Page 27 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

Tobi frowns. “What’s Ereyek ?” He wonders if he can guess. One of the traders referred to Harok as Tobi’s Ereyek .

“Word kushessa need,” laughs the trader.

At this, Lymok stands. He puts a hand on Tobi’s forearm.

“Don’t call him that, you hess ,” Lymok snaps, “Come on kushir,” he says, giving Tobi’s arm a gentle tug. “Come with me. Let's get away from this uncouth scum.”

The traders all make disappointed noises as Tobi stands up. Lymok leads him through a doorway into a second chamber. This room contains a long low bed and chair set beside a fireplace. Tobi glances at the bed then to his guards, following them through the doorway.

Lymok gestures to the chair. “Don’t worry, kushir, I’m not going to force myself on you. I don’t want to die at the hands of your chastity guard.”

Tobi sits down on the chair as his guards take up a new position, two on each side of the doorway. The small chamber is quite crowded.

Lymok sits down on the bed. “I am sorry about them. I thought it would be pleasant for you to hear your own language spoken. I did not expect them to be so crude. They are simply excited to meet a kushir.”

“I didn’t mind them,” Tobi says. “I come from a travelling circus in Azuria. I have not been sheltered from crude talk.”

“I suppose not,” Lymok says with a light smile.

“And it was pleasant to hear people speaking Artemian. I hadn’t realised how exhausting it was not understanding what was being said. But tell me,” Tobi says, leaning forward. “What does Ereyek mean?”

Lymok glances briefly at Tobi’s guards before he says, “Uh, the one who uses the cock, I suppose. With two men, one is Ereyek .”

“Oh,” Tobi’s eyes stretch wide. “Oh, I see. In Artemian, I do not think we have a word for that.”

“I suppose not, as it is against the will of Zai.”

“Indeed,” says Tobi.

“But Ereyek is not…” Lymok pauses. “It’s not a descriptive word. It’s an erotic one. It’s a word…” Again he struggles to explain. “You would not simply use it in conversation. It’s a bedchamber word. You would only call someone Ereyek if you wanted them to cover you. If you…, needed them to.”

“Oh,” says Tobi, thinking perhaps he understands, that perhaps it would delight Harok if Tobi called him Ereyek in the bedchamber.

Lymok exhales. “I am sorry the other traders do not speak Artemian well. As I said, I am meant to be teaching them. But they do not care for it very much. ”

“Are there any other people in Urynwud who speak my language?”

“Speaking Artemian is rare among the Solwen these days. Because of my father. Things under his regency were…,” he pauses. “He thought differently about these things.”

Tobi nods. “Mereli told me that when Lal died and Vahul became regent, he took Alyse as his kushir and fathered you upon her.”

Lymok nods quite emotionlessly. “That is correct. In many ways I was born of Irgo Vahul’s need to undo the things his brother had done.

He was very close with the Blood Priests.

They saw the danger of someone like Lal having command of the Solwen.

He had already insulted them by raising one of the Verilissia as Kushel.

Part of Vahul’s change of tone meant controlling Alyse and her Azurian influence.

The easiest way to do that was to take her as kushir. ”

“He took her to his bed so he could control her? Couldn’t he just lock her up or send her away?”

Lymok shrugs. “He could have done, I suppose. But taking her as his kushir gained him everything he would have achieved that way with the advantage of not having an unwarmed bed. Irgo’s can do as they wish with their kushir so he could keep her away from all of Urynwud.”

Tobi swallows at that statement. “Did he keep her shut up in the kushir’s chamber? The one that adjoins the Irgo’s?”

Lymok nods. “He did. I was born in that chamber. For the first few years of my life, my mother and I rarely left it. So she did not teach any more Artemian to the Solwen after that,” he says, voice betraying nothing.

“And the Solwen she had taught were branded traitors. Although, of course, Mereli managed to keep his head. He has his wiles. The only other person in Urynwud who was taught Artemian by Alyse is me. Her son. That was done in secret.”

“In defiance of Irgo Vahul?”

“Yes. That I would know who I was. And I think she liked having someone she could speak with in her own tongue. Even a babe. Although Vahul discovered what she was doing in the end.”

Tobi nods. The story of Gold Alyse is more complicated than he knew. “The Copperhead Players used to enact the story of Gold Alyse,” he says. “But it was very different from the truth.”

“I am sure,” says Lymok wryly. “What is the version you know? I would be interested to hear it.”

“It’s quite bawdy,” Tobi says, feeling a little ashamed.

The Copperhead Players show liked to dwell in Gold Alyse finding savage pleasure in the bed of her brutal forest king abductor.

