Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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“Once more,” said Zhuqa.

She looked at him, then at Hruuzk. She couldn’t begin to perform the necessary vocal aerobics to apologize in dumaqi. What the hell did they want from her? “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling frustration in her stomach almost as hot as the throb and sting in her back. “Whatever you want me to say, I’ll say it. Just let me get out of here, for God’s sake. I’m sorry. I don’t care anymore. I’m sorry. Let me go!”

Her voice cracked.

Hruuzk and Zhuqa exchanged a maddeningly knowing glance.

“Very good,” Zhuqa said. He tapped her shoulder with two knuckles and turned around. “Come, Eshiqi. I’ll take you home.”

They walked back to his room together. He kept silent, acknowledging neither her presence at his side nor the salutes of the many guards they passed in their descent through the ruins. When he unlocked his door, she saw a lamp already burning on the table, which had acquired a plain metal cup and, more importantly, a wide-mouthed clay bowl generously heaped with roasted meat and charred roots.

The smell of the food struck her almost at the same instant as the sight of it. Her mouth flooded even as her back continued to throb and sting. She knew better than to take even one step toward it, but could not help staring.

Zhuqa followed the direction of her eyes as he unbuckled his harness. He did not remark, only smiled and undressed. When he was naked except for his loin-plate and the knives strapped to his biceps, he gestured at her.

She started to take her shift off, wincing as the coarse fabric pulled taut across her back, but he stopped her.

“In a moment. First, I want you to look there and see the plate I have set for us to share.”

She looked. Her stomach growled.

“I know that you are very hungry,” Zhuqa said behind her. “I see that you are tired. And hurt.” His hand slipped like slow hell down her spine. “But Hruuzk tells me you have been obedient and hard-working…most of the day. And I am inclined to forgive your foolishness there at the end, because it so warmed me to see my Eshiqi seeking her man’s aid. So. Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” she said, and said it again as best she could in dumaqi.

“I’m glad.” He took her arms and raised them over her head, taking the opportunity to nuzzle at her from behind. There, with his snout close to her ear and his hands like shackles around her wrists, he softly said, “Because if I find a weapon hidden on you, Eshiqi, I’m going to make you eat it.”

She started to look at him. He released one hand to catch a fisthold in her hair and yank her head back, so that she suddenly found herself looking into his face. Viewed this way, upside-down and from below, his eyes caught the light in a strange new way, almost seeming to glow.

“If you took something out of the workpit, bring it out. I’ll beat you,” he said calmly, “but I won’t kill you if you confess it now and beg my forgiveness.”

“I don’t have anything,” she said, truthfully enough. It wasn’t as if the thought had never crossed her mind, but the only knife she’d seen in the workpit had been strapped to the side of Dkorm’s left boot and he’d been staring at her most of the day anyway.

“Please yourself. But remember that I gave you this chance.” Zhuqa let go of her hair and pulled her shift off. He felt it out carefully, gave her a long appraising stare, then tossed it aside and resumed his impersonal search, this time on her body. He made thorough work of it: finger-combing through her hair, lifting her breasts, even thumbing at her belly-button. Unsatisfied, he then knelt to check between her toes, run his hands up her legs all the way to the crack of her ass, and once there of course, felt inside her pussy. “Take that look off your face, little liar,” he remarked. “You’ve opened for me.”

“Not open enough to hide a knife. Seriously, what are you thinking?”

He grunted and released her, his spines now flexed all the way forward, broadly smiling. “No weapons. Not even a splinter of wood to sharpen. Am I to believe my dangerous Eshiqi has been tamed?”

“Only long enough for Meoraq to get here.”

His spines came forward at once. “Was that a name?”

Amber shut her stupid mouth.

“No answer? So be it. You’re Zhuqa’s woman now.” He rose and walked over to seat himself at the table. “And Zhuqa feeds his loyal woman well.”

She didn’t let herself get carried away by relief at these words; he was altogether too pleased with himself. And sure enough, at her first cautious step forward, he patted his thigh.

