Calliope's Wings Read online

  Look at me. Riding all side-saddle and proper and shit.

  She liked to have her backplates scratched, I discovered.

  The sun was brutal and I was thankful for both the ointment caressed into my skin and the more opaque cloak that was tossed over me. It had a large, floppy hood and the cape of it was as long as my too-long skirts. It was fastened around my neck, snapping into place at the edges of my collarbones into the embellished bakal. The pure white of it helped, too, against the sea of black around us.

  Sekhmet, the matriarch she was, eschewed any normal path through the traveling Udon now that I wasn’t sequestered in my omma. She weaved in and out of the procession, nuzzling her mouthplates and tendrils with those of the other Mahzri. Most of which were male, though there were a handful of females slightly smaller than Sekhmet. We even rounded out to the back of the Horde to trot alongside the juvenile Mahzri.

  And fuck, the little beasties were adorable.

  Well, ‘little’ was a very loose term. The smallest one, from what I could see, would’ve still been as tall as me if we stood side-by-side. Those ones had to run to keep up with the steady, brisk pace of the adults.

  The juveniles played and bumbled with each other endlessly at the back of the herd. There were adult Mahzri, too, acting as caboose and sentry, keeping the young from straggling or straying. When they saw Sekhmet, they trumpeted gaily and hopped around on their four legs with exuberance. I couldn’t resist stretching out over my girl’s back – ignoring the occasional twinge from my mostly-healed ribs – and ruffling my hands over the cowled heads of the young. Their quills bobbed with their crests as they barked and chirruped at me.

  The Udon, I saw, was set up stringently. To the head of it was Kor and his Zikta, a literal army of orc-ish men. Their numbers were…staggering. Thousands. I couldn’t keep track. I didn’t want to. And that, too, was only the warriors. There were Pashas further back, either riding their own Mahzri or clustered together on ornate, open-air wagons. And further back from them were the countless caravans and wagons loaded down with the Horde’s goods and slaves. Yet more Zikta bordered the Udon, guarding its sides and rear and keeping stragglers contained. All throughout, there were riderless Mahzri, which outnumbered even the Tauren.

  It was insane. It was a mobile township-cum-military-outfit.

  When Sekhmet carried me through the throng of Pashas, I didn’t miss Gaddi. In point of fact, I think she took me up beside my young friend on purpose. So, with a wide grin, I scratched her backplates vigorously and thanked her loudly.

  She purred.

  “Gaddi! My friend!” I waved to the Pasha, effervescent in my greeting.

  In the two weeks of healing I’d done in the Udon, I’d come to know Gaddi very well. She was scarcely sixteen – unbelievable! – and was the Pasha to a Zikta middling in their hierarchy. Although, really, the warriors were held in the highest of esteem no matter their rank. That’s just how it was in this violent, brutal world.

  We sat together every night to share dinner. Gaddi often gushed about her family, who were ‘lowly’ fishermen on the farthest Western edge of Luintak bordering the Dark Sea, and her upbringing on the ocean. She peppered me with a million and one questions, wanting to know about my family and where I came from. She wanted to know everything about me.

  I tried not to let it, but talking, even generally, about my friends and family back on Earth hurt. I missed them all more and more each day. I lamented that, even if I ever was able to go back, they’d never recognize me. I didn’t recognize myself most days.

  They’d have been heartbroken to see how far I’d fallen, too. I’d never been a depressive person and I fought for everything I had in life, but there was only so much a person could stand. Intau was killing me.

  I kept things vague, mostly telling her about my three older brothers, my Ma and Pop, and my closest friends. Mackenzie, my Mac, I remained hush about. I was selfish with him, thinking about him in quiet ways everyday and not sharing him with anyone.

  So many years now since I lost him and he was still tied up and around my very soul.

  I didn’t mention Earth, either, though she pressed, and instead talked about my faraway home like it was in uncharted lands no one had ever heard of. It was, of course, just not how they thought. She thought I descended from Skyvryn, their equivalent of Heaven or some other Otherworldly plane where the One presided.

