Even the Wingless Read online

  "Just one trunk, sir?" The dock liaison paused, blushed and amended, "—err, lord. Is it just the one trunk, my lord?"

  He was human, of course. Since they'd returned to the galaxy, the Pelted had treated humanity with sheathed claws and milk teeth, as combination parent, companion and god. That reverence insured that most humans remained blissfully ignorant of the multiple cultures of the Alliance... everyone arranged themselves to suit humanity, rather than the reverse. Still, Lisinthir had expected more of the ambassadorial office's dock liaison, but since the number of Eldritch who'd stepped off-world could be counted on one of his hands, he supposed being properly addressed was asking too much.

  "One trunk, yes," Lisinthir said. "It's heavy enough, you'll find."

  The man tagged the trunk and nodded. "It'll be on board the Chatcaavan shuttle as soon as it docks."

  "And that will be...?"

  "About half an hour," the liaison said as the uniformed attendant behind him pulled the trunk onto an antigrav dolly. "If you'll follow me? The admiral would like to see you."

  "Of course," Lisinthir said, hiding his surprise. Before leaving the Alliance Core he'd been briefed for so many hours even he'd grown impatient—and impatience wasn't a vice rewarded in his kind, living as long as they did—so he wondered what the admiral could possibly add. He fell into measured step behind the guide, taking care not to outpace the shorter man, and observed the spaciousness of the halls as they headed into the heart of the space station. If he recalled correctly, Earth administered these border stations, but the architecture was pure Alliance: understated and terrifying. In space, elegance was a statement of power.

  The admiral's office was no less profligate. A smartly groomed Tam-illee foxine in a lieutenant commander's braid guarded the interior door in an antechamber appointed with plants, pictures, and a single window that simulated the starscape outside the station. The window was false. The pictures, on the other hand, still smelled of linseed oil and turpentine.

  "Ambassador Nase Galare," the lieutenant commander said. He didn't even stare, though Lisinthir's velvets, long cloak and mane of hair were as far from Fleet's austerity as one could get while retaining any dignity. "Admiral Levy is waiting for you. Please, enter."

  Lisinthir nodded to him and passed through the portal, into a gloriously expensive study: wooden chairs and table that gave off the perfume of furniture oil and more of the paintings: star charts this time, but rendered in calligraphy and gold and silver leaf, stunning juxtapositions of the technological future and the hand-crafted past.

  The human who rose to greet him had as fine taste in meals as he had in decor, if his girth was any indication. His features were not attractive, but he was so scrupulously clean, groomed and coiffed that it didn't matter how those features were arranged: he transformed them with his attention to detail and the power of his presence. His eyes were an uncompromising blue, daylight-pale rather than Lisinthir's vespertine-dark.

  Before Lisinthir could speak, the man leaned across the desk, seized Lisinthir's hand and shook it hard, punching into the Eldritch's mind: friendly interest. Intense curiosity. A veneer of hard concern, edged with spikes of wariness. Shocked and caught off-guard, Lisinthir nevertheless smiled and said, "Well-met, Admiral. May I ask why you wanted to see me?"

  The man maintained the grip several seconds longer, then nodded and stepped back. "Excellent. You pass muster."

  "Ah," Lisinthir said. "So that was a test."

  "You think so?" the man asked.

  "And you posed it to me because you believe you have more experience with the Chatcaava and you want to make sure that all the stories about Eldritch being fainting maidens weren't true."

  Now he laughed. "Excellent! Excellent! Sit!"

  Lisinthir dropped into a chair and canted a brow. "I take it I was correct."

  "Every word," he said. "I'm Alon Levy. I've been at this post for twelve years."

  "Ah," Lisinthir said. "So you have watched the parade."

  Levy snorted. "That's one word for it. Coffee?"

  "Surely," Lisinthir said.

  Levy walked to the sideboard. The trickle that flowed from the silver pitcher sounded like music; the aroma, deep, nutty and grounding, was ambrosial. He noticed it all, the sounds, the smells, the sights, almost as if he expected he'd never experience them again.

  He wouldn't be gone that long. Not by Eldritch standards, anyway.

