Kyrus

53 - A Royal Cell Opens

2011-03-31T21:11:00.004-04:00

Mariush reclined on the couch facing the back and fidgeted irritably. “Why can’t this be over yet?” She flung a damp cloth off her forehead into the basin beside her. “We were taught it was usually half a day! Mother, you lied!”

“No my dear, I did not lie.” Mother rubbed her back, strong hands kneading, supporting. “Usual endeavouring time. This baby is your first and you may go several days and nights so you should sleep.”

“I tried that,” she said sulkily.

“And you succeeded until the contractions woke you up early this morning.”

“I’m thirsty,” she whined, and Shashi gave her a glass of honey’d water. Mariush drank it down and restlessly got up and paced.

Mother settled down on the divan and propped a pillow behind her own head. “From my experience you have another day perhaps, lovie. Save your strength.”

“The barbarians... the Trovi... they have tubs of water for birthing mothers to float in...” Mariush knew she was being awful but everything was so irritating.

“And if you had been the Emperor’s, rather than a cast off zardukahr I’m sure he would have had the precious fluid set up for you. Unfortunately we are in the Dry.”

“Mother it makes no sense for me to be birthing in the Dry. Why do humans do that? Everything else is most fecund in the high spring not now.”

“We are still strangers here, daughter. And our kind... our bodies... have not yet become one with the land.”

Mariush muttered angrily and wiped her face and head with the wet cloth and curled up around her stomach, arms loosely clasped over her quivering belly as it began to tighten up again. “Ow. Ow. Ow,” she said dispassionately. “This is uncomfortable and I don’t like it.”

“I know daughter. Believe me, I know. The first is always the most annoying.”

Shashi’s voice rose, alone in the middle of the night. A soothing song... a lullaby for a weary mother. An endeavouring mother. Diryush padded down the spiralling way inside the wall and touched three pads to open the door.

He stepped into Mariush’s rooms behind a carved screen and took in the scene in front of him. How many times have I seen my daughters, my grand-daughters, labour so hard? How many babies have I seen born in my Loggia? The person who has been killing my brood, I will find and sting him to death if I can.

Mariush lay in the bed, restless, not sleeping not really waking, dozing more than anything. Shashi, heavy herself, sat on the bottom of the bed, cradling her own stomach, looking wilted.

Mother Thriti was just waking, splashing water on her face from the basin, raising her sleeves and tying them off. He stepped out from behind the screen. “I’m in good time then?”

Mother nodded at him. “If you are strong enough, you may be her couch. She’ll be in transition soon.”

“I might be old, woman, but I can sit and have my hands seized and crushed by a birthing woman still.”

“Let me check her.”

A whispered word to Shashi who stopped singing and nodded. She moved to lie down where she was, watching. Mother checked Mariush and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Do you feel ready to push?”

“I’ve been wanting to push for the last while...” she snarled.

“Come along then.”

Mariush didn’t even blink at Diryush being there, so wrapped in herself that she would not notice. She settled onto the padding on the floor and leaned back against Diryush’s knees. He wrapped his wirey old arms around her and she grasped her knees and pulled up on them, hard.

“Come out. Come out, you little larva!” Her voice was gasping as she pushed with the next contraction. One hand slid up and back to grasp Diryush’s forearm. “Come... it’s time it’s time it is more than time... I’m so ready for you to be born!”

“Breathe now,” Mother said, crouched in front of Mariush, whose eyes were locked upon the large mirror angled so she could see the birth of her child.

“RRRRRRRRR.” It wasn’t a scream, more a growl, a low sound, and then Mariush stopped, panting.

“Once more and then the hard part will be done. Let us get this child to the air, child.”

“MooootherrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRR.... Ah Ah AH!”

Mother caught the babe as it emerged, deft fingers unwinding the cord that had been wrapped around the tiny body, cleaning the face, and laid the baby upon her mother’s suddenly emptied belly, soft where it had been distended hard, skin wrinkling and relaxing.

Mariush’s arms came down and gathered the baby close. “When did I take all my clothes off,” she said absently as she guided the baby up to a nipple. “I don’t remember.”

The afterbirth was almost unnoticed, a minor aftershock, after a ground quake that was enough to destroy buildings. Mother caught that as well and inspected it to make sure it was all there. “Good. Very good. You have a small tear, daughter, but nothing to truly worry about.”

I see this every time, the baby... she latched onto her mother with an urgency that showed her commitment to life, to living. She’s strong. She did not cry. She coughed, spit out the fluids of birth and breathed and then seized onto her mother with mouth and both hands. I suppose the larva does not fall far from the hive, hmmm? As all babies, she is ugly. As all babies, she is the most beautiful thing on the planet. I hope I live long enough to see you safe, being raised as a Captain’s daughter, in a Captain’s house, far away from this toxic royal hive.

Mother cut the cord and wrapped up the package of afterbirth to be dried and kept, and Shashi pushed herself to sitting again and began singing another encouragement to a woman birthing. People all over the upper Loggias would be listening. The bees came down in a ringing drone and crowned Mariush and the faint fuzz on the baby’s head, tasting the skin of the newborn girl.

Mariush flinched as the bees stung her, and then relaxed as the modified venom coursed in, giving her new energy, beginning to replace lost enzymes. The baby didn’t flinch and even broke her suction and cooed at the bees. Diryush nodded thoughtfully.

Shashi was joined by Mother and the two of them lied to the city, listening for the birth of the baby. If the Hive Lords did not know the baby was born yet, it would give them all a little more time before the plotting started, before the possible attacks started.

Mariush, sore, tired and worn out, looked into her newborn daughter’s eyes as she suckled and smiling, burst into tears.

The Hiatus Continues!

2011-01-16T04:49:00.000-05:00

I really hate to leave my one character mid-labour and my other characters in a terrible fix because they don't want to leave their newly marrieds!

Oh and the evil baddie who just wants power for its own sake because he happens to think he knows best. Sigh. He thinks he's the hero. Such self delusion.

The Emperor would like to have it noted that even though he is upwards of two hundred he really, really does not want to check out while all of this is going on, thank you. But he will gracefully if he thinks his grandchildren might pick up the slack.

Kyrus is still being a teenager with wildly conflicting emotions and a budding love affair and gets dragged away will he nil he.

This is a terrible soap opera, isn't it?

Stay tuned. More is coming. Maybe tomorrow. Um... later today perhaps.

Part of my interlude!

2010-07-10T13:03:00.000-04:00

The Fool on the Mountain

LIVEWRITING EVENT

Submitted by Karen on Sat, 07/10/2010 - 09:38

THE FOOL ON THE MOUNTAIN

The unlikeliest pair in the post-tech world of the Fifth Millennium

HE is a paladin: a brilliant young champion of war, impeccable in character. But he has lost the duel of his life, is forsaken as a loser and a traitor by his home empire, and is separated from the man he loves… the man who defeated him, and might well go on to destroy that empire. Torn and despairing, he is considering ending it all.

SHE is an iconoclast: an elderly, eccentric sage living in a cave on a barren mountain slope, kept in food by local people and pilgrims alike who appreciate her uttered jewels of wisdom—or is it madness? Either way, she seems to have learned the secret of absolutely unshakable happiness, and all who speak with her come away somehow changed.

He needs living space. She needs a guy to do chores.

Maybe he’ll learn something.

Maybe they both will.

A collaborative weblit novel of love and enlightenment

by Shirley Meier and Karen Wehrstein

Please see New Updates from the Gulf

2010-06-15T16:45:00.004-04:00

No post tonight or Saturday. Sorry... All words are being diverted to --

Because of a minor accident ~~fire/explosion/sinking/mistake~~ in the plot of another ongoing ~~drilling project~~ novel, our ~~emergency crews~~ fearless author has been called to attend to the ~~plot-gushing environmental disaster of the century~~ fiddly little cleanup details. Until further notice! Exterminate! Exterminate! Warning, warning Will Robininson! The Seaview is going down! Hull-breech imminent Captain. The Time Tunnel is collapsing! The two astronauts will never make it home to our time! Uncle Martin put that antenna down! We apologize for the leakage of any other plots onto your screen and will ~~Resistance is futile~~ have this little leak fixed ~~whenever she ponies up the fikken words to plug it!~~ in no time at all. ~~Mother stop honking at traffic policeman do you want to get me arrested?~~

There has been a ~~crippling disaster~~ minor problem discovered, deep in the buried posts of EC which will lead to some ~~dmajor revisions to plug a seven month hole~~ teensy little revisions in the plot. Everything is fine up to post 243 and then we experience a ~~massive fucking entropy-spewing hole~~ ~~where the platform burned down, fell over and sank into the ocean~~ little blip ~~spewing oily words in all directions like dying birds~~ until our ceaselessly working ~~engineers put a cap on it spin~~ writer can come up with a lovely story about how hard we are working to ~~fucking fix it!~~ Correct our little problem. Please note the engaging colours on the surface of the water. Pretty, just like soap bubbles. ~~Not a deadly, life and book sucking horror~~. Everything from Post 250 onward should be fine.

We should be caught up over this weekend. ~~With the flippin’ car crippled and on two wheels, my scissor jack squashed under the parts car and only a bicycle to get my son to freakin’ camp this weekend…~~ We have a whole week in which to ~~flop around like deranged jellyfish~~ access our brilliant think-tank and come up with a ~~smoothly sliding~~ seamless solution.

Stay tuned for our very own Update from the Gulf of Words!

52 - Endeavouring

2010-06-12T22:01:00.002-04:00

Mariush paced back and forth slowly in her enclosed rooms in the Sunrise Loggia. The shutters were pulled tight against the sun and the baking heat. The vents set deep into the central core of the city breathed cool stone air up into the room.

She accepted a cool towel handed in to her by a servant at the door. Since she was supposed to be in disgrace there was no servant with her. She paused as another tightening shook her body. She hoped that Mother would come soon.

The cool towel felt so soothing on her forehead and wrists and down her neck. Mariush put both hands, the one with the towel and the one empty on her belly. “It’s all right little one. The Emperor truly knows... I think. I think he does know you are his. Boy or girl, you’re the old one’s blood.”

She sank down on the bench that would have been by the window and put the towel over her face. “Mother, come. Please.”

Squeezing through the cracks around the screens a honeybee buzzed up and landed upon her head. One. Then two. Then three. Her little sisters buzzed about her head the way they had crowned her on Diryush’s balcony. “Shh. Shh. Little sisters,” she paused as her body tightened again.

“I am just birthing a little larva. I am young and have never done so before.”

The bees buzzed up and hummed in the curtains as Mother and Shashi, Nasera Basserus easing her heavy, pregnant belly as she sat down. “I’m sorry Mariush, I’m a little winded.”

Mother, briskly took over. “What are you oafs thinking? A woman endeavouring and you take His Radiance’s displeasure to this degree? Shame on you lot.” She stripped off her veil and her oversleeves, rolling up the undersleeves. “We need ice and more water. Tea with the birthing chutneys and honey. She needs the propolis due an endeavouring woman! Quick now!”

“What happened?” Mariush sank down next to her friend, Shashi.

“Someone tried to kill Diryush—sh sh... we and he dealt with it. It was both crude, direct and clumsy. One of the generals I believe but we will find out, even if the assassin had a bad reaction to bee venom.”

“His Radiance? He’s all right?”

“Yes, dear. He just needs to rest after expending all that energy. His little sisters will help... oh, good.”

As the activity in the room increased the bees flew up, more agitated. “He’s sent them to you, sweetheart. He’s worried about you and the baby.”

“I’m all right...” she paused again. “Thank Light and Dark you weren’t demanding that I lie down!” She climbed up back onto her feet, restless.

Shashi nodded. “Walking helps.”

“Oh good. You’ve done this twice before.”

“Yes, my sister. You can do this.” The servants brought the things that Mother had demanded and finally, mercifully, withdrew. The bees came down again the moment the doors were closed and there were more of them.

“My daughter.” Mother said quietly. “They know.” She held out a glass of juice to Mariush. “Have some juice and let me feel how the baby sits. It looks to me as though you have some hours to go before she’s born.”

“She?” Mariush turned toward Mother Thriti. “You know?”

“I have a feeling, sweetheart. I could be wrong.”

“Mother...” the next contraction stopped her, panting. “Are you sure His Radiance is safe and all right?”

“Yes, my dear. Shashi caught the dart and I’m sure the physician will be along shortly to find the poison upon it. After he puts the old man to bed to recover from his exertion.” She rose and came to settle her solid old hands on Mariush’s belly. “Ah, yes.”

“Exertion?”

“He pulled a sword, my dear. Cut the man behind the knee and dropped him so the bees could take him. Then he sat down again. Not bad for a man his age.” She directed Mariush to sit down. “You should get as much rest as you can. You are in for a long time. Are you sleepy?”

“MOTHER!”

“Now, now, I know an endeavouring woman is allowed all, but really.” She put her arms around Mariush and the labouring young woman put her forehead into Thriti’s shoulder.

Shashi sipped her own juice. “We’ll be here for you, sister. And we have other sisters to keep watch over him. Now, Mariush you have some of the bees food to keep your strength up. You know the bees will be here for you. He sent to to you.”

The ceiling of Mariush’s closed room was humming and glistening by now and she looked up and wiped a tear out of the corner of her eyes.

“He did? He did. Mother. Why could I not have been his Zardukahr when he was younger?”

“Child. Child. You were not yet born. But we are here. And you need to go into yourself. The Immutable is with you. He is resting and when he is recovered he will be here in spirit.”

Shashi smiled. “If he is recovered enough he will be here in body, Mariush. You know he will. No one will know, but us.”

Mariush rose and paced again, pushing her sleeves up. “Oh! This horrible dress!”

“Take it off, my dear, if you need. All is allowed an endeavouring woman.” Mother smiled. “Shashi, why don’t you and I sing?”

She laughed. “Mother I don’t have the space to sing!”

“So... practice, my dear.”

And Mariush drew her dress up over her head and flung it on the bed, next to the towels and the basins and all the things necessary for the birth of a baby. Then she went back to pacing as Mother raised her voice in one of the traditional Lainz birthing songs and Shashi, for all that she protested had a sweet singing voice.

In the High Bedroom, Diryush propped himself up against his pillows, against his physician’s hands. “Let me up, man! I can breathe better upright!”

“Of course, My Immutable. Let me prop your pillows.”

The bees ringed Diryush’s wrists and along his collarbone and the physician made no move to brush them away. “I’m fine, thank you. Thank you. I will speak to my Rasheem captain tomorrow, not today, my physician, thank you.”

He accepted a glass of honey’d raghnall juice, still bitter enough to make him grimace. He choked back a memory of explaining to Ty... protesting a medicine.. why do all medicines that are good for you have to hurt or taste bad? Little boy, the physician wants you to get better as fast as possible. If the medicines are sweet we might not struggle to get away from them so hard. Rest in your tomb my little great grandson. You are beyond bitter medicine.

From somewhere below, in the lesser rooms, women’s birthing songs rose. The early ones to hearten a young mother. To encourage a first time birth. Mariush. Be strong, young woman. Be strong for your Captain, safe in the northcountry struggling to bring an heir home to Lainz. Dukir... don’t fail me, old friend, or you are going to have to defend the baby being born today. He sighed and closed his eyes. I need to find out the subtle assassin and the blatant one who tried to kill me today. I do not think they are the same man. But I do not want to send my little prince or princess into hiding, set up a fairy story scenario. Too many people die during the reign of the ‘Evil Emperor’ before the true Heir can grow up. Does anyone notice that the storytellers never focus on the people suffering in those kinds of stories?

