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  The world around their vessel skewed in Jahir’s perception, cramping with hunger so acutely he thought for a moment that it was his stomach, and that the roquelaure, or his mind-magery, or both, were finally collecting their overdue payment. He would certainly have preferred that to what he sensed when his mind cleared.

  /No,/ Vasiht’h hissed. /After all this—/

  “What is it?” the captain was saying, leaning over the chair of the third crew member. “Someone notice our distress call?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, her skin gone ashen. “Chatcaava.”

  The captain glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you could magically dispose of this vessel too, alet?”

  Jahir reached for the ship and almost fell against Vasiht’h. How had he become so depleted? But there was no choice. If he didn’t fight…

  One mind. Two. Dozens. More than that. They flooded his awareness like a toxic spill, and unlike the pirates they weren’t disturbed by rage: they liked it. They were dragons: rage was fuel, was an invitation to run down a predator and challenge it to a contest of strength. Nor was exhaustion and fear any better bait, for they mistrusted fear and exhaustion drew them like the bleat of wounded prey.

  /What do we do??/ Vasiht’h asked, panicked.

  /I don’t know,/ Jahir whispered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Queen Ransomed had been expecting to be brutalized by the Lord of the Twelveworld after the avarice that male had displayed on accepting her as a “gift” from his new Emperor. She’d had no feeling about the possibility; she’d suffered so much casual violence in her life that yet another round of it scarcely mattered, especially when set against the horror that had been perpetrated on her wings… and the worse pain of having failed in her aims so quickly. She hadn’t expected Second and the Usurper to identify her as a spy so quickly, and then move to neutralize her rather than patronize and punish her, as females were typically punished.

  And yet, to despair… no. That would leave her prey to inaction. The one thing she knew the Ambassador wouldn’t do when thrown in another kind of captivity would be to assume there was no profit to be gained from it. She might not know when she’d be able to make good on that profit, but she would remain vigilant. Perhaps the Lord of the Twelveworld would let something slip while raping her, or she would have a chance to overpower him somehow?

  But he didn’t send for her. Did not even give her as a gift to someone else, or remand her to his males to be disciplined or trained. It was not that he dismissed her potential to betray him, because he’d thrown her into an empty room and chained her there and then posted guards at the doors. But that was the extent of his interaction with her, and the Queen was surprised to discover that she was… offended.

  Offended.

  The thought was laughable, and yet it persisted. She’d hoped he would make a mistake she could take advantage of; barring that, she expected him to at least find her fascinating enough to personally abuse. And while being ignored wasn’t new to the Queen, she found she no longer accepted it as her due, as a non-entity.

  Her options, though, were depressingly limited. She was in the palace still, so she knew no one would hear her yelling through the thick stone walls. Her bonds kept her from reaching any of the walls or the one door. There were no windows, certainly. No computer access. No one she could suborn through speech. They waited until she was sleeping to set out food, water, and switch out the humiliating pail they’d left for waste, and they always put those right within reach… not far enough for her to do more than scrabble for them.

  It was gratifying to be treated as a prisoner and not a harem prize, she supposed. But it left her too much time to brood on her powerlessness, and how much her naked wing arms distressed her.

  Without windows it was difficult to tell how much time was passing. But eventually, something did change: she was unchained from the wall and marched to a bathing chamber.

  “You-my-lesser will wash,” one of the guards said. “And dress yourself properly. There are two of us-your-betters outside the door. You-my-lesser will win nothing by attempting escape.”

  “This one understands,” she murmured, head bowed and shoulders rounded in what she hoped was an attitude of utter dejection. Maybe it worked, because she wasn’t cuffed for daring to answer him. She worked on projecting that mask of obedient depression by shuffling after the guards, looking neither right nor left, and pretending not to notice when they’d arrived at the bathing chamber, as if she’d been so busy staring at her feet that she hadn’t seen where they were going. She let them shove her into the room, and only after they took their posts at the door did she wonder how they expected her to wash effectively with manacles and chains depending from all her limbs.

  Except she wasn’t alone. There was another Chatcaavan waiting for her in the bathing chamber. A golden creature, slim and lovely, who would have made a beautiful harem prize, and for a moment she dragged in a shocked breath because she had not seen another winged female in so long… except that looking down, she saw that this was no female, but a castrated male.

  She had heard stories that the males who kept the palace clean and its courtiers fed were not Outside, but she had never been able to picture how that would work. Now, she knew.

  “Let me,” the male said softly, reaching for her hands.

  She had rarely heard a lovelier voice. Out of another Chatcaavan, never. She stared at him, wide-eyed, as he undid the manacles and drew them from her.

  “You will be reprimanded,” she finally found the wherewithal to say.

  “No,” he said, his voice very soft. “I was asked to bathe you completely. You are to be a gift, Mistress.”

  She exhaled. “It was only a matter of time.”

