by Jane Kindred
Ume grinned, smoothing the velvet silk over her lap. “Just a bit of dressmaking.”
“Well, as long as you’re in drag, I was thinking…” Cree had an odd expression, and Ume’s brow wrinkled, waiting for her to go on. “Perhaps…you could be my highwayman.”
“I could what?”
It was difficult to tell in the dim light from their fire, but Cree appeared to be blushing. “Just a—a game. To pass the time.”
Ume’s lip curled up in a sly smile. “I see. You want me to accost you and take advantage of you.” Cree was decidedly blushing. Ume set the dress aside and pushed Cree onto her back, looming over her. “And just how long have you been harboring this perverse little fantasy?”
Cree’s heart was beating faster as Ume held her down. “Just—since Mole Downs.”
Ume pressed herself against her, her erection grinding roughly between them. “And I suppose you’re a damsel in distress, all alone in this rickety cart.”
Cree swallowed while Ume ran her tongue over her throat. “No, not a damsel, exactly.” Her voice was rough with arousal. “A young man out on my own for the first time.”
Ume gave her a look of mock dismay. “Why, Mr. Silva!” She rose up on all fours and grabbed Cree’s short-cropped curls at the nape, forcing her onto her belly. Cree made a soft moan of highly aroused alarm. Ume yanked up on her hair. “Unbutton those pants and slide them down, boy.” She growled the words in Cree’s ear, and Cree swiftly obeyed. Ume pressed against the firm ass, her cock, still inside her own pants, straining against the fabric. “You do as I say, and I won’t hurt you,” Ume whispered roughly, working her way down her buttons against Cree’s skin. “Least, not more’n I have to.”
“Yes, sir!” Cree gasped. Her breathy sounds of convincing fear were incredibly arousing.
She put her lips against Cree’s ear. “You ever been done by a man before, boy?”
“No, sir,” Cree whimpered.
“Not even a cock in your mouth?” Cree let out an insensate moan in answer, and Ume rose up on her knees, straddling her, as she released an almost painfully hard erection from her open pants. “Roll over.” She grabbed Cree’s hair at the crown as Cree obeyed, and hauled her up to sitting.
Cree opened her mouth a bit too eagerly, but as Ume brought her forward, a sound outside the cart arrested them both—the distinct sound of footfall in the hard-packed snow.
“Shit,” Cree hissed.
Ume let go of her as they both scrambled to right their clothing. Heart pounding, she grasped in the pile of supplies in the corner for a mallet they’d salvaged from the mill, certain highwaymen had found them after all.
Cree, pants hastily buttoned, grabbed up the shotgun as the footsteps came closer, pointing it at the opening of their canvas tarp. “Who’s there?” she demanded in her deep contralto.
“Do not be alarmed.” The voice was female, and its owner stepped into view, a tall, willowy woman in a cloak of deep green, a length of fair hair spilling out of the hood.
“It’s you,” Cree gasped, lowering the shotgun.
“You?” Ume stared. “You, who?”
“This is the woman who treated my wound when I was stabbed.” Cree blinked as if she wasn’t sure she was awake, and certainly the scene had a dreamlike quality, so Ume could hardly blame her. “The Caretaker.”
The woman inclined her head and then turned and began walking away. “Come,” she called over her shoulder. “You court danger here.”
“Who in the name of the gods is the Caretaker?” Ume demanded, her fist still clutched tight around the hammer.
Cree was already climbing out of the cart, the shotgun lowered at her side. “I told you, she treated me. She gave me some kind of healing tincture and stitched me up, but I don’t remember how she got me off the street.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Ume bundled herself in her coat and scarf, tossing Cree’s hat at her as she grabbed her own knit cap.
“Because,” said Cree, with a touch of annoyance. “It sounded weird when I thought about telling you. I thought I’d dreamt it.”
“Well, how could she be all the way out here?” Ume hissed as they hurried over the snow to catch up to the woman. “Did she follow us?”
Cree shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out when we get where we’re going.”
“Which is?”