The bees staggered up off his wrists and neck and another necklace and bracelets of workers descended on him. You can only do so much, little sisters. Thank you. He dismissed his attendants and lay in the humming quiet, listening to Mother--he recognized her and Shashi’s voices – sing.

From the songs she has some time to go. I will sleep and then I will go down the secret ways and see my child born.

51 - Mother Visits Diryush

2010-06-09T00:07:00.006-04:00

The lush spring rains, the storms pouring down on Lainz, combined with the thunderous roar of snowmelt that had originally carved the canyon, had come and gone. Now the sun, the blinding radiance above in a sky so harsh a blue/purple one could imagine hammering nails into it.

The water retreated from the blue-hot iron of the sun, creeping away from the stone and down the walls of the Basin, leaving the little boats people lived in, dry on their stilts and ladders, dry on the dust that blew in from the white desert. Every year people jostled for a better position when their homes grounded.

Moisture sank into the cracks and crevices and then evaporated completely, leaving only the condensation snow that lived all year in the bottom of the canyon, and the stubborn, shrinking river trailing along the stone, far below the walls it had scoured only weeks ago.

The flowers, finished their eye-blink seeding cycle, grew brown and blew away, leaving their parent plants hiding the precious fluids behind thick brown bark, gray/green fleshy barrels coated with their own ghostly wax, or died back to the rim of the ground, tucking their lives back into the thread-thin roots in bad soil, waiting for the water to come back.

In the shaded fields, and ‘cliner-cut terraces up and down the cliff face, the Lainz crops grew, each plant carefully tended, loving watered, by hand, or by water bought from the pump-head where it was brought from the river below.

Just after sunset, before the deep cold of night, the stop-cocks were turned with creaks and groans by diligent field workers, the mist-waterers whispering to life, so that every drop was available for the sun-warmed plants, but none was wasted to the thirsty, heat-shimmering air.

It was the Deep Dry. Hottest, brightest, most brutal time of year, when everyone was under the Radiance. Everyone was forced flat, hammered onto their faces by the heat. This was when even the bees of Lainz worked at night, and worked far below where both water and night-blooming flowers could be found.

Under the Emperor Hive the screens didn’t block the wind, the breeze blowing through the carved stone flowers. The Hive sisters were spread out thin over the inside of the hall roof, the beat of their wings adding to the cooling breeze.

And cooling it was for water pumped to the reservoir just under the Sun Crystal drifted down in a fine mist outside the windows and cool the hot wind blowing in, chilling it.

The court wore the thinnest of veils and the lightest of Trovian cottons rather than their more traditional gauze linens. Diryush stood before his chair as the court parted for the older woman dressed in white and blue with a red-gold veil. “Mother. You are most welcome. These old eyes are so eased by your beauty, we are disappointed that we cannot more often lure you from your Zar School.”

She sank in a stately curtsy, small golden feather shaped weights chiming on the marble from the edge of her third veil. “Immutable. You are too kind. And I should remind you that I am hardly your ‘Mother’!” The smile was easy in her voice.

He answered it with white teeth still showing a flash behind his veil. “Yes, and certainly not my sister! Thriti, please come and sit with me.” He held out his hands to her, the tips of his fingers gilded.

“I may not stay long, Immutable. I am called to my poor, disgraced daughter, but I did have to make my submission to you personally.”

“Ah. She has called you? Shashi.” He settled down to his throne, handing Thriti into the courtesy stool at his knee. He waved Nasera Basserus out of the crowd with the hand he’d seated Mother with. “Nasera. You have my leave to attend to Mariushn with Mother Thriti, when I release her. Mother informs me her time to give birth to her little bastard.” My apologies, my dear. “I do not wish to see it.” I do. I do wish to see this last child of mine before I die. I want to hold the living flesh engendered by me on your beautiful mother.

“Of course, Radiance.” She curtsied as best she could with the bulk of her own pregnancy slowing her down and moved to stand behind Mother, her own black fan adding to the stir of air.

“Ah, Mother Thriti. Have something to drink before you go. The woman will be labouring for hours yet.”

“Yes, your Brightness,” she fanned herself idly with a honeywood fan. The women ranked themselves off to her side of the room, their veils the colour of flowers. Diryush leaned back against the Hive throne, cut from citrine, the hand-rests carved like the hilts of swords sunk in the stone. “She’s fine, Thriti,” he murmured in the hair’s breadth of time he had before the vizier clapped a young servant forward with his tray of iced drinks.

“Oh, His Radiance is teasing me!” Mother fanned herself and answered, out loud, a comment he hadn’t made. Sashi waited by her shoulder and as the young man knelt gracefully before Mother, something tweaked her sense of warning. Something was not right.

The servant rose from his elegant service to Mother and turned toward Diryush, who watched him with lazy, half-lidded eyes.

A number of things happened at the same time.

A servant raised a tray, puffed through a straw.

A ladies’ fan snapped out to catch the dart in its folds.

The Emperor leaned out of the line of fire, seized one of the hilts in his throne.

The Rasheem began to move to protect His Radiance.

The bees reacted with their drowsy hum ratchetting up to an alarmed roar.

And things began to unravel, unfold, unwrap all at once. The Emperor was on his feet the sword pulling out of the throne with a ‘shrinnggg’ as he stepped toward the assassin, not away.

The assassin flung the tray, crossed his hands and drew knives. The Emperor bent back even further as the woman’s fan reached out and tapped the tray up to arc over his Radiance’s ducking head. It raised a fan of sparks off a column behind with an awful screeching sound before clattering ineffectually to the floor.

Diryush came up from his crouch, brought his sword up and around cutting hard at the man's knee. The assassin leapt over the cut, the tip of the manifest sword slicing through skin, drawing blood after it.

The assassin landed hard on the floor, came up to face His Radiance and the bees came.

His head was suddenly encased with a thick ball of bees and he froze. He could not see, his hands came up toward his head, knives tumbling from lax fingers, bees flowing around and enclosing his hands... and his shoulders and his torso.

Millions of bees balling the assassin as if he were a wasp or spider attacking the hive. The man fell to his knees unable to scream without drawing bees into his lungs. The Rasheem seized him and the bees let go, spiralling up in a waterfall reaching to the ceiling. But the man lurched against the Rasheem's brutal hands and began to convulse, foaming out of his mouth, until he went limp, though they tried to save him for questioning.

The Emperor collapsed back against the high back of this throne. “Physician...” his voice was a croak. Shashi folded her fan tight around the dart she had caught in it.

Mother nodded at Diryush and he, barely at her. The physician elbowed his way out of the Hive Lords, standing with their ineffectual knives in their hands. “Radiance, let your little sisters test me,” he said, holding his hands out to Diryush.

“My healer, Brienz, I trust you. Please.” Diryush tried to sit up straighter. “Mother, Shashi, go to Mariush. She needs.”

“And you do not? Diryush don’t be an ass.”

From the Sun throne he raised his head and smiled at her. And she raised her fan before her veiled face. “Don’t die old man. Not yet.”

“Never, Mother Thriti.”

“You should have made me your Sun Crystal, Diryush.”

The fading whisper from his lips as he finally let go his fading consciousness. “I... shou...”

50 - A Larvae in a Royal Cell

2010-06-06T00:20:00.006-04:00

I missed the deadline again... the three hour drive to Toronto avec familia tends to mess these things up... and I realized... I need to go back to Lainz.

So... I will do what I can tonight... and tomorrow. Might not be tomorrow either. If not it will be a double post on Tuesday. Cross my heart and hope to die if I lie!

Take care.

_______________________

The lush spring rains, the storms pouring down on Lainz, combined with the thunderous roar of snowmelt that had originally carved the canyon, had come and gone. Now the sun, the blinding radiance above in a sky so harsh a blue/purple one could imagine hammering nails into it.

The flowers, finished their eye-blink life, grew brown and blew away, leaving their parent plants hiding precious seeds and fluids behind thick brown bark. Or inside gray/green fleshy barrels coated with their own ghostly wax, or died back to the rim of the ground, tucking their lives back into the thread-thin roots in bad soil, waiting for the water to come back.

In the shaded fields, and ‘cliner-cut terraces up and down the cliff face, the Lainz crops grew, each plant carefully tended, lovingly watered, by hand or by water bought, drop by drop, from the pump-head, raised from the river below.

It was the Deep Dry. Hottest, brightest, most brutal time of year, when everyone lay under the Radiance. Everyone was forced flat, hammered onto their faces by the heat. This was when even the bees of Lainz worked at night, and worked far below, where both water and night-blooming flowers could be found.

____________________

Well. It has to be a double post on Tuesday I guess. This has been an odd and very busy weekend!

Author's Note

2010-06-02T00:03:00.002-04:00

Post 48 will be slightly delayed... since I am not feeling up to snuff!

I will finish this post later today. As well as a full EC post.

My apologies for failing to deliver... come back later today and look at Post 48.

Shirley

49 - Face to Face With a Dead Man

2010-06-02T00:00:00.011-04:00

So I… Dukir Pahgemar, pretending to be the Amir Isfahsalar, most illustrious spymaster for His Radiance, Diryish Pollus walk into this odd tent inside a cave in Milar. The last thing I expected, on the whole sphere of the earth, was to walk in, face--to–face with a dead man.

A dead man with a reputation for the highest honesty and the most impeccable of integrity, the man who would die rather than be disgraced on or off the field. I’d been only hoping to find the boy. The malleable teenager I could take off to the Empire, wil-he, nil-he, and train up to be a decent Emperor… not this warrior… even if he was standing with a single sheet wrapped around himself, no veil and an arm flung around… the surdeniliarch of Milar.

It all fell together like coins in a well, in his head. “Kyrus Talain… the elder,”

“Amir, please, be seated.” Kyrus sat down himself, the Milari war master not letting go so Dukir found himself the target of their two gazes; along with that of the boy, still sitting on the floor with the little white vermin in his lap. “Kyrus… offer the Amir some tea, would you, son?”

“Certainly, Da.”

As the boy quietly fetched cups and crumbled tea leaves and set out the little bowls of chutneys and butter, Dukir watched, quietly, taking in the way everyone moved.

“May I offer my congratulations on your marriage?” He said as he accepted a cup from the younger Kyrus. “I’ll take the drink bare, thank you. Though as Siwion, I should rightly serve you.” The boy flinched.

Ilax said, quietly. “Neither my inamour or my married-in son have had time to adjust to the idea as of yet, Amir. Give them a little time, please.”

“Oh, yes, certainly, surdeniliarch. I am needing considerable adjustment time, myself.” That drew a laugh. “I am sure this is going to throw a chicken into the war-bird’s pen.”

“Yes, it will. With the warning my new son gave us, that he is a Siwion of Lainz, and thus so is his ‘dead’ father, we had just come to the conclusion that to sort this all out I shall have to request a State visit to the Radiant city, myself and my heir.”

“Truly?” Dukir found himself surprisingly relieved. He’d been thinking he’d have to argue and cajole or even threaten. “The Most High could let his son come to the city with me, thus maintaining his cherished privacy and his new wedding…” And if everything fell apart I’d have you tucked away safe in this country… hmmm.

“No.” Kyrus’s voice and Ky’s voice rang out together and they exchanged a look with each other that showed surprise and pride on both sides. “It would be my duty to return to my home country,” Kyrus continued. “I was discarded by General d’molfe, and would never return to be merely another Ass in the Lainz armies –“

“—never that low, da!” Ky protested. “You were better than that!”

“Shush, lad.” Even in the wrapped bedsheet there was something intense about Kyrus, that mere trappings couldn’t show. Perhaps it was his will, or the force of his stare. That stare is so much like the old man’s… If I’d ever doubted, one of those looks would have been enough to convince me otherwise. “But if the Emperor needs me, in whatever capacity, it will be my honour and pleasure to accompany you… as long as my husband and new family is acknowledged appropriately.”

“Of… course.” Dukir turned to Ilax. “Naser… would your government allow your visit to Lainz the city?”

“It’s been ten years,” Ilax said thoughtfully. “Considering that the circumstances have changed, probably no more than a month’s worth of debate.”

Ky and Kyrus both just rolled their eyes skyward. “Of course… only a month.” Tizrav wiggled over to him and began pulling on the edge of the sheet wound around Kyrus, protecting his modesty. “Stop that, rodent! Amir… how urgent is it that we travel to the city?”

While Dukir considered, Ilax said quietly, “Personally I got on well with His Radiance, I thought.”

“Yes, surdeniliarch.” Dukir hid his sigh. “His Radiance… is very old, though his health is remarkable for his age.”

“And remarkable when people kept trying to kill him in inventive ways,” Ilax said dryly.

“But he is very old.” There was no getting around that fact, and the reason he had been sent to Milar, with such broad-reaching orders. “I, and my Captain, would be very happy if we could cut our travel time down to weeks.”

Ilax looked thoughtful, apparently not noticing that his sheet had slipped loose and lay around his waist as he sipped his tea, thankfully for the Lainz sensibilities it hide everything necessary. He was as unconcerned as if he were fully dressed, in his office, behind a desk. Or as if he sat in his chair on the Unity floor.

“So it is your Captain who has been behind this mission, Amir?”

With a totally bland face, Dukir reached up to thumb his insignia, as if he were merely the Amir it claimed him to be. “Of course, Nasers.” Ilax’s smile said volumes but he said nothing. “I am but a working Feather-spitter.” And you’ll believe that when the sun and moon change places, he thought.

“How may I help the Illustrious Siwions and the most honourable surdeniliarch and his family come with us to Lainz… as fast as possible?”

“People have only just adjusted to the fact that Kyrus isn’t dead. It’s going to take you and your captain both to convince the Unity that you are serious and that Milar has been hosting the possible Kraganzh himself, all unknowing.”

“Certainly, Nasers.”

Kyrus and Ilax exchanged a look full of the years between them, the understanding each had of the other’s mind. “I will be very happy to have my husband and wing-brother at my back, Amir. For my protection and the protection of our son, Kyrus.”

Oh Light and Dark. This is going to have the Hive-Lords squawking so loud you’ll hear the screech and cackle all the way back up these mountains. Diryush is going to laugh so long and hard he might just fall over and die right there, from laughter alone.

48 - Meet my Family

2010-05-29T21:49:00.003-04:00

It was only a moment of frozen silence between the three of them. Ilax held out his arms to his new inamor, even as Kyrus said, “Deovar!” and Ky curled up to sit on the rugs, Tizrav in his arms.

“We’ll figure this out,” Ilax said. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Da,” Ky gulped. “I can see one way... um... we keep pretending that you’re dead, to Lainz anyway... I’ll go. I mean...”

“Son, that would be deceitful. Besides, it's too late for that. I've come out of hiding for all Milar. Lainz will find out eventually. I just didn't think it would have such odd implications.” But Kyrus’s eyes were hooded as he thought, his face closed as granite. “To let my son go into the Hive... they’re SURE we are Siwion?...” At Ky’s mute nod he sighed. “I cannot refuse my duty... I have hidden from my people for so long... and I chose to expose myself to all the possible censure to help save lives after the mudslide. It is my duty to reveal myself to his Radiance. But I refuse to leave you, deovar. I just had my wedding and I’m not going to pretend that it didn’t happen.”

“And I have a position here that I cannot leave. I’m trying to stamp out a huge fire in the brush right now... a fire that could potentially have both Lainz and Milar embroiled in a war... as allies, but still a war that I’m hoping to prevent. And I will not leave you either , my inam. I did not keep your secret for so many years, to have duty take my love away.”

