Even the Wingless

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  It was no use arguing. Lisinthir gathered the blankets and the brandy and left for the bathing chamber, wondering if he knew after all what he was doing.

  He Changed, shedding the alien skin with such alacrity she barely had time to shift to relieve her aching hips and thighs. When he turned to her he was once again the Emperor she knew... except that his eyes were wrong. Their fluorescence had been snuffed, and Changing back had not removed the trails on his cheeks. They were incongruous on the face of a dragon.

  Incredulous, the Emperor said, "What have I done to you?"

  "You have made me into your work of art," the Slave Queen said. She added, contemplatively, "Works of art are objects. Dead things. That I breathed was only incidental."

  He did not touch her. Indeed, the distance he kept between them was so exaggerated it was almost absurd, as if he feared what she held in her skin after so many revolutions of handling her however he pleased. She could only stare at him and wonder if the Ambassador was correct after all, and if at last, he had proven himself the master.

  "Is it because you had wings?" the Emperor asked. "That you can feel the feelings of males?"

  The Slave Queen said, "Wings do not make people people. They only make them free."

  He stared at her as if only now discovering what she was. And perhaps he was. Then he reached toward her wings and touched one of the hard, scalloped edges. She watched him impassively.

  "These past days together," he said. "When I felt your willingness through your skin, your desire. Were those lies?"

  "No," the Slave Queen said.

  "Then how?" he asked, lifting smoldering eyes to hers. "How could you possibly have felt such things for someone who did this to you?"

  "I have made the best of what I have been given," said the Slave Queen. "I had little other choice."

  "But you desired me," he hissed.

  She looked at him. In all her life she had never expected to have such a conversation with the Emperor, much less to exist in such a lacuna during it. "You have changed," she said. "And you are changing yet."

  He fingered her wing edge. After a time, he said, "You long for something you've never known."

  "I am Chatcaavan," she said, and she choked on the words for the first time. She looked down at her knees and said nothing more. She expected him to send her away or to ignore her, but perhaps she should not have been surprised when he pulled her to him instead, guiding her head to his lap. There he stroked her hair with such deliberation that her breath shuddered in her body. She could feel the difference in him, in the determination with which he touched her. It took her several minutes to understand what end he had focused so completely upon.

  He was trying not to hurt her.

  The Slave Queen's chest ached, though from what she could not say. Only that it was torment to exist here in such tenderness.

  "I am sorry," Lisinthir said from the landing.

  The Slave Queen looked at him, a slow swivel of her head that cocked it near her neck, protective. Her visible eye had darkened with sorrow.

  "Your plan is working," she said after a moment, turning her head back to the vista outside her window. The sky, he noticed, not the sea.

  "Is it?" he asked, walking closer but not yet close enough to touch her. "Is that why we're here, in your room, alone?"

  "He will summon us," the Slave Queen said, her voice softened, almost a whisper. "It is a matter of time."

  "I hope," Lisinthir said and paused. "I hope I have not done you ill, Beauty."

  She shook her head, a movement decidedly alien on her long neck. "No."

  "If not that," he said, "then why do you grieve?"

  She touched a hand to her chest, absently, eyes closed. "You are changing him, and that change will kill him," she said. "But I like the change. How can I love what will destroy that which I could come to love?"

  He drew in a sharp breath and pulled that hand from her breast. "Is he that different?"

  "He stroked my hair," the Slave Queen said, looking up at him with miserable orange eyes. "All night, he did this. It was... it was kindness."

  And kindness in the Empire earned one an early death, he finished silently, and held her hand. Whether the sorrow he felt was hers or his he couldn't tell—they flowed into one another, crossing waves like the tides feeding back on one another at the shore.

  "It has been almost an entire day," Lisinthir said, looking out at the horizon and the sun that showed only the slightest of rims at its edge. "Perhaps he will turn back from this course."

  "And then what will you do?" the Slave Queen asked. "How will you win us free of war?"

  "Perhaps he will change so much that he won't want war anymore," Lisinthir said.