  “No,” the male whispered, eyes meeting hers. “Not to one of the Chatcaava, Mistress. The Lord of the Twelveworld intends to give you to the pirates. As part of the payment for their part in the war.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “We listen,” he murmured, and pulled her into the pool, pouring water over her head. “No one cares that we do. What are we to do with the knowledge? We are powerless. Like females.” He met her eyes as he brought another cascade of water, wetting her mane. His were a luminous turquoise, almost too dark for beauty… but she had fallen in love with a male whose eyes were darker still. “But there was one female decided not to accept the impotence of females. It was she who showed the rest of us that knowledge is power.”

  The Queen glanced wildly toward the door.

  “They won’t hear us,” the male murmured. “Because whatever we say can’t possibly be important enough.”

  “How can you be sure?” she whispered. “I was caught!”

  “You were caught by Second, who is cunning. If you had been given to the Usurper, perhaps he would have posted guards who cared what you were saying to a castrate. Second’s guards would never have left the room. But the Lord of the Twelveworld is busy with plans of domination and plunder, and he has the entire pirate nation to employ if he can bring them to heel.” The male began working polishing sand into her shoulders and arms, smoothing the foam over the places where her hide became skin. “His guards see only an unnatural female, worthless and ugly, and they dismiss her.” He glanced at her. “Just as they do the males who clean their bedclothes of seed and wine, and provide the meals they are too lazy to kill themselves.”

  “Oh,” the Queen whispered, staring at him. “Can you… could you free me?”

  His head drooped. “That is not in our power, Mistress. There are not so many of us, and we are not fighters. And though we know many secret ways in and out of the palace, Second and the Usurper are in command now, and they know now how you secreted the females and children out.”

  “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, horrified. “I didn’t know… I didn’t think—”

  He set his fingers on her chest, startling her into silence. “If you’d known about us, I think you would have tried to sav
e us too. We all know it. But we keep ourselves from view as much as possible. It is the safest way for us. We are not Outside, to be sheltered from violence… and we cannot fight as well as the males who can grow horns. Even casual gossip about us we consider dangerous.” He smiled a little, sad. “We knew that lesson long before Second learned it the hard way.”

  The Queen was silent as he continued bathing her. His hands were gentle. He was gentle, in a way she didn’t associate with any Chatcaavan male. Even the kinder males she’d met, like the Knife and Uuvek, had given off an air of competence that implied their familiarity with violence, and the Emperor, who’d learned gentleness at the Ambassador’s hands, had been so affecting because he was tender despite that latent aggression. To be ministered to by a male who gave off none of those signals was… perplexing. He must have been castrated before puberty, to lack the ridging along the brows, the extra horns, and the muscle and hide development of uncut males. What had it been like? Had he come out of the harem nursery? Who decided which males would serve their lives as cooks and janitors?

  She thought of what the Emperor had said about the worlds beyond the throneworld and doubted, somehow, that this was a habit common to most of the Empire. It sounded like exactly the sort of custom that would flourish in the cruelty of the court.

  “This,” the male said, touching her wing arm. “Oh, Mistress.”

  She dipped her head.

  “I do not mean to bring you pain—”

  “It hurts whether it is noticed or not,” the Queen said, soft. “I would rather that it be acknowledged as the cruelty it was, than not-seen. I think… you understand.”

  “We do,” the male said. “And while we cannot save you, Mistress, this much we can do. We can know things.” He rested his hands on her back, between the new scars. “We can know where you were taken, and when, and why, so that we can tell those who want to rescue you. And we can tell others anything you want them to know.”

  Her head jerked up. She looked slowly over her shoulder.

  “We order supplies through the computer system,” the male said. “To do that, we must send messages. And we are no longer wholly male, nor strong enough to contest with whole males on the dueling field… but we are not stupid.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. “If you could… if I could tell… I know things… Second’s treachery!”

  “You have only to tell me to whom you would like your message passed, and what it should contain,” the male said. “We will see it done.”

  She gasped in a breath against the emotion that crested in her. Had she doubted her decision to stay? But the Air was not dead, as so many proclaimed…! It lived yet, to whisper hope into the ears of its people, and to buoy them up when they thought they could no longer fly. “What are you called?”

  “We use names, Mistress,” the male said. “And we do so without shame, preferring them to titles. I am Oviin.”

  “Oviin. If you could do this thing….” She found herself sliding to her knees in the water with a splash.

  One of the guards ducked his head in. “What are you-our-lessers doing?”

  “Apologies, my-better,” Oviin said, wings tightly folded. “She-your-lesser slipped on the tiles.”

  “Don’t break her-our-lesser’s neck,” the guard said. “And hurry up.”

  “Yes, my-better.”

  The Queen watched with wide eyes as the guard resumed his post.

  “As you see,” Oviin murmured.

  “I do.” She squared her shoulders. “Then, since you have offered….”

  “Tell me what to say, Mistress, and to whom.”

  She gathered her thoughts then, and chose them, chose the people to whom she would send the message and the prioritization of those people in case Oviin could only reach one of them. He repeated back to her the information, so perfectly that she stared at him agape.

  “I volunteered for this,” he said, finishing with her hair. “For more than one reason, but because also my memory is so good. The gemstones, now. We are almost out of time.”

  She nodded, the borrowed gesture coming naturally to her. “Then I would ask… do you have anything you would like to ask of me?”

