Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 09

With the sun slipping into the sea, we found a great flat slab of stone, warm from the day's light, high on the riverbank and partially shaded by an ancient green-trunk. We rinsed dust and caked sweat from our bodies and greasy hair. The moons trod their glowing path across the darkening sky, and the day's haul went into the tough leather stew-pot. Stars winked to life through the rustling canopy over our heads. Kiravi had called them the hearth fires of the gods once, but my tribe knew them as something different, sinister. The Huri had sired us through violence and violation, almost always at night, and to us, the stars were their glowing eyes, always leering down at us.

I never looked up at night, if I could help it.

I undid my braids, as did Kiravi, and we ran fingers and twigs through our locks to unsnarl clumps and knots. After a few moments, Serina set down the remnants of her meal and gently held my hand. For a moment, I froze, wondering if she was going to lean closer to me and press her supple body against mine, but she just pried the twig from my calloused fingers. She scuffled around behind me, shyly smiling, and started brushing my hair.

It was strange to feel her tiny fingers running through my long and wavy auburn hair, tugging at my scalp. My mother used to sit me in her lap and do just the same thing every night, and Serina's gentle touch reminded me of the warmth and safety of those quiet nights. But, it was different too; as a little girl, my mother was caring for me, looking after me in a harsh world as my protector. Serina was warm and small, and her act wasn't maternal protection but the submissive care of a lover.

Her breath tickled through my hair, warm and soothing, while her fingers indirectly massaged my scalp. I couldn't help but coo, feeling a day's worth of ache and tension melt out through the roots of my long hair and down each strand. At hearing my soft assent and appreciation, she pushed herself closer, curling her legs around my seated hips, our warm skin brushing together what felt like everywhere.

The same damnable fluttering filled my guts, curling through me but battling a long days' worth of endless climbing. Happiness and confusion swirled in warm eddies in my mind, each tempered and muted by exhaustion. There was no denying how I felt about her or how she made me feel at that moment. That boiling confusion about desiring and craving her gentle femininity and shy demurral filled me, and the oily weight of relaxation and fatigue kept me from acting on it or even worrying overmuch.

I groaned happily, contented, and Serina murmured something sweet and unintelligible in response. Her fingers no longer teased knots from my hair -- she'd finished that long, hazy minutes before -- and now she just massaged my scalp and shoulders. I melted into her fingers, and her body puddled against my muscular back. Pleasure and desire smoldered inside of me, white embers that flared with every breath, floating on a current that swirled in two different directions.

One fed on Serina's selfless and demure service, bathing happily in those slight feelings of power. The other flowed in the opposite direction, swirls of lust that trickled through my mind and ended at the desire for Kiravi to throw me down and have his way with me. I moaned and shuddered, pulled in two directions and too tired to act on either.

Words tumbled out of me, massaged out like the knots of stress, "Come here, Kiravi." His face had half-slackened with the expectation of sleep, the other half leering at our intimacy, but his eyebrows went up at hearing my words. He crawled over, around the fire, and I took hold of his rippling shoulders before his imagination could take things any further. I pulled and twisted him, laying his willing body across my legs until his head rested face-up in my lap.

His lidded eyes met mine, full of curiosity, and I smiled back down at him before I twisted my hands into his hair. I combed and teased and massaged his long black locks and scalp, and I could see his face slacken with pleasure. Then, just as Serina served me, tiny and demure beneath my predatory strength, I submitted myself to Kiravi. Those same muted and dampened flutters filled my stomach, and, dearest readers, there was no way I could understand or decide which feeling was more important to me. They swirled together as my eyelids drifted shut until each desire was indistinguishable from the other, and there was nothing but a warm pool of happiness.

We awoke in a tangle of loosened limbs and wild hair. A cool breeze caressed sun-darkened skin, bringing the smell of damp stone and the sharp tang of desert plants with it. Serina stirred and murmured something, shifting against me and yawning. Despite how we'd fallen asleep, somehow, the changed girl was in my arms and cuddled tightly against me, and Kiravi's burly limbs were wrapped around both of us.

Few words passed between us, just as in those cold mornings in the Ketza. I communed with both Niknik and the Kwarzi that made the riverbank their home. Serina mixed and fried dough and portioned out our dwindling stocks of pemmican and seeds. Kiravi, of course, leered at us in between packing away our bedding and tools.