The woman ducked into a dense cluster of pine, the dark undersides of the branches blending with the shadows. Ume pulled back on Cree’s arm as she moved to follow. “This could be a trap.”
“If she meant us harm, it would have been just as easy to set upon us at the cart.” Cree ignored Ume’s anxious tugging and ducked under the damp branches, and Ume hurried after, afraid Cree would disappear into the darkness. As she lifted her head on the other side of the low-hanging branches, Ume stopped with a gasp. The trees—and the woods altogether—had dissolved like wet paint slipping down a canvas, and they stood in some kind of primitive stone lodge. She looked back, and there was only a hazy suggestion of a door behind her.
“What in the world? Where are we?”
The strange woman lowered her hood and gave her a cool, unnerving smile that didn’t quite touch her pale gray eyes, glinting in the light of a cozy fire. “You have come under the hill.”
Fourteen: Intricacy
“I am not in league with any fugitive Meer,” Ahr insisted.
He stood with Jak before the solicitors in the renovated chamber of the former Temple Ra, where once had sat the tyrant’s pompous homage to himself: the Meeric Altar. Geffn had been dismissed as being a harmless falender who knew nothing, but Jak’s gender presentation was suspect.
Overhead, the sparkling lights of diamonds reflected from the interior of the ebony dome like stars. The walls, inlaid with gold, curved upward to the dome and held it on its angled columns with fierce outstretched claws encompassing orbs of carnelian. A stall of dark wood had replaced the dais and the altar as the focal point of this “court”, equipped with a collection of individually carved seats for each of the appointed solicitors behind the hemispheric bench, itself carved in one great piece from the trunk of a tremendous tree. The corners and balustrades of this installment were tipped in caps of gold. They might have renounced the tenets of his rule, but certainly the wealth of the deposed Meer had not been abjured.
The first time Ahr had come here, she’d been taken on the lapis-and-obsidian floor, MeerRa leaping over the arm of his throne like a hunting cat to seize her and press her down against the night-tempered tiles—hungry, insatiable, devouring.
His man had found her in the beggars’ yard behind the teahouse. She recognized him as one of the bronzed giants who’d borne her through her deflowering. Summoned, she went.
MeerRa had seemed possessed, his eyes wide and riveted on her all the while he touched her. He hadn’t penetrated her this time, but wanted her denuded, his arms holding hers wide that he could look on her. He’d consumed each part of her body then, beginning with the tips of her fingers taken into his mouth like sweets, down her arm with his oral caresses, kissing softly against her throat below the inevitable veil. Her breasts he’d lavished with his mouth’s attention, possessing them for what might have been hours in the stillness of the temple. This intimacy aroused her, calmed her from her fear of him, until she quivered and pressed herself into his mouth with a soft moan, unable to contain it. He continued, after a time, to her navel, where he circled its jewel with his tongue, and then lowered his mouth between her legs, gently persuading her body to open.
Ahr had begun to forget where she was, forgetting everything in the surrender to the heat of his mouth. She was a goddess on an altar of ecstasy, tasted and stroked and caressed by his tongue, transported to an endless night where there was nothing but his kisses inside her sex, his tongue absorbed by her, his mouth drinking her like the font of bliss.
He let her go at last, dazed and dreamlike into the streets of Rhyman under protection of his man Merit, returned to the teahouse yard in the remaining cover of dark.
“You are an associate of the falender who harbored the former despot of our realm.” The prelate’s words brought him back to the present.
Ahr pulled his gaze away from the floor, polished tiles reflecting back diamonds to the dome, and stared at the prelate. “Was he a despot?” He posed the question to himself.
“Do you deny knowledge of the Meer?” asked one of the solicitors.
“I knew of him,” said Ahr. “I am a former citizen of the Delta.”
“Former citizen,” the prelate noted. “And now perhaps a fugitive in the wastelands yourself, traveling with your companion.” He flicked his eyes toward Jak. “This…person…who is known to have harbored Meer.”
Jak looked to Ahr for interpretation. He hadn’t even realized he’d slipped into the lyrical Deltan tongue. He’d been speaking the slower Mole so long it had finally become automatic.
