Even the Wingless Page 10

  The following day all four of the alien females avoided the Slave Queen, which suited her. Their company had become tiresome, and she had other things to distract her.

  She had never begun a Touch without finishing it. She had no idea it would throb in her like scorched flesh. As a child, she'd been precocious and experimented with the Touch, using her grandsire's rare alien playthings as her templates. She hadn't known their names or species until the Emperor had come for her, but she now knew that she could become a gray Karaka'An with unusually long claws, or a dark-haired human with unsettling orange eyes. She had never told anyone about her experiments, though her dam had witnessed her Changing once and beat her for it.

  Truly, to be winged and female was to be reviled.

  There was no one she could safely ask about the consequences of her unfinished Touch. Her skin itched, but when she tried to scratch she couldn't find any place on her body that responded. Her restlessness drove her to pacing, and so intent was she on it that she missed the arrival of the Ambassador. It was his voice that made her turn, not to respond but to wonder who he was addressing with such an archaic title.

  "Lady?" He stood on the stairwell, dressed in the richness of that red that made him look like prey, like something already ripped open and bleeding. One of his white brows lifted when she didn't immediately reply. "You haven't lost your voice since yestereve, I trust?"

  "What are you doing here?" the Queen asked. "You need permission—"

  "—I have permission to come and go here as I please, and more besides if I were ever to dare," the Eldritch said. "Though I wonder if this is an insult. Where I come from, it would either indicate that the Emperor thinks well enough of me to share his women with me... or believes me to be emasculated."

  The Slave Queen stared at him, even her wings stilling. She was not accustomed to hearing such confidences directed at her ears.

  "You would not happen to know which it is?" he said, easing himself into a chair. "I would find any supplementation of my knowledge useful."

  "You are asking me these questions?" the Slave Queen asked. "Why?"

  "Why not?" he asked. "I might be remarkably well-informed for an alien in your midst, but I haven't lived in your Empire all my life. Surely you're more cognizant of your customs than I am, despite being sequestered in a tower most of your life."

  "I... I suppose," the Slave Queen said, startled. "But I cannot help you with your question. The Emperor has never allowed the Alliance Ambassador the use of his harem, so I cannot know what it means. And you have no horns, so it would be hard for us to judge if you'd been emasculated."

  "So the amount of horns on a person's head is significant," he mused. "I thought so."

  She dipped her head in reluctant assent. "A stronger male breaks them off his rivals to humiliate them."

  "Interesting," the Ambassador murmured. Perhaps he was thinking of how many courtiers had only two, like a female. "Still," he said more clearly, "I am not here solely because your chamber is far more palatable than my own. Have you had a chance to consider my plea?"

  The Slave Queen flicked a hand. "I had an idea, but it cannot be done."

  "Hold a moment," he said. "That motion with your hand... what does that mean?"

  "I... I'm not sure what I'd call it," the Slave Queen said, moved to look at her hands. "It is an expression of... either-wayness. Of not-quite-caring? Not quite disinterest."

  "Ah, yes. We use our shoulders for a similar gesture, I think. Thank you. And now, you had an idea?" He sat forward in his chair.

  "There will be a public test," the Slave Queen said. "You understand the notion of tests?"

  "I know what a test is to me," he said, watching her with those night-dark eyes. They were not quite as large as the Eldritch female's, but she found uneasily that she could read them just as well.

  "The tests," she said. "The Emperor plays with all his court, to test their mettle. He has a habit of toying with the dignitaries from the Alliance because they shatter so quickly, and he wants to sweep the pieces away and send them back. He is trying to do this with you."

  "And if I don't shatter into pieces?" the Ambassador asked.

  "Oh but you will!" the Queen exclaimed.

  "I assure you, lady, I am harder than my soft exterior may lead you to believe," he said with wry amusement. "Still, humor me a moment. If I do not break?"

  "I don't know," the Queen said, trying to fathom the possibility. "Perhaps he would then test you as he would a courtier. He will conduct business with no one whose mettle he hasn't tried to his satisfaction."

