Amulet Rampant

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Lisinthir cocked a brow at him.

  “I know,” Jahir said. “It seems a ridiculous turnabout from someone who was horrified not so long ago. But even I can see the potential in it. If ever we needed it, which I dearly hope we don’t.”

  His cousin swirled the ice in his glass, letting that lie. Instead he said, “You sit as if you wish me to kiss you. If I pressed my attentions on you in public, you would not be pleased with me.”

  “That dancing was very nearly lovemaking, and quite public.”

  Lisinthir chuckled, low. “You noticed. I thought you too far gone in my feelings to have any time for your own.”

  As if…! Jahir was trying not to notice his own: the mortification that such public display inevitably evoked dampened by the ardor he had stopped fighting. “Can you use my own ability to sense my feelings?” Jahir asked suddenly.

  “I... had not tried?” Lisinthir eyed him, then laughed, though that laugh did not quite cover the sudden avaricious gleam in his eye. “Oh, you are clever!”

  “I have my moments,” Jahir said.

  “Rather many of them, I think. You are too modest. And too sedentary. Come, let us go back.”

  “Go back!”

  “The night is young, cousin. And I won’t settle for mere frustration. I accept the reprimand of suffering your thwarted desire through the lens of your talent…but if you thought it would be sufficient to cloud me with fever…” He paused, laughed. “You should know better.”

  “I suppose I should.” Jahir drank down the rest of his glass, then accepted the gloved hand. There were promises in it he could feel now without the skin to skin contact, and he let those promises carry him back into the mob. It was beginning to feel natural, drawing his cousin’s emotions to him—knowing Lisinthir was using that to borrow his abilities made their existence, their use inevitable. And inevitability calmed him in a way choices never seemed to.

  Lisinthir drew him close until there was no space between them. “Better,” he murmured against Jahir’s ear, almost lost against the music.

  Give in

  Reach out

  “Better,” his cousin said on a sigh, and they danced, and as one they gathered the euphoria of the room and slid among its packed crowds, leaving trails of space behind them as talent worked as intimately as the bodies they used to seat those talents. Frustration became need; need became surrender; surrender became pliability, until Jahir felt he was a shape formed by Lisinthir’s hands on him.

  Twice more, they left the crowd to restore themselves; by the time Lisinthir led him to the exit, Jahir wondered if he would disappoint his cousin, who’d brought him here to find his body’s edges. He’d found them and lost them again in a soft haze, long past the point of desire and well into some new place where everything was bearable except when it was unbearable, beautiful. He was grateful beyond speech when Lisinthir looped an arm around his waist and guided him away from the fluorescence and the shadows and the music that was too remote and too loud at once.

  The lift was very far away. Observing this, staggering, he said, “I am drunk.”

  “Without a single sip of liquor,” Lisinthir agreed. The lift opened for them, and closed behind them, and then it brought up its lights and the lights blinded him. He hid his face against his cousin’s shoulder, swaying against the arm around his waist.

  “Stay with me, cousin,” Lisinthir murmured.

  There, at the edge of his perception: such resolution, hard as steel, as knives. That was Lisinthir. Had Jahir thought his talent unnatural? But it was so natural to know. Lisinthir was a knife, so how could he not feel it?

  “You are taking me back to the suite,” Jahir murmured. The sudden silence was a vast, muffling weight after the din in the club. He could barely hear himself. “To deflower me.”

  “Again,” Lisinthir said, with a hint of amusement. “You have already been, you recall.”

  “What did you do to me?” Jahir asked. But no, wrong question. “What do you do to me?”

  The smile then was gentler; he could hear it or feel it, or both. “I love you.”

  The corridor leading to their room was too long. And too large. And too empty. “I love you also, but I feel….”

  “Destroyed?”

  “As if that was not the answer I was looking for.”

