Calliope's Wings Page 4
She did, though she walked like she was about to be beheaded. I smiled a little at her meekness. To think, at five-eleven and weak as a newborn kitten at their feet, she was afraid of me. What the hell was I going to do against a woman that had enough muscle to bench Schwarzenegger out of a job?
Once she was close enough for me to touch her shins, I lowered my hand to her scratched left foot. The wounds weren’t deep, but she didn’t need to be bleeding out with the cuts in the open air. Bacterial infection was a huge risk on Intau. Tired though I was, I pulled the healing heat up from inside and washed it out, knitting the sores back up. The women, again, gaped at me mutely before two of the others ripped Ruune ruthlessly out of my reach.
I flinched. God, I was fucked. I ended up in one of the tribes that thought magic was bad.
I really don’t want to be burned at the stake right now. Please don’t burn me at the stake right now.
“Innintani,” the lead female kneeled beside the mattress and me, carefully cradling my wrapped arm and wrist and guiding it back to my side. She set it down like it was already fractured spun glass. Her fingers stroked languidly over the backs of mine when she pulled away, her body shuddering.
Her words, when they next came, were a different dialect from the Lubrei in the city. Like Québécois and Metro-French. It was going to be a racket to pick out the difference in accents.
“You are awake. We feared You would leave us.”
Pft. Yeah right. No leaving for me. I’d just pop right back up like an unwanted dandelion a little further south.
I sighed, closed my eyes, and rolled my head back so my scalp was again buried in the pillow. My body was one big ache and my head was beginning to hurt. I wanted to go back to sleep, but more than anything, I was dying for a drink of water. If I felt better, I’d have crawled up off the bed to lap it up from the rug where the still-broken jug pieces lay.
Shame had its time and place and, at the moment, it wasn’t grimacing at me.
“Innintani?” The lead woman’s voice was suddenly worried. Frantic. Bodies shuffled around until I felt surrounded. Squinting my eyes open, I saw them all kneeling around the bed, their burdens set off to their sides, and looking down at me fretfully.
Liquid poured near my ear and my attention was fully caught. My eyes popped back open and my head whipped around to see one of the five pouring a pale pink juice into a carved horn. I struggled to sit up, whimpered when I couldn’t, then flopped back. Careful hands caught me, though. One cupped the back of my head to tip it up while the juice-bearing lady diligently poured sip after sip into my parched mouth. I choked on the drink no less than four times, but it was the best thing I’d ever tasted! Like apricot and honey.
The woman refilled the horn twice more before I’d had my fill of the juice and was laid back down.
A rumbling growl that was more animal than man ripped through the hut. The women all prostrated themselves, their hands flat on the ground and faces buried into the rug under the mattress. With this new position, I could see the scarred remains of where they’d been whipped. Ruune, I noted, had the most scars by far.
“What happened here?” Though the query was quiet, it was lethal.
Looking the Zikta up and down, I saw the way his leather trou clung mercilessly to his muscled thighs. His skin was so dark a bronze he was almost burnt chocolate. He had a wealth of golden tattoos – literally gold – glinting from his temples to his collarbones. I’d seen tattoos like that before on Zikta, but they tended to be a lot smaller, almost negligible on the warriors I’d seen in the market. His braided hair was studded with golden bands and amber stones. He had a bullring like the one woman, too, only his was golden. With his chest bare, I could see the mountain of muscle he actually was.
Then, he caught my eye and immediately switched from enraged to contrite. His fisted hands opened and splayed as he bowed his head to me. When it lifted again, his all-black gaze was leveled on me.
“Forgive me, Innintani. I assumed You still slept.” His expression moved back to thunderous, though, when he scored his eyes along the prostrate backs of the women. One of his boots knocked against a large shard of jug. His next words were laced with a promise of pain. “Who dropped the gourd?”
The women all tensed and I saw Ruune’s fingers twitch beside her ground-facing head. Her body trembled. Her indigo aura shaded with grey as her fear overwhelmed her. The Zikta clocked the shaking and his muscles rippled as his internal rage seeped out into a physical expression of his ire.
