Methods Devour Themselves Read online

  “Ah, a little like priests. Still that makes you worthy of worship.” Crow’s gaze turns, fractionally, speculative. “There is a magnetism to that which is holy.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Back in my birth country I had this habit. I was a person of faith, I left offerings at every temple, spent a great deal of time praying. I began to notice how self-contained and pure the priestesses and shrine maidens were. That drew me. I suppose I made a game of seducing and tempting them.” They say this lightly, leaving it ambiguous, perhaps a joke and perhaps not.

  Lussadh fills a cup of water from the fountain, gestures to the prayer basin. “I know little of seduction, but I would be pleased to show you how we pray to the sun. Hold your hands over the basin, like so.” The emissary has eidolic wrists. Her body and theirs touch at the hip, the shoulder, forearm to forearm. Lussadh can feel their breath on her cheek. “Summon your closest desires to the forefront of your thoughts.” She tilts the cup over their joined hands. “Now you are blessed, and your wishes wheel closer to fulfilment.”

  They remain in her loose hold, their damp wrist cool next to hers. “And is this all the more potent because a princely demigod consecrated me?”

  “As to that I cannot attest.” Lussadh sets down the cup. “But I’m curious what methodology is effective on holy women. One day I may find myself in need of such tactics, and as you said, an exchange of knowledge is the noblest of commerce.”

  Crow’s grin is quick, a flash of slightly crooked teeth. “First you approach at a distance, so as not to alarm your quarry.” They step away with a rustle of silk and lean against the wall. “You arrange yourself strategically––I would drape myself across a bench or kneel by an altar, if any is available. It’s best to look faint and tortured. Perhaps you reach out, breathless, and beg for spiritual salvation.” They stretch their hand forward.

  Lussadh does not quite take it. She holds her palm to theirs, a millimetre of air between. “And those ordained must give you succour.” Their fingers meet, the lightest contact, and part. “Taking you to a secluded, private place fit for cleansing the soul.”

  “Much like this little chamber. There I’d ask them about yearning, about passion, and guide their attention to––I cannot replicate it here; it requires a certain mode of dress, certain assumptions, to find the revelation of a collarbone risqué.” Crow loosens their collars, even so. “Have you ever wanted something desperately only to have it slip out of your grasp, have you ever felt the agony of absence. On I’d continue, quite cornering the poor priestess. At this point I would take my leave, for to go all the way through seems like a terrible sin.”

  “Considerate,” Lussadh says, her mouth twitching, “and cruel.”

  “I like to think I was helping them preserve their vow of celibacy.” They draw themselves up, their posture straight once more, no longer an offering. “Oh. I must ask, as a matter of academic interest, do you keep to such a vow? For you are in your fashion––”

  Lussadh looks Crow in the eye, directly. “No, I can’t say I have ever considered practising celibacy.”

  “Ah.” Their expression is a between thing, secret, shadowed. “This has been most educational.”

  They leave the temple, speaking of the inventors and scientists that would arrive from winter. Crow gives a schedule, lays out the logistics, though it is all pretext. But pretexts fill up spaces and populate what would otherwise be blank; they are the ink of governance. The queen is willing to expend the resources necessary to transport a dozen people to Kemiraj who may or may not be scholars. Lussadh bargains it down to half a dozen––easier to monitor, easier to control––citing that it is early days. Crow agrees.

  In the evening she summons Zumarr, who notifies her that the queen has not advanced, and there have been no winter troop movement. Good news, Lussadh supposes, though by now the queen should have withdrawn. Whatever her true intent, with Crow here as her spy her presence at the border serves no purpose other than as a threat. Except Crow has not hinted at anything remotely menacing, has accepted Lussadh’s every requirement. There is something winter wants, or Crow wants, that she can’t quite yet see.

  She keeps an eye on the westering sky. As an adolescent she wanted more than anything to wander beneath it, be a courier who could always be on the move. Transient inside and out, stopping only for rest when absolutely necessary. She’d told the Shuriam girl, who said, Inside all of us is a second self, one that could have been. We’re an envelope for futures. But we all dream of falling, great prince. Did the girl know, even then, anticipate her conclusion. The way it’d end. Lussadh did not ask before the kill whether there was love, whether she’d ever meant anything she had said. Why bother. A prince cannot be that weak. Lussadh is not that weak. How the Shuriam generals must have laughed, up until the point she put a bullet in them.

