4Author's Notes: Well, look, I've written something. It's been a while, yes, it has. First, warnings: This story contains some pretty twisted stuff, implied torture and castration, as well as a gay relationship between two of the main characters. Tread carefully, children. Okay, a little background: Doran/Dragon People are a scaled race supposedly descended from dragons. They have scales, stubby tales, huge membraned eyes and females are normally larger than males, about six feet. Sapphire is very lightly retarded. Everything else you can figure out by yourself, I hope. Please, PLEASE critique!
Copper eyes stared up at sky, whispering softly to it in a tongue foreign to both the clouds and the speaker. The slender youth swayed slightly, his body protesting to the effort of standing. There were sores on the backs of his arms, across his chest and legs, large whiplashes crusted with dirt and blood in equal proportions. Long, dark red hair had gotten tangled, and it served as token clothing. Nudity seemed not to bother him at all, this Adam in his Garden of Eden. Only, the land here was dry and dead, and only bones grew in the sand. If you planted them, they grew into the angry men.
It was possible, the speaker thought, that he was mad.
He turned to look into the ground, past the surface and he saw the molten core legends had spoken about, where the first Gods were born from the wellspring of fire. He touched cracked lips, gathering droplets of blood on his fingers. The stuff of life. Maybe if he dropped it into the wellspring, it would recreate him as a God. He dropped to his knees, fingers digging into the sand, frantically panting in the desert heat as the sand stuck under his nails, and blew into his wounds. He would dig them out, the Gods of the old religion. He would resurrect them with his hands, breath and blood.
They were coming. He raised his head, scenting the air. Words, meaningless, cut through him like knives, opening him to the sky and the sand and the angry men who would suck him dry. Tears danced down his cheeks, making rainbows as they fell. He tried to hold onto them, the liquid precious, but they slipped between his fingers, like hopes and dreams long fled.
In the distance, a man's voice growled a command and a dog barked. The youth curled his body into a fetal ball, resting his head in the indentation in the sand his futile effort had created. "Please." He asked of the sky, but it had gone stiff and cold, like a dead body, like a dead God, unable to hear the pleas of one pitiful follower. He did not fear death. He barely cared about pain, anymore. But he had never been able to pass it on, the old lore mixed with the new, and now the dogs and men would tear him apart for an animal's pleasure. For Master's pleasure. He spit in contempt; the liquid composed more of blood than spittle. Master was nothing. Master was not in the desert. The desert was the land of the old Gods and the angry men. He raised two blood-covered fingers to the sky and sent a prayer of blood to the old Gods. Not yet. Let him find his apprentice. A prayer in blood…surely that would reach their heretofore uncaring ears.
If not, he would be able to talk to them in person soon enough.
"I don't understand. I do believe my hearing must be going. Repeat, if you please, your exact words." Soft, cultured—and cutting—the voice belonged to a man. A tall, elegant man, with shoulder-length black hair. A man dressed in rich velvets, his clothes spotless and the colors tastefully muted, in accordance with the dictates of style. A man whose voice carried hints of an accent, whose manner of phrasing things occasionally hinted that the language he now spoke was not his native one. A man you did not fail.
"I said we were unable to find the slave, Lord." The kneeling man mumbled, his voice quaking with fear, his heart racing in his chest. Even his breathing had noticeably speeded up. His Lord's eyes raked him and he knelt further, the muscles in his back straining. He did not see the cruel smile that lit the standing man's eyes or he might have broken and fled the room then and there.
Well, he might have tried.
"Ah. Then I ask, why have you returned?" Soft, gentle—almost caressing. If it were not for the finely honed edge of sadism in that voice, one could almost believe it was an honest question, instead of a finely orchestrated dance, with all the steps already set out by centuries of tradition.
"…The desert…we searched as far as we could in either direction, but if he got past the first set of boundary stones…" The man swallowed. "The desert is huge and the team had none of the desert guides with them. We ran the risk of getting lost or losing the dogs and horses. We did catch one of the desert people." He dared a glance up, trying to read from the set of his Master's face how this news would be received.
Behind him, he heard the door close and his heart jolted into his throat. He knew what was coming. He had stood and watched impassively as it was done to other men, lesser men. He had promised himself it would never happen to him, that he would never be kneeling here. Certainly not over one miserable slave lad, not even a man grown. It was impossible. He had seen the wounds, had overseen the boy's beating. He should have died in the night, picked apart by bugs and birds drawn to the smell of blood. He should not have escaped, and he certainly should not have made it past the boundary stones. That was over half a day away. Impossible.