  Lisinthir laughed. “Very good! If you can pretend to primness, you are coming back to me.” He waved the door open then pushed Jahir against the wall, and this seemed inevitable, and that was good. That was just right. He remembered a time long removed from this one, on the courier, with the burning hekkret and his cousin pressing him against a wall. “I like walls,” he said, thoughtful.

  “Good,” Lisinthir said. “I like them too.” And kissed him quiet, kissed all the thoughts in his head away, scattering them like glass shards from a dropped vase. The kiss demanded, was molten, was glory, and a distraction from his cousin leaning on him slowly, more and more until breathing was an effort. That was unbearably good. The wall was even better, because the wall was holding him up. No, the wall was keeping him from breathing because it wouldn’t give beneath his cousin’s weight, and he was trapped between them….

  He couldn’t breathe into the kiss. He was coming apart and it was good, so tremendously good. Coming apart but not quite there, cognizant enough to feel the caress of gloved fingertips along his temple.

  Jahir opened his eyes, found his cousin considering him with that predatory regard. Except there was merriment there. Merriment?

  “This is not working as I planned,” Lisinthir said.

  It seemed to be working perfectly to Jahir. But he managed to find words. “It’s not?”

  “You swim, cousin… tell me… how long can you hold your breath?”

  It took a moment to work through the implications of the question, to realize that his cousin was trying to invoke some of the pain and fear he craved by controlling his breathing, and… he started laughing too, soft.

  “I thought so,” Lisinthir said, grinning. “Well. I shall just have to improvise.” And the hand Jahir had forgotten against his shoulder flexed, driving the clawtips past his too thin shirt and into skin. Jahir gasped in, his cousin shoved him hard against the wall and stole that breath, ate it off his lips, kissed him hard.

  After that, he lost all control of his body. It didn’t matter how long he could hold his breath when he never knew when he’d be breathing. And the claws were so close to knives, and so far, and the kisses so brutal—he had no voice to beseech with, but there came a time when time became an eternal moment and that moment was one long plea for release.

  When he came back from that space he was still against the wall, and still dressed, and a complete mess, and none of it mattered. Lisinthir was petting his face, solicitous and protective, holding him up.

  The first words that came to him, that came from him, were hoarse. “Cousin, I want you.”

  That earned him a gentle kiss on lips that felt bruised and sensitive. “I want you too.” Hands gathered his elbows, stroked down to his wrists, his palms, clasped his fingers. “Come.”

  CHAPTER 9

  It had been an uneasy night. Not because of her anxieties, though the Queen still nursed them, but because she’d had dreams… such vivid dreams, strange and vibrant, that she’d woken yearning and sated and with her mouth pressed into her arm to muffle the need to keen. It had taken a dip in her coldest pool to restore her equanimity, and when she’d exited it the sight of her empty vase struck her again. She was contemplating it when the Knife arrived for their morning meeting. For that was what they were that now, weren’t they? Not visits, but meetings. They had work to do together.

  “My Queen,” he said without preamble, “I believe I have secured your escape route.”

  She grew still. “Tell me.”

  He dipped his head. “There is a basement level in this tower. Did you know?”

  Memories, bold and cruel as blows: the dank air. The smell of panic. The s
tark chiaroscuro of the dungeon’s poor lighting. And her first glimpse of an Eldritch face, tears ringing the enormous eyes, so like, and so unlike, the eyes she had come to love later. “I knew, yes.”

  “It is poorly maintained, the basement,” he said. “But there is a tunnel.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Someone put a tunnel beneath the harem tower.”

  “One that leads outside the palace. I too am suspicious that it should exist. I can only imagine it was excavated to allow the inhabitants of the tower to flee the convulsions of the court, which would suggest that everyone knows about it.”

  “It would, yes.”

  “But I investigated this tunnel and it has not been used in a very long time,” the Knife continued. She walked past him to sit by the window, and he turned to face her. “The instruments I brought found no evidence of anyone’s passage for at least a hundred revolutions. Perhaps more.”