I braided my auburn hair tightly as I always did, and Kiravi twisted and coiled his in the strange way high-class Anghoreti men always seemed to do. Serina absently rubbed at Niknik's ears and scratched his flanks, her glowing eyes staring into the brightening, dawn-lit canopy. A strange thought flitted through me while I tied the ends of my braids, and I walked over to my young lover.

It took her a moment to notice me. I always wondered where her thoughts went and what she really saw with those changed eyes. Then, finally, she smiled with genuine warmth, cheeks dimpling, "Are we ready to leave?"

"Almost," I crouched down beside her and felt her long, blue-black hair between calloused fingers, "May I?"

She nodded gently, brow wrinkled in confusion, but she understood soon enough. I deftly twisted and braided her unusually long tresses just as I'd done for myself for years, marveling at how quick the process was when not doing it blindly and by feeling. She tore two more small scraps from her dress to tie them tightly, a wide grin plastered on her face as if I'd just given her a priceless gift.

"They're beautiful, thank you, Leotie," she ran them through her fingers, "Just like yours."

That damned fluttering again. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, "I just thought you'd like your hair up and out of the way."

Her cheeks colored as well, "I've wanted to be more like you."

I shook my head, confused, "Why? I'm just a lost Bhakhuri."

When she spoke, it was as if she'd plucked the words out of my mind, like an osprey snatching fish from the Mother River. "We're one now, as one shared hearth in a village like Wakh. You and Kiravi are all I have, the only ones that can help me find the goddess now. It's like...like I'm..."

"Home," I whispered, my heart burning with the same feeling. We shared blushing, contented grins, my hand finding hers.

"Are we staying here until springtide? Or shall we go?" Kiravi said, rich voice teasing.

We shared a last look, both of us rolling our eyes, "Akagi take you, you useless man."

"I could take you instead if you'd like," he snarked back, flashing me a crooked grin.

Serina snorted, "If you don't stop, Leotie and I might just be rid of you. We don't need you anymore, right Leotie?"

"Absolutely right," I teased, squeezing her hand.

He gasped with mock shock, then shrugged, "As long as I get to watch, I don't think I'd mind too terribly much."

We all laughed as the two of us chased him up the riverbanks with curses and raised fists.

***

The valley, wedged between the coastal hills and the jagged ridges of Niza, narrowed as we slowly ascended until the vista of distant mountains was all but obscured by its walls. We rested for the third time since starting off, noontide not even reached, and each of us was sodden with sweat and caked with red dust. With every aching step into the new and unknown lands, the faint and gnawing worry that I might let them down crept back in.

Come. Come see.

Niknik's not-voice was soft in my mind. He glanced back at me before padding away through an overgrown crack in the rock. Kiravi and Serina panted as they spoke about something I hadn't been paying attention to, so I followed my companion without a word. The crack twisted up and away from the riverbank, split open by some ancient calamity and forced wider by the questing roots of the green-trunks.

A faint breeze tickled my sodden forehead and stray hairs, carrying the faint stink of the sea. It wasn't much of a climb but was so narrow at the end I had to turn sideways to slip through. Blue sky held the promise of an open vista and long sight-lines in this unfamiliar place.

I wasn't disappointed.

The land remained undulating and broken, with knife-edged ridges crowded between hills and the foot of the mountains. Streams ran in confused and twisted branches between the piled and broken rock, and it looked as though the river we'd followed curved away to the east, trapped by the high ridge. Achingly bright trees filled the hollows and cling to all but the steepest outcrops of red stone. Yet, even though it was an unfamiliar and foreign vista, my eyes were trained by a lifetime of learning the land. Already, I could see the small game trails, the bends in streams where spring floods had settled gravel and the water would be filled with fish, and where deadfalls had opened up clearings that would teem with game.

Most important, though, was the stone and mud-brick tower stabbing upwards on a high ridge due north of us.

"How did you know?" I murmured, watching the greasy smear of smoke curl up from the tower and whip away on the wind.

Niknik looked up at me, blinked. Bones-in-Water told me.

