Chapter Two

Mother

Enk savored the sudden immovability of being clasped in Merka’s arms, wondering whether comfort always seemed so all-consuming when preceded by hurt. His breast thumped, buzzed in a way that set his whole body ablaze. Her fingers swept through his hair, felt like half a dozen points of sunlight teasing his skull.

“About last night—” he began.

“Don’t,” the former wet nurse squeaked, looking down at him through teary eyes, a vision so beguiling it stole all breath for simply being. “There’s no need to speak of it, not ever.”

“No. I want you to understand. You’re like a . . . mother to me. More of one than my own. Don’t you see, that’s why last night couldn’t happen. It would ruin something beautiful. Something pure.”

Merka stepped back, a lifetime of emotions running across her face—decades of petty hells and little heavens all bound in a brittle little smile. “You know . . . when you want to, you can be the sweetest of boys.”

She touched a knuckle to his bruised cheek, then fled the passions shimmering in his eyes.

Enk brushed a treacherous tear from his face and gazed up at the portrait of the red-coated Lord-Captain that hung on the wall in between two windows. Like every other morning, his father’s portrait towered from its perch, painted eyes glaring, judging. He sat straighter.

His home dwarfed him in so many ways. It was more than the architecture. It was the history of the place, all the Gueyes that had come before him. Their great deeds and accomplishments weighed on him, none so much than his father’s own. Yet not today. Not right now.

A smile curved his lips.

The door opened, accompanied by the swooshing of fabric, impassioned murmurs, and the exchange of lewd kisses. The smile slipped from Enk’s face. He did not turn to look, to look was to ink the degradation into his flesh anew, to tear at the canvas of his heart.

“Sweet, so sweet,” spoke a man in a voice rendered cavernous by hunger. “Your lips are candied fruit.”

A peal of child-like laughter.

Enk exhaled. How could such lasciviousness sound innocent? How could one trust in mere forms when beauty could conceal such poison? A certain blankness of expression, he had long ago decided, was the only solution to such contradictions.

The table jumped back, knocked by the thrashing of limbs entwined in a fumbling, groping dance. Enk locked eyes with Mother, Lady Phebe Gueye. She graced him with a sly smile, her fingers interlocked behind her lover’s head, her backside pressed against the table, her tongue flickering against the man’s own with an animal-like ferocity.

Multicolored ribbons pinned the cloth of her white dress like festive curtains, so that she appeared as something prized, something reserved for the most deserving. A bracelet of jade obelisks etched with ark motifs dangled from her left wrist. A headdress of rose gold wings and roses crowned her head, imposing order on her luscious blue hair. Yet despite her nearness, she seemed as distant as the alien horizon glimpsed through the Cobalt Gate, no less beautiful for its falseness.

“Morning, Mother.” He did not look away. If the years had taught him one thing about his mother, it was that she would exploit any weakness, slip her claw into any crack.

The smile dipped from her face, replaced by an air of boredom. She placed her palms against her lover’s chest and pushed. “Utu, my boy is watching,” she said in her sing-song way.

“Let him watch,” came Utu’s flippant response. He was a brute of a man, his knuckles scarred with the evidence of his barbarism. A member of the Peacebringers by uniform—a blue coat with brass buttons and red epaulets.

Mother shied from further advances, turned rosy cheek to puckered lips. Her voice cooed admonitions, rejections steeped in the erotic aura of innocence. Utu retreated, his face blotched by lust, another man made slave by want. Only fiends of the most mythic stature could resist such an allure—this Enk knew. Better men than this hapless fool had fallen victim to his mother’s invocations. Marshals and Generals. Priests and Senators. And to them all, she had brought ruin.

Face impassive, Enk glanced at the blue hat clutched in the man’s hand. “Lord-Captain . . . Utu, was it?”

“Captain Utu Levin, boy,” Utu said, the challenge naked in his beady-eyed stare.

Disgust hooked Enk’s heart and hate steadied his gaze. He understood the rules of this little game, had learned them out of necessity. For men such as Utu, there was only the rabbit and the jackal. Power was the precarious fulcrum upon which his life swung. To retreat before him was to become prey.

“A lowborn then.” Enk found himself resenting the ease with which he slipped into his practiced highborn arrogance. “Tell me, Captain, is this the etiquette with which you greet all members of the Second Estate? From a man of better breeding such a thing would be almost tolerable. But from someone. . . .” He allowed his voice to slide into nothingness, allowed the man’s imagination to supply the insult.

“Be nice, Enk,” Mother said, a mocking purr in her voice as though she were a cat toying with loose string. A move meant to excite the man to violence, Enk was certain. Few tested as Lady Gueye tested, few knew how to cut to the heart of a man with nothing more than a honeyed phrase.

Utu bared his crooked teeth. “The resemblance is uncanny. You even ape his mannerisms.”

Enk did not ask the obvious question, but it was a lie. He looked nothing like his father. In a way, all insults returned here, not only to his feebleness but to the gap that lay between him and his legendary father. Alapar Gueye. Lord-Marshal of the Empire, savior of the Second Crusade.

The silence became dangerous, edged with acidic wisps.

“Will you be joining us for breakfast?” Mother asked, taking her seat at the head of the table

“No, not this time, my sweet.” Utu donned his hat. “May I call upon you again?”

“Perhaps. . . .” Her eyelids fluttered with coy shyness, but her smile . . . her smile was all courtesan.

Utu left, the swagger of his steps matched by the broadness of his grin. And Enk met his father’s painted glare, raging, fuming. How much? His fingers clawing at his thighs. How much more must he endure?

“Do you like him, Enk?” Mother asked.

“You two make an interesting pair,” he heard himself say in a passionless voice. They had been friends once, he and his mother. Secret conspirators.

“Sweet of you to say so, Dear. I’m glad you approve.” She touched a finger to her lip, drew a slow circle once, twice. . . .

“Excuse me, Mother.” Enk sprung from his chair, propelled by welling revulsion.

“But you haven’t eaten.”

The scion of House Gueye made his retreat, heedless of his mother’s beseeching calls, fleeing as any sane man might from the gates of the Hundred Hells. The door closed behind him, and he broke into a sprint, chest heaving for the festive madness of repressed torments, for the fear of weathering further such transgressions.

Reason dictated that he should return to his room and unravel the mystery of what happened with him and Merka, but he could not stay in this place, not with Mother so close. He needed to get away. Sunlight swam through the windows, bathing him in cold light.

Suddenly, his ears tingled, plucked by the wordless song that escaped from behind the kitchen door. He slowed, wheezing slightly, then stopped. His throat tightened around a human heart, thrummed with each chest-thumbing beat.

Like a crisp morning breeze, Merka’s voice swamped through Enk’s chest, stirring, stroking. Every note was the remnant of a golden hoard, unmoored from time and space, possessing the ghosts of happier days.

Enk pressed his head to the door, closed his leaking eyes.