Eight: Reflection

The Meerchild huddled over the strip of parchment, one hand sketching rapidly, its eyes transfixed as the images came to it through the mirrored glass. Drawing after drawing, there was nothing but a suggestion of gray tones that were the spaces between an angry swirl of white. The Meerchild shivered in the thin cotton shift that came to its knees, though the cold wasn’t here with it, rubbing its toes together as it leaned forward on its knees and drew.

The awful whiteness stung the flesh and tore the breath from the lungs. Knees and elbows ached with bruises from stumbling in the blinding white. It drove against the body, merciless and cruel, like a many-tailed whip in the hand of an angry master. The Meerchild had felt those before, had learned its lessons well at their lashing.

There was nothing but the drawing. Not even the Master mattered when the drawing came. Pain didn’t matter. Hunger didn’t matter. Want and need and desire sang in the Meeric blood, rushing in and out with every breath, sharing images and sounds, tastes and smells, and the touch of things the Meerchild had never known—a mother’s kiss, a soft blanket, the feel of a smooth stone skipped over water, the prick of a thorn in a bush full of roses. Stories danced in the darkness of the glass and whispered their secrets, and the Meerchild drew.

Out of the vague shapes of whiteness suggested by the frame of the smudged stick, a whirlwind of black marks spun suddenly from the Meerchild’s fingers, a black river covered in ice. It was the river of remembering, the river that flowed through every Meer’s veins. It curved and flowed around a face as pale as the snow. Dark eyes pierced the page, wide and haunted circles, lines of pain, a mouth that trembled, frozen tears in dark, violent streaks. It was the most beautiful face the Meerchild had ever seen, and it rendered the lines with reverence.

The face looked out across the landscape of endless white and focused on a spot in the distance, and in that spot on the parchment, no bigger than a hundred-piece coin, the Meerchild sketched the whole of the Delta. Cities and temples and hills full of flowering trees flowed out of the razor-thin edge of the charcoal into that singular spot; rivers and waterfowl populated it; tiny people hurried to and fro; barges floated, and carts rolled. The beautiful, haunted face regarded the spot with purpose. The Meer was returning.

The child sat back, satisfied, and gazed upon what it had drawn, making the soft sound of fingers and palms in the air next to its ears that soothed it like a Deltan spring rain it had never experienced.

The Meerchild smiled and nodded. “Ra.”

Jak had said nothing, offering neither comfort nor condemnation, merely sitting beside him by the fire, rightly overwhelmed by it all. Ahr felt like a brittle shell, a poor imitation of a human being that when broken open would yield nothing but stagnant water. The Ahr that had been—consort of a Meer, mother of a goddess, instigator of a genocidal movement—he despised her; but the Ahr he was now was nothing more than a coward and a lie.

He turned the ring on his finger, recalling the words of MeerShiva: “You are the mother of RaNa of Rhyman.”

Before RaNa, Ahr had been open, like the orchid depths of her own female sex. Even the Meer’s abandonment of her hadn’t occluded those unwary petals. But the theft of RaNa—Mila, as she would have been called if she had been her mother’s to keep—had torn the succulent skin of those petals at their center, and Ahr had curled, black-green and putrescent, into herself. All that had mattered for the next dozen years was retribution, and Ra’s undoing.

“Remember me while you rot,” she’d said as they fell upon the Meer. “Remember Ahr!” They were the last words MeerRa would ever hear.

But it was the sight of RaNa in her slender innocence, broken and naked before MeerRa’s astonishment, a woman who would not be, that had driven Ahr to transmutation. She could no longer bear to look on her own form. She was ashamed to be a woman.

So Ahr had done the unthinkable. She had sought out one of the Meer in hiding. There had been fewer than a dozen Meeric principalities in the Delta at the time of the Expurgation, but rumor had it at least one had escaped.

She found MeerShiva in the dark of a moonless night.

Ahr stood before a darkened, industrial building over a recessed iron grate that enclosed an uninviting cellar. Rumors in the markets of Soth In’La suggested the coal woman who lived here was the fugitive Meer from the eastern Delta. Meeric sympathizers were few, but it was surprising how much information one could purchase in the markets with the passive currency of the caste of the veil.