  "And then he will have become so weak that he will die beneath the court's talons," the Slave Queen said.

  "There must be some other way," Lisinthir said.

  "There is the other way," she said. "You can become uninteresting to him. Merely a plaything. If you can regress to that state—"

  —to the state of a slave—

  "Then perhaps," she said and trailed into silence.

  Lisinthir quivered.

  "Except then you will not be what you were either," she said. "And then there will be no war, but no Ambassador either. And I am now enough of a self to hate that thought as well." She did not pull her hand from his, but her wings with their stiff vanes mantled in time with the surge of her nauseous unease. "There is no way out. Everywhere I turn, there is grief."

  None of the platitudes he'd taught her in stories sprang to his lips. None of them had been crafted to speak to an ending without some good, some future good. Lisinthir supposed he should be glad of the benefit he might gain the Alliance, but that world seemed so very distant.

  They stood together in contemplation of the encroaching dark and there the messenger found them, the one that summoned them back to the Emperor's suite. The Slave Queen glanced at him, a spike of fear jabbing through their joined hands.

  "You said the time would come," he reminded her.

  "But I did not want to believe it," she said.

  And thus together they made the long walk, fingers intertwined, not quite strong enough to break the grasp, nor so glad of the contact to prolong it. Against his fingers, the smoothness of her scales and the stillness of her resignation ground each other, dissonant.

  The Emperor awaited them in the bedchamber, stretched across the bed with his arms folded behind his neck and his head turned toward the window, watching the stars. When they entered, he did not move. Lisinthir let the Slave Queen's hand slide out of his and waited for her to hop onto the bed and curl up into a ball within easy reach of the Emperor, but not touching him. Then he followed, sitting against one of the pillows.

  "There is something I would ask of you," the Emperor said after a long silence.

  "Do so," Lisinthir said.

  "It involves those," the Emperor said, turning his nose toward the corner of the room.

  There, shrouded in the dark, was a blindfold and a set of cuffs and collar. Lisinthir choked on his next breath.

  "I think I know what I ask," the Emperor said, and something about the quiet of his voice didn't match the violence implied by the request. "But I ask it anyway."

  Lisinthir met his eyes. "We have been through this before."

  "Yes," the Emperor said. Nothing burned in his gaze, no hunger, no fury. How Lisinthir longed to touch him and ascertain for certain! But this was not a moment for confirmation.

  "Have you not learned all that could be learned?" Lisinthir asked.

  "No," the Emperor said simply.

  He too, held himself apart from Lisinthir. It made the request mysterious, as irresistible as the fear was terrible, the fear that was pebbling the flesh on his back and brushing his skin with sweat.

  "Very well," Lisinthir said, before he could say "Never."

  The Emperor drew himself upright and nodded toward his chest. "Undress. Your shirt will be
sufficient."

  To think now would be to turn back. Lisinthir pulled the shirt off, shaking back his hair, and walked his now graceless body to the corner. He kneeled there and held his hands in front of himself... and looked away.

  They were gentle cuffs. Mere leather. They did not have the chafing sandpaper-like lining, nor the less subtle spikes. Just leather, stiff but survivable. Lisinthir watched as the Emperor locked them together. The collar was far harder—to sit still for that when his entire body tensed, ready to flee, to not just remain where he was but to lift his chin and tilt it backward so his hair wouldn't catch against his flesh... this was madness.

  The cuffs were clipped to the collar. In the front, crossing his arms in front of his bare chest. It gave him the illusion of protection, juxtaposed against the truth of immobility. It made him feel as if he choked, as if to swallow required an act of strength, to force his hands away from his throat.

  The blindfold was, as always the worst. The moment it eclipsed the room, he began to shake.

  And then... nothing.

  No whip. No teasing. No trailing finger to make him wonder what next. Only this exquisite, unbearable vulnerability. Not quite a helplessness, but too close, too, too close.

  Hands lit on his cheeks. Warm hands, satin-soft, without the pinpoint pressure of talon-tips. And on the crest of that touch, a silent reception. As Lisinthir shivered, holding himself still only through discipline, he felt the Emperor's presence.