If the boy had been anything but what he was or had done anything less than what he did, perhaps there still could have been forgiveness. The man considered himself a damned good Captain, after all, one of the most competent guards that served in the fortress. But the boy had been one of those damned Old Believers, spreading his rot and corrupting good slaves, though that had been found out only after they tied him to the post and found the sloppy tattoos on his chest. Still, it had a strong effect on the slaves, to see one of those damn heathens flayed and cut, and it should have had a stronger effect when they saw the remains the next day. That the slave had escaped, then, was a slap in the Lord's face. And the Lord had a strong aversion to being slapped. Add to that that the boy had cost them an important alliance and somebody was going to have to pay. He had known that.
He had just hoped it would not be him.
"Jerik. It's Jerik, isn't it? You've been a good Captain. You've served me very faithfully for quite a few years. Why, in this next decade, you might have looked forward to retirement, maybe with a woman of your very own." Jerik raised his eyes to look up at the Lord, trying to resist the urge to beg. He remembered the contempt he had felt for all those others, those begging others whose faces he had never looked too closely at.
Then a certain instrument was lifted, and Jerik's whole body tensed. He could feel his sphincter muscles tighten, his bladder fill. He trembled, his wide brown meeting cruel cobalt orbs. Hands caught him and held him, tugged him to his feet and bound his hands behind his back. The guards stripped him—without once looking at his face.
"Never let it be said I don't reward good service." His Lord murmured, walking over, a long silver knife glinting in the light. Jerik felt something wet snake down his leg. It took him a moment to realize he had wet himself. "Most men live through his process, after all. You'll have a very fulfilling career, though it seems unlikely you'll ever get around to having that woman." Jerik licked his lips. Something hypnotic about that knife, about those cold blue eyes. He swayed, slumping against the bonds, his body shivering with cold. One long-fingered hand reached down between his legs.
It was then he started to beg.
He wanted to kill them all. It might have struck him that such an urge was oddly primal, that it did not belong in these cultivated gardens with their exotic foreign plants and aesthetic fountains, but such thoughts were far beyond him. As he swept the floor of the garden pavilion he reflected on images of their death, brutal, visceral images that reached deep into his gut and twisted him up inside until he could hardly breath. He kept sweeping as his imaginings made him tighten his grip on the broom, but when the tears started to come he dropped the broom and sat down on the stone floor, tears rolling down his cheeks in big fat droplets as he sobbed helplessly. He rolled on his side, hugging himself tightly and letting the tears come.
Kiri was dead.
He had been there when they had taken the whip to Kiri, because it was all his fault. He hadn't wept then, just stood like stone, the other servants clustered around him. He had effortlessly ignored the whispers that floated around his head and the sympathetic glances shot his way. He did not deserve or desire sympathy. He just wanted to die. He wanted Kiri to live, or he wanted to die with his lover. Unfortunately, neither of those options seemed possible. Kiri was dead and suicide terrified him. He hated being in pain—he had cried when one of the older servant boys had pushed him into the rose bushes and the sharp thorns scratched his skin. He wasn't brave enough to kill himself..
He wanted a hero, like in Kiri's stories, a champion who would rescue him from this hellish existence. A golden man who would spill the Lord's icy blood and free those slaves who still believed in the old ways. Sapphire was never sure if he believed Kiri's stories, but he liked them anyway, stories of immortals that interfered in human life, blessing the righteous and punishing the wicked. He liked those far more than the ones where a human was chosen as a vessel and filled with a God's power long enough to fulfill some great purpose. In those stories, the vessel almost always died after said purpose was fulfilled, and Sapphire didn't like death.
But Kiri wasn't afraid of death—he dreamed of being one of those vessels, of having the Gods take him, one of their last faithful servants, and work their will upon him. Sometimes it seemed like that was the only thing Kiri cared about, but Sapphire didn't like to think about that—about the times Kiri looked like the angry men of the stories, filled with nothing but the righteousness of the desert, ready to rend and tear enemies and friends alike. He preferred the Kiri who sung him to sleep, who rocked him and kissed away his tears and made promises even Sapphire knew he could never keep.