She looked at his hand, then at his face.

He grimaced at her playfully (first saw that look on meoraq yeah the morning after we first made love he probably has no idea how freaky it makes him look but at least he tries o god where is he) and patted again. “I have only the one chair.”

“I don’t suppose sitting on the floor is an option.”

“You will sit to eat—” Pat pat. “—or you will not eat tonight, Eshiqi.”

She sat on his lap. He bumped his knee a few times, grimacing as she winced at the rough scour of his scales, then he pinched off a chunk of meat and held it up.

Her mouth snapped shut on a sudden river of saliva.

“This,” said Zhuqa, placing the morsel against her lips without any further torment, “is for sitting so immediately and so well upon your man’s knee.”

And oh but it tasted good. Tachuqi meat, she knew that at once, but the best damn tachuqi in the world. They’d actually braised it in something; the taste was richer and more tangy than mere hunger’s spicing. It was, in all honesty, the best thing she’d eaten since leaving Earth. Better than quite a few things she’d eaten on Earth.

He had a bite of his own while he enjoyed the sight of her trying (and failing) not to wolf it down in one swallow. Then it was gone and her hunger was fully awakened and clawing up her guts, and the real torture began.

“Put your hand on me, Eshiqi,” he said. “You know the way.”

Amber gave the bowl of food a pointed look and unbuckled his loin-plate. She cupped his groin impersonally and waited.

He tore off another chunk of meat. “That was neither immediate nor well done,” he said and ate it himself.

“Sadist.”

“Mm. It isn’t bad for camp food, is it?” He licked his fingers.

“Fucking sadist!” Her eyes fixed infuriatingly on his mouth.

He took more meat and must have felt her hand on him tense in expectation because he glanced down before snorting laughter at her. “No, Eshiqi. One bite for you, one for me. That is how we share our meals. And you forfeited your last bite. This one is mine. But keep moving your hand. When I give you an order, I mean you to go until I tell you to stop.”

She kneaded at him mechanically as he sucked the juice from the meat, pinched it off into smaller and smaller bites, and finally ate it. He started to reach for another, then paused, pretending not to notice her hungry stare, then held out his hand invitingly. “Taste?” he offered.

No way. No fucking way was she going to—

And then she grabbed his hand and sucked not just greedily, not just that…but gratefully.

Zhuqa rocked back hard, banging his head sharply against the back of his chair. Now his eyes were fixed and staring.

That’s right. They didn’t have lips. They could lick…they couldn’t suck.

“Well, damn,” mumbled Amber disgustedly, but she couldn’t let go of his hand.

And as long as she was sucking on it, he was in no hurry to take it back. But the taste of meat was finite, and the taste of lizard could not provoke the same gusto. “Enough,” he said, once her enthusiasm began to flag. He looked at his hand when she released it, flexing his wet fingers, and then at her.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re going to be coming back to that, aren’t we?”

He picked up one of the roots—not a piece, but the whole thing—and held it up where she had to look at it. “I want your hand on my cock.”

His cock wasn’t out. Amber stroked his slit, which, despite his obvious effort to keep it tight against her, was already oozing beadlets of oil.

“You are such a slut,” said Amber, pushing her finger in to stroke his sa’ad. “Honest to God, that’s what you are. Big, tough Zhuqa. You’re just a dirty girl.”

He hissed through clenched teeth, then groaned, then finally gave up with a hoarse laugh and let himself extrude. As soon as she closed her fist on his shaft, he gave her the root. “Remember, you obey until I tell you to stop. Keep your hand busy.”

She did, although it wasn’t easy to fight open the thick, burnt husk of the root with one hand while gently rubbing a man’s dick with the other. Beneath the peel, the pulp of the root was grey and unappetizing, with a taste that was mostly that of the ashes it had been baked in. She ate it anyway, bolting it down in just a few half-chewed swallows, until she had nothing to do but work her fist and watch him slowly eat.

