Page 58

“I slept in the past?” Tobi says. “Is that what you mean? I slept before I knew you.” It is strange to hear Harok say the words Copperhead Circus. It makes him feel eerily homesick. Copperhead Circus feels so far away. Like something from a distant dream.

Harok only looks at Tobi blankly.

“Before I knew you,” Tobi says sadly. But he’s speaking Artemian. “In Azuria I did not know Ereyek dek.”

“Magnificent cock.”

Tobi laughs. “Sho. How I sleep without magnificent cock?”

Harok taps Tobi’s face in a playful slap. “Obey, Irgorye, Suskara,” he says simply, before leaning down and cutting off any more of Tobi’s babbling with a deep, warm kiss.

And there is nothing to be done. Harok is the Irgo. He is king and Tobi’s master. He is the Unkillable Irgo. But Tobi does not believe that anyone is truly unkillable. Such things are simply the legends kings like Harok build about themselves.

19

TOBI

Harok leaves the following morning with the traders and their carts and a large escort of warriors to see them safe to Ceruleum. With Harok leading on Embox, they will show a clear signal to the Exceli that attacking their trade routes will be met with violent force.

As the following days pass, Tobi finds his nights distinctly emptier. But he sees no reason to sleep alone. He takes Baby from the stables each evening after dinner and has her sleep beside him in the narrow bed in the kushir’s chamber.

Despite not having Harok to impress with his new skills in Ambolk every evening, as he goes about Urynwud having conversations with the Solwen, he finds the Ambolk language seems to click into place in his mind. He doesn’t need to translate back and forth in his head into Artemian quite so much when he speaks with people. He finds the Ambolk words just come. Almost as if, some of the time, he is thinking in Ambolk.

After two nights without Harok, Tobi arrives at the library with his guards. Today there are only three of them. This morning when he left his chamber Cel was not there and Oladin informed Tobi that he had given Cel the morning off as he had spent the night with his kitchen maid.

So, Tobi thinks, his mariandcards came true.

When Tobi enters the library he finds Lymok is not there. But it is not unusual for Tobi to arrive first. He settles Baby beside the fire and wanders around the room, looking at the books on the towering shelves. He stops when something catches his eye. A book on one of the shelves bound in red leather. On the spine are some Ambolk letters embossed in gold that mean nothing to him, but beneath them, also in gold, is what caught his eye. A small drawing of a roused cock.

Tobi reaches for the book and pulls it out. He can’t read the words on the front, but he doesn’t need to. Because along with the words embossed on the cover is a simple line drawing of two men in an embrace.

Tobi flips the book open at a random spot. Which turns out to be an illustration of a man wearing the same wooden crown Harok wears to court. He sits on the throne in the Sacred Hall, naked. Another man sits in the Irgo’s lap. He wears an alit and it is pushed up to his waist, so the Irgo can curl his hand around the kushir’s cock. Tobi peers close. The Irgo in the image looks a little like Harok. And the kushir could be him. The lines of the kushir’s face are very well drawn. The way he is close to breaking with the ecstasy of spend is clear.

He feels his face flush to look at it. Before he came to Urynwud, Tobi considered himself worldly and experienced. Since he has been here he has spent dozens of nights in Harok’s bed. But even with all he has done, he is still shocked to see something so lewd and arousing in the pages of a book. He’s always disliked books before, but he does like this one. He squirms as he turns the pages, unable to believe he could be allowed to look at such a thing.

Behind Tobi, a voice says, “What do you have there, kushir?” And the book is snatched from his hands.

Tobi whirls to find Lymok standing behind him. He looks at the book. “Oh,” he says, sounding very amused, “you found this. Can you read it?”

Tobi shakes his head. “I struggle to read Artemian. I wouldn’t know how to start with Ambolk letters.”

Lymok closes the book and looks at the cover. “I suppose, with a book like this, there are other ways to enjoy it.” He says something in Ambolk, reading from the cover, “This is a very famous book. A great classic of our people.”

“Really?” Tobi takes the book back and turns it over in his hands. “In Azuria a book like this would be burned. You’d be flogged for owning it.”

Lymok looks perplexed. “Why?”

Tobi opens the book. He shows Lymok a picture of two men kissing passionately. “In Azuria this is a crime. A sin of the body.”

“Oh,” Lymok frowns. “I’d forgotten about that. Is it really a crime? That seems so strange.”

“If you had grown up with your mother in Azuria you would be shocked to see this in a book,” says Tobi. “This is a crime the empire punishes severely. Sometimes with death.”

“Death?” Lymok’s eyes stretch wide. Tobi thinks Lymok does not believe him. “For a man to lie with a man is death?”

“It can be.”

“And for a woman?” Lymok asks with clear curiosity. “To lie with a woman?”