The Wilding

RIVERS OF RED, meeting a crystal ocean. How bright, how beautiful! Eddies curling about like the most fragile of feathers, bleeding crimson mist into the current. Slowly. Sensually. I savor the motion, each last precious ripple of crimson, and feel the heat of it passing into cold, brightness into dark, pain into peace. Not long now, I tell myself. Not long.

My story? It is not lengthy . . . at least, not the parts that matter. Summarize it so: I am a Braxin woman, born in the Central System, near that heartbeat of the Master Race which they call Kurat. Too near. Had I known the price of that nearness, I would have moved. I would have sold every possession I owned, I would have begged on the street for sinias, I would even have bound myself in servitude to some bizarre nonhuman life-form that desired acts it would shame me to perform, rather than remain there, where they might find me.

They say that strength is a curse in women. They say that the ability to endure pain draws pain to them, so that each is matched by Ar to that which will test her limits. If so, then the goddess was flawed in measuring mine, for I have tasted a terror no mortal soul was meant to endure.

The ocean is no longer clear, but clouded; a fine mist of crimson hangs in its drift, fluttering like a silken pennant as the currents play across its surface. Red: that is the color of terror, is it not? And passion. And . . . life.

My mother named me L’seth. It means “Gift of the Snow.” Brings to mind pristine fields of whiteness, doesn’t it? Yet the snow in our district was anything but white, being muddied quickly underfoot by the passage of the poor and dirty, within hours of falling.

She told me once how I had been conceived in the snow, on a cold night when she had wanted nothing more than to get inside where she could be safe and warm and could forget about the weather. Alas, fate was not obliging. Sometimes there are men who truly savor the acquiescence forced upon us by law, choosing a time and place for their sport that degrades their subjects even more. One of them found my mother that night, and since she had no pressing business, and since there was no man to claim ownership of her, he exerted his rights under Braxaná law and took here there, right in the filthy slush. Oh, he paid for the damage that did to her clothing, of course. Spilled a handful of tarnished sinias into the muck for her to dig for with frozen fingers. You can abuse a woman by Braxin law, that’s part of proud Braxaná tradition, but may the absent gods descend upon you in wrath if you damage property.

An auspicious beginning, yes? Surely no better or worse than the lot of other women of my class. My mother valued children and so she kept me, instead of casting me out into the adoption pool. Was that good or bad? I might have wound up in some truly horrific situation, purchased by one who wanted slaves rather than family, or by some man with a perverted sense of fatherhood—yes, for there were said to be men who were so twisted they coveted girl-children to raise, and had the money or influence to get an agency to indulge them, against all custom—but then again I might have done better, and gone to some upper-class woman whose smattering of Braxaná genes had doomed her to an otherwise sterile existence, who would have treated me like a precious gift, and truly made me her own.

Other fates, other paths. Who knew where this life would lead? Women have the essence of Ar in them, the goddess of chaos, and their lives are prone to twists and turns no one can predict. Men are weak by contrast; they could never survive such uncertainty. Small comfort, isn’t it?

Skip over the middle part of my life. That is something no woman wishes to remember, the time when growing ends and the law casts us out into the world, at the mercy of men. I beat the odds then, demographically speaking, and didn’t kill myself. Is that a sign of inner strength, or of weakness? Fear of death is a powerful motivator when there is no god waiting to receive your soul on the other side of that great barrier. Our gods don’t care about us; they did their job in creating the world and then went on to other amusements.

How I envy those peoples who believe in Heaven. Or even Hell. It is the thought of absolute obliteration that is truly terrifying. Who would seek out such a thing? Only one whose terror of life had come to exceed her terror of death.

I grew into the kind of woman that men desire. That was no accident, of course. The only way out of the slums of my birth was to find a wealthy protector, and I knew from my earliest days that this would not happen without my working for it. And so I spent my spare hours subjecting my body to all manners of abuse to reshape it, and I took those drugs which would stimulate growth where men liked growth to be and inhibit it elsewhere, for men are creatures of sight and touch above all else. And of course I paid the price for such alterations. In Kurat itself women might seek out doctors whose sole purpose was to pamper them, and have access to drugs that gentled the body into its intended shape. I could not afford such things. And so I vomited up my older self in a thousand bloody pools, and spent the nights curled about my pain, knowing that the only way to escape my dismal circumstances lay down such a road. And in time it was done.

