15th Withering Day of the Month of the Wheel, Year 416 of Settlement
Miyun shivered and burrowed deeper under the bolts of cloth, though she hated not being able to see out. The bound Wind that kept the barge aloft dragged a bunch of air with it so at least there wasn't any wind blowing on her, but her entire face was still turning numb. "Captain," she whispered, "this was a really stupid idea."
Yarumin scowled. "If you wanted to stay warm, you could have stayed and ended up in Censor Kirabu's featherbed," she pointed out. "Or you could have REMEMBERED THE PIG-FELCHING WATER BOTTLES!"
"I did remember! Just didn't stop, and that's why we have airmasks and maidenheads."
Yarumin snorted. "Yah, yah. Kirabu and his 'filling out the paperwork gives criminals time to get away' shit was letting the cogs run wild anyway; time to move on." She was interrupted by muffled coughing from somewhere deeper in. "Go help Shisan. Her lungs..."
Miyun crawled into the darkness, rag-wrapped hand groping until it found a bony hip. "It's me. You okay?"
Shisan coughed again, with a worrying gurgle to the sound. "I'll make it." She squirmed around to press the length of her body against Miyun's. "Not all of us have as much padding on our chests as you, but I won't die."
Miyun wrapped her arms around the smaller girl. "Doesn't make up for five years of men trying to pin me down," she assured her.
"I guess." Shisan nuzzled into the curve of her neck and shoulder, and Miyun flinched. Shisan's skin was ice-cold even to Miyun's half-frozen flesh.
"Pit with not leaving any traces," she muttered and drew a knife, wincing as the cold air slipped beneath her poncho and stabbed through her thin shirt. The coarse canvas keeping the bales of fish-silk bundled cut easily, as did the bands keeping each bale from unravelling, and she pulled yards of the fine cloth out to wad around her and Shisan. Under them, too; she could feel the bare wood of the deck sucking at her warmth. Another bolt she handed outward. "Captain! Wrap yourself in this."
"I said don't mess things up!"
"Your frozen corpse wouldn't give us away?"
"Yah, yah." She took the cloth, though.
Back in the silken nest, Miyun slipped out of her poncho and peeled the worrisomely passive Shisan out of hers, using the garments as blankets as they curled together to share warmth.
Shisan clasped Miyun's hand to the slight curve of her breast; even through the woolen sweater, her nipple poked at Miyun's palm. "You're warm..."
Miyun curled tighter around the other girl, breasts squashing against her shoulderblades, and ran her hand in a slow circle. "That's one way to make some heat."
"Mmmmm, I feel warmer already." She twisted around to face Miyun, tangling their legs together, and kissed her with cold lips that quickly warmed.
Miyun slid her hands up Shisan's sweater, eliciting a squeak from the cold touch and then another as her fingers walked up Shisan's unpadded ribs to settle on the softness of her small breasts. She could feel the girl's pulse quickening along with her breathing.
Shisan broke the kiss. "Mi', do you really want to?" Her warm breath caressed Miyun's cheekbone shiversomely."
Miyun's pulse throbbed, filling her belly. "Got anything better to do for the next ninety degrees?"
Shisan giggled. "Is there anything you like to do better for any ninety degrees?" She kissed Miyun again, warm tongue plunging deep, and untucked the tail of her shirt to run ragged fingernails in a zigzag up her spine.
The almost-painful catch of jagged nail in soft skin sent a quiver through Miyun's body, and she rubbed the heat of her groin against the wiry thigh so conveniently between her own. "Nothing," she mumbled against Shisan's mouth and rucked the annoyingly thick sweater up so only the thin linen of her own shirt and halter was between their bosoms.
Nimble fingers quickly disposed of those impediments, squashing her breasts together to unfrog the shirt where it stretched over them and then unfastening the halter's band at the front to let them bob free. Miyun sighed with pleasure as bare sensitive skin met bare skin, and nibbled along the line of Shisan's jaw. "Ahhhhh, Shisan..."
Shisan rubbed her breasts eagerly against Miyun's, digging her fingers into the larger girl's back to pull her closer, and traced her cheekbone with kisses that exposed just a hint of fang.
"Ahhhhhhhh!" Miyun reached down and grabbed Shisan's leg, pulling it into position for her to rub herself against at just the right angle to put pressure on the bit that radiated urgent heat throughout her body.
"Watch it, our clean clothes are all back there!" Shisan extricated her leg from between Miyun's, with some difficulty, and started unlacing the side of her trousers. Miyun's eager fingers took over, though, she returned the favor and they squirmed out of trousers and breechclouts together, bare legs rubbing against each other. Miyun's freed tail curled around Shisan's hips, pulling her close, and the tip slid down through damp fluffy plumage to tease the top of her cleft. With a moan, she grabbed the tailtip and dragged it down to press between her soft folds, against the nubbin of hardness where it made her moan louder and writhe.
Miyun burned with desire for the lithe body writhing against her, but put off her own needs while she kissed her way down Shisan's neck, nipped the length of her collarbone, nuzzled between her breasts, licked circles around one nipple. She pressed harder with her twitching tailtip, and was rewarded with a change in the noises Shisan was emitting, from moans to soft desperate cries, and frenzied thrusts of her hips.
With convulsive strength, Shisan dragged Miyun up and struck like a snake, sinking long fangs into her tender neck, muffling her climactic cries with her lover's flesh and blood while her body arched and clenched.
Miyun gasped and clutched bruisingly hard at the shoulders shaking in her grasp, but rather than withdrawing her body pressed even closer to Shisan's as the other girl bucked and ground her loins against Miyun and finally, shudderingly, subsided.
For a moment, Shisan lay still except for the heaving of her breast and the movement of her throat as she swallowed Miyun's blood, but the other girl's increasingly frantic motion broke her trance and she freed her mouth to cover Miyun's round breasts with sticky kisses.
Miyun gasped at every touch of lips adding to the throbbing fire within her, and when Shisan's wet mouth closed around her nipple, she cried aloud and shoved her hips against lean thighs, heated to the point of explosion and desperate for release.
Shisan's slender finger stroked the seed of Miyun's pleasure and she cried out against the palm that had suddenly clamped over her mouth. She barely noticed, thought lost in the sensations pulsing out from nipples and loins.
As her climax dwindled into aftershocks, she slumped dizzily against the wool-covered body behind her. The hand moved, letting her suck in air, although it seemed to take a long time to get her breath back.
"Did I not explain that stowing away means not letting EVERYONE ON THE WHOLE PIG-FELCHING BARGE know you're here?" hissed Yarumin. "Five gods in a bucket, I should have left you to the Censor."
Shisan giggled. "She's just jealous 'cause she glims we didn't save anything for her."
"Uh," said Yarumin as Miyun rolled and stretched languidly, pressing one still-tender breast against her captain's arm with a shudder.
* * *
Shisan's coughing woke Miyun from her dozing dream of being smothered between huge, soft breasts. This time, though, the hacking went on and on while her muzzy brain tried to figure out why that was important. Yarumin's breath came in rapid pants against the nape of her neck, and that reminded her. "Airmasks!" She scrabbled through the stolen silk, discarded clothing, and half-waking female bodies for the little sack that held the three precious airmasks. Shisan's coughing scared her, but, "If ya need 'em, put yer own on first," the old airsailor had told them. "If ya try to help somebody else first, yer like as not to pass out and then yer both buggered, right?" So she plastered the first velvety leaf across her nose and mouth and waited until it adhered firmly before slapping one onto Shisan. Yarumin moved behind her, and then her muffled breathing slowed.
Shisan choked, coughed once more, and then her breathing steadied. "Thanks, Mi'," she gasped. Her breathing was still fast, but Miyun wasn't sure what else she could do for her.
"Anyone know how long it's been? Yah, yah. Miyun, go take a look outside and see if you can tell where we are."
Miyun cleaned herself as best she could on the slippery fish-silk and groped around for her clothes. There were a couple of squeaks when her hands landed on naked flesh, but she finally came up with what felt like her own things. She'd still been wearing the breechclout when Shisan had gotten her good and ready, though, so she shoved the wet scrap aside and wriggled into the trousers, which did fit. The halter wouldn't close in front, though, which she finally realized meant it was Yarumin's. Another round of groping and some swearing from Yarumin got her her own, and a shirt that didn't seem any tighter than usual. Two ponchos, Shisan's gloves, and a shirt wrapped around her head didn't make the outside seem any more inviting, but it was the best she was going to get. She squirmed through the wall of wadded cloth, making sure to push it back into place to keep Shisan warm, and crawled to the far side of the pile.
Straight out past the rail was only dark, dark sky; she had to slither half her body out from hiding before she could see down to the mountain spine that was one root of the sky tree. Fortunately, a pyramid of casks concealed her from the bright warmth of the bargemen's cabin. Craning her head toward the bow, she saw the matching ridge from the other side join its mate at the base of the trunk only a little above the barge's current altitude and not too many leagues off.
She'd seen the sky tree, and the trees of other worlds, in dreams and pictures, but the real thing was entirely different. In the blue ghost of the dead day, it was a wall of darkness spangled with crystals, obscuring half the forward horizon and towering to join the night. Far far above, so high the sun hadn't yet set, the trunk became visible again as a golden spire that tapered to impale the heart of a green-and-gold fireworks display that dwarfed the half moon shining behind it. A tiny cluster of yellow lights gleamed where root and trunk met, and when Miyun realized that was a shipping yard that daily handled dozens or hundreds of huge barges like the one she rode, she thought she grasped the scale of the sky tree, and stared in wonder.
The tree kept growing, bigger than cities, bigger than mountains, and its far distant branches bore the dim stars for fruit.
A sudden vibration of the deck broke Miyun from her fascination, and she burrowed back to find her companions. From underneath, the mound of cloth seemed to cover much more of the deck than it had before, but eventually she found the nest.
"Took you long enough," Yarumin growled.
Miyun wasn't embarrassed at all. "It's beautiful, Captain! You gotta come see it, both of you!"
"Then give me back my pig-felching coat!" Eventually they got all sorted, swatches of silk augmenting their inadequate cold-weather clothing, and all three crawled out to watch the tree fill the sky.
"Even if they catch us and send us back, this is worth it," breathed Shisan, but she made the sign against ill-omen anyway.
"Back under," hissed Yarumin. "They might check before they put us on the climber." Miyun lingered at the edge, though, until the wall of vines parted and let the barge into the warmth of a cavernous dock all lit with tubes of flowing sunfire and swarming with men and golems.
Yarumin had called it right, of course; that's why she was the captain. The sound of boots and complaining was brief, though, and didn't come near the secret nest where the three girls hid, snug. The barge shook, moved, turned, slid sideways and crashed into something solid. Moments later, it shook again as something crashed into it.
A harsh metallic clang came from that side, and then the noises stopped. "That's the climber closing up," Shisan whispered. "This deck, anyway; I don't know how many they haveta fill before we go up."
Four more distant thuds and another clang reached them over the next couple of degrees, and then there was silence again. Time passed.
Very slowly, with a slight sway, they moved upwards. Miyun let out a squeal and hugged both her friends. "We made it! Even if they catch us now, we'll be in the port, not on Hoshadu!"
"Yah, yah! Censor Kirabu can go bugger his file drawers!"
"Or his cogs!" Shisan put in. Miyun pictured the scrawny guardsman who had kicked in the door of their attic, pinned under the round form of Censor Kirabu in a love-nest of silk and lace, and laughed until she could hardly breathe.
They gained speed upward gradually, but for a very long time; without a clock, they couldn't even begin to guess how quickly the climber was hauling them upwards, except "fast". Which was good; they had a thousand leagues to go.
* * *
"Shi', wake up!" Shisan mumbled sleepily and nuzzled into the pillow of Miyun's bust until a poke in the ribs brought her awake with a start and a whump of head on tight-rolled cloth.
"Ow! What'd you do that for?"
"We're almost there," said Yarumin. "Feel it? Like floating..."
The lightness was interrupted by jerks this way and that as the climber edgedinto its berth, but finally settled down as it thudded into place. The main doors opened up with a clang and a brief gust of howling wind; all three girls winced and clutched at their heads as their ears popped.
The voices outside were muffled by the mass of cloth, but Yarumin's bat-like ears could still make them out. "Two of them, a fem and a mal," she whispered. "They're each checking one side... the fem's on our side... she's coming this way..."
Miyun stopped breathing. She willed her heart to be silent as well, and did her best to imitate a bolt of cloth. No life, no mind, no sound, no scent.
It didn't help. "Come out from there, 'cause if I have to go in after, it's gonna be a mighty smiting, says I." The voice was female, with a strange accent and growling inflection, and no bluff in it at all.
Miyun squeezed Yarumin's hand, but the captain only sighed. "Yah, yah, we're coming out."
Insects swarmed around Miyun's face as she emerged, long-legged bugs that tried to crawl under the edges of her airmask even when she swatted them away. "Ew! Get off!"
"Don't squash the finder-bugs, says I, 'less you want to pay for them." Their captor was taller than Yarumin, broad-shouldered and unfeminine in a padded doublet, heavy knee-breeches, hose, and indestructible-looking boots. She had the pushed-forward lower face and broad, flat, almost canine nose of a Hulyu-lander, and that nose twitched as the three girls filed past her and down the gangway. She smirked. "Found some way to pass the time under there, thinks I." Shisan and Miyun flushed; Yarumin only glared. Her partner, a Shadrite with pale green plumage around the fringe of his balding head, chortled.