  "I see," the Ambassador murmured. "I had assumptions about your world, lady. Now I see they are all correct." He lifted his face, and she shivered suddenly at the hardness of his gaze. "Tell me what your idea was. Something to do with the Emperor testing me in public."

  "Yes. By using the girl of your species in your presence, and seeing if you fall apart."

  "In public," the Ambassador said. His face remained hard. "In front of the court, then."

  "Yes," the Slave Queen said, and continued warily. "I thought, if I could take the pattern of the girl, your staff could secret them away while I pretend to be her at this public test."

  "You can Change?" the Ambassador asked, eyes widening. "I thought only males could shift their shapes."

  "It is the wings," the Slave Queen said. "Winged Chatcaava can Touch and Change, no matter their sex. I can do this thing... but I tried to gain the pattern, and the girl will not allow me to touch her long enough to succeed."

  "I imagine not," the Eldritch said with something in his voice she couldn't name. Sorrow, perhaps. Fatigue. He continued, "Could you take the pattern from me?"

  "From you?" the Slave Queen blinked her great eyes, then nodded slowly. "Yes. It does not matter which Eldritch body I take it from. I will still look much the same."

  "Then that part we can do," the Ambassador said. "Which leaves me only with the logistics of stealing away the slaves while I'm at court."

  "Your staff—"

  "I brought no staff, lady."

  She stared now at him. "No staff? But every other person who has filled your role has brought servants."

  "And every other person has failed," the Ambassador said. "They allowed the people they brought to lull them into a false sense of security, to give them a safe place to withdraw to so they would not have to live here fully. I would forgo that luxury, and have, so that I can become a full member of this court, able to stay more than a few weeks." He grinned.

  "You are mad," the Slave Queen breathed. "Who will prepare and taste your meals?"

  "For now no one... unless Second actually makes good on his promise to have me fed regularly."

  "You will die of poisoning!"

  "Hopefully not until after I run out of the food I brought," the Eldritch said, and chuckled. Now indeed he sounded fatigued. "I can only take things one moment at a time, my lady. I think I see a way to acquire some temporary help—there are items I could request for this assignment that I failed to bring, and I believe I can expedite the importation of those items. So granting that I can arrange the smuggling, that leaves only you and the Change. Will you do it, lady?"

  She nodded quickly before she could change her mind, for she saw something in his eyes that frightened her.

  "Let me stand, then," he said, and did so. "This is important. It wants ritual."

  She approached him tentatively, feeling again his height. The Chatcaava were not so tall; the Emperor was considered freakish for his height and even so he was a good head shorter than this alien.

  "You are not great lovers of names, I have gathered," the Eldritch said once she stood in front of him.

  "No, Ambassador."

  "Our people are, though. And so, for form's sake, I say to you: I, Lisinthir Nase Galare, offer you now my very self. Take it, my lady, with my permission." He pressed his hands together, then spread them and offered them to her, white palms, white fingers, blue veins. O
ne of his fingers was encircled by a band of metal, a ring like a female's but far thicker.

  Unsettled by the sense of ceremony, the Slave Queen hesitated. Then she ducked her head and took his fingers in hers.

  The heat gathered. This time it crested and rolled over her, sharp as an orgasm.

  The Touch—

  pulse of feelings, hot body, shivering—

  shape more fragile than glass—

  thin limbs, sharp mind—

  everything a threat—

  life neverending

  The Slave Queen dropped his hand, giddy. The pattern coursed through her and she turned, stumbling. She felt a broad arm wrap around her waist before she could fall, and then she was being propped up against the wall of one of the bowls in the floor, surrounded in blankets. As she swayed, blinded by the depth of the merging, she heard the Ambassador's voice and Laniis's.

  She let her head rest against her knees. Breathing heavily, she waited for the pattern to settle, to meet her own and change to suit.

  The sickness passed then.

  "Mistress?" Laniis was kneeling at her side. "Are you well? Lord Nase Galare told me what you've done." Then, more quietly, with a fierce desperation, "Did it work?"