Yet ironically, that thing which appealed to men most was not a thing of drugs or artifice, but the one true gift of nature I had received. My hair had that tint of red which is so in vogue now, not a thing of the cosmetician’s art, but the real thing. To me it looked no different than the falsified shades, but men seemed to be able to sense the difference, and the real thing . . . excited them. No explaining it, at least not from a woman’s standpoint. It spoke to them of power, of conquest, of favored blood somehow made their own as they spilled their seed at its altar. Incomprehensible, to me at least . . . but I was not above exploiting it.

In time I found a protector, and in later time traded him for another. By the night I met Satas I was skilled in assessing men at a glance, and knew this one had potential. It took little work to entrance him. Within the first zhent I had sparked his interest, and by the second I had moved my things out from my current abode to his studio, on the outskirts of Kurat itself.

He was an artist, and found in me such inspiration as brought new life to his work. Or so he told me. I don’t pretend to understand it. His creations were surreal, often so abstract that I found it hard to see how my modeling had anything to do with it. Yet he would set me up naked amidst some bizarre arrangement of props, and stare at me for hours as he molded various substances to satisfy his inner vision. Weird stuff, but it paid the bills.

I had been out shopping, and was not prepared for company. In truth I didn’t much feel like dealing with anyone, for the day had been long and frustrating and the manifold treasures for which I had braved the lower class open markets had eluded me for all the hours of sunlight. Nevertheless I took a deep breath upon the threshold, and prepared myself to deny all that, at least in Satas’ presence. The bond between man and woman is never so strong that a few bad days cannot sever it . . . even when the woman does serve as model for such works as “Ninth Event Horizon, Repeated,” and “View from the Nether Side of Pain.”

Then I opened the door and I saw the Braxaná. A magnificent creature, decked out in the face paint and stifling clothing of his class. Standing there in the foyer, discussing some work of art with my patron.

No. There is no adjective that suffices. The Braxaná have a language all their own, it is said, and such is needed to describe them. For that quality which they possess is more than mere physical presence, though they have that in abundance. It is more than power. What they possess is unspeakable in other languages, where words like “awe” and “reverence” are reserved for gods.

I saw him, and I knew by his dress what he was, and I found I could not pass. Let other women rave about his beauty, it was not what held me frozen. What is beauty, anyway? Flesh can be molded easily enough, if you have the money and can endure the pain. No, what held me fascinated was something more. Something intangible, that breathed across my flesh: a promise of power incarnate, wedded to a lust to wield that power. It was enough to raise hairs along my bare arms.

“Yes, my Lord.” It took no great insight to catch the turmoil in Satas’ own voice. How dearly he wished I had not arrived just then. Never before that moment had I realized how much he truly valued me . . . or how much his male pride would suffer, if the price of losing me was not high enough.

I took a few steps into the room, not quite knowing what to expect. I was loath to remain cowering at the door, but equally unwilling to test my own nerves by trying to stride past this man as if his presence didn’t matter. How could it not matter? He filled the entire studio with his presence, tangibly enough that as I licked my lips nervously it seemed I could taste it. Was this some secret pheromone of the Braxaná, that had managed to seep out through his concealing costume to mark the room as his? Or was it instead something rooted deep inside my own brain, my female brain, coming from the part which instinctively understands that the true value of a man is measured in his dominance over other men?

“Stay.” His voice was quiet, but it carried power, and I froze in mid-motion, dreading the reason for that command. My eyes carefully averted, I nonetheless heard him as he walked over to me, and the shiver I felt as he reached out to touch me was not a thing of fear alone. A gloved hand touched my cheek, and he turned my face toward him, urging me with a touch to meet his eyes. And I did. Black eyes, black in black, eerie eyes in which the dividing line between iris and pupil could not be seen. Windows to the soul, but shadowed windows, secretive. I could not guess at what thoughts were behind them.

After a moment he turned his attention to my hair, and ran a gloved finger through it, parting it to the roots. Yes, Great One, I do not use a cheap dye, but are you so sure drugs didn’t create this color? Apparently he was, for he nodded as his hand fell away, and I felt a catch in my throat as the bizarre inspection ended. If he had ordered me to speak then, and told me my life depended upon it, I don’t think I could have managed a sound.

“Are you not?” he demanded. There was an edge of warning in his voice, but also . . . amusement. Cold amusement, the kind you see in men when they set helpless animals to fight each other to the death, to see how they die. “Have you never claimed his ownership, then?”