Nope. Nah-ah.
“I dropped it.”
All heads, the females’ included, looked to me. When the warrior snarled a bestial warning, their faces went back into the rug. Once they were subdued once more, the male turned his focus onto me. I wasn’t threatened by it even though I should’ve been. I didn’t want to be burned for being a magic-wielder, but I could stomach a whipping. Probably. I couldn’t hurt much worse than I already did.
“You would lie for a kut?”
Kut. Their word for slave. I hated the sound of their Tongue around the title. It made an already unsavory word worse.
“I dropped it,” I reiterated flatly. I’d be fucked if he asked me to stand and prove I could even get up – which I obviously couldn’t. Still, I wasn’t backing down. No way. Not when Ruune’s back looked like she’d spent a lifetime under the lash. She didn’t get the option of coming back from the dead if they went too far in punishing her.
The male sighed, deeply, before loosening his enraged stance. His tusks pressed tight against his upper lip when he clenched his jaw.
“Innintani,” his tone was long-suffering, “You will be trouble.”
He tromped further into the hut, his head bowing the closer he got to me and his face turning away from looking directly at me. He stopped by Ruune. Faster than lightning, he grabbed the female’s neck and lifted her into the air so her knees floated a little off the ground. His tusks and teeth sneered right by her torn ears.
“Thank our Innintani for Her graciousness. Only She saves your flesh.”
“Dashka, Innintani,” Ruune whispered tearfully as the warrior clenched his big fist around her neck one more time before dropping her carelessly. She hit the ground hard and immediately fell back into her bowing pose.
“Clean your mess up.” With that final order, he bowed more deeply before marching right back out the doorway. He had to duck to go through it since the doorway was only a little over seven feet at the top of the jamb. I watched him leave through the mesh in the other openings, though his dark body was mostly ghostly due to the thickness of the gauze.
“Well,” I rasped at last in English, “he was fun.”
The females’ heads turned up and they gaped at me with watery eyes. I closed my own to them. I didn’t need them looking at me like that, like I was some sort of hero. I wasn’t. Not really. I was just dealing with my hand in a way they couldn’t with their own.
I wasn’t unduly tired, so I just laid there and listened to the females when they started to move around again. I heard jars thunking and clinking around. The shuffle of fabric. A snap of leather. The women began murmuring amongst themselves softly, the sound a pleasant background while I feigned sleep. I could’ve stayed like that for a long time.
Unfortunately, one of them decided it was a good time for me to roll over.
“Hey!” I struggled immediately when the lead female – the head slave, I assumed – hooked a gentle, but firm hand under my right thigh and another to my upper right hip. I moaned in agony when I tried to wiggle away from her, my back igniting in an inferno. I struck out at her blindly with my right arm, only to have my hand and wrist grasped firmly to bring it back down flat onto the bed. She at least gave up on trying to roll me.
Tears were in my eyes when I opened them to glare at her. She looked almost more pained than me and remorseful.
“I am sorry, Innintani. I thought You slept and You would need to relieve Yourself.” Her hand patted o
ver mine. “Do You not need to go?”
Now that she mentioned it, yeah, I did. But, looking at the glossy item Ruune held in her big hands, I could see the oddly-shaped bedpan for what it was and wasn’t having anything to do with it. I didn’t care if they’d already had me piss in the thing and wiped me up while I was out; now that I was awake, it wasn’t happening.
“I will go to the pot,” I told her firmly, already bracing myself to get up. The slaves, all back around the bed again, shook their heads at me in a combination of worry and horror. They kept me pinned down to the bed with their stronger hands.
“No! You must not. We are here to help You.”
“You cannot stop me.” Okay, that was a blatant lie. Even one of them would be able to keep my ass where it was, but they wouldn’t be able to have me docilely accept a bedpan and being tended to like an invalid.
“Innintani, You must,” the leader began only for me to growl a little at her. Her eyes widened in surprise.
