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The
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"—and
here's a sauna for you. I've taken the liberty. I'll take your boots,
sir."
And
rest-dress by implication would be waiting in the warmth of the
dry sauna, with clean linen. Capitulating, Andrej sat down on the
changing-bench and started to strip. A man was slave to his servants
from one end of the Bench to the other, Andrej mused to himself.
There was no sense in arguing with people who had gone to such lengths
for one's benefit.
It
felt good to wash.
The
water was perhaps not over-hot, but it stayed warm enough throughout
the duration of his shower; and Robert had promised him a sauna,
which would serve very well for heat. Robert declined to let him
go into the sauna to dry off once he was rinsed, though. Robert
handed him a towel and took a towel of his own to Andrej's back
instead, talking all the while.
"You
know. Where I come from when someone has deprived your household
of part of its wealth they're expected to replace the loss, to make
it good. Beast for beast. Grain for grain. And when one of the family's
been lost to quarrel it's one of the family missing, isn't it? I
wonder if his Excellency's familiar with the tradition."  TOP
Andrej
thought about it for a moment, scrubbing at his hair with the towel.
Stildyne would be at him with the trimmers at any day. Just as well
Stildyne was not here. "I don't believe I've heard it put quite
that way, Robert." Blood-guilt was almost always answered in blood,
though, wasn't it? On Azanry there were volumes measures thick discussing
and dissecting the issue.
"Taking
a man's life is to diminish his household and his weave by so much,
and the women are made poorer by it. It can only be answered by
replenishment, a back to the labor, a voice to carry the weave.
But a woman would hardly care to make her husband's murderer the
maister of her household. Obviously."
Well,
yes, obviously. Or else a man would logically murder a rival to
obtain his rival's wife. There was a story about that on Azanry,
the epic of Kumitaz. Two thousand pages, give or take four hundred
depending on which version one accepted as canonical. Sixty lines
of prose text on a page, scanned in precise measure to an heroic
meter no longer in general use. Andrej had read about the Kumitaz,
but he couldn't say he'd ever gotten past the first few thousand
lines, himself. He was saving it for the years of his retirement.
"A
robber who's stolen a man from the weave owes something precious
in return, to replace the value of what he took. What's more precious
to a man than his own childer? So it takes a child of his body to
make peace between weaves. And when a man accepts blame for murder
he accepts his responsibility to make the debt good. Sir."
Andrej
wasn't quite sure he liked that idea, in the abstract. How many
people were dead by his hand, over the years? He would be in bed
for weeks on end. He had to admit the basic practicality of the
approach, though. As long as the child wasn't abused for its parentage
the weregeld would tend to reduce further conflict in the next generation.
At least in theory. TOP
"It's
hard to imagine a woman bending herself to embrace the man who has
murdered her husband." Or her brother, or her father, or whomever's
assassin. "And what's to stop a woman from rather more direct revenge?
Surely the men would all be murdered whilst they were caught up
in their duty. As it were."
He
was dried off now, and ready to go into sauna. Robert hadn't stepped
aside yet, though. Robert still stood between Andrej and the sauna
door, holding a towel for Andrej to wrap around his waist.
Whatever
for?
"Taking
another's child is vengeance enough, and a woman is responsible
for stewardship. And the child is raised as the dead man's own get,
and it's her right to demand reparations, your Excellency. A man
is glad to be given the chance to make it right. Else the guilt
stains his weave forever, and that's a shameful reproach to his
parents and kin."
Somehow
the long slow accumulation of oddities was beginning to come together
in Andrej's mind in a very unusual pattern.
"Robert.
Please. You cannot mean to tell me. It is beyond all imagining."
There
was someone in the sauna already. TOP
"It's
her right, sir. According to our way of things." Nor was Robert
hastening to dispel an incorrect assumption. This was getting worse,
and worse, and worse. "She's come to me and claimed it, and it would
have broken your heart to see how feared she is. But it's her right.
And her duty to her brother."
Heart
to heart, and neither rank nor Bond between them. Man to man. Robert
knew what was right-by his own lights at least. And Robert was asking
him to do the right thing. "If his Excellency would be graciously
pleased to make allowances. Sir."
Was
he to be murdered in the sauna by the vengeful hand of a woman bereft?