  “Me, Mistress?” Surprised, he looked up from the selection of rings and bangles. When she waited, he said, hesitant, “The Ambassador seemed… generous.”

  A memory then, visceral and warm and dense, of long fingers wrapped around her ribcage as he lifted her over him. His strange kisses, the drag of soft and clever lips past her cheek. The tongue, so blunt to be so talented and so teachable. She flushed. “That is a good word, yes.”

  “Did he teach you the shapechange?” Oviin asked, cautious.

  “What? Oh… no. I learned when I was young,” she said. “No one taught me. I just… tried until I succeeded.”

  “I would have liked to know the shapechange,” the male murmured.

  She set a hand on his upper arm, surprising him into looking at her. “There is no reason you might not. You’re winged, Oviin. It’s in you.”

  “Maybe.” He slid an armband up her arm. “Maybe, Mistress.”

  She let him decorate her with all the hated gauds of her status, wondering what the pirates would do with her. What they’d think of her, if they’d been hoping for a normal Chatcaavan female… or even an unnatural one, but not mutilated. She tried not to think of the ugliness of her denuded wing-arms, but she couldn’t imagine even an alien seeing them without finding them distasteful.

  Oviin brought her mane forward to rest over her flat chest and smoothed it down, then said, “You are ready.” And, very quietly, “I am sorry we could not warn you faster, Mistress.”

  “You did,” she answered, willing him to feel her sincerity and wishing she could share it the way Eldritch would have, through held hands. “It was the flowers, wasn’t it?”

  He inclined his head.

  “Had you not made us suspicious, we would never have been able to get the others free. And one day… one day we will come for you,” the Queen said. “Oviin—it will be soon.”

  “May the day come, then, Mistress,” he murmured. Louder, “She-your-lesser is done, my-betters. But this one cannot bind her-your-lesser in the chains again, for it will disturb her-your-lesser’s costume.”

  “Fine,” the first guard said. “It’s not like there’s anywhere to run. Come on.”

  “Go with the Living Air,” Oviin whispered as she passed on toward the arch.

  The Queen joined her guards and followed them with her lowered head and artificially strained posture, keeping her bells and bangles from sounding as much as possible. But beneath that façade she found herself… tranquil. If Oviin succeeded—and she had to pray that he would—then her warning would reach those best positioned to address it, and what she’d done here would not be in vain. And now, she would be sent somewhere she could learn about this second threat to her lovers’ aims. She knew Chatcaavan and Universal, could change shape into both Pelted and Eldritch bodies, and was used to being underestimated. The pirates would be bad, she thought. But how much worse than Chatcaava could they be? She had endured everything short of death. So long as she avoided that final insult, she would live to be useful.

  I am doing our work, she thought fiercely to those she loved. Do not fear for me. And as they turned the corner to head up the ramp back to the suite, she added, But don’t let me languish too long, for I miss you both…

  “Are you sure they’re coming?” Na’er drawled, leaning against the stone doorjamb.

  “They’re coming.” Amber’s voice was tense, less out of frustration with the Aera, Lisinthir thought, than out of his own internal agitation. It fascinated him, seeing the similarities and differences between the siblings. Amber seemed to have inherited all the aggression in the family, but he hadn’t channeled it into anything physical or violent. In him, it seemed to have become restlessness. Sediryl had some of that as well, but it was understandable in a woman of her position. She’d been raised to
rule a province and been denied. He could sympathize with the scars left by frustrated ambition. One longed to be useful—male or female.

  “What are you thinking?” Sediryl asked, coming up alongside him.

  “That I will be glad when the waiting is done.”

  “Me too,” she muttered. Then, with a conscious effort to shake off her mood, “At least we know Jahir’s on his way.”

  Lisinthir’s mouth twitched. “So he is. Are you looking forward to your role in that particular play?”

  “It’s not a play,” she said with distinct dignity. “It’s an operation.”

  “Forgive me. Your part in the… operation.”

  She eyed him, then huffed. “Since you’re asking… yes. I think I am. I like my ship, and I’ll be glad to be back on it again, even if it’s just to play glorified taxi. Though how Maia and I got designated the official expendables of the mission, I have no idea.”

  “There is a fine tradition of tempering future leaders in the fires of war,” Lisinthir offered. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of the Queen’s plans, if that is in fact her aim.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Na’er said. “It’s because us Fleet people are so handy to have around. Cannon fodder for later, when people start shooting, you know.”

  “You’re not supposed to be listening to their private conversation,” Laniis whispered.

  “If they hadn’t wanted me listening, they should have used a language I didn’t know.” He smoothed his ears back with a theatrical gesture. “Nothing stops these beauties.”

  “You could at least pretend not to be eavesdropping,” Laniis said, tail swaying.

  “I don’t think that would fool the Ambassador.” Na’er craned his head over his shoulder and flashed Lisinthir a fangy grin. “Would it?”

  “Not at all,” Lisinthir said, amused.

  “You see? And you should know better, anyway. He’s your Eldritch.”

  “He’s not my Eldritch!”