“My name is Calliope. Io, if that is easier for you. Stop calling me Innintani.” I batted their hands away from my shoulders. “If you want to aid me, help me get to the pot. I do not want that.” My meaning was clear when I sneered at the bedpan in Ruune’s hands.
After an inordinate amount of time, time in which I felt like my bladder was going to burst, the females decided I was the tougher party. That or they were afraid I’d call back in the unnamed big bastard who’d been here earlier and let him have his merry way whipping them raw. As if.
I almost regretted my stubbornness to use the chamberpot instead of the bedpan when they helped me to sit up. My back felt like theirs must have looked fresh from being whipped. Actually, it felt worse. More like I’d been run over a bed of hot coals. I gagged a little, choking on spittle, and the bedpan was thrust under my bent head to catch any spew I might have had coming up. Lucky me, I didn’t. Even luckier, the bedpan had to have been cleaned to within an inch of its life because it had no odor coming off it that would make me want to hurl my guts out.
The shortest of the females, both the head slave and one with a small cleft in her upper lip, shuffled to me on their knees. They hooked my arms over their shoulders so they could help me stand. My legs were unbelievably shaky and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it without their assistance.
I realized only then that I was naked but for some bandages over my forearms, another set wrapped snuggly around my chest – I felt the obvious signs of broken ribs when I breathed – and some white patches of gauze over other stretches of skin on my legs. My rough tunic and trou hadn’t, obviously, kept me safe while being dragged like a ragdoll through Blackburhn.
With them stooped over, probably uncomfortably so even though they didn’t say anything to that affect, we moved to a folding wall off to one side of the hut. It was made from the same bonewood, carved to look like a large, flowering tree in the North with bolts of teal floral fabrics between the renderings. It was as beautiful as the rest of the hut and more decorative than I gave the Lubrei credit for. It seemed that just because they were nomadic, it didn’t mean they lived like paupers.
I knew that, though, from my experiences in the port-city. Besides the Tribute handed out, whenever Zikta were in the city and perusing the wares, they always bought quality. They couldn’t have bought it all just to, what, burn it in a fire? Toss it over a cliff? Yeah, I was an idiot if I ever thought that.
I didn’t know what I thought. I was just that fucking spent.
The chamberpot, to my delight, wasn’t just a crude pot on the ground that I’d have to stoop over. There was a bonewood seat made for a bigger ass than mine, but carved just as beautifully as the screen was. There wasn’t a back to it, but there were shallow armrests that I used to keep myself upright once the females helped me down. They stood back, watching me, but I waved them off. I wasn’t peeing for an audience.
“Innintani,” the leader began only for me to cut her off with an angry slash of my hand.
“Io. Call me Io.” I sighed. “And I am not doing this with anyone looking. Please, just step to the other side while I go.”
“What if You have need of us?”
“I will call out to you.” I pointed rudely. “Now go.”
There. They left. It seemed like direct orders worked better than pleases did. Ma’d be crestfallen if she heard that. She’d always been the one to tell me to use ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. ‘You attract more bees with honey’ she’d tell me. The thing was, I wasn’t trying to attract bees…I was trying to get rid of them.
Shoofly, don’t bother me.
The sound of my pee trickling into the basin was loud. Loud enough to make me wince. Still, it was one of the greatest feelings ever to be able to let my bladder go. Looking to the side, I saw a cleverly shaped shell with the spongy moss favored by the richer Tauren in the depression of it. The moss, when new, scented heavily of something like cocoa-butter and I could smell it from my perch. Once I was done, I took it from its shelf and wiped myself clean.
There wasn’t toilet paper in this world. Between the lack of indoor plumbing and toilet paper, I was morbidly depressed with these ancient times in another universe. I was riding a cloud at the moment, though, since I usually had to use leaves I found, cobs, or – if I was extremely unlucky in one of my lives – a communal sponge all the slaves used. I’d gotten a bad infection once and suffered with a pustuled rash for weeks.
Never again.