“So you can’t let these Hive-Birds know you’re still alive.”

“But I have to. I’ve finished with hiding.” Kyrus got up to pace, his path a circle around the central stove. Tizzie darted off Ky’s lap and chased after his heels, rolling and bellyflopping after him. “Well...” He trailed off, darted a look at Ky, then back at Ilax. “How difficult is this situation you’re dealing with?” He asked the surdeniliarch.

Before Ilax could even begin thinking, Ky burst out “It’s not so bad that you couldn’t take a moon of honey after your wedding! Ask your Assemblies permission and bring the kids... Let’s all go and get this straightened out!”

In the silence his statement created, distantly, they could hear a voice on the mountain, calling. “Kyyyyyyyrrrrruuuuuusssss!”

“They’re not just Hive-Birds... they’re Rasheem, Da,” Ky said quietly.

“This is just such a mess.”

“Da this can’t be real, this is craziness!” Ky wanted to scream and curse and rant in the filthiest tongue he knew. “Only a few moons ago I would have been dancing and singing and kissing the ground in front of the Amir’s bird. Now I want them to take their high office and position and shove it up their—“

“--Kyrus Talain!” The full name came from both fathers, though Ilax followed it up with “You may want to tidy up your language, lad.” While his Da spat “Mind your tongue!”

“You know,” Ilax said thoughtfully. “It’s high summer. And we did plan our moon to be during my slowest time. I could petition the Unity for a ‘State Visit’.” It was his turn to leap up. “You know, it might be good for me to break bread and honey with the old man... and you would be the next Radiance, so if I did help you straighten this out...”

“And if this war does show up... You and I would be set to work together.”

“But Da’s!” Ky waved his hands as if to flag down a pair of horses... “Um... Fathers.... um... but my um we... um... Da and I would have to live in Lainz and Da and Haraklez would have to live in Milar...”

Both Kyrus and Ilax turned to each other. “Whatever happens... we’ll fix it.”

There was a scratching noise outside and polite cough from outside. The Amir’s voice, in his precise, polite Milari echoed only slightly. “My apologies for disturbing the Inimitable surdeniliarch and his new bride... but is the boy Kyrus Talain in this cavern? Again, my apologies for the interruption and disturbance.”

Eye caught eye caught eye inside the tent and Ilax waited until Kyrus nodded, just slightly. Ky put both hands over his mouth and chin, in lieu of a veil. “Amir,” Ilax said quietly in Lainz. “No disturbance to apologize for. Do come in and meet my family.”

47 - They Want Me to Come With Them!

2010-05-25T23:59:00.006-04:00

“Da!” The mountain’s slope had gained steepness somehow, the air thin in his lungs. He couldn’t produce a shout and run at the same time but he tried a few more times. “Da, Light and Dark, Da!”

He ran, thankful that the Zon had insisted he run up and down the mountain every day as part of his training, but his run was a half scramble, hands digging into the side of the slope here and there because the direct path up was so much steeper than the path. It felt steeper. Did I just witness my da and Ilax pledge themselves before the Ancestors and the Light and the Dark and walk down here, just a day ago? Twins of Light and Darkness, he’s just married Ilax, Hara’s papa... oh Dark and Light and Dark again! They wanted to take him away from Milar, away from his da... and his new husband... Light and Dark they wanted to take him away from Hara. They wanted to take him away from everything. I don’t want to. They can take their position and the riches and everything and shove them up their cloacas!

It took forever, as if the cleft of the newly cleaned out cavern, the old ‘mander spell covering it up burst asunder and washed away by the flood of mud, kept receding away in front of him.

Ilax had said that someone would probably put one up again someday but everyone in this generation now knew about the cave. The cleft just seemed to hang there in his pounding breath, not getting any closer, even as he strained upwards.

Behind he could hear the uproar as one of the Rasheem, probably the Amir, got himself straightened out and rode down the loose bird before it bit someone. When Ky had spooked it, he’d flipped the reins over the raised pommel so the eyeflaps had locked open, letting it run. “Da. Da.” He had no air left at all and he’d suddenly made it up high enough to dodge into the Ancestor stones no longer as exposed as a bug on a plate.

His chest heaving, heart pounding and spots swimming in front of his eyes as if he had mountain sickness he staggered into the passageway, the rock cool on his hands as he fell against one side. He couldn’t stop.

He made it into the main cavern, turn the sharp corner, dragged the door-flap up without so much as a cough to let them know he was coming and fell over with a bang as Tizzie darted between his feet, tripping him. He raised his head just in time to see both his da and Ilax, completely naked, let go each other to have their mouths free. Ilax’s pale arms were wrapped around his da’s knees and kneeling... um... da had opened his mouth... let him go.... um...so he was kneeling...

Kyrus didn’t even bother trying to get up but turned his face down into the carpets and flung his arms over his head, still struggling to get his breath back. A fast rustling noise came from the bed. Thank Light and Dark they’re both warriors and move fast... “Ky, what’s wrong?” Ilax’s hand on his back. I might be enlightened sexually but not THAT enlightened. Twins of Light and Dark, PLEASE have some kind of clothing on your body!

“It’s all right son,” Ky risked at peek at his Da over the edge of his arm. Da and Ilax both had a couple of furs wrapped around them from the bed.

“No, it’s not!” He heaved a full enough breath finally. “There’s a couple of Rasheem who say that I’m the bastard great-grandson of the Radiant Light and that I’m a Siwion and have to go with them to Lainz and maybe the new Kraganzh – I don’t want to go I want to stay here with –“

“Hush, son. Wait a moment. You’re making no sense. Catch your breath. I can’t make out half of what you’re saying.” He sat down next to his son, while Ilax went over and grabbed some clothing up off the floor. Ky sat up and turned his head to look resolutely at his father while Ilax pulled on something a bit more substantial than a blue-wolf fur. Tizrav bounced back into the tent and climbed up Ky’s back as he sat and he didn’t notice.

“Da! Listen. Your da... Diryish Talain, right?”

“Yes.”

“His mama was Shabat, right?”

Kyrus was starting to look both puzzled and upset. “Yes, that was grandmother’s name. It was a bit of a scandal that grandfather insisted on marrying her, rather than accepting the girl chosen for him by his parents.”

“Da, the Rasheem, say he... Diryish -- really His Immutable’s son! Herself ‘d gang bunwise with the Scorcher!” His tongue failed him, falling back into the cant he’d grown up with. “We’m Embers fallen ta Darkmost! An’ they High-beaks say... come along, no wrong, come along! Da!” Even as old as he was Ky couldn’t help sounding much younger, in his fear. “Da, t’makes you real-ion, Siwion, an’ t’ highest Height-climber, Sun-crystal sniffer, Buzzing One!”

“Kyrus, inam, I don’t speak that variant of Lainz. What’s going on?”

“Oh.” Kyrus Senior said. “Oh. My. Light. And. Dark. Drill me twixt the butt-cheeks and throw a gold beak loop in my sweet and sour pinched cloaca, guano on me!” Ilax was completely frozen as the obscenities poured from Kyrus’s lips, totally unlike him.

“Inam?” He came over and knelt between and beside father and son as both covered their faces.

“Da, what are we going to do?” Ky was still panting as if breathless, though he’d long recovered from his run. “They’re following, lookin’... um, looking for me. They’re supposed to be my bodyguard!”

“Ilaxandal. My husband.” Kyrus was shaking in a way that was clearly strange to Ilax because he flung his arms around him and held him tightly as though to keep him firmly on the carpet before the bed.

“Will one of you two please start making sense? What is going on?”

“Ky tells me that I’m the bastard grandson of the Imperator of Lainz and he’s all out of Heirs. He... because everyone in Lainz still apparently believes I’m dead... thinks Ky, my son, is at least a Siwion, what kingdoms would call a ‘Prince of the Imperial House’. And the old man might choose him as worthy to be the new Kragahnz.” He took a deep breath. “All because they think I’m dead.”

“Oh, my illustrious and most favoured Ancestors.”

2010-05-21T17:26:00.002-04:00

Author's Note:

I will not be posting this Saturday, because of the holiday weekend up here. [Victoria Day, or as is more commonly known, the May Two-Four weekend, punning on the number in a large case of beer. Most people open their cottages this weekend, it will be a zoo!]

I will be back on Tuesday with our next thrilling installment!

46 - The Basserus' at Home

2010-05-18T23:46:00.001-04:00

Shashi yawned and kissed her husband good night. He was still up, still reading. It was the one thing he did diligently that she approved of with a whole heart. “May I draw you to bed, husband?”

He smiled up at her, distracted. “No, no, my dear. Do go on. I shall be in, later.” She padded to bed in her house-slippers. The bed was actually part of a wax column, so the stone was almost hot to the touch and she opened the window in the wall over her pillow just a fraction. Nadian would be in late. He usually was.

She hung her veils up and went down the hall to check on the children. She looked in and the night nurse looked up, the nightlight turning the nursery into a warm, safe honey-coloured cell. “They’re both sleeping safe, Nassera,” she whispered.

“Thank you, Roshni.” Despite the nurse’s reassurance Shashi padded over and kissed both her girls, careful not to wake them. “Sleep well my little honey-bees,” she whispered, running her hands carefully over their soft curls. Their eyelashes against their cheeks are a beautiful miracle to me every time I see them.

“I think you can sleep now, Roshni. They’ll be up early.”

“Yes, Nassera. Good night.”

Eredat, the newly assigned zardukahr to Nadian waited on his side of the bed. “I give you good evening my sister, how sits the new baby?”

Shashi settled onto her side of the bed, her hand on the curve of her belly. “The baby sits perfectly. I, however, feel bloated, thick ankled, and full bladdered, with my heart burning for the day of birth!”

Eredat laughed. “Until he comes then, shall I massage your feet for you?”

“I would be forever in your debt.”

“Silly woman,” Eredat rose gracefully and came around to kneel by the bed. “I hate to tell my sister distressing news but the most gracious General de’Molfe called again, today. I believe he is courting your husband for the day our Radiance goes to join the Hive of the Sun.”

“Oooh, that feels so good, Eri. Really? Or is my husband courting him?”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know but I suspect everyone the good General approaches, and my esteemed brother-by-marriage as well.”

“How does the queen bee?”

Shashi sighed sharply, nothing to do with the ministrations of her school-sister’s strong fingers. “Badly. He’s holding on with strength alone, I think.”

Nadian closed his book a short time after his wife went off to bed. He really couldn’t stand the way she looked when she was this gravid. It was enough to turn his stomach, even with the magnificent new woman that the Zar school had graciously honoured him with.

Even Eredat’s almond eyes and pert, young, and decidedly pre-child-bearing breasts couldn’t help him perform with Shashi in the bed as well. She was probably throwing another girl. If she’d been less well connected, and any less in the Emperor’s favour he would have divorced her with the first female child.

He walked over to his study and walked down to his pristine stone table. The doors would not open for anyone else after a certain time of night. He had managed that ‘cline well enough. The old man was just hovering on the edge of the Dark and simply would not take the final step.

It’s like he’s got his feet jammed in the sill and his hands locked on either door jamb and won’t leave the loggia. And as long as he’s alive there will be no more wars of conquest. We have all these treaties and agreements that are obsolete and terribly humiliating for a country of our power, our stature.

It truly was time for a new Radiance to shine across the desert lands, and perhaps all the way south, to the sea, or over the mountains to the plains beyond. The Empire of Lainz need more land, more conquest, more slaves and goods and gold. Why couldn’t the old man see that? Why did he insist that the EnDarkened peace treaties and trade agreements made more sense?

Without war, Lainz would stagnate and fall into decline. He snorted at the thought and pulled a book towards himself. He had nothing new to secretly attack the man with. It was time for more research. He would have another of the old ‘cliners exhumed, clandestinely of course. Perhaps this time he would find the spell that would open the way perfectly for him to take the High seat.

45 - This IS an Emergency!

2010-05-15T23:16:00.005-04:00

Kyrus found himself backed against the rear wall of the butcher’s shop, hands splayed on the stone to either side of him as if he could push into the wall, staring at the Amir as if he had just offered him up a snake on a plate rather than his sword.

There was a wild ringing in his ears and he gulped air. “W...w...w.. hat?”

“I am the first to greet the new Siwion of Lainz,” the Amir said from his knees. “Do you see me?”

“I... I... I... see you, of course I see you! You’re kneeling in the street in front of me!”

“I thank the Siwion.” He stood up with a military snap, sheathed his sword and re-clipped his veil in place.

“Stop calling me that!” Of a sudden Kyrus was wildly conscious of his own bare face, the mountain wind blowing across bare skin. “I’m Kyrus Talain, yes! But... but...”

“His Radiance has discovered that your line was sprung from the sheen of his loins, though not from her Lustre. The Empire is in need of you, to rise to the Golden Throne when His Immutable dies, forgive my bluntness of speech, Siwion. I’m sure the Hive-Lords would make their words sweeter.”

“But... But..”

“His Immutable was with a woman by the name of Shabat, who, when it was discovered she was with child, was married by a Hive-Lord by the name of Riyish Talain.”

“My... my... ancestor?”

“That boy... was called Diryish Talain, everyone thought, in honour of the Radiant Lord’s friend, the Emperor. You are the last son of the line.”

“But... isn’t the Hive-Lord Diryish Talain still among the living?” Somehow Ky’s brain was crawling into motion. This is terrible, this is awful, this is a disaster...

“No, Siwion. The Unknown Radiant One went into his death cell five years ago. You must pack up your life here and come home to Lainz with the Captain and I – we will be your constant bodyguard from this day forward – and His Radiance will likely name you Kraganzh.”

“But... But... That’s the Heirship to the High Seat... not just ‘Prince’!”

“Nevertheless. Your Empire needs you, Siwion.” The war-bird behind him shifted, raised one clawed foot to scratch its bent neck behind the hood.

“So... You’re not just Hive-Birds, you’re Rasheem. He ran his eyes over the bare cuffs of the Amir’s uniform. “Why aren’t you showing it?”

“Being Siwion to Lainz... possibly the Kraganzh, is a dangerous position. The less pomp we held, before we found you, the less likely someone would guess we were looking, Siwion, and try to kill you.”

Oh. Oh this is just getting better and better. I need my... Da... they don’t know he’s still alive. They’re still talking like he’s dead! Oh, Light and Dark. HE is the true possible Kraganzh. Oh Twins of Light and Dark... Oh Twins! I have to... I have to... “I... understand, Amir.” He stepped forward as if finally accepting that he couldn’t press himself through the building. “I... think I need at least a cup of tea before even trying to figure out what all this me –“

He cut off again and this time ran straight up to the Unity. Behind him he heard the curse and the scramble as the Amir leaped onto his bird and gave chase. It took him a precious moment or two, long enough for Ky to dodge into a maze of yards and alleyways. The war-bird screeched when confronted with flapping lines of laundry and the irate washer, waving a clout-beater over his head.

At the Unity he flipped the other war-bird’s tie loose and spooked it, slipped as quietly he could into the building, skirted around the main hall, all the way around and up the back stairs to the back door that opened toward the Ancestor stones. He could hear the chaos he’d left on the other side of the building

I have to tell Da. I have to. This is an emergency!

