Being dead should have meant, as far as Marius had considered the matter, that blood ceased to flow throughout his body. Sure, Keth had shown him otherwise, but Keth was different, and besides, he hadn’t really had a handle on the state of his being then, and after all, that was Keth. And yet, as the girls before him gyrated and folded their nubile, sweating bodies into shapes he’d only ever seen formed by clowns making balloon animals for children in the marketplace, at least one part of his body exhibited proof that blood was flowing into it at a furious rate indeed. A dancer shimmied up to the table, bent back at an angle that intimated a loss of at least three vertebrae, breasts swinging from side to side like passengers on a running camel. The King whooped in a most unregal way and leaned forward to slap her on the stomach, indicating to Bomthe that he should do the same. Bomthe complied with nowhere near the reserved air he had displayed during the meal. The girl slid along the table and presented the swaying vista of her body to Marius. He swallowed, remembering the first time he had seen Keth. He had been alone, a stranger to the city, and the tavern window had shown the only light along the whole posh side of the docks. He’d squeezed himself into a booth with a pint of bottom scrumpy, and watched as the dancing girls moved through the crowd, sliding from one dropped farthing to the next, displaying themselves for those who would pay only to imagine, and marking out those who would pay more, later, to touch. Keth had swayed out of the crowd, back arched, hips swinging in long, slow circles, and leaned over the table towards him, long hair gently tickling the sides of his face, ends dipping into his flagon. And with no money, and no contacts, he’d gone out that night and found a game of penny ante, and the next night a game of three card poke, and the next joined in a plot to rumble a distributor of fake Tallian art treasures… and every night, every penny he earned, he brought back to the tavern, and waited with his solitary pint of dregs, waited for Keth to come swaying out of the crowd…
“No!” He pushed himself back from the trestle, knocking his stool to the sand and standing, shivering, under the shocked gazes of Bomthe and the king. The dancer worked a shrug into her movements, a little dip of her shoulders that said “Whatever. Your loss, pal,” and slithered over to the first of the sailors laying on their mats. Bomthe raised his eyebrows.
“A problem, Mister Helles?”
“No. No, I…” Marius wiped a hand across his eyes.
“Not your type, sir?” Marius heard the insinuation in Bomthe’s tone, saw the smile. “Shall I call Figgis?”
“No, that’s not… to hell with you.” Marius swung way and stalked out of the circle of light, into the dark at the edge of the village. He stopped once he was around the corner of a hut and leaned his head against the rough dirt wall. Only then did he let out the breath he had been holding.
“Gods damn it,” he breathed. “What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I even breathing?”
He straightened himself, took several more. “Just get through this,” he muttered. “Just get through this and get back. Get it sorted.” He nodded his agreement to the small voice at the back of his mind that was whispering all the things he would do once he got through this and got back. Yes, make it all right. Yes, take her away. Yes, even that. Even settle down. He stepped back towards the feast, his composure restored, ready to make his apologies and see out the rest of the evening, then stopped just outside the row of torches stuck in the sand. Bomthe and the King were standing, deep in conversation with the girl whose dancing had sent Marius into his reverie. She nodded, and Bomthe passed her something which she quickly tucked into the waistband of the tiny grass skirt she was now wearing. The King waved his fingers and she left them, ducking between two torches a few feet from Marius. She turned when she saw him lurking in the shadows and smiled, coming towards him with one arm held out as if to take his hand.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Marius said, taking a step backwards. “It’s not that you’re not… desirable. It’s just that, well… I’m sort of…”
She laughed, and lunged forward, quickly grabbing his hand and gripping it with a strength that belied her tiny frame. She smiled in a way that was far too lascivious to be mistaken, and let go his hand, patting him gently on his undying erection, then stepping past him, away from the raucous party.
“But… I…” Marius glanced back into the light, saw Bomthe and the King staring at the shadows in which he stood, and pursed his lips. He felt his face crease in anger.
“All right,” he said. “All right.” One more thing to make right when he got back. Just one more wouldn’t hurt.
The girl laughed, and skipped away along one of the myriad sandy paths that criss-crossed the edges of the village, leading into the hinterlands of the archipelago. Marius watched her rounded buttocks as they bounced away from him, and a feral grin split his lips.
“I will,” he said, and took up the chase.
SIXTEEN
The island sand was a curse, sent to torment Marius by a vengeful and sadistic God. It shifted underfoot with every step, twisting Marius’ passage so that every inch of forward movement was a victory won against the odds. By the time he reached the top of the hill it was as if he had chosen the longest route on purpose. The native girl waited with one hand on her hip, a smile that was part sex, part derision, clear in the dark. Marius cursed under his breath and redoubled his effort. The sand fought him with a million fingers, until he stumbled and landed face first at her feet. At any other time he’d be happy with that position, but for once, he took no pleasure in the view.
“You’re doing this deliberately,” he said, and found confirmation in her laugh.
She tossed her head, indicating a random pile of branches and leaves at the edge of the track, bunched against the base of a giant tree. Marius stared at it until, slowly, he began to make out some order amongst the detritus. If he assumed that gap to be a door, and those smaller gaps as windows…
“Your hut?”
She nodded , and moved towards it. This time, Marius did take a moment to admire the view, before climbing to his feet and tottering after her. A heat haze hovered around the hut, a living thing that Marius could see shimmering in the falling dark. Ignoring the burning in his calves, and refusing to question why he should even feel such a burning in the first place, he clenched his jaw, and stalked towards the opening that now yawned wide amongst the leaves, awaiting his entrance. The girl slid inside. Marius paused at the opening, letting the stink of sweat, foreign skin, and thick cooking odours assail him. When he was sure he could enter without gagging, he covered his mouth and nose with one gloved hand and stuck his head inside.
“Are you in there?” he called, frowning at the uncertainty in his voice. Where else could she be? Marius decided he didn’t want to know the answer. A chuckle rose from the darkness, startling him. He had heard similar sounds before. Animals caught in traps, recognising their fate as he walked toward them out of the bush, preparing for one last fight before death.
“Stay outside if the dark frightens you so,” a voice said in perfect Scorbish. “Otherwise, come in and stop wasting my night.”
Marius scowled in a flash of embarrassment. He ducked his head, counted to three, and stepped inside before pausing, nerves alive to the thought of attack. Slowly, details emerged from the murk. Marius gasped, stumbling forward in astonishment.
From the outside, the hovel was no larger than the types of shelter street children build from whatever refuse they can liberate from the back of fish stalls and printing houses in the bigger cities, and not quite as well constructed. Two adults of Marius’ size would have grown far more intimate than polite society would accept just by squeezing themselves into the same space, a prospect Marius had found appealing and repulsive in equal measure. Now that he was inside, Marius didn’t know whether to be disappointed or terrified that such an outcome was so unlikely – this was no dirt-covered hole dug out between roots. It was a room. A proper room. Not large, not by the standards of normal rooms, but still, it was considerably larger than the bundle of branches that formed its outer walls. And it had walls, real walls, wattle and daub structures that reached up to a thatched roof overhead.