  I relished in telling her about the skinart I used to do, pointing out my scarred-up tats, and telling her we had tools capable of tapping a needle so fast the eye couldn’t see it to drive ink into and under the skin. She looked suitably impressed, then begged me to give her a tattoo.

  I wished I could. The only way I could see it happening was getting a sharpened quill and, one by painful one, sinking dye in. Old Earth tribes used to do something like it before machinery and electricity was developed, but I wasn’t trained that way. Hadn’t even thought to do something like that.

  I wondered how the Zikta got their tats, but didn’t mention it. The Horde was hush about such things.

  I picked her brain for information on the Lubrei as slyly as I could, wanting to know more about these people I really had no clue about outside of the port-city and what I gleaned from my lives in the North.

  Gaddi, bless her naïve heart, was a font of information.

  “The Lubrei are the Original Tauren. They are the Keepers of the Old Ways and the One’s Eye. The lands to the North? Bah! They are backwards and wrong. They have lost sight of the One, though I hear they still fear some of the prophecies, as well they should. They have strayed too far and will be punished severely.” She’d thrust her chin up into the air haughtily. “I am proud and of strong bloodlines. My Sire and Dam always made sure I and my siblings understood the One’s Eye. The other Pashas do not care for me because I am from stronger bloodlines than they…and because I am so dark.”

  “What?” I recalled vividly looking her up and down. “Why would that be a problem. I think you are beautiful.”

  Gaddi had blushed at my sincere praise and ducked her head down low. She fussed with her single braid of hair.

  “For You to say such things, Innintani…I am humbled. You are the one all biis’a strive to be. I am too dark in complexion to ever match with Your beauty. No amount of respite from the sun could lighten my shade.”

  I wanted to tell her that I hated being alabaster white. I wanted to tell her that I used to have hair almost as dark as hers and a rich, golden skin tone. I wanted to complain about how my eyes were alien and frightening now. I wanted to tell her how I’d give anything to go back to how I was before that druggie popped me, but I couldn’t.

  No one would understand.

  I stayed morosely silent.

  The Udon, she told me one night, was traveling slowly to Mel’lau. When we arrived, the Tohtahk would present me as the fabled Innintani to the Lubrei at the temple where the Innintani’s alter sat. She was so excited by the prospect, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d have loved nothing more than to run the fuck away from that fate.

  I probably would. Provided I could get the chance to escape.

  Aaaand…back to the present…

  I was abysmal at keeping focused. I was just a flighty little bumblebee tripping from flower to flower in my own mind. My mind where things could be safer than the outside world.

  “Rocho, Innintani!” She slapped her needlepoint down onto the back of her Mahzri. The bronze male didn’t so much as flinch at the rough treatment. He just trilled his own greeting to Sekhmet and me. “I did not expect You to ride! Oh my, You glow!”

  I held my arms out beside me and laughed a self-depreciating little chuckle. “I am as white as shura! Of course I glow against these dark sands.”

  “Innintani,” her voice was chiding. “You know I do not like You being so cruel to Yourself. You are…”

  “Opari. I know, I know.” I waved her off. Opari meant beautiful or perfect. No one would ever get me to
believe that shit. No one really thought a walking skeleton with the skin tone of bleached bone was attractive no matter what they said. I refused to listen to that kind of nonsense.

  Gaddi sighed at me.

  While she was still respectful of me, almost to a fault, and never spoke my name, I’d built up enough of a rapport with her that she felt she could be freer with me. It made me feel like I had a real and true friend, which went a long way towards appeasing me. It alleviated some of my loneliness. Mari’et had been my friend, too, but I didn’t have her anymore.

  I thought about her a lot. I thought about her ties to Lutau, the city she’d said she’d run to while the Horde attacked Blackburhn. I prayed she made it there and to safety. No one knew I scouted the slaves out whenever we passed any of them, wishing with everything I had that I wouldn’t see her among them. There were too many, though, to see them all. She could be anywhere in the Udonak and I wouldn’t even know.

