Parathas followed Eth a few steps as she marched off, but paused beside Aida and touched her arm.
Surprised, Aida turned and looked down at the short, wiry, balding man.
“Whatever she says about you, all I have seen in the short time I have known you is a good woman working tirelessly for those she cares about. Which seems to encompass anyone and everyone who comes. It is an honor to serve you, Mother.” He bowed deeply and rose smiling.
The man's words landed deeply. She touched her heart, tears streaming down the smooth skin of her once-wrinkled face.
“Apologies, Mother, I did not mean to-”
Wrapping him in a bear hug, she held him for several minutes. His initial stiff awkwardness relaxed as he patted and rubbed her back. When she finally pulled away, wiping tears on the sleeve of her fraying tunic, tears dampened his cheeks as well.
“Well, don't have to wash the back of your shirt on that side now,” she said, smiling.
A matching smile emerged and faded into quivering lips. “I have not held anyone like that since my family. Since they...”
His strong fingers rubbed the braille dotting the backs of each finger of his left hand.
“I'm so sorry,” Aida whispered, rubbing his arm and feeling selfish for crying on him over nothing when he'd clearly lost so much. “I didn't mean to bring them up. Are they... did they...”
She bit back her question, realizing she blundered about a deep wound that, by his trembling, went to the core of this quiet, thoughtful man.
He took a deep breath, hesitating before speaking. “I do not know. As a young man I spoke without thinking, acted impulsively.”
As he spoke, the words gathered momentum, pouring out from some place he'd obviously locked them away. “I earned debts with the wrong people in striving to raise our lot from lives of endless toil in the Threadfields of Slik, gambled believing I would clear them but I doubled them instead. The last place I saw my family was the Canyon of Cages on Berujat where we were sold to the Small Masters to pay my debts.”
“Sold?” Aida's breath caught in her throat, heart aching.
“They placed us... they placed us all in sight of one another so we could see as each of us were bargained off. The men who sold me told Fatma, the Small Master who bought me, to sell me last. She took great pleasure in the task, selling each of my children first, then my wife. I hung there alone for months, maybe years after. I lost track of time. Asked about them during Calms but to no avail. I was a fighter when they put me there, but when the beauty in green bought me for use as a skinscribe I was a broken, blank canvas for them to braille across.”
Though it pained her to ask, his words sparked a question she couldn't wait to ask. “Beauty in green? Dark skin, regal?”
“Kind but firm, yes, pearls in her hair.”
“Did they take you to Heaven's Tread, perhaps?”
“No, I was taught braille in the Annalis of Libriam. The names of those I lost were the first I wrote into my flesh.” He rubbed the backs of his fingers again.
She bit her lip, seeing how much he shook. “Sorry to ask, but it might be important: did you catch her name?”
“Whatever you ask, Mother, I will do. My time alone here preparing for your coming was exactly what I needed. Hard, dangerous work, alone in the hot emptiness but maybe just what I needed. I may never forgive myself for my youthful idiocy, may never see my precious Hallai, Parathain, and the young one still before her Nameday, but at least here the wounds scabbed over.” He wiped his eyes with a patched, sun-faded sleeve. “I never caught her name directly, but she was a Seneschal by the strings in her throat.”
“Ocyl then? Or the Imminents using him, maybe?” She watched Eth scrambling down the shell, thoughts tumbling over one another. Ghillie squatted nearby, threading bits of moss into her eponymous suit. “What do you think Ghillie?”
The tiny blonde looked up, her blank-bone mask another story Aida'd not yet had the time or courage to delve. Ghillie's hands darted in Feral sign language Learning it had proved one of her few distractions from her endless daily responsibilities and problems. I follow to end. Even in face of Aj itself.
“That's not what I...” Aida stepped back involuntarily, another wave of tears brimming. She slipped on the moss and fell on her butt. Parathas jumped towards her to help her up but she waved him off, laughing. “Even a Dynast can slip and land on her ass sometimes. But thank you, both of you.”
She looked into the faint blue of Ghillie's eyes. “I promise I will strive always to earn such devotion.”
Turning to Parathas, she rose and took him by the arms. “And I promise to you that I will go to Berujat and empty that Canyon of Cages. Whatever the Dynasts think of 'menials', where I come from a great named Abraham Lincoln once said 'whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong urge to see it tried on him personally.' Let these Small master people sit in the cages for a while after we empty them.”
Parathas' eyes widened and his mouth hung open as he looked at her.
"You're going to catch a bug if you keep it hanging open like that." She gently nudged his jaw to close his mouth.She raised her hand, turned the back towards him, pulled three fingers in, and mimed slicing them off. "Believe me, you don't want the sort of bugs we got here in your mouth."
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He smiled dazedly and nodded. "I remember."
"The good ol' days," she said, sighing and looking out over what could be called a jungle slum if one was being polite. "Should probably get back to it."
Using the guideline, she began the slow descent back down the mossy shell.
"You would truly face down the Small Masters of Berujat?" he said, sliding along behind her.
She threw a hand in the air. "Got a stack of Dynasts already wanting me dead for liberating their menials and Wretches, what's a heap of slavers piled on too? Speaking of Dynasts, which one owns Berujat anyway?"
"It's owned by 'fixed Feli', but he retreated to a remote fortress a century ago and never leaves. Most of the Fraction now call it home after giving up on their verses or selling them to the Directory. Now they run it for him for a share of the profits. Not only would you be facing dozens of Dynasts, but the densest concentration of Masters and mancers in The Book."
