Durilla Degra may not have been a telepath, but she had an uncanny knack for catching Darek in the hallway on the lowest residential level of House d’Wyr. He would have loved to be able to avoid her, but the single passage open to him that led to and from the matriarch’s chambers also took him past the chambers that Durilla Degra shared with Daella Degra, and as the matriarch rarely gave any important duties to her descendant’s wife, she had plenty of time to lie in ambush for him.
She caught him leaving the matriarch’s room near the end of his off-shift following the on-shift after he’d foisted Alea off on Dehsah.
“My dear lieutenant,” she said, raising her head to Darek to give him a friendly glimpse of her face beneath her cowl. “How are you?”
“Tolerably well,” he said, though that was a lie.
Being called on for procreative duties always left him feeling strangely out of joint… he felt a physical pleasure similar to that he received from sex, but the passion was not there. It was bad enough with a house soldier or a lesser noblewoman, but with Duala Deneira, the house’s sitting leader? He went in nervous, feeling like he was pleasuring himself on the family altar… and he left frustrated because he would have given almost anything for a chance to bed her properly.
That she seemed to genuinely enjoy the experience only made it all the more unsettling.
He didn’t dare complain about his time in the matriarch’s company to somebody who would repeat it, though. Even knowing that the matriarch shared his disdain for the downwardly-mobile Durilla. Embarrassing the matriarch was embarrassing the house, and atoning for that… he might be able to get out of it with his balls or his career intact, but not both.
“I am glad to hear that,” Durilla Degra said. “We do care deeply about the well-being of our daughter’s lovers. How is our Dehsah?”
“Quite well,” Darek said. “Ce delights in the attention your daughter dutifully shows cer, even from a distance.”
“Yes, we have received many letters,” Durilla Degra said. “I am afraid to say that I don’t think much of the results of Dehsah’s instructions. I believe Delia will require remedial instructions before she resumes her clerical duties… basic literacy is, I am sure, a requirement for priestesses.”
“I’m sure the low priestess will take your recommendation for what it’s worth,” Darek said, with a slight bow. “But Dee has had many teachers. If there’s a defect in her learning, I don’t believe it can be laid solely before Dehsah’s varnished toenails.”
“Ce was the foundation of everything that came after,” Durilla Degra said. “I do not believe we will require cer services in the rearing of our next daughter.”
“Surely, you still hold out hope for a son,” Darek said.
“The goddess will provide what the goddess will,” Durilla Degra said. “But I’ve spoken to the matriarch many times about the folly of relying on halfkind nurses, much less one of Dehsah’s venerable age. The accumulated folly of so many cycles spent in pampered isolation can’t help being passed on in cer words, if they haven’t infected the very milk of cer breasts.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” Darek said. “How did the matriarch receive your concerns?”
“She was noncommittal, but she herself has expressed a belief in the steady degeneration of her line,” Durilla Degra said. “And it is hard to argue that on the evidence.”
“Certainly there is a marked difference between her and certain of her descendants,” Darek said. He put on his politest, most deferential inflection. “And how is your better half, by the way?”
“She sleeps,” Durilla Degra said, missing or overlooking the insult to her beloved as she basked in the heat of the respect she was being paid by proxy. “I’ve given her a potion… doing the child-dance is so stressful for her, the poor thing. It’s better for her if she’s unconscious.”
Lucky her, Darek thought.
“Is she being attended to this moment, then?” Darek asked.
“Oh, no,” Durilla Degra said. “No man is alone with her. I watch everything. It is not a pleasant duty, but I am willing to make the sacrifice for my Daella.”
Durilla was entitled to refer to her wife and “their” daughter by their names alone, but it galled him the way she inflected it. She more than reveled in her little-deserved privilege, she practically wallowed in it.
How had poor, dissipated Daella Degra ever been allowed to make a marriage compact with this woman? he wondered, though he knew the answer: the house hadn’t been willing to declare the only living heiress of the line incompetent, which meant that in the absence of any concrete objection they had been obliged to let her marry who she wished and hope that her bride’s sharp mind and sharper ambition would make up for her own shortcomings.
“In any event,” Durilla Degra added, “you will be happy to know that I have secured an important assignment for you.”
“Perhaps overly happy,” Darek said. He bowed. “I have duties already, and only a small time left before I must resume them, so…”
What he really wanted to do was go up to the training barracks to bury his member in the back of a boy or three to get reacquainted with his manhood before his on-shift began, but that sort of thing was getting trickier… being a breeding male diminished the respect the rank-and-file gave him, made them less likely to offer up their charms to him and more likely to foster design on his.
Considering how precious little time he had, it would be safer to go back to Dehsah. Also, he’d left cer alone with Alea for two shifts and most of a third. They had food and a sanitary cubby, but he felt he should at least check in on them.
“Oh, I’ve already spoken to your commander,” Durilla Degra said. “And he agrees that it’s too rare an opportunity to pass up. Unfortunately, you will have to leave at once, as they are setting out on the turn of the shift.”
“Setting out?”
“Your pardon, I’ve gotten ahead of myself… there is a certain male general of the outer militia with whom I have enjoyed a correspondence,” Durilla Degra said. “He has an altered consort, but they enjoy having an intact male between them, and I have been telling him of the superiority of d’Wyri men, before and behind.”
“I would not think you’d have an eye for such things,” Darek said.
“I have ears,” Durilla Degra said. “And I’ve heard it said often enough. After much effort on my behalf, he’s been persuaded to try sampling from our house’s bounty for his companion for his next survey tour of the far garrisons, on the condition that I judge a suitable partner for him. You can well imagine I thought of no one but you for the position.”