The climber bay was huge, tall enough to allow access to all six levels of the climbers and long enough for three of them side-by-side, with enough space left over to juggle a dozen barges, and brightly lit but windowless. If anything, it was busier than the shipping yard below, though with more golems and fewer people. Barges from another climber were being unloaded onto centipede-like golems with flat backs that carried the barrels away through a wide passage marked with warning signs, and more of the carrier-golems were bringing in coffin-sized boxes from the same tunnel. One of them, led by a Shadrite in stained overalls, scuttled right over the enormous leaves that covered the hole where a third climber could enter. It didn't even dent the leaves, but Miyun still shivered, thinking of the endless leagues of airless nothing below.
The women with the bugs grunted, and Miyun looked back at her with a sinking feeling. The badge of crossed staff and tree on her breast wasn't familiar, but the woman could have been stark naked and Miyun still couldn't have mistaken her for anything but a guardswoman for an instant.
* * *
The three girls had been in several mills before, but none quite like this. For one thing, it was more of a guardburrow than a guardhouse, since like the rest of the port it was dug into the living wood of the sky tree's upper branches. White-painted walls and a high ceiling kept it from being too claustrophobic, but it still had an underground feel. The cogs in Hamvin-town had been a slovenly lot, mostly young men who couldn't make anything better of themselves, almost all the Hulyu-lander people who unabashedly dominated Hamvin (like Censor Kirabu); these ones were presentable if not fancy, as many women as men, and of every people the girls had ever seen as well as a few they hadn't. Instead of lounging around gossiping, they were mostly busy with paperwork at their desks, or lugging bundles of paper around, although a few were staring at the ceiling. There was plenty of black tea around, but nothing stronger, not even beer.
Quite a few of the workers turned to watch as the Hulyu-lander led the girls between the desks to the private offices of higher-ranking guardsmen at the back of the place. Miyun crossed her arms defensively over her breasts as well as she could with her wrists bound, and scowled at one long-armed young man who showed too much interest. "What, never seen a fem before?" she inquired sarcastically, but he was too much a cog to be stung.
The office they ended up in had no windows, only blank walls of pale wood decorated with fancy-looking papers, and a plain desk with a middle-aged, paunchy hatuman man behind it digging in the thick layer of papers. He looked up as the door thumped shut behind them. "Good watch to you, Ordinary. What do we have here?"
"Found 'em under a load of fish-silk on the evening crawler, Second. Counter's man hasn't reckoned out the damage yet, but it'll be a bundle, thinks I." She dumped the pile of belongings she'd removed from her prisoners onto a low spot on the desk.
"Rn." The desk-guarder eyed them narrowly. "Thank you, Ordinary. You'd best get back to your go."
"Second." She half-bowed and let herself out.
In Hamvin-town, a lot of the cogs would let a girl off with with a warning in exchange for a few degrees alone in an alley, if the crime was something they could overlook, but even the slimiest of that sort usually wouldn't rape a prisoner in the mill itself. That was Hamvin-town, though, and although the cogs outside had seemed professional enough, Miyun had no idea what the standards here were. This one didn't seem to have that sort of thing in mind, at least, but she felt Shisan go still as water beside her, and Yarumin brought her hands up defensively.
The guardsman bent his head to his papers again, though Miyun could tell he wasn't ignoring them. After a long time, long enough that Yarumin couldn't keep her guard up anymore, he came up with a single sheet and looked up at them again. "Caution: escaped custody in Hamvin-town, unknown location, may be armed," he read. "Three girls between womanhood and citizenship, travelling in company. One half-hirudo, of diminutive stature, narrow as a boy, with pink plumage as a Shadrite and orange eyes--" He rolled one eye at Shisan, who still stood motionless, huge eyes fastened on his balding spot and fangs barely showing behind her blood-streaked lips.
"One lios of mixed blood, showing proper lightness of complexion and hair and well-formed ears but excessive height and an unsuitably womanly form--" Yarumin brought her hands up like Miyun had, though really she was only voluptuous by lios standards; to anyone else her figure would be modest, and anyway barely visible through her multiple shirts.
"And one of unknown heritage, with skin of honey and hair of ebony, of middling stature but extremely well-developed, dark-eyed, walking on cloven hooves and possessed of a hairless tail (which may be hid within her clothing)." He raised one eyebrow at Miyun, who flushed and twined her tail around her leg inside her trousers. "What people are you from, by the way?"
"I dunno," Miyun admitted. "I never knew my parents."
He nodded unconcernedly. "Please report capture to Office of the Censor of Hamvin-land," he concluded, and let the paper slip to the desk. "Do those descriptions sound familiar?"
Yarumin's long ears swept from tight against her head out to the sides. "If you were going to just write us up and send us back to Hamvin, we would already be out of here."
Both his eyebrows rose. "Not the dullest arrow in the quiver, are you? But we knew that. Do you know how many bodies we pull out from under cargo on those barges? Ten this year, and it's a light year."
Miyun gulped. It had been a stump-headed idea. Yarumin just inclined her head politely, in the graceful lios way.
"And these descriptions." He took up the paper again and shook his head. "I'm surprised the drool didn't wash the ink off the original before it got copied. 'Unsuitably womanly form,' tsch." It drifted back down, covering the little pile of their belongings.
Miyun couldn't stand it. "What are you gonna do with us? If you don't send us back, you'll have Censor Kirabu down on your head. Up. Whatever!"
"I'm sure your Censor is used to mere guardsmen jumping at his every word, but here in Treeport we prefer to observe the proper chain of authority. A request from the Hamvin guard would be one thing, especially if accompanied by proper identification and a list of charges, but this?" He brandished the paper disgustedly. "Censor Kirabu has a grossly inflated notion of himself."
Miyun stifled a snort. "Grossly inflated" was a good description of the Censor in most ways.
Yarumin's mouth turned up at one corner. "Being up here gives you perspective, doesn't it?"
"It lets you see who's a real problem, at any rate." He looked them over again, a little more like a guardsman and less like an opponent of over-inflated bureaucrats. "You'll get treated like anyone else who came into the port without papers, and anyone who damaged private property."
"We have a little glass," Yarumin offered, with a nod to their belongings.
The guardsman scooped up their stuff in both hands and let it clatter back onto the desk, where it landed in neat array, their paltry few coins neatly sorted and their weapons -- including Shisan's prized singing knife -- separate from the rest. "Not enough for fish-silk, if Halugat was right about the damage. We'll have to wait for the counting-man to file an official grievance, but you can count on having to work off the difference in the labor pool."
"Not for the owner of the silk?" That's how it would have been done in Hamvin-town, which is how Censor Kirabu would have made sure Miyun ended up doing civil service on her back.
He shook his head. "We used to do it that, but some of the traders have strange ideas about what constitutes honest labor." He looked Miyun up and down, not lecherously, but enough to make his meaning clear. "Labor pool's run by the port. You'll get indigents' housing and board and everything you make goes to pay off your debt."
"Then what?" Shisan put in. "We still won't have the--" she was interrupted by a bout of coughing, but gasped out, "--the papers you want."
"Stay in the labor pool for half a year and you get entered on the city rolls."
Miyun wrinkled her nose. In Hamvin-town, the civic labor pool did glamorous jobs like clearing the streets of flops and unclogging the sewers; with enough seniority, you could move up to spending a hundred-eighty degrees a day with a shovel, maintaining the earthworks against floods.
His eyes narrowed. "If you confess that you're the ones the Censor's notification describes, we'll probably feel compelled to send you back to him in the name of inter-province cooperation."
"We'll take the hard work on our feet," Yarumin said, and Miyun and Shisan moved to back her up.
The guardsman let out tension that hadn't been visible before. "Good. I'd hate to send anyone off to that sort of thing." He didn't say it, but "I have a daughter your age" was written in his eyes.
Miyun hadn't noticed any signal, but the door opened and another guardsman came in, the long-armed and hunch-shouldered one who'd ogled her before. "Main cage, until we find out their debt," the man behind the desk ordered, and resumed delving in his mountains of paperwork.
"This way, freewomen." He shooed them out ahead of him and followed with a hugely rolling gait. Miyun, feeling his eyes on her, tried to keep her rear from moving at all, which was probably mistake considering how hard it was just to walk with her body so light. When she stumbled going around a corner, he snorted. "Nothing wrong with being female."
"Only problem is men," she shot back.
"Sorry. But I really doubt I'm the first -- left up here -- to look at you that way. You're really very striking."
"I guess you could call them that," she said sourly.
"No, I mean it!" he protested. "You're exotic, and that's not easy here. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anyone like you."
Yarumin elbowed Miyun in the ribs, plainly meaning "Play up to him, you stump-head!" She had to admit it couldn't hurt to have one of the guardsmen favorably inclined to them, and he wasn't entirely repulsive, but that didn't mean she had to like it, especially since, like everyone else she met, he was going on about her ancestry. Then Shisan elbowed her in the other side and she gave in.
"Well, thank you." She thought she managed to ignore his unsaid question graciously, and didn't show off too blatantly -- if there was such a thing, with men -- as she twisted to talk to him; he lighted up, at least.
"I'm Orugo, Guardsman Ordinary Formyth Orugo." He had a pretty good smile, although he was awfully sincere.
"Miyun. This is Yarumin, Shisan."
"A pleasure. Well, here we are." He had brought them not to a cell, but to a small room with white-painted walls, full of strange contraptions presided over by a tiny elderly Hulyu-lander woman. "Just stand on the red circle," he advised them, "And First Ormon will have you done in an instant."
Yarumin went first, standing stone-faced as a column of brass and crystal orbited her and lensed things clicked. Ormon retrieved the waxy cylinder she'd made Yarumin hold, taking it carefully by the ends, and rolled it across the bottom of the paper one of the machines had produced. A slot next to it had extended a strip of metal, which she fastened around Yarumin's wrist. "There you are, Freewoman."
Miyun was impressed; the Hamvin-town cogs took pictures and aura-impressions too, but did each part by hand, and usually wrong the first time, so it took about ten times as long as this did. On the other hand, law this efficient wasn't a good thing for people like them.
The metal bracelet Ormon gave her was stamped with her name and a number and, she suspected, her aura-impression as well, so that the cogs could find her no matter where she went. But she'd worry about that later, since she knew where she was going as soon as Shisan was done.
* * *
The fems' main cage was just another room separated from the corridor by diagonal bars of dark wood with short crosspieces placed randomly. The suntubes were recessed deeply into the ceiling and covered by metal grilles, and the only furnishings were benches built as part of the walls. A hirudo, only slightly less skinny than Shisan but well-muscled and shown to advantage in a sleeveless vest and knee-length trousers, looked up from her position against the far wall, spotted Shisan, looked from Miyun's neck to Yarumin's with a smirk, and went back to doing nothing at all.
Orugo tapped the bars with his ring in a quick rhythm, and they bent aside, around an oval opening just large enough for one person. Miyun let her friends go first so Orugo would get an unimpeded view of her bending over and wriggling through, and was rewarded with rapt attention. Not until the hirudo looked up again and asked "You coming in or staying out, chains?" did he look away and, embarrassed, hurry off down the corridor.
"They're too rows-and-columns here for you to get special treatment that way, sun-and-moon," she advised Miyun.
"Yah, well, if it gets me out of specially bad treatment, good enough. Sun and moon?"
"Two heavenly orbs." She gestured vaguely toward her own flat chest.
Shisan laughed. "I like it! Sun-and-Moon Miyun!" She bobbed back from Miyun's clumsy swipe; no matter how much Orugo liked Miyun, he hadn't unbound her hands. The hirudo was bound too, wrists resting on pulled-up knees.
"You got a name?" Yarumin asked.
"Cam." She went back to dozing or meditating or whatever, head drooping so black hair fell over her pale face and golden eyes.
Miyun threw herself down on the floor, which was somehow padded, although it looked like wood and blended seamlessly with the walls and bars. "More waiting."
"Yah, yah. Beats walking home." Yarumin flopped down beside her in a pose much like Cam's. "Warm, lots of air, what's not to like?"
Shisan looked around. "Do we get fed?"
* * *
As it turned out, they didn't, at least not soon. Three times guardsmen showed up with more prisoners: first two Shadrite women with roughly-patched wounds and bruised faces, who glared at each other from opposite ends of the cage and filled the place with alcohol fumes; an exaggeratedly voluptuous and highly indignant hatuman girl about Miyun's age with a skin-tight shimmering dress, her hair tumbled down because the guards had confiscated the pins holding it up; a lios girl just a bit short of womanhood, ragged and sullen, who seemed to know Cam at least well enough to sit beside her, copying her pose.
None of the newcomers seemed interested in talking; Shisan watched the houri flaunt her expensive good looks for while and finally tried to strike up a conversation, but was snobbishly rebuffed and returned to curl up against Yarumin's side. The boredom of the cage, after the excitement of the earlier evening, drew yawns from Miyun and she eventually put her head in Yarumin's lap, just to rest.
16th Withering Day of the Month of the Wheel, Year 416 of Settlement
"Well, aren't you the popular one, dear!" Miyun blinked dozily and looked up at the ball of old clothes that was cheerily addressing Yarumin. "If we could bottle you and sell you to the young men, we'd be rich as priests!" There were bright eyes somewhere between a mustard-colored muffler and a faded brown cap, so Miyun guessed that was a face. "I'm sorry, dear, didn't mean to wake you! Just go right back to sleep, that's a good girl." Miyun wanted to snarl, but found herself sinking back into slumber. With an almost muscular effort, she forced herself awake.
