Dangerous Gifts Read online

  She nodded. Then she turned to walk out as though none of us were there. “Guard! Stay with her!” Tantris snapped.

  I shot a glance at Fain, who said, “Go with her.” His normally warm-coloured skin was wax-yellow, with blue shadows under the eyes. Abruptly, his knees folded, and he slid down the wall.

  “Fain!”

  “Arm. Broken, I think.”

  “Guard!” I snapped.

  Enboryay burst through the crowd, choleric and yelling. “What’s going on? What...”

  I thrust Daryellee at him. “She killed Lobik. It was meant for your daughter. Do something with her.”

  Enthemmerlee walked down the steps as though in a dream. The guard hovered around her, at a loss.

  “Lady Enthemmerlee. Enthemmerlee,” I said. “Come this way. I’ll take you home.”

  She was crying now, but she didn’t seem aware of it; the tears spilled, unnoticed, down her still, pallid face. I manoeuvred her towards the waiting carriages, opened the door, helped her in. “Stikinisk, Vorenay, Koverey, get in with her. Vasik, you’re on the roof, with me.” We climbed up beside the driver.

  “They threw her out?” he said. “I knew it.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Lobik... Lobik’s dead.” Grief, sharp and mostly unexpected, clawed at me. I’d hardly had time to get to know the man, but what I knew, I liked a great deal. And he was gone: stupidly, pointlessly dead. And poor Enthemmerlee... I hadn’t liked the way she looked, climbing into the carriage. I hadn’t liked it at all.

  “Lobik?” The driver looked at me. “Lobik Kraneel? What... No. You joke me.”

  “I don’t joke you, mate. I wish I did.”

  “Ah, guak,” he said. “Guak. Fuck. Bastard. Fuck.”

  “All of that,” I said.

  Guilt assaulted me, that sick hollow ache curling in the back of my thighs.

  It was the oath; the oath I’d forced Fain to take. He had acted without thought, without awareness, when he deflected the stone. The oath had used him to protect Enthemmerlee, and in doing so, it had killed the man she loved.

  I felt as guilty as if I’d slung the stone myself.

  THE SENESCHAL THRANISHALAK must have been watching. The sight of a single coach brought him scuttling down the driveway as fast as his stiff-backed gait allowed.

  He was too well trained to ask what had happened, but glanced up at me before he opened the door of the coach. I just shook my head.

  Enthemmerlee got out, moving as though she were half-frozen.

  “Miss?” He said.

  “She killed him, Thran.” She made a terrible, ugly noise, as though her insides were being torn out, and bent over, clutching her arms across herself.

  Thranishalak looked up at me again. “Lobik,” I said.

  The skin of Thranishalak’s face quivered; his crest flicked up, once. Then his feelings, whatever they were, disappeared under the mask of the perfect servant. And he put his arms around Enthemmelee, holding her, rocking her against him as she wailed. “There, Miss. There. Hush now.”

  I heard the driver hiss with surprise.

  Thranishalak picked Enthemmerlee up, like a child, her arms around his neck. She was so small; so frail. He carried her into the house. I followed.

  We put her to bed in the blue and white room. Thranishalak had hushed conversations at the door, and a few minutes later there were mugs on a tray, steaming. He put one in her hands, folded her cold little fingers around it.

  He offered the other to me. I took it. It smelled of sweet syrup, sleepy and comforting. I put it aside.

  Enthemmerlee had stopped that dreadful wailing, but now, holding the mug, not drinking, she stared at the faded hangings.

  I knew she wasn’t seeing them. I thought I knew what she was seeing instead.

  I got up. “I need to stand guard.”

  “I’ll stay with her,” the seneschal said.

  “I’ll be outside the door.” Guilt and pity clogged my mouth. “Enthemmerlee. I’m... I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she said, in a distant little voice.

  Don’t thank me. For the love of the All, don’t thank me.