“I’m not a fugitive. Merely an expatriate. My friend from the mounds of Haethfalt at Munt Zelfaal has been accused of harboring a Meer without evidence.” And to Jak, in Mole, “He’s asking where we’re from. It’s nothing.”
“How do we know you’re not a fugitive?” another solicitor demanded. “Perhaps you yourself are one of these Meer.”
Ahr laughed. “They think I’m Meer,” he said to Jak. “Your Excellency, do you think I’d be standing here having this conversation with you if I had such power?”
“The power of the Meer was largely exaggerated,” said the prelate. “You’ll be detained until we’ve determined you have no Meerish blood. As for your ‘friend’—” He gave a quick nod at Jak as though he didn’t want to be soiled even with the symbolic touch of such a person—“while it is true that the Meerhunters have presented no evidence to corroborate the charge of conspiracy to harbor a fugitive of the Deltan states, gender impersonation is a crime under Deltan law.”
Ahr swallowed at the implications this might have for him as well. “My friend is a free Haethfalt citizen and not subject to your laws.”
The prelate shook his head. “All who set foot on Deltan soil are subject to Deltan law.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Jak, but the red-robed solicitors had risen from their seats to remove them from the court.
In the cellar hold, Jak was to be stripped and searched for weapons, while Ahr, whose potentially Meerish blood frightened the Deltan guardsmen, was briefly patted down and then left alone. He turned away while Jak submitted to them, privy to the insults of the guards that Jak couldn’t understand.
“What do you suppose it is?” the senior guardsman sneered. “A man or a woman?”
“A pervert,” his companion replied, and they laughed with overloud enthusiasm.
“It has to be a man,” said the first. “It’s too ugly to be a woman.” He kicked at Jak. “Take them off, faisch, or we’ll do it for you.”
Ahr closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the bars with hands white around them. He must let them get this over with. Any resistance would only make it worse for Jak. He knew why Jak was stalling, of course, and he wished there was something he could do to let Jak keep the illusion of genderlessness. He’d longed to know what hid beneath Jak’s clothing, but he didn’t want to know like this. He hated himself for having ever desired it.
“Hurry up, pervert. All of it. We haven’t got all day.” Fabric rustled as the garments dropped to the ground. “Well, what do you know?” There was a sharp bark of laughter in response to the guardsman’s comment. “Turn around,” he ordered, his voice rough and humorless. It was all Ahr could do to remain motionless at a sound from Jak—a sound of pain.
“Well? Anything up there?” The tight, stifled groan came again.
“Nothing, sir. Want me to put something up there?”
Ahr stiffened at the ugly laughter. He wouldn’t allow this. No matter the consequences, if they intended to abuse Jak, he would fight them.
As he moved one hand from the bars, the enthusiastic laughter was cut short by another humorless snarl from the leader, who had his eye on Ahr. “You make me sick. Pathetic deviant. You’re both deviants.” He was holding Jak’s shirt, and he threw it at Ahr, buttons snapping against Ahr’s cheek. “This is a waste of time. Damned faíschen. Probably full of disease.” He released Jak, who stumbled as he slammed and locked the cell door, and the Temple Guard, reduced from the noble office it had been in the time of Ra to a band of petty thugs, left them in the dark.
Ahr tried to hand the shirt to Jak without turning, but Jak ignored him and knelt down among the fallen garments. He set the shirt beside Jak and saw the smooth, white breasts cupped in each hand, undeniable proof of Jak’s “biological destiny”. He turned away, fighting the urge to comfort. “They’re satisfied that you’re not Meer. They’ll leave you alone. It’s me they’re not sure about.”
“I know exactly what they think I am.” Jak’s voice was terrible, near tears. “Do you think I need to understand the words?”
Ahr sank down on the bare stone bunk against the wall—a most un-Meeric addition to Temple Ra—and put his head in his hands. He couldn’t take much more of the curse Ra had put upon him.
“Under the hill?” Ume repeated. “Are you—? You’re the Hidden Folk.”