“I . . . ah. . . .” All words left me. Was this one of the men who had the right called Whim Death, allowing him to snuff out a human life as casually as Satas or I might squash an insect? There were no safe words for me, not anywhere.

I met Satas’ eyes. There was fear in them, I saw that plainly. Fear of angering this man, fear of losing his patronage . . . fear of asking for too low a price? He could not meet my gaze for long, perhaps afraid I would see his sympathy turn to greed. The bonds between man and woman are not strong in our world; it takes little to sunder them. Now this bond was about to be measured precisely.

For a brief moment Satas reminded me of a fish dragged out of water, mouth agape at the shock of cold, dry air in its gills. Then he managed to draw in enough breath for speech. “She has much value to me. . . .”

The Braxaná waved his hand in a short, quick motion, dismissing the thought. “You will send me the sculpture we discussed. If it pleases me, I shall have the Central Museum commission you for a work for its new gallery. Something the critics would take note of.”

I could see the greed in Satas’ eyes. Perhaps a bit of sorrow, also, but that was swallowed up by the greater whole, as minnows are swallowed up by bloodfish. Stupid, stupid man! Could he not hear that he had been offered nothing, that the whole bargain was conditional upon the judgement of a creature known for both manipulation and cruelty? Yet what could I say? You do not challenge a Braxaná to his face, not ever. God forbid he should get upset enough to alter his body temperature, and cripple those few precious sperm that he has. It must have been bad in the old days too, but now, with their gene pool so small that every new generation was an evolutionary feat, it had reached the point of obsession.

And so I was sold. A handful of words to enslave a human life, decades of freedom traded away for a pedestal in some central museum. A lifetime of hope and frustration traded for a critic’s review, that might not even be good.

I hope he betrays your trust, I thought to Satas. I hope he receives your precious sculpture and finds it lacking, and makes of all your ambition no more than a tale to tell over drinks in some Braxaná haven, to the tune of the Pale Ones’ laughter.

But should I blame him for this, really? The blame belongs to a society that makes such creatures out of us, estranging us from one another, turning us all into objects. Not only women. Standing before the might of the Braxaná, blinded by their blazing arrogance, we are none of us truly human. Only creatures of convenience, tolerated as long as we serve their purpose. Silently, obediently. Nothing else is to be endured.

What words, for Zhene? An artist’s masterpiece, spread out across the surface of Braxi’s one small moon. Castles sculpted out of stone and glass, ancient materials that would last forever on this worldling which had no winds, no weather . . . no time. Overhead the silver web-work of the gravlock system gleamed like some vast spider’s craft, the light from B’salos shimmering weirdly as the containment field distorted it. It was wonderful and terrible all at once, and as we passed through the gravlock and the sickness grabbed hold, as the body attempted to vomit up the artificial gravity which was so suddenly being applied, I knew with a sinking sensation in my heart that I would never be allowed to leave.

He took me to his House, where it was clear to all that I was a prisoner, property, differing from the sculptures and paintings that filled the house only in that I was harder to maintain . . . and perhaps less valuable. Truly I might have been made of stone for all the Mistress of the House noticed, and as she inspected me from all sides I half-expected her to reach out with a dusting cloth to wipe off some offending spot of dirt.

He used me himself, of course. Who would have expected otherwise? And I was prepared for it, knowing all the arts that please men, capable of pretending that they pleased me too. All my life had been spent working toward this end, a station in a rich house, comfort, security. Yet there was something about the Braxaná that chilled me to the core . . . or perhaps it was the passing references to my being a gift for him. Never a name, only that pronoun, spoken in a tone that was half reverence and half resentment. Perhaps it was all the times I would hear whispers in the hallway outside my small cubicle, whispers that ceased when I showed my face. . . .

I never asked about it. Never dared. But I couldn’t help wondering: was this man testing me somehow, waiting to see if I was worthy? Or simply waiting until he tired of me himself, before passing me on to another?

The answer came soon enough. Barely two zhents after my arrival the Mistress of the House bade me pack up my few things and prepare to move. Things? They were few enough, keepsakes of a life that had little worth remembering. All my life had been lived in preparation. Now it seemed as if the thing I had been waiting for was about to happen, at last.

And then what? Run screaming out the air lock? Beg to be returned to my home district, stark naked if need be? I didn’t know enough to scream. Even when I realized where we were going, and who the mysterious him might be . . . I didn’t know enough to be afraid.