  I stood there until the others returned. I stood there while her father went in, and sat, silently, on the end of the bed, and came out again, shaking his head.

  I stood there while Selinecree fluttered in, and said, “Oh, Enthemmerlee.” She pulled at a curtain, fussed with the covers. “Have you had anything to eat? You should probably eat something.”

  “No, thank you, Aunt.”

  I stood there while Malleay came to the door, his eyes raw with tears, and said, “Em. I’ll... if you want anything.” He stood there for a minute, and she said, in that same distant voice, “Thank you, Malleay.”

  He went away. I stayed.

  Eventually Rikkinnet stood in front of me and said, “Go.”

  “I...”

  “Go. Sleep.” She spat the words out like small stones, everything about her tight and furious.

  “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  “I should have...

  “No.” She swallowed, and I saw, for just a moment, the grief and guilt smear across her face like a dirty rag, before she pulled herself back to rigid control. “Do not say it. It does no good. We cannot save him. We still have her to watch, and to watch, you must sleep.”

  IT WAS SOME time before Malleay answered my knock; when he did so, he looked dreadful, his green flush faded to a pallid grey.

  “Oh,” he said. “Is something wrong? Is it Enthemmerlee?”

  “Well, yes and no,” I said. “Rikkinnet is on guard.”

  “Oh. I mean, that’s good. Did you want me for something?”

  “May I come in?”

  “Oh, of course,” he said. “How rude of me. Please.” He waved me past him. “I’m sorry it’s such a state. I don’t like to let the servants clean it, but they keep trying. I tell them I can do it myself, but...” He moved about, jerky as a badly handled marionette, lighting another lamp, making ineffective attempts at tidying the piles of books that rustled and teetered on every available surface. “I’m studying Hodrinka. But every reference I find turns up six more, and there are so many books that are impossible to get. Or they take months, and then when they arrive they’re not what you ordered. That was one thing about Scalentine. I wish I’d had longer to get to know the book dealers. They had some magnificent stock. Please, sit down.”

  “Hodrinka?” I said, seating myself in the only chair no longer acting as a library.

  “One of the founding thinkers of political philosophy in the civilised planes. But so little is known about him. Or her. It’s thought there were many more writings, but even those fragments we have, one could build a civilisation on them.” His eyes lit with fervour and I suddenly got what it was Enthemmerlee had first seen in him. He glanced at me, and the smile dropped away. “It was Lobik who told me about Hodrinka, you know.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “A good man? He was a great one,” Malleay said. “And... he was...” He turned away.

  “He was a friend, too, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Malleay, would you like a drink?”

  “A drink?”

  “Alcohol.”

  “Oh, I don’t... Oh, yes, why not?” He rubbed his face, as though he had only just realised how tired he was. He was shadow-eyed and too thin. The brightly coloured Ikinchli-style shirt he wore only emphasised his pallor.

  He slumped in a chair, and took the flask, though he didn’t drink. Instead, he turned it in his fingers, staring at nothing.

  “If you’re not going to drink that,” I said, “give it here.”

  “Sorry.” He took a slug, looked startled, and handed back the flask. “What is that?”

  “Golden.” Damn good golden, too. But I wasn’t going to drink it myself; I was still on duty.

  “Oh.”

  I sat back. “It’s so sad. You know, I’ve been
thinking about it, and considering everything you had to overcome, I’m truly astonished that you actually succeeded in doing what was necessary for Enthemmerlee’s transformation. It must have taken great courage, to do what you did. The political pressure, the rules you’ve always lived by, the consequences of failure... Really, you’re to be congratulated.”

  “Congratulated?” His voice rang like a lead coin.

  “Why, yes.”

  “I’ve always loved her, you know. Since we were children.”

  I nodded.

  “When we found out what she was, and she asked me to be one of her husbands – oh, you can’t imagine. To be trusted to stand with her at the heart of history, to be given the chance to change everything... but I... You see, it wasn’t...”