  "Twelve ambassadors I've seen walk onto that shuttle since they decided to set up a permanent presence over there," Levy said over the music of the coffee service. "Twelve came back. One in a casket. Four straight into the care of shrinks. Every time they come back, I send a note to Fleet Central about what my observations of the Chatcaava suggest they'd respect."

  "And still they send unsuitable candidates," Lisinthir said, accepting the coffee and with it the flutter of emotion the human passed him through their brief contact.

  Levy paused. "I thought you espers didn't touch people?"

  "We shouldn't," Lisinthir said. "It's uncomfortable."

  "What's it like?" Levy said.

  Lisinthir began to wonder if bald questions were the man's style. "Touch that swift is merely distracting, Admiral. Though I'm flattered by your cautious confidence in me."

  Levy laughed. "That's a handy power. But according to all the information we've ever gotten on you people, you pass out when you touch people."

  "In addition to being dandies?" Lisinthir asked. He smiled over the rim of his cup. "True of most of my people, I'm afraid. I am cut of different cloth." He sipped. "You were saying?"

  "Ah, yes." The admiral sat again behind the desk. "I keep trying to tell FC that the Empire doesn't recognize the same... courtesies? Rules? That we do. That they need someone tough and adaptable, and above all, someone unflappable."

  "They've been listening," Lisinthir said. "The fault lies elsewhere."

  Levy's brows lifted. "Ah! Ah! I see." He sucked from his cup, considering. "Figured. I should have figured. The Pelted are too cultured. They think all problems can be solved by talking. Some problems need a gun."

  "It's good to begin with talk," Lisinthir said.

  "You won't leave it at that, will you?" Levy said. "Because if you do, you're going to be the next person they send packing in a couple of months... if you're lucky. If you're not, you'll come back in a box."

  "An accident," Lisinthir murmured. "Surely there will be no more caskets."

  "Don't kid yourself, Ambassador," Levy said. "They killed him because he bored them and to test whether we'd have the nerve to call them to task for it. We didn't. No one's safe, except if he has teeth he's not afraid to use."

  "They have a natural advantage in that," Lisinthir said.

  "Yes," Levy said. "Look, Ambassador, you have an edge. They know about Eldritch. They know what they think they know about them. But you shook my hand and looked me straight in the eye and you could have been human for all you reacted. Don't hesitate to use that against them. It's not just about our safety. It's about yours."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Lisinthir said.

  "Tell it to your entourage as well," Levy said. "They'll trip you up just as easily."

  "Not likely," Lisinthir said. "Since I brought no entourage."

  Levy set his cup down. Then he grinned. "Bet they didn't like that up in Heliocentrus."

  "They hated it," Lisinthir said, returning the grin. "Absolutely hated it."

  The man nodded. "If you can keep from getting too homesick for a friendly face... "

  "I've spent years alone at a time," Lisinthir said. "A passel of dragons won't intimidate me." He finished the coffee and set the cup and saucer on the desk.

  "Hopefully not," Levy said and stood. "You'll
be reporting up the normal chain, of course. If all goes well, you won't see me again until you rotate home."

  "Then I'll see you in two years," Lisinthir said, and held out his hand.

  Levy glanced at it and chuckled. "I wouldn't do that to you for no good reason, Ambassador."

  "A friendly send-off isn't good reason?" Lisinthir asked.

  Levy hesitated, then gripped his hand with a rough and friendly palm. The man felt better about him than he ever had about the ambassadors he'd escorted out of Alliance space before... and well he should. Lisinthir planned to be the most successful Ambassador ad'Chatcaavan Empire the Alliance had ever sent.

  That would also make him the first successful Ambassador ad'Chatcaavan Empire the Alliance had ever sent.

  "Just remember the mission, Ambassador," Levy said, and through his skin a wave of anger crested.

  "It's in the forefront of my mind," Lisinthir said.

  Perched on the window ledge, the Slave Queen rested her head against cold stone and watched the sky with unblinking orange eyes. Staring out of the tower was like whipping the inside of her soul, but she couldn't stop herself when the sunset drew her to the melancholy glories of the throneworld's ceiling. Each day was so much like the next that only the shifting clouds convinced her that they passed, and her grave gaze gathered and recorded each vista.