"As long as we're on the subject, what the hell is a Master and a-" Aida's foot slipped completely and she lost the rope. Careening down the shell with gathering speed, she wondered for a moment if this was how it ended. What a ridiculous way to go after all she'd been through. That flicker of thought was all the time she had, then something in her body sensed the time to jump and she leapt from the shell at crazy speed, hurtled through the air, and hit the uppermost vertebrae of the neck. Tucking to a roll absorbed most of the impact, but she couldn't bleed enough speed and her momentum carried her off the far side.
Catching a spine jutting from a vertebrae fin as she cleared the bone and net catapulted her back around like some Olympic gymnast going for the gold and she landed on the top vertebrae kneeling with one hand planted to stabilize herself. As a rush of adrenaline pounded in her temples and she realized she was alive, everything became etched in perfect detail. Every sense hummed at maximum intensity. Slowly she looked up to find, for once, no one on the upper part of the neck leading into the shell. Looking up, the cave-like neck opening blocked sight of Parathas.
"Oh my god," she said to herself. "Did no one seriously see that?"
She stood and struggled in vain to brush off the moss stain's she'd accumulated that soaked through the back of her pants. A deep, luxuriant laugh echoed from the opening of the turtle shell, joined immediately by a delightful high counterpart. Alerestro and Viviana emerged from the gloom him slow clapping as he laughed and strode forward like a man entering stage left on opening night while she glided forward with her unnerving, consuming focus locked on Aida.
"Bravo, bravo!" he said, grinning.
Viviana practically wrapped herself around Aida and set to 'helping' her pick moss from her backside. The woman wore some perfume that scented her faintly of spice and roses. Though Aida had been adventurous in her youth, trying and mostly enjoying almost everything - especially when her second uptight and straight-laced husband had suggested they try the 'swinger lifestyle' near the end before cancer took him - she'd mostly found herself attracted to men. That aside, staring down the front of Viviana's dress as the woman rubbed up against her amid still-pumping endorphins from her near-death experience, she found herself short of breath and unmistakably aroused.
Alerestro quirked an eyebrow and grin turned to a knowing smile. "She has that effect on everyone. Trained as a pleasure slave now a slave to pleasure."
Viviana stood up and leaned in to whisper in Aida's ear. "Join us?"
She nibbled on Aida's ear then kissed her neck.
The proper thing to do would have been to pry the woman off and politely comment on the busy schedule she must attend to. That or give a stern warning about making unwanted sexual advances on their Dynast. Problem was, by her body's reactions, the 'unwanted' bit would be a lie. How long had it been since she and Ryk last found some time to-
"Ryk!" she shouted too loudly, peeling herself away from the woman and holding her at arm's length. Viviana took it in stride, lifted one of Aida's hands and began kissing it. Alerestro took the other.
"He can join us too. No reason we can't all enjoy each other." He tilted his head towards the darkness of the shell. "We've set up our small camp just inside. It's not much, but the blankets in our tent could certainly accommodate three or four."
Aida groaned and let them lead her several steps, her restraint fading quickly. Why did she need restraint anyway? Not like she and Ryk were married. Barely even saw each other more than a couple times a week and then it was pretty much all physical. Besides, she ruled the goddamn verse and all she had to show for it was knots in her shoulders even her Dynastic regenerative qualities couldn't combat and a rock of tension in her gut. As the adrenaline began to subside and the shakes set in, the simple human comfort of their touch called to a primal part of her.
"Dynast!" Parathas called, his head jutting over the shell's edge. He spotted her and sagged in relief, panting. "Thank the Ascen you're okay. I feared I'd find you dead."
Aida jumped away from Alerestro and Viviana and crossed her arms, a flood of guilt washing through her as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. "Nope, all fine here Parathas. Just talking with my friends here."
"Yes, just some friendly chatter," Viviana said, squinting up at the skinscribe. Her smooth slide close to slip an arm around Aida's waist didn't sell the lie very well.
Parathas smiled uncertainly. "All is well then. I apologize, Mother, but I must find Eth and Rustrovan for he's not holding up to the Dynast Plague well. We can talk of Berujat another time."
In the rush of the moment, she'd forgotten about the slaves entirely. Another wave of guilt washed over her and she squirmed from Viviana's touch. An internal battle raged as other parts of her craved that touch on its own and also what it promised to lead to. "Yes, I won't forget, Parathas. Maybe we can even find your family."
His face fell at their mention though he tried to hide it behind a smile. "As you say Mother."
A moment later he vanished behind the jutting upper lip of the opening and he left her alone again with the luscious pair. She turned to them, putting her palm out to stop Viviana. It stopped the woman for a moment, but pressed as it was against her chest, the woman put her own hands over it and began to glide Aida's hand down the top of her dress.
Alerestro stepped beside her, his voice deep and low. "We will do nothing you do not wish, Dynast. Simply speak the word and we will find a better way to serve. As your advisor, however, I think your people could use their Dynast in peak form. Without pleasure and release to balance them, pain and pressure can distort the judgment of even the wisest ruler."
"I don't... it's not that... I'm not sure..." She couldn't even come up with a coherent reason to say no, but the stubborn part of her held out anyway. "Ryk! I shouldn't because..."
A familiar figure walked from the dark opening; Ryk, wearing only his sarong. His long braid swaying over tanned skin and layered muscle. He grinned. "I could use a break from training myself. You were saying?"
"Oh, fuck it," Aida said, that last stubborn bit crumbling as she let them lead her into the shell's shadows to a small, surprisingly cozy tent lit from within by a warm yellow light.
"Your wish is our command," Alerestro said, holding the tent flap open and gesturing within.
Aida began to strip as she ducked within, feeling a thousand worries fall away in the folds of her clothing.