The beggar woman rocked back on her heels as Miyun sat up. "That's a nice strong soul you have there, dear! You're not the leader of this little band, are you? But your friends rely on you for courage."
Miyun rubbed sleep from her eyes. "What? I glim so. Sometimes."
Yarumin stroked her behind the ear, almost eliciting a purr. "Yah, yah, it's true. I'm the brains, Shisan is the muscles, but Miyun is our heart."
Flustered, and still too sleepy to be polite, Miyun asked "Who are you?"
The beggar cackled. "No one in particular, dearie, just someone who knows good from bad."
"Then why're you in here?"
She cackled again. "Well, what's good isn't always what's legal, now is it? When someone has something he oughtn't, what's it matter if he has some paper saying it's his? I wrote a paper saying it wasn't, and that's just as good, isn't it? But the chains don't care, they want their special paper. Isn't really their fault, the poor dears. They mean well, most of them."
Miyun tried to unravel this. "You're a paperbagger?"
"But it's not forgery if what I write is true, now is it, dear? Oh my, I've been terribly remiss in my manners, haven't I? My name is... What is my name? I think it shall be 'Elestrol'; that has character, don't you think? And you shall be Miss Sun-and-Moon, Miss Tree-Tall, and Miss... Not-a-Crow!"
Miyun sighed. "I'm stuck with this, aren't I? No one's ever gonna look at me and see anything except two 'heavenly orbs'."
"Not until you see something different, dearie. Oh look, it's breakfast! What do we have today, Madame Locks-and-Keys?"
"Spicy rabbit," grunted the guardswoman as she thrust a stack of soft squeeze bottles through the bars.
"Excellent, my favorite!" The self-named Elestrol moved over to the bottles in some fashion that didn't seem quite like walking, but maybe that was just the effect of so many layers of skirts fluttering so raggedly. "Cam, dear?"
The hirudo caught the tossed bottle without looking up. "Thanks, Ancestress."
"Don't mention it, dearie. And here's one for your little friend, too!" That bottle bounced off the lios child's head, startling her awake, but although she glared at Elestrol, she didn't say a word. "Meshim, sweetheart?" The courtesan, who had been napping on the bench, turned her sculpted nose up at the offer. "One more for me, then!"
The two Shadrites, who had apparently formed a grudging alliance while Miyun slept, loomed over Elestrol. "Who put you in charge, anyway, wrinkles?"
"In charge? Oh no, no no! I'm just doing something that wanted doing, you see. It's what I do." She held up two bottles, which one of the Shadrites grabbed. The other bent and snatched away the spare bottle Meshim had rejected.
"I think we should get the extra."
"If you like, dear, but gluttony can't possibly be healthy!"
The Shadrite snorted and the two of them retreated to their corner, leaving Elestrol to gather up the remaining bottles and return to Miyun and Yarumin.
"Ah well, only one apiece for us, dearies. I suppose Miss Not-a-Crow will have to fatten herself up later."
The bottles were full of some sort of fine gruel, flavored with rabbit broth and viciously red flecks of pepper. Miyun had eaten better, but never in a cage.
Orugo appeared before the cage. "Miyun! How are you?"
Miyun eyed her breakfast that no one could choke on in a bottle that couldn't be used as a weapon no matter what. "Safe, I glim." She turned her smile, and a slight shimmy of her shoulders, on the guardsman. "Here to let us out?"
"Not yet, I'm afraid." He turned toward the two Shadrite women. "Freewoman Paskar? Freewoman Hantubul? Your clans have agreed to accept you into their custody. Freewoman Gorji?"
"It's Elestrol, dear."
"Er, right. Anyway, the priest is here to take you to the god's justice."
"What about me?" the courtesan demanded, but aside from Orugo's glance at her prominent charms, no one paid her any attention.
Elestrol turned back to the three girls. "I'm afraid I'm off, dears. Mustn't keep the August waiting; he's a very important man, you know! Now you three take care of yourselves, and make sure Miss Not-a-Crow gets plenty to eat and grass tea to drink!"
Orugo hung back a moment as the three freed prisoners preceded him down the corridor and waved. "See you later, Miyun!"
* * *
The counting-man for the owner of the fish-silk was a lios of excellent breeding, not as tall as Yarumin but lithe and narrow as a display rack inside his suit of embroidered velvet, with ears sharp as needles and a rope of silver hair down to his knees. He was also nearly apoplectic, but the desk-guardsman -- the same one who had originally interviewed the girls; his name was Porfiros -- was monumentally unimpressed. Miyun suspected the counting-man was habitually apoplectic.
"Six bales ruined!" he was shouting. "Even if it can be cleaned, and I'm not sure it can, with the, the, the secretions of these wretches all over it, it'll never be the same!"
Porfiros didn't blush, exactly, but he had trouble looking at the girls. "Please, Master Yindi, control yourself. I'm sure it's very distressing, but the debt will be made good."
"Money? You talk of money when these harlots have defiled things of beauty? Have molested the honor of my clan with their grotesque lusts?"
"He's just upset because he wasn't there," Shisan stage-whispered.
Yindi, who presumably like all right-thinking lios preferred his own sex, turned purple. "SILENCE! I will not be mocked by, by common criminals! Deviants and thieves! Vandals!" He appealed to Porfiros again. "Surely you can see that such infamous acts require more than a mere financial penalty! Flogging at the very least!"
"Master Yindi! The conditions under which your clan is allowed to participate in the trade of this port specifically include obedience to the laws of the port as set down by the Apostles of the Great Tree. Those laws do permit you to express your outrage, but to incite a guardsman to violate his oaths is to abuse that freedom."
Yindi subsided, muttering something about honorless unbred that Porfiros chose to ignore.
"These documents from the independant assessor corroborate your claim that the damage is in the amount of eleven hundred and fifty talents of silver." Shisan choked, but Porfiros ignored her too. "If you'll just sign here and here, you can be about your business."
Yindi stabbed the offered pen viciously into his arm and scrawled crimson in the spaces the guardsman indicated. "I hope your rice-counting laws are satisfied, for honor is surely not!"
"Entirely satisfied, Master Yindi. You may apply to the office of the fisc for the funds at your leisure."
Turning his back on them all, Yindi stalked out, yanking the door to behind him.
Porfiros sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I'm always amazed his veins don't simply explode."
"Eleven. Pig-Felching. Rocks." Yarumin collapsed back against the wall. "Our grandchildren will still be cleaning sewers!"
"It's not as bad as all that. There are three of you, and wages here are probably higher than you're used to."
Yarumin said without opening her eyes, "How much higher?"
"If you don't get docked for causing trouble, a quarter talent per day."
Her eyes flew open. "Five gods in a bucket! Honest labor does pay! So that's only forty-four, forty-five, split three ways is fifteen hundred days, so thirty months..." Her shoulders slumped. "Still five years. More."
"Did you have any guarantee of food and lodging for five years back in Hamvin? Or citizenship at the end of it?" He didn't wait for an answer; he didn't need to. "I'll have someone take you over to the indigent quarters so you can get settled in. You'll start work tomorrow."
* * *
Miyun tugged at the collar of her new tan-and-beige tunic where it chafed at the back of her neck. Maybe she should have taken the bigger one, but it felt strange and lumpy when she stuffed it into the waistband of the uniform trousers. It wasn't the first time she'd envied Yarumin and Shisan's ordinary figures, and she was dismally certain it wouldn't be the last. At least the trousers fit okay, even if they were the ugliest shade of brown she'd ever seen, and the rather plump -- and therefore sympathetic -- woman in charge of stores had found her a halter that was adjustable enough.
Yarumin saw her fidgeting and hissed, "If you wanted to look good while working, you could have stayed with Kirabu!"
"Hush," said Madame Kentrit. Stick-thin, and unguessably old but unbowed, the supervisor for their wing made the plain tan doublet-and-knee-breeches uniform of the indigent quarters' staff practically martial. She had taken charge of the three girls as soon as Orugo delivered them, running them through the process of being documented, uniformed, oriented, and welcomed efficiently and without a single smile. Miyun was just as glad; she could tell that Madame Kentrit was the sort of person who only smiled when things were very bad.
The god of the house had a small but extremely ancient-looking shrine set up in the lobby, where it could watch the front door. Miyun hadn't been able to ignore the presence about it when they'd first been brought in, but it hadn't seemed hostile, and even in a backwater like Hamvin most buildings had similar shrines. She'd never lived in a building that nice, though, and wasn't sure she was looking forward to even such a minor spirit knowing the taste of her blood.
Madame Kentrit knelt before the shrine, and Miyun immediately copied her. "Most honored, generous, and forgiving Manakut," the supervisor murmured, "I present to you these new daughters, that they may be made part of our family, subject to your blessing. Please, O open-hearted Manakut, accept their efforts to find worth in your eyes."
The drowsing presence roused and focused. Miyun kept her face lowered, but she could feel the eyes of the faded portrait within the shrine upon her. Millions of people lived with household gods; it wasn't going to hurt her. Sweat trickled between her breasts anyway.
"O charitable Manakut," began Yarumin, and Miyun and Shisan quickly chimed in, almost in unison. "We came before you naked, and you clothed us; we came before you hungry, and you fed us." Symbolically, anyway; they'd just missed lunch. "Now let us clothe your spirit with honor, and feed it with blood." They rose and lifted the sticks of incense they had been given. Miyun and Shisan lit theirs from the candles flanking the portrait; Yarumin, showing off, touched hers to her lips and it caught from her whispered word. The incense smouldered vigorously as they planted the sticks in the bronze pot of sand, with a spicy and faintly musty odor and pale coils that piled up at the top of the shrine niche. None of the sticks went out, so one by one each of the girls pricked her left ring finger and let a drop of blood fall on the glowing end of her incense stick. The blood hissed and sputtered, and the rising smoke faltered.
Miyun flinched. What if Manakut only accepted Treeport people? From the way Porfiros had talked, hardly anyone who tried what they had lived to get here, so Kentrit might not even know.
All three sticks flared up, bright as the candles. The flames wavered as Miyun and at least one of her friends let out their breath, and then subsided to orange coals.
"Very good," said Madame Kentrit. "Now you can start cleaning the dormitory."
* * *
"Hey, fresh meat!" Miyun looked up from scrubbing the middle of the floor to see a yellow-haired hatuman girl in labor pool tunic and trousers eying her with amusement. The hatuman and the cluster of girls behind her looked like they'd had a hard day's work, but not so hard that they couldn't haze the new girls. "What the hell are you?"
"A cobbler's nightmare?" suggested one of her followers, which made them all snicker.
Yarumin, also on her knees with a scrub brush that secreted fuming paste, shifted closer and put a hand to her ankle. The cogs had kept not only their weapons but their protective amulets, but these girls might not know that. More importantly, if it turned ugly, Shisan was peering in from the hallway where Madame Kentrit had set her to folding bedding and sweeping when the fumes from the brushes made her cough so much she had almost passed out.
Would anyone ever have a different first question? Still, it beat "How much for a quickie?". She answered politely enough, "I dunno, I never knew my parents."
The odds were still two to one, but the blonde glanced over at Yarumin, shrugged, and went to get a hair ribbon out of her footlocker. "Too bad. Well, scrub faster if you want any dinner tonight." She and her friends wandered back out. Miyun sighed and rinsed her brush, wondering vaguely what sort of trouble she'd have to deal with when the rest of dorm five got back.
"Why aren't you two in the refectory?" demanded Madame Kentrit from the doorway.
* * *
Falling for such an obvious trick put Miyun in a mood that made it lucky for the boys in the refectory that Madame Kentrit didn't let them move around during the meal. She was tempted to repay a couple of the comments from adjacent tables with globs of something that stained, but that would have been a waste of perfectly edible food. "Good" would have been stretching it, but the thick slabs of seed-filled vegetable in sweet orange sauce and lengths of rod-shaped herbed cheese were far from the worst she'd ever eaten, and farther still from going hungry.
"Cleanup!" yelled one of the supervisors, and the diners grumbled to their feet, drifting towards the buckets by the door while finishing their food or continuing their conversations.
"Hey," said a young Shadrite man with glorious violet plumes, "You're gorgeous! But what are you?"
"Never mind that," put in an adolescent lios girl as she elbowed the Shadrite aside. "I want to know if you're busy tonight!"
* * *
At the refectory door, Madame Kentrit extended a skeletal arm to bar Shisan's way. "The tableware is held in common, young woman, not provided for your sole convenience." Defiant but abashed, Shisan handed over the table knife from her sleeve. Madame Kentrit raked her with a cynical eye, but then turned to break up a couple locked in a clinch.
Yarumin slipped the knife into Miyun's hand without breaking stride, and Miyun tucked it into her waistband just as smoothly, trusting the worn fancywork at the handle to keep it in place.
* * *
In dormitory five, their beds were naked mattresses. The other girls ignored them, then acted surprised when Yarumin asked politely about their bedding.
While Yarumin stirred up a fuss, Miyun watched the crowd for the ones who didn't react enough, who knew what was going to happen. "Shi', three at the end." Surprisingly, they didn't include the blonde hatuman from before.
Shisan bounded across the room and seized the pillow from a fat but not particularly soft girl with a smooth brown pelt and brushy crest of black hair.