  She hasn’t been to Shuriam for a long time. Little enough remains in it, an array of empty fastnesses. Hardly a country, barely a city.

  A knock on her door as she strips down for bed. She wraps herself loosely and when she opens the door she is not entirely surprised to find Crow. They are in a pale, spectral robe weighed down by hyacinths at the hem, at the sleeves. Their feet are bare, white against the black floor, a statue’s immaculate feet.

  “I’m impressed,” Lussadh says, “that you didn’t step on a snake or a thorn.”

  “I have my ways.” Their voice is low, a whisper. “May I come in?”

  She steps aside. Shuts the door. Crow’s robe is thin, nearly translucent. Little is hidden––no place to conceal a weapon, unless it is the secret kind, secreted between gums or on tongue-tip. “Will you want something to drink? I may not––it’s not past midnight and still the day of pendulums. The time of the week where one must keep a vigilant mind and avoid all intoxicants.” Coitus not being on the list of prohibited acts, which she’s always found faintly amusing.

  They press their hand against their front, as though to keep their robe tightly shut. “I too wish to be of clear wits. You aren’t going to chase me out?”

  “You are an honoured guest of the palace. If I can entertain you at so late and dull an hour, I would be glad to.”

  Crow laughs. “So courteous; so faultless. Someone like you I cannot imagine doing anything imperfectly. Anything.” They untie their hair; it falls down, black, like solid ink. “I have a confession. For all my boasts of tempting priestesses, I have never––actually. Not with them, or anyone else.”

  “Would you rather not, then? We have known each other for less than a month.”

  They exhale. “I would rather.”

  Lust, virgin curiosity, something else. They are both in a position of risk, precipitous. Yet here they are. “Then it would be an honour.”

  Crow moves to undress; she stops them, saying, “Let me learn your attire.” Their broad sash comes to knot at the small of their back, and when it has been loosened there is not much that keeps their robe in place. There is no second or third layer, nothing under the white silk and the indigo hyacinths. There is only Crow.

  Laid bare they seem to shine under the lamplight. They turn in her arms, pulling the loose wrap from her. They palm Lussadh’s chest as if they mean to measure and map it, as if it might at any moment transform into another material––jade, quartz, a vessel of sunrays. “How soft your skin is,” Crow murmurs. “No one who thought you a terror on the battlefield would imagine.”

  Lussadh cups the emissary’s jaw. The apple and cinnamon scent, Crow’s pulse throbbing in the side of their throat. These signifiers of vitality. “May I?”

  Virgin or not Crow is a bold kisser, all teeth, avid and expeditionary. They suck at Lussadh’s lower lip––Lussadh thinks of their mouth elsewhere––and when they break the kiss Lussadh’s mouth is tender from their attentions, her heartbeat in thunder. Crow is breathing hard, trembling, their eyes bright.

  It’s been some time since she’s taken to bed someone with Crow’s anatomy, and there are
things she’s missed. Like this. “You’ve got gorgeous breasts.” Lussadh bends to them, their soft heft, the tight gathered nerves at their tips.

  “A great prince must’ve seen finer––” Their breath cuts short. Their fingers curl in Lussadh’s hair.

  Lussadh charts her way down, nibbling, licking. Crow’s stomach is a fascinating landscape, a record of their history and what uses they have made of their body. There are scars from combat and training, vivid striae from growing and living. Whatever else, it pleases Lussadh to make these small discoveries when she takes a new lover. The secret curves captivate her the most, the inside of an elbow, the back of a knee, the inner thigh. She attends to that last now, pinching the tender skin between her teeth. Crow’s voice climbs.

  “Wait.” Their hands on her shoulders, staying her. Crow inhales, shuddering. “Inside me.”

  “My fingers?” Lussadh bites again, lightly, another breath this close.

  “You. I want to know how it feels. I want to know how a prince feels in me.”