“You are good,” he remarked between lazy bites. “Your Sheulek trained you well, but this is Zhuqa’s House. Get up, Eshiqi. Put my cock inside you just how we are.”

He looked so sly and serious about it, like sex in a chair with the woman on top was the absolute limit of unthinkable depravity, that she laughed at him. Then she got up, still shaking her head (very much aware of how closely he was watching her now) and straddled him. “Such a dirty girl,” she said, milking at the base of his shaft until she’d worked the thick head of it inside her.

“Just so,” he murmured, reaching up to stroke his thumb along her throat.

She bore down, rocking a little to let his oils make the entry easier, and then sat, eye to eye, waiting for further instructions.

“Make me cum,” he said, not moving.

It took a few false starts; she didn’t want to put her arms around him for balance and she hated having his face right in front of her while she bounced on his cock, having to watch him study the juddering of her breasts and smirking. So she leaned back, bracing her hands behind her on his knees and raising herself up on her toes to pump her hips at him while she looked at the ceiling instead. It put a lot of strain on her aching shoulders, but it wouldn’t last long, she knew. It never did.

Or at least, it never had.

“It was a sick mind that taught you this,” said Zhuqa in a mildly marveling tone. Apart from a minute clenching of his thighs now and then, he managed not to move at all. His breath remained slow and even. His hands stayed at his sides. His cock, ticking hard inside of her with the urgent hammer of his pulse, gave neither of them release.

Her shoulders couldn’t take this much longer. “Hurry up and finish, motherfucker,” Amber muttered, bucking faster.

He only chuckled. “Fierce little thing. A Sheulek is a master of his flesh. Just because I choose so often to revel does not mean I do not know restraint.”

Which meant he was willing to go all night, for no other reason than to piss her off. Irritation became the spark of an idea. Amber caught his wrist, brought it to her mouth, and sucked at his finger, bobbing up and down its small length to the rhythm of her pumping hips.

“Fuck Gann!” he spat, yanking back his hand, but it was all over. His cock jerked; she felt the heat of his cum spitting over and over, like fireworks blooming in some internal sky, until he shuddered out the last of it.

He glared at her, close enough that she could feel the hot grunts of his breath puffing on her throat and stirring through her hair. His neck had lit up at some point during the sex, but the color wasn’t fading now that it was done. If anything, it was getting brighter.

All sense of victory slowly died, leaving her nothing but Zhuqa’s eyes burning into hers and the sting of the belt still crawling like coals over her back.

“That was stupid,” said Zhuqa, scarcely audible even with his face right in front of hers.

Should she agree? Apologize? Stay quiet? Amber hesitated and lost the choice.

“You want me to finish with you, is that it? You have somewhere else to be tonight? Eh?”

“No,” Amber said, tried to say.

“No! You don’t decide when I’m done!” Zhuqa picked her up only to thump her down with ass-bruising force on the table and shove her flat. Her head hit the bowl, upending it. He swiped burnt roots and greasy meat out of his way, hauled her hips to the table’s edge, and stabbed himself back inside her, snarling, “I’ll fuck you until you bleed if that’s my pleasure!” His empty hand splayed open and heavy across her chest, pinning her in place for his rapid, unfeeling thrusts. The table rubbing at her from behind might as well have been wrapped in razor wire. “I’ll fuck you until we both bleed and you…” His back arched, bucking almost in convulsions, every cord of his throat pushing out through vibrant shades of black and yellow. “…and you…fuck…” His eyes were glazing even as he glared at her. “You,” he said, but the rest was an animal hiss.

Amber didn’t move.

Zhuqa closed his eyes. He began to breathe. “One,” she heard him mutter. “One for the Prophet…”

Someone knocked at the door.

Zhuqa roared. Not like an angry man, or even an angry lizard. It was the roar of a dragon, wordless, tearing through the air and her bones together at decibels no mortal voice should even be capable of achieving. His hips pumped spastically, brutally, without seeming to be aware of her at all.