"Hey, bitch!" The brown girl grabbed Shisan's arm and pulled, with as much effect as pulling on a wall. Her two friends, a hulking blue-feathered Shadrite with a scar across her nose and a Hulyu-lander who could have been the sister of the guardswoman on the barge, closed in and grabbed Shisan by the shoulders so their leader could pummel her, like thugs anywhere.
"She shouldn'ta done that," a lios girl with a lazy eye advised. "You're gonna get it too, ya know."
Miyun smiled. "I glim not."
Shisan blocked the blow to her stomach with a raised knee, straightened her leg to send the fat girl sprawling, kicked back at the Shadrite's knee, and slipped free of the startled Hulyu-lander's grasp. She was still holding the pillow.
"Aa! You little jizz-drinker!" The Shadrite rolled on the floor clutching her knee. "I'm gonna kill you!"
The leader of the three bounced back to her feet and cut to the side, pinning Shisan between her and the Hulyu-lander. "You stupid or what?" she demanded. "Come in here, get mangled your first day?"
"Or what," said Shisan and punched her hard in the gut. She was tough; she didn't go down, but she doubled over with a wheeze. The Hulyu-lander brought her doubled fists down on where Shisan's neck had been and kept going as Shisan grabbed her wrists and pulled, spilling her on top of her boss. While they tried to untangle themselves, Shisan briskly stripped the bedclothes from the brown-furred girl's bed, wadded them up, and threw them to Yarumin.
The Hulyu-lander gave up on trying to stand and swept Shisan's legs from under her. Shisan landed on her side and immediately brought her heel down hard on the other girl's groin.
Stepping carefully around the bodies curled in various positions of agony on the floor, Shisan gathered up the other two sets of bedding and took them over to make her and Miyun's beds.
"Fuck me dead," said the lazy-eyed lios. "Where'd she learn that shit?"
"From a crazy old man in Hamvin-town. Said he used to be a marine scout. Said a lot of things, but no one ever argued with him."
"What in the name of the Sacred Tree is going on in here?"
"Nothing, Madame Kentrit," chorused the room.
"They tripped," volunteered one girl. "Musta had something on their shoes."
"I see." Madame Kentrit plainly did, but forbore to bring her wrath down on anyone. "Take better care in future."
"Yes, Madame Kentrit!"
Shisan's victims pulled themselves to their feet, if not upright, and produced some stained bedding from under other people's beds. The rest of the girls crowded around Shisan.
"That was royal!" enthused one girl, bouncing on her toes. "They deserved that so much!"
"Can you teach me to fight like that?" "Aren't you going to drink their blood?" "Hey, what is your friend over there, anyway?" "Can we sleep over here by you?"
Miyun stretched out on her bed, pillowed her head on her folded arms, and watched Shisan, pink-faced, glow in the admiration of the other girls.
17th Withering Day of the Month of the Wheel, Year 417 of Settlement
Yarumin stretched luxuriantly under the stream of hot water. "Five gods in a bucket, this is great!"
"Not much water in Hamvin?" inquired the girl in the next shower, not pausing in soaping her small round breasts and flat belly in a way that probably was completely innocent but caught a good share of Miyun's attention nevertheless.
"Not for dimics." Yarumin ran her fingers through the chopped-off silver mass of her hair. "Can't remember the last time I had anything except a damp cloth to wash with."
"This is one thing the port has plenty of," commented another bather -- the hatuman who had wanted Shisan to drink the blood of the girls she'd defeated -- as she stepped under the shower. For someone so blood-thirsty, she had a remarkably nice smile. And nice legs, Miyun mused. "We can't possibly use more than a tiny bit of what the tree draws up for itself."
Shisan surfaced in the steaming pool with a tremendous splash and stood there grinning from ear to ear until one of the girls she'd splashed tackled her and they both went under.
A towel-wrapped head poked in. "Four degrees to breakfast!"
Yarumin stood indecisive. "I can remember the last time I ate..."
"You want to keep your strength up. Anyway, the baths'll still be here tomorrow!"
"I guess." Reluctantly, Yarumin shut the valve and padded out in search of a towel or three, followed by the girl with the smile and thus Miyun.
The towels were just the right size, so far as Miyun was concerned: when the girl with the smile and the legs wrapped one around herself and tucked it above her pretty round breasts, the lower edge came just down to her hips, so that she looked all legs.
Miyun swallowed. Nothing ventured, nothing touched, she reminded herself, and asked casually, "Do you have a brush I can borrow?"
"Oh, here, I'll do that!" She moved around behind Miyun and started brushing her hair with long even strokes just a bit too slow to be efficient. "You have beautiful hair. I'm jealous!"
Miyun arched her back in pleasure, hair swinging free from her shoulders. "Mmm. I'm glad you glim so; maybe you'll do this more!"
She giggled. "If you ask nicely, maybe!" Then she squeaked as Miyun's languidly-swinging tail curled around her calf. "I've never met anyone who had a tail before!"
Was that the right sort of curiosity in her voice? "It comes in handy sometimes," Miyun admitted. Should she move her tail up?
"I'm sure it does!" The smile in her voice was definitely interested. "I'm Millim, Hokashut Millim."
"Miyun." She squirmed, causing the towel to pop loose from her chest, and caught it while she was still decent but not modest. Even though Millim was out of sight behind her, she could feel her looking. Maybe the stupid things were good for something after all.
"What clan?"
"No clan, just my friends."
"Making your way without any family... You must be really strong."
Embarrassed, Miyun shrugged, dislodging the towel even further. "We get by."
Millim dropped the brush on Miyun's chest, letting it slide down into her cleavage. "My turn!" Her shoulder-length hair was thick as Miyun's or Yarumin's, but a rich chestnut brown just redder than her skin, and flowed like silk over Miyun's fingers. "With the brush, silly!" Miyun blushed, but Millim didn't sound at all offended.
Hesitantly, she put her hand on Millim's shoulder, ostensibly to turn her so the rest of her hair could be brushed. Her skin was warm and strangely unyielding, but satiny-smooth. Miyun's heart pounded.
"Hey!" Yarumin snapped a towel like a whip at Miyun's face; reflexively she shoved between it and Millim, hand raised. "Hurry up or we'll miss breakfast!"
"My heroine," said Millim, and brushed Miyun's cheek with her lips, leaving her there stunned and blushing.
* * *
"Count off by threes," the supervisor ordered. "Ones, follow me; twos, you'll be doing the north branch with Lalu; threes, east branch with Jurlilo."
Miyun had been standing next to Yarumin, but quickly moved to put two girls between them. Looking down the line to see who else would be in her group, she spotted Millim and the Shadrite Shisan had beaten elbowing for space. Had Millim moved, or was it the Shadrite?
"You, sun-and-moon! What number comes after two?"
"Um... Two and a half?"
The supervisor snorted. "Close enough; it's not like you're here for your brain."
"Doesn't it bother you to be called that?" asked Millim as they followed Jurlilo -- a squat, hairy man with no perceptible sense of humor -- toward the promised eastern branch. "I mean, they're pretty and all, but so's the rest of you, and your tail's more unique."
Miyun looked down at where the tan labor-pool tunic strained over her bosom. "My tail's not up here where men look. I dunno, I guess it bothers me a little." She shrugged. "Not much as life goes, though."
"I guess," Millim said dubiously. "I'd hate it."
"Really, not being able to get clothes that fit is worse," Miyun assured her.
"If you want, I can tailor that tunic. We're not supposed to, but lots of people do anyway."
"Really? Thanks!" Then she stopped dead as Jurlilo lead them through a plain door.
So far, Miyun had only been in the working part of the port: enclosed spaces of plain or plainly painted wood that could have been the insides of buildings back in Hamvin, except for the lack of weight. Even the green leaves and gold ribbons of Planting Day decorations were the same. She'd been disappointed, but figured that people did the same sorts of things everywhere they went. On the other side of the door, though, was what she'd imagined the port to be back when their escape was just a late-night fantasy.
Overhead, the stars shone in blackness, not as bright but far more glorious than the many-colored pictures of shop signs along the boulevard. Brightly-dressed people of every kind she knew and kinds she'd never seen before thronged like birds in a zoo, rushing back and forth like "the bloodstream of interstellar commerce" (as one of Martal's favorite dreams had put it. Even they, though, sometimes stopped and looked up at the stars, as though unable to believe they were really among them.
"Hey!" The Hulyu-lander Shisan had beat last night shoved her. "Get yer eyes back in yer sockets; it's just stars and rich bastards."
Miyun shook her head. "If that's what you use for a soul, no wonder Shisan mangled you."
"Miyun, come on!" Millim grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the Hulyu-lander's confused anger.
* * *
Miyun put her hands in the small of her back and stretched, which would have been more satisfying if a seam in her tunic hadn't given way. "Come to the sky tree, see the people of a hundred worlds, and pick up their garbage."
Yarumin came up behind and rubbed her shoulders. "It's still the best deal we've gotten so far, and you can't beat the scenery."
She leaned back against the strong hands and looked out the long windows lining one side of the corridor. The suntubes inside washed out the stars outside, but the brightest were still faintly visible, and both the larger moon Adlu and its tiny, fast-moving sister Kodlu were clearly visible through the shining branches of the Tree. A bright orange star beyond them was Vidram, the next planet in, which after another few centuries of labor might be fit for a god to inhabit. She wondered if Martal was there; she knew Irinso's clan was a big name in the project.
Yarumin's thumb gouging at a particularly hard knot dragged her out of dark thoughts. "Yah, yah," she agreed. "But that's all out there, and we're in here." She sighed. "It's better, yah, it's just not what we..."
"Dreamed of? But not much is."
Miyun sighed. "Not for dimics like us."
"I know she's hot," growled Jurlilo, "but grope her later. That fountain still needs cleaning."
* * *
Yarumin collapsed backwards onto her bed. "Fifteen hundred thirty-two days to go."
Shisan shrugged. "Fifteen hundred days with regular food, hot baths, and no one trying to rape us." She coughed, but not as painfully as before; maybe the steam from the bath and the moist air inside the Tree was helping.
"Yah, yah. Well, maybe we'll get better work later on. Dorm four is putting up Planting Day decorations, so it's not all picking up trash."
Miyun looked over from where she sat cross-legged on her bed in only trousers and halter, facing Millim while she tailored her tunic to be fitted rather than tight. "Hope springs eternal."
"Feh, broke the needle!" Probably because she was paying more attention to Miyun's chest than to what was supposed to cover it. "I'll have to get a new one. Come on, Miyun, I'll show you where the supplies are." Millim jumped up and pulled Miyun to her hooves.
Yarumin smirked. "Hope of something, anyway. Have fun!"
Millim blushed darkly. "I'm just showing her where to get needles and pens and all!" She fled, dragging Miyun behind.
* * *
"Hey, sun-and-moon! Looking for some company?" The Shadrite man's leer reminded Miyun that although the halter she'd been issued was as boring and practical as possible, it still clung and plunged.
She flushed and folded her arms across her breasts. "Sorry, just going to get a needle so we can fix my tunic."
"Too bad, you don't know what you're missing." He wandered off back toward the men's wing.
"I don't know whether to be glad I don't get attention like that or mad that he didn't even notice me!"
"He just doesn't have any taste," Miyun assured her.
"Sure he does. He liked you!"
"I don't glim that's taste so much as --"
Millim turned on her with mock ferocity. "So now you're saying I have no taste?"
Miyun flung up her hands defensively. "I'd never say that!"
"So no more saying you're not beautiful."
"Yes, madame." She lowered her eyes in pretend humility; too bad the straight-legged labor pool trousers completely hid Millim's legs. "Where is this supply room, anyway?"
"Oh, we passed it already. We'll get a needle on the way back."
Miyun stopped short, dragging Millim to a halt by their linked hands. "Where are you taking me? Are we -- Do you -- You really --?" Her face burned, and so did the rest of her. She felt like a babbling fool.
Millim laughed, but not with mockery; more like relief. "You seemed so sophisticated, so... worldly? I didn't think you'd get flustered just like anyone else."
Miyun looked sophisticated? That was news to her, but not bad news. "The more you want something," she said after a moment, "the harder it is to be smooth."
Millim put her free hand on Miyun's cheek, cool fingers stroking her cheekbone. "Then I'm flattered."
Miyun shivered and pulled Millim closer, arm curling around her slender waist. "I babble that much?"
Millim looked into her eyes from close enough that their nosetips touched. "You're cute when you babble." She cocked her head consideringly to one side without dropping Miyun's gaze, then leaned the last bit forward. Her lips were softer than her tough skin, soft as mist seeping through the window before dawn, and tasted delightfully of the spicy sauce that had been ladled over dinner.
Miyun closed her eyes and opened her mouth, invitingly. Millim's narrow tongue lingered at the entrance until her own pulled it inside, curling slippery and warm together. Millim melted against her, free hand running up behind her nape into her hair, holding her still while Millim's tongue explored. She could feel the beat of Millim's heart, speeding just in synch with her own.
"You sure do get around, Miss Sun-and-Moon," growled Jurlilo.
Miyun sprang free in startlement, but didn't lose hold of Millim's hand. "I, um, we..."
Jurlilo scowled up at her. "Not like you need my approval; anyone doesn't think you're of age for that has to be blind. And probably deaf. Just don't do it in the halls and block traffic." Behind him was a large table, the other end supported by a young lios man who was trying to watch the reddened lips and heaving bosoms while looking politely away.
