by Jane Kindred
Ahr sighed and brought the fingers to his lips. “So we’re not to be lovers.”
Jak kissed his cheek, apologetic. “Not physically. I’m sorry, Ahr. I should have been clearer. I thought you knew I was celibate.”
He laughed softly, rolling onto his back once more and staring up at the ceiling. “Celibate lovers seem to be my fate.”
Nesre ripped the parchment down the center, and again, tearing it in smaller and smaller halves until there was nothing but a scattered snow of little pieces on the floor of the cage reflected in the dark glass. He turned and grabbed up the flinching child, shaking it in an uncontrollable rage. Infuriated by its cowering, he flung it to the pallet and began to beat it with his fists. The child knew better than to cry out, and so it curled into a ball and gasped in silence as the blows rained down on it.
When the rage subsided and he let the child lie, Nesre regretted losing his temper. It wasn’t the Meerchild’s fault it saw what it saw, depicting it for him in charcoal strokes. He’d trained the child to do just that, and the message of the beating he’d given it in return must have been confusing. It lay panting in a corner of the octagonal room, staring up at him.
He found himself on the verge of speaking soothing words, and he snarled at his foolishness as he bit them back. He hadn’t spent over a decade cultivating this pearl only to ruin it by putting the lethal weapon of speech within its mouth.
The prelate controlled his anger and took a handkerchief from his pocket, dipping it in the child’s water bucket to dab at the welts and clean its bloody nose. The Meerchild’s eyes were dripping a steady stream of blood, and he shuddered, knowing this was not his doing, but a sign of the creature’s unnaturalness.
He sat the child firmly on the pallet and unrolled another strip of parchment, placing the charcoal in its hand. He nodded and smiled, patting the child on the head and placing its hand on the parchment. He was not a man without pity and he was sorry he’d taken his anger out on it. It wasn’t the child’s fault the fools Nesre had hired in the wasteland had failed so miserably. It wasn’t the child’s fault MeerRa of Rhyman was making his way ever closer to the Delta.
Cree frowned as she wiped down the bar, keeping an eye on the group of Deltan river rats in the back of the pub. They’d been drinking all afternoon, growing louder and more uncouth with every round. Meerhunters. What decade were they living in that they still thought they’d find bounty? It took a special kind of stupid to accuse a race of people of being invincible monsters and then sign up to capture said monsters.
But there were more Meerhunters in Mole Downs at the moment than she’d ever seen in one place, which meant something was up, and it made Cree uneasy. And with the ugly weather, they weren’t likely to leave anytime soon; whiteout conditions outside had left guests of the inn effectively snowbound.
Cree had never missed the gentle Delta winters more. Her old flat in In’La had looked out over the Anamnesis. She and Ume now had a view of the Filial from their upstairs room if they craned their necks over the buildings across the alley, but the Fil was nothing but a frozen stream. In the springtime, it would probably be little more than a sewage drain.
Cree’s miserable thoughts cheered considerably as Ume came down the stairs in a stunning sapphire gown she’d designed in velvet silk, her waist cinched impossibly small with the corset beneath that drove Cree a bit mad to think about, and a newfangled piece at the back called a bustle.
She leaned across the bar to give Ume a kiss when she arrived. “Are you trying to kill me, doll?” Cree murmured against her ear.
Ume gave her an innocent look. “What do you mean?”
Cree snapped the rag at Ume’s hip where she leaned over the slick wood of the bar. “Minx. Those river rats are eyeing your lovely behind. Everyone’s stir crazy in here with the storm. I’m liable to end up having to whip every one of their asses.”
Ume grinned. “I love it when you talk of whipping asses.” Cree rolled her eyes and groaned. “Anyway, I thought I’d do some more palms this evening. People seem to like it, and they actually want to pay me to read for them. I may have found something else I’m suited for.”
It was nice to see Ume happy. Not that she’d been unhappy, exactly, but she hated sitting around, in her words, like Cree’s “kept woman”. Cree relaxed as Ume read for some of the regulars, “holding court” in her corner booth, but the sense of unease returned as Ume began to attract the attention of the Meerhunters.
