Timothy reached out and caught Charles’s hands and leaned forward, squinting at the symbols. He felt sick. “These are Catalian symbols. These are the
katkha moor
, but they never—” He tilted his head to one side and turned Charles’s wrist back and forth as if this would right the symbols. “They’re perverted. The true symbols are beautiful; they bring peace just by looking at them.” He looked up at Charles, then let go and shoved up his own sleeves. “Here. Look.”
Charles was quiet as he took Timothy’s hands in his, but where Timothy had just stared, he ran his fingers tentatively over the designs tattooed on Timothy’s wrists and forearms.
“They’re beautiful,” Charles said at last. “But I thought Catalians didn’t believe in magic.”
“These aren’t magic. They’re symbolic.” Timothy guided Charles’s finger up his wrist. “The four colors denote that I worked in the royal palace; the leaves around the symbols indicate I worked in the garden. The paisleys are because I came to the garden from the south, where these designs are popular.” He switched to the other arm, where the tattoos began on his palm and ran all the way to his shoulder. “These tell my talents, my trainings.”
Charles looked up at him without lifting his head. “Smith said you were a pleasure slave.”
“Court concubine.” Timothy tightened his grip, then realized he was holding Charles’s hands. He deliberately let them go. “It’s a position of honor, one of the highest, and as I was in the garden, I was practically untouchable. Only an appointment by the Cariff could bring you to me.”
Charles was still watching him intently. “And were you good, court concubine?”
“I was the best.” Timothy sat back against the arm of the couch, trying to look calm. He wasn’t. The drug was permeating his system now, and since he had not taken enough to pass out, he was rather uninhibited, and since he was attracted to Charles, this was trouble.
Charles leaned back too, but his eyes were still hooded. “Whom did you pleasure? Women? Men? Both?”
“I am
li
,” Timothy said, his voice huskier than he wanted it to be. “I pleasure only men.”
“Never a woman?” Charles pressed. “Not even one?”
Timothy’s legs were beginning to cramp. He wanted to stretch them out, but he didn’t dare. “Not in the garden. There were a few on occasion, but generally they were mistakes. I am attracted only to men. That is what li means.”
“I like both,” Charles confessed. He took another drink. “In Etsey, they call you a goat and they put you in the pillory. They’d put you there too, but
me
—oh, the goats usually don’t live past the first night, whereas mollies usually live to hang their tattooed foreheads in shame.”
“In Catal, you would be called
lilon
,” Timothy said. “And you would not be put in a pillory for it.”
“Lilon. That’s pretty.” Charles handed him the bottle. “I think I would have liked Catal.”
The past tense depressed Timothy, as it always did, and though it was foolish, he accepted the bottle and drank. Then he drank again.
His lips felt numb when he lowered the bottle; Charles took it away and set it on the floor. “I think you’ve likely had enough. You’re enchantingly tousled, but you look close to sleep now.”
Warning bells sounded in Timothy’s mind, but they were dull and echoed because of the drug. He tried to retreat into his corner of the couch. “What—” His foot slipped off the edge, and he nearly fell off.
Charles caught him and righted him, keeping his hands on him once he had him seated again. “You put baetlbeth in the brandy, yes?” When Timothy gave a distraught cry, Charles laughed and brushed a kiss against Timothy’s knuckles. “I’m a hopeless addict of every illegal substance Hain can smuggle into Etsey. Baetlbeth was a luxury item even for me, but Smith uses it in his henna and laces my tea with it every morning. I don’t notice it beyond a faint disorientation until I reach the fatal dose, and something Smith did nullifies even that.”
“So you let me take too much, let me gauge myself against your standard instead of paying attention to how much I’d taken in.” Timothy felt his head begin to spin. “A stupid mistake. In the war it would have cost me my life.” He looked blearily at Charles. “Will it tonight too? Is this Smith’s cunning plan? Use you to drug me, then—what? Am I to ride his dildo next?”
Timothy wasn’t prepared for the intensity of Charles’s reaction; all he knew was Charles’s eyes went dark with hurt and anger, and his hands were bands around Timothy’s shoulders.
“I would
never
—” He shut his eyes, drew in a breath through his teeth, then let it out, loosening his grip as well. His eyes he kept closed. “I would never do that to anyone, but not you especially.”