  And then the Emperor's understanding.

  And then the Emperor's awe.

  Even held fast by fear, Lisinthir knew then what the Emperor did. When the blindfold was stripped from his face and the Emperor in his Eldritch skin reached for the cuffs, Lisinthir said, "No."

  The Emperor cocked his head.

  Past his tight throat, Lisinthir said, "If you want to really know, truly, in-your-bones know, then do it all to me. Suspend me. Whip me. Gag me. All of it."

  "I have no wish to break you," the Emperor said, wetting his fingertip and using it to relieve Lisinthir's dry lips.

  "Do you shy from full understanding?" Lisinthir asked, forcing himself to meet the Emperor's eyes. "Do you fear what you will learn?"

  "Even now you challenge me," the Emperor said, but the words were accompanied by gentle amusement, not the eager violence they had in the beginning. "Tell me, Beauty... if I am to experience this, how can I also wield the whip?"

  Softly, from behind them: "Ask the Surgeon."

  The Emperor looked over his shoulder, surprised. The Slave Queen sat on the bed's edge, peering over it. "The Surgeon is Outside," she said. "He will not tell of what he sees. He is also the Surgeon, and will know how far he may push without permanent damage. And he will be able to fix what he breaks."

  "It's a good idea," Lisinthir said. If he focused on the particulars, he could somehow get through this. He had to get through this. He had to, for what might happen on the other side. Forget the prevention of war. Forget the Alliance.

  "It is," the Emperor said. "I shall have to reward you for it, pet."

  "You may do that now, Master," the Slave Queen whispered. "By allowing me to leave, so that I need not witness this."

  The Emperor paused, then nodded. "Call the Surgeon as you leave."

  She dipped her head in acquiescence and slid off the bed. Lisinthir was glad to see her go. The Emperor resumed his gentle stroking, aching caresses along Lisinthir's jaw, behind his ears, pushing back the hair from his face.

  "Shall I get you water?" he asked. "Your throat sounds dry."

  It was, already, unbearably. "No," Lisinthir said. "I may not keep it in."

  "You tremble before we begin," the Emperor said, dropping his hands to Lisinthir's shoulders and trying to steady them.

  Lisinthir said nothing. It was useless to attempt to control the shaking. He would need that energy later.

  "We could trade places," the Emperor said. "The Surgeon could be convinced to attack me instead of you."

  "No," Lisinthir said. If the Emperor hung here instead of him, it would become a contest of strength. But if the Emperor were forced to bear witness... yes. That would lead to the door, and perhaps it would open.

  The Emperor touched Lisinthir's lips, then stood. "I will find suitable instruments. Don't leave."

  They returned together, the Emperor and the Surgeon. The latter looked disapproving, but did not stop the Emperor as he set up the rack, the harness, set out the clamps and other, less savory items. Lisinthir didn't watch, though he desperately wanted to know what he would have to guard against. Hours of similar sessions had taught him that knowing in advance never seemed to prepare him as he hoped... they only heightened his dread, his sense of powerlessness.

  Sitting still as the two of them bound him into place and then hooked his limbs onto the rack, pulling all his joints into traction with his own weight, cost him so much he bled from his mouth from biting his own tongue. It fouled the gag they pressed into his mouth with a bitter tang. After the blindfold, he could no longer see the Emperor, but he felt the hands that cupped his face, and then the forehead that leaned against his, a steadying pressure.

  "Commence," the Emperor said, a gift.

  Lisinthir tensed against the first blow, and it came a heart-beat late, just when he'd begun to relax. He knew then that the Surgeon would be worse than ever the Emperor had been, and knowing it screamed into the gag, too late, too late.

  Smelling blood. His own.

  Yanking at restraints that would not release him, and cut into his flesh with cunningly placed barbs.

  Lurching away from the stinging cuts left by whips thinner than hairs.

  There, his wrist, slick against the inside of the cuff with unexpected blood.

