Flesh Gambit (3 page)

“Pour.” She repeated.

The
Infantana’s
smooth flesh was oily with perspiration, and her silk garment clung to her folds and secret creases. Her husband had died two days ago, on the night of his wedding to the much younger woman. His daughter Alyssa, from his First Concubine and his only heir, now lay locked in a tower chamber “grieving” for her father until the new ruler of the family spire decided she had shown proper respect.

The girl began to pour the wine. Amber liquid spilled smoothly into the glass from the decanter. The
Infantana
watched the girl’s breasts dangle loose in her short toga as she bent over to pour the chilled wine. The
Infantana
casually moved her hand so that the crystal chalice deviated from the stream of amber fluid. Wine spilled on the animal furs at the foot of the
Infantana’
s chair.

“Stupid, girl!” She shrieked.

The
Infantana
rose to her feet while the slave girl moaned her fear and collapsed to the ground in supplication. The
Infantana
was merciless and swift. The riding crop rose and fell, raising welts along the soft flesh of the girl’s back. The
Infantana’
s heavy breasts rose and fell with the exertion, and her face twisted into a wild grin.

“Forgive me, mistress!” The girl wailed.

The
Infantana
was on her in an instant. Leaping forward she reached down and snatched the girl up by her hair. Twisting it cruelly, the tower mistress bent the girl’s head back and straddled her face in one smooth motion.

“Show me,” the
Infantana
snarled. “Show me you’re sorry, little bitch.”

The girl began to work her mouth and tongue without hesitation. So eager was the girl to please and so skilled in her supplications, that the
Infantana
, a skilled and subtle sorceress, did not feel the shiver of eldritch power that pulsed momentarily through her tower.

* * * *

The tower across from the
Infantana
’s rose above the library at the back of the spire temple. There the Caliph kept his chambers. He wiped effeminate lips with soft cloths and eyed the young slaves standing in mute phalanx along the wall. The little group of nubile youths had been a gift from the
Infantana
. The Caliph’s prayers to Cahlii, the First Among Equals, had been instrumental in releasing the protective wards on his former Lord’s soul, allowing the
Infantana’s
augurs to sever that corrupt soul from the mortal coil.

The Caliph burped in satisfaction. He allowed his gaze to play across the volumes of books housed in the wall shelves around his chambers. His collections of rare and diabolical tomes were legendary even in Gomorrah, a cosmopolitan city known for its libraries. So legendary that even the
Infantana
’s young charge, Alyssa, had begged to be allowed to look upon them.

The Caliph swilled his wine and pushed the plate of pastries away. He idly fingered his nose with a bejeweled finger and wiped the prize on his long robes. He patted the gigantic roll of his stomach and looked at the barefoot slaves dressed only in leather loinwraps and collars of hammered metal.

“Here,” the Caliph snapped at one of the lean young men.

The youth stepped quickly forward. The Caliph slapped the table top beside him. Immediately the slave bent at the waist and pressed his forehead against the smooth wood. Slowly the Caliph reached across plates of half-eaten delicacies and found a bowl of butter grown soft in the heat.

He drew the butter to him and turned to admire the flanks of the slave bent over beside him. Beyond the motionless servant rose a stack of bookshelves. Housed there were many of the scrolls dedicated to the art and positions of copulation. The Caliph rose from his chair, butter in hand, and began to adjust his robes. Contained among the erotic psalms was a particular grimoire of immense possibility. The girl Alyssa had fairly trembled in awe when he had pointed it out to her by name. He’d let the suggestion that he might somehow be persuaded to allow her to look at it dangle.

The Caliph set the butter dish down on the slave boy’s back. He reached into the dish and squeezed the butter into his fist until it dripped between his fingers. He threw dollops of it down across the slave’s flesh.

His eyes sought the spine of that particular grimoire. Standing naked behind the boy, the Caliph suddenly froze. Butter dripped out of his hand and dropped to the floor in yellow curds.

The book was gone.

Khat stood on the forecastle near the solar panels. He chewed one of the bitter green pills with the strange little rune carved into them.

“Tell the men to get the ship into position,” Khat ordered.

