“We come to this circle to bind ourselves in spirit and mind,” he began, wrapping their clasped hands together, his right and Charles’s left, with the silk. Excepting that strip of fabric, they were both naked. “We declare to one another our devotion, using this ceremony to demonstrate our sincerity.” He drew their bound hands together and kissed the point where their flesh joined. “Sharb’ta,” he murmured, then pressed their hands toward Charles.

  Charles kissed the same point and echoed Timothy. “Sharb’ta.”

  The light of the low fire in the hearth danced in Timothy’s dark eyes. “It means ‘I pledge,’ just so you know. You can say it in Etsian if you prefer.”

  “I like sharb’ta better. It sounds prettier.” Charles waggled his eyebrows. “I thought this was a sexual ceremony. Is that another thing we Etsians got wrong?”

  The last of the shadows left Timothy’s face. “Patience, quiera.”

  Oh, excellent, Charles thought, and did his best to wait.

  There were many more vows, long, intricately worded vows of fealty, citing Catalian customs and concepts that Charles just barely understood: he had no idea what it meant that he promised to push his ox cart only for Timothy, but he was happy to swear to it all the same.

  They lit the candles too, one at a time, first one, then two, then three. But once the third was lit, Timothy got to his knees, reached for one of the jars, and the Catalian ceremony immediately got a lot more interesting.

  “I promise to pleasure your body,” Timothy said, painting oily streaks down the insides of Charles’s thighs. He had unbound their hands and wrapped both ends of the strip around his own wrists, giving himself just enough slack to move them about Charles’s body. “I promise to pleasure you with my mouth, my body, my breath.” He bent and licked at the oil, and Charles had to put his hand on his lover’s head to steady himself as he watched the wanton display. “I promise to give myself to you, to make my body your house. To love you with my heart but to treat you with my body, to show my love by surrender.” More oils, more paintings, with particular, wonderful attention to Charles’s nipples, anus, and cock. “I anoint you, lover. I mark you with precious oils and ointments to show my love, my devotion, my honor to you.” He pressed a large, fragrant jar in Charles’s hands, then bent all the way to the floor, kissing the tops of Charles’s feet. “My body is your body, quiera. I ask you to take the honor and the privilege of using it as you see fit.”

  Timothy lifted his head, crawled on the ground until he faced away from Charles, and curled into a ball in the center of the circle. Then he tucked his head into his knees, lifted his hips, and reached back to open himself.

  He waited.

  Charles did not make him wait long. His cock was already hard and pulsing, but at the sight of Timothy so subdued and patiently displayed, he fumbled like a young buck at his first fuck, slicking himself with shaking hands and shoving grease into Timothy’s anus with clumsy haste. His ardor only rose as Timothy held completely still, little more than a vessel for Charles to fuck, and fuck him Charles did. The only complaint he had was that he was so aroused he could not make it last, erupting his seed into Timothy within less than twenty thrusts. He collapsed over his lover’s back, gasping. When he was able, he rose and withdrew, his legs still quivering like a pudding.

  Timothy rose, not entirely steady himself, and met Charles for a fierce, fiery kiss. Then he guided Charles’s hand with his as they lit the fourth candle.

  Once this was done, he smiled with great pleasure as he unwound the silk, handed it to Charles, and pushed him onto his knees. “Your turn.”

  Charles’s body, though completely sated, hummed with renewed excitement. “Just the same thing as you did?”

  Timothy nodded. His hand stroked Charles’s hair. “I’ll help you through the words and tell you which ointment goes where.”

  And then you’ll fuck me silly while I’m curled into a ball. Charles’s backside clenched in eagerness. “Out of curiosity, what do the women do in a ceremony?”

  Timothy’s smile would have made the most hardened whore in Etsey blush. “They use a phallus.”

  Charles’s belly clenched, and his cock bobbed. “Goddess bless, but I love Catal.”

  It was less graceful than he’d have liked, having to have Timothy feed him each phrase, but Charles was glad to do it. He meant every word, scripted or not. It was with only the deepest reverence that he anointed his lover, and when he curled into a ball and offered himself, pulling his cheeks wide, he felt as if he were opening himself all the way to his soul.