It
almost seemed preferable than the alternative.
His
fish, disloyal, unthinking, unhelpful, didn't care.
For
whatever unfathomable reasons of its own his fish thought the idea
of a lady in the sauna was intriguing. Fish had no sense of timing
or propriety. That was one of the great burdens of living with a
fish.
There
was to be no help for it but to at least speak to whomever, then.
"Very
well." Demands were seldom made of him by bond-involuntaries, even
ones so free from normal control as Robert was. "I will see what
can be done. If anything at all."
Backing
into the sauna with a towel wrapped around his waist, Andrej Koscuisko
opened the door, and turned toward the interior of the room to meet
his fate. TOP
Andrej
pushed open the sauna door with diffident reluctance, looking at
the slatted floor, unwilling to raise his eyes. Uncertain as to
how to approach the task to which Robert had set him. It was unthinkable.
He would make his excuses and leave. There was no other solution.
He was decided.
He
saw no feet upon the slatted floor, female or otherwise.
The
door closed behind him.
Had
Robert been having a joke at his expense?
Was
there another exit to this room?
Feeling
foolish, Andrej glanced from one end of the sauna to the other,
still unwilling to raise his eyes. Someone had made up a bed in
the sauna, he could see that. Layers of toweling laid down across
a mattress made up of bundles of toweling held in place in the pit
created by moving four benches into an open square. Ingenious. Unwelcome.
Andrej made a face of half-serious disgust to see it: and a woman
spoke.
"You've
no call to geek your mou' at me like that, Koscuisko. I know my
rights. And I mean to have them. You should thank me for the settling
of the debt, rather."
A
young woman, but surprisingly determined; the sound of it startled
Andrej into raising his eyes at last to stare in the direction that
the voice was coming from. One of the upper benches. Sitting very
properly cross-legged with the toweling tucked as modestly as any
severe aunt could demand. TOP
She
had undressed in the warmth of the moderately-heated sauna, obviously
enough, perhaps to spare herself the awkwardness of stripping in
front of a stranger; the strands or dark hair that had escaped her
braid were clinging alongside of her face, black with sweat.
Thin.
The
bones of her bared shoulders were so prominent as to be pitiful.
And yet her shoulders were bared for him, as if she knew how naked
shoulders spoke to the fish of a decent Dolgorukij-or even his.
His fish crested beneath his towel at the sight of it, but he had
to say something. She was staring at him, waiting for a reply. Biting
her lips, which reddened.
"Robert
has overstepped himself." Perhaps if he was firm enough he could
get out of this without giving unnecessary offense to a woman who
had certainly never done anything to him. "It is really too forward.
You will excuse me, Maistress, whoever you are. Please. Dress yourself.
This is a mistake."
"Your
man has only done what an honest man should." She was not yielding
to authority. Why should she? She was Nurail, and believed that
he had murdered her brother. There was no reason to expect her to
listen to a thing he said. "And shown himself your honest servant,
who cherishes your best interest. Don't make this any harder than
it is already."
Please.
He
heard the word, although she did not say it.
Had
he not heard the same word from her brother before he died, whoever
that brother was? TOP
Andrej
stepped up onto the bench that formed one side of the makeshift
bed, reaching out his hand to coax her down. She put her hand into
his; it was trembling, and for her fingers to be as cool as they
were in a sauna meant that she was as tense as surely ruled out
any sport of surf and fishes.
On
the other hand the sauna was adequately warm, but not too warm.
Robert had taken thought for the effects of exercise in extreme
temperatures. If she was sweating-as she was-it was her nerves,
then.
"It
does not have to be difficult." Standing on the bench with her Andrej
experienced a sudden instinctive impulse to put his arms around
her, comfort her, protect her. She was so thin. And she was so determined.
"It can be quite easy, you dress and leave, I stay. Or vice versa.
You need not put yourself to this."
She
was also stubborn. And she was proud. "It's you I do a favor for,
Uncle. Stop talking. Honor my brother's memory and be reconciled
to his weave. Or carry my curse to your grave, your choice."
Oh,
so many curses. So many murders. She would not bend to court him;
why should she? And still she was not leaving, either.
All
right.
If
there was to be no other way.