  Mari’et needed to be free. She needed to be a healer for all the unfortunate souls who needed her. And, she simply didn’t deserve the fate of being a slave. It would crush me to see her back flayed like mine or to see the light in her dark eyes die out from abuse and neglect.

  I forced myself out of my miserable thoughts and back to the present. Again.

  Jesus Christ, Io. Focus for one fucking minute, would you?!

  “Gaddi, I heard one of the Udon playing something last night. It sounded like a wind instrument. Do you know who that was? Or where I could find other instruments?”

  “Oh! They are in one of the itchto somewhere. There are many kut that make music in the Udon, but most of the instruments are returned to the namintak. Kut are rarely presented with such things to keep for themselves.” She beamed brightly, enlightenment dawning. “You play?!”

  I shrugged my shoulders sheepishly.

  “We must find You an instrument, then!” Gaddi quickly tucked her needlework into the simple saddlebag to her right while looking around at the array of Pashas and smattering of Zikta in their throng. Her face lit up when she recognized someone. “Adis! Adis!”

  I don’t know how she saw the other female from so far away, but a Pasha turned her Mahzri towards us as soon as she heard her name shouted. She wasn’t as dark as Gaddi, but she was close and had several brass rings pierced through her lower lip and above her left brow. She expressed shock when she clocked me to the opposite side of Gaddi, but she kept sidling up to us nonetheless.

  “Rocho, Innintani. Rocho, Gaddi. What has you so vocal this high-soli, tersti?”

  “Adis, one of your kut thumbs the strings, aichi? Do you know which itchto holds the other instruments then? Our Innintani would like to procure one for Herself.”

  “Oh-oh my.” Adis darkened with some amount of either surprise or embarrassment. I chuckled at her and waved from my saddle.

  “Rocho, Adis. Since our friend forgot her manners, let me introduce myself.” It was Gaddi’s turn to blush. “I am Calliope, though I know you will not call me that. If you do not know where the instruments are, that is fine. I am sure I can find them on my own.”

  “I would be honored to be of help to our Innintani,” she husked roughly before whirling on her saddle – her mount never once twitched in his forward movement – and looking behind herself. Her wide lips pursed. “I cannot see it from here, but we can venture for it. With all three of us searching, I am sure we can find it. …If You would not mind searching, Innintani. Gaddi and I could find it ourselves if we just…”

  “I would like to come!” I patted Sekhmet’s back briskly. She chuffed at me. I switched to English for my girl. “C’mon, Big Mama. Let’s go find me something to play with so I’m not so bored!”

  All togther we slipped back into the Udon, leading our Mahzri opposite of where everyone else was going. I didn’t miss the glances the Zikta tossed me especially, nor could I unsee their rush to be further ahead of the troop. They were, doubtlessly, tattling on me to Hulk.

  Let them.

  I was going looting with my teeny, tiny gaggle of merry women and I was bound and determined to enjoy whatever ounce of mischief I was going to get into.

  Chapter Eight

  Some hours later, I sat cross-legged on Sekhmet’s back, strumming experimentally on a string instrument shaped vaguely like a harpsichord, but much smaller. More like a lyre.

  My dumb ass was trying to play Disney melodies on it.

  Ma had wanted me to learn to play piano as a girl, then flute, then violin, and in a last-ditch effort to get me to play something, had given me a guitar. Pa’d laughed his ass off when Ma failed to turn me into an accomplished little debutant to parade in front of the other southern belle mothers. As soon as I got my hands on the guitar, I started trying to mimic Aerosmith and Bon Jovi.

  A princess I was not.

  Pa told her to be happy that I hadn’t gotten around to playing with the drums.

  I was no savant, but I could admit, if only to myself, to having a bit of a hand with the strings. Not instruments where I had to hold a bow or any other tool, but ones where I could use my dexterous little fingers. I’d loved strumming away on my guitar when I was a kid, still sometimes played background at karaoke nights with my shop gang when I got older, and made up my own shit when I wanted to kick back and relax after a long week of endless appointments with clients. My guitar at home was my cherrywood stress-alleviator.

