Jo Clayton - Diadem 3 - Irsud

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Irsud
Diadem, Book 3
Jo Clayton
1978
V1.0. Spell-checked, but not proofread.
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Sold into slavery, Aleytys’ fate was to be worse than that of the usual slave girl’s bondage. For her new
owners were insectoid and she was to serve as proxy-mother to the old Queen’s successor. In short, like
an Earth wasp’s prey, she would be both bearer and food for that which was to come. Had Aleytys been
any other human, this would have been the end. But she was the wearer of the diadem, that creation of
galactic science that linked her nervous system to powers of strange potency. The fate of Aleytys on
Irsud is a gripping novel of an eerie world and a dread conflict, a vivid step in the saga of a heroine that
Publishers Weekly describes as being “as tough as, and more believable and engaging than, the general
run of swords-and-sorcery barbarians.”
SYMBIOTE
“You saw the egg. You saw them put it in your leg. As soon as the opening was sealed the egg began
changing, triggered by the blood and warmth. Within an hour it had sent out a thousand cilia through your
body so that the cleverest surgeon couldn’t clean them out and it dissolved itself into a hundred nodes
scattered around the webbing.
“The nodes grow but not much. She develops detail but remains small so that she does not
inconvenience the host. She acts as a symbiote, taking food in return for comprehensive care of the
host’s well-being, doing this by instinct rather than conscious decision. For a year…”
Aleytys found it hard to comprehend what he was saying. She finally registered his silence. “After a
year?”
“Don’t think about it. It won’t helpyou.You’ve a year, a whole year… .”
Jo Clayton has also written:
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Prologue
Aleytys lifted her head. Standing in the doorway of her cell-like room on board the ship, the kipu stared
at her a minute then stepped back to let another nayid slide past her, white velvet tunic scraping
schupschup against the naked metal.
Black rod advancing. A sting in her arm. Black lenticular eyes slid back from over her. The white tunic
flicked out of her sight as the drug-induced fog beat her toward insensibility. She fought but the
psi-damper crashed on, sending her brain shattering into fragments….
Black multi-faceted eyes glittered above her. Two nayids vague, blurred, twisting like something seen
through moving water.
“She’s coming out of the drug.” Dull red antennas twitched irritably. “I thought you said it’d keep her
under till we touched down on Irsud.”
“Rab’ Kipu.” The white-clad nayid fidgeted with a short black rod. “It should have. It’s what I!kuk told
me to use.”
“He said she’s a healer. The psi-damper is supposed to suppress those talents. Was he wrong about
that, too?”
“No. The readings say she can’t be using her psi talents.” Her short stubby antennas wobbled
uncertainly. “Unless she’s incredibly powerful or….” The doctor shrugged. “I’ll trust the readings.”
“Hunh. Put her under again.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Will it kill her?”
“No. But it might burn out her mind.”
The kipu turned away. “I don’t give a damn about her mind. That’s not what we bought her for.”
Chapter I
Sweeping in a widening gyre through the dark confusion that swirled in stained snow flurries, her
awareness fluttered toward a pinpoint light, cold striking into two arms, two legs stretched out from a
torso shivering naked against naked metal. Aleytys opened her eyes.
A narrow face with round insectoid eyes the size of teacups hung dizzily over her, reflecting her body
back like a double dozen octagonal black mirrors. “Kipu.” Aleytys pulled at the grip on her arms, a
growing irritation heating her blood. “What…” She tugged again, more sharply. “Let me go.”
The kipu smiled, shook her head, short stubby antennas twitching slightly. With an angry snort Aleytys
jerked against the wiry strength of the guards’ six-fingered hands. Struggling futilely to free herself, acid
tears of frustration oozing from her swollen eyes, she fought a panting grunting battle against a strength
that made nonsense of her own muscles. She humped her body in one last convulsive thrust to freedom,
then fell back on the metal table snarling at the faintly smiling face that coolly waited for her to exhaust
herself. The nayid came back and stood looming over her.
“An exercise in futility.” The rich deep voice was insufferably complacent.
Panting helplessly, raging like a netted tars, Aleytys scowled at the delicate mask-like face of the kipu,
wanting to shatter that mask. On the cool metal her hands curled into claws, fingernails clattering harshly
against the steel. “Bug!” she shrilled, then spat full in the nayid’s face.