_______________________

Dear Readers: Sorry for the short post again. I'm up to my ass in alligators and an 'unnecessary noise ticket' for my muffler having fallen off the car.... I'm in the city... I'll keep people posted. Happy reading and I hope you've liked this all so far.

s

44 - Siwion of Lainz

2010-05-12T00:06:00.004-04:00

Dukir, out on the mountain, on the other side of the raw scar of the landslide, where no one could see him reached into his sash and pulled out the ‘stinger’. “Heh. I’m glad enough that this is only once that I can use this, else I’d be a pin-cushion making my reports.” He held it on his flat hand and said clearly and slowly. “Activation. Dukir to Diryish!” He did not flinch as the small, flat gold-coloured bead stung him.

“Deenay confirmed. Demand underway.” It said. I’m glad I’m enough of your blood to use such things, Diryish but the magic still makes me nauseous. The air above his hand vibrated, glowing and shifting, a veil of light as if the desert sun had poured itself into the specific place at His Radiance’s demand.

Diryish felt the vibration in the sun-gem in one earring. He turned to Shashi. “Escort me, my dear.”

Having been in the loggia before he knew very well where the washroom was but, being who he was, never when anywhere unattended. It was actually rare enough that he could beat off his young Hive Lords to go even there without at least two following.

He closed the door on Shashi’s veiled wink and locked himself in, moving over slowly to settle on the closed bowl. “Diryish, accept.” Because the gem was already in a piercing it did not need to re-pierce his skin. “Deenay confirmed.” The voice was one that only he could hear.

“Old friend,” he said. He closed his eyes to see the image of his spymaster more clearly. “You have news for me?”

“The boy is the bastard son of the champion, Kyrus Talain, and is your blood. We were lucky. We have been astonishingly lucky because the boy grew up in the Basin, but made his own way here to demand their surdeniliarch teach him to be a warrior. Not diseased, broken or tainted apparently. He’s a reasonable warrior with some of his deceased father’s talents. Even the Milar respect the man… and thus the boy.”

“And your judgment of him? You have spoken to him?”

“He reminds me of you but I never knew you when you were young, old man. He was polite, well-spoken… and you might get a possible marriage by alliance if what I saw was accurate and he and the princess -- whatever -- carry on the way they have been.”

“You mean Ilaxandal’s daughter? I saw her as a little mite of a thing, last.”

“Your grandson appears to be in love with her, and is very protective of her and of his friends.”

“Great-grandson. Never mind. You like him?”

“Does that matter, Diryish?”

“I would rather not settle for ‘good enough’ to find he is gangrene wrapped in sugar.”

“I like him. He’s not a fool and I don’t think the princess… whatever they call her… I realize… they vote and such… she wouldn’t cover for an idiot or a brute.”

“Good. I trust your judgment, Dukir. Thank you.” He ran a hand over his face, feeling the dry, papery rasp. “I’m holding on, my friend. He will be my Siwion, my Young Apis. You tell him and you and our young Captain… you are now his bodyguards. Bring him home. Bring him home quickly.”

“I obey, my Resplendence. Diryish, you have the strength. We’ll see that there is someone to keep these cloaca-lords from tearing the Lainz to pieces and picking over the carcass. Until next month.”

The image of the Immutable, eyes closed, faded to a pin-point and vanished, the stinger let go of his hand, leaving behind only the memory of pain. Dukir tucked it away into his sash carefully, even if he could not use it again perhaps the Emperor would be able to make it work for someone else.

He rubbed his palm thoughtfully as he got up and went to look for his new Siwion, Kyrus Talain.

Kyrus gingerly opened the door of the Dee school, poked his head out, looked one way, then the other. No sign of either of the Feather-spitters, though he couldn’t be sure because he couldn’t see the Unity hitching post from here, to see if the moa was still snoozing in front of it.

He eased out and jogged down the street, glancing up the road to check and see the Captain’s moa still at the Unity. He breathed a sigh of relief and picked up speed. I’ll head over to Verpiccaus’s place. They’ll never think of inquiring after me there… He heard the scrape of the war-bird’s claws on the cobbles. It wasn’t moving very quickly, just a walk but a bird’s walk ate ground double the speed a man could run. It was right behind him and he just knew that the rider was after him.

Without thinking, he wheeled… saw the Amir’s war-bird immediately behind him, ducked and ran straight between the legs. He yanked hard on the tail-feathers as he passed under them, felt the bird scramble, screeching.

“Leave me alone, Hive-bird!” He shouted as he dove into an alley at an angle. It was too narrow for the bird to follow. He’d be out past the butcher’s and half-way across the village before the Amir got himself straightened out.

“Talain! Wait!” The name was enough to make him slow down. “I must speak to you.” Ky straightened, slowed. I don’t want to talk to you. But I have to stop running. He turned and made his way back down the alley, retracing his steps. The Amir was down off his bird, the hood blinding and tying it where it stood, waiting at the end of the alley when he emerged.

“Hive-bird.” Kyrus crossed his arms belligerently. “You must speak to me, you say. I’m here.”

The Amir looked at him with a very strange look on his face, reached up and removed his veil and very precisely, very formally, offered the Great Salaam. “I shield my humble eyes from the newly discovered Young Apis, the Siwion of Lainz.” Going to his knees he offered his bare face and his sword.

43 - Who holds Power

2010-05-09T01:41:00.004-04:00

General de Molfe rose to offer a scented handshake to Nadian as he entered the room. Nadian took the hand but hid his revulsion. “Good day, General. Thank you for coming to our little fete.”

He smiled and Nadian had to restain himself from recoiling. Vile man. You think I can’t smell you?” The General smiled. “Hive Lord. You are most gracious to open your home to me.”

Nadian had to restrain the cringe in his body. The energy radiating off the general made him sick. “General. You are most welcome. How could we not laud a hero of the last war?”

“Please let us welcome you,” His wife was properly demure inside her veils of honour and curtseyed deeply.

“Thank you, Shashi,” Nadian brushed in between her and the General, even though he had no worries that the General might be interested in her. De ‘Molfe had no idea that his sexual tastes were as obvious as they were.

“So... Hive-lord.” The General came right to the point, not bothering to mitigate the blow. “The Emperor is not well?”

“Oh, General. One might say that the Emperor is somewhat under the weather but he is still firmly in control of the Lainz.”

“But a man might find that the old Emperor is... perhaps... less than vital?”

Nadian stopped where he stood, in the garden of his loggia, looking down at the vile little man who was the General. “Oh.” This man might consider supporting me should the old Radiance die without naming an heir? “The esteemed General is considering what should happen when the old man passes on to his ancestors?”

It was harsh and blunt. But the old man had refused to name an Heir. The General hesitated a moment before stepping through to the ball-room. “Indeed?” He turned to face Nadian. “Perhaps we should speak of this more... intimately... Hive lord.”

Nadian couldn’t help but be snide. “Indeed.”

He offered the General his arm to escort him down the stairs into the ballroom of his own loggia. “Indeed, we should, General.” Don’t think you will be able to touch me, you pervert. I would no more look at your skinny, wrinkled ass than I would look at my own bird’s cloaca. But he might indeed be able to assist him taking the throne, once the old man died.

Diryish leaned back against his cushions. He was so tired. He wanted so much to let go, to rest. But he could not. He took a deep breath and sat upright. Shashi and Mariush both closed in to support him on either side.

“Women. Are you two doing this for your Mother?”

Mariush looked shyly at Shashi who spoke up for both of them. “We are doing it for you, Radiance.”

“I should have made her my Empress.” His words were quiet, meant only for their ears. They dutifully ignored them.

“Are you all right, Radiance?” Shashi asked.

“I’m all right, girl. Look at them. Ninety percent of them drones who could care less what happens to their hive.”

“Yes, Radiance.”

“Do you two realize? We need more people, more people who are willing to think and to take us to a point where we can defend people. One day we will need to defend our culture and our hard-won independence against overwhelming odds.”

“Radiance. We will. Trust us.”

He looked at her with compassion. “Mariush. Ask your mother. We need to bring everyone to a similar level, a similar place of knowledge.”

“I will, Radiance. I promise.”

He snorted. “Mariush. You will need to study much more... even to bring that little larva to full adult. Please. Learn everything you can. Please.”

“I will, Radiance.” She looked grim. “But you are not going to die immediately. Stop talking like that.”

He snorted laughter. “Of course, my dear. Of course. How is your young man?”

She looked away as if she could ignore his crudeness. “Mariush... I know.” His breathing was hollow and rattling. “I know. I’m glad your Mother has you in hand and I’m glad you found a young man to think that child is his.” He smiled, wiped his lips with a cloth and nodded at the court in front of them. “I don’t think any of those men are worth one of your captain’s farts.” He coughed and continued. “They’ve arranged wars that I did not want, killed men who did not deserve it.”

“Then why leave them in any power at all?” Shashi snapped even as she offered a bland, sweet smile to ‘His Radiance’.

“They show up in any culture, child.” He pointed his chin toward a conversation across the room. “Shashi, your husband is sliming up to General de’Molfe.” She looked down, no other sign that she was ashamed of being associated with him.

“Are you sure that our mystery assassin is targeting him?”

“No, Radiance.” She took a deep breath. “Is it possible he is one of our conspirators?”

“I don’t know. You should find out. For your father’s sake. For Lainz.”

She set her teeth behind the veils she wore. “Radiance, do you suspect my husband?”

“I suspect all Hive Lords, child.”

“I thought he was a horrible man, Radiance but I never thought he might be a traitor.”

He took up a roasted bee on a skewer and crunched it between straight white teeth. “We are all set against the Owners and against the elements.”

“Naser?” Shashi curtseyed down deep as if he’d chastised her. “Shall I investigate my husband?”

“Yes, child.” He ate four more skewers of bees and threw off the blanket and stood up. “They will not pull me down yet.” He wobbled a moment and then he steadied and put out a demanding hand. “Let us walk among my lions and cheetahs and moas.”

Shashi swallowed hard and offered her hand for the dry, wrinkled old hand. Daddy, you are so much better than I at this kind of thing.

“General.” Nadian drank the honey syrup from a silver spoon.

“Yes, Naser?” You suck the shit out of every word. Nadian hated him even as he opened his words to him.

“Tell me... Naser... do you like the way the Feather-Spitters have gone this last while?”

A loyal son of a moa wouldn’t hesitate. “Naser... why... um... er...”

“I... find that His Radiance is... fading.”

The General coughed and coughed again. He cleared this throat. “You... think we should expand more... aggressively ... than we have been?”

“Oh, yes. General, we have been far, far too ‘genteel’ in our willingness to expand.”

And you think I am missing your eyes lighting up, with the idea of boys enslaved, boys of the conquered people, open to your taking? You perverted, hidden man. I despise you, boy-lover. “I understand,” the General said. “We should truly have control over the wild, barbarian Milari as well as all the northern tribes... as well as the delta lands.”

“Ah. It seems that we are of a mind, General.” Nadian smiled at him and stepped a half-step away from him. De’Molfe smiled.

“Of course, Hive Lord.” He set his cup and skewer down on a small table and brushed his hands together. “It is a matter of who holds power.”

Another Sunday post

2010-05-09T00:42:00.001-04:00

I have another villain post for Kyrus and it has been harder than I thought. I am working on it and will post a little later. Ciao!

42 - Stop Running Away

2010-05-04T23:42:00.001-04:00

I leaned my back against the newly closed door. “EnDarkened! What do they want? Asking questions…? I didn’t DO anything. What do they want?”

Hara smacked her hand into the middle of my chest. “Don’t panic. They’re being polite. They didn’t drag you off. And they can’t. They can’t just drag you off. Your da just married mine and that makes you family. You’re a Milar by marriage. They can’t just haul you away.”

I seized control of my breathing. The kids were looking at me in a way I didn’t understand. “You did it like Papa does, Ky.” That was Maks. “When he doesn’t want to talk to people he ‘polites’ them out the door.”

“Thank you. Um… They are going to be back. They’re probably talking to everybody who knows me. I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing.”

“It’s not something that is important enough to interrupt da and papa right at the start of their honey month.”

“Yeah. Hmmm. I know. I’ll go to the Mandery school. If they come there to ask about me, I’ll slip out and head to the war-school.”

“I’ll track you down with lunch then,” Hara grinned. “You’re fine, Ky. They’ll ask their questions and then they’ll tell us what’s up. Once they do, we’ll deal with it.”

“You’re right. Thanks, Hara, you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. I’ll find Werfas and the other kids. If you need to drop out of sight for a little while until these Lainz go away, we’ll do it.”

I took a deep breath. “Thanks… I’ll see you at lunch.”

I stepped out of the house and checked to see if the Hive-Birds were around. No one. Most people were still recovering from the wedding. I got a wave from the sweepers, cleaning the stones of the square.

There was a new inn, for foreigners, since I had come. Someone figured out that there was money to be made. But there was a bird tethered and scratching outside the Unity. The Captain’s it looked like from the fittings I could see.

No sign of the other. I headed back over to the Mandery school. I had been attending from the time that Ilax had insisted, backed by the Zon at the War-school. They had said they would teach me no more physical training if I did not train my mind.

My mind, in the school, usually felt sluggish and as awkward. My Da told me that training my mind was like training my body and I needed to get through the beginning to reach mastery. Dee Mander Mayu made me stinking nervous but she was a tiny, bird-like woman. I knocked on the door of her office and found she was not there.

I headed deeper into the school. I hadn’t thought I would ever feel it was safe, but it made me angry to find myself enfolded by the building. In the main hall I found Mayu sitting cross-legged, suspended on a thin, thin whippy strand of wood in the centre of the hall, meditating. I almost backed out but she unfolded from her cross-legged pose and slid down the thread thin support. “Kyrus. I’m glad to see you on a rest-day.” She padded over to her tea-kettle. “I would have thought you would also be resting today?”

“A couple of Hive-birds came asking questions about me, Dee Mayu.”

“Yes.” Why was I not surprised that she didn’t seem surprised? “Kyrus. You recall your lessons from me?”

“Of course, Dee Mayu.” I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t necessarily believe her but I hadn’t forgotten.

“So. Repeat the founding myths to me then.”

I sat down and pulled in a deep breath. “We are all refugees. We are all rebels from the original plan. We need to work together, for the time that the owner of the planet decides to call in his contracts.”

“Very good. So how old are all our countries?”

“Some only a few hundred years. Some as many as a thousand.” She sipped her tea and raised an eyebrow at me. I closed my eyes. The odd little sense in me, that she had pointed out, came up into my inner eye. “Planetary years. Terran years are 1.3 of our plantary years.”

“Good. And Lainz?”

“Lainz did not exist till recently. Milar is only a generation older.”

“Very good.”

“Dee…” I sipped the tea she offered me butterless, chutneyless, bare. “You call what I call mandery, science. But what does your mandery tell you about why these Lainz are asking questions about me?”

She sighed. “I’m not a ‘magic mouth’, Kyrus. They talked to me about you. I can speculate.”

“Please do.”

“They are asking questions focused on your character. You may be more important than you think, lad.”

“More important?” I set my naked tea down with a click. “I have just found out my father is alive and he’s been teaching me. Lainz and my grandfather and ‘His Radiance’ threw his life away as though he was a used kerchief. What might they want with me?”

“As I said. I may only speculate. The Captain has the authority but from my experience, lad, you should be more careful of the Amir, in my estimation.”

“I thought so, Dee.”

“You like my tea?”

“It’s naked.”

“Yes.” She sipped.

“Wonderful. You served me naked tea to make a point?”

“Kyrus. What we are is defined culturally. How someone takes his tea is important because we make it important. It is stupid things like that that make history as we remember it.” The hairs on the back of my neck tried to stand up. One of her mandery’s was memory. Not many people had it. But theoretically she held the memories of her people before their founding. Not all of them but far more than most.