Amber did not fight him, did not cry out, did not even breathe.

Three more knocks, deliberate and loud.

Zhuqa stopped rock-rigid above her. His arms shook where he leaned on them, not (she was sure) from the strain and violence of his thrusts, as much as from the strain of not letting go to his killing rage. Amber, the only living thing in the room, held very still and watched him as he turned his head and looked at the door.

He breathed. Once. Twice.

“I,” he said in a rasping, hellish hiss, “do not care if the skies have split open and are shitting fire all over my camp! Move the fuck on!” he roared, once more in that dragon’s voice she felt even in her womb.

A moment’s stillness. Zhuqa’s heaving breath moved her minutely back and forth on the table. He didn’t look at her.

Tok. Tok. Tok.

He shoved himself back and out of her, snarling curses as he gripped his cock and wrenched it with difficulty and obvious pain back into his body, cinching his loin-plate on to keep it there. Metal flashed; knives flew to his hands as he crossed the room, flung the door open—

And stood there.

Meoraq’s name leapt like hope itself in her heart, but it died…because in that stillness, she heard what Zhuqa saw: the baby.

Amber sat up slowly, not daring yet to leave the table or even bring her legs together, but she had to at least look. Zhuqa’s friend Iziz stood on the other side of the door, Xzem huddled small at his side, and the baby thrust out as if in sacrifice before Zhuqa’s naked blades. She hadn’t been able to hear it crying through the door. She could barely hear it now. Its cries, little more than an endless, rusty “weh…weh…” breathed through a throat scraped raw by screams.

“It hasn’t eaten,” said Iziz.

Zhuqa sheathed his knives. “Since?”

After a moment, and a light cuff to the back of her head from Iziz, Xzem stammered, “Since third-hour last, my lord.”

“Since third-hour? You tell me this now?” Zhuqa looked at the baby, then at the woman who held it, incredulous. “Tell me why I should not go this instant and pull an arm off your shit-sired little poke!”

“Please, my lord! It is not my fault! It does not want me! I thought…it would suck when it became hungry enough, but…oh mercy, my lord!”

“Mercy?” Zhuqa snatched at the scruff of her filthy shift and yanked her off her knees. “I offered you mercy, woman! I offered you more than a used-up breed-pot like you deserves and you repay me by starving my child half the fucking day?!”

Xzem wailed.

“She says it quiets up in your creature’s arms,” Iziz put in. “She thought if the creature touched it…”

Zhuqa straightened up and glanced back at Amber. The yellow stripes at his throat throbbed, but they were fading. He released Xzem and stepped back.

Amber kicked down off the table and limped hurriedly over to take the baby from its weeping wetnurse. It hung against her breasts for perhaps half a minute more, and then suddenly brought both hands up to smack against her skin in a strong, pinching grip. It pulled in a deep, deep breath, and screamed it out—weak no longer, but full-lunged and furious. Fluid poured in an immediate, answering trickle from Xzem’s flaccid teat, but it was Amber’s breast it blindly gnawed, futile for them both.

The two men stood to one side while Amber and Xzem tried for several maddening minutes to fit the three of them together, offering no help and no encouragement. The baby cried louder, drawing strength from the touch it craved more than the milk it needed, until the flashings along its pale, scrawny throat began to turn yellow with rage.

Zhuqa and Iziz snorted in unison.

“It’s a son,” Iziz declared. “Only a boy could get that worked up over riding a woman.”

“In fairness, it is one damned fine ride,” Zhuqa replied.

“Better than a quick fuck into my mother?”

“Better than a slow fuck into God.”

Iziz looked at him, startled and trying to smile. “That’s a blasphemous lie.”

“No,” said Zhuqa seriously, watching Amber. “It isn’t.”

“You, sir, are a pervert. All that smooth skin. It must be like fucking a baby.”

Zhuqa said something in reply, but Amber didn’t hear. Smooth skin. Smooth and soft.

