Carnival

The meeting continued long past midnight. Afterward, Lesa returned home, changed clothes, and rode the lift almost to the top of the towering spire of Pretoria house. She slipped past Agnes and into the Blue Rooms, saying she was going to check on Julian. She stopped, though, and crossed to the outside wall, where she climbed into an archway and watched the snarled sky turn toward sunrise. Lesa’s hair was tangled, leached to streaked black and gray in the nebula-light. The Gorgon stretched overhead, a frail twist of color like watered silk, far too permeable a barrier to hold anything at bay for long. Pinprick glows slid against it, red and green, and she wondered if the cargo lighter descending across the dying nebula carried the Colonial diplomats.

Lesa hugged herself despite her nightshirt sticking to her skin, despite the jungle beyond the city walls still steaming from afternoon rains. It wasn’t safe to stand here half clothed, her honor left with Agnes outside and nothing between her and a messy death except her reflexes and a half-kilometer of space.

But she needed the air, and she needed the warmth. And she could hear the stud males sleeping, their snores and soft breath soothing enough that she almost thought about lying down to sleep beside them. Her mother would have her hide for a holster in the morning, of course, but it might be worth it. Elena Pretoria was almost sixty; she was still sharp and stubborn and undeniably in charge, but Lesa was more than capable of giving her a challenge, and they both knew it.

And the men knew which member of the household looked out for them, and they knew there were gentles and armed women beyond the door. Some women were frightened of men—hopelessly old-fashioned, in Lesa’s estimation. Stud males might be emotional, temperamental, and developmentally stunted, at the mercy of their androgens, but that didn’t make them incapable of generosity, friendship, cleverness, or creativity.

It wasn’t their fault that they weren’t women. And Lesa knew better than to provoke them, anyway. Like any animal—like the house khir that had been Lesa’s responsibility before Katya took over—they could be managed. Even befriended. They simply demanded caution and respect.

Which was something many women were not willing to offer to stud males, or even gentle ones, but Lesa found she preferred their honesty to the politics of women. An eccentricity—but that eccentricity was one reason why she would be the one to meet the Colonials when they came.

The reason besides Katherinessen. She was looking forward to that. She stroked the archway and felt House shiver its pleasure at the touch.

Some people couldn’t sense the city’s awareness of their presence and its affection. Lesa found it comforting. Especially as she considered the thorniness of the problem she faced.

Her mother believed in the process. No matter what, no matter how much wrangling went on between Elena and Claude, Elena believed in the process. In the New Amazonian philosophy.

And Lesa no longer did.

She stepped back. The wall stayed open and a warm breeze chased her, bringing jungle scents and the calls of a night-flyer. She’d worry about the Colonials tomorrow. Tonight, she picked her way past the sleeping men, brushing a finger across her lips when her favorite, Robert, lifted his head from his arm and watched her go by. He winked; she smiled.

The boys’ quarters were at the back of the Blue Rooms. She pushed past the curtain and held her palm to the sensor so House could recognize her and let her pass. The boys slept even more soundly than the men.

None of them woke. Not even Julian, when she climbed over him and the yearling khir curled against his chest, slid between his body and the wall, and pushed her face into his hair as if she could breathe his rag-doll relaxation into her bones.

Timeslip. Cold currents on unreal skin. The flesh-adapted brain interprets this as air on scales, air tickling feathers.

Kii had wings once. Eyes, fingers, tongue. No more. Now, Kii watches the aliens through ghost-eyes, tastes their heat and scents and sounds through ghost-organs. No skin-brush, tongue-flicker, swing of muzzle to inhale warmth through labial pits.