“There’s been a change of plan,” Orlec answered, his voice low.

Slowly, Khat turned. His primate stood at the front of a tight triangle of the corsair’s
six man crew. The cutthroats behind Orlec watched Khat with narrow eyes, sweaty hands tight on the hafts of weapons.

“Maybe your whore of a mother changes plans,” Khat answered. “But on the
Twisted Cross
I’m the one with the plans.” His hand came to rest on his waist.

“We want the girl.” Orlec said. Behind him the men grunted and nodded.

Khat sized the group up. He had kept his crew small for this part of the operation. He had picked good fighters and, though Khat was at least 70lbs heavier than the next biggest man, he knew the corsairs were all cat-quick bladesmen.

“We want the girl,” Orlec repeated. “This is your fault, Khat. You think you can bring a coven-whore on board and start throwing down sex magic and not expect us to need an outlet?”

“So take the coven-whore,” Khat offered.

Orlec laughed and the sound was bitter. “We’re not as careless with our souls as you. Give us the girl.”

Khat took a fold of his cheek between his teeth. He found an old scar there and relaxed. He tried the other side of his mouth and found soft flesh. He bit down and blood rushed hot across his tongue.

He smiled at Orlec, teeth bloody.

“Frenzy!” Orlec screamed in sudden realization.

The primate exploded into action. His naked cleaver swept up and behind him as the cutthroats, hardened killers to a man, lifted their own weapons in response. Their snarls and shouts were like the growling of a wolf pack as it descended on a wounded bull.

Khat’s big fist struck Orlec in the sternum. The
thwack
was sharply audible, and the primate staggered back, gasping for air. Khat turned as the first of the cutthroats leapt forward and swept down with the wicked curve of a boat hook. The point of the rudimentary weapon gouged a chunk of flesh from Khat’s massive shoulder, and blood spilled down the big man’s tattooed arm.

Khat drove the edge of his hand into the attacking sailor’s neck. The hook-wielder staggered backward, his throat crushed. Khat twisted at the waist, lifted one huge foot up, and planted it straight into the face of a third man rushing in with a knife held low. The renegade dropped to the floor and Khat leapt laughing among the rest.

Blood splashed out in great arches, splattering the wood of the ship and staining the solar crystals used to power it. Khat’s frenzy locked him in its fierce, grip. Halfway through it, the men started to beg for mercy, and he buried his lips to their acrid, unwashed necks and ripped their jugulars out with his teeth. He buried his blunt thumbs in eye sockets, he swept grown men to the deck and used his sandal heels to dash their brains out.

He howled like a wild animal and killed with preternatural strength and speed. He broke the back of the last man over his knee like a rotten branch and silenced the killer’s screams. Khat licked the speckles of gore from around his mouth. His eye, red-rimmed and wild, rolled, searching for prey.

Slowly he sank to his knees in the congealing blood and scattered corpses. He put a hand out to steady himself, and it slipped on the gray-blue loop of an intestine. He fell hard to the deck and lay there. The frenzy seeped from his body like heat from a fire. He caught a motion rushing towards him, and his heart thrilled at the chance for another kill.

He caught the figure in his hands and began to throttle it. Spots swimming before his eyes cleared and he saw it was the slave girl. Even a heartbeat before, Khat could not have stopped himself from crushing her neck like overripe fruit.

He released her, and she collapsed against him. She trembled, huddled in the lee of his arm. He tried to shush her, to tell her she was safe, but his throat was still constricted from the thrill killing. He croaked something, and she put her face next to his ear. Her breath was hot in his ear.

“Don’t let
her
have me,” the slave girl begged. “Please.”

Khat felt slow-witted and stupid as he emerged from the cloud of his murderous fugue. “Her?”

“Me, corsair. Me.” The coven-whore answered. “I want the girl.”

Standing above his prostrate form, a figure blocked out the sun shining in Khat’s eye, showing only a black silhouette. He saw the pendulous sway of the coven-whore’s full, nursing breasts.

His hand slid down to his belt, not to the hilt of his blade, but to the little pouch he kept there.

“Not the girl,” he said.

