bell

The cup holds two sips that never taste the same twice, the taste  of nothingness. The liquor is thick as honey, cold in his mouth, even when he warms it in his hand before drinking. The cup is glazed white, the liquor is peridot green. It smells of mint.

The glyph inside the cup is 'submit'.

To kneel with supple grace, and wait in perfect stillness, was the first lesson and the last. John listens to the bells, until the sound is a still emptiness in his mind, and he is in it.

He is, and no more.

He does not need the cup.

The Haralim lifts the silk away from him and he follows its hem with his eyes, the dazzle of a gilt charm reflecting the long gold light of the afternoon. Black traceries of shadow lie across the floor, cast by the intricately decorated grills over the windows. The floor itself is a mosaic, a single Selketi word: desire. John kneels in its center.

She lets the silk fall in a pool of red.

John follows her to the bed, in the room redolent of incense.

The Rale is there.

John sinks to his knees again and presses his forehead to the floor. He shudders once, feeling his whole body flush with want, with the need to please. This is what he is in this place: the Haralim's gift to her husband-brother.

Words dissolve on his tongue. The taste of nothingness, the sound of bells, every caress learned in the time between cup and cup, such is all that is left in the hollow where he used to be.

He is opened and burning, crying out face-down, bruised and forced even when he offers no resistance. This is what the Rale wants. A hand at the back of his neck, harsh, pressing him down into the sheets that bunch in John's fists. Always this first. He gives into it, loses himself in the rhythm, the sensations. Filled, taken, pinned under the other man's weight, fucked breathless and gasping between spikes of pain and brighter pleasure when the Rale raises John's hips and thrusts over and over again, chest hot against John's back.

He can come from just that now; it leaves him humiliated and hungry, desperate for more and more.

The Rale and the Haralim tangle together in the aftermath, while he lies spent amid soiled sheets the color of forests, watching bared skin through hazed eyes, sinuous contortions, hearing murmurs not meant for him, while the hours pass.

This is the mystery. The Rale is lean and long as his sister, younger, son of a different mother and fair in contrast to the Haralim. A puckered red scar runs up the inside of his thigh to his balls. His eyes are rare among the brown-eyed Selket, a gold-shot hazel. This is why the Haralim chose John.

There are secrets inside secrets in the Seven Walled City. There are no secrets someone does not know. The scar is a secret John keeps even from Rodney. A secret between the Haralim and the Rale and their bed slave.

John curls onto his side and watches them make love, until their voices rise in completion. He thinks of plots and heirs, assassins and cuckoos.

Then there is the cup, smooth porcelain held to his lips, the scent of mint bringing him to erection before he swallows. They both touch him now, hands sure and possessive, bringing him to the brink, making him beg, breaking him to their pleasure. They smile and kiss, they tease him to desperation, while dusk dyes the room blue and turquoise, and they bear him down on the bed, laughing. He aches and twists, shaking, helpless, needing, and they bind him with silken cords wrapped around the golden manacles, around his ankles, his knees, his thighs, until he is spread wide, stretched and displayed and taken beyond himself.

Every shiver, every shudder, and the bells chime, giving him away; his body ringing to each touch.

The Haralim sinks onto him and John bucks upward, wild, while the Rale twists three fingers deep inside him. Sparks burn through his nerves, lights behind his eyes, muscles drawing taut, making him gasp. She grinds down, her hands flattened over his chest, sharp nails drawing blood, tightening internal muscles around John, white teeth flashing. He curls his hands, bound high over his head, into fists, pushing up into her heat, down onto the Rale's merciless fingers, rhythm lost, out of control. Stares into the Rale's black-fringed eyes—hazel eyes, his eyes—reflecting his own, and comes.

They treat him like a pet afterward. The Rale unties him, then ignores him, while the Haralim lies on her back, her legs curled up and held to her chest, one hand resting over her vulva, red petals still shining wet with their mixed fluids. John slides from the bed. His legs buckle under him. He clutches for support as he goes down, pulling at one of the sheets inadvertently. The Rale looks up from stroking his hand through the Haralim's tangled, sweaty hair.

John knows he isn't supposed to see this, to understand this. His breath catches, then the Rale gestures for him to go.

He bows his head, gathers the silk pants and the veil, and leaves, his limbs still trembling.