  In reply, the Slave Queen pulled her wings tightly to her back and willed herself to the Change.

  Ah, the Change. So quintessentially male. But she was winged, and could trade shapes, and she did. It overcame her in fits, as it always did with new patterns. From the inside to the out, she Changed. She took on an Eldritch's metabolism, and an Eldritch's organs. Harder, the skeleton; it always pained her to lose the extra limbs, mass consumed and routed elsewhere to match the new shape. Last the fascia, and the skin.

  She lifted her new face to two watching and accepted their stares.

  "It is not an exact match," Laniis said hoarsely. She had never seen the Change; it was not something lightly done by males and rarely needed in the relative safety of the court.

  "It never is," the Queen said in a lighter, thinner voice. It had been so long since she'd Changed that she'd forgotten that most of the Alliance's aliens had binocular vision from every angle. Disoriented, she remained curled into a ball for several heart-beats until she thought she could move without falling. Once she stood, she found that she was a little taller than usual: the mass of her wings, perhaps, adding to her stature. She experimented with her new limbs, which were much like the old ones, even in weight. "Mirror," she said.

  Laniis scrambled for one and brought it back. The Slave Queen looked in it and saw a face close enough to the Eldritch female's to be mistaken for a sister. She'd wondered about that—she'd told the Ambassador the truth, close enough, but the individual from whom a Chatcaavan took the pattern usually influenced how it set. Perhaps in the intitial Touch she'd gotten enough of the female's pattern to approximate her appearance.

  Her amber-orange eyes remained, just as they had in her human shape. The Slave Queen felt her flat jaw and short nose, touched sensitive lips with her fingers, wondered at their softness. She looked up, met the Ambassador's eyes.

  He drifted closer, his gaze shuttered to her understanding. For a long time, he said nothing. Then, quietly, "Lady, you're naked."

  She had been wearing only a few strands of jewelry and her collar; her Chatcaavan body required little else. As an Eldritch, however, her entire body was so sensitive she could feel air currents across her back. But it was more than the sudden cold that made her shudder. She had never spent much time with the species she'd experimented with—never known them to be people. But having the Eldritch so close while wearing a similar body reshaped her primal self as well as her body. He had a very aesthetic shape, and in the center of her body, deep in the basin of her now-broader hips, something noticed. Her cheeks flushed, warm and alien. As Laniis scurried back to them with a wrap and she folded her new body into it, the Slave Queen shook away the feelings and said in a small voice, "Will it work?"

  After a moment, he nodded. "I believe it will."

  "You seem distressed," the Slave Queen prompted when he did not continue.

  A fragile-looking smile curved his lips. "You are the very image of one of my Queen's relatives, my lady. Fitting, since you are helping me to smuggle the heir to the throne out of the Empire."

  "Pardon?" the Slave Queen asked, wobbling. Laniis had sucked in such a breath that the Queen could hear it from several paces away.

  "We have a queen, something you probably don't know... a woman who rules us as your Emperor rules you," the Ambassador said. "The woman in your bathing chamber is her niece, and our next queen. I find it strange to look on your face and see hers... though perhaps not as strange as I found seeing her here in the first place."

  "Do they know?" the Slave Queen asked, horrified.

  "That they have the heir of my kingdom? Or that we are ruled by women?" The Ambassador laughed. "I don't know on either count. But I do not intend to inform them if they don't already know."

  The Queen drew in a sharp breath and nodded. Her head felt strange, too short, and she turned it slowly to keep from developing vertigo. "Laniis, please go downstairs and listen for anyone coming."

  Laniis nodded and vanished as bid.

  "At very least we shall do what we can to make sure they don't learn it from our voices, speaking so openly here," the Slave Queen said.

  "I appreciate your help," he said. "But I am more worried about you."

  "What of me?" the Queen asked.

  "I do not like to think of what will be done to you when the plot is discovered," the Ambassador said.

  "Me? What happens to me is nothing. What of you? Your part in this will surely be exposed. The danger to you is great," the Chatcaavan said, folding her thin arms over a chest far larger than she was used to. Having breasts was uncomfortable.

