203 - The most intense pleasure

Segiddis drew back from me enough to whisper, “You’ve told me you’re a fecund man. Come to bed with me and we’ll seal the deal.”

“Em...” There was no doubt between my legs that I wanted her—call me hopeless for strong women—but I had to think of Niku. I realized I didn’t know whether she’d mind or not. In Arko, where I’d have gelded myself with an eating spoon before I bedded any woman but her, it hadn’t mattered. I had told her about Shaina and Etana, but I had also told her that was purely convenience, and they loved each other. “I’m betrothed. And when did I say I was fecund?”

“When you mentioned that Niku carried your child. If you can manage in that cesspit, you’re fecund. But you’re betrothed, you already belong to her?” She looked sour for a bit, then brightened. “I make it a condition of our alliance, then. That sets it above mere sex, makes it diplomacy. She’ll understand. I want to get the feel of you this way as well.”

She let go of me but grabbed my wrist in her iron-gripped hand and set off for a door other than the one I had come in. She didn’t seem to doubt for a moment that I’d follow, and I found myself following. “It’s not as if I’m trying to steal you away from her; I don’t do that,” she said. “I should hope she doesn’t mind sharing her bounty. If she’s jealous later, we can settle it sensibly between us, like women.”

What does that mean... a duel? An alliance disaster loomed in my mind. I told myself not to be silly. Niku had never seemed to want to own me, and Segiddis had just stated she didn’t mean to steal me. Through the door was a bed-chamber, with a huge circular bed at its centre, covered with a silken quilt of interlocking triangles in every brilliant colour. If you can’t talk Niku into understanding that it’s diplomacy, I can. I hope.

“Love was sanity, in that cesspit,” I said. Then something made me add, like a youth unable to resist boasting further when he’s received a compliment, “I have two other children.” We stood by the bed, and she put her arms around me again, inside mine.

“By Niku as well? But I thought you met her in the Mezem.”

“No...” I suddenly regretted mentioning it. “One by my wife in Yeola-e, and the other... my oldest, my heir...” How exactly to explain this? “Well, I’d been captured by the Lakans, and they, em, wanted to make some use of me while they negotiated my ransom. But he, and his mother, were set free as a favour to me by As—”

Her brows darkened with puzzlement, and a touch of anger. “Chevaga, did you say... wife? But you’re betrothed to Niku.”

“Yes. Ehh… what do you know about Yeoli marriage customs?” She hadn’t let go of me, but the touch was less intimate and more firm.

“I heard you commonly married in fours. One woman and three men, a good ratio, since she can wear out that many in an evening. Is it… not that?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s sometimes that... sometimes one man and three women... sometimes two of each, and the women may be in love with each other, and likewise the men, but they make a four to have children... or sometimes four men or four women. Or sometimes six. There is even the odd eight. Generally it’s iterations of pairs.”

She looked at me as if I’d fallen from another Earthsphere.

“But, my wife… well, we are unusual in being a three, and, in love, they are the pair. I married them to start getting heirs early, and our agreement is that our fourth will be of my choosing. So that will be Niku.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t speak of other nations’ customs if I don’t understand them,” she said. “But tell me true: should I not be wanting you because you’re tangled with all these other women?” She held me face to face with her by both shoulders, serious. “I don’t want to have enraged warriors coming to challenge me for you.” At the same time, she was impatient; one hand dropped to finger the top edge of my kilt almost absently.

I tried to imagine an enraged Shaina issuing Segiddis challenge, and stifled a smile. “With my wife in Yeola-e, it doesn’t matter. As I say, it’s Etana—my husband—she loves. Niku, we’ve already—”

Her hands dropped off me. “Your... husband? I thought you must mean they were both women… You’re not one of those, you don’t... do the Arkan thing, do you?”

All-Spirit, I thought. Just as two women being in love is loathsome, if not inconceivable, to Arkans, here it’s the same with two men.

“Make love? No. Well, yes. I mean, a little, once or twice... as friends, when all three of us did together.” I so wished I had not mentioned my other two children.

“Ah. Your wife was there. That’s all right then.” Relieved and so resolved again, she took a firm grip on the top edge of my kilt. Like the women on the street, she dipped her other hand between her legs, then, with a wide smile, wiped it fast across my cheek and lips, leaving them wet with her musky juice. “You feel how much I want you.” While I stood in that frozen and yet half-lax state you get from utter shock, she shoved me hard backwards. The edge of the great bed was just behind my knees, tripping me so I landed flat across it. “Ha! I see how much you want me!” My kilt was a little tent now, with a very rigid pole. “Such beauty! Chevaga, I’m done with holding back.”

She knelt on me, pinning my thighs under hers, and had the kilt off in a moment. “Ahh, look at that sweet dew-drop, quivering there… you are so beautiful, even without the face-paint; so natural in your own skin, so un-self-conscious, so… untamed. You are like no other.” She crawled up me, her hands all over, feeling, measuring, relishing. “I gave you just a taste; have it all, now.” I could barely say, “I give myself to you, Segiddis,” before she lowered herself onto my face, clenching my hair in two fists.