  And as the ceremony finished, as Timothy was spent and they reached together to light the last candle, as they inscribed their names on the parchment and watched it burn between them, Charles made one last vow, silently, his words echoing not just in his soul but in the whole of the universe, as far as his powers could send them.

  I will do anything to keep us together, Timothy. Anything at all.

  Forever.

  Chapter Ten

  The ice creeps in and holds us fast

  To the Ring we go, with clan we cast.

  For four long months we while away

  For four long months the pirates play.

  But spring will come, and off we’ll be

  O Sea, O Sea, we sail for thee.

  —from a Ring pirate chantey

  Three weeks before the first day of spring, Madeline came to Jonathan in a dream.

  He began by making love to Gibbs on a cloud, kissing and rolling and laughing. Soft, gentle hands touched his arm and his side. Turning his head, Jonathan saw Madeline lying beside him, smiling. He smiled back and kissed her, and for a moment he was making love to the both of them, which thrilled his heart.

  Then Gibbs faded away, and it was just he and Madeline, lying naked in the quiet of the stars.

  He lifted his head and looked around. “This is like that place we came to when I was dying. When you lost your body.”

  “Yes, except this time I know how to find my way back.” She smiled and skimmed her hands over his skin. “You look happy.”

  “I am.” He captured her hand and kissed it, keeping it close to his lips. “Especially now that I see you.”

  A flicker of sorrow passed over her face. “A great war is coming very soon. It will be against an enemy that we do not expect.” She took his face in her hands and held it there as she spoke in hushed tones. “Hold fast to your heart. To love. To life, to yourself. I’ve come to give you a warning: do not let yourself go back to your past of guarding, of giving yourself to duty. Hold back, and hold fast. You have given enough to the world. It’s time to let it save you for a change.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jonathan said. She began to fade, and he tried to grip her tighter. “Madeline, don’t go! I don’t understand!”

  “Your first loyalty must be to yourself,” she said, her voice beginning to echo as if from far away. “Learn the difference between selfishness, which is taking from others to serve yourself, and serving self, which is putting your needs above that of the world. All the Goddess must learn this, my love, or we will fall.”

  “Madeline, I don’t understand!” he cried. She was almost gone now.

  “Remember,” she said, her voice so distant it was a whisper. “Remember yourself. Remember, or you will be lost.”

  “Madeline!” he cried out—and woke with her name on his lips, his heart pounding so hard that it hurt.

  For several seconds he sat rigid on his pallet, pulse pounding, breath heaving. When it was clear sleep would not return easily, not with that dream resonating inside him, he dressed quietly instead and slipped into the main passageway of the caves.

  Madeline had described to him the cave system the Zamoa used in the desert, natural caverns carved, one assumed, by water long ago. The pirates’ nests were similar, though they hadn’t hesitated to help nature along when it hadn’t suited their desires. Strategically placed gunpowder gave them larger rooms and passages when the way felt too small, and in some places rock had been reformed to create desired spaces.

  There were kitchens, too, and toilets, and both were highly regulated. Catalian influence was high here, and thus so were sanitary standards; the toilets were what Jonathan learned were “composting” ones, a concept that had seemed vaguely agricultural until explained, and it was all a bit alarming to a native Etsian, the idea of fertilizing crops with human refuse. But once he’d been given a tour of the entire Ring system, it made sense. The food stores were guarded more heavily than the armory, much of it traded, purchased, or stolen from Etsian merchants. Food was difficult to come by in the caves; a small farm of sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens were kept in a shelter near the ships, but they were expensive and difficult to feed and were killed carefully and infrequently, excepting the swine. Their waste, as well as that of the men, was kept in a special decomposing area that, bizarrely enough, eventually produced rich dirt, which was in its turn used to grow the carefully cultivated crops of fresh vegetables and grains in another open area near the kitchens.

