Darek had managed to hold his tongue in the presence of his female escorts. He kept his silence until after they had delivered him to a male soldier at the fort… each of the passages out of the main cavern of Durakesh being heavily fortified… who had been tasked with seeing him outfitted for the arduous tour.
“This is very exciting,” the soldier said. “Nobody expected General Anerik to go outside the ranks for his next consort.”
“Wait, consort?” Darek repeated. Up until that point, he’d feared a murder plot… now it seemed there was a worse fate in store for him. “I’m not getting married. I’m just the good time friend.”
The soldier’s cowled head came up and he gave Darek a very obvious up-and-down look.
“What are you, thirty-two?” he asked. “And where’d you steal those lieutenant robes from? The general doesn’t waste his time on minor conquests, he only captures prizes… and it’s a huge career move, for those who can take it.”
“Take it?” Darek repeated. “What, is this general unusually well-equipped?”
“Oh, he is legendary, but that’s not what I meant,” the soldier said. “Don’t you know anything? You’re lucky you managed to end up inside a house guard, you probably would have ended up polishing the sword of a water-carrier in the civic service.”
“Let’s just say I charted an alternate path for my career,” Darek said.
“Oh, one of those types,” the soldier said. “Well, the priestesses call it a blessing, but of course they would since without it they wouldn’t get any of our men.”
“Look, enough about that,” Darek said. “What’s the deal with this general?”
“General Anerik loves the male form, so he has three consorts to celebrate its variety: one intact male, one halfsy who can match his endowments below the waist, and one alt. He never keeps any longer than eight cycles… except sometimes the first one ends up being shifted into another position, if he really likes him. It’s the one way he has of bending his rule, though he’s never broken it.”
“And what if not?”
“Well, a few of them have been released and gone on to glorious careers with his assistance and patronage,” the soldier said.
“A few of them?”
“The general’s a survivor from the middle period,” the soldier said. “When officers considered it lucky to send a cherished lover or two on ahead of them… of course, that was a holdover from the high period, when it was rare to find a veteran who hadn’t seen multiple lovers go on ahead in the course of things…”
“Skip the history lesson,” Darek said. “Are you saying this general…”
“I’m saying he’s going to have quite the reception waiting for him when he goes to meet the goddess.”
“So let me get this straight,” Darek said. “I can look forward to eight cycles of caring for this general’s ‘legendary’ weapon, after which if I’m lucky I can kiss my balls goodbye and then spend another eight cycles servicing him, my replacement, and possibly a ‘legendary’ halfkind before I get to scurry down the invisible web to join his eternal harem?”
“Well, there is always the chance he’ll find a place for you in this world,” the soldier said. “The Watch Commander of the City Council is one of his former lovers, you know. One of the most respected men in the city. He can say hello to a matriarch, if he wants to, if you can believe that.”
“I say hello to my matriarch!” Darek said. “It’s an overrated pleasure.”
“But he can speak to any matriarch who visits the council chambers. This is not a privilege they grant him individually, it’s a right due to his standing.”
“If you’ve spoken to one matriarch, you’ve spoken to all of them,” Darek said. “Anyway, it isn’t very likely that there will be an opening for the Watch Commander of the City Council when my time is up, is it?”
“Well, no… not that position in particular. But there’s a chance…”
“I wouldn’t bet a moment of my off-shift against a life as a matriarch’s consort on that kind of chance,” Darek said, and the soldier went stiff underneath his cloak.
“Well,” he said. “Perhaps you wouldn’t, with your chances inside a house… but in the City Guard, in particular the Wall Guard, the opportunities for advancement are fewer and the chances to meet the goddess are more numerous. Most promotions come, when they come, to those who are willing to risk death. You’ll forgive me, Lieutenant, if a chance to risk death for promotion after eight or sixteen cycles of enjoying relative comfort, regular love, and all the standing of a general’s consort sounds like a tremendous stroke of luck to me.”
“You really think you’d enjoy changing cloaks with me?” Darek asked.
“I dare say that I would,” the soldier said, and though Darek had been speaking rhetorically, the idea seemed suddenly appealing to him, as well.
The soldier had not adopted any of the insignia of the altered, but it was possible the regulations regarding such things were different for the Wall Guard.
“You have balls under there?” Darek asked him.
“If you’re offering me yourself out of pity…”
“I am offering myself,” Darek said. “That is, me. My selfness. My identity. You want to change places with me? Grab your razor.”
“You can’t be serious…”
“Of course I am,” Darek said. “Your General Anerik has never seen me before… if he’s been given a description of me, you can be sure the woman who gave it didn’t go into much detail beyond ‘male and clean-shaven’… possibly only just ‘male’. If we trade cloaks and you shave your head, who will know you’re not me?”
“And you expect to pass for me to my commander and my shift mates?”
“Not a bit,” Darek said. “I won’t be here. But neither will you, so what do you care?”
“I’ll care if I’m caught and executed for desertion.”
“You’ll have all the standing of a general’s consort to protect you,” Darek said.
“Unless General Anerik is outraged by the deception and refuses to protect me,” the soldier said.
“Oh, of course,” Darek said. “We can’t expect a walking web of attrition like him to accept a substitute as if all men are essentially interchangeable. You lambasted me for pulling my hood down at a chance to risk my life for a chance at social advancement, but what are you doing right now?”
“But there’s a difference between an established path…”
“It’s ‘established’ because one ballsy general has been doing it for longer than shadows remember!” Darek said. “Do you know how I got where I am? Or where I was before I was sent to be married off to your oh-so-generous general? By speaking out of turn, going where I’m not supposed to go, taking risks, taking that which wasn’t meant to be mine but which nobody was there to stop me from taking…”
“And look where it’s gotten you,” the soldier said.
“Right where you’d love to be,” Darek said. “Do you think you’re going to get a better chance than this?”
“When you put it that way…”
Darek began removing his cloak.
“Your name is Darek,” he said. “Of House d’Wyr. Your matriarch is Duala Deneira. Your ‘benefactor’, if it comes up, is a woman named Durilla Degra…”
“From what I’ve heard, the general isn’t big on talk in the early stages of his relationships,” the soldier said, taking off his own cloak.
“Then this should work out beautifully,” Darek said.
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