A Taste of Honey Read online

  “You put it in me,” Lucrio said, and kissed him before speaking again. “Damn, though! That was mean, Aqib.”

  “It was necessary, I assure you.” Aqib lifted his arms—the shirt pulled up and off him. “I cannot say how the menials are in Daluz, but here in Olorum one cannot permit them free rein. They are to be taken firmly in hand.” Aqib’s belt crashed to the mat-covered floor, his trousers falling, too. “Loose tongues and sly eyes, rumor and intrigue: many a household has been brought low by menials left masterless.” Lucrio disrobed, and Aqib, wondering, played fingers down the valley between the deep halves of his lover’s chest, there where soft dark hair grew thickest. “And now you and I share a secret that must be kept.”

  [second day]

  In the white sun-blast of morning, Aqib slaughtered an old lamed bongo at the Menagerie and threw its meat to the cats and dogs, while dwelling upon the night before, satisfied. Sometime while the long gold afternoon waned into red, during the nervy first free-flight of a fledgling hawk, he began to wonder what other things two men might do together when they lay down: more than gentle touches, more than soft kisses. Dusk had gone blue, not yet violet, and the menials were trudging in with emptied shitcarts, when some old memory came back to him re a poet he’d once heard declaiming near the port. That wild crowd! Its howling laughter! What lewd words had that poet spoken? And then, late night at the rendezvous, in black shadow and orange lamp-flicker, Aqib strung together the remembered words as best he could: “Ego tibi fututrix. Volo crisare et cevere; tu me pedicare et irrumare vis?”

  At once Lucrio seized him close in a huge-handed assault. With violence, with possession, Aqib was kissed, bitten, a tongue thrust into his mouth. Then he was shoved back, half-crushed, to arm’s length while Lucrio gaped at him. “You know what you just said?”

  “No!” Aqib said, delighted. “Did I say it correctly, though?”

  “More or less, but Aqib—!”

  “I wanted to surprise you.” Aqib stuck a hand in his lover’s clout, and was gratified by discoveries. “It was awfully wicked, what I just said, wasn’t it?”

  Lucrio boggled at such understatement. “Yeah!” he said. “No, stop—I’ll come too fast. Quit, Aqib! Where in the world you heard all that, anyway?”

  “In the Low-Port market, when I was a boy. There was a poet reciting, and the crowd exclaimed at every verse. They laughed and rolled on the ground. Then some king’s men came and took the poet away. My father knocked me down when I asked him what the words meant. He’d never hit me before, nor has he since. May we now do those things I asked for? Tonight?”

  “You don’t even know what all you said!”

  “Who cares? I want to do it all anyway. Whatever pleases you, Lucrio, will delight me—please?”

  “Well . . .”

  [thirteenth day]

  In the last days of the Daluçan Embassy, His Holiest Majesty’s youngest and favorite child, the Blessèd Femysade, had returned home from university after years abroad in the north. Consumed with her studies, she never granted the Daluçans audience. Indeed days after they had gone, she still had not stepped from indoors the Sovereign House. At last, the Most High put his foot down. And so the Blest made safari in the Park with the king her father and many attendants. As she had been of age to marry for some years, His Holiest Majesty pressed her on the subject, which bored her, as did most men. Then, from afar, the royal host glimpsed Aqib running Sabah. He rolled in the grass with the growling cat, his wild hair loose and gathering chaff and golden straw. He wrestled with Sabah, and laughed: joy nowhere and with no one else, now. The Blessèd Femysade recognized him at once. She turned to the king and said, “Him, Papa.” With that, Femysade and Aqib were married even before the Long Rains fell that year, and their daughter, Lucretia, was born before the Rains fell again the year after.

  [third day]

  At first light, Aqib sat up abruptly in bed. “Oh, Blood of the Saints,” he exclaimed, “the bears!”

  Lucrio propped himself up on an elbow. “Bears?”

  “Well, you cannot be imagining they teach themselves to dance.”

  “Never really thought about it.” Lucrio lazily took in the view as Aqib crouched and stood, crouched and stood—naked—rummaging the floor-strewn clothing. “But, yeah, I could see that somebody’s gotta learn ’em.”