He was filthy, he realized with dismay, sitting up and wiping away the traces of tears. The emerald uniform of a common household servant was smudged with the dust and dirt that came from lying on the filthy pavilion floor. He tried to brush the dirt off, reflecting that sweeping was not going to get this place clean—they would have to get hot water and soap to clean the pavilion, if the amount of dirt on his uniform was anything to go by. He dug into his pocket, producing a silk handkerchief, wiping his nose, and folding it up again. The head servants would whip him if they saw him like this and Kiri would lecture him on—
Kiri was dead.
Sapphire knew he was not very intelligent. Kiri had done the thinking for both of them—Kiri knew things, had plans and thoughts and, a rarity for slaves, dreams. He had kept himself as inconspicuous as possible, never drawing attention himself or talking about his beliefs to anyone but Sapphire. He had hidden in plain sight, sure that someday his Gods would save him. But his Gods had never made their appearance. All the sacrificing, the praying, the chanting, and Kiri had still died. Not even for his beliefs, which might at least have made him happy, but for Sapphire.
He didn't care if they whipped him. He couldn't bring himself to make it matter, to tell himself to get up and go back to sweeping. Every time he tried to do anything, he remembered Kiri was dead and something hit him, something so hard and cold he thought it might do his work for him and kill him. But it never did, and he always got back up and then the cycle started over again.
Slowly, he rose, remembering one thing he had to do, the last thing that mattered. He left the broom at the pavilion, and headed toward the courtyard termed the "Corpse Garden" by all those who knew of the Master's temper. He could remember when his father died, and a soothing voice he supposed must have been his mother's forcing him to look at the body. Over and over, telling him it would help. He couldn't remember more than that—not even if it had helped to look—but he had promised Kiri to hang his medallion around his neck, so his lover could make the journey to join the Gods in the desert. So he had to look this time. He couldn't just…forget.
He had worn the medallion around his neck all day, in addition to sleeping curled around it. He could feel it rubbing against his skin, chafing lightly under the tight uniform, and it had provided a strange comfort, like Kiri's touch. Kiri was the only man he had ever wanted to touch. It was a little like being back in the arms of his mother, being cradled in Kiri's strong arms, cuddled close to him like a little boy. Kiri was never rough with him, never hurt him or hit him. He rarely even yelled.
Sapphire loved Kiri.
He entered the courtyard and made his way around the rows of benches that had been set out for the Master and his court's entertainment. He kept his eyes down, but the wind carried the stench of old blood to his nose and he inhaled it, feeling his stomach twist in nausea. He had seen the remains of other corpses, criminals and traitors, as well as people killed purely for Master's enjoyment. He knew Kiri wouldn't look like Kiri.
He stood there for a long time, at the base of the platform, remembering when they had dragged Kiri away. The entourage from General Miander hadn't even cleared the gate when they came for him. He had told Sapphire that Gods would save them both, but Sapphire knew better. The Old Gods were cruel beings—they were not Gods of mercy and they could not be bribed with sacrifices and placating gestures. When they came for a follower, they took that follower away. If he was a particularly strong believer, they might bless him and make him one of the angry men.
Sapphire did not understand, always, why Kiri seemed to love them so, these gods of blood and sand.
He unhooked the medallion from around his neck, remembering when Kiri had caught a pigeon, plucked it and carefully shaped the feathers into this strange X shape, the shape he had tattooed all over his body. Many of those tattoos were Sapphire's work, painstakingly done with cheap inks and a needle. Kiri had never cried when the needle pricked his skin—but he had cried when he had wrung the pigeon's neck, murmuring an apology to it. Sapphire had loved him for that. Kiri had never taken the medallion off until last night, when he pressed it into Sapphire's hand before the guards had dragged him away. It was his one treasure. They would rip it up when they found it on the body, but Kiri had said that that didn't matter—the Gods would know that here was a follower in life who still followed them even after death. They would take his soul to the desert, and not leave it trapped in his dead, worthless body.
Sapphire owed his lover that much.
He looked up. For a minute, he could not understand what he was seeing. The post, where Kiri's limp, fleshless corpse should have hung, was empty. For a minute, he dared to dream—surely they would not have burned him so soon, not until all the other servants had taken the lesson to heart. That was what Rani, the kitchen maid, had said. But dreaming was Kiri's sphere, not Sapphire's. His mind could barely comprehend this enough to hope or believe. He could not understand what had happened, and he didn't like it. He hated things he couldn't understand.