Cree blanched, scanning the stoic faces of the group observing them. They all had the same peculiar pale gray eyes and fair hair—this too more gray than blonde—and their skin was oddly translucent, with delicate robin’s-egg-blue webs of veins visible beneath the surface like ethereal tattoos. “Is that true?”
She’d thought the Hidden Folk no more than a superstition, one she and Ume had encountered in the north before, and that northerners had obviously imported to the highlands, though it had never reached the Delta. Deltans, of course, had their own superstition. Never mind that it had turned out to be real despite Cree’s lifelong skepticism.
The one who’d called herself the Caretaker bowed her head slightly in answer, hands clasped in front of her. “That is the name your kind has given us.”
“What do you want with us?” asked Ume. It wasn’t confrontational; more like astounded.
Beside the Caretaker, an ageless-looking man—they all looked ageless—answered. “You are the consort of the one called Alya.”
Ume faltered, and Cree slipped her hand out to her side. Ume grasped it. “MeerAlya was once a patron of mine. What does that have to do with anything?”
“A man pursues you, seeking another of the ones you call Meer. Do you know of this Meer?”
Cree’s chest rose with anger. “If you’ve brought us here to ask Ume more questions, you can just forget it. She doesn’t know anything about any Meer.” She raised the hand still clutching her shotgun, not quite aiming it but ready to, given the slightest provocation.
The Caretaker held up a pacifying hand. “There is no need for your weapon, Cree Silva. Nor will it function here. The Recordkeeper merely seeks to ascertain why the man pursues you.”
“What do you care?” Cree blushed. “I mean, I appreciate what you did for me at Mole Downs—whatever you did—but I’m not sure how any of this is your business.”
“Much that transpires beyond the hill is our business,” said the Recordkeeper. “We have neglected it, to our detriment, retreating under the hill when we could no longer abide the acts of Men.”
“But we set certain events in motion long ago to which we must now attend.” Another man beside him had spoken, his words following smoothly on the words of the Recordkeeper as though they were all of an accord. “The one who seeks knowledge of this new Meer possesses dangerous magic and will stop at nothing to obtain more.”
Cree swallowed. He wasn’t speaking of the Meerhunter. The idea that Pike had been working
for Nesre filled her with a sick dread. The Meerhunters weren’t after Ume specifically, she’d told Cree; they wanted information about Jak and Azhra—or whatever name Azhra went by now. But the confluence of events with their presence in Mole Downs was too close for Cree’s comfort.
“I will tell you what I told the Meerhunter,” said Ume, drawing herself up with the grace of the courtesan as though she were dressed in her finest gown instead of a borrowed pair of pants and work shirt. “And without being tortured to do it. I sensed magic around Jak—the Haethfalter the Meerhunter claims to have been harboring the Meer—the same kind of magic that once touched me. The Meerhunter assumed that because I’d been intimately acquainted with one Meer, I would naturally seek the same acquaintance with another. He was wrong. As I told him, I have never met another Meer and have no desire to do so.”
“But you are acquainted with the mother of a Meer,” said the Recordkeeper.
Ume shrugged and didn’t deny it. Cree supposed with all they seemed to know, they must be aware that Azhra had undergone some kind of transformation that could only have been effected via magic—after the Meer were supposed to have been destroyed. Perhaps the same Meer who’d helped Azhra after the Expurgation was the one the Meerhunters sought.
Cree cleared her throat and took advantage of the lull in their questioning. “I’m very grateful for your kindness in helping me when I was injured, and if there were anything I could offer you to express my thanks, I would do it gladly. But if it’s all the same to you, Ume and I will be going now. Above the hill. However that happens.”
The Caretaker gave Cree another little bow of her head that was anything but humble. “You are free to go as you please. You need merely pass through the door. You may wish to know, however, that the man who pursued you from the place you call Mole Downs is burning down your cart at this very moment.”
Cree’s heart sank. Pike had found them.
“You are welcome, on the other hand,” said the Caretaker with what Cree was certain was a smug expression, “to remain here as our guests for the time being.”