“You’re being obscure again, Dee Mander.”

“Of course, Kyrus. But it is wise to remember that we are more than we think. As we find more and more information as we get older we change ourselves to fit our new information… for you personally… did things not change for you when you discovered that your father was still alive?”

I picked up my tea again. “Yes. Yes it did.” I suddenly understood. I suddenly realized. Words were like the perfect punch, the perfect sword-strike, the perfect dee-mand or dee-cline. If you understood, you could do it. It was as though the whole world folded open again and I found another layer underneath that I had never suspected.

“So… Dee… what should I do?”

She smiled at me, her teeth white and straight and bright. “You should stop running away, young Kyrus.”

41 - Bastard or Not

2010-05-03T00:23:00.004-04:00

Raghnall looked at his Amir as the door shut behind them. “Did he... he just... ended an audience, didn’t he?”

Dukir hid his smile. “He did. Naser, perhaps if you spoke to the War Teachers’ at the school. I noted that he is training there.” The scabbard he reflexively grabbed, by the door.

“You did? How...? Never mind. Good work, Amir. Why don’t you go speak to that ex-patriate Lainz cook and see if we may gain more information on this boy.”

My young officer is learning. The boy –Kyrus-- is very like the old man. I can see Diryish in him, but it might be my own wishful thinking. He doesn’t seem damaged, in fact these Milari are good for him. He is defensive of those close to him but still polite, though suspicious. I am encouraged. “I hear and obey, Naser.” Dukir slapped a hand across his chest armour.

“Make your report to me at the Unity.” Just this morning, when the offices had opened after being closed for their surdeniliarch’s wedding, Captain Raghnall had presented his papers at the konsiliarch’s office. They were the formal request from His Radiance to re-open the Lainz Embassy in the capitol. Their mob of a government was probably getting around to debating it right around now. They had asked that they debate it in camera, so none of the ambassadors or news-criers were present.

“I hear and obey, Naser.”

The pseudo Lainz kitchen was quiet this day after the big celebration. Every kitchen had contributed and today lunch in Viltaria was fresh bread baked overnight and leftover feast. The cats sprawled on the sun-warmed stone under the windows, and the foul-mouthed bird even snoozed, his head tucked into bunched feathers.

“Nice to see another Lainz around, Amir.” Brakayus leaned on his counter, his Lainz a little rusty.

“What? The boy doesn’t come speak to you?” Dukir set a small bottle on the counter. “I just happen to have some raki along.”

“And it makes bad drinking to drink alone. I can help you with that friend.” Brak put two small glasses on the counter. “I haven’t seen raki of that quality for years.”

“A friend gave it to me.” Dukir raised his glass and Brak clicked his against it.

“To your friend. And the kid comes in all the time. He does chores with his section of kids. He’s a good kid – likes to wash dishes.”

“You’re joking! He washes dishes?”

“Not joking, under the Hive, I swear. He was nervous at first, had to fit in with these naked faced people. So, why do you... one of the Hive-bird unit... want to know about our Kyrus?”

“Your Kyrus?”

Brak leaned closer and put his empty cup down in front of Dukir. “Amir. You and your Captain have been asking gentle questions about him, during the celebration, sprinkled in amongst the ‘nice to be getting to know all about you curiosity.’”

“You’re good, Naser.”

“You may as well not call me Naser, Amir, my parents were married as well.” Dukir smiled and re-filled the glass.

“Nice to find a kindred spirit in a distant land.” He filled his own glass. “No threat to your Kyrus intended, Brother.”

“Good. Am I going to like what is intended? Are his heart-sibs going to like it?”

“Don’t know, for sure. I need to find out if he’s a good boy with a good mind.” Brak’s face wasn’t any easier for Dukir to read, even if he was wearing a veil light enough to make his mouth visible.

“You swear to Light and Dark both that you aren’t out to drag him off for some imagined crime and stick him in a cage with no bottom?”

If the kid really is good enough... and he’s shaping up to be... it’ll be a cage of sorts. But an Imperial one, not one without a floor. “I swear on Light and Dark.”

Brakayus knocked back the second glass, set it down with a click. “Kid’s like his dad. He gets through his training and he’ll make a warrior to be reckoned with. Not a champion. Not as good a warrior as his dad, but still good. Kids are never copies of their parents, you know. He might be more a thinker than his dad.” One finger drew circles in a drop of raki on the counter. “He grew up in the Basin, did you know?”

Dukir nodded. He knew, but it had only been the usual sketchy information about Rats. “He found a patron, found someone to teach him Milar, made his way here and convinced the surdeniliarch to take him in, and teach him.”

“He did. The surdeniliarch’s daughter is teaching him quite a bit.” He didn’t mean the comment to have any bite and he could see Brakayus take it in and chew it over and nod quietly when he realized it.

“She’ll be a better warrior than him, maybe and she’s part Lainz. She and he and their friends fought to get people out when the landslip happened. You saw the celebration yesterday? And you saw the boy dancing, yes?”

Dukir nodded yes. He’d been quietly watching. After all, the dark Lainz skin kind of stood out in amongst these milk-pale Milari.

“He’s become one of us, Lainz.”

“Us?”

Brak turned his raki glass over and set his hand over it. “I’m from Lainz and I’m pleased and happy to be. I will take what good I can from my heritage. But Milar saved my life at the end of a horrific, unjust war and then gave me a place I could live and live with myself. I’m of Lainz, but I’m Milari now. As my wife is, and my children are. I don’t know what you want of Kyrus but he’s made himself part of this life, this country and this people. Us.”

This could be a problem. “Thank you, Brother, for your frank talk. I’ve needed it.” The boy sounds like he could be Diryush’s answer. It sounds like he could be the Heir, bastard or not.

Mal Spider Images

2010-05-01T23:26:00.008-04:00

Introducing 'Fluffy'

I will have words tomorrow. Today was a little chaotic. I hope you like my spider...

40 - Questions and Panic

2010-04-27T22:56:00.014-04:00

I backed up as Hara, as the Surdeniliarch’s daughter, took over like a great lady, showing the two Hive-birds in. “Maks, Ilia, go get dressed, please. Would you gentlemen care to be seated while Kyrus makes himself fit for company?” Lovely hint, heart’s dear. I tried not to look like I was rushing. The window in Hara’s bedroom is too small for me to climb out and there are no windows back here big enough to offer escape, unseen.

I threw my robe and slippers off, dragged a fresh suit of clothes… tunic and trousers in the Milari style and my veil… where was my veil? I’d put them away… I’d stored them… veil, veil. Oh Dark! It was in the bottom of my pack in the cupboard under the shoes… I dragged a comb through my hair once, twice, threw on the face covering and immediately felt like I was donning armour and propriety. There was a raw spot that my collar rubbed on before covering it up. What do they want? Why do they want to talk to me?

I could hear the murmur of voices in the main room, I paused to catch my breath and over heard the young captain say “… a matter of inheritance.” Inheritance? What? What?But they are the highest of the high. What kind of inheritance could there be for… father… oh… oh no… is my grandfather dead?

I stepped out, dressed, veiled and with soft boots on. “Captain. Amir. I am here.”

“Good.” Hara stood up from where she’d been sitting. “I’ll be out in a moment. There’s more breakfast, and tea, Nasers.”

The Captain stood as she did, as did the Amir. She is such a politician’s daughter it’s not funny. It’s even hard to see that she’s not properly dressed. She stopped to kiss me on the way by. I wanted to cling to her lips like a man clinging to the cliff edge by his fingertips. Thank you, my love. Oh Light and Dark, don’t stop loving me no matter what these feather-spitters say. I had no idea what they were there for so every fear I had came out and was chewing on me hard. Da, I hate to bother you in your time of honey, but I need you. Da, help me.

“You are Kyrus… bastard son of the deceased champion, Kyrus Talain?” The captain wasted no time beginning, even as I sat down.

“I am proud to be so, yes Naser.”

“Your mother was a whore of the Basin by the name of Dugdhohva, no surname?”

“I am honoured to be her son, yes.” I stared into his eyes, daring him to challenge me on that. I could sense the Amir pricking up at that. I spared a glance to him. “Anyone may say what they will. Any despite of my honourable mother, dishonours me, Amir, Captain. I must insist your tongues be respectful of my honoured mother.”

“Oh. Of course. No insult intended, young Naser.”

“Good. Please continue.” The Amir’s attention, if anything, sharpened rather than diminished.

“You were the young ‘patron’ of a scholar by the name of Oltarios?”

“Before I answer, I must know, what consequences will fall upon his head?”

“None. None, young Naser.” I stared at him and wondered. I could not be sure.

“I will refuse to answer any question that implicates the honourable scholar.”

He stared at me, harsh as a war-bird’s glare. I glared back. Oltarios had taught me, helped me, gave me what I needed to fulfil my dreams. He’d even taught me to accept that sex with an older man was no shame… he was my mentor and my friend no matter what hold he’d given me over him. In Lainz, the old men… even if they had the money, the influence… they were the vulnerable ones and if a young whore were abused they could have their patron placed in a cage merely by opening his mouth. It was a system open to horrific abuse and needed to be changed. I’d been lucky. Oltarios was a good man.

The Captain took a deep breath. “Of course.”

I caught a fraction of a blink from the Amir and focused on him, for some reason. “Amir.”

“Yes, Naser.”

“Why do you need to ask me these questions?” I felt like I had to cut to the heart of it. “Why? I am Kyrus Talain, son of Kyrus Talain, a man whom the moa-lords… and you know exactly which one I am speaking of… destroyed. Why are Lainz Feather-Spitters coming to question the son of a man discarded by the Empire?”

“Captain, Naser,” The old Amir was looking very intensely at me. “There is a reason.”

“Amir.” I found myself staring at him in a way I could lay no reason to. As if it was him I had to convince of something rather than the young Captain. “You seem to need answers from me. If you give me assurances that my mother and my patron are not harmed… and convince me of your sincerity… you will have your answers. Otherwise I will place myself before them. They are vulnerable, having given me all they had. I owe them and will not deliver them to shame or degradation in any way. Convince me, or I will answer none of your questions.”

The Captain coughed, nonplussed. The Amir… damn his eyes, smiled. “Of course, Kyrus. Of course.”

“There is no ‘of course’ in this.” I crossed my arms across my chest. This Feather-Spitter could go screw if he didn’t give me answers that I needed. I felt Hara’s hand ghost onto my shoulder. She’d be perfectly dressed. I didn’t need to look. I had my family. I had my brothers and sisters and heart’s dear and wing brother and my father. Who had just married his love, the love of his heart. These featherspitters weren’t going to pull that apart if I had anything to say about it. If it killed me. I had found honour. I had found my father and my blood. I had found a place to put my feet.

“Answer me, Feather-spitter, or you will get nothing from me.”

The Captain coughed. He looked at the Amir and then back at me. “Kyrus.”

“Talain.” I cut in. My Da had acknowledged me. I had my name and he was not going to steal it from me.

“Naser.” The Amir spoke. “It may have to do with more than just your mother and your patron. Do you care about more Lainz than those two?”

I stared at him. “Every Lainz is important.” I bared my teeth at him. “If you, Naser, think that ANY Lainz is less important then I shall have to disagree with you.” Why did that seem to make him happy?

“Feather-spitters.” I snapped. “I hope you have enough.” I stood up. “Enough is enough. You are delving into people’s privacy and security and that is enough. That is where I draw the line. Ask your questions of someone else or not at all.”

“Ummmm.” The Captain seemed stumped. I looked at the Amir and he smiled. I realized. I would have a questioning from the Amir separately. “Captain. Thank you for your time and attention. I will speak with you again. Thank you.”

“Kyrus.” He coughed. “Thank you.”

“I will be here.” I said and crossed my arms against their intrusive questions. “If you wish, I am here.”

“Ah.” The Captain rose to his feet. “All right. I see. Thank you Kyrus Talain.”

He acknowledges me as ‘Talain’. This is more important than they make it out to be. I smile. They acknowledge me as ‘Talain’. We will speak again.

“Feather-Spitters.” I rose to my feet as did they. “I thank you for your time and attention.” I smile at them. “Come back again and we will speak of our loyalty.” I moved toward the door and they, being polite Lainz moved before me. “Perhaps we shall speak again.”

The Captain tried to speak but I turned my back on him. “Good day, Nasers.”

I looked at Hara and she grinned at me.

I would do the whole thing, again. I will cleave to her. Even if she ceases to love me, I will cleave to the image of my love. Lainz is worth that. I am worth that.

“Oh. Um. Oh. Kyrus, um.” The young Captain seemed completely nonplussed. The Amir nodded. I stared at him.

I had no idea what was happening but I dug my heels in. I could feel my lips tighten and my body tighten. I stared at the Amir. “This is something that needs clarification - but later."

I waved my hand to usher them out. "We will speak again. Good day, Nasers." And I shut the door on their words. It required clarification.... later.

39 - Might we come in?

2010-04-24T00:33:00.004-04:00

Kyrus drifted up out of one of the deepest sleeps he’d had in a long time. Ilax and Da... do I call Ilax da now too? It was a crazy thought. He was so warm and exhausted and he and Haraklez had practiced with each other until they were both sore, but in a good way, after Ilax and Da snuck off to start their honey time.

Before, he’d drunk enough that he’d been sure he couldn’t do anything at all but cuddle with her, but she’d pulled him into the circles of dancers with her, dragging his one arm over her shoulder, Werfas on his other side. Jash was too little to dance with the grownup circles but the kids were all dancing together too, requiring some fancy footwork on the drunken adults’ part to not step on the kids.

They’d all danced, he’d even ended up in the men’s drunken dance with Verpiccaus and his wing brother Gaumant, each one showing their ‘fine-feathers’ circling and stalking each other like the warbirds in their heat-dances. Kyrus had a memory of leaping and spinning, with the two, the girls clapping and chanting them on, faster and faster, jumping over Gaumant’s low kick, ducking under Ver’s high one. They ended, all three on the ground, lying arms spread, grinning, just trying to catch their breaths before the girls... and some boys, swept in to carry them off and toss them in the fountain, though they gave them time to take their festival clothes off first.

Everyone had ended up in the fountain by the end of the celebration, the spring water merely cool instead of icy because of the magma at the mountain’s heart. And then after he’d clambered out of the water, clean and naked and not caring, taking Haraklez’s hand that she offered him.

“Is that the Rumon ambassador... naked... with the Speaker of the Unity?” He’d hissed in her ear as they made their way quietly out of the crowd.

“Yes, aren’t they cute together?”

“As long as it’s not a diplomatic incident.”

She shook her head in the dark, the moon high enough to make her motion clear. “I spotted the other ambassadors taking advantage of the wedding truces. Kaosha, and Maxshtey, were splashing Lainz mead on each other and giggling, last I saw.”

“Those are the Charnan and Hippafrei representatives?”

She nodded again, smiling. “Weddings are so good at making people friendly instead of wanting to kill each other.”

“Well, we can hope that the Nadumarian ambassador gets laid tonight.” It was so easy to say such things in Milari.

Maks and Ilia were long asleep from the evidence of a trail of wet clothes leading to their beds. Ilia’s hand trailed out of the top bed and Hara tucked it back under the covers. Maks was bundled up tight in his featherbed, only the pale oval of his face showing, snoring.