I frowned in confusion; we'd already trekked far from the glade Bones-in-Water called home. There wasn't any reason for it to be here, was there? I closed my eyes, centered myself, and reached out with my conduit. Dozens of tiny Kwarzi flicked and flitted about me, but one swooped close to my consciousness, a twisting silhouette of dark and light. Bones-in-Water, back again. It said nothing, gestured nothing, just swirled around us before disappearing into the rock. I'd never spoken with the Kwarzi the way I had since meeting Serina, and I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I could survive and even thrive beyond the craggy wastes of Anghoret.

"Leotie, are you up there?" Serina called through the crack in the rock.

My eyes snapped back open, and the bright green and red vista flooded back in, "Yes! I'm here! And I know where we need to go!"

It was simple for Serina to follow me, but getting Kiravi through the cracked rock was an exercise in grunting, sweating, heaving, and the most colorful cursing I'd heard since the massacre in Tebis. Finally, with a tangible goal in sight, I pushed our pace hard, threading us through one craggy draw after another. Kiravi supposed that the tower was attached to whatever passed for a Mayoral palace out here, but I only knew it was a known point, a landmark that I could use to orient my uncertain thoughts.

The sun dipped low, bathing us in dappled shadow. Our feet ached and bled, lungs burned, and each of us looked a shade or two darker than usual with the dusty grime covering us. My lovers complained and groaned with pain, and still, I pressed on. But, dearest readers, we climbed up the last ridge, following a marked path lined with rocky cairns, just as the last light faded in the west.

A surprised Enges guard greeted us, peering in the dying gloom at our bedraggled forms. There was no palace, no town, nothing but the tower and a single mud-brick structure huddled at its base. A tired-looking and aging human spoke with Kiravi briefly. He braided his graying hair in the same noble fashion. I suppose he believed Kiravi's lineage and the tattoo on my mate's chest and allowed us to stay in the squat barracks. Maybe two score Men and Enges manned the tiny outpost, all of them staring at the newcomers.

As was custom both for the so-called civilized people of Anghoret and in bands like mine, we supped with the guard captain as guests. His name was Itca, and he'd resigned himself to his station far out from the Mother Rivers. He'd been banished out there for some reason or another that I can't be bothered to remember. The fare was hardly better than our traveling food, but we wolfed it down all the same.

"If you're looking for the edge of the Empire, you've found it," he grumbled, draining another beerskin and tossing it aside in the gloomy barracks. He pointed beyond the mud-brick wall, "Can't see it tonight, but there's another stream below this ridge. Other side of it, that's Gavic. Those primitive Agasu stay on their side; we stay on ours," I stiffened at his casual use of the slur, knowing that it was usually levied at my people. Surprisingly, he spluttered a quick apology at seeing Kiravi's scarred face twist into a scowl. "Um, yes, sorry. Ah, as I was saying...the Gavicans are really just a collection of tribes and bands. I think they have a few villages, but there is no authority for the Emperor to send envoys to. We know to remain on our side. They know to remain outside of Anghoret, and we have no reason to enter their squalid holdings."

"It doesn't seem so squalid to me," Serina said. For as much as her demure youth made me feel...strange, her naiveté still managed to surprise me at times. "It's far richer and lusher than any part of the Mother Rivers."

Itca snorted, "They don't farm, and they have no knowledge of the secrets of copper, much less bronze. They'd sooner use a tablet of priceless script to hammer nuts open than even try to read it." He pulled open another beerskin. "Like I said, savages. It's only a matter of time before the Emperor sees fit to conquer their lands and put them to good use."

I was exhausted, but my blood was up from this weak but casually offensive castoff from Anghoret's so-called high society. "Why do you suppose that hasn't happened yet?"

"What's that?" His eyes narrowed, and Kiravi nudged me.

I ignored him, "The Empire hasn't invaded their lands. Maybe it was attempted and failed?"

Itca bristled, "Perhaps."

That damned, beautiful smirk crossed Kiravi's face, "I think I heard something about that. The first year after Jerra's death? Some sort of colossal failure, I think."

Itca shrugged as if it was beyond his ability to care about. Maybe he'd been part of the failure and found himself left here as punishment? "It was a...difficult time for the Empire. Every few years, we butcher a hunting party we find on our side of the river, as a reminder."

Serina shuddered, I flexed my fingers deliberately, but Kiravi spoke first, "I suppose that does wonders for relations."