But from the story Lymok tells, it seems she was intelligent, cruelly treated and brave.

And the forest king who took her to his bed was doing it out of revenge.

“I like bawdy stories,” Lymok says sweetly, which might be true but seems a strange thing to say when that story is about his own mother. Perhaps he is simply trying to save Tobi’s guilty feelings.

“My mother would play Alyse and I would sometimes play her babe. The child fathered by her forest king.”

“You would play Alyse’s babe?” Lymok’s eyebrows climb his forehead. “So you would play the part of me?”

Tobi purses his lips. “I suppose. But the story of the play was all wrong based on what I have heard you tell. Our story was that Alyse was snatched by a forest king who had been driven mad by lust at the sight of her. And also, that she ended happily, falling in love with her king and giving him babes. ”

“Oh,” says Lymok. “I suppose there was a babe. But that is the only part that has any truth to it.”

“What happened to your mother?” says Tobi, “Mereli told me she died.”

Lymok nods. “Not long after Irgo Vahul discovered my mother was teaching me Artemian, she was chosen by the Blood Priests to be sacrificed to Diazuul.”

“Oh,” says Tobi, quite shocked by Lymok’s bluntness. “She was made a blood sacrifice?”

“One of the last before our great Irgo slayed the demon we called a God.”

“So you must be grateful that Harok slayed the demon that took your mother from you.”

Lymok looks at Tobi. His expression is hard to read.

After a moment he says, “I suppose I should be. But I have often said that we ought to try and find a way to make peace with the Exceli. Harok will not hear of it. Last time I voiced such an idea was when I lost my place on his council.” He looks over towards Tobi’s guards.

Is Lymok worried about what he is saying?

What Tobi’s guard might report back to Harok?

But they are speaking Artemian. The guards cannot understand them.

“I should get back to work,” Lymok says, his voice far colder than it has been.

Tobi nods and stands. As he reaches the door, Lymok says, “Do not think that just because he allows you the freedom of Urynwud that you are not Harok’s prisoner just as my mother was Vahul’s. A kushir is the property of an Irgo. You are trapped in a cage just as your lykat is.”

After leaving Lymok, Tobi spends some more time walking the halls, until he finds his way back to the Sacred Hall. He walks over to the tables laden with bread and meat and fruit. He takes two trenchers and loads one with fruit for himself and a second with meat for Baby.

When he reaches Baby’s cage, back in the stables, he is about to climb in to share the food with her, when he sees light from some lantern’s a little further down the row of stalls.

Curious, he pushes the trencher through the bars of the cage for Baby and goes to investigate further into the stables.

Towards the back of the stables is a large stall, its wooden door ajar. Tobi looks inside.

Tamello lies inside on a bed of straw and Harok is lying beside him, stroking his flank. Has Harok been here all day? Is that where he hurried off to? To spend the day nursing his injured horse?

Distinctly, Tobi can hear Harok murmuring the Ibian words Tobi had used, “ Lalian. Lalian ary juzu. ”

Tobi feels a strange heavy ache in his heart.

Could this really be the same man who has forced him to dress so immodestly?

Who took him so roughly in his bed last night?

Who growled with pleasure when he made Tobi scream and spend harder than he ever remembers doing before?

Who stalked off this morning with barely a word?

“Irgorye?” Tobi says softly. Harok turns and Tobi says, “How is Tamello?”

“Kushir Suskara,” Harok replies. He does not seem to have understood the question.

“ Tamello? ” Tobi says again. He searches his mind for something useful. “ Ga? ” he says, sure that ga means good. “ Tamello ga? ”

“ Sho, ” Harok replies. “ Sho, Tamello ga. ” He pauses.

Tobi wishes he could say more, express somehow that he is pleased, that he too is grateful to the beast that saved their lives.

“ Suskara, ” Harok says again, as he rises to standing. He walks over to Tobi and takes him by the wrist. His touch makes Tobi’s heart skip.

Harok takes Tobi out of the stall and back into the stables, dismissing the guards with a sharp word and a hand gesture, before leading Tobi through a door and into an empty stall.

With a sudden growl, Harok pushes Tobi up against the wall and kisses him, sudden and deep.

Tobi gasps, Harok’s big body presses against his.

Harok takes hold of both Tobi’s wrists and pins them to the wall above his head.

Tobi moans and squirms against Harok’s body as Harok’s tongue takes his mouth.

When Harok leans back from the kiss, Tobi is panting.

Harok says, “Suskara.” His voice is deep, lustful. He nods once and says, “ Dekuna .”