Once done, I dropped the shell into the smaller bowl on the shelf. There was a liquid in it that ate away whatever refuse was on the moss. It wasn’t a liquid you wanted on your skin. The two items had a symbiotic relationship with each other, I thought, but not with skin. With skin, you’d end up itching for days with the unneutralized liquid hitting you. It was like a bad allergic reaction.
I called out for the orc-ish ladies. They were there instantly and helping me back to the bed. I was sweating like a pig spitted over a bonfire by the time I was set under the blankets.
The female with the cleft lip took a soft rag from a basin and began to bathe my tired brow.
“What are your names?”
“I am Shree, Innintani.” At my glower, she flinched like I’d struck her. “I cannot call You by Your sacred name, Innintani. It is not fitting for kut or any Tauren beneath Skyvryn to utter their sacred callings.”
Now I remembered. Mari’et had mentioned taking me to Mel’lau to see the alter of some fallen angel. Innintani. That’s what she’d called the woman. I wanted to laugh, thinking these people could possibly mistake me for some fallen angel. Where were my wings? Where was my sparkling, calm and patient personality? No, if I was anything, I was a demon. A resurrecting demon in this fucked up game of ‘Whack-A-Bitch’.
“Your name?” I turned to the head slave. I gave up on being called by my name for the moment. I was too tired to fight about it. Let them blow smoke up their own asses.
“Tan. I am first of Your kut.”
“Mine? I do not want kut.” I waved her off when she looked ready to argue. “No more. I have been on your end of the lash and I do not want to hear it. I do not tolerate it.”
“Innintani, You must!” Tan looked hurt by my words. She wasn’t the only one, either. The others, when I met their gazes, were just as broken by what I’d said. Maybe even a little scared. “Are You unhappy with us? There are more kut. They would be honored to serve You. The Tohtahk will find You better kut if it is Your desire.”
“Tohtahk? No, nevermind. You all are right. Brah. I speak truth.” A little jumpy, but that was understandable. No slave was ever immediately comfortable with a new Master or Mistress. God knew I never had been. All new Masters were considered dangerous to my life until they’d proven they were worth some of my trust. None of them ever were capable of moving up the scale from dangerous to okay. They always managed to kill me before that could happen. “I do not want kut.”
“Why? You need tending! Constant, sol to lune care.”
“You…Your scars…” To my infinite surprise, it was Ruune that spoke. Her voice was deeply husky. Deeper than all the females she towered over by many inches. Then I saw her swallow and pinpointed the pronounced Adam’s apple.
Fuck! Was Ruune a man? Her – his? – cheeks burned when I gaped at her/him.
“I should not have spoken. Forgive me.”
“It is not a crime to speak to me, Ruune. Far from it.” I held up my right hand and wiggled my only remaining fingers. The slaves all turned a touch grey when they looked at the scarred stubs that remained of my knuckles. “This was from my last time as kut. This was what I received for speaking out of turn. I will never do that to another Tauren.”
A heavy weight filled the hut and I flopped back harder into the bedding. I was so tired after my little trip to the bathroom and I just wanted to sleep. But I needed to get the names of my other supposed slaves.
“I know you, Ruune. Who are you other two?”
“Orla,” the one with a beauty mark over her right eye, a lighter smatter of golden speckles over her gold-to-cinnamon skin, bowed to me over where she was cleaning up the shattered water jug and the drying water.
“Tok,” intoned from beside me, stitching a silver and teal band of fabric.
“Nice to meet you,” I mumbled at last, closing my eyes. I don’t think I was awake for much longer than that. I fell back asleep with the taste of the pink juice still on my tongue and a happily relieved bladder. I was on the world’s most comfortable bed under equally perfect blankets. The only way it would’ve been better would be if I wasn’t hurting.
Baby steps, girl. Baby steps.
Chapter Four
An animal snarling is what woke me up.
Murmuring in protest, I rolled my head around until my squinting eyes could find the creature that was going to eat me. It picked a piss-poor time to do it. I wished it’d just waited a few more hours so I could’ve enjoyed my first full sleep since waking up on Intau. It would’ve been a great sendoff.