“You barely know me,” Timothy said.
Charles smiled a half smile and opened his eyes again. “You tried to help me at the inn, and you knew me less than I know you now.” He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just… Well, I thought with a bit of baetlbeth in you, maybe…” His smile fell away as he reached up and tentatively brushed Timothy’s cheek with the back of his hand. “I’ve been a social pariah since they knew my mother was pregnant. She never held me, not once, not even when I was a baby. But I was handsome, and I learned to be charming, and once I was older—well, it turned out noble bastards have a lovely free reign to fuck whomever they like, so long as they don’t cause the wrong kind of scandal. And even those can be bought off. So my life hasn’t been much, but sex has always been a pleasure I held dear. I didn’t know how dear until Smith—” He laughed, and it was a sad, hollow sound. “He’s all but killed it. He’s turned it into a nightmare, a torture. When I’m not sick from what he’s done to me, I think about how much worse it will be if he doesn’t kill me before he stops. If I have to find something else to live for, if I look at a woman or a man and see pain, not pleasure, I don’t know how I’ll bear it.”
He looked so bleak. Timothy couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and touching his cheek in return. But then Charles’s eyes lifted to his, and they were dark and full of heat.
“But you,” he whispered. “I saw you, and even at the inn—” He reached out and touched Timothy’s lips. “Goddess bless, but you’re so beautiful. And I wanted you. It felt so good just to want you, to look at your hands and imagine them touching me, to ache for that again instead of cringing. And then earlier, I caught you looking, just enough to make me think, to hope… I thought, if I don’t tell him about the drug, and he relaxes, maybe…maybe…”
His thumb tugged gently on Timothy’s bottom lip, parting it from his upper one briefly.
Timothy tried for reason, but simply breathing was trouble enough. “You didn’t need to drug me for this. Yes, I was interested, and if you’d kept me straight—”
“You would have focused on my brother, even though there’s nothing you can do until whatever Madeline is doing in there finishes.”
That was true, and it irritated Timothy to have it pointed out. He gestured awkwardly to his left forearm, to the tattoos there. “If you were after the ‘pleasure slave,’ you’ve just drugged him nearly insensible.”
Charles’s eyes danced. “I think insensible might be more fun, given everything that’s happened tonight. Bear in mind, I’ve never had anyone as fancy as the Cariff’s untouchable concubine. I’m sure I’ll be impressed no matter what happens.” He moved his hand to Timothy’s shoulder and made gentle but insistent circles with his thumb on Timothy’s collarbone.
Timothy swallowed and shut his eyes, but the room spun all the same. “Jonathan—I should be thinking of Jonathan.” It came out wrong, though, as if he meant he should be thinking about sex with Jonathan. It was dangerous territory, and Timothy tried to shut down those thoughts.
Charles leaned forward and whispered into Timothy’s ear. “Did you ever fuck my brother?”
It was a blunt question, and it occurred to Timothy that he should be offended by it. He couldn’t quite manage offense, though, and when he answered, he was a little shocked at the frustration in his voice as he said, “No.”
“Did you want to?”
Timothy tried to close his eyes, tried to find his anger. But baetlbeth wasn’t very forgiving, and he was too pleasured to be upset. “Yes,” he said and looked Charles in the eye.
Charles didn’t smile, just met his gaze and nodded. “He didn’t want to. He’s not that way. He didn’t resent you for it, and he probably noticed, but he just isn’t interested in you that way.”
“No.” There was a strange release in the confession.
Charles leaned forward and pressed his lips so close to Timothy’s ear that when he spoke, Timothy could feel his lips brush his skin.
“
I
want to fuck you.” The hand on Timothy’s shoulder tightened. “I want you desperately. I want you now. I want you here. I’ve been hoping I would have a chance to fuck you ever since you slammed me into the wall upstairs. Even when you scared me and I thought I should probably run, that you were too much for me, even then I still wanted to fuck you.”
Timothy had his eyes shut, and he was breathing too fast, swaying to the strange litany of Charles’s confession. “
I want to fuck you
.” It sounded so crass in Etsian, but he liked the sound of the words in Charles’s mouth. “
I want to fuck you
.” He swallowed and reached out to steady himself, which meant he grabbed the front of Charles’s shirt.
“Say it again,” he whispered.