She lowered herself into the window well in which the grate was nestled and tapped against the metal with the ring on her right hand. The darkness was quiet, but in a moment, she heard movement below and saw the concealed light of a brazier. She tapped again, but the burrow remained silent.

“MeerShiva,” she whispered, and the hint of light was extinguished. “Hear me, Shiva,” Ahr petitioned. “I mean no harm to you.”

The grate opened with a sudden scrape of rusty metal, and Ahr scrambled back to keep from falling. A dim face peered up at her from the shadows.

“Get in at once,” hissed the Meer. “If you are so bold.”

Ahr lowered her limbs into the darkness and tumbled at the dusty feet of Shiva. The Meer motioned from beneath a hooded cloak toward the interior of the cellar, and Ahr rose and obeyed. After drawing a heavy bolt across the grate, Shiva uncapped the lantern and lowered her hood to reveal a gaunt, coal-smudged face and a tangle of dusty hair. It was a far cry from the oiled and gilded head of the majestic Meer.

“It’s true, then. You shovel coal and sell it in the market.”

“What of it?” Shiva emanated distrust. She was an older woman, possibly ancient. No one knew how long the Meer lived. Coal dust lined the creases beside her eyes.

Ahr bristled at the escaped sovereign, though she needed her now. “Why don’t you just conjure what you need for food and shelter?”

Shiva sat down before a table made from an empty coal bin turned on its head, nodding toward the other stool. Ahr hesitated and then joined her. Shiva might be at her mercy, but she was equally at Shiva’s, and she would have to lay her anger aside.

“You have a score to settle still,” said Shiva. “It was not enough for you to see them dashed against the stones.”

Ahr shivered, drawing her cloak tight.

“I am not the one who wronged you.” Shiva leaned close. “And you have had more than retribution.”

Without warning, Ahr began to sob. Shiva stared at her as she shook and wailed, allowing her no mercy. Ahr covered her face with her hands and tried to still the emotion, but the flow of tears had triggered the desperation of un-solaced sorrow and self-pity. She wept into her hands and rocked the table with her shuddering. Shiva remained impassive until the unbidden outpouring subsided and Ahr peered up from beneath her fingers, gasping for breath. She pressed the back of her wrist to her face to try to wipe it clean, but at last Shiva had stirred to produce a kerchief for her to blow her nose and dry her eyes.

As Ahr clutched the damp cloth between her fingers, Shiva stretched her arm across the table and covered the ring she wore. “You are the mother of RaNa of Rhyman. That is her band.”

Ahr corrected her bitterly. “I am the mother of Mila, whom the templar priests took from me. I know nothing of RaNa.”

“And yet you have not come to ask after Mila, though you killed her yourself.” Ahr wanted to deny it, but the Meer regarded her through eyes as green as poison. “RaNa is naught but a stranger to you, one more parasite pulled from the throat of the strangling Delta. Because you choose to believe your Mila died the day she was taken from you does not make it so.” Her hand gripped Ahr’s painfully, grinding the ring against Ahr’s knuckle. “You will not ask after RaNa-Mila, but I will tell you of her. She grew up empty and longed for her mother. She was taken from your breast the way all Meer are taken from those who give them life, placed in a house of the dead to do the bidding of the selfish Deltans and their templars.

“You hated RaNa because she wore gold in her hair and rode in litters of velvet and silk, receiving the gifts of the underclass though they could barely feed their own children. Are you so stupid, young Ahr? Did you not guess it was the merchants and the keepers of the Meer who stole from you? You broke the skull of little Mila, who came from your own flesh and breathed of your own lungs, and whose heart beat with your own blood, while the templars have always had the wealth of the Delta in their coffers, and have it still. Have you no shame?”

Ahr kept her hands still and her eyes steady throughout this rebuke. “I have nothing but shame, MeerShiva. It’s why I’ve come.”

Shiva sat back, and her face seemed to change, subtly transforming to a more youthful appearance. When the lamplight flickered, Ahr could see the dusty hair was a dark and glistening rubine, without a trace of gray.

Shiva looked into her eyes. “Perhaps shame is the wrong emotion, girl. Perhaps it is remorse that is necessary.” The Meer rubbed her hands together in the cold, closing her eyes a moment and then opening them shrewdly. “You think a cock will make you a better person?”