The kipu stepped back without a word and stretched out a hand. Hastily a white-clad female nayid
hovering behind her thrust a square of cloth into the imperious fingers. The kipu wiped her face and
dropped the cloth without watching where it fell in an unconscious arrogance that struck a chill through
the heat in Aleytys’ blood.
Aleytys shook her head, tossing her red hair, cooled to wariness. Her breathing slowed and she was
abruptly conscious of a fuzziness clogging her mind. She shook her head again trying to shake the fog out.
The nayid’s antennas twitched as a faint flush briefly tinged her parchment cheeks. She stared briefly at
Aleytys, then shifted her gaze, refusing to look at her captive. Speaking to another nayid, one out of
Aleytys’ arc of vision, she said brusquely, “The psi-damper?”
“Functioning, rab’ Kipu.” The cool monotone seemed to sooth the kipu’s ragged emotions. Her face
smoothed out, the fault supercilious smile curled her thin lips, her hands came together and brushed lightly
palm against palm in a soft papery whisper.
“Good.” The word oozed satisfaction, sending a tiny shock of remembered response shivering down
Aleytys’ body. Antennas swaying in a gentle rhythm that underscored the renewed arrogance in her
stance, the kipu spoke softly to Aleytys. “According to the ardu-epesh I!kuk, your intelligence measures
superior.” The deep voice turned coldly precise. “I suggest you apply that intelligence to your present
situation. I suggest you stop these futile gestures, ardana.” Aleytys stiffened. “I’m not a slave. Don’t call
me a slave.”
“Ardana,” the kipu repeated calmly. “Ardana.” Aleytys stared at her. After a moment her body relaxed.
The kipu nodded slightly and the guards let the captive move by herself for the first time.
“Show her to me.” The hoarse bass voice thrummed from behind gauzy curtains behind the kipu. Aleytys
pushed herself up and swung her legs over the edge of the metal table. For a fleeting moment her brain
tilted dizzily. She sucked in a deep breath and watched curiously.
The curtains fell from a centerpoint on the ceiling, pinned there by a gilt bee-like insect with wings and
legs spread against the center of a floral mosaic coiling overhead in a mass of elaborate convolutions. As
the kipu swept the lacy blue-green gauze back from the elaborate bed, Aleytys gaped at the wizened and
bedizened old nayid who radiated a vivid force that somehow dominated the whole room. Even the
arrogant kipu was diminished by the lumpy decrepit figure lying among a ridiculous froth of lace and frills.
The old queen poked a bony elbow into the heap of pillows and grunted herself a trifle higher, her eyes
fixed avidly on Aleytys. Her free hand like a claw, she beckoned the kipu closer, the two-score bangled
bracelets crowding up her skinny arm clattering like an Oshanti whore’s come-on beads.
“That?” The voice boomed in Aleytys’ ears. “Why?” She moved restlessly, the sagging flesh on her neck
trembling with the palsy of extreme age. “It’s female?”
“Mammalian.” The kipu pulled her six-fingered hand—long flexible digits with the fragile beauty of a
lizard’s fore-paws—in a fluid gesture across her flat spare thorax, the corners of her mouth tightening a
fraction in disgust; her antennas twitched in a few sharp jerks. Before she spoke her long delicate face
smoothed into immobility. “The ardu-epesh I!kuk guaranteed her genetic potency—so much that to
control her I!kuk implanted a psi-damper to nullify her talents. Forget what she looks like. The egg will
take the gifts and leave the rest.”
“Umph!” The round black eyes the size of teacups moved over Aleytys’ naked body in cold insulting
appraisal.
Aleytys tightened the grip of her hands on the curved edge of the table, remembering eyes coldly
measuring and assessing her as she stood in a forcecube on cold stone block in the slave market of
I!kwasset. She shifted uneasily on the cold surface, wondering what the kipu was talking about with a
sick foreboding that she wouldn’t like what was coming. Irritably, she jerked her shoulders. The
psi-damper planted below her left shoulder blade itched furiously as she fought against the mind trap. She
closed her eyes, shutting out the shifting groups of nayids, and concentrated on the inside of her head.
“Where are you?” She hurled the words into the darkness thick and musty at the back of her mind. “I
know you’re there.” The psi-damper was a torment of small irritations, a fuzziness that sent her mind on
veering orbits so that it was hard to hold onto—the logical progression of thought. Concentration was a
physical effort that left her shaking. “Dammit, you weren’t so shy before.”