And then they’d slid their newly washed, naked selves into Haraklez’s bed and... that was where his memory hiccupped a little. ... made love. He didn’t want to gloss it over in his mind, the scent of her hair in his hands, the scent and taste of her hair on his lips. Her hands clenching in his hair as she laughed and sobbed, saying ‘yes’ ‘yes!’ against his lips and tongue, the feel of her gripping him all around, clenching and shuddering still, slippery and hot, her fingers clenching tight on his back, then cupping him, pulling him close even as he drove into her arching his back almost enough to smack his head on the shelf over her bed...

And later, the dreamy, almost sleepy, gentle second, and third time, her laughing at him for fighting sleep so hard. He did make her lose count of her paroxysms and did fall asleep with his head on her thigh, smiling into her deliciously fragrant hair. The cat was lying on one of his feet, he could feel her purring, even through the quilt.

This morning he could still taste her on his lips and in the night they’d shifted so she lay half on his shoulder and chest, sprawled like a cat, limp as warm washing. His own limbs felt weighed down by the draw of the planet, but not sore, nor hung over. As though he’d spent all yesterday working or working out. Limp all over. Not like the singing tension that had been in him when he’d worked as a whore in Lainz. He could look at it now, because of Haraklez, because of da. Because of the Milari, and their ideas.

It didn’t crush his spirit the way it once had. It just was. And it was a good place to be, now. He and Werfas had talked... a lot before Haraklez had grabbed him... and he sent a prayer to Light and Dark both for his wing brother. As long as it was agreed on, as long as one did not own the other or coerce the other... as long as everyone was happy, it was good, not evil. He was hurting no one and he had never felt so good in his whole life before.

He shifted slightly to put one arm behind his head and she shifted, murmuring in her sleep on his chest and other arm, a fine hair or two from her tangled head drifted across his lips so he kissed them and smiled. He had nowhere to go today. No lessons, no training. And neither did she.

Maks looked in. “Hey,” he whispered really, really loudly. “Hara? Kyrus? You awake? We made some food!” His words were the cat’s cue to get up, stretch with mild complaining cat noises and walk up them to lie down like a stone on his abdomen, reminding him that his erection now had nothing to do with sex. It’s tail flipped up and across Hara’s face and she sputtered, pawed it out from under her nose.

“Good morning, sleepy,” he said. “Maks and Ilia have cooked something for us all.”

“Oh. I don’t want to get up.”

He laughed, bouncing her head on his chest. “Cloudy has just reminded me that I need to reacquaint myself with the earthcloset and I would really hate to put that fluid into your bed.” She giggled and pushed up on his chest, her hair falling forward to veil their two faces as she kissed him good morning.

“That’s nice of you. And you didn’t even mention that my breath is morning bad. You’re learning to be a gentleman, you Basin rat!”

He growled, pretending to threaten her, swooped up to kiss her breasts before tickling her unmercifully till she fell back against the wall, laughing breathlessly and let him up. The cat, of course, had fled the moment the bedclothes started heaving. He retreated while he could, snatching his bedrobe off its hook and fled before she could rally and drag him back onto the bed.

Maks had flour upon his nose and Ilia wielded an iron pan over the burner fuelled with a burning pot with its blue flame high and hot. Maks carefully drizzled the criss-crossing lace-like pattern from the dipper and the batter puffed as it hit the oil. Kyrus refused to say anything about the fearsome mess left around the wash-bucket but quietly turned the spigot on to fill it. “I’m hungry enough to eat a wool-pig raw!” he said, pouring tea for Hara and himself.

Everyone was still in their bedrobes, worn at the elbows in the kid’s case, embroidered with star-flower’s in Hara’s. Ky’s was a plain brown fleece, thick and wooly and he was the only one with blue-wolf fur slippers, everyone else was barefoot. Everyone’s hair was uncombed. “You barbarians! Even the summer mornings are freezing up here!”

Ilia giggled and poured more boiling water into the tea pot. “Soft Lainzer!”

“We have the whole house to ourselves for a whole month,” Maks crowed. “What will we do for a whole forty days?”

“Your griddle cake is burning,” Hara said, just as there was a knock on the outside door.

“I’ll get it,” Kyrus said. “I’m closest.” The inner door was wide open for the summer, as were all the windows and Kyrus still had his tea-cup in his hand when he opened the door to see two very properly veiled Lainz feather-spitters standing there. “Hello---” His voice cut off as he saw them.

Their livery was the dark blue-black and gold of the Imperial Hive-birds, the screaming war-bird in gold on their chests, swords just perfectly so, a cascade of feathers of honour woven into the one sides of their heads interspersed with crystal spacer beads. The young man, high-born, with the perfectly smooth brown skin and brilliantly bright eyes showing over his black veil, just lowered his hand where he’d been about to knock a second time. He had the gold bees marking his rank on his chest, a captain. The older man behind had the single drone of a working Amir, his shrewed old eyes taking in every detail, even as he stood, casually, perfectly placed to defend his officer should it be necessary.

“Oh, Nasers!” Kyrus flipped up the edge of his collar to hide his face. “I’m sorry, Nasers, the Surdeniliarch is unavailable.”

“So we were given to understand, lad,” the one said. “I’m Captain Shaidan Raghnall and I am looking for a boy by the name of Kyrus.”

“Oh.” He clenched his teeth. This could be nothing good. Two Hive-birds come looking for a Basin whore? A boy with no last name as far as they knew? His stomach clenched as he thought of all the other ways out of the house, should he need them.

“Nasers... that would be me.” Haraklez came up behind him and he could see the two of them look as she laid a hand on his shoulder. He could feel himself blushing as he realized he had no clothes on under his bedrobe at all, his forelock falling into his eyes and... oh Light and Dark has Hara left a sucking kiss mark visible on my neck?

“Is there a problem, Nasers’?” She said in her flawless, highest Loggia accented, Lainz.

“No problem, Nasera.” The captain bowed to her as if she were a properly dressed lady instead of a half-naked, dishevelled hoyden, smelling of sex and griddle cakes. “We merely wish to speak to Kyrus, here. Might we come in?”

38 - Post Wedding Celebration

2010-04-21T00:13:00.002-04:00

Dukir handed off his reins to the girl at the new inn in Viltaria and hitched his swordbelt into place, stepped back and waited for his captain to dismount. The girl took hold of the guide reins of their whole pack-train, rapped the lead-bird on his beak with a bronze stick and led the lot of them into the stables, by herself.

“These Milari are tough!” Captain Raghnall grinned at his Amir. “I can’t think of a single Lainz inn-servant who would even try to control a whole train of warbirds!

“Ah, Captain, the instant we couldn’t see, there were a dozen stable hands to take control, Naser.”

He laughed. “They save face and are practical all at the same time! Watch my back, Amir.”

“Of course, Captain.”

They wandered the wedding celebration, looking for the boy they had come so far to find. Dukir had a wooden platter of roast herbal moa in one hand and a stein full of high potency wine in the other when he found his captain again.

The lad, to his credit, had wetted his lips and had a bite but hadn’t indulged. “Naser,” Dukir said. “Any sign of the boy we’re looking for?”

“No, Amir. Everyone is celebrating. There is no one in any of the offices.”

“I spoke to one of the cooks, Naser, and he was a Lainz expatriate.”

Raghnall raised both eyebrows. “Trust you to find a Lainz, my Amir.” He nibbled on the savory bird-meat on a spit in his one hand. “I quite like the Milari idea of a celebration. They seem to like feeding anyone.”

“Ay, Naser.” Dukir took a sip of his tankard and a bite of his pig. He knew that it was unlikely they would find their boy in the midst of the celebration. “Perhaps we should ask tomorrow?”

“Amir! The Emperor said this was important!”

“Yes, Naser.” Dukir watched the Captain forge back into the celebrating crowd. Ah, lad. Trying to find a boy in the middle of a partying crowd... Ye’ve never had to try and talk ta the drunks and the happy folk.

He took a bite of the moa and a hasty swig from the tankard to cool the spice flames in his mouth. It was so good. He had another sip and another bite and ended up sitting in a Milari woman’s lap who thought he was intriguingly exotic.

The taste of her lips when he raised his veil to kiss her was spice and wine, as he remembered. “Nasera, you are incredible.” He said, drunkenly. “I was here and I should have stayed here.”

She laughed and stretched up to kiss him back. “Yes. You should have stayed last time!” He put a flat hand against the fascinating silks over the woman’s breasts, looking for his captain. Some part of him knew they wouldn’t find the Heir the same day they came into the town as an enormous celebration.

His captain had a glass of mead and was holding forth to a circle of listeners, not fighting off sexual advances. Not that he particularly wanted to fight off this woman. She wasn’t young but not old either. She had a knowing twist to her coral lips against exotically pale skin; a waterfall of wavy brown hair.

Technically he was off duty. He threw one last glance at his captain and caught the ‘go on’ wave out of the corner of his eye as the woman leaned forward to raise his veil and kiss him. Well. One day, we can make up, once we find the boy. Once I figure out if he’s worthy of being trained up to be Emperor. He knocked back the dry, pale mead and someone re-filled the cup for him. I shouldn’t do this. The drunken spymaster is a dead spymaster. But I don’t want to find the boy is horrible and have to kill him to protect the Empire. I want the best for the Empire, for my friend. I hope... I hope he’s a good boy. I don’t want to kill him.

He smiled and kissed the woman again and she spilled her wine on his veil and lips and smiled as he un-hooked the sheer fabric and licked his lips.

Tomorrow’s problem. I hope he’s a good boy, he thought and then slotted that thought into tomorrow’s box in his mind.

37 - Wedding

2010-04-17T20:07:00.005-04:00

The two Lainz, leading their birds, climbed over the last rise in the Korifar pass and looked across the valley and at Viltaria. The horrific scar of earth to the one side of the village was already blurring as people planted it to keep it from moving again. The scent blowing across was redolent of sweet baking spices and the mouth-watering aroma of spit roasted lambs and birds, pine from the trees along the village roads and the deep sweetness of flowering meadows all around.

Above the village the Ancestor stones were polished gleaming white and white ribbons streamed from them. The whole village seemed to be festooned with white ribbons and green branches, every lamp-post along every road, festooned posts driven into a processional way up to the stones.

The deep tones of the enormous Milari wooden horns echoed across the valley, perhaps a dozen. “I can’t help think more of gigantic cows rather than music,” Captain Raghnall commented as he gathered up the reins and prepared to leap up to his bird’s back to ride now that they were no longer climbing.

"As yeh say, Naser."

"I wonder what they're celebrating."

"I'd say a big wedding, since you can see their big fountain lit up, with torches that odd green you can see even in daylight, Naser."

The captain unhooded his bird's eyes, scratching behind its crest. It was tamed down enough that it accepted the caress, stepping off slowly rather than charging down the road ready to kill everything in its path. “You know a lot about Milari customs, Isfahsalar.”

“Yessir, mostly from the war, Naser.” Dukir answered, his own bird following more gently than it had at the beginning of its journey. The village was full of people and the processional all the way to the Stones, a mass all in their festival reds, the roads before them empty. “It’s a big wedding then.”

Captain Raghnall stopped at the tiny guardpost with its gate raised. “Good day, Cragman.” He spoke in his brand-new, careful Milari.

The guard, stepping out, seemed completely used to warbirds. Of course any public servant who could not deal with foreigners coming into the capitol would not have lasted. This deep in the country, she wore no armour but her insignia.

“Good day, Feather-Spitter. If I might see your road passes?”

The Captain handed over the packet with the ease of long practice and the Cragwoman scanned them. “If I might ask, Crag—“ He blushed still when presented with women warriors. “—woman… who is getting married today?”

“Oh, you didn’t travel here for it? It’s the Surdeniliach’s wedding. A second marriage for him.”

“Ah. We shall be happy to represent Lainz at his nuptials then!”

“Have a good end of journey… Naser.” She said in careful Lainz and smiled as she handed back their papers. “Careful at the second bridge… there’s a bit of water over it since the land-slide, making it harder for your birds.”

“Thank you, Cragwoman.” They were at the second bridge, looking at the hand-span deep bit of water flowing over the stone-bridge before them before he spoke again. “You think we’re going to actually find the boy, Isfahsalar?”

“We have a good chance, Naser.” And I hope he is something like his father’s reputation. He might actually be good for the people on the Empire, rather than a sacrifice to the moa-lords. “If I might suggest, Naser, we hood them to a crack and urge them. They should cross the water more easily.”

“Good thought.”

**

Light and Dark am I dreaming? Ilax’s smile... his beautiful smile...and he’s got the goblet in his hands, matching the one in mine. He drinks out of the cup in my hands, I raise my veil and drink out of his. I put my hand on the goblet and he on mine. Remember, deovar, we smash yours, not mine... We are being married. We are being married.

My heart is so full. I never thought I would be so happy. Is this real? Is this some happy ending by someone in the Basin bellowing a tale to a noisy crowd? Oh Enlightened, may this be real and not a dream.

My son. My beautiful, magnificent boy found me. And Ilax and I are being married. Ten years ago, I lay in the snow, thinking I was only fit for death because I loved a man and now we are being married. Enlightened, how is so much happiness possible?

The glass smashes into the stone bowl into a brilliant glitter of shards, each shard supposedly a year of happiness together. The whole crowd cheers and I raise the other precious goblet in my other hand and we wrap it, together, and place it in our wedding box, wrapping our fingers together in the silk ribbons, laughing together.

The scariest part, for me, is coming up. My soul has been naked before my love, and I will bare myself before his beloved people. Thank goodness the children did not insist we disrobe at the Stones and walk nude down the mountain. The bird’s feather I clipped into my love’s hair flutters in the warm breeze as he removes his shirt, matching me, unlacing. I have to take the veil off next and he is unveiled and waits for me, smiling at me. I want to kiss him but not yet.

Enlightened, blessed blessed Light. Our soft boots... we tug off each other's to the yells from the crowd and showers of wine and mead the streams soaking us, mixed, Milari wines and Lainz mead. Our trousers next and the wind caresses parts of me I’m not used to being touched like that.

Oh, EnDarkened, I can’t stop it, I’m getting hard and as much as I blush and want to cover myself up I can’t because Ilax has seized my hands. The crowd is cheering us and singing their wedding song and he’s erect too. I look at the pink head of his penis, the slightly lower erection of a mature man, wanting to kiss him there. Not yet.

“It’s seen as a good sign! A good omen, inamor!” He has to use his battlefield voice for me to hear me. “Let’s finish, and get clean, then you can show me how well you can perform with that Faidan! One of their many untranslatable words that means firm flesh, male, in Lainz.”

I don’t care that the fountain is cold and I shrink, we pour the cleansing palm-full over each other’s heads that means we are a couple and then everyone who can reach the fountain starts splashing us.

Mercifully I can sit and splash back and Ilax whoops and we end up back to back in the water spreading blessings with our newly coupled hands. The cave has been cleared out and we will go there for our honey time... and no one will bother us... barring an international incident, no one will look for Ilax.

Light and Dark thank you, thank you. We leap out of the fountain to be enveloped by our children waiting with enormous towels and are hustled to Ilax’s house... my house now too. We will have to apply to the Unity to add another room to it.

I am so happy. I am so happy. We will dress in dry clothes and the children will take us out to our feast and we will then vanish up to our cave. How on the planet did I ever deserve such happiness?

36 - I'm old, not sick

2010-04-13T16:37:00.006-04:00

I’m tired. This whole life I’ve balanced the good of the Empire on the point of a pin. On the point of my head, I’d say. I’m tired. I’ve seen my sons go down and my daughters, all to the service of Empire. And my grandsons and little tiny baby girls born dead. Scraps of flesh. Scraps of my heart.