  It was to this nearly open area Jonathan wandered now. The weather was crisp and cold. Snow had fallen over the ships, leaving them icy beautiful in the dark gray waters. Heat from the caves mixed with the cold air of the docks, casing the area in a fog, freezing in places along the stony walks. The animals bleated and rustled in their pens as he strode by, watching him with mild suspicion but mostly chewing their grass and pellets. Beyond them stood the high glass and stone walls of the gardens, their sloped roofs closed to keep out the cold and fog. In the distance Jonathan could hear the hiss of the natural vents that warmed the caves as well as the angry splash of waves against the rocks beyond the bay.

  He also, he realized a little belatedly, heard footsteps behind him.

  Old instincts had him whip around fast, his hand going for his knife. He stopped just in time to keep from drawing it, but when he saw who followed him, he almost wished he’d done so. It was Gibbs.

  The pirate grinned. “Hello, love. Don’t usually see you up and about this early.”

  Jonathan rubbed at the back of his head and grimaced into the early morning mist. “I had strange dreams.”

  They stayed where they were, silent, watching each other. Eventually Jonathan’s attention was drawn by an especially great crash far out in the bay. It sounded like glass and thunder.

  “That’d be the ice,” Gibbs supplied, nodding in the direction of the sound. “Warmer floes coming through the strait now, breaking it up. Never freezes much thick this far south, but freeze it does, and this is the melting time. Will get louder and louder as spring comes nearer. Within a month now a scout ship will see if the way is clear, and as soon as it is, we’ll sail once again.”

  A great war is coming, coming very soon.

  Jonathan felt the next crash in his belly. “And we will sail with you, I suppose? Charles and Timothy and I? Is that when the kinder will return too?”

  “The kinder comes and goes as the kinder wants. But aye, I expect we’ll see them and your fine lass with the first melt. As for where you go—that’s up to you, isn’t it, mate?”

  Your first loyalty must be to yourself.

  Jonathan frowned. “I don’t know where else I’d go. I need to help Charles, find Madeline. Rescue Timothy.”

  Gibbs nodded soberly. “Aye. Your clan. I understand.”

  For some reason the pirate’s solemnity irritated him. “Do you?”

  Gibbs’s eyebrows rose briefly, but then he nodded and took a step backward, holding out his hands and inclining his head in a sort of calming respect as he did so. “Aye. I do, love.”

  Perhaps it was the strange dream. Perhaps it was the fact that spring came closer every day, meaning the life Jonathan had only just now begun to accept would change around him yet again. Perhaps he was simply a bastard that morning. Whatever it was, it made him tetchy.

  “Don’t pity me, Gibbs. Just because we’ve shared a bed doesn’t mean you understand my life.”

  “I wouldn’t pretend to,” Gibbs replied calmly.

  Goddess bless, but that tone went right up Jonathan’s nose. “I’m not your man to coddle.”

  Gibbs watched Jonathan with a strange gaze, on some odd kind of alert now. “No, can’t say y’are.”

  Jonathan’s hands clenched, itching for his weapon. Alarm bells whispered in his mind, warning him he was being led by something, but it was a tide he couldn’t stop. He faced Gibbs straight on, fury rushing through his veins. “Respect me, damn you. I fought in the wars for the forces you stole from. I bore demons and faced the gates of hell more times than I am capable of recounting.”

  The pity on Gibbs’s face was naked now, but it was very grim. “And you have more hell to face, man, I regret to say.”

  No more of this. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Gibbs strode forward slowly, watching Jonathan’s face all the while he spoke. “They told you, I expect, how I ran away from the oasis, how I came back.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware of your cowardice. You only came back because you faced a worse foe.”

  Gibbs smiled grimly. “True, though I will tell you what I didn’t tell them, brother—I came back for another reason.” He reached up to scratch the side of his nose with his thumbnail. “Kinder’s funny, y’see. We see ’em in ships, an’ that’s how we normally does, but it’s not entirely unheard of for’em to be on land as well. They’re usually there all magiclike, comin’ in dreams or fancy. But i’the desert, somehow, they just appear. An’they did, for me, just a’fore I saw the resurrected dead t’Pretender used as h’force.” All trace of humor had left him now. “They told me of such that a’first I didn’t believe. Thought ’twas some trick. But i’time I saw all they said come t’pass. They told me of t’temple fro’the sky. Of t’city rising from naught but sand. Of t’spirit tha’would ask me t’host it an’take me t’an old enemy. Of many, many things the kinder told me. And then I forgot most of them, I’ll be honest. They can do that to a man. I remembered a bit here and there, then forgot again. Until we came to the Ring. Now I remember it all, and it’s time I shared some of it with you.”