"Sorry!" Mortified, Miyun flattened against the wall to let them past. Millim squeezed up next to her, still without releasing her hand, which helped surprisingly much. As the two men manhandled the table past, the lios contrived to rub his arm against her breasts, and the pressure on her swollen nipples made her bite her lip to keep from gasping aloud. Then they were gone around a corner and she let her breath out with a whuf.
Millim's eyebrows were raised. "I think that lios might be queer for girls!"
Miyun burst out laughing. "Or wants to know what he's missing!"
"I could call him back and we could show him...?"
This wasn't the first time Miyun had gone off alone with someone she fancied; it wasn't even the tenth, although maybe not much beyond that. Yarumin and Shishan had done the same, though not as often. No one had ever had to say it, but it was clear that such affairs were just for sex, or at most friendship, but never anything like the bond the three of them had. So why did it hurt so much to think that was all Millim wanted too? She recoiled a step.
"Miyun! Miyun, I was just kidding! Don't look like that!" She seemed honestly distressed. "If it was Pelelu I wanted, it would be him I was dragging off to have my way with!" She tugged on Miyun's hand.
Miyun opened her mouth to explain, closed it again. She knew the laws of nature, especially the one that went "Let anyone see your heart and someone will tear it out". But she didn't have to expose her heart to enjoy Millim's body, so why wasn't she following her?
Millim tilted her head the other way, and her hazel eyes were sharp. "That's not it, is it?"
Mutely, Miyun shook her head.
"Something... something against men?" She said it delicately, but her meaning was clear, and her hands were balled into fists.
"No! No, not that. It's..." There wasn't a way to say it that wasn't stupid, or insulting, or just plain pathetic.
"Oh! Are you geased against talking about this?"
"No, no. I just can't..." She couldn't say what, and that made her eyes prickle. "It's stupid!"
"Oh!" If anything she was even more alarmed. "Don't cry, Miyun! I never know what to do when girls start crying on me!"
Miyun turned away and rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm stupid!"
Pure motion flower itself them and solidified into a young man in supervisor's uniform and a peaked red cap. "Freewoman, are you all right? Is she bothering you?" His eyes were long and blue, and reflected stars.
Miyun startled back, hand going to the knife concealed in the leg of her trousers. Despite his courtesy, he felt immensely dangerous, and not just from his speed; here was something far more important than romantic nonsense. "I'm fine, freeman, thank you," she said cautiously.
"I'm sorry, I hadn't realized there was any people who wept when 'fine'."
"Um. Maybe not fine, but it's not her fault."
"If you say so. Do you need assistance?"
"No! No thank you." She tried to indicate by tone that he should go, but it didn't seem likely she could make him leave if he didn't want to.
"Very well." His mouth turned up at one corner, a bit like Yarumin's. "I hope you feel better soon; no one as beautiful as you should have cause to weep." He turned and walked off, past Millim who had been edging away from him during the whole conversation and who put her back to the wall as he passed, as though he took up the whole corridor.
She watched him go, still overwhelmed though he was no longer present. Not until he turned the corner did she cross over to Millim. "Who was that?"
"I don't know. He must be new; I don't see how we could have missed anyone with that much mana. But what's someone like that doing here? Besides saving you from the brute who made you cry, I mean."
"Penance? Worshipping something that likes charity?" She held out her hand to Millim. "It wasn't you making me cry, or at least not anything you did that you shouldn't have."
Millim started to raise her hand, but stopped. "There were a lot of qualifiers in that."
"Yah. Maybe I should just say, 'It's not your fault'. You didn't do anything I should get upset at; I'm just stupid."
"But I don't want to upset you!" Her voice rose. "Tell me what I did, so I can stop doing it!" She broke off. "Will you come with me? This hallway has too many busybodies."
That was hopeful, but... "Yah, it does. Where?"
Millim's hideaway was a storeroom at the back of the complex, where the suntubes guttered orange, but still as bright as the fireglobes they'd had back in Hamvin. Millim spat on the thumb of her free hand and traced a twisty pattern on the face of the lock, and muttered to it until it opened. Inside was even dimmer, and claustrophobic with boxes piled high. Miyun stepped back in embarrassment as a blissful sigh came from somewhere inside, but Millim took her hand and pulled her in, around the boxes in the other direction. Tucked between stacks of boxes and the bare wooden wall was a folding cot with an inflatable mattress, a stack of clean sheets, and a hamper of dirty ones.
Millim sat down on the bed, bouncing slightly, and pulled Miyun down beside her. The sag of the mattress tilted them together, and Miyun quit trying to sit up straight when Millim put one arm around her waist and cuddled warm and firm against her side.
Miyun looked around. "Handy place. Won't we get in trouble, though?" Still pathetic, but better than talking about what Millim wanted to.
"I promise I won't get you pregnant if you don't get me pregnant," Millim said solemnly. "But if you come here with a man, there are tablets in that box over there, the kind you put up inside."
The voice of experience, Miyun was sure. No reason for hope after all; Millim just wanted to avoid an embarrassing scene in public. Miyun didn't care for one either, so she should have been grateful for Millim bringing her here, but she couldn't help saying, "You come here a lot, then?"
Millim was quiet for a bit in the semidarkness. Maybe Miyun had offended her, maybe she'd storm out, change dormitories -- "Here, just once. It... didn't work."
"Oh." She couldn't think of anything else to say that wouldn't be pathetic. Or worse.
"I had a sweetheart, Archa. I loved him for years, and when he finally noticed I was a girl, I was so happy. If my family had let me, I'd have married him as soon as we came of age; I might have even if they didn't. But..." She was quiet again, maybe trying to figure out what to not say. "He needed some stuff, and I got it for him. I got in a lot of trouble, but I didn't care, because it was for him. Then he used what I gave him... Later they told me the details, and there was no way he could have survived. He knew, too, but he did it anyway. And he made me help."
Miyun struggled for words, appalled at what her jibe had brought forth. What came out was what she should have said already, but better late than not at all. "I'm sorry." She understood how Millim felt; Martal wasn't dead, but she was so far from what she'd been as Miyun's friend that she might as well be in another incarnation. And Miyun had helped her.
"I'm sorry too. I thought..." Her voice rose again, and her words quickened as she spoke. "It's been half a year, I should be able to, to like someone again, and you're beautiful, and sexy, and if you think those are the same you haven't seen a purebred lios, and you stepped in front of me when you hadn't even seen what was coming, and I thought you liked me but I made you hate me and I don't even know what I did!" The last came out as a miserable wail, and Millim put her face in her hands and sobbed.
Miyun wrapped her arms tight around Millim, pulling the other girl's head against her breasts. The inflated mattress tilted them over until they toppled over, but she didn't let go. "Millim, you didn't do anything wrong. I like you. Maybe a lot. When you talked about bringing that boy, Pelolo, I glimmed it meant you just wanted a tumble, and I felt stupid for wanting... anything else." She stroked Millim's hair and held her close as her sobbing quieted. "I mean, we just met this morning, you don't even know me, so when you dragged me off how could it mean anything more than you have the itch? What kind of idiot would want more from someone she just met?"
Millim sniffled, and mumbled into Miyun's cleavage, "An idiot like me." Her throat vibrated with speech, sending tickly little sensations into Miyun's breasts.
Miyun squirmed, not at all unhappily. "I guess this can be our clubhouse, so all we need is a pass-sign."
Millim arched her neck, pressing the delicate lump of her larynx into the inner curve of one breast while her hair swept the top of the other where the scanty halter bared it. She hummed, and Miyun writhed, clutching at her shoulders. "Oh, Mi'!"
Millim looked up at her, face streaked with tears but that smile flickering behind them. "That was gratifying. I always thought girls with more to show were less sensitive."
Miyun took a deep breath, breasts squashing and relaxing against Millim's neck. "But then they wouldn't be heavenly."
Millim's fingers worked up between their bodies to flick open the button fastening Miyun's halter. "And they definitely are!" She pushed Miyun over onto her back and bent over her breasts, silken hair brushing suddenly erect nipples as she covered the full curves with kisses.
Miyun gasped and squirmed a lot more, clutching Millim's head to her. Then Millim did the humming trick again, this time with her larynx resting right on the nipple, and Miyun arched with pleasure that ran down through her belly to her groin. "AHHHHHHHH!"
Millim giggled and started to raise her head to make some comment, but Miyun's frantic fingers pulled her back into place, and she obligingly went on with her humming. Heat filled Miyun's body, radiating from burning nipples and aching groin.
Millim shifted her attentions to the other breast, easily overpowering the hands holding her in place, and the change was just that bit more needed to send Miyun over the edge, writhing and crying out from the pulses of ecstatic release.
When Miyun slid back down from her peak, the buzzing against her nipple was suddenly too much to bear, nearly painful, and she pushed Millim away. The other girl slid up, smooth cloth of tunic feeling rough as burlap on oversensitized skin, and smiled at Miyun. "Lucky!" she declared, pretending envy but with delight shining through. "I didn't know it could happen that way!"
Miyun gulped air dizzily. "Me either! You have the magic touch, I glim."
"I bet I'm not the only one." Millim sat up and pulled her tunic off over her head, revealing breasts straining against a lacy halter and nipples jutting through. She arched her back and raised an eyebrow in challenge, then squealed as Miyun sprang, knocking her over and nipping at the lace-covered mounds with mock ferocity.
Supporting herself on one elbow, Miyun bit in earnest, teeth indenting resistant skin until Millim squealed again. Her other hand fiddled with the button fastening Millim's trousers, fingers brushing bare belly above until her victim couldn't decide between laughing and moaning.
Finally the trouser fly came open, letting the tickling fingers in and into a breechclout lacy as the halter above. The moans won out as Miyun ran her nails over hairless skin and along each side of the damp cleft below.
Millim pulled her legs up and clamped her thighs on Miyun's wrist, trapping it. As the fingers, unable to escape and not trying to anyway, slowly wormed their way between her folds, she arched up, shoving her breasts against Miyun's face and grinding one nipple against her teeth. Miyun took the hint and bit down hard on the tip of that breast, trusting to the odd toughness of Millim's skin. Frenzied writhing, nothing like an attempt to pull away, resulted.
Miyun's questing fingers found a hard nub, pressed in beside it, working the skin of its hood back and forth. Millim arched her back incredibly far and her legs crushed Miyun's arm between them, but no sound escaped her mouth while her body jerked climactically.
Millim sagged back onto the bed and sucked in air as though she hadn't breathed for an eighth of a degree. Despite the gasping, her smile was at full luminosity. "Oh, I told you, Miyun!"
Miyun, still breathing heavily herself, grinned smugly and kissed Millim softly but thoroughly.
19th Withering Day of the Month of the Wheel, Year 416 of Settlement
Millim bent over the board, chewing her lip in concentration, hair swinging forward to shadow her face. It was a pose that made Miyun lose her train of thought every time, but it wasn't her turn, so she had plenty of time to meditate on the graceful curve of cheek and fan of lashes. Beautiful, beautiful and all hers.
"Hah!" Millim tapped one piece, a chariot, and the blocky green statuette galloped across the board, between two walls, and onto the square where Miyun's greater hierophant stood, knocking it flying. The defeated piece picked itself up and slunk away to the graveyard, while those it had collided with strode back to their places.
Miyun hadn't expected that; half her strategy was built around her heirophants. She hadn't played against Yarumin so long without learning the necessity of an interlocking defense, though, and she picked up one of her cataphracts, then dropped it embarrassedly as it squirmed in her grasp. She still hadn't gotten used to the way everything in Treeport moved by itself; in Hamvin-town, only the rich had anything like that, but here even the dimics in indigent housing had it.
The cataphract recovered its dignity and with a single step pinned the chariot. Millim's piece wasn't captured, but it couldn't do anything without exposing itself. "Hah yourself!"
"Hmph. I'll never get used to your siege variants. What's wrong with the field ordinary?"
"Miyun's all about the imposing edifices," jibed a passer-by. Miyun stuck out her tongue.
"Hey!" It was an unfamiliar voice, male and accompanied by the squeals or protests of those dorm-fivers who didn't feel they were wearing enough to entertain company. "Anyone here a virgin?"
Universal laughter answered him. "In here? We're the wanton criminal classes!" "Not since I was old enough to know what it was for!" "I may be a pervert, but virginity's just unnatural!" "I still got the box it came in, though!"
"You asking socially or technically?" someone inquired. The laughter subsided as the young women considered the question.
"Uh, technically. We're um looking for maidens for the Procession of the Twelve Joys." The speaker was young, ascetic-looking with shaved head and simple green robe, and trying very hard to not goggle around at the residents of dormitory five, not all of whom minded being seen in their underwear or less.
"Shit, that late in the month already?" said the same girl. "I better start getting my sacrifices together."
"The Procession is to be composed of young women from all parts of the community," explained his superior, who was taller, older, fatter, and had ears that drooped far out from his head like a sick bat. He also didn't seem to care that most of the girls seemed to know this already; the script called for an explanation, so he was going to give one. "Traditionally, one is drawn from the Houses of Charity, and our casting of the signs has led us to this dormitory." His gaze, as it encompassed the residents, was much less approving than that of his assistant. He also looked completely unwilling to be put off.
"What's the Procession of Twelve Joys?" whispered Miyun.