A shiver ran up Ahr’s spine as she realized the Meer had reached into her thoughts. She blushed but held her ground. “A cock would make me less conspicuous, MeerShiva. You ought to understand that.”

The Meer inclined her head.

Ahr spoke again, trying to keep her eyes on the shifting face. She had the feeling Shiva was trying to manipulate her in some way, to mesmerize her. “I don’t wish to be…the mother of anything.”

Shiva stared at her for an interminable time, neither blinking, nor twitching, nor, it seemed to Ahr, inhaling a breath. Then the Meer stood and reached toward her with both arms, and Ahr flinched. The space between them, occupied by the coal-bin table, dissolved at Shiva’s motion. At her touch, Ahr was caught like a fly in a web and taken in, absorbed into the expanding core of the powerful body.

She tried to cry out, but her mouth seemed full of something, and she was surrounded, enveloped in amorphous tissue that was continually shifting. Despite the muffling of her voice, she felt a terrible howl emerging from a place deeper than sound, prodded outward by the impetus of pain. She couldn’t struggle, could only submit to the agonizing sensation of being crushed and engulfed.

The red of blood and a pounding beat surrounded her, a bitter fluid with the tang of metal pouring through her lungs instead of air. The howl went on, torn from her cells, and molten tissue seemed to weep from her eyes. The beat confined and comforted her, though it was terrible, and soon her incorporeal cry was a thread in its dominant meter, impelled first into a rhythmic thing like desperate song, and then into the voice of her own Mila, tender and plaintive and torn from her. The cry became weaker and faded, like Mila taken from her into the darkness. Sound was no longer conceivable. Breathing no longer seemed to be a function of her own body but of fluid, softly and unconsciously taken and exchanged between her cells and the surrounding matter.

In this stillness, Ahr felt herself falling, not downward but away. Then Shiva stood before her, solid again. A remnant of the frightened howl escaped, and she did fall at last, moaning, to the cellar floor. Her clothes were scattered over her, and when she moved, there was an unbearable ache and unfamiliarity in her limbs.

“What have you done?” The whisper was her own voice but changed. Ahr was no longer a woman.

“They will not know you anymore in Rhyman,” said Shiva. “You are still yourself, still Ahr, but you are no longer subject to the caste of the veil.”

Ahr sat up, his head feeling dim and his muscles a knot of pain. Instinctively, he pulled the garments up to cover himself, but instead of breasts, he encountered the smooth void of his altered chest. He looked to Shiva, and his mouth opened to speak, but a quicker reflex had taken over, and he saw that Shiva was changed as well, or he understood her differently, in a basic way with the body and not the complex invention of the mind. Shiva’s skin was suddenly important to him, as were the oils that sparkled on it. He couldn’t think why he hadn’t smelled her subtle musk before, or noticed the heady green of her eyes.

“You will be solitary,” said Shiva. “No man can have companions who has not volleyed with them as a boy. Nor will you find women easy to take to your bed.”

He felt his brow go white with annoyance, an easier emotion than discomfiture. “And why should women be so elusive to me?”

“Your confidence in who you are is no greater now than when you were one of them. Do you see yourself taking them as Ra took you?”

Now he was blushing. He didn’t care for the picture of his girlish deflowering that had entered his head as though it were common knowledge among the Meer.

Shiva smiled and went down to his level, balancing on her heels. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d become younger still. “You may find you still desire men. It makes no difference. The desires of some are changeable, of others, not.”

There was a throbbing beat in his head obscuring thought and making Shiva’s words a jumble of half-heard, soothing sounds. He turned aside and staggered to his hands and knees, attempting to stand, though he ached so that the feat seemed impossible. Shiva’s hands were on him, pressing him down. He fumbled and fell onto his back, and she climbed over him like a spider, intent and stern, throwing aside his dress and exposing him.

“It will be a long spell before you have relief in the temple of another body.”

“No.” He shook his head, but Shiva gripped his strong jaw between her even stronger fingers.