“Your accent is Deltan.” The loud declaration from the table across from her booth was delivered in their native tongue. Ume’s customer, an itinerant tinker, thanked her and paid his coin, taking his leave.
Ume glanced over at the Meerhunter with her lovely lips curled with disdain. “And yours is southbank,” she replied, an insult implying he was uneducated working class. Cree grimaced. A bit elitist, her Ume, though she’d worked her way up to the highest ranks of the temple courtesan from the humblest beginnings.
The drunk got to his feet, and Cree clutched the edges of the washbasin she’d just filled with dirty glasses. “I’ve seen your kind before.” He gave Ume a lewd appraisal. “What’s a Meer-whore like you doing so far west?”
Cree dropped the basin onto the counter and reached for the rifle from under the bar. She’d picked it up after the trouble in the last town they’d left, not surprised to learn the invention came from In’La itself. In the wake of MeerAlya’s death, many of his tinkering innovations had been put to less than altruistic uses.
The Meerhunter was leaning on both hands against Ume’s table as Cree came around the bar. Ume, of course, sat serenely, not allowing the uncouth river rat to disrupt her elegant poise.
“You flaunt your obscenity in front of decent folk,” the Meerhunter growled.
“Decent folk?” Ume laughed. “Surely you don’t number yourself among them?” The Meerhunter moved quicker than Cree expected, yanking Ume up from her seat with a fist in her hair.
Cree raised the shotgun. “Take your hands off my wife.”
The Meerhunter straightened and turned, still pulling Ume’s hair. “Well, that’s a first. A Deltan with a Meer-whore for a wife.”
“Let her go, Smalls.” One of the other Meerhunters stood, looking slightly less stupid with drink.
“Shut up, Pike. We all know you want to keep the bounty to yourself.”
Ume took the opportunity to grab Smalls by the…smalls…and twist. He let go of her with a yowl of surprise and stumbled back against the opposite bench. Cree had stepped forward at the same moment and she foolishly let her guard down in concern for Ume, putting her back to the table of Meerhunters. Ume cried a warning just as something struck Cree from behind.
Reeling, she fumbled at the trigger of the shotgun, and another Meerhunter knocked it from her hand while the glass mug that had struck her shattered on the floor. “Godsdammit,” she hissed at her stupidity.
The one called Pike regarded her as she rubbed her head. “Gods. That’s an interesting oath.”
“It’s a figure of speech, you troglodyte.”
“And yet you claim this temple courtesan for your own.” He looked Cree over. “You’re no Meer. But we have it on good authority that there’s one hiding in the vicinity. And here we are with a pair of Meeric sympathizers.”
“We’re hardly Meeric sympathizers,” Cree scoffed. “We were at the forefront of the Expurgation.” Don’t fuck this up, Ume, Cree prayed silently at the shadowed look Ume gave her.
“A sacred whore at the forefront of the Expurgation.” Pike looked amused as he sized Ume up, and then he raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be the Maiden Ume Sky?”
Ume lowered her voice into the infamous purr. “Well, not anymore, sweetheart. I’m married.”
“Holy shit,” said Smalls, his voice still tight with discomfort. “The transvestite?”
Ume rounded on him.
“I’m more woman than you can handle, you southbank piece of dirt.”
“I can’t help thinking this can’t be a coincidence,” Pike interrupted. “After the information that a fugitive Meer has been seen in these parts, and the Deltan whose trail we followed from here to Haethfalt.” He addressed Cree. “What do you know about him?”
“What Deltan?” Cree blushed, and Pike smirked. She’d always been a terrible liar. “There was a man I used to know from the Expurgist movement in here a few weeks ago, but I haven’t seen him since. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think he’d harbor a fugitive Meer.”
“He left town with a Haethfalt Moleman who was seen in here, but nobody seems to know the Moleman’s name.”
A merchant at the bar let out a belch as he finished his ale and turned toward them. “There a reward for such information?”
Pike glanced at him. “Could be.”
“The Deltan traded with me, had a tab from one of those Mole colonies with all the names strung together. Let’s see, now, which was it?” He scratched at stubble on his chin.
Pike opened the coin pouch on his belt and held out a pair of Deltan universal gold pieces, the currency that had replaced the Meeric units of the individual soths. “This jog your memory?”