  "I will be fine."

  "You can't be sure of that," she said. "If you're caught trying to leave—"

  "I won't."

  "You will be taking the same transport as the people you intend to smuggle away?"

  The Ambassador clasped his hands behind his back. "I won't be leaving, lady."

  "What!"

  He smiled. "Weakness? Admission of guilt? I have an imperfect understanding of your culture, but this much I suspect: if I try to escape the consequences of my actions, I will be seen as a true alien, a wingless freak. Am I right?"

  She looked down, trying not to shiver. "Yes," she whispered.

  He nodded. "Had any of the ambassadors that came before me had any kind of backbone at all, they would have made an attempt to extricate our people from the court. The Emperor isn't expecting me to try and rescue the Alliance citizens he's captured, but I believe if I do he might think of me as a more competent rival. I'll stay and make no excuses for my actions. He will understand."

  "Understand!" the Slave Queen exclaimed. "Oh, he will understand... he will understand that you are defying him, stealing his property and expecting him to forgive you the offense! He will have you beaten... he might even imprison you, or commit you to this tower to take the place of the playthings you stole from him!"

  "Perhaps," the Ambassador said.

  The Queen shook her head, grew dizzy, listed. He caught her by the arm.

  Concern! Confidence! Something else—regret, sadness, serenity, all of these things, all at once. The tension and shock and fear in her own mind blew apart as the alien feelings burst into their place. She grabbed her head. "Oh!"

  The Eldritch's eyes widened. "Do you have all our abilities?"

  "Stop—stop feeling at me!"

  He let go of her instantly, his face taking on an ashen cast. "Forgive me, I didn't know or I wouldn't have—I had no idea the shape was so complete."

  "They always are," she said weakly as her own emotions began to cohere again. She sat and trembled. "Is that how it is whenever you touch?"

  "Touch skin on skin, yes. It can be muffled by clothing and the strength of it is dependent on the ability of bot
h minds involved. Their skill at the communion." He crouched in front of her. "It can be pleasant, but rarely by accident."

  "I can't imagine such a thing being pleasant," the Queen said with a shudder. "I see why you rarely touch. My entire skin feels bruised."

  His somber gaze unnerved her, but she couldn't look away. "You realize," he said, "that you will have to accept the Emperor's attentions for some amount of time in this shape."

  She paused, then nodded. Moving this head got easier with repetition.

  "Are you still willing?"

  The Queen looked away, hugging herself. "I could not see it done to her, knowing what it feels like to someone so fragile," she whispered, though no one in the room remained who could understand them.

  "Brave lady," the Ambassador said. "There is no payment sufficient to your courage."

  "Words," she said.

  "Words are more than you know," the Ambassador replied.

  Thinking suddenly of the wall between herself and the newest prisoners, one only Laniis could breach, the Slave Queen said nothing.

  /So you need a shipment./

  /Of something believable/, Lisinthir typed back. He was lying on his stomach on the broad bed, spurning the less secure study with its wide windows and balcony. /Carried by competent people who look like harmless cargo-men./

  /Not a small request. Is there anything you do need?/

  /Food/, Lisinthir wrote. /I'm not sure how much I trust the chefs here./

  /They would poison you for no reason?/

  /I have already given them reason/, Lisinthir wrote, thinking of his brazen responses to the Emperor. /And soon I will give them more./

  There was a pause long enough for Lisinthir to let his eyes drift again to the door leading into the hall, freshly locked after his visit to the harem. So many questions... was he already emasculated in the eyes of the Emperor? Or was this another one of the tests the Slave Queen had mentioned?

  If it was a test, what was the right answer?

  /We are compelled to ask again, far-cousin. Are you certain about staying?/

  /I am not here for a single task, a single mission/, Lisinthir wrote. /I am here to make it so that there need never be another operation like this again. If I leave, you will have to train yet another ambassador. And you will not find another Eldritch to do this work for you. Where then your esper?/