“You do not understand me, ordinary man. Did you think there would be no price for what I have given?” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “The Meer have fasted longer than you can fathom. Deprivation of the flesh has taken its toll in the erosion of our wisdom, our common sense and our instinct for self-preservation. It has laid us bare to the bludgeoning of templar deceit.” Shiva placed her hands around his cock, and it rose beneath her touch.

Ahr felt a sense of panic at the insistent ache that had arisen with it. It made him wish to be devoured, annihilated, to do whatever Shiva bid him. He was helpless and, for the moment, glad of it.

Shiva yanked him toward her. “You have not the patience of the Meer.” She descended on him with such swiftness that the stroke of her body was like fire. He was deep within her, and she was mounted on him like a predator, lifting and plunging her thighs with brutal efficiency and a roughness that made him expect to see blood. Ahr couldn’t move, would not have been able even if his limbs had allowed it. This was terrible and divine, and he found himself groaning with each thrust of her flesh.

Her cloak fell open, and he shuddered as she arched back and let it fall, breasts glistening with sweat as she bounced against him. Ahr grasped at the air as though he would hold her, and she gave a shriek like the sound of a mating cat that made him fall back. She was a thing beyond beauty, beyond bliss. He felt the spasm begin at the base of his shaft, and he shouted something he couldn’t later remember as the heat in his loins began to spill into her.

Her pounding of him ceased. “Keep your seed,” she said disdainfully. “I have no need of it.” The power of her body convulsed against him, and she had somehow expelled what he’d given her. She stood, and he was torn out of her, lying depleted in a puddle of his own humiliation. He closed his eyes, as much from exhaustion as from a dread of looking at her.

“Three hundred years for a minute,” he heard her say, but he was drifting too far away to wonder what this meant.

When Ahr awoke, the sky was dusky in the window wells above Shiva’s cellar, but not with morning. He sat up with a start to find himself clothed in a bright drape of red—a man’s garment stitched with embroidered plackets and gathers between the legs. Shiva had somehow put him into a high cot, and he climbed down, finding himself no longer sore, but moving awkwardly as he adjusted to the change in musculature.

She was waiting, Shiva the elder coal woman with blackened hands and besmirched complexion, resembling only faintly the creature who’d consumed him.

“How long have I slept?” Before Shiva answered, the length of the hair on his face hinted at the astonishing reply as he rubbed his jaw between his thumb and fingers.

“A month. One turn of the moon of which you are no longer part. One turn of the cycle you shall no longer have.”

Shiva had granted Ahr’s vetma, freeing Ahr forever from the caste of the veil. But it hadn’t freed Ahr of shame after all, or of the words MeerShiva had spoken when they parted, as though no time had passed at all since their first conversation. “You will not ask after RaNa-Mila, but I will tell you of her. She will not return. Her heart was broken. It is the heart that returns, again and again, to life.”

Remorse had followed him every day since.

In the years before the Expurgation, Ahr had created a pampered goddess in her mind to keep RaNa from being real, to keep from dying of a broken heart herself—to keep RaNa from being Mila. She had pictured the shallow, vain RaNa as a possession of Ra’s, something he coddled and flaunted as a reflection of himself, a smug sign of his virility in a time when Meer had long been thought impotent. A spoiled being such as she’d imagined could not possibly be loved, and the cold, heartless creature she knew MeerRa to be could not possibly love. They were perfect for each other, and she despised them.

But in Ra’s face tonight, Ahr had seen—impossibly—the reflection of his own love for his lost Mila. Ra had loved their child.

As his head tried to make sense of these contradictions, his stomach churned, taking his mind off his less physical misery. The conjured food he’d eaten out of spite hadn’t agreed with him. The thought of being trapped in here with the smell of being sick was almost enough to make him lose the meal. If he was going to be ill, he was going to have to find a way to do it outside.

When he rose unsteadily from his place before the fire and tried to get to the door, Jak jumped up and blocked his way. “What in the world do you think you’re going to do? You can’t be thinking of going after her!”

“I’m not going after her. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going—” He paused, holding back his gorge. “I’m going to be sick.” He tried to push Jak out of the way, but his friend could be solid and stubborn as a tree stump when it suited. “Please. I don’t want to be sick inside.” He covered his mouth. It was too late.