Kiri had never made him feel stupid. He had always slowed down to explain things to Sapphire, and if it had ever made him feel frustrated, he had never made it obvious enough to hurt.
"You! Boy! What are you doing here? This isn't your post!" The rough voice terrified him and he cringed, a momentary fantasy passing through his mind—perhaps this was the voice of one of Kiri's gods. Then he saw the servant, dressed—like him—in emerald green. He carried a bucket of water, to wash the blood off the wooden floor of the platform. For a minute, the two stared at each other, each debating different courses of actions, and then Sapphire's eyes darted to the post. The other man's lips twisted in a momentary parody of a smile.
"Ya, he was a tricky one, eh? The Master is trying to say that they burned the body, but it's gotten out…Cap'n Jerik, he took out a team this mornin'. And they came back with empty hands. I'd say the little heathen go' away clean. Thas one in Master's eyes, tis." The malicious pleasure in his voice was obvious. No servant here held much love toward their erstwhile master. Then the man seemed to remember he was saying these words aloud and his eyes darted around with evident paranoia. Rewards were gained here by betrayal. "But I'm talkin' 'gain when I should be workin'. You run long."
Sapphire nodded, his bright smile momentarily eclipsing the sun. "Yessir, thankee." He turned to dart away, then glanced back and smiled. "I won't tell." He said, blue eyes clear and shining. The grizzled man smiled.
"Nah, lad. I dun believe you would." He turned back to his task, and Sapphire made his escape, body shaking with emotion, a smile tugging at his lips.
He huddled away in a nook made by erosion, a small hollow under a large bush. He curled his body around and laughed until his sides shook. Kiri was alive. Kiri was alive. He didn't care if it was Gods or humans. Kiri was alive. That was all it took to make the rest of it meaningless, all the pain and horror. Kiri was alive.
It would only be much later, as he moved to put it back around his neck, that he remembered he had held the medallion in plain sight the entire time he and the old servant had talked.
Lillian crouched. The scent on the air was a combination of blood-sweat-fear and it reeked of complications. She hissed, her tongue flicking out to catch the scent again. It filled her mouth and she resisted the urge to spit. It was not one of her people, then, for there was no familiar smokiness to the taste/smell. It was almost entirely alien—foreign, but she recognized one element of it. Whatever creature this was, it was dying.
"What is it?" Connor asked, green eyes wide. She glanced over at him and smiled affectionately. Her little brother brought that out in most people. Smaller than her, his small hands were far more agile than hers, and his mind followed that same pattern. She shrugged, and Connor rose from his crouch. She hissed at him reprimandingly and he smiled at her, showing sharp carnivorous teeth. Then he headed toward the scent.
That brought her out from behind the sand dune she had been using for cover. With a nervous hiss, she padded toward a form laying flat on the sand, something sticking out of it. She was almost too close when she realized what it was, and with a startled noise, she pulled back, ready to run. It did not even look at her, two fingers raised in the air, fingers coated in blood. She flicked her tongue out again, nervously tasting.
It did not taste human.
"Lillian, it's okay." Connor called. He hovered near it, knowing better than to get close enough to touch but obviously fascinated. Lillian blinked at him, a slow motion that indicated disapproval and disbelief. He smiled lightheartedly, an achingly human gesture. "Come on, it's badly hurt. It can't hurt you."
She approached again. The sun's rays hit her skin, reflecting dully off her bronze scales. The human jerked his head to stare at her, and then it laughed. A hacking, coughing sound, which meant Connor hadn't been wrong in his estimation. It was dying. But it did not evince fear or even the disgust so common in humans. Instead, it stared at her for a minute; it's mouth moving soundlessly. Then it spit out two words, two words in her language.
"Help me."
She was so startled by the sound that she almost missed the second, even more crucial sound. Dogs baying. It took her a second to realize she had to find cover. Her mind raced with calculations—where the nearest bolthole was, how fast, how far. If they caught her out here, they would do horrible things to her and Connor, enslave them and breed her. She could tear them apart if they were unarmed, but they had darts that would paralyze her while they broke her to their service.