  Today there were purple rips in the sky. Great puffs of smoldering orange clouds obscured the more slender cirrus strands, and then a single contrail scored the darkening vault, descending. She straightened, the long claws on her fingers digging into the grout. A vessel on its way to the palace, leaving behind the stars. It struck her as ridiculous, the wrong direction, the wrong approach. Who would go down, if he could go up?

  The Slave Queen turned her narrow face from the view, one hand clenched into a fist. Out of habit, she kept her mutilated wings out of view, swinging them behind her as she stood. Stepping down from the ledge beside the window, the Queen walked deeper into her soft prison. Vast pillows in gold and lavender edged with orange decorated the tower room, the topmost of the harem and her own, private space—such as any Slave Queen could have private space, of course. The other females left her alone here, but the males came and went as the Emperor allowed: lately only Second had been her guest, or on occasion vile Third.

  She shivered at the thought of the latter, stopping at the ledge of one of the deep wells in the stone floor; such approximations of nests were presumed to comfort the flighty females of the Chatcaavan race, but the Queen had only ever found them repellant. She sought the high places, the windows where the risk of falling and the pleasures of the sky balanced one another. This room's emphasis on those windows had been the original reason so few of the other harem-members visited... now they had better cause. She had not been responsible for the new Emperor's ascension, but the females blamed her for his violence, his virility and his attention anyway.

  The Queen brushed back her dark mane and found it tangled, a distraction from her anxiety at the sight of the contrail. "Khaska!"

  "Mistress!" The voice came from downstairs, and a few seconds later a wisp of a Seersa fox female appeared. She was short even by Chatcaavan standards, the black tips of her ears barely reaching the Slave Queen's neck, and her body was a soft creamy white tipped with silver, with black legs and hands and tail-tip. Confectionery, really: it was no wonder she'd been stolen from some Alliance merchant crew. Her orange eyes were several shades darker than the Slave Queen's, and matched the translucent scarf wrapped around her waist. It was her only clothing; the thick fur at her breast and hips barely obviated the need. The silver collar at her throat definitely obviated the need. Slaves did not wear clothing.

  The Seersa came to her, kneeled at her feet and kissed them. Her nose-pad was cool and damp against the Slave Queen's softly-scaled instep. "Did you need something, Mistress?"

  The Slave Queen sighed. The Seersa's rigid formality struck her as tiresome, but a year hadn't been long enough to cure the girl of it. "Rise, Khaska. We are not among males here."

  "Yes, Mistress." The Seersa climbed to her feet, head bowed.

  The Queen observed her obedience with little joy and seated herself on a pillow inside one of the bowls in the floor. "Brush my hair, Khaska... please."

  The Seersa padded to the small bureau by the stairs and removed from it a silver brush, mirror, and comb. She returned and sat behind the Slave Queen on the ledge of the bowl, knees on either side of the Chatcaavan's ribs. The Queen arched her wings apart and bowed her head as far as the elaborately wrought collar would allow, let out a soft sigh as the brush pulled at her dark mane. "The sky... I think there was a shuttle."

  "There have been several lately," the Seersa said. When the Slave Queen twisted her sinuous neck to give her an askance look, the female concluded hastily, "You were... busy, Mistress. I did not wish to disturb you."

  Busy pleasing Second, which involved little more than bathing him and oiling him... and Third, which involved far more difficulty. He had perverse desires. The Queen cast her head down. "I see. I wonder why?"

  "There is discussion in the harem," the female said hesitantly. Her strokes slowed as she reached the heavy collar, and her silky fingers lit on the Slave Queen's neck as she gathered the mane and carefully drew it away from the metal's edge. "About Grandeine."

  Trust the alien to be so easy with names, particularly of her own kind. She'd been so distressed to be called 'Slave,' as all the Emperor's slaves were important enough to be titled, that the Slave Queen had given in and named her, as one would a commoner, a pet or a non-entity. "The Ambassador? I thought he left."

  "Yes, Mistress," Khaska said. "But the Alliance must replace him, of course."

  The Queen glanced at her, which caused the Seersa to shrug uncomfortably. "It is advisable," Khaska said. "One does not leave the Empire unattended."