Jak propelled him swiftly to the ceramic basin, and Ahr clung to the edge of it, retching from the pit of his belly. “You have running water, you idiot.” Jak pulled back his hair, the gentle touch in contrast to the words, while he was violently ill.

When he was empty, Jak stroked his hair, tucking it behind his ear, and helped him wash up, operating the hand pump for him to rinse everything away. If only the rest were so easy to get rid of.

He grabbed the edge of the basin once more, overwhelmed with self-hatred beneath Jak’s kindness. There had been another time when Ahr had been similarly comforted by a friend, equally undeserving of either comfort or friendship. He shook the thought away and stared into the empty basin. “You must think little of me now.”

“No, Ahr.” Jak put a hand on his shoulder. “Come sit down.” He let Jak lead him once more to the fire. It hardly mattered. He couldn’t feel the cold. He was numb.

Jak tucked the blanket around him as they sat. Every act of kindness made him loathe himself more. Jak didn’t understand. He didn’t deserve kindness. Or maybe it was pity. He didn’t deserve that either. He was despicable.

He wrapped his arms around his knees. “I don’t expect you to understand what happened between Ra and me.” He shuddered as Jak touched his hand.

“No, but I understand that you’ve lost a child.”

“Lost?” He pulled away from the touch, horrified at Jak’s sympathy. “I killed her! I killed my child!” He closed his eyes, covering his head with his arms as if he could keep Jak at bay—keep the truth at bay. Like Ra, he didn’t want to remember. How lucky she’d been to come back with an empty mind! How lovely it would be to know nothing of himself, nothing of what he’d done. He hated her for that. Something new he could hate her for. It felt good, if only for a moment before he went back to hating himself.

Ahr shook his head beneath his arms. “I’ve longed for Ra to be the guilty one, but it has always been me.” He curled into a fetal position and lay with his back to the fire. “You wondered why I was so closed about my past. Now you know. I murdered my own child.” He waited for Jak to move away from him, to rebuke him, to reject him once and for all.

To his surprise, Jak curled up before him instead and slipped a hand through his, looking him in the eye. “My dear friend. I don’t pretend to understand how you could have been a mother, or a virgin girl seduced. Perhaps I’ll ask you for your secret someday, in the interest of gender philosophy.” Jak gave him a wry smile. “But I know one thing about you. You could no more murder a child than you could conjure this fire.”

“No. I was part of the Expurgation. I was there. I stood on the steps and watched as they were—” He made a strangled noise in his throat, his breath a wheezing gasp, unable to continue.

“That doesn’t make you a murderer. You didn’t strike the blows. I heard what you said to Ra. You didn’t even know they meant to hurt her.” Ahr tried to turn his face away, choking on tears, but Jak prevented him. “Look at me. You didn’t. You know that. You’re a kind and decent person.”

He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling with a laugh, but it was difficult to mock himself with tears spilling over his cheeks.

“And Ahr, my friend, despite your gender or mine, or any lack thereof—” Jak smoothed a thumb over his wet cheek—“I love you. And I can’t bear to see you cry.”

With a painful gasp, he pulled Jak against his body, warm and real beneath the layers of wool, and shuddered with silent tears. This was not what he’d expected. This wasn’t the deserved contempt he’d rehearsed in his head when he’d thought of telling Jak about himself. He buried his face against the strong shoulder while the fire heated them, the comforting embrace distracting him from his sorrow.

Though the awful truth was still there, the burden of dread he’d carried for so many years at the prospect of being exposed was lifted. He’d never shared himself with anyone. Even Ra hadn’t truly known Ahr. MeerRa had been consumed with her, driven only by his insatiable Meeric desire, but just as the Meer had never gone beyond her veil, he’d never seen inside Ahr to who she was. And now, Jak knew Ahr and loved him anyway.

Jak kissed his temple, stroking his hair as his shuddering slowly subsided, and he began to feel a heat that had nothing to do with the fire. He was appalled at himself for feeling desire. Certainly Jak would be equally appalled if he expressed it. But Jak’s hand was strong and gently possessive as it moved from his ear and trailed down the side of his neck. It was an unmistakably sensuous gesture, and Jak couldn’t possibly be unaware of its effect on him.