Bowing,
Andrej kissed the hand he still held, and led this determined young
lady onto the bed Robert had made of toweling. "Well, would you
like to tell me then, about your brother?" A poor choice for conversation,
perhaps, but some conversation was better than none. "Sit, sit.
Look, Robert has made a place for us. Careful." TOP
Maybe
once she started to wake to precisely what she had aimed herself
at she would take fright and bolt. A man could hope. Settling her
gently to sit on the bed with her back to the upper bench Andrej
sat down beside her, and trailed the fingers of one hand from the
near joint of her thumb up to the soft inside bend of her elbow,
then up her arm. She shivered. It was not quite fearful, that shiver.
"His
name was Pike Wryneck. And his mother's people held the Sundered
Towline."
Oh,
it was her half-brother, then. And Andrej thought he recognized
the weave, by name. He had a vague memory of a Sundered Towline.
He stroked her arm again, and settled closer, thinking very seriously
about kissing the hollow of her throat. Perhaps her shoulder. Since
she was in collusion with his fish he might as well go along with
the two of them, Andrej supposed. And he had probably murdered her
brother.
His
fish didn't care.
Nor
was the young woman herself leaping to her feet to flee in suddenly-realized
horror of her situation, not even when Andrej tucked his arm around
her back and took her into a modified embrace. Stroking her arm.
Would nothing frighten her away?
Did
he want to?
"What
is your name, then. You already know mine."
She
was not dressed, beneath her layered towels. Nor was he. And yet
she had the advantage of more than just the name, she had the advantage
in toweling as well. She wore two to his one. She did not seem to
have as much of a figure as a woman properly ought, beneath her
towel; she watched the progress of his hand with attentive suspicion
as he teased the soft skin of the fold of her arm, and the bend
of her shoulder, and set out to consider to stroke her breasts beneath
her towel. To find out where they were. To find out if she had any.
TOP
"My
name is Triona. And I shall call you by your name, which is 'butcher.'"
How
could such a custom have been started, to expect a man to lie with
a woman who had only well-earned hatred for him?
What
was the point?
Was
the point that a man would have to humble himself to her body in
order to do the thing and not do injury, which would only create
further conflict?
His
fish was not the least bit troubled by the idea. But Andrej was
tired. He wasn't sure how far he was willing to indulge this idea.
"Well,
then. Triona. You should at least kiss me. Or else I may not be
able, in the end, to follow through."
A
bit of a lie. Perhaps not too much of one. She clearly didn't care
for the idea; well, neither did he care to be put out to stud in
this manner, as though he'd been a prize ram of some sort.
Grimacing
a little with distaste-geeking her mouth at him, she would have
said-she turned her face towards him. Not good enough. After a moment
she stretched out her neck and put her mouth to his, and her lips
softened. It was a very pleasant softening. Andrej played lip-games
with her mouth, stroking her breasts beneath the towel, feeling
her nipples harden against his fingertips. TOP
He
was beginning to enjoy himself.
Once
he but knew where her nipples were he knew how to make her gasp
and sway toward him, seeking the touch of his hand while her jaw
relaxed and her mouth opened to him. Andrej took merciless advantage,
tightening his hold around her body.
"Touch
me," he suggested. His voice sounded a little thick, to his own
ears. A little hoarse. "Let us share some pleasure. Come, be fair."
Then
slowly her left arm crept up around his naked back, and slowly her
right hand sought out his chest. It was a enough to stiffen a man's
fish in anticipation. She could play the same tricks on him as he
on her, it seemed, but the little scratching of her nails against
his skin made him so drunk with the need for the ocean that Andrej
stopped caring if he was exploiting her. Or being exploited.
She
indulged his kisses, but she went traveling; and proved that she
could make him gasp in turn by the light suckling of her soft hot
mouth against his throat. So intense was the sensation that he almost
wished to put her away from him, he was so stiff; and had to still
himself with a stern effort against his own reflexive gesture of
rejection.
It
was his instinct to reject too intense a physical pleasure, putting
him in danger of expiring of a surfeit of caresses before his fish
had left dry land. And at the same time such pleasure as she gave
him, thoughtfully, returning to him such caresses as gave her pleasure,
was not to be rejected but embraced.
