The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [46]
Taking an awkward run at the corpse, keeping low—rocking from side to side—he used all his strength and what little momentum he had to roll the woman, moving her body toward the edge of his nest, pushing with his shoulder, straining with his legs. Garbed in the outfit, shifting the corpse was difficult and the woman’s naked limbs were rigid and unyielding. Outflung arms crashed down against the twigs, impeding movement. Once, twice. But he flopped the body over. There were metal studs down her blue flesh and these flashed patterns of dull lights at him. Tattoos on her palms. Tattoos on the bottoms of her feet. Hairless legs, vagina, head. But he could not look at that face any more. Glassy eyes watched him. Black crust of sap, silver teeth, exposed in an ugly rictus.
The rods over his back clanged against each other. The blanket flapped taut against him.
Then the body tipped over the edge, catching for just a second on twigs before plummeting down, away, toward the clouds. He heard faint but rewarding screams of the padres, no doubt trying to protect themselves from the blasphemy falling at them from the sky.
Pan Renik stood on the precipice. Above, Anu, moving quicker now, guided by his phalanx of ambassadors, was about to take his life. Below lay endless, poisonous clouds. He held his arms out, fighting for balance, staring down as the winds roared, eager to pluck him away.
For just an instant Pan Renik lifted his face, one last time, eyes nearly closed, and let out a scream of defiance.
Then he launched himself over the edge of the world, arms held out like wings, like a glider, in hopes of soaring into the morning, leaving all this behind, but instead he plummeted, faster and faster, shrieking down, past the padres—who stood open mouthed in shock—entirely out of control, toward the clouds.
Afterwards, she lay on her bed and might have even dozed. The girl had quickly departed. The orgasm had not been as exceptional as she had hoped it might be, though it had not taken the kholic long to achieve. Truth be told, when sober, little effort was required to get the chatelaine off. Plus, Octavia could make almost anyone come by just standing there. Her body had been taut, pungent, lithe. Her skin was grimy. People in Nowy Solum that were able to look right through Octavia, as if she did not exist, must suffer from dementia.
The chatelaine rolled onto her side and looked in her mirror, upward, at an angle, so she could only see the wooden ceiling of her chambers. She wasn’t ready yet to meet the gaze of her pets. There was always a tiny element of shame she harboured whenever they had witnessed her shouting and thrashing about during congress. Sometimes she wished that when she came she could retain more decorum. Be discrete. Absurd that she lost control like that. What did the girl possibly think? Octavia had been utterly silent throughout, even as the chatelaine went down on her. What did any of her lovers think during sex? The chatelaine knew that citizens talked about her, chuckled about her antics. Octavia had even paused at the worst possible moment, looking up from between the chatelaine’s thighs, probably to see if the chatelaine was okay or not. Embarrassing.
Yet she smiled at the memory.
The chatelaine tried to gauge if fucking the girl had changed what she thought about the kholic. She did not feel more in love—if these emotions were indeed burgeoning love—but neither did she feel further distanced, as sometimes happened after the mystery of such attractions was, well, consummated. One thing for certain: her day had begun to look up.
Octavia did make several flattering, if deadpan, comments during their lovemaking.
And, of course, the girl had initiated the sex. That was a compliment the chatelaine would not soon forget.
She rose, arranging her clothes, checking herself in the mirror to ensure everything that was supposed to be covered stayed covered, and left her chambers.
The nearest access to one of the towers that supported the dungeon was across the Great Hall, in the corner of the room her ancestors