He raised his head and dared to kiss the hollow of Jak’s neck, touching his lips lightly to the smooth skin. Jak made a soft sound, a sigh of breath that said he wasn’t mistaken in his assumption.

When he met no resistance to this tentative exploration, he traveled upward with his mouth, absorbing Jak’s taste and scent, caressing the softly defined jaw, almost forgetting everything in the delight of at last being so close to Jak, so intimate. But his mounting appetite was thwarted as Jak pressed a hand to his lips before their mouths came together. He paused, confused, afraid he’d misread the signals after all, but the steel eyes were warm with arousal.

“Ahr.” The word was a bare whisper as the slender fingers traced along his lips. “Don’t make the mistake of assuming I’m only the sum of my parts.”

“Never, Jak.” He dipped again toward the elusive lips, and this time was rewarded with their embrace. As he explored the texture of a mouth that wasn’t his own, he moved his hands beneath the warm shirt at Jak’s waist, palms and fingertips permitted for a moment to mold the smooth terrain of skin until he made the mistake of slipping them through the laces of the canvas pants.

Jak shoved him away. “Dammit, Ahr. Don’t. Is that all you can think of—what’s inside my pants? Is that all that defines you?”

Ahr rolled onto his back, one hand clutched in his hair in frustration. “Of course not. Fuck. Yes! I don’t know.” An image of himself lying beneath MeerShiva on the floor of her den flashed into his head, at her mercy as she exacted her price for the vetma she’d given. She hadn’t asked for his consent, but his newly male body had been alarmingly willing. The first and last time he’d had sex as a man.

That wasn’t helping. Groaning, he rolled away onto his side, hoping Jak couldn’t see the heat in his face, or indeed, the heat in his cock. He stretched his hand behind him and Jak took it, entwining their fingers together.

Ahr sighed and brought the fingers to his lips. “So we’re not to be lovers.”

Jak kissed his cheek, apologetic. “Not physically. I’m sorry, Ahr. I should have been clearer. I thought you knew I was celibate.”

He laughed softly, rolling onto his back once more and staring up at the ceiling. “Celibate lovers seem to be my fate.”

Nesre ripped the parchment down the center, and again, tearing it in smaller and smaller halves until there was nothing but a scattered snow of little pieces on the floor of the cage reflected in the dark glass. He turned and grabbed up the flinching child, shaking it in an uncontrollable rage. Infuriated by its cowering, he flung it to the pallet and began to beat it with his fists. The child knew better than to cry out, and so it curled into a ball and gasped in silence as the blows rained down on it.

When the rage subsided and he let the child lie, Nesre regretted losing his temper. It wasn’t the Meerchild’s fault it saw what it saw, depicting it for him in charcoal strokes. He’d trained the child to do just that, and the message of the beating he’d given it in return must have been confusing. It lay panting in a corner of the octagonal room, staring up at him.

He found himself on the verge of speaking soothing words, and he snarled at his foolishness as he bit them back. He hadn’t spent over a decade cultivating this pearl only to ruin it by putting the lethal weapon of speech within its mouth.

The prelate controlled his anger and took a handkerchief from his pocket, dipping it in the child’s water bucket to dab at the welts and clean its bloody nose. The Meerchild’s eyes were dripping a steady stream of blood, and he shuddered, knowing this was not his doing, but a sign of the creature’s unnaturalness.

He sat the child firmly on the pallet and unrolled another strip of parchment, placing the charcoal in its hand. He nodded and smiled, patting the child on the head and placing its hand on the parchment. He was not a man without pity and he was sorry he’d taken his anger out on it. It wasn’t the child’s fault the fools Nesre had hired in the wasteland had failed so miserably. It wasn’t the child’s fault MeerRa of Rhyman was making his way ever closer to the Delta.

Cree frowned as she wiped down the bar, keeping an eye on the group of Deltan river rats in the back of the pub. They’d been drinking all afternoon, growing louder and more uncouth with every round. Meerhunters. What decade were they living in that they still thought they’d find bounty? It took a special kind of stupid to accuse a race of people of being invincible monsters and then sign up to capture said monsters.