  There’d been a ‘guitar’ in one of the wagons – the itchto – we found, but it was way, way in the back and I wasn’t stopping the thing just to get it. Plus, it was huge. Closer to oboe size. There was no way I could comfortably handle that bitch.

  So, instead, I had Sekhmet steal the bonewood lyre closer to the rear panel. Learning a new instrument would keep me occupied while my girl did her thing surveying her Mahzri and the Udon.

  I stayed consumed by the thing for the entirety of the day. I stopped only long enough to chat with Gaddi and Adis whenever Sekhmet patrolled near the two and when my girl chided me. How did I know she was chiding me? Because she warbled and barked in a fussy way, often stopping with one of the others of the herd to unload me so I could take a piss out in the open, under the scrutiny of hundreds of Lubrei who didn’t give a shit about my absolutions. They had no shame, doing the same as I was prompted to.

  At least I had a ‘portable’ shell with moss and a tightly sealed jar of tiktik to clean it afterwards in one of the two saddlebags tossed over Sekhmet’s flanks.

  And food. I had dry food like trail mix aplenty, something I ate often while sequestered in my omma, and two bladder sacs filled with drink. One had water, the other my pink juice. The juice, I speculated, had curative properties because my hurts healed quicker than I thought they should have. Plus, it made me sleepy. Medication of any sort always made me sleepy.

  I was bumbling through a song from Pocahontas, figuring out the notes. The lyre made airy, yet voluminous sounds with the frontal strings while the rear layer made strangely deep sounds akin to those that came out of a trumpet. Some of them had more twang or bass while yet more chimed and tweeted and I was trying to figure out the best positions along the pearly strings to get my notes down. I spent well into sunset with the thing, getting lost in my off-key humming and familiarizing myself with my new toy.

  Finders-keepers, bitches. I wasn’t giving it back.

  It wasn’t until a grunting bark – two-toned – sounded nearby that I realized Sekhmet had pandered up to the front of the Udon once more. She was abreast of Kor and his mount. The two beasts nuzzled each other sweetly while Kor glowered at me.

  “It is mine,” I told him firmly, tightening my hands over the carved wings of my lyre.

  He affected a stiff, formal nod. He didn’t speak.

  “It is dark. We do not usually ride into dark, do we?” I don’t know why I made it a question. I knew we never had before. I was probably just trying to break the tension I felt wafting from him to me.

  Also, I wanted to keep his mind off my
pilfering. I didn’t need any more fingers lopped off for my petty crimes, thank you very much!

  “We arrive to Granzee this lune.” He gave an arrogant chin-jerk in the direction before us. “Look.”

  I did.

  Well ahead, hugging close to the black horizon, I could see a dim glow of lights. Torches, I assumed, since Intau had no electricity. It wasn’t a small number of them, either. They stretched wide and I knew this must have been a large settlement. There were some number on Luintak; many more than the North gave them credit for. To the rest of Intau, it was as if nothing of importance or substance made a home further south than the port-cities and the Udon was a lethal shadow, a scary bedtime story to tell children.

  “What is the Udon to do in Granzee?”

  At this question, the male cocked a half a smile. He turned back on his saddle – sans the comfortable, cushioned back mine had – and walked his Mahzri on. Our two beasts were still nuzzling each other and, from the corner of my eye, I could spy something popping in and out of sight under the bronze male’s belly.

  Ah. Big Mama had an admirer. I don’t know why it made me giggle like it did, but I slapped my hand over my mouth to contain it and the hilarious snorts – very unladylike, mind you – that threatened thereafter.

  My giggles had Kor’s dark eyes on me again. A different sort of thickness filled the air around us. His hands squeezed the leather of his mount’s reins brutally.

  “You are happy,” he rumbled, his tone something I wasn’t sure of. Was he upset?

  “I just saw…” I pointed behind where his legs were opened across the Mahzri’s back and in the direction the trimmer waist of the beast was. The male’s penis was still swinging out in the open, the tip barely visible in the moonlight when it peeked out from the shadow of his belly. “Your Mahzri desires Sekhmet.”