eagerness. "Ah! More, pray, Beauty."
Lisinthir tucked his hair behind his ears and closed his eyes. What he was about to do he had not sought permission to ask, and yet he would ask it. He would hope for forgiveness afterwards. When he opened his eyes, he looked at the Slave Queen and found her already regarding him, uneasy but, as always, so exquisitely willing. "Lady," he said to her, "I wish to teach him to weep."
She shuddered and covered her head with her wings.
"Weeping!" the Emperor exclaimed.
"You showed such a fascination for it," Lisinthir said. "But I don't think you could bear the sorrow that weeping reveals. I don't think you understand suffering."
The Emperor laughed and leaned back again. "Oh, I understand suffering. The beauty of suffering."
"Had you ever suffered you would know that suffering is not beautiful," Lisinthir said, his voice hardening. "You wish to know where I am your master, Exalted? This is my realm. In understanding the hearts of others, I best you without needing to lift a single finger."
"What good is it to understand the hearts of others?" the Emperor asked with a derisive snort.
"You forfeit the battle without even fighting it?" Lisinthir asked.
"It is not worth fighting," the Emperor said. He shrugged as Chatcaava did, a motion that made a lie of his Eldritch shape. "The hearts of others... what good is such knowledge?"
Lisinthir couldn't help it... he laughed, a bitter laugh born of the grief, pain and fear of all the months he'd spent in the Empire. He turned on the Emperor and grabbed his chin, forcing those alien eyes to meet his. "You want to know
what good it is? I will tell you, then. Because to bear the misery of others takes ten times the strength of bearing your own. That is why I'm stronger than you, Exalted. That's why I could keep kneeling to you. That's why I could take you in my mouth to keep you from killing the innocent and never lose my pride. That's why I could return every night to the rack, knowing my sanity dwindled with every strike of your whip. That's why I am your better, Exalted... and why I always will be."
Those eyes, how they burned. Lisinthir felt the fury through his hands, against his body, and beneath it, the sizzle-sweetness of curiosity.
"All that you can bear, I can bear twice," the Emperor hissed through blunt teeth.
"Prove it," Lisinthir said. He held his free hand out toward the Slave Queen, felt her submission as she slid her fingers into his and let him pull her to their side. "Touch her."
"That's all?" the Emperor asked askance.
"Do it," Lisinthir said.
The Slave Queen bowed her head as the Emperor grasped her by the neck. But her eyes were on his. She was waiting. She knew.
"Show him," Lisinthir said huskily. "Show him how the wingless need the sky."
Her resignation, her acquiescence... and through the hand he still held, the surge of melancholy, the bleak despair. The smell of searing tools, the acrid stink of lacquer, the clack of wing vanes gone hard and inflexible. The knowledge that even had she kept her wings, no one would have let her fly. She held nothing back, and Lisinthir gripped her hand tightly. The least he could do was bear witness, licking the tears he shed for her from his dry lips. He sank deep into their communion, letting her desolation flow through him, losing himself to it.
When it cut off abruptly, his breath caught, his heart stopped and then skipped, rushing to catch up with itself. The sudden sheen of sweat inspired by it chilled him. When he managed to focus past it, he found the Emperor on the other side of the bed near the headboard, his white back turned to them.
"Leave us," the Emperor hissed.
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