Page 59

“Yes. Perhaps. It would depend. The enforcers consult the Book of the Rules to decide the punishment. It might be a flogging. But if someone had committed many sins of the body it would likely be death. My own brother, Damon, was exiled into death for being sly.”

Lymok looks quite pale. “How strange. But you lay with men before you came here?”

“I did, but I had to be careful about it. There were ways.”

“You must be glad to be here where you are safe to do what you enjoy,” says Lymok.

Tobi isn’t sure what to say to that. It had never occurred to him before that he might be happier in the Forests of Amber than in the empire. Free to enjoy the pleasures of luxoli without concerns for the laws of Azuria. “I suppose,” he says, “I am certainly glad to be able to read a book like this.” He takes the volume back from Lymok and looks at the cover. “What is it called?” he says.

“The title means, ‘The Exultant Cock of the Ereyek’.” He smiles to himself. “You remember what Ereyek means⁠—,”

“I do,” Tobi interrupts him. He cannot keep the smug note from his voice. He uses the word Ereyek almost every night as he sobs and pants with pleasure in Harok’s bed. He is the kushir. The exultant cock of the Ereyek is his. He flips the pages of the book, rubbing a thumb over the text. “Perhaps I ought to try and learn the Ambolk letters after all,” he says. “I could read this poem to Harok.”

“So, that is what it takes to make you want to learn Ambolk letters, kushir.” Lymok smirks. “I am sure Irgo Harok knows this poem well. It’s thousands of words written by a greedy kushir, all about how delicious he finds his Master’s cock. Full of lewd words about how big it is and the nectar that drips from it tastes like honeywine. Some people say that kushir wrote it while crazed and desperate on foribunda. You see, years ago, that was the punishment for a misbehaving male kushir. Dose him with foribunda and lock him in the dungeons until he loses his mind, desperate for pleasure.” Lymok sucks his bottom lip. “but if you prefer, I could read the poem to you and you could learn it that way.”

Lymok takes Tobi through the book page by page. Each one seems to contain a lewder act than the one before. Some are familiar to Tobi and some less so. Before long Tobi is squirming under the table at the thought of recreating every page of this book in Harok’s bed.

It is really quite beautiful and deeply romantic. It is also very, very explicit. Tobi is quite overwhelmed by the fact that such a thing could exist. He liked the pictures. But combined with the words the effect is quite extraordinary. A work so beautiful. So true and heartfelt about the kind of love, the kind of desire, he feels himself. His own experiences put into the most exquisite words.

“Can I take this?” he says, lifting the book from the table.

“I don’t see why not,” says Lymok. “You are kushir. All of Urynwud is yours to take.”

That afternoon, Tobi is teaching his favourite rat, who he has named Cyrus, to run through a maze he has built from some scraps of wood. Cyrus is a very clever rat. He earned his name because he was one of the orangey-coloured copperhead rats, a type known for their intelligence.

This morning Cyrus manages to find a tiny hole in the way Tobi has constructed the maze. He squirms through it and bolts across the stable. Tobi jumps up and races after his rat, not wanting to lose his clever little star and the days of training he’s put into him.

He rounds a corner, then another and finds himself in a part of the stables he’s not seen before. It seems to be mostly used for storage. And amongst the ropes and saddles and straps and sacks of grain, he spots a familiar cart.

He knows it by sight, although it has been almost two full turns of the moon since he saw it. It’s the cart that was with the Ambolk when they took him. The last time he saw his trunk of clothing, it was loaded onto that cart. Tobi is heartily sick of wearing an alit, especially now Harok is gone. He knows it is a mark of Harok’s possession of him. But Harok isn’t even here. What difference does it make to Harok what he wears? What is the point in being dressed as a kushir when Harok is not able to make use of him?

Walking barefoot is uncomfortable and demeaning. He would love to have his boots back. His favourite pair vanished with the outfit he arrived in, and he assumes all of those clothes are long gone, but he had a spare pair of boots in that trunk.

Several moons ago, not long after Tobi had begun learning Ambolk, he had asked Lymok to teach him the Ambolk word for boots so he could ask Harok for a pair, but Harok had shook his head and said, “Ei, kushir grelsi,” Tobi’s Ambolk had been weaker then, but he had been able to tell that was a no and when he’d asked Lymok about it the next day he’d explained that grelsi meant barefoot. A specific word for kushirs. Ei, kushir grelsi. “No, kushir go barefoot.”

“It is tradition,” Lymok had explained, “for a Kushir to always be barefoot. And only have slight clothing. It makes it harder for them to run away.”

Lymok was right. It would be very difficult to flee into the forest with only the clothes he is wearing for warmth and protection. He is a possession and an ornamental one. That is considered before his comfort.

After Tobi has checked the cart to see that it is empty, but, as far as he can tell, it is definitely the one that brought his trunk to Urynwud, he tracks down Sami where she is filling a trough with buckets of water from the pump and asks her about the cart. It takes some time to find the right words to ask her what he wants to know: where would the goods it brought have been taken. He comes away with the location of a storeroom for kitchen goods, which he hopes is the right answer to the right question. He cannot be certain, but he returns Baby to her cage and sets off on a mission.

Tobi has been back to the great kitchen of Urynwud since he wandered in there on his first day and was chased out. Once he had a few words of Ambolk he found it easier to explain his presence and use his charm. Tobi has made friends with many of the serving men and kitchen maids, mainly because he likes being able to get extra treats whenever he is passing.

So his arrival in the kitchen on this rainy afternoon is met without much comment. Preparations are already being made for that evening’s meal. Meat is being roasted in the fires and great dishes of bread and vegetables are being prepared on the long table that runs along the centre of the room.

Tobi passes through, dancing around to avoid getting under the feet of anyone working. He snatches up an apple from a small pile of them on a side table, partly as an excuse for why he might be there, and munches on it as he slips into the storeroom at the back with his guards following behind.

The storeroom he finds himself in is huge. There are baskets of berries and roots, herbs hang in great bushels from the roof, making the room feel just as much a part of the forest as any other room in Urynwud. Through an alcove is a further room which is hung with meat. Whole carcasses, aging in the cool stone chamber.

The sight of so much deadness makes Tobi shiver. The room smells of blood and faintly of decay and rot. It makes him think of the Blood Sacrifices that the Solwen had practised every year, not so long ago.

But Tobi perseveres. He searches around the vast space and there he finds a corner stacked with different trunks. Seemingly like they are long forgotten. But nestling amongst them is his own. It feels like a lifetime ago that he watched it being loaded onto a cart, as he stood by Harok on his huge horse, not knowing what awaited him in the Amber Forest.

Tobi turns to his guards, who are loitering by the storeroom doorway. He puts together an Ambolk sentence that he hopes means, “This here, to my chamber.” He says it quite casually, giving it a little kick with his bare foot in case he didn’t quite make it clear what he wanted taken to his room. He doesn’t know the word for trunk.

The guards look at each other. Tobi cannot remember ever giving them a direct order before. He isn’t sure if they will obey him, but he simply waits and smiles and tries to look as if he expects them to do exactly as he asks.

And, after a couple of moments, they do.