  “A hundred revolutions,” the Queen murmured.

  “Four generations.”

  “That is not long, to forget something that might be used against one’s enemies.”

  “I know,” the Knife said. “I am looking for alternatives. But this tunnel is in the tower, so we could use it without being noticed, and it opens very near the landing pad.”

  “And that pad…”

  “Is… potentially useful. It may be equally wise to send our wards into hiding on the planet.”

  She imagined that: of over a hundred Chatcaavan females and children scattered. Of the likelihood of their remaining free. “I cannot imagine that ending well.”

  His eyes were somber. “Then you understand our chances of success at this point, barring any external aid.”

  She thought of Laniis. “I do, yes.”

  “Shall I warn someone at the pad that we might be coming?”

  The thought chilled her. Right now the only people who knew her intentions in the Empire, where she could be betrayed, were in this room. Including more people would put them at greater risk for discovery… and yet, they would have to, eventually, for the plan to work. “I don’t know.” She regarded him. “You are military. You know better, I think, than I do.”

  His wings twitched. “It is hard to decide when we don’t know who we’re fleeing, or when we’re going. If we’re leaving soon, our exposure is minimized… and if our allies are alerted, they can have the shuttle prepared for us, and that will make it harder for our enemies to catch us before we escape. But the longer we remain, the longer our allies have to betray us with a mistake.” He spread his hands. “When are we leaving, my Queen?”

  There it was. Not ‘when might we leave,’ but ‘when are we leaving.’ “Do you think we will?”

  Whatever answer he contemplated was interrupted by the surprising arrival of the Mother, whose timid entrance was betrayed by the scrape of her claws on the stone steps. The Queen had not yet sent for her; it shocked her that the Mother might come in advance of that summons, shocked and pleased her. There was obviously more mettle in the female than the Queen had anticipated, and if so…

  The Knife and the Mother had seen each other now, and that too was revelation. It was clear to the Slave Queen that the Knife found the Mother compelling. Perhaps that was unsurprising; had he not said he cared for his own dam? And here was the Mother, who, unlike the Slave Queen, looked the part of a fertile female. This was a fascinating new permutation of his unnatural attitudes: that he might see the Mother as someone he could be protective of, and fond of.

  So that did not surprise her. What did was that the Mother did not instantly recoil from that interest. What Chatcaavan female had ever failed to find a male’s interest intimidating? How did the Mother see the Knife’s benevolence past what should have been revolutions of socially-inculcated wariness? Because it was clear from the Mother’s hesitation that she had evaluated the quality of the Knife’s gaze and found it harmless. Was this some skill passed on with the stories the Mother had heard from her dam?

  In how many other ways was the Mother unusual? All this time the Queen had thought herself isolated, alone in her strangeness. If she’d only troubled herself to investigate, what would she have discovered? Or would she have been capable of seeing any of it before the Ambassador had opened her eyes?

  “Pardon me-your-lesser,” the Mother said to the Knife before bowing to the Slave Queen. “Mistress, you had said you wished to speak to me and I wished you not to trouble yourself to seek me. I hope I have not transgressed….”

  She had, but the Queen preferred it to the alternative. “You were wise to anticipate my request.”

  “Shall I go?” the Knife said.

  “Stay. But sit there.” She pointed at one of the benches against the wall. The Mother watched him go, wide-eyed at this show of obedience to a female’s command. When the Mother swiveled that startled gaze back to her, the Queen said, “He is my Knife. A gift from the Emperor to ensure my security.”

  The Mother did not ask if she was at risk. No Chatcaavan female would ask such a question. They were born into bondage and misery, subject to the smallest whim of the males that owned them. What else? What she said, instead, was, “Mistress? May I ask… why you wanted to see me?”

  “Because you love children,” the Queen said. “And there is a good chance they may all die soon.”