The merchant sidled up and took the coins, looking them over. “Think it might’ve started with Ram-something.” Pike handed him another coin and the merchant nodded, pocketing all three. “Mound RemPetaJakGeffn…blah-blah-blah-something. That was it.”
“Jak na Fyn was the Moleman,” said Cree, ignoring Ume’s glare. Smalls had picked up her shotgun, and she yanked it out of his hands. “I think you gentlemen should return to your rooms. And when this storm clears, I don’t ever want to see any of you in here again.”
Ume was furious. The Meerhunters hadn’t given them any more trouble, content to take their ale up to their rooms now that they had what they felt was a lead on their bounty. But upstairs in their own room after Cree had closed up the bar for the night, Ume berated her for giving in to them.
“They had the name of the mound.” She sat before the vanity, removing her cosmetics with harsh strokes, wearing nothing but her corset. “You didn’t need to volunteer Jak’s.”
“I volunteered it because they had the name of the mound. It’s not as if Jak is Meer, for godssakes. They’ll head back to Haethfalt, find nothing, and be done with it. I needed to get their attention off of you. And you didn’t need to volunteer so eagerly that you were the Maiden Sky.”
Ume paused with the damp sponge at the corner of her eye, one curve of kohl gone and the other still in place, and stared at Cree in the mirror. “Are you ashamed of who I am, after all this time?”
“Ume.” Cree came up behind her and cupped the back of Ume’s neck, stroking the soft nape beneath the upsweep with her thumb. “I’ve never been ashamed of you. What I am is madly in love with you and scared to death someone’s going to take you away from me.”
Ume lowered naturally thick lashes over the wide, amber eyes that made Cree’s heart beat faster every time they looked at her. “That bastard called me a transvestite.”
“Fuck him. You’re my girl.” Cree took the sponge from Ume’s hand and tossed it on the vanity, turning Ume’s chair. “My lovely girl, who happens to have the sweetest cock in the Delta, the falend, and the northern lands besides.”
Cree dropped to her knees as Ume blushed, and the cock in question perked up at the praise, a lovely contrast against the silk of the corset. Cree wrapped her hand around the base of it, and Ume moaned. “And I wouldn’t have you any other way. But I am going to have you this way.” Cree grinned and dipped her head, sliding her mouth over Ume’s erection and down to the base, while Ume, toes rising en pointe, let out a melodic sound between a sigh and a groan and surrendered to Cree’s attentions.
Nine: Abeyance
Morning broke calm and clear at last over Haethfalt. Jak was only half-awake, vaguely aware of a pleasant rhythm like distant music, recognizing it for the ring and thump of pickaxes across the glen as they struck against ice only after the door of Mound Ahr was forced open.
Scrambling to get untangled from the blankets by the hearth, Jak managed to rise to a half-kneeling position, but nearly yanked all the covers from Ahr in the process. Someone jumped down from the snow bank that had been dug out above the door, and Keiren’s face appeared around the wood just as Jak tossed a quilt over Ahr.
“Keiren.” Jak was breathless from wrestling with the blankets. “What are you doing here?”
Keiren looked from Jak to Ahr and folded his arms. “We came to see if you’d frozen to death, for soothsake. Guess you found a way to keep warm.”
Heat spread across Jak’s cheeks. “It’s not what you think.”
Keiren shrugged. “Not sure it really matters what I think.”
Waiting on the bank of snow above, Geffn breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of voices. Keiren had offered to go first in case what they found inside Mound Ahr was the unthinkable. Clearing away some more of the frozen snow to shed some light on the interior, Geffn hopped down onto the steps and found Keiren standing awkwardly before Jak in front of the hearth by the cold fireplace.
Beside Jak, another form stirred, and a bare-chested Ahr emerged from beneath a blanket. At the sight of Geffn, he scrambled up with the quilt around his waist and stood staring at them, scratching uncomfortably at several days’ growth of beard. He offered words neither in greeting nor to ease their discomfort. It was what one had come to expect of Ahr.