"Maidens bearing symbols of what the port is grateful for this year, parading around the fane and putting them on the altar, kissing the men in the Procession of Twelve Tribulations, standing around looking maidenly. I did it two years ago, before I met..."
Miyun looked for Yarumin and Shisan, but neither of them had come back since she last looked -- not that Yarumin was qualified anyway. Feeling more than a little trapped, and not particularly relieved that the duties of a Processional maiden didn't sound like they involved either blood sacrifice or ritual deflowerment, she raised her hand.
The younger priest turned bright red; his superior cuffed him absently and bustled over to Miyun's bed. "Excellent, excellent! I knew it was a good casting! But you will understand that we must verify your eligibility?"
"Um. Sure?"
The priest brought out a small clay pot full of dirt, from which a single living green bud protruded. "If I may have a drop of your blood?" He grabbed her arm without waiting for a reply, and then looked startled when she twisted from his grasp. He hadn't seemed to mean any harm, but then Miyun hadn't had to think about what to do when someone grabbed her. "My dear young lady!"
"It's all right," Millim put in. "He's a priest!"
The priest looked at her, then brightened. "Ah, yes, you were in the Procession last year-- no, the year before. Mim, was it?"
"Hokashut Millim, Elevated Sir."
"Of course, of course. Now, my dear young lady," he addressed Miyun. "I understand you are a newcomer to our community, but surely your friend Millim stands as proof that we have no ill intent." Miyun looked over at Millim and bit back a smile. The priest looked a little confused but reached for her hand again, and this time she let him take hold. His subordinate passed him a tiny lump of resin, which he twisted open to expose a shining needle. Apparently he did this a lot, because Miyun barely felt it when he pierced the side of her fingertip and squeezed a single drop onto the bud.
Nothing happened.
Miyun realized after a moment that she was holding her breath, and inhaled, feeling a bit foolish. The acolyte completely forgot about the pot.
When the priest had counted to sixty under his breath, he beamed and put the pot away. "As pure a maiden as I've ever tested!" From his other sleeve he produced a length of green and white banded ribbon which he tied onto her wrist in a complex bow of many loops. "Excellent! Now if I may have your name, I will arrange for you to be excused for your other duties for the length of your instruction."
"Miyun."
"Of what clan?"
"No clan."
That stopped his officious fussing, but he recovered quickly. "Well, the Procession must represent us all, from the highest-placed to the lowest. I am sure you will do admirably. Please present yourself at the fane at sixty degrees ascending tomorrow to begin your instruction. Now, if you will excuse us, we must locate your colleagues." He dragged his assistant away from fascinated observation of Miyun's respiration and they departed.
Miyun blinked after them, fidgeting at the bow on her wrist. "That was sure sudden and unexpected!"
Millim giggled. "Really, Mi'? Never? Not even for curiosity?"
Why was she embarrassed? She shrugged. "A lot of dimic girls were happy to get glass that way, but we promised to get by with our wits and wills, not just warm holes. And this parade of yours isn't the only ritual that needs virgins, so we even got a little glass for not doing it."
"Oh." Millim squeezed her hand and was quiet for moment. "I'm sorry, Mi'. I always thought of my life as hard, so when you say you grew up in bad circumstances I picture, well, this." She waved her hand at the warm, comfortable dormitory and its healthy, well-fed inhabitants. "There's nothing up here as bad as what you had to go through, so I don't have any basis to feel it. Or I can't stand to think of you in someplace so horrid."
Miyun's heart flinched at Millim's distress. "It wasn't as bad as all that." She patted her chest. "I wouldn't have these if I'd been starving, and I kept the choice of remaining a virgin. We didn't have it easy, but we did a lot better than some." Thanks to Yarumin's cleverness and Shisan's strength, mostly, but she couldn't bring herself to say that in front of Millim.
Millim lifted Miyun's hand to her lips and softly kissed the palm. "I'm glad. You deserve the best, even if what's available isn't much." She looked up, eyes dancing. "So what didn't you say to old Ghirlees?"
Relieved at the change of subject, and loving Millim for it, Miyun grinned. "Whether this Procession thing is harmless depends on whether you glim turning someone into a split-tail is harm!"
"Hey! I come by it naturally! Anyone who's seen you with your shirt off would!"
A bedsheet landed over them. "Next time it'll be a bucket of cold water," warned Nosanis, the youngest dorm fiver and the most loudly disgusted at such goings-on. Fake disgust, as it turned out -- her desire to have Miyun instruct her in "goings-on" was obvious, at least to Miyun -- but she wasn't going to admit it.
"That's what you think!" Millim leapt up, gorgeous legs flashing beneath the hem of her tunic, and threw the sheet back over Nosanis. Laughing, she and Miyun tickled the younger girl into submission, then wrapped her in the sheet and sat firmly on her.
"You're not just lewd, you're mean! And using your tail's cheating!"
"That's not what Mi' says!" said Miyun smugly.
20th Withering Day of the Month of the Wheel, Year 416 of Settlement
The top of the sky tree was so high above the ground that the sun rose only a little more than thirty degrees after midnight, but that didn't make sixty degrees ascending any less early. Only Millim's whispered suggestion that the god of the tree would strike her frigid if she didn't do her duty got Miyun up; not even the bitter, steaming tea passed out by acolytes at the fane got her awake.
Together with eleven other maidens, who all seemed to be naturally early risers, she stumbled through the forms of the Procession: how to progress with dignity, accept an object with dignity, offer up an object with dignity, make proper obeisance to the chief priest, to the people, to the presence of the god. Their instructor was a priestess, still young in years but crochety as any oldster when one of her pupils backslid from the proper forms. In those rare periods when none of the girls incurred her wrath, she helped the male instructor shout at the young men practicing their own forms at the other end of the hall.
By the time rest of the port would finally be getting out of bed, no doubt with slippers and rugs between their skin and the chill wood of the living tree, Miyun was awake but not at all glad of it. It was easy to take a step, to kneel or to bow, but doing it over and over for dozens of degrees, and at half speed, was not, even in the lesser gravity of the port. When a break was finally called, she collapsed in her place and lay there doing nothing but breathing for a degree or two.
"Um, excuse me, but are you all right?"
Miyun opened her eyes to see one of the other maidens bending over her, one of the ones from the middle classes; a small girl with a rabbitty face and unflattering bangs but a rather nicely rounded, if compact, body under her close-fitting athletic outfit.
"I'm okay. Just not used to this."
"Oh." She still looked worried, though, and bent low to whisper, "The boys are staring!"
It wasn't surprising; Miyun's labor pool tunic now fit properly, but plastered to her body with sweat, it was at least as revealing as before Millim had altered it. She flopped her head over anyway, and was rewarded by seeing several male heads snap back to face their instructor. One waggled his bushy brows and winked a large violet eye at her first, though, making her blush and then scowl at herself for it.
The rabbit-faced girl was blushing too, but also holding out a hand to help Miyun up, and pulled her to her hooves when she took it. "Um, what are you? I've never seen anyone like you." She was even smaller than she had looked, not even up to Miyun's shoulder.
"I don't know, I never knew my parents," Miyun explained patiently for what seemed like the fiftieth time.
"Oh! I'm sorry! Er, I'm Cabastral Ishin."
"Miyun, of no clan." To avoid all the other questions she expected, she continued on. "You seem to be okay; you do this a lot?"
"I play steeple-ball," she confessed, as though embarrassed at her own fitness. "After doing fifty high jumps and fifty long jumps every day, this isn't so bad."
Miyun had only a vague idea of what steeple-ball was: something involving kicking, throwing, or somehow getting a ball back and forth over a field covered with obstacles. She got the idea, though, and was impressed. "I bet!"
"Come over here and have some water. You need to replace what you're losing." Ishin's face was at just about the level of Miyun's bosom, so there was no way she could gesture at her sweat-soaked tunic without embarrassing herself. She was cute when she blushed, although in a way that inspired protectiveness more than desire.
Along with half a dozen cups of water (small cups, to enforce a limit on how fast one could drink), Miyun got introductions to the other ten maidens, all of whom also wanted to know what she was. Most of them were polite but not friendly; even the undistinguished middle class considered itself far above the labor pool. Allil, a plump blue-crested Shadrite with her baby fat pleasingly concentrated behind the front of the ratty old tunic she wore for exercise, and Mimanid, a lios of passably good breeding, were more welcoming; she was not surprised to learn that they were the daughters of, respectively, a golem foreman and a guardswoman.
Least friendly, but also by far most striking, was the maiden from the priestly class, Anjut Kasis. She was tallest of the group and slender enough to make her curvature seem more than it was -- not too far off Yarumin in build -- but only a few tiny bits of her darkly bronzed skin were covered by a red halter and breechclout that fit like paint. Black hair bound with fancy silver rings into a rope thicker than Miyun's wrist hung almost to the floor, swirling behind Kasis's quick elegant movements, and her black eyes shone arrogantly. If she had thought a labor pool worker was even slightly like a person, Millim would have needed to worry; even so, Miyun was almost hypnotized.
"I can't believe she wears that in public," whispered Allil, scandalized. "She looks more like a street-corner girl than a temple dancer!"
"But she's here, so we know she's not like that. She just pretends to make boys notice her," Mimanid whispered back. "Anyway, if she really did lie down with them, they wouldn't always be following her around."
"I heard she doesn't even like boys," put in Ishin.
Allil clapped a hand to her mouth. "She does it with girls?! But she's not a lios!"
"Well, I guess she doesn't actually do it, or she wouldn't be here."
"It doesn't count if it's just two girls," said Miyun. Allil and Ishin stared at her. "Well, it doesn't!" she said defensively.
"That's enough gossip! Finish your water and get back out here! None of you can genuflect well enough to greet a janitor, never mind the Inestimable. Except Kasis, and even she could stand some polishing," the instructor added. Groaning, the other eleven girls followed Kasis onto the floor.
* * *
This time Miyun staggered over to the table to fill her hands with meat buns and her mouth with a sweet seed cake before collapsing against the wall. "I'm dead," she moaned. "And I must have been a real bitch when I was alive."
"If you're dead, you don't need this!" Allil grabbed at one of the meat buns, but Miyun clutched it possessively to her chest.
"Mine! It gets buried with me!" Then she looked at the sweat it was absorbing from her sodden tunic. "Never mind, you can have it."
"No thanks. Ew."
Ishin flopped down cross-legged beside them. Miyun was relieved to see that even the athlete looked worn out; maybe she wasn't as pathetic as she'd thought. "See, doesn't Kasis look like she doesn't want any of them?" Ishin's chin indicated the pack of half a dozen boys surrounding the beautiful dancer, who held herself aloof from them all.
"Maybe she just likes older men. You know, ones with some tact," suggested Mimanid.
"I didn't know other girls even could," mused Allil. "I thought lios girls were special." She seemed even more interested in the idea than Nosanis; Miyun was sure at least one of Allil's friends was going to get a surprising offer soon. Well, surprising if they were as sheltered as Allil. "Does it really not count if it's with another girl? It's still sex, right?"
Miyun hid a smile. "What's important is whether it can make a baby. Same reason we all have to be past the age of womanhood; if we weren't, we'd just be little kids, not maidens. And nothing before that counts, even if it was with a man."
One of the other maidens, eavesdropping, blushed, but luckily Allil didn't notice. They'd probably never have heard the end of it if she had.
Allil considered Miyun's explanation. "I guess that makes sense. But it still seems funny that you can get all naked and sweaty and... whatever with somebody and still say you're a virgin!"
"Here come the rest of the boys," warned Ishin, and she and the other two quickly brushed crumbs from their fronts and finger-combed their hair into shape. Miyun had gotten as far as propping herself up on elbows to see a bit better when the other half of the young men's class surrounded them.
There was a flurry of introductions, of which Miyun remembered one, the willowy bronze-skinned boy with the big violet eyes and bushy black brows who had winked at her last time she took a break. His name was Anjut-su Calido, and he was some sort of half-cousin to Kasis. That was obvious from his dress sense, though: he wore only rather tight knee-breeches, and a headband to keep his shaggy mane out of his face. In Miyun's opinion, he had the muscles for it, and it looked like Ishin and Allil, at least, agreed with her.
All the boys, on the other hand, remembered her name, though she had quickly sat up so her shoulders weren't pulled back so emphatically, and they all wanted to know what she was, where she was from, and what life in the labor pool was like, or least how much free time she had. She somehow put them all off until, by whatever arcane means the boys determined such things, it was Calido's turn.
He knelt in front of her and with a shameless grin said, "There's no point in your being a virgin after the Procession, so how about I help you with that?" Ishin spit out her mouthful of juice, turned bright red, and retreated; Allil and Mimanid just made choking noises.
Miyun burst out laughing, which didn't seem to wound his pride at all. When she recovered, still giggling, she said, "At least you know what you want!"
He gestured dismissively. "Just what all the men and three-quarters of the women here want. The only difference is, I'm not ashamed to try and get her." He pretended to ponder for a moment. "Well, not the only difference, but I'm too modest to mention all the others."
It was obvious that he meant his outrageousness to be charming, but Miyun was embarrassed to realize that it was, at least to her. Men had tried similar approaches, as well as every other sort a city full of one-track minds could devise, but for Calido, it worked. The bastard. But at least he hadn't asked what she was!
"It's a very kind offer, but I glim my sweetheart wouldn't like it." It wasn't hard to sound regretful, not hard at all.
