Page 38 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

TOBI

H arok leaves the following morning with the traders and their carts and a large escort of warriors to see them safe to Ceruleum. With Harok leading on Embox, they will show a clear signal to the Exceli that attacking their trade routes will be met with violent force.

As the following days pass, Tobi finds his nights distinctly emptier. But he sees no reason to sleep alone. He takes Baby from the stables each evening after dinner and has her sleep beside him in the narrow bed in the kushir’s chamber.

Despite not having Harok to impress with his new skills in Ambolk every evening, as he goes about Urynwud having conversations with the Solwen, he finds the Ambolk language seems to click into place in his mind.

He doesn’t need to translate back and forth in his head into Artemian quite so much when he speaks with people.

He finds the Ambolk words just come. Almost as if, some of the time, he is thinking in Ambolk.

After two nights without Harok, Tobi arrives at the library with his guards. Today there are only three of them. This morning when he left his chamber Cel was not there and Oladin informed Tobi that he had given Cel the morning off as he had spent the night with his kitchen maid.

So, Tobi thinks, his mariandcards came true.

When Tobi enters the library he finds Lymok is not there.

But it is not unusual for Tobi to arrive first. He settles Baby beside the fire and wanders around the room, looking at the books on the towering shelves.

He stops when something catches his eye.

A book on one of the shelves bound in red leather.

On the spine are some Ambolk letters embossed in gold that mean nothing to him, but beneath them, also in gold, is what caught his eye. A small drawing of a roused cock.

Tobi reaches for the book and pulls it out. He can’t read the words on the front, but he doesn’t need to. Because along with the words embossed on the cover is a simple line drawing of two men in an embrace.

Tobi flips the book open at a random spot.

Which turns out to be an illustration of a man wearing the same wooden crown Harok wears to court.

He sits on the throne in the Sacred Hall, naked.

Another man sits in the Irgo’s lap. He wears an alit and it is pushed up to his waist, so the Irgo can curl his hand around the kushir’s cock.

Tobi peers close. The Irgo in the image looks a little like Harok.

And the kushir could be him. The lines of the kushir’s face are very well drawn.

The way he is close to breaking with the ecstasy of spend is clear.

He feels his face flush to look at it. Before he came to Urynwud, Tobi considered himself worldly and experienced.

Since he has been here he has spent dozens of nights in Harok’s bed.

But even with all he has done, he is still shocked to see something so lewd and arousing in the pages of a book.

He’s always disliked books before, but he does like this one.

He squirms as he turns the pages, unable to believe he could be allowed to look at such a thing.

Behind Tobi, a voice says, “What do you have there, kushir?” And the book is snatched from his hands.

Tobi whirls to find Lymok standing behind him. He looks at the book. “Oh,” he says, sounding very amused, “you found this. Can you read it?”

Tobi shakes his head. “I struggle to read Artemian. I wouldn’t know how to start with Ambolk letters.”

Lymok closes the book and looks at the cover. “I suppose, with a book like this, there are other ways to enjoy it.” He says something in Ambolk, reading from the cover, “This is a very famous book. A great classic of our people.”

“Really?” Tobi takes the book back and turns it over in his hands. “In Azuria a book like this would be burned. You’d be flogged for owning it.”

Lymok looks perplexed. “Why?”

Tobi opens the book. He shows Lymok a picture of two men kissing passionately. “In Azuria this is a crime. A sin of the body.”

“Oh,” Lymok frowns. “I’d forgotten about that. Is it really a crime? That seems so strange.”

“If you had grown up with your mother in Azuria you would be shocked to see this in a book,” says Tobi. “This is a crime the empire punishes severely. Sometimes with death.”

“Death?” Lymok’s eyes stretch wide. Tobi thinks Lymok does not believe him. “For a man to lie with a man is death?”

“It can be.”

“And for a woman?” Lymok asks with clear curiosity. “To lie with a woman? ”

“Yes. Perhaps. It would depend. The enforcers consult the Book of the Rules to decide the punishment. It might be a flogging. But if someone had committed many sins of the body it would likely be death. My own brother, Damon, was exiled into death for being sly.”

Lymok looks quite pale. “How strange. But you lay with men before you came here?”

“I did, but I had to be careful about it. There were ways.”