It wasn’t long before I saw it come into view, that new third moon of the Braxin system. Not even a century old yet, its gravlocks and landing bays sparkled in the Void as the sunlight played across them. Inside, it was said, were all the amenities of a true world, including gardens and forests and even hunting preserves, transported from real planets to this place of utter privacy, to suit one man’s pleasure. It was also said that there were less natural things inside, things that were only whispered about when no one from the upper class was listening: alien things, wondrous, terrifying, enticing things. Every man wanted to get a look inside the place, just once. Most of those would die of terror if actually summoned there.

I remembered the name of the satellite and spoke it aloud, feeling the sound tremble upon my lips. H’karet. Place of the Hidden. And as the words left my mouth, I knew in that moment with dread certainty who it was that I had been purchased for.

Pri’tiera. I tasted that word silently and felt myself tremble. Originally no more than a title for the leader of the Holding, the word has come to mean so much more: a heritage, a bloodline, a mystery. Was this what I had been preparing myself for, all these years?

There were rumors about the current Pri’tiera. Crazy rumors. But he was Braxaná, wasn’t he? So that meant he had to be human, no matter what anyone said about him. He wasn’t more than two centuries removed from regular humans, either . . . or at least from the Braxaná ancestor who had first borne the title.

Inside . . . inside was a vast space, a hall whose opalescent ceiling vaulted high above, whose walls were cut from Aldousan boulder opal, veins of glittering milky rock twisting through the grey stone matrix. The space was punctuated by hundreds of gleaming pillars, between which hung artifacts from ten times that many worlds. Tier upon tier of treasures, suspended from nothing visible, with a narrow walkway vaulting between them. Some were gifts that had been presented to the Holding by subject nations, images of which I had once glimpsed on newscasts. Some were less recognizable artifacts, alien pieces that seemed out of place in these Braxin surroundings, beautiful and disturbing at once. Some were clearly ancient relics, with the dust of the ages still clinging to their surface. To walk down the hallway between and beneath these things was to drink in the whole vast span of the Holding, both its present and its history. More than one could absorb in a single passage. Perhaps more than one could absorb in a lifetime.

He was young, so very young. Was that an aspect of his bloodline, or of the thick cosmetics that hid his skin from sight, or was he really as he appeared, just past the age of independence? He seemed at once a monument to human beauty and a strange mockery of it, for his carefully sculpted features were almost too perfect to belong to a living creature. And cold, very cold. It was hard to imagine such a face ever betraying human emotion. One could almost imagine his features carved from alabaster, rather than human flesh . . . only alabaster was warmer than this.

It took me a moment to remember where I was, so intent was I upon studying him. When I did I could feel my face flush, and I dropped my eyes and went down on one knee, wondering if he would kill me for the effrontery.

“She has spirit.” His voice was smooth, a thing of music, and something about it made the back of my neck tingle in resonance. This is the sound of power, I thought. It was as if I could feel his words wrapping themselves around me, and I knew that if he commanded me to move then, my flesh would obey him as if the words were my own. It was a terrifying sensation.

How much did anyone know about this man? His bloodline had disappeared from public view nearly two centuries ago. The common tribes assumed that he still walked among the Braxaná, in places like the moon where the lower classes were not there to see . . . but maybe not. Maybe he was as much a mystery to his own people as he was to the rest of us.

I saw the black leather boots stop before me. I felt his presence as a palpable thing, fearful and seductive all at once. Then a gloved finger touched me beneath my chin, tilting my head up to face him. The contact was sudden, electric, and I heard myself gasp as my flesh shuddered in response.

Then I met his eyes, and the world ceased to exist. Dark eyes, Braxaná black-on-black, they seemed to spread out as I gazed at them, becoming two vast pools of inky shadow. Inside I could sense things swimming, darkling creatures that never saw the light. Shockwaves of raw emotion seemed to shiver through the blackness, and I barely had time to sense their nature before they were gone from sight. Hatred, power-hunger, lust . . . the last left me dizzied by sudden arousal, and I knew in that moment there was nothing I would not do for this man’s pleasure, no act so extreme or so painful that I would not indulge him.

The Pri’tiera waved his hand in what was an unmistakable gesture of dismissal. “You have given me a gift. If she proves worth my time, you will have my favor. Do not ask for more now, Kaim’era.” Though I did not know the complex voice modes of the Braxaná, even my untutored ears could make out the incipient anger in his voice. Apparently the Kaim’era heard it also, for he bowed once, deeply, and then without further word left us.

