Twenty-seven

The first time Matron Slender Fox had made love with her brother, Sliding Ice, had been when they were children. She had been nine, and Sliding Ice was just turned eleven. It had started because they’d hidden under one of the beds as part of a game, only to hear two of the household slaves, Slip Fish and Fern Flower, sneak into the room. The two adults had frantically stripped off their clothing, leaped onto the bed, and Slip Fish had driven himself into Fern Flower with a vigor that strained the leather strapping and had the bed’s pole frame creaking. The event ended in a chorus of delighted yips and barely stifled squeals.

After the slaves had left, Sliding Ice had turned to her, saying, “I wonder what that’s like. She sounded like I’ve never heard a woman sound.”

“And he kept whispering, ‘Yes, yes,’ over and over.”

“Must be wonderful. I can’t wait to try it.”

“We could, you know. Try it. Just to see. We’re going to have to learn how sometime. You heard War Leader Black Stick. How he made fun of Tied Root. Said he couldn’t pleasure a woman if he had a thousand years to learn. Well, you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“You could tell me what made you feel good.” Sliding Ice had frowned. “And it’s not like we’re lowly Earth Clan or dirt farmers. We’re Four Winds Clan. Nobles. I don’t want people to make fun of me just because I don’t know how to pleasure a woman.”

“A woman needs skill, too, you know. Someday I’m going to be high matron. I should know what’s good and what isn’t.”

Besides, Slender Fox had always found a certain excitement in the forbidden. And somehow, over the years, on rare occasions when she was feeling particularly frustrated, stressed, or just felt the physical need, she would arrange to have the palace empty. What she and Sliding Ice did on those nights wasn’t love, but a physical release that still carried the added excitement of being forbidden.

Sliding Ice had indeed become expert at coaxing pleasure out of a woman’s body, and she suspected that he kept a little extra in reserve just because it was her. In the end, he knew her needs in ways no other man ever had or would.

That night he had taken her from orgasm to orgasm. The warm and tingling glow was fading from her pelvis, thighs, and lower back as he slumped onto her body, breath shuddering in and out of his lungs. “How’s that?”

“Never better, brother. No wonder White Phlox doesn’t want you taking a second wife. She’s probably afraid the word would get out, and you’d have a line at the door to your personal quarters.”

Craning her head, she thought she heard a dog lapping water. Then wind in the thatch overhead drowned the noise. Couldn’t have been. She’d personally secured the great room door and latched it with a thong. Anyone trying to enter the palace would have given her and Sliding Ice plenty of warning.

“All these years, I’ve wondered why this was forbidden.” She wrapped a lock of his hair around her finger. “Coupling as brother and sister is supposed to result in evil Spirit-infested children with deformities. That man Jenis, the Ilini, remember him? He planted that child in his own daughter, and when the baby was born she looked normal enough.”

“She was only three when Jenis was found out and they burned the girl alive. Maybe the evil hadn’t had time to manifest itself. And don’t forget Tharon. You know the stories about all those monsters he sired. And that’s why we don’t ever want to get found out. If anyone so much as suspected—”

“Too late,” a voice announced in the darkness.

Before Sliding Ice could scramble off her, a heavy weight landed atop them, driving the breath from her lungs. Sliding Ice bucked, grunted, crying out, only to receive a hard cuff to the head. The impact of it banged Sliding Ice’s skull against hers. Hard enough that lights flashed behind her eyes.

By the time she could fill her lungs, a couple of loops of thick rope had been wound around their bodies, locking them together, binding them to the bed frame.

“Who are you?” Sliding Ice cried, half panicked as he thrashed against the bindings. All he succeeded in doing was to hurt her.

“Stop it!” she ordered. “Hold still.”

Looking up past her brother’s head, Slender Fox could only make out the dark shadow of a man. He loomed above them, staring down. When Sliding Ice tried to slither forward, the intruder made a tsking sound with his lips.

“I wouldn’t do that. No, you stay right there. Seriously, there are a great many worse places to be than naked against a beautiful woman’s body. And your sister? There’s not a man in Cahokia wouldn’t mind being bound up tight with her. Especially after a session like you two just had.”

“What do you want?” Slender Fox asked in her hardest voice. The paralyzing flood of fear was being replaced by the first fingers of panic.

“Who, me? I want all kinds of things. It took a good friend of mine to finally figure it out. She says I can’t live without having a challenge. That I need the excitement. Like tonight. Sneaking in here like this. See, it’s kind of a gamble.”

“You know who we are?” Sliding Ice demanded indignantly.

“Sure. You’re Lord Sliding Ice, who’s punching his shaft into Matron Slender Fox’s ever-voracious sheath. Daring of you, given the penalty for such doings with one’s own sister.”

“You know what’s going to happen when we catch you?” Slender Fox asked in her most calculating tone. Who was this man? Why couldn’t she place his voice?