  Gibbs stood directly before Jonathan, all the jocular pirate gone from him now, even the coward fled. Jonathan tried to meet him with indignation. “And what did they tell you of me? Something that makes you pity me, I assume?”

  Is that why you took me to bed?

  Gibbs grimaced. “You have a terrible curse, lad, one I’d wish not on my worst enemy. Yes, I pity you.”

  “What curse?” That’s why you reached out to me. Why did that hurt so much? “What nonsense is this?”

  It was so swift Jonathan didn’t see it coming until it was too late—he was staring at the pirate’s face, his guard down, never thinking, never dreaming he needed defenses, not with Gibbs.

  Which only made it easier for Gibbs to draw the knife, pull back, and drive it straight into the center of Jonathan’s chest.

  His cry of shock became a gurgle lost to pain and blood as he fell to the ground, staring up disbelievingly at his killer. Dead. Dead, here, and at such a hand!

  He stared up at Gibbs, who looked down at him grimly through tears.

  “James,” he whispered, then choked as blood filled his mouth.

  Madeline!

  As he died, he felt her respond. Felt Timothy too, rising in his bed. He felt a tall, dark-haired woman in the desert city far away, stirring in the middle of the night. He was aware of a thousand rustling shards, scattered throughout the world and over the sea.

  He saw a temple that floated with him through the stars, and a young man, dark and grinning as he came down the steps and kissed Jonathan, hard and fast on the mouth.

  There was a rush—of speed, of sound, of light, of taste, of everything and nothing, all at once. He saw the tunnel ahead of him, a narrow chute he recognized, and he raced down it—

  —and back into his body.

  He lay gasping on the ground, his heart thumping loudly in his breast. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt it, heavy and wet across his chest. He felt the ghost of pain, but he could tell too that he was uninjured, despite the fact that he had been stabbed and brutally so. He felt weak and strange, but above all shocked beyond all sense and reason, which was why he only stared, trembling, at the pirate as he knelt beside him.

  Gibbs looked shaken himself, and miserable. Gone was the veneer of composure, and back was the man Jonathan was used to, sweating and looking ready to cast up his accounts.

  “By the sea, love, I don’t ever want to have to do that again!” He mopped his brow with his sleeve.

  Jonathan managed to speak, but only in a whisper. “You killed me.”

  Gibbs blanched and shook his head fiercely. “Stabbed you, love. Stabbed you. You didn’t die. You tried, but you didn’t. Which is what you had to see—now, before the war comes.”

  War. “Madeline told me about the war. In my dream.”

  “Aye.” Gibbs stroked Jonathan’s face. “The war is coming, and much as I would love to keep you from it, it will find you. And what it has in store for you is terrible.”

  Jonathan just stared at him, lost, confused, and finally terrified.

  “You can’t die, Johnny. Not by my hand, or your own, or anyone else’s. You were the river of life for a hundred thousand souls. And now you are the river of life.” Gibbs’s face filled with misery. “Forever.”

  * * * *

  Just as the ice was due to break, a pirate land scout came over the pass from Hain, his body bloodied and his escorting party cut down from fifty men to three.

  They had been inspecting the pirate’s field of winter wheat when a Cloister unit had found and butchered them, an infraction of Ring territory never before heard of. More troops had been reported to be headed their way, and the scouts were adamant that the invaders meant do to much more than burn the crops. Though that alone promised to be devastating. Seventeen teams of men were sent to guard the pass, and the rest hurried spring preparations to take to the waters and sail to the Plains of Evadae, where they could assemble against the Cloister and block their access to the pass.

 

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