But there were more Meerhunters in Mole Downs at the moment than she’d ever seen in one place, which meant something was up, and it made Cree uneasy. And with the ugly weather, they weren’t likely to leave anytime soon; whiteout conditions outside had left guests of the inn effectively snowbound.

Cree had never missed the gentle Delta winters more. Her old flat in In’La had looked out over the Anamnesis. She and Ume now had a view of the Filial from their upstairs room if they craned their necks over the buildings across the alley, but the Fil was nothing but a frozen stream. In the springtime, it would probably be little more than a sewage drain.

Cree’s miserable thoughts cheered considerably as Ume came down the stairs in a stunning sapphire gown she’d designed in velvet silk, her waist cinched impossibly small with the corset beneath that drove Cree a bit mad to think about, and a newfangled piece at the back called a bustle.

She leaned across the bar to give Ume a kiss when she arrived. “Are you trying to kill me, doll?” Cree murmured against her ear.

Ume gave her an innocent look. “What do you mean?”

Cree snapped the rag at Ume’s hip where she leaned over the slick wood of the bar. “Minx. Those river rats are eyeing your lovely behind. Everyone’s stir crazy in here with the storm. I’m liable to end up having to whip every one of their asses.”

Ume grinned. “I love it when you talk of whipping asses.” Cree rolled her eyes and groaned. “Anyway, I thought I’d do some more palms this evening. People seem to like it, and they actually want to pay me to read for them. I may have found something else I’m suited for.”

It was nice to see Ume happy. Not that she’d been unhappy, exactly, but she hated sitting around, in her words, like Cree’s “kept woman”. Cree relaxed as Ume read for some of the regulars, “holding court” in her corner booth, but the sense of unease returned as Ume began to attract the attention of the Meerhunters.

“Your accent is Deltan.” The loud declaration from the table across from her booth was delivered in their native tongue. Ume’s customer, an itinerant tinker, thanked her and paid his coin, taking his leave.

Ume glanced over at the Meerhunter with her lovely lips curled with disdain. “And yours is southbank,” she replied, an insult implying he was uneducated working class. Cree grimaced. A bit elitist, her Ume, though she’d worked her way up to the highest ranks of the temple courtesan from the humblest beginnings.

The drunk got to his feet, and Cree clutched the edges of the washbasin she’d just filled with dirty glasses. “I’ve seen your kind before.” He gave Ume a lewd appraisal. “What’s a Meer-whore like you doing so far west?”

Cree dropped the basin onto the counter and reached for the rifle from under the bar. She’d picked it up after the trouble in the last town they’d left, not surprised to learn the invention came from In’La itself. In the wake of MeerAlya’s death, many of his tinkering innovations had been put to less than altruistic uses.

The Meerhunter was leaning on both hands against Ume’s table as Cree came around the bar. Ume, of course, sat serenely, not allowing the uncouth river rat to disrupt her elegant poise.

“You flaunt your obscenity in front of decent folk,” the Meerhunter growled.

“Decent folk?” Ume laughed. “Surely you don’t number yourself among them?” The Meerhunter moved quicker than Cree expected, yanking Ume up from her seat with a fist in her hair.

Cree raised the shotgun. “Take your hands off my wife.”

The Meerhunter straightened and turned, still pulling Ume’s hair. “Well, that’s a first. A Deltan with a Meer-whore for a wife.”

“Let her go, Smalls.” One of the other Meerhunters stood, looking slightly less stupid with drink.

“Shut up, Pike. We all know you want to keep the bounty to yourself.”

Ume took the opportunity to grab Smalls by the…smalls…and twist. He let go of her with a yowl of surprise and stumbled back against the opposite bench. Cree had stepped forward at the same moment and she foolishly let her guard down in concern for Ume, putting her back to the table of Meerhunters. Ume cried a warning just as something struck Cree from behind.

Reeling, she fumbled at the trigger of the shotgun, and another Meerhunter knocked it from her hand while the glass mug that had struck her shattered on the floor. “Godsdammit,” she hissed at her stupidity.

The one called Pike regarded her as she rubbed her head. “Gods. That’s an interesting oath.”

“It’s a figure of speech, you troglodyte.”