  I waited.

  “It was a great moment, you understand? And I was – I stopped even thinking.” He remembered he was holding the flask, and took a deep drink, which made him cough. “I didn’t... To be in that room, with them both... and knowing that what I did would change her, and that it would hurt her; and I was still able to do it.” His fingers tightened on the flask. “It wasn’t for all the reasons we’d talked about, for the country, for the people. I could do it because...”

  “Because you wanted her.”

  He looked at me then, and his eyes were hollow and haunted. “You... you guessed? I did, and I was able to do that. To hurt her. I was a beast.”

  “Did it hurt her?”

  “She said not. But she’s always kind. And she made a noise, and I... It must have hurt her. I mean, two of us...”

  “Do you think Lobik was cruel?”

  “Cruel?” He looked horrified. “Lobik? No, he’s... he was... the kindest, gentlest... and brilliant. Do you know he could recite the entire EbarnerenSaga? He knew more about political history... And he never even saw a book until he was ten years old.”

  “But you think he was cruel.”

  “No!”

  “But you both did exactly the same thing, and you think you’re cruel.”

  “I...” He stopped.

  “Are you disgusted by her?” I said. “Now she’s changed.”

  “What? No! She’s beautiful. Even more beautiful. Every time I look at her I... My heart... it shakes. As though something in my chest were trying to get out.”

  “So why do you flinch?”

  “I don’t... do I?”

  “You twitch away from her as though you found her loathsome.”

  He chewed his lip, and took another drink. I waited.

  “Every time she gets close to me,” he whispered, “I remember. I remember how I hurt her, and I don’t know how she can bear me.”

  “Do you think Lobik hurt her?”

  “He’d never hurt her. Not on purpose.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course not. But I did, didn’t I?”

  “Do you feel desire?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “But you’ve been told, all your life, it’s shameful. Do you think that’s right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t attend privaiya any more.”

  “No. And since I stopped... I stopped going because I don’t believe in the things we’re told, and because I think the smoke controls us, I don’t want to be in the control of something else. But since I stopped, I’m out of control anyway. I feel... I can’t even say it.”

  “Malleay, you’re not out of control. If you were out of control, you’d take what you wanted whether the other person desired you or not. To feel desire and not exercise it? That is control. Look, if your desire hurt someone, then it would be right not to exercise it.” I heard Cruel and Unusual protest in the back of my head, but shoved them away. This wasn’t the time to take Malleay on a tour of the wider ranges of passion. “But what if the thing that hurts is to believe that someone you care for finds you ugly, and disgusting?”

  “You mean Enthemmerlee? Is that what she thinks?”

  “You flinch from her. What’s she supposed to think?”

  “But I love her. I just can’t... What I did, it hurt her. Once she started to change, you could see it.”

  “But it was what you all wanted, what she wanted, for her to change. It was what was meant to happen.”

  “I didn’t know it would hurt her so much,” Malleay whispered.

  “It doesn’t hurt her now.”

  “But I did that to her.”

  “Yes. So did Lobik, and so did she. You all decided on this course of action. After what she’s been through, do you want her to think that she disgusts you now?”

  He shook his head.

  “Malleay. The act itself, did it hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not supposed to. And sometimes, yes, there is pain, especially the first time. But it’s also about pleasure, Malleay. It’s supposed to be about pleasure. My first time... Well. It wasn’t as good as it was later, but I wanted the other person so much that it was still very pleasing.”

  “But it wasn’t the same. You weren’t going to change, to have something terrible happen that might kill you. Besides, you’re...” He stopped.

  “One isn’t born a whore, you know. I was just a girl, back then.”

  “But it’s different for you. We’re not the same race.”

  “Malleay. Enthemmerlee is the Itnunnacklish. What does that mean?”

  He looked confused.

  “Do the Ikinchli women hate sex? Do they avoid it? Do they turn their men away with cries of disgust?”