“Truly, I don’t deserve such a tireless advocate,” Darek said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Durilla Degra said. “I’ve certainly endured stories of your prowess at sword-play often enough, and if the rumors that have been reaching my ears lately are true, you’re equally sought after in the other direction.”
Rumors, my well-used ass, thought Darek. As if we don’t know who bears chief responsibility for that.
“I’m flattered that you thought of me,” Darek said. “But I really don’t feel I can be replaced at the moment. My responsibility to our Dehsah…”
“Has been well-discharged,” Durilla Degra said. “The arrangements you’ve made for cer security are both simple and all-encompassing. I don’t see what more any one elf could do. You’ll only be away for a quarter of a cycle or so and this is a very important opportunity, lieutenant, for the house as well as for you. Good relations with ranking officers in the city’s militias are essential in making sure we can get the best placement for the elves we send them and our fair share of any mineral or fungal wealth or other resources discovered on expeditions.”
“Even so, I’m afraid I must graciously…”
“I would not expect our firstborn daughter’s amekan to go against our wishes on a matter of importance to the house,” Durilla Degra said, and Darek swore inwardly. That was a thrust he could not easily parry.
“Your amikan is in agreement with you on this, then?” Darek asked.
“It was her idea,” Durilla Degra lied, so artlessly that it was obvious she meant for him to know. “I’m certain if she were awake, she would be most distressed at your lack of appreciation for this great gift.”
Darek was certain that if he pressed the issue, Daella Degra would be distressed when the question was put to her… but then, it didn’t take much to distress her.
“I suppose, since she is not awake and since the general is leaving on the turn, that I must take your word for it,” Darek said.
“I suppose you must,” Durilla Degra said. She clapped her hands, and a pair of female soldiers emerged from her chamber. “Escort the lieutenant to Gate Seven-Three,” she said to them. She turned to one of them. “And… hurry back.”
Darek wondered just how long the sleeping potion would hold Daella Degra in its grip.
“I… I’m to be assigned to the wall at shift-turn,” the soldier said.
“I have a free shift coming to me,” the other soldier said, a slight pleading inflection.
“Consider yourself reassigned to private duties,” Durilla Degra said to the first, ignoring the second. “Hurry back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” both soldiers said, bowing to the waist.
“Is that how you bow to a noblewoman of the line?” Durilla Degra said, and they sank to the floor.
She wasn’t truly a noblewoman of the line, even if her marriage entitled her to some of the privileges thereof, and not even the matriarch required that level of obeisance on a casual basis. Darek also doubted she had any real authority to reassign soldiers. Her seat on the house council meant she couldn’t be part of the military command structure.
The soldiers knew better than to make an enemy of her, though. They were likely more afraid of her than they were of their commanding officers… and they would deliver him to the waiting general without question or deviation. His only hope was to engage the one who’d been in a hurry to get away, draw her to his side by playing against their common enemy.
That was risky. He hadn’t been introduced to her. She hadn’t spoken to him. He had no relationship to her.
But it would be worth it, if it worked. They had to cross the water and get to the edge of the cavern before shift-turn… the general would not be able to hold up the caravan for the promise of a delivered lover, and it wouldn’t take much of a delay to miss the departure.
“I heard a rumor that woman-love was supposed to be mutual,” Darek said to her once they were on a boat gliding towards the shore. “Does the dragon get all her side partners that way?”
“He’s speaking to me,” she said, not in response to him but to the other female soldier.
“That’s funny, I thought you loved men,” the rejected one said bitterly. “You certainly don’t know what to do with a woman’s body when it’s in front of you.”
“I love men, I just don’t like it when they just… speak to me,” she said. “It’s rude and it’s unsettling. Does he think I am hiding a penis under here?”
Darek bit his tongue. Anything he said… literally anything… could only make things worse. If they ended up fighting with each other, the one he’d spoken to might forget to complain about the protocol breach.
“I think you might be,” the embittered soldier said. “You looked shocked enough at the sight of Rilla’s majesty… I would have thought you’d never seen one before, let alone used it.”
That was interesting. It was one thing for a married woman to have lovers. Giving them access to her… feminine space… seemed like it might have been another thing entirely. Darek didn’t know for sure, but he made up his mind to ask someone about it when he had the chance.
Possibly Durilla Degra. That might shut her up for half of a second or so, letting her know that he not only knew she was putting her soft-brained wife into a stupor to fool around with house soldiers, but that she was letting them take such unseemly liberties… she’d been careless enough arranging the continuance for the assignation in front of him. Did she think he’d forget about it in a quarter of a cycle?
…or did she not expect him to come back in a quarter of a cycle?
Darek had no contacts outside the city cavern, but Durilla Degra had reached her current position in life by spinning a web with strands everywhere. She could have more allies with the expeditionary caravan than a randy general… or the general himself could be prepared to act on her behalf.
For a moment, Darek considered jumping from the boat and disappearing beneath the icy black waters of Durakesh. It would have been suicidal for most, but he was a strong swimmer and bore a charm around his neck that prevented him from being noticed by aquatic predators… the key to his easy infiltration of the orchard island. Only the monks and their barges could pass through the dome barrier that surrounded it, but he could swim under the wall.
The problem would be where to go. He couldn’t go back the house and denounce Durilla Degra for a plot for which he had no proof. If he jumped out of the boat, he would be a houseless outcast… he would give up his position, everything he’d worked for, and his lovers.
Dehsah had already been abandoned by Dee and Alea… until Dee’s return, he was all ce had.
I’ll stay on and see it through, he decided. If I can foil whatever trap “Rilla” has laid for me, maybe I can even salvage some proof from it.