She looked around, then thrust the baby back into Xzem’s arms and ran to the table. “Do you have anything else like this?” she asked in lizardish, holding up the wineskin. “To wrap it in?”

They looked at her, both of them frowning, as she mimed putting on a shawl.

Damn it. She slowed down, trying to work her mouth around the alien words: “I need something with smooth skin.” Frustrated, she slapped her naked body a few times and then slapped the leather flask. “Like me!”

“What the hell is that thing barking on about?”

Zhuqa’s spines flared. He looked at the baby and then at the wineskin. He came over to the table and took it from her.

“No, you idiot!” Amber said, exasperated into English. “I don’t want a drink, I need—”

“I hear you, woman,” said Zhuqa. He uncapped the neck, righted the bowl that had once held their scattered dinner, and carefully poured the contents of the wineskin out. As he shook the last drops free, he drew his knife.

“What are you doing? Oh Zhuqa, no. Please, that’s a perfectly good—and there it is,” Iziz sighed, rubbing at his brow-ridges as Zhuqa sliced the skin open down its lengthy middle. After a short silence and a few meditative breaths, Iziz turned a glare on Amber and snapped, “Do you know how hard it is to make a watertight vessel out in the fucking wildlands? No, of course you don’t, you are a fucking watertight vessel!”

“Mind your manners,” Zhuqa said distractedly.

“That was a perfectly good corroki bladder! What the fuck does she want with it?!”

“She wants to put the baby in it.”

“Wants to…? Why by the names of Gann and God would she want to do that?”

“So it will think she’s holding it, you fool. Quiet down.” Zhuqa tossed the flap of the cut wineskin to Amber, who took it and folded the baby into its dry side until it was entirely cocooned but for its snouted face.

“Hush, baby,” she said. “I’m here. Amber’s here.” And with that, she placed the damp, wine-stinking bundle back in Xzem’s reluctant arms, its wailing mouth close to the leaking eye of Xzem’s teat. At its first accidental bite, the small head turned, shoving itself up so that most of the lizardlady’s single breast was swallowed into its stiff, lipless mouth. Its hungry cries turned at once to grunts of effort and then to soft, slurping sounds.

It drank.

“So,” Iziz said after a moment. “It wanted a blanket. Shows what I know about sprats. My apologies for disturbing you, Zhuqa.” He reached down to take Xzem’s arm.

“Let it eat.” Zhuqa sat down, picked up his cup and dunked it in the bowl. He gestured ruefully. “Have a drink. It’ll be full of dust and dead yifu by the morning.”

“Waste not the gifts of God,” said Iziz piously, picking up the whole bowl for a series of deep swallows.

Zhuqa sipped at his cup, picked splinters off the nearest chunk of roast, and tossed that at Amber. “A good thought, Eshiqi. Eat.”

She did, but without appetite, too much aware of Xzem’s hungry stare.

Iziz helped himself to a baked root, unzipped its skin, and swished it through the wine a few times before popping it whole into his mouth. He studied Amber while he chewed and swallowed, then said, “You know I have to ask…”

“Go on then.”

“What it is really like to dip it in that thing? Honestly.”

Zhuqa grunted, looking Amber over, then flexed his spines in a shrugging gesture. “Perverse. More than you can imagine.”

“With respect, sir, you have no idea the sorts of things I imagine.”

“She’s smooth, like baby-skin. Soft all over. Soft inside.” He took another sip of his drink and chuckled. “She cums like a man.”

“What do you mean?”

“She oils up when she cums. Like a man. She even has a little sa’ad.”

“What?!”

“And she’s so soft inside, softer than her outsides even. There’s nothing to catch on, nothing to push against, nothing but this soft, wet squeeze.”

Iziz drew back in a wince of queasily fascinated revulsion. “So it’s like fucking a sack of hot shit. Your pardon, a hot sack of male shit. There’s something wrong with you, Zhuqa.”