  “Someone indeed,” Aqib said grimly, wrapping his loins in one of the clouts. “Would you care to guess who?” Lucrio glanced at the other clout, opened his mouth to say something; closed it, and didn’t. “And in three days’ time,” Aqib said, drawing on his shirt, “I’m meant to give a show for you all, the whole Daluçan Embassy. By then my bears had better be prancing winsomely, or so I was advised by a herald of His Holiest Majesty . . .” It occurred to Aqib that, first thing in the morning, one might better eschew complaints of ursine intransigence, and stick to tender talk. “But tell me, mi mellite,” he said with a smile, looking up as he pulled on his trousers. “What do your Daluçan knights of the Tower require of you today?”

  “They got me doing exercises all day long with one of your armies. Drilling your guys in triplex acies.”

  “Oh,” Aqib said, without a clue what the term might mean. “Well, that does sound like fun, I’m sure!”

  Lucrio made a face. “Some boring-ass bullshit is what it is. I’d rather be laid up here with you.”

  Aqib, however, had a long day ahead too—with recalcitrant bears. They dressed and hastened to their work.

  [fourth day]

  Did a shadow cross the light? Aqib opened his eyes. At the bottom of the room, one third of the window-shutter was folded open upon the fondac’s garden, admitting sun and birdsong. Last night, in hopes of some breeze to stir the room’s steamy closeness, odorous of man and boy and their rutting, they’d dared risk an uncovered window. Now, blue tatters of sky in a green leafy frame could be seen, brightening. Lucrio breathed still sleeping against his shoulder; a huge arm across his chest, a thigh big as both of his lying over them, keeping him close, in place. Brisk steps went down the hallway, rustling the portiere in passing. Aqib closed his eyes to the faint noise of folk breaking their fast up front in the fondac’s refectory. In a moment, they must rise and away: Lucrio to put the Olorumi Royal Cavalry through its paces, practicing whatever difficult formations, and Aqib to the Menagerie and its many chores. But for a little while longer, he could lay sleepily enjoying the weight of muscled limbs, the sweaty press of skin on skin, Lucrio’s phallus hard against his leg, and pulsing.

  [fourteenth day]

  The aunty-broker met with Berasade mln Sun Above The Fog, who signed without a quibble, for the opening bid came in stupendously lavish. Berasade took the news to her father, Master of Beasts and the Hunt, Sadiqi, who summoned in turn his elder son, styled “the Corporal.” These three took conference. Sister and brother then brought the news to Aqib. They sat him down and laid out the details: the who, the when, the how much. Aqib listened quietly even as his siblings veered off into giddy speculation over their own much-brightened prospects. When finally they allowed him a word edgewise, Aqib said—hardly knowing what he was saying—that, having heretofore belonged only to the lay priesthood, he found himself seized by sudden vocation, and moved to take the fullest, strictest vows. He felt disposed now in his heart and soul to a renunciate’s life, and wished only to wander skyclad and prayerful, for all his earthly days remaining—

  —Starting in fright, Aqib lost the thread when the Corporal stood and struck the wall; but smoothly Aqib picked it up again, saying only, “Celibate . . . ,” before the Corporal kicked the stool out from under him.

  Women being weaker than men, they will often break at the sight of strength brutalizing helplessness. Aqib, then, knew whence salvation would come, if it came at all. Whichever way knocked, he always turned his eyes back to Sister. And she did soon rise from her own stool, saying, “Really, Brother,” to the Corporal, “I do think that’s quite enough. Must you always . . . ?”


  The Corporal spun on her, spraying spit as he spoke. “You defend him? You, who are playing two royal grandsons and a royal nephew against each other? And how many other fools vie to make you the best bride’s-price? I wonder, Sister, whether Olorum’s best will still come sniffing around you, if this one spurns the king’s favorite, spitting in the face of the Blessèd Femysade! Who will marry you, then? Or would you rather end up some, some—merchant’s wife?”

  Berasade recoiled. For that, most decidedly, was not a fate she wished for herself. Merchant’s wife, indeed! Averting her gaze from brothers younger and older, Sister gathered up the layered hems of her skirts, light linens all richly colored. And speaking no further words, Berasade mln Sun Above The Fog withdrew—leaving them to it.

  The wife had never lived on this earth more content and better pleased with her husband than would be the Blessèd Femysade, once she’d married the son of Sadiqi, Aqib. The world would say she glowed—warned the Corporal—they would say how happy the Blest seemed now, so changed, so full of joy. And babies, they would say. So many babies! One right after the other! Sweet Saints above, what could those two be doing . . . ?