Ripped off and flung out and instead of whirring away to make new colonies, to build a safe place for Lainz... they’ve fallen, been eaten... burned by too much Light or swallowed by too much Dark.

The Milari might have a better idea. How can one mind, one heart bear this? Spread it so that old men can die in peace. LEAVE ME ALONE, you EnDarkened fool of a doctor. I’m old. That’s the problem. I merely can’t lie down and rest just yet. I have to find more strength in me, more life in me somehow. I’m not raving. I’m not out of my head. Aren’t old men allowed even poetry without being called mad?

“He’s not making sense, I’m afraid, my lords. Give him some rest. Give him some time.”

Yes. Time. Time for me to call my black and gold angels, my little sisters. Time for me to pull myself out of Death’s Jaws one more time, fingerwidth by fingerwidth. You jackals. All waiting to pounce on me and rip the Empire between you. You fools! Don’t you know that the people... the people need the water we’ve won so hard by conquest and agreement? We’re not a true Empire! We’re a blighted refugee camp clinging to a frigid river-bottom in a desert eating bees and raghnall nuts and green shellfish ripped out of icy water!

You rip apart the so-called Empire and the whole lot of us starve to death. It’s not feather-spitters and glory and gold you vultures. It’s always been the water. When we first came we were drinking our bird’s blood, the children whose parents had died of thirst carried by warriors barely able to control their dying moas. And we found the canyon. The water... and the bees who saved us all. I’m not raving. I’m remembering my great-grandfather’s memories. I need more time enlighten you. Give me more time!

**

The Emperor’s physician closed the door of the bedchamber quietly and turned to look at the assembled court. “He’s resting. He has ordered everyone out and might sleep. It is possible he will be up this evening.”

The court dispersed, slowly, their silks rustling like the wings of honeybees, murmuring one to another. Eyes slid from face to face, judging who was most powerful, should the old man die this day. Groups shifted, nomarcs stepped away from one high lord, to another, their patterns altering as they bowed and scraped courteously.

From a door inside, the opening hidden in the pattern of honeycomb, Shashi slipped into the bedroom. The bees recognized her and though they swarmed, distressed, did not sting. “He’ll be all right, sisters,” she whispered to them as they buzzed and settled on her arms and hands. “He’s too stubborn to die yet.”

A rustling whisper from the bed. “Shashi.” Diryish swallowed, a liquid gulp. “I hate this age... water pooling in my limbs and lungs... I shall drown in my desert. Any word from... your father yet?”

“Not yet, Radiance.”

“Didn’t I teach you better, girl?”

She settled down next to the bed, looking at his tired face. “I’m sorry. Uncle Diryish.” Even though their relationship was not of blood, she would not set aside her propriety to just call him by name. If he lived long enough for her to gain enough age, she might one day just call him Diryish.

“Better.” His pale, shrewd old eyes opened, then closed again. “I have enough young moa-lords telling me nonsense they think I want to hear. ‘Immutable, indeed.’ I need your father to kick me, when I’m too full of memories.”

“You’re a honeycomb packed full of life’s honey, Uncle.”

“Ready to be capped off and sealed away.”

“Uncle... we need to keep things together for a while longer. And I’d miss you. Mariush, is not yet delivered and father hasn’t sent word on your heir. You need to get your strength back.”

“I will, child. I will. I’m not quite ready to get wrapped in my words and packed away in my own white mountain.” He smiled at her from his pillows. Did she think I missed her own concern buried in the Empire worries?

She patted the bed decisively. “I’m going to write father and ask him to bring some Milari healers with him. They might be able to help you.”

“I have been thinking of re-building our Dees school. Re-introduce the power to open use again. People have recovered from our disaster, enough I think. Yes, do so.”

“I will. I’ll leave you to get the rest you need, Uncle.”

“Yes, child, go on. I’m not sick, I’m old. There’s a difference.”

“Yes, Uncle,” she said in the unknowing way of the young. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead quickly. “I’ll be in later.” He sighed and smiled as she fussed away back through her secret door.

In the quiet afterward he raised his hands, palm up, and called. “Little sisters... I need help... Come.” The hive rose, not as many as the night they had defended him from the assassination attempt, but enough to cover his bedclothes and his hands. He hissed a little through his teeth as they set stingers into his wrists and elbows and in a precise line along his collarbone. “Thank you,” he said as the modified bee venom coursed into him. He closed his eyes, and slept.

35 - Tea and Sex

2010-04-11T22:56:00.001-04:00

Mother sat outside her private cocoon, right on the edge of the open wall over the drop to the river, enjoying the view. Clouds were piling up behind the city, and since her windows faced south the white fingers of water vapour painted the edges of the blue sky on either side and gave the afternoon sunlight a rich greenish golden hue.

The water was high and everywhere in the city there was the sound of fountains. The Basin was full to the brim and plants cascade down the stone walls from every window. When the deep dry came there would be banners instead but for now it was living green.

The air was full of the scent of earth and the sweetness of flowers. The hives were empty and the plants were full of bees so the whole city buzzed with them. The dark green vines trailing down into the opening were full of pink flowers and the busily humming black and gold insects.

“It is the time of sweetness,” Mother said quietly to Shashi. “A good time for weddings and births.”

“Mariush might give birth early. It is her first,” Dukir’s daughter answered, just as quietly as she massaged Mother’s feet. The wind, promising another rainstorm, teased the women’s silks and face veils and strands of hair pulled loose from elaborate braids.

Mother had black and white spotted moa down feathers woven softly around her wrinkled old face, and her eyelids were painted shining silver, giving her the blank, ‘royal’ look when she closed her eyes to think, though no one but the Emperor would dare use gold.

“She and the baby are healthy.”

“The Emperor has her surrounded by his bees. She is as protected as if she were the Empress rather than a disgraced zardukahr carrying a bastard.”

“Our Emperor is most generous to forgive her, her indiscretion.”

“It is interesting that she is as protected so well. Has the court noticed the bees?”

“Not really, because he is keeping her close, though pretending to disdain her. It is difficult to see his protections as separate from hers.”

Mother stretched. “That’s good, child. Thank you, enough. Have some tea yourself. How is your father doing?”

“His health is better,” Shashi smiled at Mother as she said this, both women knowing very well that Dukir’s supposed ‘ill health’, made it perfectly plausible for him to be away from the court for extended periods. “He wrote me about how his garden is doing.”

“I hope it is doing well.”

“Yes, indeed. He has a particularly promising young tree flourishing and he is going to spend some time cultivating it.”

“Indeed. A Raghnallaz, I presume.” It was the name of a fruiting tree that grew a sweet, hard-shelled nut that usually flourished along the river bottom. A tough little tree that made do with little light, extending long, wild tendril roots over the cold, dark rock to reach the water.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Excellent. Is he still researching the family line?”

“Yes, Mother. He feels confident that he has found a long-lost scion of the household and hopes to bring that line to the world’s attention very soon.”

“Really? How very interesting. Thank you for telling me, my dear.” Both women knew very well that the household referred to was the Emperor’s.

“There is someone dabbling in mandery and direct assassination, Mother. They have attacked my husband and the Emperor both.”

“Oh? Not that someone attacking your husband troubles me greatly, sweetheart…” Shashi grimaced and shrugged it off. Mother didn’t have to tell her how childish her husband was, very needy for a grown man. “And Mariush cannot trace it down because all her strength must go to the child.” She sighed and tapped her jewelled nail against her teacup.

“No, Mother, I first thought it could be my brother-in-law, but I can discern no signs of it.”

She rose and brought a platter of candied purple blossoms to set between them. “Shashi,” Mother said, floating a sweetly sinking flower in her tea, “You need to write your father and let him know about all of this, if you already haven’t. I will release two of my graduates to be your husband and his brother’s zardukahr and we will have more eyes and ears in your household.”

“I have and will write him, Mother.” She smiled faintly. “The men will both be tremendously flattered to be chosen for the honour.”

“I’m sure.” Mother said dryly, watching the purple flower dissolve its colour into her tea. “I am also thinking of you, my dear. I know it isn’t easy and you should have a sister in the house.”

"Mother,” Shashi gave her the minor salaam. “I love you.”

“I love you too, dear.”

**

Even before the door closed behind them, Ky’s good sense had come back. “Wait, I shouldn’t have… I mean… what if I get you pregnant… I can’t support a wife, I’ve just begun earning my name I mean… I’ve got my dad but… but… but..”

“Oh for my great-great-great left-handed grandmother’s sake!” Haraklez didn’t stop pulling him into her room by the wrist. “Look, Lainz… Our health ‘cliners have basically blocked us kids when we go through our fertility ceremony… We get ‘unblocked’ when we get married… and then blocked again after we have our kids… I don’t want to get into the politics that goes on in every community, every generation… when people figure out how many kids we need… It’s just polite…”

“What? Blocked? What are you talking about? You mean you can’t get pregnant? What about… ummm… disease?”

“You don’t get checked before????” She raised her eyebrows. “You mean you were doing all the sleeping with old men to pay your way here and didn’t get your health checked after?” He sank down on her bed, as if her words had jabbed him in the gut.

“How? How can you just spit out such things without even blushing, naked faced?” He could feel his own face on fire. She sat down next to him on her bed.

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t see it as shameful or embarrassing. And when I think about it, when you started at the school did someone give you a health check?”

“Un-huh.” He was still embarrassed by remembering it. Probably because he had expected it to be more invasive, given the reputation Milar healers had. “It was Zon Witten.”

“Then you’re all right. He wouldn’t let you keep any pet illnesses of any kind to take into the school. And you should ask if he ‘blocked’ you… um--blocked your ability to engender children… probably not without asking you, especially since you’re so allergic to mandery or clinery… but it’s seen as polite to control your semen you know.”

“Errr…. I suppose. At home we just control the whole person, I guess.”

“That kind of explains a lot.” He found himself staring at her lips. He really, really wanted to kiss them again.

“I like girls better than men.”

She grinned. “I understand. So… do you want to test out how sturdy my bed is?”

“I … I’m not sure how to, with a girl. I… might be terribly jealous of other boys who taught you stuff…”

Haraklez put her hand softly against his lightly fuzzed cheek, trailed her fingers down to the edge of his collar and over and up to his bottom lip. “I would love to show you,” she said, smiling. A real smile, not just a grin. Serious. Then she kissed him again, teased his mouth open with her tongue.

Oh, good. Kissing I’m good at.

He kissed back, running his tongue just behind her teeth, tasting her tongue with his as she threw her arms around him and he pulled her close against him. He was aware of her breasts pressed against him, as if they were warmer than the rest of her, even through her shirt.

He daringly slid one hand down her back, hesitating as he got to the waistband of her trousers. She smiled against his mouth and took a deep breath. “You may,” she said teasingly as if he were hesitating to raid a sweets jar. His hand slid down, slowly, to cup the big muscle there, and she wiggled and said, ‘oh, that’s nice.’ His other hand found her other hip then her buttock and he could feel… he hadn’t thought he’d gotten that much bigger this last year but her bottom fit so sweetly in his hands and he couldn’t think, couldn’t think, couldn’t stop.

Haraklez’s hands tugged his shirt up, and he was forced to break off their kiss as the cloth rode up between them and over his head, mussing his hair, leaving him reddened, breathless and bare-chested. “Oh, Zon,” he teased. “I’m going to love these lessons.”

“I like the way your smile is so bright. You don’t smile enough, Ky.”

“I’ll learn. Life’s been getting a lot—” she cut him off again, kissing his neck, just at the soft spot at his throat. “Oh, yessss!” He threw his head back and they somehow ended up tangled together, fallen back against her pillows.

“You have too many clothes on, Hara.”

“Yes. That should be fixed, don’t you think?”

My apologies

2010-04-11T02:19:00.003-04:00

Got caught up in a conversation with folks in Oklahoma... [hi there!] and Kyrus will be posted later today... My bad!

Forty lashes with a wet noodle for my dog Rio, who assumes fault for everything on Sunday!

s

34 Wedding Plans

2010-04-06T23:55:00.003-04:00

“… All right. We can’t have my father ride up on his horse or yours on a bird. They’d either just try to kill each other or the bird would try to eat the horse,” Haraklez said.

“Not our dads…” Kyrus said absently only half hearing her, chewing on his pen. The marriage vows from Lainz were just going to have to be re-written entirely, given that there were only one male set of vows that would be silly if spoken twice. The man to the woman specified a woman’s body parts rather than a man’s. “Maybe they can just say the men’s vows simultaneously. Yeah.”

“No, silly, the riding animals!”

“Um… they can walk up to the Ancestor stones?”

“That works.” She made a note.

The two sat outside the house on a blanket thrown onto the grass, facing one another, legs outstretched. Most of the mud and muck had been cleared away and the flattened houses. Fortunately few people had died in the slide. Kyrus the Elder was at the school speaking to the Zon there about teaching. They’d asked him. Ilax was at the Unity offices working.

Up the hill they could hear the chanting as people worked to clear the last of the mud and rubble from higher up the slope where it still threatened the town, and higher still, if they walked around the house they would have seen the baffles being re-built stronger, thicker.

“It’s going to be more crowded with your dad living in the house rather than up on the mountain,” Haraklez said.

“Yeah. That cave is almost entirely plugged up with mud and it will be a while for it to be cleaned out.”

“The slide scoured away a lot of secrets."

"What are we going to do with the wedding cup problem?” He asked going down to the next thing in his notes.

In Lainz the glass wedding goblet that the couple drank out of for the first time as a couple was sacred and carefully kept as a symbol of the enduring bond of the marriage, while in Milar they smashed it, to show that they chose to end their single, separate lives.

She leaned back on her elbows, putting her own notebook down. “You know you’re avoiding the really big problem, solving all these little ones.”

Ky put his own notebook down and clutched his hair with both hands. “It’s different with me, showering! Him having to get up there and strip naked?”

“How is that different from the Enlightened or EnDarkened Priest unveiling them to each other?”

“It’s behind a screen and it’s just to each other! Not in front of anyone who happened to be in town that day and came to the party! Or the whole country if they decide to come because its Ilax!”

“It’s not going to be the whole country. And it will only be most of Viltaria… and my grandparents.”

“Wonderful. Zon Aetavvar and Nasera Samennaz. Neither of them like me. They aren’t going to be thrilled with their son marrying my father.” He threw his hands over his mouth “What am I saying? This is just so crazy. This is madness. At home they’d expose both of them!”

“Good thing they aren’t in Lainz then, hmmm?”

Kyrus actually ripped at his hair a little until she reached over and caught his hand. “You stop that. It’s normal here. People fall in love no matter what sex they are and they aren’t treated like bird poop. Look. What if we get both of them to be face-veiled, and then our Eldest can act as priest and remove the veils while they’re facing each other. Then they can take off the fancy clothes, take each other’s hands, walk the circle and step into the fountain together. They can pour water over each other’s heads just like the last part of the Lainz ceremony.”

He stopped yanking on his own hair and put his one hand over hers. “Haraklez… will this marriage make us siblings?” Part of him… part of him really, really didn’t want her as his sister.

“Oh. Well. Yes.”

“Oh shit.” He took her hand down from his head and looked at it.

She stared at him and smacked him. “What do you mean, ‘oh shit?’ Don’t you want me as a relative?”

He could feel himself blushing all the way to the roots of his hair, as if the skin of his face were on fire. “Um… well… not that kind of relative… I… um…” He put his one hand over hers. “But… I’ve not… I’m not… um…” She smiled though he couldn’t see it, since he was studying their joined hands so intently.