"Help me." The impassioned plea seemed to be the only two words the human knew. Connor said nothing, but the look he shot her was one of wishful hope. Her large golden eyes darted in the direction of those noises. Wordlessly, she grabbed the human, and hefted him easily in her arms. He did not weigh very much—he must not have been full grown. Then she whirled and—almost gracefully—she ran.
The hot sand did not burn the scaled soles of her feet, and she barely felt the wind as it slapped against her skin, the membranes over her eyes protecting them from the particles of sand that blew at her. The human, though, moaned, and she could feel blood from his body leaking onto her arms, the metallic scent not unpleasant. Behind her, a dog bayed, perhaps catching the scent on the wind and she murmured a curse. She wouldn't get to the nearest tunnel in time. There was no way—she had to dump the human, that would distract the other humans enough to give Connor and her time to get away.
Then she realized Connor was not beside her. She spun to look for him, expecting that his endurance had given out. Instead, he was back where they had found the human, standing quite calmly, as though he did not know that his doom was approaching. She screamed his name and he turned and smiled at her.
It was a smile that wished her luck and long life. It was a loving smile. It was almost sheepish in its apology.
In short, it was a smile that understood what was going to happen.
The humans streamed around the dune, a large hunting pack of them. Connor hissed at them, capering madly as though in sudden fright. The dogs, scenting prey, forgot their training and went completely wild and the humans seemed to share their madness, for they all took off after her little brother. Connor ran, of course, his legs pumping wildly. He was faster than the clumsy humans, her brother, but his endurance would not stand up to a long run.
There was only one outcome to this chase.
Her race could not cry. Only now did Lillian understand the injustice of that.
She turned and ran. The human in her arms did not stir and she wondered if she held a corpse. Somehow she could not bring herself to care. She finally skidded to a stop, her stubby fingers hitting the top of an trapdoor hidden under a layer of sand and ignoring the shocked expression of the guard who lifted up the metal trapdoor so she could access the tunnels of her people. She handed the human down to the guard, ignoring his rather shocked requests for explanation. She scrambled in and jerked the chain hard. The trapdoor fell shut and she collapsed onto the floor, her head in her hands.
Around her, she sensed a bustle and commotion. Someone did something with the human, but she didn't look up and they seemed to know to move around her. Soon she would stand up and tell them what had happened. Somehow, she would try to explain to her parents why their favorite child was not returning home. She would tell the counsel and help them begin to mourn for Connor.
But right now, she was a sister who needed to grieve for her brother.
Connor was not afraid. Not when he fell, sides heaving, and a dog bit his arm. Not when a human touched him for the first time in his life, dragging him to his feet and making demands he could not understand. Not when the human hit him, making him spit up blood. The worst he felt was the guilt and sorrow, because Lillian would not understand. She would blame herself. She always seemed to think she should take the world's ills on her shoulders.
But Connor had hope. Even as the human continued to hit him until the scales and skin on his face were torn, he felt the warmth of hope suffusing him like the hot sands of the desert. He had seen the possibility for change in the dying human and he knew that change came too rarely to be extinguished by something as foolish as human hunters. He had known what he had to do, and he had done it.
Connor's people called him lilim. The closest the human language could come to it was seer. He saw things few others did—the possibilities inherent in others. In most of the people he knew he saw great possibility, but the human had dwarfed all of that. He could change the very fabric of reality for the better. Connor didn't know how—but he had seen the spark in the human jump to Lillian and it had begun to change her, to give her different paths, paths that would lead places no one of his race had ever gone.
He only wished he could be there with her—but his destiny was different. He wanted to tell her not to worry—not because there was nothing to worry about, but because it wouldn't help. What would come would come—the seeds of change had been planted.
"I'm sorry, Lillian. But its time we…" Whatever Connor might have said next was lost as a human, in a fit of frustration, backhanded Connor and the slender, dark red creature fell into blackness.
Kiri opened his eyes and found himself staring up at cold, polished metal. Around him, words in a hissing tongue he barely understood taunted his ears. He could feel his body again, which meant the pain brought tears to his eyes, but it also meant he was alive and the large creature that had rescued him was not some desert mirage. He smiled slowly and turned his head to the side, surveying his surroundings. They turned out to be rather bland, cold metal walls and floors without a hint of furniture—with the single exception of the bed he now lay in. But the two creatures standing in the center of the room caught his attention, so that he barely noticed the lack of furniture.