“That’s the gamble part. Suppose someone comes back? Wanders in the door. I’m betting I can get out of here, disappear, before they can get you untied and you can call out the guards to run me down. But then, that leaves you with the problem of having to explain why you’re both naked, tied up in Slender Fox’s bed the way you are, and smelling the way you do. Wonder what clever explanation you’ll try and concoct.”

The panic was now steady and enveloping as it rushed through Slender Fox’s body. “I asked you what you wanted. Why are you here? Why are you doing this? Surely we can come to some sort of agreement.”

The man’s long silence just added to her terror. If she were discovered thus, it would be all over. There had to be something she could do to—

“You’ve got corn, right? Storehouses with dried squash? Baskets full of goosefoot seeds? Those big sacks of dried beans?”

“You want a storehouse full of food?” Sliding Ice muttered incredulously. “For yourself?”

“Well, no, not for myself.”

At that juncture, the sound of the door opening into the front room sent ice into Slender Fox’s veins. Someone was coming. Out in the great room she heard one of the cooking pots rattle as it was knocked against its neighbor. Then came the sound of slurping again. Most definitely a dog.

“You got ’em?” a voice asked in the dark.

“Sort of bound them up like fish in a net. Say, that’s an idea. We could wrap them in a net, drop them just like this on the Grand Staircase on Morning Star’s mound. Be a little cold, but they could huddle together for warmth. Should have seen how they were staying warm when I got here. Very athletic. But with lots of gasping, moaning, and frantic breathing.”

“No, thanks. I never was much into watching.”

That voice, old, female, slightly slurred from missing teeth. Something about it …

Then the old woman’s dark form was leaning over the bed. “What do you say, Matron? Do we opt for the net? Or just wait until Wolverine, maybe the household staff, comes back? Your choice.”

“I will burn you alive for this!” She let the rage loose, using threat and bluster as a tonic for desperation.

“You have a choice. Order your storehouses emptied and sent to Evening Star Town to compensate them for what they donated to supply the expedition, or within the next hand of time, you and Sliding Ice are going to find yourselves the center of most unwelcome attention.”

“I’ll kill you!” Sliding Ice bellowed in his impotence.

Slender Fox clamped her eyes closed. Pus-rotted gods! It had been her hope that Columella would be deposed over the donation of those stores. Now she found herself caught against her brother’s trembling body, still wet with their combined fluids.

“How do I know that … that…”

“That I won’t betray your secret?”

Slender Fox waited, the sensation like that of knowing a terrible weight was about to come hurtling down from the heights to crush her.

“I guess you’ll just have to find out. Day by day. Forever worrying.”

“I’ll order it first thing.”

“You’ll order it now.” The old woman raised her voice. “Runner?”

Slender Fox heard someone enter the great room, trot across the matting.

“Far enough,” the woman ordered before the newcomer reached her personal quarters. “You know the matron’s voice?”

“I do, Lady.”

“Go ahead,” the old woman told Slender Fox in a most agreeable voice. “Give the order.”

Slender Fox, on the verge of tears, filled her lungs and called, “I want our granaries emptied. All of it. Every last kernel of corn, every rind of squash. The same for the local Earth Clans. We’re … we’re sending it all to Evening Star Town.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “A gesture of gratitude toward our good friend Matron Columella.”

“Yes, Lady,” the eager voice called from the front room. “I’ll have our people on it by first light.”

Slender Fox felt Sliding Ice’s body go limp against hers, felt his lungs pulsing, as if in silent tears.

“Is that sufficient?”

Silence.

“Have I bought your silence?”

She twisted her head past Sliding Ice’s, stared up at the darkness, and saw no looming forms. Her room was empty.

Whoever had tied them had done so with expert knots. It seemed to take forever for Sliding Ice to wiggle free, help her out of the blankets. She pulled on her clothes and staggered out into the great room. Sliding Ice followed close behind her.

Someone had tossed a couple of logs on the fire. The flames now leaped to illuminate her empty great room. Everything seemed in order except for the ceramic vessels around the fire. The stewpot lay canted, empty. The loaves of bread were gone, only crumbs left. A wet stain gleamed in the firelight where it looked like a dog had urinated on the dais that supported her litter.

“I will find whoever did this,” she swore, fist knotted. “And when I do, I will hang them in a square and gut them slowly.”

“I think I know that voice.” Sliding Ice looked sick in the firelight. “I think it was the Keeper.”

“Are you crazy? If Spotted Wrist trapped us like that, he’d have hauled us up before the Morning Star and destroyed us. Besides, he’s the last person who’d want Columella’s storehouses restocked.”

“No, I mean the old Keeper. Blue Heron.”

Slender Fox pursed her lips. Thought it through. Yes, that’s why she’d thought the voice familiar. “That, brother, is a different thing entirely.”