“You must be glad to be here where you are safe to do what you enjoy,” says Lymok.

Tobi isn’t sure what to say to that. It had never occurred to him before that he might be happier in the Forests of Amber than in the empire.

Free to enjoy the pleasures of luxoli without concerns for the laws of Azuria.

“I suppose,” he says, “I am certainly glad to be able to read a book like this.” He takes the volume back from Lymok and looks at the cover. “What is it called?” he says.

“The title means, ‘The Exultant Cock of the Ereyek’.” He smiles to himself. “You remember what Ereyek means?—,”

“I do,” Tobi interrupts him. He cannot keep the smug note from his voice.

He uses the word Ereyek almost every night as he sobs and pants with pleasure in Harok’s bed.

He is the kushir. The exultant cock of the Ereyek is his.

He flips the pages of the book, rubbing a thumb over the text.

“Perhaps I ought to try and learn the Ambolk letters after all,” he says. “I could read this poem to Harok.”

“So, that is what it takes to make you want to learn Ambolk letters, kushir.” Lymok smirks.

“I am sure Irgo Harok knows this poem well. It’s thousands of words written by a greedy kushir, all about how delicious he finds his Master’s cock.

Full of lewd words about how big it is and the nectar that drips from it tastes like honeywine.

Some people say that kushir wrote it while crazed and desperate on foribunda.

You see, years ago, that was the punishment for a misbehaving male kushir.

Dose him with foribunda and lock him in the dungeons until he loses his mind, desperate for pleasure.

” Lymok sucks his bottom lip. “but if you prefer, I could read the poem to you and you could learn it that way.”

Lymok takes Tobi through the book page by page. Each one seems to contain a lewder act than the one before. Some are familiar to Tobi and some less so. Before long Tobi is squirming under the table at the thought of recreating every page of this book in Harok’s bed.

It is really quite beautiful and deeply romantic.

It is also very, very explicit. Tobi is quite overwhelmed by the fact that such a thing could exist. He liked the pictures.

But combined with the words the effect is quite extraordinary.

A work so beautiful. So true and heartfelt about the kind of love, the kind of desire, he feels himself.

His own experiences put into the most exquisite words.

“Can I take this?” he says, lifting the book from the table.

“I don’t see why not,” says Lymok. “You are kushir. All of Urynwud is yours to take.”

That afternoon, Tobi is teaching his favourite rat, who he has named Cyrus, to run through a maze he has built from some scraps of wood. Cyrus is a very clever rat. He earned his name because he was one of the orangey-coloured copperhead rats, a type known for their intelligence.

This morning Cyrus manages to find a tiny hole in the way Tobi has constructed the maze. He squirms through it and bolts across the stable. Tobi jumps up and races after his rat, not wanting to lose his clever little star and the days of training he’s put into him.

He rounds a corner, then another and finds himself in a part of the stables he’s not seen before. It seems to be mostly used for storage. And amongst the ropes and saddles and straps and sacks of grain, he spots a familiar cart.

He knows it by sight, although it has been almost two full turns of the moon since he saw it.

It’s the cart that was with the Ambolk when they took him.

The last time he saw his trunk of clothing, it was loaded onto that cart.

Tobi is heartily sick of wearing an alit, especially now Harok is gone.

He knows it is a mark of Harok’s possession of him.

But Harok isn’t even here. What difference does it make to Harok what he wears?

What is the point in being dressed as a kushir when Harok is not able to make use of him?

Walking barefoot is uncomfortable and demeaning. He would love to have his boots back. His favourite pair vanished with the outfit he arrived in, and he assumes all of those clothes are long gone, but he had a spare pair of boots in that trunk.

Several moons ago, not long after Tobi had begun learning Ambolk, he had asked Lymok to teach him the Ambolk word for boots so he could ask Harok for a pair, but Harok had shook his head and said, “ Ei, kushir grelsi ,” Tobi’s Ambolk had been weaker then, but he had been able to tell that was a no and when he’d asked Lymok about it the next day he’d explained that grelsi meant barefoot.

A specific word for kushirs. Ei, kushir grelsi. “No, kushir go barefoot.”

“It is tradition,” Lymok had explained, “for a Kushir to always be barefoot. And only have slight clothing. It makes it harder for them to run away.”