He perked up even more. "You have a lover? Maybe we can work something out. Is she as beautiful as you?" Before she could answer, he went on. "No, can't be; I don't see how there could be two women as beautiful as you in one star system, never mind one little port."
Miyun, more dazzled than she wanted to be, stomped on thoughts of two welcoming bodies waiting for her in bed. How could she be such a split-tail, after the scene she'd made when Millim so much as joked about such a thing? But Millim had brought it up first, so she must have already been thinking about it, right? Miyun was taking much too long to reply; Calido probably thought he was getting somewhere. Quickly -- in case he was right -- she said, "My lover is ten thousand times more beautiful than I am." She paused and added, sincerely, "She's even more beautiful than you."
"Ah well. I'll have to ask again when I'm all bedecked and bedizened for festival. You will bring her, won't you?" He widened his eyes appealingly, and all she could do was nod mutely.
"Enough lollygagging!" shouted the male instructor. "One degree to finish up!"
"Alas, fair lady, we must part!" Calido sprang nimbly to his feet and walked away. Dizzily, Miyun observed that he also had the muscles to wear skin-tight breeches. She only noticed the other boys trooping after him as obstructions to her view.
"Not bad," said Kasis, who had appeared unnoticed at Miyun's back while she was being sweet-talked. "Most girls propose marriage on the spot when my baby cousin turns on the glamour like that."
Miyun shrugged and gestured toward her chest. "Lots of practice." But it was still much harder than it should have been to move her gaze from Calido's rear to Kasis's face.
"I'm surprised they let him anywhere near this year's crop, but the Tree knows where sun lies," Kasis said idly as she turned to the remaining seed cakes.
"What?" That sounded juicy.
"Never mind," said Kasis, and before Miyun could press, the female instructor was yelling for them to get back to work.
As they returned to their places, one of the other maidens -- Rhanit? Rhonid? -- noticed Miyun's scowl and whispered, "Two years ago, Calido seduced one of the Processional maidens before the Procession. I don't know what he's doing here either!"
* * *
Much to everyone's relief, the next lessons were mental and spiritual instead of physical. A different priestess, much older and more sarcastic, lectured the maidens on the origins of the rite they were to be involved in, the symbology of every part of it, the underlying theology (and other bits that seemed interesting), and finally the significance of each of the ritual objects, of which there were not many.
"We do WHAT?!"
"Disrobe at the portal of the temple," the instructor repeated with exaggerated patience, "to show that you are bringing nothing of the vulgar world with you. Would you like smaller words?"
Miyun put her face in her hands.
* * *
Millim looked up from the broadsheet she was reading as Miyun stomped in. "Oh," she said guiltily. "You found out about the no clothes?"
"You could have MENTIONED it! Five gods in a bucket, don't I have enough problems with men already?"
"I could have told you, but that wouldn't have made it not the right thing to do."
Miyun flung herself backwards onto her bed with a resounding whump. "I guess. Oh well, at least I'll get to see Kasis naked. Not that I'll see much more that way."
"Anjut Kasis, the temple dancer? She's one of the maidens? Oh, she's gorgeous!"
"No kidding." Miyun stared up at the ceiling, too tired to be very angry. After the lectures, which lasted exactly long enough for all her muscles to stiffen up, the day had finished off with another agonizing session of physical training. Her limbs felt as though they had been sawn off -- with blunt saws -- and replaced with leaden fakes. "Hey, Mi', you said it was two years ago you were in the Procession?"
"Right?"
"Did Kasis's cousin Calido really seduce one of the maidens before the Procession?"
"Kind of. It wasn't as one-sided as you make it sound, though. Gillin and Calido had been sniffing around each other for a while, doing a little kissing practice, that sort of thing. I don't think either of them planned it, but somehow they ended up alone together, she was nervous and tense about the Procession, he was warm and comforting, and nature took its course, as they say. She got in a lot more trouble, of course, because she had the sacred obligation. I think she got sent down to the ground for schooling."
"Sacred leaves. So what'd they do about the procession?"
"Fortunately, one of the maidens from the year before didn't like men so she was still qualified and didn't need much training."
"Lucky! I glim you can't have earthquakes or floods up here, but fires? Air leaks? Dry rot?"
"It really was; most of the maidens don't keep their qualifications very long at all. It's good luck to be a Processional maiden's first, and even the ones who prefer women usually have some male friend they want to give the luck to."
"Hey, Miyun! How was maiden practice? Did you get fitted for your costume?" Yarumin grinned down at her.
Miyun dragged her pillow over her face. "Kill me now," she mumbled.
"She's just grouchy because she's stiff. Yarumin, help me flip her over and I'll give her a rubdown." Miyun yelled as ruthless hands grabbed her and flipped her over onto her belly; the pillow went flying. She yelled again when strong fingers sank into her weary muscles, but although the massage was painful, she knew she needed it, so she gritted her teeth and bore it.
21st Withering Day of the Month of the Wheel, Year 416 of Settlement
Once again, sixty ascending came much too early, though Miyun had fallen asleep right after dinner. When she stripped down at the instructor's order, though, the touch of cold air on her bare skin woke her right up. The first thing she saw, of course, was twenty-five people looking at her tail, which at least took her mind off her bare breasts and groin; all the other girls had those anyway. She wasn't surprised to see that Calido was watching her openly, nor that his cock was standing up stiffly. She didn't have much to compare it with, but it looked awfully big to fit inside. That was supposed to feel good?
Most of the boys, like the girls, had their bodies turned half away from the other group but their heads turned back in hopes of getting a peek without showing anything themselves, but she could see that they were all standing as stiff as Calido, if not as big. The girls had arms over breasts and hands between legs, except for Kasis. The beautiful dancer stood easily at rest, one knee bent and foot up on the ball to display the swell of her calf, apparently oblivious to the hungry and jealous eyes.
Not to be outdone, Miyun stood up proudly as well, hands at her sides, shoulders back and chest out. One of the boys choked on an oath, but she didn't look to see who; she knew it wouldn't be Calido.
She was a bit surprised to see the other girls drop their concealing hands and stand up as well, but glimmed they felt like she did about Kasis. That lasted all the way to the first break.
"Miyun, you were so brave!" Ishin gazed at her with stars in her eyes. "I was so embarrassed, I don't think I could have done anything if you hadn't stood up to them!" The semicircle of girls behind her looked just as admiring, although a lot of them were still looking at her tail.
Surprised and nervous, she coiled her tail around her leg and protested, "Me? I was just doing what Kasis did."
"Kasis is practically naked when she dances anyway, so it's easy for her!"
Miyun looked over to see Kasis, arms folded, eyeing her coldly. Apparently she had taken the top spot again, like in the dorm, but this time she didn't have Yarumin and Shisan to back her up. She wasn't even sure how normal people fought these battles; beating up Kasis probably wouldn't help.
Before anything could happen, though, the instructor called the girls back for more agonizing training.
* * *
"You have ten degrees for lunch!" shouted the instructor. Half the girls collapsed in place, but this time Miyun wasn't one of them; she managed to catch herself bent over, and pant with her hands on her knees. When she recovered, she glared at Kasis and Ishin for their atheltic figures, although at least dignified movement was slow. If they'd had to do any running or jumping, she would probably have strangled the instructor.
The boys also got a break for lunch, but neither class got clothes, so they ended up clustered at the ends of the long table, looking longingly down its length. Some of the girls were even looking at the food.
Kasis, still unfazeable, simply went and got the bowl of fruit from the other end of the table, ignoring the effect she had on the boys. Calido followed her back, watching carefully; when she turned to look at him, he studied her carefully from head to foot. His cock, which had gone almost limp while he concentrated on the lessons, rose eagerly. "Exquisite as ever, cousin."
"Careful, or your prey may take advantage of your distraction and escape." She indicated Miyun with a flick of her head that sent her hair coiling silkily around her calves.
Calido strode past Kasis and clasped Miyun's hands in both of his. "O uniquely beautous maiden, please tell me you have not come to doubt my love for you!" He did the wide-eyes trick again.
Smiling despite herself, she retorted, "I believe you just as much as before you got hard from ogling your cousin."
"If any other woman stirs me, it is only because I see in her the faintest reflection of your loveliness, your courage and grace!" he declaimed, sinking to one knee before her and lifting his arms like an actor in a florid melodrama. She noted that he was as large and upright as when they'd first met; definitely more than Kasis had caused.
She lifted an eyebrow. "You give these speeches a lot?" Allil giggled.
"Knowing that we must one day meet, I have spent the entirety of my life in study and practice for this encounter. How could I do otherwise, when my slightest negligence might bring it all to ruin?"
She inclined her head. "It's true, everyone knows you're best at bedding Processional maidens."
"Ow." He stood up and walked away, shoulders stiff. A couple of his friends hurried after him.
"Among most people," Kasis said nastily, "saying 'no' to an offer you're not interested in is quite enough."
Miyun really hadn't glimmed that someone who'd slept around as much as Millim said Calido had, and who even acted like it, would feel guilt over bedding someone, but that was because she was a complete idiot. Millim had said he and Gillin had liked each other; two years ago, he would have been young enough that she could easily have been his first real love, and by not being strong enough to resist asking or refuse when asked, he had ruined her life. Anyone with brains enough to fill a thimble would have known better than to bring up something like that ever, let alone in flirting.
Calido's friends were talking earnestly to him, and occasionally shooting dirty looks in her direction. His shoulders were still hunched with unhappiness, though, and she thought she saw them shake a bit.
At least she'd made him stop trying to shove that huge thing into her to get her luck. That was what she wanted, wasn't it? Except that if he were that heartless, he wouldn't still be miserable over what happened with Gillin.
Heedless of the eyes, variously surprised and confused and angry, of the other girls, she went after him.
One of his friends, a massively-built Hulyu-lander, stepped in her way. "Don't you think you've done enough? Go back and cackle with- GRAGH!" He didn't quite fall to the ground when she hooked his feet out from under him, but he stumbled out of her way.
The muscles of his back tightened, but he didn't turn around, so she said it to the back of his head, loud enough for the whole room to hear. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It was stupid and, and cruel, and you should hate me for it, but I didn't mean to hurt you."
His big friend grabbed Miyun by the arm, but Calido mumbled something and the Hulyu-lander stopped.
"What was that?"
A little louder, though not very, he said, "I don't hate you." He still didn't turn around, though.
She sighed, distracting Calido's other friend from the aid and comfort he was giving. "I'm glad," she said, and left him, shaking off the Hulyu-lander's grasp.
* * *
All through the afternoon's singing lessons, he avoided her, not even looking toward her. During the break, the girls Miyun hadn't made friends with went over to talk to him. He was pleasant enough, and even flattered a couple of them, but none of them looked satisfied when they returned, and several of them gave Miyun nasty looks. She couldn't say she didn't deserve them, though, and when class ended for the day, she fled. She was halfway out the fane's door before she realized she hadn't put her clothes back on.
* * *
"I don't know that you're an idiot, exactly," Millim said once Miyun had explained the situation.
"Just a good imitation?"
"Well, did you get rid of him because you didn't want him? Or because you did?"
"Millim!"
"I'm serious! I've met him; he's very handsome and he can be incredibly charming when he wants. I know your history has led you to swear off men, but that doesn't mean you only want women."
Miyun sighed. "I dunno. I glimmed he was just... being a man. Looking for someplace to stick it in near two big tits. But that's no worse than the rest of them, and he was awfully upset when he glimmed I was mocking him over Gillin."
"So you don't hate him, you even think he might be kind of nice, but do you actually want him?"
The image of Calido as she had seen him first that day popped into her head: tall, grinning, curves of muscle under smooth bronze skin, sparkling violet eyes, and obvious desire, not just the way boys always were, but for her specifically. She sighed again. "Maybe?"
"So you're not completely lacking in taste after all! Good!"
"Millim!"
Millim squeezed her hand. "But stabbing a guy right in the heart isn't the best way to get him into your bed. Not even if you're stark naked at the time."
Miyun fell over on her side, pulling Millim with her. "I glim that. But I already have someone to bed down with."
"That's never stopped anyone's eye from roving, you know." But she snuggled in and nuzzled under Miyun's jaw. "I'm glad you're not planning on replacing me right away, though."
"Never!" swore Miyun, then gasped as Millim bit down and started sucking.
Planting Eve, Year 416 of Settlement
The problem with nudity, thought Miyun, besides the bouncing bits and the chill and people seeing your tail, was that it let other people know too much about what you did. She could mostly ignore the scandalized glances Allil kept shooting at the mark on her neck, but she still turned pink when anyone looked at the row of bite marks along the inside of her thigh. Millim had done that on purpose, the wretch!
At least she didn't have to see what Calido thought of them: he was still ignoring her, so thoroughly it couldn't be real. Also so thoroughly no one could help noticing, which meant everyone thought he hadn't really forgiven her and that she was still the most heartless person who had ever lived. If the god of the tree didn't strike her down during the Procession, maybe she'd join an order and retreat from the world, like the one she'd heard mentioned in a dream, where each nun spent her entire life in a tiny cell dug into a remote mountain, seeing no one, seen by no one, completely isolated except for the water and vegetables tossed down weekly by caretakers.
At what she thought was going to be the afternoon break, the instructors pronounced both groups good enough. "Enjoy the rest of the day," the priest ordered. "But don't do anything that might hamper your performance tomorrow," added the girl's instructor. Calido winced and slunk off. The instructor looked confused; probably she just meant "don't get drunk and come to the ceremony with a hangover".