He
slipped her towel away from her breasts and kissed her as she kissed
him, trying not to think about where her slim little fingers seemed
inclined to travel. Seeking his towel in turn. Seeking the only
towel that he wore.
She
showed him what she liked, what she needed, with such generosity
that he no longer begrudged a fraction of his earlier resentment
and skepticism, but went willingly to work to demonstrate his mastery
of the lessons she attempted to convey. Conveyed so well. TOP
For
his reward he got more distraction, but at least by the sound of
heavy breathing it was more than just the one of him aroused and
passionate for an embrace.
She
slipped his wrap, and the towel fell away across his hip. The stroking
of her fingertips across the now-bared and seldom-so-visited skin
of his hip and thigh made Andrej writhe in erotic torment. If she
should take his fish into her hand-he would be forced to speak,
to reveal his fear of failure, lest he betray all of her careful
handling-
Not
his fish, thanks be to all Saints. But the channel of the river
against which a man's fish properly rested, taking his stones into
her hand and rolling them one by one in her strong capable fingers
against her palm with utmost delicacy. To maddening effect.
And
it had been his idea that they share pleasure, was he keeping up
his end of the bargain to which she had tacitly-but oh, so tangibly-agreed?
Her
towel was wrapped once and half a turn around her waist. It was
awkward pulling it away, but she lifted herself away from the towel-mattress
to help, which was encouraging evidence that she was engaged in
the procedure.
Perhaps
it was time to lie down.
She
was a little uncertain about that, but she surrendered to his urging
with good-will, and continued to tease his body as she lay down
with the stroking of the palms of her hands, and the pleasurable
scratching of her modest little fingernails, and the considered-almost
playful-kisses she bestowed upon him where he least expected them.
And
somehow precisely where he most desired them, discovering each time
she turned her attention to some new field of inquiry that-oh, yes-that
was exactly what he wanted. And as much of it as he could get. Gone
were reservations about propriety, about her willingness, about
the good taste of sleeping with the sister of a man that he had
murdered in order to breed a child upon her body in atonement for
his crime, to make up the lack. TOP
All
that was left was simple pleasure in her, and gratitude for her
caresses she shared so generously with him, and the cheerfully ominous
certainty lurking in the back of his lust-befuddled mind that if
he didn't mind what he was about he would disgrace himself and disappoint
the lady.
Travel.
Yes.
Andrej
stroked down the length of her thin flanks to find her hips, and
seek for shellfish in the shallows of her ocean. The tide was rising,
true enough, and each further evidence of her arousal only aroused
him further.
It
wasn't enough to stroke the swollen flesh and revel in the silkiness
of slippery nectar beneath his fingers. It was wonderful fun to
surprise her with two fingers, three fingers, insinuated within
her body, because she cried out loud as he stroked her, and clung
to his shoulders desperately.
She
had nothing to fear, Andrej knew that. Women were not like men.
They could crest the waves time and again within the same few eights'
time. A man could only hope to seek on steadily after his goal and
hope to catch the wave, and not be left to expire in ignominious
failure, thrashing about on the rocks and gasping for air.
Let
her cry out, then, Andrej told himself, with firmness not unmixed
with self-satisfaction.
She
had more cries in her than that, and he would prove it.
The
little fish he wanted was firm and stiff and brisk, but it was shy,
and could not be held firmly to its place. There was only one thing
to be done with such a fishling, and that was to consume it live
and whole. It was a delicacy Andrej did not often have the opportunity
to enjoy, and he was determined upon it now, kissing his way down
her body to his goal as Triona shivered and touched her fingers
to his head. TOP
She
was as open to him now as any man's fish could want, and yet he
was not quite sure of her, she was Nurail. He had to take steps
to be assured that her body was as ready as it could be, before
he asked her to receive his own; and what better thing before a
fish ran headlong into the breakers of her eternal ocean than to
have a fishlette appetizer?
Andrej
found her minnow, waiting. Glistening in the uncertain light, hard
and pink and pearly, tasting of salt. Triona was talking to him,
now, but it was not in words, and he had better things to do than
try to answer her. He had a little minnow, here, and it was so nice
in his mouth, against his tongue. Almost like a berry, and not a
fish, but whoever heard of such a hot and throbbing little berry,
or a berry that was salt in its sweetness?