  Lussadh makes sure, even so. She uses her thumb, her tongue, and finds the envoy as intoxicating as any wine––so much for the prohibition of the pendulum. When they kiss again her chin is drenched and Crow licks it off, this salt-and-tang of their own arousal.

  They watch as she oils herself.

  Crow’s eyes clench shut when Lussadh eases in, and this she has to do little by little. Her own breathing judders at the grip, the pressure, the slick heat. The drum of heartbeats in simpatico. “Hold onto me,” she whispers, hoarse.

  Lussadh stands with their arms and legs locked around her; the distance between here and the bed is a short one, but her steps are unsteady and weighted. Each movement jolts a cry out of Crow. They fall onto the mattress, and here they are wordless, language discarded. There is only the supreme immediacy of skin and writhing chemistry, the sensation of sinking into one another. Crow’s low moans. Her own harsh, high gasps.

  Quiet for a time, after that. Noiseless save for their breathing.

  “Could we extinguish the lamps?” Crow’s voice is glazed, feathery. They lie facing one another, a nest of bunched sheets and sweaty limbs.

  She passes her hand down the length of Crow’s spine, the wonderful inviting arch of it like good architecture. “A minute ago you didn’t seem shy.”

  “I know no shyness. I desire to see you in the moonlight.”

  It is an exquisite demand; laughing, Lussadh acquiesces. One by one she snuffs out the lamps by her desk, by the bed. She draws the curtains all the way and stands before the glass, before the vastness of the sky, the shadow-shapes of a city asleep. The moon in full wax, ascendant, its light pouring down like thawed ice. Lussadh holds her arms out, pivots slowly on her feet.

  “How is it possible,” Crow says softly, lying on their side, “that it is not known across all the realms that the prince of Kemiraj is beautiful beyond compare? What injustice it is that they sing your renown only in combat, in your acumen. But you are beautiful, beautiful. You’ve branded me from within, you’ve remade me.”

  It is only sex, Lussadh could say, you will go on to bed others; it is nothing transcendent. She could say that and tarnish the moment. Instead she says, “When I poured water over your hands in the temple, what did you wish for? Was it perhaps this?”

  Crow studies her through half-lidded eyes, and the way they spread across her bed makes her want to grip their hips all over again, begin this frenzy once more. “A little of this. What I wished for the most was courage. When I departed my homeland, it was to leave behind the reign of unjust lords. I desired freedom from the fate they set down for me, which was to be a tool; I desired to reign over my own destiny.”

  “You still serve your queen.”

  “In some ways.” They smile up at her. “In others, not at all. In those ways I am master of my own wants and goals entirely. Let me taste your lips again, Lussadh. I long to forget everything and remember only you.”

  Against the windowpane, they merely kiss.

  A pattern is easy to fall into.

  Lussadh reports to her king. She is thorough each time, conveying all she’s learned from Crow, every piece of intelligence. Ihsayn is impatient when Lussadh does not bring anything pertinent, and there is always the threat of the Winter Queen herself looming in the distance. “Winter is turning its gaze to Johramu,” Lussadh says one day, aware that nothing Crow has said to her was not meant for Ihsayn to hear. “It seems the queen intends to expand ever faster, and of her existing territories a quarter or so have been consolidated. There is some issue as to selecting her governors, for securing loyalty is not easy even for her, and despite her might she cannot be omnipresent.”

  Ihsayn has brought in more hummingbirds, half a dozen. All are silent, trained or bred to it, in cages by the window and next to the king’s map. To Lussadh it seems a sign of desperation, to have the al-Kattan living crest multiply. It is not strength; it is overcompensation. For the first time she does not think Ihsayn an avatar of power. Instead the king looks harried, diminished. “How does she mean to remedy this?”

  “Crow would have been one of her governors, so they say. But of course they are here with us.”

  Ihsayn looks away from one of the cages and studies her. The pause lengthens, crawls. “You don’t seem worried.”

  “They are easy to handle,” she says, more or less true. “Ulterior motives, naturally. I believe that they are hoping to negotiate with their queen. If they can get what she wants from us, they’ll have earned the favour to choose a domain to administer.”