She hitched forward where she sat, so their thighs, parallel though pointing opposite directions, so she was face to face with him, touched. “You Lainz are so sweet, sometimes, but so slow!” Haraklez leaned forward and as he looked up, startled, kissed him.

Her lips were soft and warm and sweet and he found himself leaning in to her. He made himself pull away. Her lips were perfect compared to some of the wrinkled older men he’d sexed and he didn’t have to touch himself to spring up, excited. “I… um… I know how to please men better than young women! And your father is going to kill me if I corrupt his oldest—“

“—Shut up, Lainz. I think I want to find out just how corrupt I can get you to be.”

“—But… if you’re my sister…” he let go her hand, leaned all the way back onto his elbows, his body fighting him, to move closer to her, heart hammering. “This… would be… wrong…” He clenched his eyes shut tight, struggling to seize control of himself. If she’s my sister… this would be very, very wrong.

She grabbed him by the shirt, both sides just under the chin, his green eyes popping open to stare into her gray eyes, so like her father’s, pale as her barely tanned skin. “That’s not how it works with heart’s marriages instead of marriages for children. You’d be my heart’s brother and I your heart’s sister, but if we try and decided we wanted to more than just roll in the grass, we could. Not illegal, not immoral, got it?”

He stared into her eyes and began to smile, slowly. His grin broadened whitely as she stared at him nose to nose and she began to blush, finally, so beautifully pink. “I suppose that we should try the kissing again and see if we want to roll in the grass… though maybe not in the middle of town next to your father’s house where all the world can see?”

33 - Arguments in the Hall

2010-03-30T23:59:00.006-04:00

“… AS THE HONORABLE MEMBER FROM UPPER COMO HAS REPEATEDLY SAID – Order! Order in the Unity! Members, please do not be a DIS-unity – HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!

Ky put his hands over his ears, muffling the roar of voices in the Hall of the Host. It was unreal. The Hall was an oval room with two levels, the rows in the balcony all raked to let everyone see the floor below. On the floor there were five chairs, three and two, the two in front slightly lower to let everyone see the higher three and they also had desks before them.

Usually the Konsiliarch and the Surdeniliarch sat side by side, with the empty chair reserved for guests or witnesses, speakers of any kind, called to speak to the Unity. There were six banks of seats in the oval, each capable of comfortably seating fifty people. Only the middle four banks were used since the Milari had not grown to the population that they thought their country could support.

The one hundred and eight current representatives were all on their feet, it seemed. Order had completely vanished no matter what the Konsiliarch said. Once he couldn’t hear the words any longer Kyrus just looked at all those angry faces, all those mouths working. Bare faces, bare emotions.

And his father stood in front of the guest chair, hands clasped behind his back, apparently listening to all their rage. He didn’t seem angry or upset, more intent, careful. EnLightened and EnDarkened may I be like him one day. So I don’t need a veil to hide my emotions. Beside him, Ilax stood as well, standing with his inamor. For all they were so different, they were both similar in their calm. Is it because they’re warriors? Or because one’s a politician, their ‘he who has mastered war’… or as they think… a peace keeper?

The noise was awful and finally the Konsiliarch, Vidarna Xshathrita, a statuesque woman who, if Kyrus had seen in the street, would have thought was someone’s favourite grandmother, got up and stepped over to a stone altar. Kyrus pressed his hands tighter over his ears. Here it comes.

She picked up a kernel of something, a stone, from a box on a separate table and placed it on the pedestal and waited, the metal hammer in her other hand. The noise didn’t ease so she picked up a second, then a third.

Ky could see her mouth move but not hear. Even in this debate he’d only seen a two-stone before. EnDarkened, a three stone summons to order, EnDarkened…

She raised the hammer and brought it down sharply on the stones with a CRACK loud enough that Ky jumped, even with his hands over his ears. A cloud of smoke billowed to the ceiling where it was caught by the slow-turning fans and whisked away.

I think it is partly the smoke that shuts them up, forcing them to cough instead of yell, as much as the noise.

Ky’s hands went from his ears to his nose, holding a cloth to breathe through. “Honourable Members of the Unity,” she said finally. Probably when the air cleared enough for her not to be gravelly, but that translated into a solemn dignity as she sat down again in the sulphur-smelling Hall. “We have heard the Surdeniliarch and Kyrus Talain both tell us their whole story. What they did. Why they did so. We have also,” she paused and held up the hammer demonstratively at one member who dared raise her voice from the back.

"—And we have heard the upset and anger expressed.” She drew a deep breath. “I regret that the issue devolved into fisticuffs between Honourable Amrav and the Honourable Ushtra. The page informs me that both are well and apologizing to one another.” Enough of the Unity was recovered that they could slap their desks in approval for that. She waited another moment. “As Konsiliarch it is now my duty to inform the Unity of things that have not been mentioned, for your consideration.”

She rose and murmured to both Ilax and Kyrus to be seated. “The Unity is no doubt aware, that the war in question is over.” That got a mutter though not a chuckle. “The Emperor of Lainz has shown his willingness to cease warfare, under our Surdeniliarch's prompting.” A dozen voices cried ‘hear!’ ‘hear!’ and she waited for them to subside. “To answer the first question posed…”

No, Ky thought. It’s too soon!

“Ilaxandil Vania a Ruikart -- she added in the ancestral designation to his name -- "Admits to both deceit and deception, for reasons of passion and compassion. And we Milari pride ourselves in being both passionate. And compassionate. Yet he still did his duty and an enemy of our state was neutralized, though not quite in the way that was demanded.” Ky could see that his father and Ilax, when they’d sat down, had clasped hands. Can’t they see how much they love one another?

“I also note that as surdeniliarch his service to the country has been exemplary and he has so far moved people to request his top stipend be extended, since there was no legal way for us to laud him further, for work above and beyond his mere duty.” She paused to nod at the ambassadors in their chairs, who had scrupulously kept their silence while the Milari raged, but no doubt had been taking good note. They nodded back.

They still need him. He’s gotten some pretty tough sticks of diplomats to not only talk, but work together and Xshathrita knows it. “Moreover, as we have always accepted those injured, even the enemy, because of our unwillingness to send more people early to our ancestors, Kyrus Talain was saved by our healers and has, since his salvation, been working to teach our children, taking over the duty from Agalia and Corydon, by their will. I remind you that they were our finest Dees and our finest Zon. I suggest that the Honourable Members perhaps should argue with those shades…”

The murmur this time was more wry and gave Ky a sense of ‘oh no… you talk to those ancestors if you want… not me…’ partially humorous. Almost a laugh.

“I speak specifically to those who were their students.”

This time there were hands thrown up, a barrier of fingers. “Honourable Konsiliarch,” the Member from Tzatzkim called. “We concede the point.”

She looked up at him and then around at the other Members. A second came from Member Ruvan. “A quick show of hands, yes the point is conceded?” She asked. “Clerk?”

“Passed, Konsiliarch.” She nodded. “So. It is moved that the Surdeniliarch be censured for his deceit of the punters.” Their word for voters… or those who opt. “The option for his removal already having been punted down, I call for a show of hands.”

There was a pause and then hands began rising in the Hall.

She stood, waiting as the clerk counted. “A firm yes or no, ladies and gentlemen, no half-hearted hands, please.”

The clerk handed her the tally and she looked down at it. “Passed that the Surdeniliarch be censured, 74 to 22 with 10 abstentions and two Members out for medical treatment.” She sat down again. “I open the floor for discussion on the nature of this censure.”

This is going to go on for days, Ky thought. But he could see his da’s posture had eased a bit. Do I know him well enough so fast? I suppose. Werfas, beside him, punched him—not so lightly in the arm.

“Hey, what?” People around him shushed him. “What did you do that for? They’re still going to cut him down some,” he hissed to his wing-brother.

“It’s good because nobody re-opened the ‘throw him out option’.”Werfas whispered in his ear. “That was what the pause was before people started putting their hands up. Now it’s all about fines and stuff, not whether he can get kicked out or not. And you’ll be able to start the proper wedding party plans, since they never had one.”

“Me?” Kyrus squeaked loud enough that he got shushed again. "Why not Haraklez? That's stuff girls do."

“Yeah, you. It's not girl stuff in Milar, jerk. You and her together since you’re both old enough.”

Wonderful. But he couldn’t put a lot of intent into his groan.

32 - Balling the Spider

2010-03-27T23:37:00.005-04:00

As the jewelled spider hit the floor, the quiet hum of the hive rose to a disturbed roar. The single drone, moving where it would normally have been still, jumped into flight, wings quivering as it zipped into the air. Hundreds of its fellows followed, clicking and whirring like small machines. Zooming in through the opening from the balcony, they circled the Emperor’s rooms, rainbow eyes pulling in information, light and shadow, as crystal wings whirred.

The spider crouched in the shadow where it had frozen at the first sound of the bees, pressed tight to an ornate table leg, emerald eye cluster tilting as it tracked first one, then ten then struggled to follow a hundred bees in flight. A dozen bees settled into the silken curtains around the Emperor, who stirred, rolled over again, his sleep disturbed but not yet broken.

The hive’s hum rumbled, a low, boiling sound. The spider crawled on its glass-furred belly up the table leg on the inside, in the deep shadow. For a time everything grew still again, save for Diryish’s occasional snore, the hive slowly settling, the mal-spider crouching still as a non-living thing underneath the table top, wedged into the join where the table-leg was cross-braced, glittering faintly in the dark. The drones and workers all through the bedchambers settled down in cornices and curtains and on the edges of unlit stone sconces.

Nadian, sat, still bleeding gently from his lip, the iron/salt/oil slick puddling just under his tongue. He waited, growing more and more impatient. What is taking so long?

Under the pressure of his impatience, the mal-spider shifted, crawled out along the edges of the ornate table. It was not a direct line to the bed but there was a screen close by the table, that threw a long shadow in the right direction.

It stopped at the corner, its pearl head swivelling to scan for bees. Apparently chilled down again, they were still as if soldered onto the tips of the Immutable’s crown. The spider crawled down slowly then made the tiny leap at the bottom into the deeper shadow of the screen, diamond feet hitting the tile with an eightfold click and froze once more.

The sound was enough. The bees rose again. A few more flew in, circled the bed room. A single bee landed on the vanity table, its feet tasting the jewel box. A second joined it and the two began buzzing around one another in a zizzing circle. Then a third. And a fourth. A fifth hovered over the knot of dancing, seething bees and the hum rose to a higher pitch; high enough to make teeth start to quiver in the mouth.

Suddenly the vanity table was covered with a glittering mass of yellow and black bees, like moving topaz and onyx. The spider darted along the shadow of the screen straight toward the bed, a stream of bees following after it as thunder follows the lightning, screaming a buzzing threat, other bees pouring in to thicken the wave.

The stream of bees hit the mal-spider, knocking it off its target, tumbling it, losing bits of gemstones as it clattered against the tile and smacked against the trailing bedskirt. The bees rippled under the bed after it, surging, but hummed in confusion. Where was the spider?

It lay still under the heavy puddle of silk, waiting as miniscule diamond claws wiggled across the tile to re-join it, then stealthily set its forelegs on the trailing bedclothes. Gently, softly, it pulled itself up the bed while bees blundered underneath, sensors all but blind. But bees live in dim or dark in the hive and live by touch, the faintest quiver of a neighbour, the wiggle of the queen across risers. The spider had just dug claws into the mattress when the workers found it.

Insect hive invaders are never stung. The voiceless quiver, the cry of ‘defend the nest’ sent on currents of air and hair too thin to see, galvanized the whole hive. Diryish sat up as thousands of bees shrieked into his bedchamber to defend the royal cell.

They flung themselves on the much bigger spider, clinging to legs and abdomen and head and stinger, while it struggled to hang onto the mattress, fought to squash itself between two layers of padding, trying to scrape bees off itself, kicking and flailing its legs to fling bees off its body.

For every bee it flung off, or bit or stung, or ripped to pieces, there were hundreds more to replace the fallen one and the spider, smothered in a ball of workers and drones, claws unable to hold the weight tore loose. The whole mass of bees, with the spider subsumed in the middle, thudded to the rug below.

Diryish reached to light a candle, set it in the sconce, not moving from the centre of his bed, watching, bees covering his bedclothes and his hands and head as if to put their bodies between the threat and him. The ball of bees was now almost as big across as a person’s head, the violent twitching of the spider buried inside reduced to ripples in the biomass smothering it.

Nadian, at his worktable, fell forward, head hitting his forearms with a crack, struggling to breathe. He managed to open his jaw against enormous pressure, as if he were crushed, buried under the city’s weight of sand. He spat out the pooled blood onto the table, the picture under his arms, turning the image of the spider into a sodden smear of blood and ink.

As the image dissolved, the link dissolved, he drew a ragged breath and sat up, shaking. What in all the EnDarkened world was that? It was as though the Emperor had something enormous enough to crush a jewelled spider in one blow. He’d never seen any kind of sign of such a creature in the bedchambers and could hardly go rushing to the Sunrise Loggia now.

He might be venal, but he certainly was not stupid enough to do that. He loosened his collar, and cuffs, wiped streams of sweat from his face. When had the heat gone up so much in here? The cold night air should still have been pressing in around the shutters and it was just so hot. His silk shirt and trousers were soaked through with sweat and his hair hung in messy, sodden tendrils, dripping. What happened? I obviously ran afoul of the Emperor’s protections but I have no idea what they are and I thought, if I did not succeed in my dear ambition I would at least find out what they were!

But the link with things like the spider had never been good for him. He could not see through the insects’ eyes, or hear through them. It was like trying to control a horse or a moa through ten-foot long rods, blindfolded, ear-muffled, trying to figure out the beast’s reactions through the quiver through the hands, which had gloves on as well. He stripped his disgusting clothing off, moving like an old man, the inside of his lip raw. I must not be impatient. Time is on my side. I’m the logical choice for the old man to choose as his successor. There is no one else.

He considered waking Shashi to calm him. Sex always settled his mind. But she would wonder at him chasing after her after days of her chasing him and him gently pushing her away. He was trying too much too soon. Too fast. Impatience will kill you, boy. Slow and steady will get you what you want. Let the flashy ones burn out and die. He could almost hear his grandfather’s measured words.

That was enough to settle his racing heart. He bundled his fouled clothing into the bin for the slave. I need to sleep. That will be enough.

Diryish looked down at the ball of bees, no longer spasmodically convulsing. His hands were gentle as he lifted mats of bees from his arms and head and neck. “Shh. Shh little sisters. You did your job. I’m safe. I’m safe.” He felt odd speaking to the bees but even more odd if he did not and he'd been speaking to the bees for many, many years. They responded to his voice and spiralled up in a misty cloud, heading for the outer hive once more.

The room was hot, almost glowing with it as if someone had lit a brazier immediately beside the bed. The centre of the ball of bees was dead. As the outer layers dispersed, like buzzing fog, the mass fell apart, gems and gold trapped in the centre clinking and chiming as cool air hit them. The abdomen was a melted puddle of goo. The pearl pieces lay scattered, trash in the midst of brittle, disintegrating bees but not for long. The live bees came to clear away their dead, leaving the mess of gem chips, cracked glass and melted atomizer scrupulously alone on the bedside rug.

2010-03-26T00:27:00.004-04:00

Author's Note:

Easter Weekend will be a holiday so the weekend post will not happen then. Just to give everyone a 'head's up'.

I'll remind everyone again just before.

Take care! And don't do anything I wouldn't do!