The Pri’tiera walked around me, slowly, studying me as so many patrons had studied Satas’ sculptures in the past. I fought not to let my fear show. The shock of discovery was over now, and I was determined to get hold of myself. I had spent my whole life preparing for this moment; I was not about to let it pass without making the most of it.

But he did not touch me again at that time, or even address me. He walked about me three times in all, then called out a woman’s name. Mere seconds passed before I heard footsteps approaching. “My Lord?”

This was my fate, this. Whatever he intended . . . I would find my way. I would adapt. I would please him, as I had pleased all men. Had I not been chosen for that very purpose? Had not both men agreed the signs were right?

The words meant branded, as criminals are branded, with a raised mark upon my forehead that burned with fresh pain at night. All of his people wore it, I saw, men and women alike. A strange and barbaric custom, once used to mark herd animals on the open range. The message was far more complex in this case, of course, not merely a warning against the theft of slaves, or a simple warning of criminal history.

His women attended me. Slaves to a slave. I tried to get information out of them that would enable me to assess the situation, but it was a hopeless effort. I tried to get them to voice the subtle fear that flickered deep in the backs of their eyes, that I might know its name, but to no avail. I tried to get them to talk about the Pri’tiera . . . and that was when they really shut down tight, their eyes flashing me something that might have been pity as they scurried from the room like frightened birds.

It was fourteen days before he called me to him. In that time I had explored most of the wonders of the H’karet that were open to me, but I had little appetite for wonders. As each day made it more and more clear that I was not there merely to be a servant, it raised new questions. New fears. Nonetheless I put all those aside as I went to meet him, dressed in garments which his other slaves had chosen for me.

He met me in the crystal garden, a bizarre conservatory where glittering rock formations sprouted like weeds from floor, walls, and ceiling. I had to walk through half of it before I got to where he was, a pagodalike shelter whose pillars were of living Betanese coral.

So I did. Looked at him, drank him in, from the surreal beauty that all Braxaná have to the more subtle signs of power. Studied his strength, his formality, his absolute confidence . . . and something more, that flickered in the back of his Void-black eyes, too quickly and too namelessly for me to define.

I heard him come toward me, then stop. A gloved hand reached out to me, and with infinite delicacy stroked my hair. Red hair. I felt myself shiver as an undefinable something seemed to emanate from his touch.

There was nothing more to say. We both knew what had come of that Empire. The Braxaná had taken control of it within days of Harkur’s death, and never let go. Ruthless barbarians at the head of an interstellar Holding. The formula had not changed, to this day. Their nature had not changed. The signs of Harkur’s inheritance might have been diluted by the greater gene pool of Braxi, but those of his servants, now our masters, were pure and clear.

I shivered to think of what that strength might be needed for, but said nothing. All my life I had taught myself to please men, to indulge their hungers, to win their favor. What could this one ask of me that I was not prepared to endure?

I managed to nod. I don’t know if he even saw it. There was something in his gaze so fixed on me that it seemed he was searching my very soul. For a brief moment I felt an almost animal panic, primal in its tenor, that urged me to run from him, run at any cost, get out of range of his touch, his thoughts . . . it was a terrifying thing, utterly visceral in nature, doubly frightening in that it seemed to come out of nowhere. He seemed to sense it in me, for not until it had passed did he touch me again: this time a slender gloved finger to my cheek, that seemed to leave a trail of desire in its wake.

I wanted him. I wanted him as I had never wanted a man before, as I had never known one could want a man. It came upon me suddenly, a flush of heat spreading out from where he touched me to the whole of my body. Cells shivered, hormones flowed, blood rushed to the surface of my skin. It was all so sudden that I didn’t even know how to absorb it, but just stood there, flushed with the sudden heat of my desire, embarrassed at how visible the change must be to him.

I dreamed of him. Of course. Dreams are where we can express those fears and lusts that daylight forbids us from examining too closely. They rise up from the primal part of us, the animal part of us that understands everything but has no words to communicate anything.

And so I dreamed of human desire beyond all bearing, nightmares of lust and torture commingled, all the passions of all the men I had ever known in a tangled mass of memory and fear. And him. My dreams were full of him. Wanting him, fearing him. Never satisfied, not even in dreaming. It was as if something in my brain knew that it could not guess what his pleasure was, and shied away from even trying.