She didn’t lock her thighs around my head so I could not hear. I noticed the plucking of the harp again; her husband was back in his corner, delicately playing, as if he always did it while she made love with someone else. Did he feel anything? I tried not to, myself. I am here, I live by their rules, I told myself, and left behind all thoughts except of what I was doing. “Tirothuli, here!” she ordered, huskily, cutting off the music. “My nipples.” I could not speak, but I could raise my hands in a gesture, then take them between my thumbs and forefingers myself, making her throw her head back and gasp out a laugh. “Oh, Chevaga, what nerve you have, wanting me all to yourself! I’ve never met the like of you. You want to satisfy me alone, then; let’s see if you can!” The music started up again.

It takes nothing more than entire devotion, that’s all, and it occurred to me that this was a test in the greater sense; winning the war would take entire devotion, too. So I dedicated my being and life, in this moment, to her ecstasy, and to mine when she wished me to have it.

All through, there was never any thought in her mind or feeling in her heart other than that I was there purely for her pleasure, and mine would be only when it enhanced hers. She did what she willed without asking, moved me where she willed without regard to my choice or comfort, except to be careful of the arrow-wound. Of course I’d known it would be that way from the start, and thought I’d have to swallow anger. Instead, it brought the most intense pleasure, like what Klaimera had taught me with her silk scarves, but much more so.

She kept me there until past midnight, though we broke for a meal. “There is no finger-width of you I want to miss,” she breathed, “touching, smelling, tasting, entering; I want never to forget you. Give me yourself more, Chevaga.” She meant it; afterwards I felt covered all over and penetrated everywhere by her, every cell and nerve marked Segiddis. She was a woman capable of spurting—I suspect all Hyerne women are—so I drank as deeply of her as if she’d been a man. “By Theen,” she said, when we were truly spent, “I am so tempted to say, these other women you belong to, a storm take them! Will you be my fifth husband?”

“Of course,” I whispered, my voice broken from ecstasy-cries. “If you will be my third wife.”

†

We settled the details while we basked afterwards, my head in her lap. “You said your daughter will command the elite, and another commander the regulars,” I said, my eyes closed and Segiddis stroking my eyelashes. “So there will be no one overall commander for Hyerne? I’d prefer there was; it’s a stronger chain of command. But let me guess... you don’t want to put one above the other.” I was not in a position to bargain hard on this. “The one who isn’t your daughter, Pae something, who is she?”

“Peyepallo is an excellent warrior and commander, very intelligent. She’s the one likeliest to be able to raise a throne challenge to me. She certainly wants to be Queen.”

Ah, I thought. The hated rival. She’ll send her off to where she might get killed. A common strategy in monarchies. Of course Segiddis’s risk was that Peyepallo would distinguish herself without getting killed and come back triumphant, winning further favour among the people. Or, should I say, women, since in Hyerne politics, men didn’t matter. Everyone in my army would distinguish himself, or herself, if things went as I planned.

“They are separate units, normally under me,” she said, tracing my cheekbone delicately with one finger. It was still soon enough after that it felt like a line of sweet fire. “I would put Kelaepo in command but she is younger than Peyepallo... How good are you at knocking sense into a woman’s head, hmmm? Peyepallo might be harder for you to command because of what she feels toward male warriors and male commanders... she thinks they’re too much ruled by their penises to think straight.” More than other Hyerne women? I thought.

“A not-always-unjust accusation,” I said. “I think I am equally capable of knocking sense into the heads of both sexes. Perhaps I should meet her before I leave. She might otherwise refuse to go.”

“If I order her, she goes.” And you hand me your problem, I thought. I understand. “No point in meeting her yet, Chevaga; our deal is conditional, remember.” She ran her hand through my hair, catching her fingers slightly in the curls. It might be better to meet Peyepallo in Yeola-e anyway, I thought, on my ground.

“I hadn’t forgotten. Your daughter… does she particularly have it in for Arkans, perchance?”

“Yes, she does. She’s a fire-breather, that one, not like her staid and thoughtful old mother.” I let out a chuckle, and she laughed herself. We’d found harmony between us, somehow. “She’s also a daddy’s girl… listens to my second husband, her father, more than a lot of girls her age. A wise thing to do, actually, because he’s very level-headed for a man.”

So long as he doesn’t pollute her with his loathsome masculinity. I wanted to say it as a dig, but decided not to; she might just take it seriously, and say, “You understand.”

Segiddis’s finger brushed over my nipple, as if by accident, sending a jolt all through me. “The alliance is off if you kill me,” I said.

She laughed softly. “And I’d be denying myself the perfect joy that you are forever into the future, too,” she said. “Theen forfend.” She pressed her lips tenderly to a part that could take it, my forehead.

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