This
was a particularly nice one. Andrej had never yet met a minnow that
he had not liked, but this one was so frisky that it tried to run
away even as it sought his attention eagerly. Half-wild. Friendly
and kindly disposed toward him, but full of such a wild excess of
energy that the taste and feel of it was almost electrifying. He
set his teeth, carefully, at the base of the minnow's tail, to keep
it where he wanted it to suckle at his will; and Triona sobbed aloud,
and wrapped her two hands into tight fists in his hair, and forgot
to call him "butcher" after all.
He
hadn't had his supper.
He
was hungry.
A
minnow was a little fish, quite small, and it was some time before
Andrej could satisfy his appetite. Its taste was very rich, that
was true. But it was so sweet that he could not get enough of it,
and in the end it was only the aching of his own fish against his
belly that called him away from his self-indulgent feast to seek
the ocean like a decent man in hopes a young fish might come of
the quest.
It
was awkward, straightening himself out, and he didn't really want
to leave the minnow. It took many last-minute parting kisses, as
he rearranged, and finally Triona herself took firm control of the
situation and reminded him of what he was about. It didn't seem
to surprise her that she would be the one to labor; Andrej was glad
of that. TOP
As
ungallant as it might seem to ask the lady to bring the ocean to
the fish there was a certain difference in the physical strength
of the body of a Dolgorukij and that of other women, and the best
way to be sure of avoiding injury to one's partner was to set her
astride and ask her to post as she liked best.
There
was something to be said for a bed made out of towels.
It
was easy to find padding enough for comfort's sake.
Andrej
curled his hands around Triona's buttocks, liking the feel of that
soft warmth against his palms; but then Triona, sitting on his lap,
set his fish to its test of mastering the passage to the sea: and
Andrej stopped hearing, stopped feeling, stopped knowing anything
at all in the world except the heat and closeness of her embrace,
the warm taut grip her body took on his eager fish, the transcendent
sensation of having his fish stroked and kissed and kissed and stroked-and
all at once-and all over-and over, and over, and over again, as
his fish sought the ocean in her body.
It
was not an easy passage. The way was strait, and he had to go carefully,
but as he retreated and advanced again to find his way it became
easier by degrees so that he could get nearer to his goal at every
pass. Triona leaned over him with her weight on her arms to either
side of him, her head flung back and her eyes staring, crying as
they went forward together and kissing him from time to time when
she could spare a thought. It was very charitable of her, to spare
a thought. For himself Andrej could no longer think of anything
at all but the ocean.
He
could see it.
He
could smell its awesome living deeps.
Its
warm blue waters rose above his head in towering waves, and welcomed
his fish into the immortal mystery of the sea. TOP
Triona
called out a name, not hers, not his, her brother's name, called
on the spirit of her absent dead in the moment of her uttermost
extremity.
And
in that moment Andrej drowned.
The
rapture of the undertow took him, and pulled him under. The ocean
flooded him body and soul beneath the irresistible force of its
massive waves, and washed him head to foot and back again in ecstatic
bliss. Overwhelmed his consciousness. Swamped his thinking mind
beneath a vast unfathomable realm of sundappled seabeds and gently
soothing breezes. Submerged him in unimaginable deeps of pure joy
and complete fulfillment, every promise he had ever made his fish
answered and satisfied.
Drowned.
Moving
slowly, moving underwater, Andrej pulled layers of toweling up over
Triona's body where she lay beside him panting. Trying to catch
her breath. She needn't bother, Andrej knew. She was drowned. Her
breath would not come back until she'd floated to the surface again.
He
cradled her to him for warmth, for companionship, in gratitude for
what she'd given him. Covering them both up with towels. He didn't
want her to get cold.
And
may the holy Mother grant the child to you, if that is your wish,
Triona.
He
couldn't quite tell if he actually said the words or not.
And
when he woke up it was Robert to help him up and out of the now-disordered
nest and into his rest-dress, and thence to supper.
He
wasn't hungry.
He'd
had a lovely fish-course, and sweet minnow.
He
ate his supper and went off to bed, and slept as though he'd never
been Inquisitor.
—
End —
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