  “No.” He blushed again. “I haven’t... But they seem to like it quite a lot, actually. So do the men.”

  “And Enthemmerlee is part Ikinchli. She always has been. So, in fact, are you. Isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that what her very existence proves?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you’re part Ikinchli, too. That this whole fear of passion that you’ve been taught, it’s a con. It’s a dirty trick. It’s just another way of trying to say the Gudain and the Ikinchli are different. And it’s a lie. It always was. And it’s destroying your people, Malleay. They’re dying.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Of course you do, you’re not stupid. But you’ve had generations of this evil, ugly nonsense and it’s hard to change the way you think overnight.”

  “I know. I do know. But this doesn’t help Enthemmerlee, does it?”

  “It could. Because she is grieving, and lonely. First of all, don’t let her turn you away. Stay with her. Just be with her. Hold her hand. Hug her. So people will mutter. Who cares? They mutter already. One more scandal can’t possibly make any difference.”

  “You think she wants me to?”

  “I think she needs you to, whether or not she knows she wants it. And you can prove to her that she is a force of life and joy, Malleay, but you need to get back into her bed. I bet it feels pretty bloody empty right now.”

  “How will that help?”

  “Warmth. Comfort. Another warm body. Just hold her, man; you can do that, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “And you could probably do with it too, am I right?”

  He closed his eyes, and nodded, tears spilling from under his lids. I moved over and sat on the arm of his chair, and, very lightly, stroked his hair.

  The sobs came all at once, shaking him. Half-formed words tumbled out. I put my arm around his shoulders, and he clutched at me, his head pressed against my ribs. His tears soaked through my shirt. I felt, suddenly, stupidly, like crying myself. He was so young, a boy trying so terribly hard to be a man. I murmured comforting, meaningless phrases and waited.

  When his sobs finally tailed off, he let go as though I’d suddenly got hot enough to burn him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He scrambled out a scrap of ink-stained cotton, and blew his nose.

  “Malleay. Would you like to know how to please Enthemmerlee? How to
make her happy?”

  “Of course I would!”

  “I mean, between the sheets. When the time is right, to take it beyond comfort, to something else. Because I can show you. If you would like.”

  A deep green blush flooded up his neck, as though he were sinking into water. “Do you think... But surely...”

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then just be aware, and you’ll know, when she’s ready to ask more than comfort from you. It might be sooner than you think.” Sex, done right and with the right person (and hells, even, occasionally, with the absolutely wrong person, so long as you know that) is a great healer. I wasn’t just here for Enthemmerlee, or for Malleay. I was here for me, too.

  I couldn’t bring Lobik back, I couldn’t unhappen what had happened. But maybe I could make Enthemmerlee’s future a little less bleak. And maybe I could, at least for a couple of hours, shut my damned mind up about everything that was wrong.

  “But you’re not... I mean... How would you know?”

  I wasn’t going to confess my little chat with Enthemmerlee. People can be funny about that sort of thing. “I’m not that different, Malleay. And neither are you.” Considering some of the beings with whom I’ve spent sheet-time, he was so close to human any differences were barely noticeable. “It’s your choice, of course.”

  “Why would you do this?” he said. His voice shook a little.

  “Because I like Enthemmerlee, and I want her to be happy. And because you’re cute, and I’ve never had a Gudain.” He looked up, startled, eyes wide. I wasn’t lying, either. He was cute.

  “Lock the door?” he said.

  ONCE OUT OF the dreadful clothes, his body was pleasing; his pale green skin luminous in the warm gloom, like a pearl found far under water. I slid under the sheets, not wanting to loom over the poor boy; the sight of the knife I kept strapped to my thigh had made him widen his eyes enough, even though I took it off. He was shivering, his cock curled against his own thigh as though it was trying to hide.

  He began to babble. “Do you... do you do this? Often? Teach... this?”

  “It’s been known. I was taught, myself, so...”

  “Really? How does one teach...”