Geffn’s gaze turned to Jak, whose hair fell in a soft curve against one cheek instead of bound in the usual utilitarian fashion at the neck. Jak, though fully dressed, was red-cheeked as a child in the snow, guilt reinforced in the gray eyes. They’d been trysting here together, and Jak—well, it was obvious Jak had gotten over a longstanding resistance to being touched.
He was surprised to feel anger. This was what he’d wanted, after all, to push Jak into the arms of Ahr and leave him free to court Ra. Staring at his one-time companion, Geffn realized what was behind this unexpected well of feeling. Jak’s heather gaze met him from behind a tousled cup of hair in a way that was painfully familiar. This was not the hotheaded radical, nor the even-tempered, arrogant philosopher he’d come to accept in the wake of Jak’s rejection. This was Jak na Fyn, the steel-eyed wild horse he’d admired growing up in the mounds. The one who’d teased him when he was a child, bested him at wrestling when he was an adolescent, and defended him always against the bitterness of his bereaved parents.
This was Jak, with whom Geffn had fumbled in a dusty hayloft when he was just a narrow-waisted youth, recovering from a virus that forced him to spend long hours lying about when he was full of uncontainable energy and desires. This was Jak, who had seemed at sixteen, two years his senior, to know his thoughts and his body better than he did himself and had conspired with him to spend most of that convalescence in a delightful state of constant arousal and satisfaction.
This was Jak, whose mother, Fyn, he’d helped to bury; Jak, who’d come to him after that terrible year to seek his then more-seasoned comfort and bury Fyn’s memory as well in the nepenthe of desire.
This wasn’t the neutral moundmate with whom he now shared as a sibling the division of labor and polite discourse after dinner. This was Jak na Fyn ne Geffn. This was his handfasted.
Geffn sneered to keep from succumbing to the sudden overwhelming rush of sadness. “Don’t get up on my account. I’ll come back when you’re through.” He turned and climbed back out, staring unseeing at the blinding snow.
Jak shoved a lock of hair behind one ear, cheeks itching with humiliation at what this looked like—and was, to some degree. With no break in the storm since Ra’s departure, there’d been little to occupy the time. They’d busied themselves with repairing Ahr’s broken furniture and making an icebox out of the window to p
reserve the magnificent array of Ra’s abandoned food for the remainder of their meals. But as the storm wore on, there’d been nothing but each other to explore.
Ahr had spoken of his encounter with MeerShiva, and briefly, painfully, of the birth and loss of Mila. And Jak had talked of the struggle to find a self among the collective minds of the clans, to rise above the constraints of the assumptions of gender. They’d shared more with each other and found more in common than they had in the three years of their acquaintance. There was a keen awareness, however, of what was not shared, and Jak had been unable to ignore Ahr’s frustration.
Last night, Jak had removed Ahr’s sweater, untied the laces of his cotton pants, and laid him bare before the hearth in the glow of their meager fire. Hovering over him on hands and knees, Jak had kissed him lightly, starting with his mouth and moving downward. He’d lain still, watching Jak, uncertainty in the deep blue eyes that burned with contained desire, until Jak had finally joined him on the floor and drawn him close, letting their bodies twine together, with Ahr’s irrepressible erection grinding hard against Jak’s thigh. He’d climaxed with little stimulation, and Jak had kissed him as he shook with the intensity of his release, moaning Jak’s name. They’d fallen asleep with their skin still separated by Jak’s clothing beneath the blankets.
And now there would be assumptions, and judgments, and Geffn’s brown eyes full of hate engulfing them. Jak felt a rekindling of the fuel of emotional resistance at the prospect of a contest of ego between Geffn and Ahr. Indulging Ahr had been a mistake. The illusion of being alone in the world was a common danger to the snowbound. It prompted irrational behavior, as Jak well knew and should have heeded, having more experience with mound winters. The last few days had been a classic case of snow dementia.
Geffn reappeared, hopping down from the snow-packed opening, his face stony. “Where is Ra?”
Keiren threw him a nervous sideways glance and eyed the sideboard. Geffn’s gaze followed the look to the cluttered pile of bones amid a red stain from the goblet Ahr had overturned. It was obvious, but ludicrous, what Keiren was thinking. Geffn raised his brow at Jak.