“I want to fuck you.” Charles’s nose nuzzled Timothy’s ear, then his cheek, and then he kissed him, hot and open against his jaw. “I want to taste your skin. I want to pull your clothes off and push you onto the rug. I want you to push me back. I want to run my tongue down your chest. I want to see what other tattoos you have.”
“Scars,” Timothy whispered. “I have scars. Many scars.” But he was nuzzling back now, his fingers climbing up the shirt, seeking skin. He never could withstand words. He’d had nothing but clandestine affairs with guilty Etsian officers and the occasional refugees for so long; so few words, just gropes and nudges, and now here was this man, wooing him.
“I want to run my tongue over your scars. I want to trace them with my hands. I want to swirl my tongue in your navel, to make you arch, to make you beg me to go lower.” He caught Timothy’s lip roughly, briefly. “I want to taste your cock. I want it in my mouth, in my throat. I want my hands on your thighs, feeling you, curling against you as I lift you, spread you open and taste—”
“Stop.” Timothy reached up, fumbling for his head, ending up with two fistfuls of hair he used to tug Charles down to his mouth. He kissed him furiously, all his lust and anger and aching pushing so hard he was almost biting.
This is what I want
, he said with the kiss.
This hard. This angry. This raw. This. This. Please, please—give me this.
Charles groaned and met him, passion for passion, push for push.
I want you. I want you like this. I want to fuck you.
Yes, Timothy thought in surrender, and he swung his leg around and used his weight to shove them onto the floor.
Chapter Seven
a’stena
circle
There are many, many ways to travel around a circle, and each journey is sacred.
“
Fucking is for animals
.”
That was what Timothy’s
ditma
had told him on his first day in the garden, when he was young and uncertain and determined no one should ever know just how green he was. But his ditma had seen his fear and apprehension, and he had pulled Timothy aside and told him patiently the things he should know.
“
Fucking is for animals
,” he had said. “
Pleasure is an art, and you are an artist
.”
“
I am not an artist yet
,” Timothy had answered him. And his ditma had smiled a smile that made his eyes look like stars, so full of life and secrets, and he had kissed Timothy sweetly before he answered.
“
You will be an artist whenever you decide you want to be one. An artist is born in the heart, not in training. An artist believes and understands, then spends his life exploring what he has already come to believe, to make his garden greater and brighter for those who would appreciate his art. You do not enter the garden to become the sort of artist it wishes you to be. You enter to bring your art to the garden so that it may grow
.”
The ditma’s words echoed in Timothy’s mind now as he rolled on a sooty floor with Charles Perry, high on the sort of dirty drug the pleasure garden would never touch, groping and grunting and groaning as mouth sought mouth and hands went everywhere and sexes burned with nothing more exotic than lust. In his affairs since the garden, Timothy had kept to his concubine principles and strictures as a sort of ritual, a way of keeping ghosts alive.
But this.
This
was not art.
This
was fucking.
Timothy liked it. He loved his art, and he would mourn the loss of the garden forever, but this, he was finding, was a sort of healing too. The garden had been full of beauty and artistry, but it was gone. Now he was in a dirty ruin full of cold and damp and strange things he did not understand, his partner dead or dying; everything was beyond his control. Nothing was right. All beauty was dead. Everything he loved was dead.
And yet
he
was not dead. He was alive, and he was fucking.
He dug his face into the carpet—carpet so dirty he had to tuck his chin in toward his chest or he would choke—and he gasped as Charles Perry opened his mouth over his naked skin. Charles was kissing Timothy’s back, laving it, inspecting his scars, just as he had said he would. There were many: lacerations from war, whip marks from the Cloister, burns from firing canon, grazings from bullets. He had cuts on his hip, nasty poker marks on his rump and beneath the curve of his thigh where the monks had tried to convince him of his sins of the flesh with fire. Charles found them all, touching them, sucking them. He was not tender. There was no pity. Just touching, endless touching, with hands and mouth and tongue.
Timothy held still through it, just breathing, steeping in the strangeness of it all. Why did it feel so good? Why was he so passive? He had no answer. He had been an artist in paradise, but now paradise was gone. He could go there no longer. His ditma had died before his eyes, his kind and beautiful face twisted in horror and dull disbelief at what had happened to him. And it had happened to all the others. Dead. All dead.