“And yet you claim this temple courtesan for your own.” He looked Cree over. “You’re no Meer. But we have it on good authority that there’s one hiding in the vicinity. And here we are with a pair of Meeric sympathizers.”

“We’re hardly Meeric sympathizers,” Cree scoffed. “We were at the forefront of the Expurgation.” Don’t fuck this up, Ume, Cree prayed silently at the shadowed look Ume gave her.

“A sacred whore at the forefront of the Expurgation.” Pike looked amused as he sized Ume up, and then he raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be the Maiden Ume Sky?”

Ume lowered her voice into the infamous purr. “Well, not anymore, sweetheart. I’m married.”

“Holy shit,” said Smalls, his voice still tight with discomfort. “The transvestite?”

Ume rounded on him. “I’m more woman than you can handle, you southbank piece of dirt.”

“I can’t help thinking this can’t be a coincidence,” Pike interrupted. “After the information that a fugitive Meer has been seen in these parts, and the Deltan whose trail we followed from here to Haethfalt.” He addressed Cree. “What do you know about him?”

“What Deltan?” Cree blushed, and Pike smirked. She’d always been a terrible liar. “There was a man I used to know from the Expurgist movement in here a few weeks ago, but I haven’t seen him since. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think he’d harbor a fugitive Meer.”

“He left town with a Haethfalt Moleman who was seen in here, but nobody seems to know the Moleman’s name.”

A merchant at the bar let out a belch as he finished his ale and turned toward them. “There a reward for such information?”

Pike glanced at him. “Could be.”

“The Deltan traded with me, had a tab from one of those Mole colonies with all the names strung together. Let’s see, now, which was it?” He scratched at stubble on his chin.

Pike opened the coin pouch on his belt and held out a pair of Deltan universal gold pieces, the currency that had replaced the Meeric units of the individual soths. “This jog your memory?”

The merchant sidled up and took the coins, looking them over. “Think it might’ve started with Ram-something.” Pike handed him another coin and the merchant nodded, pocketing all three. “Mound RemPetaJakGeffn…blah-blah-blah-something. That was it.”

“Jak na Fyn was the Moleman,” said Cree, ignoring Ume’s glare. Smalls had picked up her shotgun, and she yanked it out of his hands. “I think you gentlemen should return to your rooms. And when this storm clears, I don’t ever want to see any of you in here again.”

Ume was furious. The Meerhunters hadn’t given them any more trouble, content to take their ale up to their rooms now that they had what they felt was a lead on their bounty. But upstairs in their own room after Cree had closed up the bar for the night, Ume berated her for giving in to them.

“They had the name of the mound.” She sat before the vanity, removing her cosmetics with harsh strokes, wearing nothing but her corset. “You didn’t need to volunteer Jak’s.”

“I volunteered it because they had the name of the mound. It’s not as if Jak is Meer, for godssakes. They’ll head back to Haethfalt, find nothing, and be done with it. I needed to get their attention off of you. And you didn’t need to volunteer so eagerly that you were the Maiden Sky.”

Ume paused with the damp sponge at the corner of her eye, one curve of kohl gone and the other still in place, and stared at Cree in the mirror. “Are you ashamed of who I am, after all this time?”

“Ume.” Cree came up behind her and cupped the back of Ume’s neck, stroking the soft nape beneath the upsweep with her thumb. “I’ve never been ashamed of you. What I am is madly in love with you and scared to death someone’s going to take you away from me.”

Ume lowered naturally thick lashes over the wide, amber eyes that made Cree’s heart beat faster every time they looked at her. “That bastard called me a transvestite.”

“Fuck him. You’re my girl.” Cree took the sponge from Ume’s hand and tossed it on the vanity, turning Ume’s chair. “My lovely girl, who happens to have the sweetest cock in the Delta, the falend, and the northern lands besides.”

Cree dropped to her knees as Ume blushed, and the cock in question perked up at the praise, a lovely contrast against the silk of the corset. Cree wrapped her hand around the base of it, and Ume moaned. “And I wouldn’t have you any other way. But I am going to have you this way.” Cree grinned and dipped her head, sliding her mouth over Ume’s erection and down to the base, while Ume, toes rising en pointe, let out a melodic sound between a sigh and a groan and surrendered to Cree’s attentions.