  Of course not... something the Alliance Ambassador had been unable to understand. He had arrived with his staff anticipating... something, the Slave Queen knew not what. Certainly not the Empire, with its brutality, its quicksilver nature, its impatience with those who did not understand a shapechanger's court. He had turned down all the Emperor's invitations—to the harem, to the vicious entertainments, to planned cruelties and tests—and swiftly discovered, as had all those who'd filled his role before him, that leaving the Chatcaava unattended was a splendid way to become a non-entity. Indeed, the Queen's understanding of the various races and species that comprised the Alliance's membership had been fostered by the revolving chain of ambassadors the Alliance had sent and recalled after they proved ineffective. So far she'd seen three so-tall humans with their properly smooth skin; a fox-eared Tam-illee who had vomited at the first challenge he'd witnessed at supper; four separate Seersa, like Khaska, who had been expert speakers of the language and otherwise completely unable to understand how to fit themselves into the court's vicious politics; a Phoenix, an Asanii and two Aera. At thirty-seven revolutions the Queen was barely into her adulthood, but she'd spent twenty-five of those revolutions at the Imperial palace and she'd seen more ambassadors in that time than she'd had any reason to expect.

  The Court had been absent a person in the Alliance Ambassador's role for several months, if the Queen recalled correctly from idle discussions Second and the Emperor had had in her presence. As Khaska started working a smoothing lotion into her mane, the Queen said, "Do you suppose it was a shuttle, then? Bringing someone new?"

  "It's too small, I think," Khaska said. "But there is much furor among the harem. Something is in progress."

  The Queen dipped her narrow head. "Perhaps I should go find out what they think."

  Khaska stepped away from her. Her eyes were so small and the whites in them so large the Queen never could quite tell what the alien was thinking or feeling. Nor did it help that the thin lines of fur that darkened the edge of the female's brow ridges exaggerated that part of her face. Was she unhappy? The Queen could never tell. So she asked anyw
ay, since she had no way of giving the female even the small courtesy of not requesting her presence when unwilling.

  "Come with me?"

  Khaska nodded, head bowed, much as the Queen expected; the female treated her questions, no matter how gently phrased, as commands. The Seersa offered the mirror, but the Queen waved it away. She did not need to see herself. She could look her finest or droop at her worst, and the females of the harem would still hate her. The Queen pulled a long translucent shawl from one of the cushions and wrapped its soft lace around her shoulders. "Perhaps the Mother will be awake."

  "Perhaps," Khaska said, but her ears lifted. The Mother was the only member of the harem currently expecting, and when she'd earned the title she had been molded by it into someone kinder. The Mother usually had a gentle word for Khaska.

  Pleased at the change she'd managed to affect in the female, the Slave Queen started down the cold stone stairs. A few moments later, the soft scrape and pad assured her that Khaska was following. The narrow stairwell leading to the topmost tower was unusual; once the two reached the first landing and the rooms blocked off there, the stairwell broadened enough that guards could stand on the landings and easily see up and down them. The two guards posted at the first landing glanced at them both with incurious but assessing looks. The Queen could remember a time when the Chatcaava assigned to this duty were far more lax, little interested in their duties unless they provided an opportunity for a little unauthorized play with the females. That was before the current Emperor realized what incompetent scum the last Emperor had put in charge of guarding his harem. Now no guard would dare think to drag away one of the females for his personal use. The Emperor would rip off his horns... or his wings.

  The harem proper was situated mid-tower, high enough off the ground to remind visitors that the Emperor's females were no simple chattel, but low enough to bar its members from the heights that properly belonged only to males. The Slave Queen had never commonly lived on this level; since the day she'd been stolen from her mother's nest, she'd been the Slave Queen, a female of a more rarified, more debased sort. It had been the Emperor's potent choice, taking his predecessor's son's-daughter as his Slave Queen and then single-mindedly extirpating every other member of the former imperial blood; both acts had earned the respect of almost every Chatcaavan courtier the Queen had observed and many more if rumors held true. A strong Emperor was a respected Emperor. A cruel Emperor was an appreciated Emperor.