  [fifth day]

  At that time, more than a generation had passed since the Kin-Slaughters, though elderly Cousins still remembered the terrors of early childhood, that bloody feast of fratricide, the rampant murders. Therefore, most great houses retained a few burly fellows who, wearing the clan livery and bearing battle spears, kept a beady eye on the coming-and-going of menials and grandees in and out of the compound of their liege. The Reverend Master Sadiqi, to be sure, was of the old school, and had guardsmen who watched at the house gate and in the front courtyard. Fortunately, vigilance and discipline were much fallen off after so many decades’ peace, and nowadays, directly after prayers, the guards doused the lamps and went to bed. The way was left clear for a skulking boy to slip unseen from his father’s compound, run down to the undercity, and fit himself in the arms of a forbidden lover.

  Aqib, glorious and out-of-place—like blue glistering diamonds round a beggar’s filthy neck—had eyes for no one in that late-night crowd as he passed through the fondac’s bustling refectory . . . though a whole host of heads spun and took note of him, on his way to some room in the back. Before he could touch him, Lucrio woke and drew Aqib down into the sheets. The first kiss lasted until Aqib broke it with his news.

  “They were saying—everyone, Lucrio!—‘the bells ring, and we all gather to worship the Saints. But where is Aqib? We never see him at midnight prayers anymore. Does he go down to the undercity, I wonder, and see some doxy there? Has he taken up, these last few nights, with some low fast girl?’ Lucrio, I laughed at them, I tried to put them off, but then Master Sadiqi my father came to me. At first he said nothing, only looking at me, and then he said, ‘We will see you tonight, Aqib, at prayers, won’t we?’ Oh, what could I say, Lucrio? My father! I said, ‘Yes, Papa. Of course.’ Therefore I come to you so late tonight, and must so tomorrow and hereafter. I am sorry to make you wait, my love. But never despair of me; don’t sleep . . .”

  [sixth day]

  Along that stretch of day neither fish nor fowl—no longer night, not yet the morning—he and Lucrio walked up the boulevard so that Sabah could stretch her legs awhile free of the Menagerie. Overcast blotted the stars. The moon had set. Night-lamps burned, godslights shone, only far and in-between. Deep shadow abounded on the boulevard, and nearly anywhere at all two young men could tarry for a kiss and grope, unseen. What did they talk about, and talk about, and talk about? Always talking in those first days of love! One hardly remembers what was said, only with whom and how it felt, the balmy promise of the air. Then, a little fat pig tried the wide road. Oh, it ran! Fleeter than one imagines a pig to be, it broke across the boulevard . . . but not nearly fleet enough. A godslight overhung a huge gate, and by that whiteblue radiance they saw coursing shadows embrace, then roll together on the ground. They heard a squeal, a scream, and next they knew, cat lay down with pig, her teeth in its throat. Sabah strangled the small thing dead.

  “What are we going to do with that, Sabah? Have you not already eaten?” Aqib came to stand over her, scolding. “I brought no gamebag. We don’t need it!”

  Insouciant, the cat stood up from her murder, licking bloody chops.

  Lucrio laughed.

  A great tenement-compound loomed right there beside the boulevard. From its courtyard a sleepless woman emerged with three children: one at the breast, one a toddling skirt-clutcher, and one six years old or seven. “Racuhzin?” the matron called. “If you ain’t gonna take that pig, mind if we do? Racuhzin?”

  Aqib looked to Sabah, who’d gone to wander naughtily at the boulevard’s far side, investigating the cover of tangled overgrowth from which the pig had broken. Negligently he waved have at it to the mother and children. “Sabah!” he called, and the cat came.

  “Well, go on, boy. Get it!” said mother to the biggest of her children. Lucrio helped the small boy hoist and settle the bloody carcass across his shoulders. The mother, humbly amazed by this assistance, said, “Thank you, Mr. White Man.”

  “Salve, Daluciane,” Aqib corrected sharply. “Tibi gratias ago.” The which the matron assayed in a garbled mumble, while backing away she repeated, “Racuhzin,” ducking her head and person obeisantly low.

  “You all take care now,” Lucrio said; and the poor family, to him: “You too!”