Both of them were large, upwards of six feet, but only one of them looked familiar. It had bronze scales running the entirety of its body, and he identified it as one of the Dragon People, the race that called itself the Doran. This, then, must be its savior. It was gesturing wildly in the air, hissing syllables tumbling out from between its lips. He tried to sit up and let out a groan of pain as one of the whip wounds on his back pulled itself open, blood oozing out.
Both of the creatures spun around. Before that, he would have called them unreadable, their scaled and snouted faces much less mobile than his. But his small copper eyes met the creatures much larger brown ones and he saw in them an emotion that transgressed any minor difference in kind.
Grief.
A lifetime of curiosity and boredom in the stilted world of servitude had made Kiri eager for learning wherever he could find it. While the few dragon people who served the Master were wary and secretive, he had managed to pry a few language lessons from them. He had gotten a lifetime of service from the barter system, trading one thing for another. He had never expected the knowledge would have practical use, however. But his endless desire to learn had left him with the ability to say the one thing he knew he had to say, even if he couldn't—quite—remember why:
"I'm sorry."
Sapphire was sweeping again, his face red from the slap the servant in charge of the household had doled out when he saw the condition of his young charge's clothes. The rest of the servants, however, were surprisingly sympathetic. All of them had liked the brash young Kiri, though they all made it a point, when giving Sapphire their sympathies, to condemn his beliefs. Nonetheless, Sapphire felt slightly warmed by the attention.
Speculation was high as to what had happened to Kiri, most of it negative. Young Dinai, the cook's assistant, thought that he had probably died in the desert. This idea had made Sapphire break down in tears again. The cook had hit Dinai with a ladle and offered Sapphire a piece of honey candy, which was now wedged safely in his cheek, the sweetness gifting him with a moment's happiness. He was sweeping out some of the servant's quarters, the ones provided for the servants of the Master's guests.
The simple sound of the broom against the stone floor soothed him, and he just brushed it back and forth, pushing the dirt around.
Sapphire was normally given simple tasks, reinforced with direct commands. Kiri used to help him with the harder things—jobs with multiple steps. He had trouble keeping the steps in the right order, no matter how many times he had done a thing. Because of this, all of the servants knew not to entrust him with anything important.
Except that the last week had been so busy—General Miander had given short notice of his arrival purposely, the servants whispered, in hopes of finding some reason to take offense. He was a prideful man, cruel to his servants, animals and children, but he was also a trusted advisor of the Emperor, and to be gifted with his presence was a great blessing to the Master.
When someone had grabbed Sapphire in the hall and demanded that he take a tray to a particular room, they had used the hallway designation, not the name of the inhabitant, and Sapphire, happy to be relieved of the duty he had been headed toward—peeling potatoes—went without question. It was not in his nature to question or to notice that the hallway he was in was far more sumptuous than the places he was normally allowed. He had knocked on the right door and was allowed in by a hard-faced guard. It was only when he started to place the shaving tray on the table indicated by the guard that he got a good look at the man who the materials were for. It took him a minute to realize he was in the presence of the General himself.
Sapphire had developed a coping strategy for the few times he found himself in the presence of people of high status and station. He ducked his head, stared down at the ground and hoped they ignored him.
Unfortunately, luck was not with him this time. Ignoring the shaving tray entirely, the General got up and walked over to the slender, girlish boy. Sapphire remembered looking up from under his lashes, and recognizing on some instinctual level the danger he was in. He tried to run, but the guard had stepped out and the door was shut. He hit the door hard, clawing at it as an arm encircled his waist. He felt himself dragged by a force as indomitable as the tide and started crying and babbling as he was thrown onto a bed.
It was not the first time, of course, that he had been bedded by a man. It was not even—sadly—the first time he had been raped. That had been a long time ago, when he much younger and more innocent, an orphan who could not possibly care for himself. But there was something so matter-of-fact about this event that it became that much more horrible. The General was not intentionally cruel, but he was not gentle either. Afterwards, he pressed a silver coin into Sapphire's hand, and pushed the boy outside with his clothes bundled under his arm.