Miyun winced too, mostly in sympathy but a little because she knew that anyone who liked Calido would blame her for his unhappiness. Sure enough, the girls who had made their plays the previous day were all looking daggers at her, or maybe vacuum swords.
Not everyone hated her, though. As they were getting dressed to leave, Ishin and Mimanid approached her. "Um, Miyun," said Ishin hesitantly, "Do you have anyone to be with tonight?" Miyun's eyebrow rose, and Ishin flung up her hands defensively. "Not that! Just, it would be terrible to be alone on Planting Eve. I know you don't have any family, but... maybe you have friends?"
"You can bring your sweetie," Mimanid added.
"Mimanid's and my families usually have Planting Eve together," Ishin explained. "We live right next door to each other."
Miyun wavered. She liked Ishin and Mimanid, but they were regular people, rows-and-columns like they said here. Millim would know how to behave, but how could she? She'd probably have an easier time faking it with tonns; she and Martal had seen plenty of dreams about the upper crust, but no one made stories about regular people! And what about Yarumin and Shisan? "Um. It's very nice of you to invite me--"
"Oh, please come, Miyun!" Ishin was nearly as good at Calido at the pleading eyes; Miyun weakened.
"Well... But what about my other friends? I can't leave them alone!"
"You'll come if they can?" Mimanid bounced on her toes. "Then you and your sweetie can be my family's guests, and your friends can be Ishin's, and you can stop worrying about imposing a whole crowd on us!"
"Hey! I asked her first! You take the friends!"
"Whatever!" Mimanid waved her hand negligently. "Anyway, you can't say you don't have anything to wear, because we can find you something, and you can't say you don't have any presents, because they aren't required, so you're coming!" She beamed triumphantly.
Miyun closed her mouth. Was she really that obvious? Oh well. Even if their parents had put them up to this so they could feel all charitable, Ishin and Mimanid were nice, and there would probably be food. She was pretty sure normal people always had food at holidays. "Yah, yah. You win. Tell me where and when, and we'll be there."
"Hurrah!" Ishin and Mimanid both leapt into the air in excitement, a fairly ridiculous sight since one was twice the height of the other. "Come to my place," said Mimanid. "Branch four, left at the seventh crossing, second house on the left. It has yellow flowers around the door. Dinner is at a hundred five past noon, but people show up earlier; eighty-five or ninety is fine."
"Four, seven left, two left, ninety descending," Miyun repeated. "So many numbers!"
Mimanid shrugged. "Space is too big for names, so we sort of got in the habit of numbers."
For practically the first time since she'd arrived, Miyun thought about where she was: straight up twice as far as Hamvin-land was wide, above the entire atmosphere, and still barely a hundredth of the way to the outer moon; the nearest planet was a hundred times farther still. It really was an emptiness that could swallow worlds, and yet people crossed it every week. She shivered, feeling again the same wonder as when she had seen the sky tree towering above her. She couldn't imagine staring out at that every day; no wonder the port didn't have many windows.
"Miyun?"
She shook herself. "Yah. Big. I better run and tell everyone. I'll see you in a bit!"
"See you soon!"
* * *
"I don't know about this," Yarumin said slowly. "What do they get out of inviting a bunch of dimics into their home?"
"I glim they don't glim what we are," Miyun said. "I'm just some fem their daughters met at class for the Procession, who doesn't have a family to go home to. Best they know, we're just poor, and they probably even glim I'm good-hearted, since I got picked for the Procession."
"So they get to glim they're being all charitable to the poor," said Shisan. "How noble of them."
"They get to feel good, we get free food, I get some people who don't want to screw me up tomorrow so I get cursed by the tree, so what's wrong?" she wheedled.
"Mi'! Everyone!" yelled Millim from the doorway. "Clothes!"
The half-dozen girls loafing about the dormitory perked up. "Clothes?"
"The recyclers just brought in a big load! They're in the refectory!" She leapt nimbly from the path of the stampede, and giggled. "Come on, Mi'! You need something I can show you off in!"
"Like I'm not going to show off enough tomorrow," muttered Miyun, but she ran to take Millim's hand. "So Mi', you didn't have any plans for Planting Eve, did you?"
* * *
The load of clothes was huge, all right: every table in the refectory was covered with them, and the room was full of people from every dormitory pillaging them with good cheer. Miyun had expected tooth-and-nail fights over choice pieces, but there was remarkably little conflict; the worse she could hear was one lios woman telling another the velvet tunic she was wearing made her look like a sack of poles, and that was just the truth.
Miyun went to the nearest table and started rummaging, but her idea of good clothing was warm stuff with no holes in it. None of this had more than minor wear, but little of it was warm: it was all brightly colored, and often thin or nearly see-through; festival clothing. She knew perfectly well that clothes made the woman, or at least the drop-dead gorgeous one, but had no idea how to pick them herself. The best she could hope for was to look like a mid-priced houri. Still, that was better than some girls.
Milim grabbed the flimsy shirt Miyun was pretending to consider. "Not that; with your coloring it'd make you look like a zombie!" She tossed it across the table to someone else and turned to look at Miyun. "You don't have any idea how to pick clothes, do you?"
Miyun shrank, feeling like an idiot again. "Not clothes like these," she admitted.
"I bet Yarumin and Shisan don't either." She grabbed Yarumin's wrist as she tried to slide by, and waved at Shisan until she came over, still holding a thick brown sweater dubiously by the cuffs. "That's not bad, but we're picking clothes for a festival, not wilderness survival." Shisan scowled and clutched the sweater; Millim sighed.
"You three come over here and follow me." She surveyed the tables, picked one for no visible reason, and marched to one end. Every garment there got inspected and sometimes held up to one or another of the three. Most were tossed back, but a few got handed to someone. Miyun had no idea how Millim was sorting them, but she seemed to.
The thought crossed Miyun's mind that someone who left visible bite marks on her the night before she had to take her clothes off in front of two dozen people wasn't the best source of fashion advice,, but then she would be back to having no idea. Anyway, it wasn't like people who had to work for a living would be able to dress perfectly either.
Millim had worked her way down a second table and was all set for a third when Yarumin cleared her throat. "Maybe we should try what we have before we completely bury Shisan?"
"But then all the good stuff will be gone!" She looked at the huge pile of clothes supported by Shisan's legs, and giggled. "Maybe we do have enough. Okay, over here." She led them to the corner of the room farthest from the door. "Shisan, clothes off."
"Hey! Oh, all right." Hidden by her her friends, Shisan stripped down to her breechclout, pointedly ignoring the whistles. She wasn't indecent for long, although she was frequently, as Millim threw clothes at her, studied the result, gestured her to take them off, and repeated.
"I like this one," Shisan protested, at being told to remove a jacket of some stiff blue material, lined with silk that showed at cuffs and collar and embroidered with knotwork down the front.
"It's huge! You could get lost in that thing and we wouldn't find you for weeks!" As had many before her, however, Millim succumbed to the dread Quivering Lip. "Oh, all right. Put it over there. We need to find you something for the party, though."
According to Millim, that was a better-fitted jacket of velvet in some sort of reddish-purplish brown, or brownish-purplish red, depending on the light, and a calf-length skirt of almost the same color with crimson embroidery around the hem.
"Hmm," said Yarumin.
"Hmm," said Miyun. The outfit did look nice, although she wasn't sure it looked like Shisan. But then, if they were going to a party with normal people, maybe that was for the best.
"A skirt?" said Shisan, dubiously. "What if I have to kick someone?"
"Knock them down first," suggested Yarumin.
Millim rolled her eyes. "We don't have all night. Can you stand to be seen in public in that?"
"Um." She spun around one way and then immediately the other, so the skirt flared out and swirled around her legs. "Sure."
"Good! Yarumin!"
Yarumin was too tall to be completely hidden; even if most of her was, it was obvious she was undressing, and her friends weren't the only ones who whistled. Miyun wondered if the Tree would get mad at her for not being more sympathetic.
This time it went faster; apparently Millim had a better idea of what lios wore to look good. Yarumin looked down at herself in sky-blue tunic of soft clinging material and darker, shiny trousers pinched in at the waist with a belt of the same brocade that spiralled down one leg. "Um. I look..."
"Female?" suggested Millim. Embarrassed, Yarumin nodded. Millim threw a thigh-length robe of shiny blue fabric that almost exactly matched the pants around her shoulders and belted it so that a V of light blue showed, curved but not obviously so. "Perfect!"
"Um," said Yarumin again, but Shisan flew into her arms. "Captain! You're gorgeous!"
A much larger crowd collected when Miyun stripped down; they didn't go away when she scowled, or even when she three things at them, so she ignored them. Anyway, after the past couple of days, having a halter and breechclout on was practically as good as being fully dressed.
Of course Millim had her shuck the halter to try on a strapless dress.
Some sort of stiffer band around the top of the dress kept the neckline on the upper curves of her breasts, though just barely so, and the back swooped lower. From there down to her thighs, the silky fabric clung like paint, finally letting go to swirl down to her ankles. The dress was a deep purple color she would never have picked, but it did seem to go with her skin. Like Shisan, she twirled to get a feel for the skirt, which slid sensuously against her legs.
She looked up and everyone was staring, wide-eyed and silent. "Five horned gods in a silver-plated bucket," breathed Yarumin.
Acutely self-conscious, as badly as the evening five years ago when Martal had suggested a good way to keep warm in the half-ruined attic they occupied, Miyun laughed weakly. "It can't be that bad!"
Millim choked on a laugh. "Bad?! If you could see yourself, you'd become a narcissist in an instant!"
Miyun felt the flush spreading down her half-exposed bosom. "Oh. Um." She knew Millim was biased, both in favor of her lover and of the clothes she'd picked out for her, but when Jurlilo said, "Hokashut, I'll give you twenty talents to take the next ship out," she started to believe maybe she did look good.
"Mi', you look wonderful!" Shisan's eyes shone admiration, as well as lust.
"Um, thanks?"
"Show's over! Go on! Get out of here!" yelled Millim, making shooing gestures at the crowd. "Yarumin, Shisan, put those clothes back on the tables. Miyun, come on." She grabbed Miyun's hand and towed her away; Miyun, still dazzled by the notion that she might be pretty, not just young and busty, followed without protest.
"Don't mess up the dress before the party," Shisan called after them, laughing.
Millim led her back to the dorm, not the love nest, but she did peel Miyun out of her new dress. Alas, she then dug her sewing supplies out and went to work on the back of the skirt, leaving Miyun breathing a bit fast and clutching her annoyingly plain labor pool tunic to her bare breasts.
"Mi', what are you doing? It fit fine!"
"Fine's not the word. Just a moment." About that long later, she sealed the edges of her work and tossed Miyun the dress. "Try it now."
Miyun didn't notice any difference, until she felt the cold air on the base of her tail. "Um, Mi', I'd rather--"
Millim put her hands on her hips and looked firm. "You're taking my advice about how to dress, right? And I think your tail is lovely, so pop it out!"
More embarrassed by this than by the bodice threatening to fall off, Miyun did as she was told. Millim stepped back and studied her thoughtfully, then then leaned forward and ran her hand from Miyun's waist over the curve of her hip. "Okay, that's got to go."
"What?"
"Drawers. Off!"
Wearing nothing except the dress felt even nakeder than no clothes at all, and the way Millim looked at her didn't help. Fortunately, the same band that kept the neckline above her nipples kept them from sticking out too much.
"Miyun, you are now utterly and completely perfect. I'm going to have to carry a vacuum sword to beat off all the attention you'll be getting."
Experimentally, Miyun bounced on her toes and twirled around again. The clingy fabric kept things in place well enough that bouncing wasn't uncomfortable, but from the way Millim's eyes bobbed, it still had all the impact she could want.
"Um, Mi', could you stop that? I have to get dressed too, and you're not motivating me."
Miyun decided she could get used to being beautiful.
* * *
"Seventh crossing?" Shisan called back from where she danced ahead of the other three, practically vibrating with energy.
"Left, second door on the right," Miyun yelled back, and then went back to beaming at Millim some more. She was pretty sure she looked foolish, but she didn't care what anyone except Millim though.
Millim wore a fitted velvet doublet that she had made the same color as Miyun's dress by pressing a tab inside it to her breast, and then lightened a few shades by holding it up to the firetubes. The top two buckles at the front were undone so that it always seemed that if she leaned forward just a bit, the shadowed depths of her cleavage would be revealed. They never quite were, but effect was entrancing.
Even more distracting, the doublet ended just at the bottom of Millim's rump, so that nothing covered her legs except translucent, pearlescent grey hose, and nothing at all concealed them. The heeled slippers were just overkill.
Millim obviously found Miyun just as captivating, which was probably why Shisan didn't walk with them. Yarumin just stayed behind them, where they couldn't see her smirk.
The door within the yellow flowers opened to Shisan's knock, letting out the scent of something wonderful frying. "Merry Planting!" said whoever stood within; probably a female lios. "Can we help you?"
Shisan bounced. "We're here with Miyun! She's late 'cause she's being goopy with Millim." She turned and yelled, "Miiiiyuuun! Hurry up, or we'll eat your share!"
Laughing, Miyun dashed for the door, but first Millim and then Yarumin passed her. Being last meant she got to watch Millim run, though.
"Last one in's a-- well, a vision of paradise, but that's not much incentive!" Millim giggled and drew Miyun by the hand into a crowd of beautiful dres