The room he had chosen was an observation chamber on the Braxin side of the satellite. Within it a whole section of solid wall had been removed, leaving only the thinnest of force fields between viewer and Void. The time he had chosen for our meeting was daylight on the planet beneath. The vast arc of Braxi spread out across the heavens, blue and white swirling across it, continents peeking out from beneath. How still they looked from here, those clouds. Storms that swept across the planet at breakneck speed, rainstorms birthed and dying within hours . . . all motionless, from here. As if even the vibrant world of our birth paused for a moment, to seek the Pri’tiera’s favor.

He moved closer then. I could feel the heat of him along my spine. So close, and yet not touching. He gave me that moment, I understand now, a last precious gift of normalcy in which I might imagine that I understood him, that he was indeed no more than a man, and that my life had prepared me properly for this moment.

He placed his hands upon my shoulders. Bare hands. It is said the Braxaná are more loath to remove their gloves than we are to remove our most intimate apparel. Perhaps that is why the sight of his naked fingers made a shiver run through me, as though something electric had been applied to my skin. Perhaps that is why his touch made me suddenly giddy, so that as he turned me to him it seemed that I stood still and Braxi itself revolved around us.

He touched my skin then, running his bare hands along the length of my neck, into my hair, along my face. And I felt . . . things there are no words for. Echoes of desire so deeply rooted that my legs grew weak beneath me . . . yet so darkly disturbing that for the first time since meeting him, I wanted to flee. It was a purely visceral reaction, coming from the part of the brain that has never been tamed by civilization. Sometimes our animal brain knows best, it is said. But where was there to flee to?

It was as if the borders of my body were suddenly gone, or at least so confused that I could not define them. As if somehow I were experiencing the same scene from different viewpoints. His bare hand moved to cup my breast, and even as I felt my own flesh tense in pleasure, it was as if somehow I was inside his body, too. I could feel my own flesh warm beneath the velvet, the soft scrape of the nipple against his my palm as it moved, the stirring of heat and stiffness below in parts I neither had nor understood—

I tried to pull away from him. He didn’t allow it. Too late. He pulled me closer—I pulled her closer—and with that motion the last barrier between us seemed to fall. Emotions poured into my brain that no woman should know, Braxaná emotions, violent in the extreme. Hate. Fury. A lust for sex and violence so tangled that only a true Braxaná might make sense of them. Resentment burning like a wildfire: of women, of fate, of one woman in particular, of the father who had defied Ar’s curse to conceive him—

I lost track of my body then, or of his. Fragments of sexual contact wrapped disjointedly about my brain, images of flesh on flesh without body or sequence to bind them together. I knew what it was like to have the whole of my lust concentrate in one heated organ—what it was like to thrust that into another—the rush of power that came of such a moment, which no woman could ever, or should ever, understand. I touched his flesh and then I was inside it, and I knew at the same time that he was within me—and that he was sharing thoughts and sensations no man had a right to witness, that he had thrust his mind into those private places where we women nurture our wounds of the spirit, when man has raped all else.

In the end there was pleasure, greater than any I had ever known. Of course. With the full range of human sensation pouring into my head, with every touch and stroke and thrust echoing with male and female energies, how could it not be so?

They say that the women of other worlds pity us. They say that they hear tales of our lives, our legal standing, and most of all our treatment by men, and regard us as poor abused creatures, and pray for some god to liberate us.

For thousands of years the Braxaná have ruled us. They set no god over us to claim our spirits, for such is not their way. They enslaved our flesh with laws and violence . . . but what is flesh? Nothing more than a container for the spirit. Science can give us breasts or remove them; how can we fix our identities on such transitory attributes? Flesh is but a vehicle of communication, no more, and those abuses which give it trial soon pass . . . if one allows them to.

I pity you, my foreign sisters, on planets where science invades the mind. I pity you in those places where psychics skulk in the shadows, their secret art invading that one place which should be truly sacrosanct. For there is one privacy even the Braxaná hold sacred, and they defend it fiercely for all their subject peoples. There is one inner jewel which neither master nor invader has the right to touch.

For as soon as your soul bears the mark of another, it’s not really yours any more, is it? And in this life which is so short, with nothing but darkness before and after . . . what is left, once the spirit itself has been violated?

The river of blood is exhausted now, my veins nearly empty. The shadows of death close about me, tempting and terrifying. No, my masters, you have demanded much of me in my lifetime, but this you cannot have. I have sculpted my body for you, I have lived by your rules, I have been slave to men and stranger to women, all for you . . . but you cannot have my soul. Not ever, not that.