Kiri had found him in a corner of the garden, throwing up all memory of food to get try and expunge a sense of pollution that had nothing at all to do with his body. All of the bruises were concealed by the clothes he wore, but Kiri had quickly figured out the basics, and had cried with him, making his impossible promises, caressing his lover and singing off-key. Sapphire was very much the singer of the two. But it had the effect Kiri had wanted and had soothed Sapphire until he fell asleep in his lover's arms.
And the next day they got up and went back to the business of living. Oh, there was some tenderness—bruises that made Sapphire sore, things he didn't want to do with Kiri for a while—but such things happened. Whether they should happen, whether it was right or just—such concepts were for philosophers, not two servant boys. They were too busy living in the world to worry about abstract concepts one of them would not even have understood.
It should have ended there, but it seemed the General had taken a liking to Sapphire. It was no secret that he preferred pretty boys, and even the other servants said Sapphire came under that classification. An extraordinarily beautiful eighteen-year-old young man, with golden hair and blue eyes and the mind of a child, caught the General's interest. He none-too-subtly hinted to Master that he would like to possess Sapphire. Permanently. Master, seeing a way to gain favor, gave his consent immediately—what was one servant boy to him, especially one who was simple and therefore not suited to anything but the easiest tasks.
But Kiri—his brave, beautiful Kiri—had fought back. Against all training and all common sense, he faced down the guards with a kitchen knife, standing between them and Sapphire. It was only bad luck that the General had decided to see personally to this affair. Well, perhaps not so bad—the guards would have slain Kiri instantly to get to Sapphire, but when a lucky blow of Kiri's knife had managed to cut General Miander across the chest, the resulting uproar as the man demanded a retribution so gruesome it had haunted Sapphire's dreams afterwards was enough that the two boys had managed slip past the guards, through the servant's exit and out into the gardens.
Kiri had gone back.
There had been a chance that the two of them could have gotten out the gate—it was guarded mostly to keep invaders from getting in. Never mind that they probably would have died in the desert. It was better than the fate that awaited them, by Sapphire's simple reckoning. Indeed, that had been their original plan—but Kiri had said they needed food. He had promised to be careful, but something had gone wrong—no one ever told Sapphire what, exactly, that something was. He suspected someone had told Master what had happened—later, he would find that General Miander had left without bothering to inform his host of anything. But the next thing he knew, there were guards everywhere.
Everyone seemed to have forgotten about Sapphire, who was the cause of this entire thing. Even the servants remembered him best as 'Kiri's lover'. The guards had taken Kiri to the "garden" where public executions were held. And Sapphire had watched as they flayed the skin off his lover, and had listened as Kiri screamed until his throat was raw, as Master smiled and applauded when a strip of skin came off whole, a testament to the torturer's skill.
He hadn't cried. Not for pride, but because his whole body was frozen in a chrysalis, unable to fully actualize an emotion he could not name, an emotion more intense and unrefined than anything that could be vocalized.
Sapphire cried at the drop of a hat. Pain, frustration—all of those caused tears to well up in him. The wellspring this feeling sprung from was too great to be healed by tears. It was pain beyond pain, guilt beyond the word's true meaning. It was the loss of naiveté. It was the forced maturation of the eternal child. The tearing of the veil of innocence, the scarring of a soul that—no matter what came after—could never erase the damage.
Imprinted on his soul forever would be the stark black and white image of Kiri begging for the pain to stop.
"Sapphire!" Sapphire looked up, startled out of the strange numb reverie he seemed to fall into easily these days. Dinai was jogging toward him, his braid of black hair bouncing along his back. Sapphire smiled at him, a silly, blank-eyed expression that meant nothing. "Have you heard? Cap'n Jerik was called in—they say he got the chop…" A crude gesture made Sapphire wince. "And they captured one of them lizards!"
"Dragon people." Sapphire corrected vaguely, wondering if there was really such a dearth of people to gossip to that Dinai had to come and find him.
"Yeah, them! But look, Cook wanted me to tell you, you might want to make yourself scarce, cause…"
Too late. The words, so meaningless, were always too late. A heavy hand fell on Sapphire's shoulder and he saw Dinai look down, look away—the way people tried not to look at a condemned man. Sapphire turned to look up at the guard who also would not look at him.
"Ye're Sapphire, yes?" The man did not pause to wait for Sapphire's answer, perhaps assuming that the boy's growing look of worry was answer enough. He looked almost sorry to say the words.
"The Lord wants to see you."