  “They tell you this?”

  “I can discern their hints.” Lussadh visited the mausoleum the other day, to pay respects to what is left of Nuriya. She liberated, from the casket of personal effects, a gun. Some conquered provinces remember their dead through ash jars; pistols she finds far more practical. “As to what their queen wants, Crow has not yet seen fit to reveal.”

  “Perhaps she wants merely to stall us. It can be that simple. While she puts her territories in order she can continue this pretence of intellectual exchange, sending us a spy or two, a few meaningless inventors. More comfortable than wasting her soldiers in the dunes.”

  Lussadh has, for a change, not worn indigo anywhere on her. If the colour on Crow bothers Ihsayn she has not bothered to correct the envoy as to what it signifies in Kemiraj. Instead she has put on princely attire, pomegranate red, chains of gold. It occurs to her that she is not only taller than her grandaunt but stronger, younger. That has always been obvious, but somehow Ihsayn’s presence has elided that, obscured it. Ihsayn has ever seemed ageless. Not today. “That must be so. The first of them will arrive next week, and I will ensure Crow doesn’t get time alone with them.”

  Ihsayn’s head snaps up, suddenly. Her expression is flat. “Not all winter soldiers were able to evacuate. One of my assassins captured a straggler near the garrison Nuriya used to command. This officer had something of interest to say.”

  Under duress, Lussadh presumes. “Yes, Majesty.”

  “I have held this straggler for many days. During that time he has forgotten much. The human mind is a malleable thing, the inner gyroscope of it susceptible to reorientation by force. He did yield this. Crow’s likeness to the queen you have no doubt noticed. This officer claims they are not merely kin to the Winter Queen but a container for a piece of her. That Crow functions as an effigy, and holds the queen’s mortality. Destroy the emissary and the queen perishes.”

  She thinks of the white sword, locked away in her chamber. Crow has not even tried to look for it. “My king, that seems phenomenally unlikely. If such a binding exists, she wouldn’t send them far from her.” A standard-bearer, if you will, a symbol. Her pulse steps up.

  “It would explain, wouldn’t it, why Crow was such a secret. Never before seen at her side. Where else to hide such a crucial piece but in plain sight, in a place where they enjoy total diplomatic immunity. What’s more, here they are safe from treachery in
winter domain.”

  In her lands many would have my life. “This is a dangerous line of thinking, Your Majesty. We cannot attempt something halfway. To harm so much as a hair on Crow’s head––”

  “Tell me,” Ihsayn says with a thin smile, “of the wealth of options available to us.”

  Lussadh falls quiet. There is nothing to propose. It is impossible to suggest the Winter Queen’s terms were ever in earnest.

  “Your next meal with them.” The king herself is never dressed in less than her finest. Of late there is a piece of armour on her, nearly constantly. A breastplate, a gauntlet. A gorget, to protect the throat. “There will be poison you can ingest safely and which will leave them delirious for a day or two. We will use an unfamiliar ingredient to the emissary’s palate, wind-lynx meat. Anyone would be indisposed having that the first time. The seers will observe the queen and we’ll determine our course of action from there.”

  “And if Crow does not believe it an innocuous case of indigestion?”

  The king looks at her. “Then I am sure you’ll be able to persuade them otherwise.”

  Lussadh thinks of what she will wear. She could oversee the preparation of the meal in the kitchen herself, but the king will likely relegate that task to a court assassin. The addition of toxins must be exactly measured and weighed, calculated for the volume of food, the body mass of the diners. When the aim is not to kill but to test a theory, the process must be the most precise of all.

  At dinner, Crow remarks how handsome her indigo dress is. “I’ve never seen you entirely in this colour before. It suits you brilliantly.” They reach across and bring her hand to their mouth. “It makes you otherworldly. A vision.”

  They eat the wind-lynx without objection. After all it is tender, delicious: to mask a poison’s bitterness, the meat must be marinated that much longer, the spices must be added with that heavier a hand. Lussadh can taste the toxin if she lets the meat linger in her mouth. She has been tasting it since she was ten, in minute amounts at a time. Building resistance had begun even before she’d been selected heir.