“Look at you,” the coven-whore’s voice was husky with lust. “Weak as a kitten, lying in the gore of your frenzy. My contract with you is done. Your augur cast. You are too weak to fight me. Give me the girl or give me you, but give me something to put between my legs before I burst into flame!”

The coven-whore’s voice had risen to a shriek as she spoke, and Khat pretended to cringe as she screamed. He slid another of the little green pills into his mouth and bit down hard.

“Go,” he told the girl. “Go, she can have me.”

He reached down with one hand and exposed his cock. The coven-whore shifted, and he saw the avarice fill her eyes with ghostly illumination. He felt her small, clever hands dive to his groin and roughly jerk him to readiness. The green pill was bitter on his tongue.

Khat closed his eyes as the coven-whore squatted down over him and he heard the girl scrambling toward the safety of his cabin. The coven-whore’s grip was liquid and hot and she made sounds like a wounded animal as she mated. He gritted his teeth against the pleasure and waited for her to finish.

Only as he grew closer and she began to drink him further did the witch realize she’d been tricked. Prey had become predator. She suddenly tried to disengage herself as she understood it was she who was weak and Khat who was strong.

“No! No!” The coven-whore cried.

His hands closed around her narrow waist like manacles, and his thrusts became rapid blows and the wet slaps were clearly audible across the deck to where the slave girl huddled. His face twisted into a snarl of satisfaction as the burning built up in the base of him and he began to erupt. The slave girl looked down at the withered, burnt-out husk of the coven-whore in amazement. Khat pushed the used waste from him, his body fairly vibrant with energy. He felt the markings of power mixed among his tattoos answer the call of the stolen energy, and his hue became golden as esoteric power burned through him.

“How is this possible?” The slave girl wondered. “How can a handmaiden of Cahlii be taken in such a fashion?”

“Cahlii is not the only god in the heavens.” Khat answered. “In Other Days the apothecaries of Anubis made medicines against the succubi. Cahlii’s influence is not invincible.”

“She is First Among Equals, Mistress of the Quatrain,” the slave girl argued, referring to the Four Gods who ruled in Gomorrah, the Tiered City. “She has ruled for a thousand years.”

“Times change.”

“But I saw you sleep with her before in the cabin. Why not then?”

“When a coven-whore gathers the forces she needs to become a succubus, there are by-products formed, certain secretions in the vagina. The thaumaturgy in the powders I took reacted to those additional secretions, not to the coitus itself. You thinking of become a sorceress? Don’t worry about it. I am master here. That is all which demands your attention.”

The slave girl hung her head and waited meekly for Khat to express his will. She studiously avoided looking at the withered mummy lying like a shucked corn husk on the corvette’s deck.

“Come with me.” Khat snapped. “I will free that collar from your neck if you can guide my ship. I killed my crew and my witch. You will be my navigator.”

“Me? I am but a pleasure slave.”

“Not to me. Now shut up.”

Alyssa sprawled across the floor of her room.

She was spent by the energies of her magics and the teeth-rattling force of her orgasm. Her legs were damp from her touch, and the high breeze coming in through the open window brushed her gently there like the head of a snake searching among tall grass.

She rolled over onto her hands and knees, hair hanging in her beautiful face, breasts dangling under their own weight. She gasped in recovery and with her sigh she heard the sound of wings.

Her head snapped up, and her startled eyes found the terrace. She heard it again and this time the sound did not fade. She knew it well. As the daughter of a Gomorrah Liege, she had gone a-falconing many times.

Uncertainty touched her then, for the wing sound promised a size she might not have anticipated. She forced her fear back and drew herself to her feet. The sound of those terrible, beating wings filled the air outside her window, smothering the rush of the sea. She heard a rustle, and then the wings fell silent.

Alyssa moved around the raised dais of her bed, trying to see out on the balcony at what form her invocation had taken. Her stomach knotted from apprehension, but the folds between her legs were still damp and warm from the summoning. She stepped forward.

“Come,” she whispered. “I have called you. Come.”

The creature stepped into her bed chamber. Alyssa gasped. She knew in one certain instant that this creature had come to command and not to serve. In that same instant she understood that this was what she wanted as well. That it was the only way things could be. She sank to her knees in genuflection.