  Having gained some distance, the mother and her biggest child began to chatter excitedly together, the boy staggering under his burden. They made their way back into the tenement’s courtyard.

  Lucrio held his hand out to the cat. She licked it clean of pig’s-blood. “How’d that lady know to call you that?” he asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “What she said. ‘Royal Cousin.’”

  Aqib said, “Oh,” and having been told thus all his life, and so believing it, said, “We Cousins have a grace about us which the little people”—one hand patting down upon the air, as milords indicate the plebs—“know and recognize. A sacred glow.”

  Perhaps. But one could certainly point to more concrete clues.

  In the first place, nine-tenths of Great Olorum walked in bare feet. Aqib went shod. And though the sandals he wore that night were only his knockabouts, still, note how intricately wrought they were, all aglint and agleam with bronze rivets and bucklery. His shirt and trousers—albeit work clothes, and stained—were bespoke confections of Sovereign House tailors, made of cotton so fine the poor never handled such stuff . . . except to pick and prepare it for their betters. Hair scissored short was suitable for all Olorumi, of any status, man or woman, high and low. None but Cousins might wear it long, however, and Aqib’s was extraordinarily so. In quality of teeth and skin, bright or darkened whites of the eyes; lips pale from overwork and poor food, or lips rich and fully pink; also in the assured grace of the body’s movements, or conversely, in its pained, halt diffidence: one could read past insults to health and ongoing privation. Or one could spot a scion of superaffluence, slumming in the undercity.

  Lucrio said only, “Ah,” in the tone of a man enlightened. They walked on.

  [24 years old]

  Behind his wife’s palace in the feral garden, where a length of chain attached to a tree-shaded expanse of wall, Aqib watched his daughter romp with a lion rescued earlier that season from an overmobbing pack of wild dogs. In rank weed and flowers, six-year-old Lucretia ran laughing. The lion, still adolescent—still clumsy, too, on that mangled right haunch—chased and bumbled. Aqib watched closely. She did well. Lucretia was obeying her papa, and with sharp tones, strong gestures, put paid to any hints of leonine overexuberance no sooner than these arose. Yet Aqib was still anxiously aware of the effect his own presence exerted here: arousing docility and scruple, somehow, in a beast truly having neither. A moment’s inattention, and the sneaky monster might well eat a child . . .

  The majordomo materialized in the open postern entry, sho
uting. “Most Sanctified Cousin, a royal herald has come to—!”

  Whereat the announced, himself shouting, shoved past the older woman. “Royal Cousin Aqib? His Holiest Majesty requests and requires that—”

  Aqib swept an imperious hand behind him, stilling the jostling and noise alike. “Lucretia,” he called. “Come at once!”

  The girl called back to him, “Yes, Papa,” and came running, lion at her heels. Resurgent hostilities abated between majordomo and herald, the toothy, clawed approach quelling them. Aqib locked the latent maneater collar-to-chain, and the beast dropped its head thirstily to the water trough. Taking his daughter’s hand, Aqib led them all inside, to the mudroom. “Now what is this?” he said.

  The herald wasn’t brisk but rude. “Two gods are just now come from the western bayou. They wait at the Sovereign House, in the Daluçan Garden as we speak: demanding to see you, the child, and the Blessèd Femysade forthwith.”

  Aqib protested. Two gods? Such august beings could want nothing with him or his daughter: neither of whom had the least to do with high politics, and as for “ . . . the Blessèd Femysade, she only reviews numbers: Treasury Chair and Treaty Signatory are, respectively, her mother, Grace of Saints upon her, and sister—”

  “You, Sanctified Cousin! the child! and your Blessèd wife!” said the herald, his trained and honeyed voice souring with nerves. “Now, where is the Blest? I must fetch her at once.”

  Father and daughter glanced at each other in alarm. One did not plague the Blessèd Femysade with petty bullshit while she was in chambers—not twice, one didn’t. Any interruption of her studies was some petty bullshit.

  “My daughter and I shall attend upon the visitors without delay.” This, Aqib conceded in the manner the herald so clearly required: without qualification. “But with the Blessèd Femysade”—his tone now becoming one of delicately proffered recommendation—“truly, it were best she be informed as evening comes on, after siesta: at such time the Blest should emerge from her mathematicon.”