“I don’t describe it well. It’s nothing like a real woman’s sleeve. It’s like…like skin. A second skin over your cock. Every time you move, you can feel it gripping and pulling at you, all over, all the time. Just moving in her feels amazing. The only thing that compares is my first fuck—well, my first with a woman—and only because it was my first and has that same sort of revelation. Otherwise, there is no comparison, no more than you can liken a bite of this shit—” He picked up a root and tossed it back on the table. “—to fried bread and fancies. She’s hard to look at, but she’s like fucking God.”

Iziz studied him over the lip of the bowl. “Of all the sex you’ve had, you said. And then you said…with a woman.”

Zhuqa looked at him, then at his cup. He put the cup down a little harder than he had to and gave it a short push away. “Strong drink weakens the mouth and the mind, says the Prophet,” he muttered. “It was a long time ago, Iziz. The door is shut.”

Iziz put the bowl down. “You weren’t born out here, I know that much. You were a Sheulek!”

“In training.”

“Still…who the hell got you on the ground long enough to get a poke at you?”

Zhuqa glanced at Amber. She looked at the baby. He snorted laughter and looked back at Iziz. “You are the fatherless son of a wildland exile and the nameless catch-cock who served the whole of his camp. What could you possibly understand about anything I could tell you of that life?”

“She has a name, I just don’t remember what it is.” Iziz drank. “Why are we talking about me? I want to hear the story of mighty Zhuqa getting plugged.”

“That isn’t what happened.”

“It wasn’t even a man, was it? I knew it. You were ravished by a wild kipwe.”

“No.”

“Before I came here, I ran with a camp that used to hold kipwe shows,” recalled Iziz, his attention wandering to the bowl in his hands. “They’d strap a slave into a kind of harness. I don’t know…the kipwe had to be trained special, I guess…and every time I saw it, I had to wonder…How the hell do you train a kipwe to fuck something? How do you even start?”

“Do you want to hear this story?”

“Yes.” Iziz drank.

“In the cities, in the Houses, in the caste of the warrior, they take you away as soon as you can be trusted to walk without falling on your ass or piss without it running down your leg. They send you to a special place close to the innermost walls to train you. You live there with the other boys of your caste, all ages, all together, and you only go home for the cold season. You speak to no one but the men who train you and the boys who train beside you. You learn nothing but prayer and the laws of God.” Zhuqa paused to fill his cup again from the bowl in his friend’s hands.

“No women?” asked Iziz.

Zhuqa snorted. “The only time I ever saw women was when I was home for the cold season, and they were only servants. My mother had been turned out by then. I had no sisters. I think it’s possible I went the first ten years of my life without knowing there was such a thing as women. Truth. No idea.”

“Ten.” Now Iziz snorted. “I was fucking them before that.”

“It was a sheltered life.”

“It was a wasted one. No wonder you were all cock-rubbers and boy-pokes.”

“Never heard either word until I was sent out of the walls.”

“Lies.”

“God’s own truth. God’s and Gann’s.”

“Go on then. Your sick string of lies fascinates me.”

“There was a man in the training grounds. Eight years my elder. High-born, low-bred. A rough.”

“Used to crawl into other cupboards at night and poke the little boys,” Iziz guessed.

“Wouldn’t surprise me, but what he used to do to me was swagger around on the training field after the masters had left us to our targets and beat on whoever caught his eye. Just sneak up from behind with a practice staff and beat them down, calling out the techniques he used like he was a master at lessons, but really just beating on the boy. It wasn’t the first time I’d played his game—”

“But this time,” said Iziz dramatically, “you fought back.”

“I fought back every time, boy. I was a Sheulek in training, not a camp-born cock-rubber like you.”

They saluted one another, Iziz tapping his bowl respectfully at Zhuqa’s raised cup, and both drank.