"We don't give an Erishua's Damn about relations," Itca spat, "and I don't know why you should either. So, what, are you planning on crossing over to bring culture to the savages?"

I glanced at Kiravi and noticed Serina do the same. Our leader, our mate, had only wanted to flee to the hinterlands and lay low until the rebellion subsided. He didn't look back at us, but he screwed his face up the way he had in Fosuyo, the way he always did when he wanted one thing and knew that we wanted something else. "And, if I were?" His voice held a resigned acceptance to it, and I grinned predatorily at Itca.

We wouldn't be staying put: Serina would be able to continue her search for answers, and I, well, I would continue my struggle to understand the whole of this world, not just the tiny corner I'd been born in.

Itca's jaw set, and he tore at the chunk of roasted venison in his lined hands. "If you enter into Gavic, all the protections and privileges of your...noble status," Itca frowned with disdain, "will mean nothing. Instead, you'll be a stranger, an intruder in their lands, at the mercy of whatever savage whims might seize them."

"But," Kiravi smiled affably, but his dust-streaked temples flexed with contained frustration, "Still a Qhatuq. One of my brethren once visited Gavican lands."

Itca snorted again, and I began to see more and more similarities between him and an aging and sickly boar. He shoveled oily meat into his mouth, and the few teeth he had left tore and ripped the roasted flesh, "Qhatuq's ply trade and tales and knowledge from cities to towns to hamlets and hovels, and back again. Culture, master Kiravi." Spittle flecked from his cracked lips. "Culture. But, if you want to waste your time and stake your life against a foolish trek, I am in no position to stop you."

"They can't truly be as savage as you say," Serina spoke, her voice tiny in the gloom.

I smirked, still glaring at Itca but answering Serina, "They call the Bhakhuri lands east of the Nekoar just as savage. Yet we don't butcher every visitor to our lands." Kiravi nudged my leg again, and I ignored him, "Not everyone. Just some."

Our host grumbled and clambered to his feet, throwing the remnants of his meal into the hearth fire. "I have done my duty as your host, master Kiravi. Let the Ettuku know that I honor travelers on the road." His voice was harsh and formal, "I have told you what I know, and given my counsel. More important things weigh on my mind, such as the revolts along the Mother Rivers," he turned and glared at Kiravi, then me, "Such as murderers and pirates loose here in the western marches of the Empire."

"Grave concerns, to be sure," Kiravi spoke slowly, picking every word with care. Part of me wished Kiravi would leap up, smash a scarred fist into Itca's nearly-toothless face in an explosion of rage and masculinity. I hoped that we could pummel and slash our way beyond these webs of hatred and bigotry and burst free into the wilds to be alone and free. Alone with my mate.

My mates?

Kiravi brought me back from my bloodsoaked daydream, "You will not need to concern yourselves with us any longer, with such other grave matters weighing upon you."

"If you enter Gavic," Itca's cloudy eyes narrowed beneath his bushy, graying eyebrows, "Then I do not expect to see you again. In fact, I'd prefer not to see you in the morning." He turned to leave the building, the hearth fire and stone lamps casting a dancing cloak of red light around him. "Should the hornet's nest be stirred, so to speak, and their misdirected anger fall upon us here, master Kiravi," he pointed an arthritic finger at my lover, "Then the Empire will ensure you're returned to the Mother Rivers to answer for it."

"Rest assured, Master Itca," Kiravi's words were again deliberate, "That that will not occur." Itca snorted and returned to the tower, leaving us with the shadowed figures of the other guards.

Kiravi sighed and pinched his oft-broken nose, "I wish you would not...antagonize others so."

The blood rushed into my ears, "And I wish you would stop dragging us to places where I am seen as little more than an animal."

"Please, you two," Serina whispered. Her glowing eyes twitched across the rest of the barracks. The scattered Men and Enges didn't bother to hide the disdainful and sour looks on their faces, and we had to share the space with them the entire night. "Enough fighting. We'll be fine." She patted both our legs, "We'll be fine."

I wanted to believe her, to will my heart to slow and the heat to leave my face, but my hands just kept trembling with energy that had no outlet. No outlet, that is, that wouldn't end with blood. So instead, my hands clenched and released, harder and harder, until my fingers ached. Only then did I realize I'd been grasping an atlatl in one hand and a dart in the other.