  The ball of his foot, sensitive beyond imagining.

  The clamps pinching flesh too sensitive for metal.

  Pain.

  Helplessness.

  Terror.

  His chest jerked, and his throat was so dry he thought it coughing. Then it came again. He choked on the sob, refusing it egress. He would not. Weeping—he'd wept before the Emperor—he knew he had, but stately weeping. Stately. Controlled. Not this.

  The second tore lose. He shook his head. No, he would not.

  But he did. He was.

  Out of fury, out of anguish, he sobbed. Out of panic that this was now, this was forever, this was never-ending. Out of desperation, that he could not escape. Except that there was one escape, one possible place to go—

  /Ambassador./

  No—

  /Come back./

  No—

  /He who is called by Others Lisinthir Nase Galare. Beauty. Perfection. Ambassador. Come back, come back./

  Somewhere, far away, there was a body wracked with pain and slick with sweat, gagging on tears. He would not go there.

  /Come back, O my Perfection. Oh, don't go./

  Also, somewhere back there, was a fear that didn't belong to him, and it somehow seemed sweet.

  /Don't go./

  And if he didn't?

  /Release./

  He had promised such before.

  /Truth. Truth, Beauty./

  Some part of him believed, believed because the words held yearning as well as fear. Grief as well as supplication. He poured back into the body he hadn't even realized he'd left and found himself slumped in the arms of the Emperor, stinking of sweat and blood, hair matted to his cheeks and against sides stiff with crusted cuts.

  "Tend him," said the Emperor harshly past his ear. Lisinthir assumed it was him, at least... this stranger whose skin blazed with anger and remorse, whose touch was tender and possessive, cradling Lisinthir's head and steadying his hip.

  The wordless other behind them began to soothe, where once he harmed. Despite the cooling touch, Lisinthir flinched.

  "Gently, Perfection," the Emperor whispered into his ear. "It is over. Never again."

  "You said that. Last time." When had his breathing become so ragged? And his th
roat so raw? Talking was agony. How ironic that he dripped with sweat while his mouth was dry.

  "I needed this time to understand," the Emperor said. "And now I do. Never again." Softer. "You may not come back."

  Lisinthir closed his eyes and rested in the arms of the male upon whose whim he lived, and felt it in his heart, the truth of it, the risk he'd taken not with the Emperor... but with himself.

  "That should be sufficient," the Surgeon said, standing. "Rest, water, food. Normal sex. He will survive."

  "Thank you for your services," the Emperor said. "Go."

  The Surgeon bowed. The silence he left behind seemed awkward, magnified by the bitterness of each breath Lisinthir fought for.

  "Come," the Emperor said, then a surge of worry. "Can you walk?"

  Lisinthir nodded, got his feet beneath himself and staggered upright. The Emperor braced him on one side and helped him to the bed, arranging him across it and drawing the blankets up around his shoulders.

  "I will get water," he said.

  Lisinthir was too tired to nod, unable to hold onto awareness. It lingered on its own, and so did he.

  The bed creased beneath a weight, and then fingers tipped with nails teased his lips apart and pressed the rim of a bowl against them. The smell of cold water drew Lisinthir from his drifting fugue, pulled him to struggle against gravity and sodden exhaustion. He drank, and the drinking was so precious he shed tears. He had his fill two bowls later, and then the Emperor set it aside with a soft clack and slid beneath the covers with him. Cool chest to abused back—somehow, even as an Eldritch, the Chatcaava ran cooler than the shape they imitated. One long arm reached over Lisinthir's side and clasped his limp hand there. In this cocoon of blankets and flesh, Lisinthir found comfort, somehow. The silence was no longer awkward, only soothing. Soothing until it was broken, and even so it softened the words that filled it.

  "Was it thus... every time?"

  On the rack. Beneath the whip. "Yes."

  "And you endured it."

  Lisinthir closed his eyes.

  "Your tears did not delight me," the Emperor whispered, and twined with his voice came despair and horror. Feeling it between them, Lisinthir's breath caught.