“But it had been a bad run of days for me,” Zhuqa admitted after a swallow. “Angry days. Things I’d always been able to shake off were striking at me like lightning out of the sky, just—” Zhuqa brought his hands banging together, making Xzem jump and the baby let out one grunting wail before it resumed sucking. “—and I was burning,” Zhuqa finished, glancing their way. His eye lingered on Amber. “And I had been all day on that training field with Master Naxuuk chewing off my hide one scale at a time, and it was all I could do not to just let that lightning burn me up when that staff came swinging out of the black and caught me right here.” Zhuqa clapped a hand over his side, just below his ribs.

Iziz frowned. “God’s Hammer, Zhuqa.”

“Felt like it.”

“How old was this man?”

“He was three years after his ascension, they said, so he must have been at least twenty and two.”

“So you were fourteen?”

“Almost.”

“Fuck Gann.” Iziz put the bowl aside and eyed his leader with a disturbed expression. “What did you do?”

“You mean after I fell over pissing myself?” Zhuqa snorted. “He got in a few more good shots. I could hear him calling them out. Leaping Drop. Prayer Block. Radiant Twist. No matter what I covered up, there was something else for him to hit. And then he stepped back and let me get up. I could hear him talking, lecturing the other boys, and that lightning struck. And I went at him.”

“Like piss you did.”

Zhuqa drank, shrugging his spines. “He saw me coming and hit me again, ready with some technique or another. I don’t remember what it was. I do remember that he hit me…but hitting didn’t stop me. It was just more lightning. There must have been a time we were grappling because I remember climbing him…not on him, but climbing him, like a drop-stair. Then he went down and I began to beat on him the way I have never beaten anyone since. I have killed men, Iziz, and taken several days to do it that I did less damage. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. I hit him until I broke every bone in my right hand and even that couldn’t stop me hitting him. Have you ever been south as far as Kthuat?”

“Once or twice.”

“They have stands of trees around there. Dead trees, mostly. Full of beetles—”

“Oh, Gann’s fuck-stick, the yumont.” Iziz shuddered. “I heard about those. Saw scars men said came from them. Thought it was a lie to scare us boys from wandering.”

“They’re real. They live in the meat of those dead trees where it’s always warm and if a man should sleep up against one, they might come crawling out and bore in under his scales to live in his meat instead. Something in the bite keeps you from feeling it at first, but then they die. And they itch. If you’re quick about it, you can pry up your scales and dig the body out, but they melt away pretty fast and if that happens, that itch clings around for days upon days and there’s nothing anyone can do to help it. That’s what it was like for me. Hitting him was like scratching over my scales at the itch I could never reach under them. And when it was over, he was lying there on the ground, trying to crawl away. My whole body was on fire wanting to get at that goddamned itch…and my cock came out. Look at her.”

Iziz glanced around. Amber started to look at the baby, then gave up and looked back at them.

“Look at what? I can’t read that face,” Iziz said. “I don’t even know how you can look at it while you’re dipping in it.”

“Just the eyes, then.”

“I cry. What’s she thinking?”

“I don’t know,” said Zhuqa. “But there’s something in those eyes.”

Iziz looked back and forth between the two of them for a few seconds, then snorted and gave Zhuqa a sock to the chest. “Forget her. You’re just getting to the good part. Go on.”

“The good part.” Zhuqa checked his cup, but it was empty. He picked up a root and peeled it instead. “The only thing I knew about cocks at that time in my life was that I had one and I took that entirely on faith. Never seen it, mine or anyone else’s. I knew nothing about sex, other than Sheul gives a man the fire so that he could pass it into a woman and she could grow a baby. Go on and laugh, I know you want to.”

Iziz barked a few times, then rubbed at his eyes. “I was trying to hold it in.”

“You were never any good at that. So it came out for the first time in all my sheltered life and I felt air on it and the air was fire. There was this swaggering little shit of a boy, crawling on the ground in a puddle of his own piss and blood, more than half-naked because I had somehow torn most of his clothes away beating on him. At no time did I think it would feel good or that it would serve the slaveson right. I didn’t even hope it would hurt. I saw the pucker of Gann’s pipe and then I was in it.”