Ray Aldridge - The Emperor of Everything

Unexpectedly, Ruiz was comforted too. He found it good just to hold her, to feel her heart beating against him. Her scent, her warm breath, the tickling touch of her hair; all these were pleasures more than adequate to the moment.

After a while her breathing grew regular, and she slept — but Ruiz felt no such urge. Who knew when, if ever, he would come across this species of delight again?

Two hours passed in a long sweet instant.

When Molnekh came to call him for his watch, Ruiz felt a deep pang of regret. He unwrapped himself from Nisa’s arms as carefully as he could, hoping not to wake her. She stirred, made drowsy wordless sounds, then seemed to settle back into sleep.

Outside, a low ground mist lay knee-deep beneath the trees. The forest was almost unnaturally quiet, except for the snores coming from Dolmaero’s tent.

“Everything’s well?” Ruiz whispered to Molnekh.

Molnekh nodded, showing a flash of white teeth in the darkness. “I can say this much: Nothing has happened. Is that good?”

Ruiz grinned back. “Time will tell, mage.”

Molnekh chuckled. “I’m tremendously reassured, Ruiz Aw.” He reached out one skeletal hand, laid it on Ruiz’s shoulder. “We all have great faith in your skills. Even Flomel, though his admiration is unwilling and pains him.” Molnekh chuckled again, then seemed to grow serious. “Our lives are in your hands, but all things considered, I feel sure matters could be worse.”

Ruiz was oddly moved. “I hope you’re right, Master Molnekh. We’ll do our best. Who knows, it may be enough.”

Molnekh patted his shoulder again, then turned away and crawled into Dolmaero’s tent. The snores stopped for a moment, then resumed.

Ruiz found a comfortable seat on a jumble of fallen stone, just outside the shelter. He settled himself for a long night. He felt no urge to sleep, and Dolmaero, the oldest and heaviest of them, would need all his strength to keep up tomorrow.

And if he had no other gift for Nisa, at least he could give her a few extra hours of sleep. He tried not to believe that this was her last night.

When Ruiz left the tent, Nisa woke. She reached for the comfort of sleep, but it didn’t immediately return. Uneasy thoughts crowded into her mind, as if they’d been waiting for an opportunity to catch her alone.

She thought of Ayam, Corean’s hermaphrodite slave, whose incautious decision to rape Nisa had provided Ruiz Aw with an opportunity to capture the airboat. She still ached where it had thrust itself into her, but the pain was fading. She remembered the terrible silent manner in which Ruiz had drawn the creature from her tent and throttled it, and the memory gave her a keen vindictive delight. It had died with such ambiguous surprise on its strange face, as if it couldn’t help finding some sort of perverse fulfillment in its own death.

Ruiz Aw. Such an odd man, such a perplexing tangle of mysteries. Tonight in the tent, he had known without words that, this once, she wanted just his comforting presence, his arms around her, and nothing more.

Not, she thought, that there was anything wrong with his lovemaking. In fact, never had she bedded with so skillful a lover. He was both fierce and tender, he seemed to know the ways her body wanted to be touched better than she did, he seemed to be able to sense the tempo of her passion perfectly. In bed, his mouth, usually so hard, became soft; his beautiful hands, those slayer’s hands, touched her gently when gentleness was what she wanted and gripped her strongly when the time was right for strength.

His fervor would be almost frightening, did it not bring her such overwhelming pleasure. She sensed in his lovemaking the same intensity she had seen in his face when he was killing his enemies — a thought both terrifying and fascinating.

Her memories of Ruiz Aw had strayed into uncomfortable areas, so she forced herself to think of the coming day. What new sights would she see, what marvelous things that had never existed on Pharaoh?

Then a quiver of anxiety went through her. And what new miracle would Ruiz perform, to keep them safe from Corean? Nisa had come to have an almost-fatalistic confidence in Ruiz; she refused to consider the possibility that Corean would best him, despite all the advantages that the slaver possessed: airboats, terrible weapons, monstrous henchmen.

No, she thought, growing drowsy again, Ruiz would manage, somehow. Her mind emptied, and then she slept.

After a while she dreamed.

The dream began well. She was once again Nisa, favored daughter of the King; once again she had all her pleasures: her bondservants, her gracious apartment in the palace, her books and games — and the adoration of everyone who knew her. She rested in a bower, gazing out at her father’s cool green gardens, wearing her favorite dress, a long high-waisted gown with vast butterfly sleeves, sewn from pale blue Hellsilk and spangled with tiny glitterlizard scales.

It was as if the past weeks had never happened. Her imprisonment, her painful role in the phoenix play and her death in the final act, her resurrection and capture by aliens, her strange attachment to the slayer Ruiz. All, all, a dream-memory, fading fast.

She forced away the tiny voice that whispered that this was the dream, and it fell silent.

Now she was moving through her father’s polished halls, drifting light as a thistle, with that glorious ease that comes in dreams. The dear familiar scenes floated past her dream eyes. The porcelain floor tiles that she had played on as a child, with their thousand subtle shades of ivory. The fountains she had bathed in. The shady rooms in which she had dallied with her lovers — sometimes the sons and daughters of noble houses, other times joyfolk from the public square.

A brief darkness fell over the dream, until she found herself on her favorite terrace, above all but the highest towers of the palace. The sun shone brilliantly on the city, and she felt a sense of grateful wonder. All this was hers, the palace, the great city, the vastness of Pharaoh beyond the walls. All hers to command.

She felt an exultation that made her giddy; she was so light with joy that when she spread her arms she was unsurprised to find the sleeves of her gown transformed into huge wings.

She rose up, soaring above everything, her movements swift as thought, inhumanly graceful.

The palace grew small beneath her and the sun grew fiercer, but she rushed upward, faster and faster, until it seemed that her wings trailed fire and she had become a comet, trailing glory.

An uneasiness came over her, too late. She discovered that she had passed the sun, and its dwindling warmth no longer reached her. Pharaoh was a grain of sand, lost in the void.

She looked up. Above her was a glassy black ceiling, a smooth arc that seemed to have no beginning and no end. She tried to slow herself, lest her delicate body be smashed against this barrier, but still she rose.

Finally a tiny round opening appeared in the otherwise featureless surface. An awful truth came to her; she saw that Pharaoh and everyone in it existed in a monstrous glass jar — and that she was rushing into its neck. Was it stoppered?

She brushed the slick walls painlessly, slid upward, slowing as the bottle’s neck narrowed and her body made firmer contact with the glass.

Finally she stuck, arms reaching upward, feet kicking furiously. No! she shouted soundlessly. She fought to get higher, clawing at the glass. Her wings were tearing, and this did hurt her, terribly, but she ignored the pain and struggled on. She moved a tiny bit, then a bit more. She had a sudden horrible sensation that the black tunnel was about to squeeze shut and crush her life away. She made a last muscle-tearing spasmodic effort.