  The Mother staggered, and the Knife darted to her side. The Queen wasn’t sure which of them was more astonished: the Mother to be caught, or the Knife to be catching her. For her part, she watched them with two sets of eyes. Her Chatcaavan set found the display perplexing. But the set the Ambassador had lent her marveled, particularly as the Knife steadied the Mother on her feet before releasing her. The look they exchanged was wordless: they were shocked at one another, and yet that they shared that shock was a bond, or at least, the foundation for one. Would it flower, she wonder, given time? And into what? Just what had the relationship between the Knife’s dam and sire looked like?

  Come to that, had the Mother’s dam loved her sire? The Queen realized she didn’t know where the Mother had come from, when she’d been merely Emerald. Had both her parents cared for her? Was that why she dared love children?

  “Mistress, the children must not die. Tell me what must be done to prevent this!”

  “You truly wish to know? You will have to be brave,” the Queen said.

  “For the children, I can be brave.”

  “Braver than you’ve been for them before,” the Queen cautioned. “And you will have to make many sacrifices.”

  The Mother was watching her now, her puzzlement giving way to suspicion. “This is another of those times,” she said. “You are going to wear the mantle of a male and do something that only males do.”

  Was she? She supposed so. She imagined the Ambassador laughing at the thought, of his hands smoothing up her sides, praising her for her body which he had not found at all masculine. “The Emperor has enemies.”

  The Knife had stepped away, leaving the Mother standing on her own. She looked small and fragile, but she had not fled. “Every Emperor does.”

  “Those enemies may try to destroy the things he owns,” the Slave Queen said. “And it is my plan to deny that to them.”

  The Mother stared at her, jaw gaping open.

  “Do you understand?”

  “You mean to take the children away before the Emperor’s rivals can kill them?” the Mother asked, her voice tight.

  The Queen was pleased. She had not expected the Mother to admit to understanding, when pretending to ignorance was a survival skill every female learned before their eyes cleared. “The children and the females of the harem. Yes.”

  “But why have you told me your pla—” The Mother stopped, and repeated, “Because I love them.”

  “So you are not likely to betray me or to make a mistake that might imperil the children,” the Slave Queen said. “Yes. But there are a great number of children, and they will need caretakers, females they trust.”

  “Yes, I
see,” the Mother murmured, frowning. “But it will take more than the two of us, Mistress. You said you intend to bring the rest of the harem? Do they know?” She rubbed all four hands together. “But they won’t be much help; most of them are witless around babies. I am the only Mother who has made the trip to the nursery more than once. The infants will need supplies. I assume there is food set aside for the journey?”

  The Slave Queen looked at the Knife, who dipped his head. “I have only begun planning the logistics, my Queen, and I fear I have little knowledge of the needs of infants.”

  “Perhaps you and the Mother might discuss it, then,” the Slave Queen said.

  The two of them looked at one another.

  “I would value the opportunity,” the Knife said.

  “Use my chamber, then,” the Queen said, waving them toward it. “I have an errand of my own and will be back in an hour, maybe two.”

  They chorused their agreements and she left them behind, wondering if the time together would result in a deepening of their unlikely interest in one another. So many Chatcaava around her nursing these streaks of heterodoxy. Had they all become so adept at using masks that they could no longer identify their allies in perversion? There was no strength without numbers.

  Her thought had been to return to the nursery to interview the female servants, but she found herself passing that door, consumed by her thoughts. She still planned to meet with the servants; if anything her recruitment of the Mother had made it clear how important their aid would be to their success. But it was not enough to flee the palace, was it? If the throneworld was taken by the Emperor’s enemies, who would remain behind to warn him?

  She had a notion of at least one person who would do. On the ground floor, the Queen presented herself to the guards and said, “This one desires escort to the Surgeon.”

  “A moment,” said one of them, and called for replacements. Then the two of them left their posts to the new males and attached themselves to her without further comment. These were the Knife’s new choices; she approved.