A pain-filled yowl jerked her head up. The bed was lost in a sea of white tunics circling in panic around
a lanky nayid with a cold dignified face and gray bars running through the short black hair coiling tight to
her narrow skull. A few quiet words brought order, sending the superfluous females to their posts.
As the crowd thinned, Aleytys saw the old queen collapsed on the pillows, bubbles forming at the
corners of her mouth and slipping in a trickle of drool across her slack jaw. Thin wrinkled double eyelids
folded up. As Aleytys watched, she shriveled visibly. The blazing personality that had dominated the busy
room moments before was eroding into a kind of terminal decrepitude. The doctor bent over her, then
glanced up impatiently at the nayid next to her.
With her soft spotless tunic flowing into agitated folds, the attendant bustled around the bed, jerked the
curtains free, and swirled them shut, leaving the dying ancient in privacy.
The kipu snapped her fingers. Three spindle-shanked horse-faced amazons in loose-fitting red tunics
popped from behind the bed and advanced on Aleytys. She slid off the table and backed cautiously
away.
Stepping quickly to her side the kipu closed long slender fingers on her shoulder. “Return to the table,
Ardana,” she said coldly.
The fingers were dry and slightly rough. Aleytys could feel the hard articulation of her finger bones
through the skin. She jerked away, tossing her hair out of her face. The wariness abruptly burnt out of her
in a wild flare of rebellion. Like a tars on the prowl she shot rapid glances around the room, animal-intent
on an impossible escape.
The white nayids clustering around the bed ignored her as if she didn’t exist, but she kept a cautious
distance from the red ones, retreating from the circling red tunics as the nayid guards stared at her out of
their round black eyes, right hands wrapped around black rods thrust through the wide black belts
hugging their crimson tunics to their thin elongated bodies. Past the irregular circle she saw an archway
partially masked by a blue-green tapestry. Run, her muddled brain drove at her. Run.
“Ardana.”
“Don’t call me that,” Aleytys burst out, momentarily diverted from her purpose. Impossible to hold two
thoughts in her head. She jerked away from the kipu and darted toward the archway, diving toward the
space between two guards. Long fingers caught hold of her hair and swung her effortlessly back with a
terrifying display of strength. Aleytys slumped to her knees, breathing hard as the grip on her hair
loosened, tears of pain oozing from her eyes.
“Calm yourself, slave.”
Aleytys crouched on the floor looking up at the kipu past tangled strands of hair. “No. I won’t be a
slave.”
“Slave,” the kipu repeated, her antennas twitching slightly. “Bought and paid for. You waste your energy
and my time fooling yourself. Your condition is a fact, to be neither denied nor affirmed. I own you.
You’re meat. If I choose to feed you, you eat. If not, you starve. If I choose to have you carved into
meat for my sabutim you will be meat. Don’t tell me about your life before. That’s over. Forget it. You’re
meat. Bought and paid for. Accept that.”
Aleytys stared at her for a minute. Quietly she stood up, pushing straying tendrils of hair behind her ears.
The psi-damper itched in her back and her brain felt like hot mush and her nakedness was a vulnerability
hard to ignore. She pushed the confusing betraying anger way, way down and fought to clear her head.
“Never. Bought? You wasted your money.”
“No. For your present comfort, slave… ” The kipu flicked a long forefinger at the two guards behind
Aleytys. “Come back to the table.”
Aleytys glanced over her shoulder at the narrow stolid faces. The damper cut off her empathic reach and
left her feeling worse than blinded. She faced the kipu again. “I could give you some trouble.”
“Bring her.” The kipu turned her back and faced the bed, dismissing anything Aleytys could possibly do
as a minor pinprick not worth bothering about.
Aleytys watched her walk away and swore to herself that somehow… somehow… she’d puncture that
arrogance.
Long cold fingers closed around her arms. Helpless as a naughty child, she let them push her back to the
polished metal table. Smoothly, with scarcely a break in their movements, they bent and lifted her,
stretching her out on the surface and holding her quiet.
A white nayid took hold of Aleytys’ head, turning it away from her, her strength making nonsense of the
long neck muscles. Aleytys felt a cold spot on her spine, round like the end of one of the rods, then all
sensation in her body vanished. She cried out in sudden panic.
“It’s only to stop pain.” The nayid’s voice was calm and precise as a machine. And oddly reassuring.
She seemed so certain and matter-of-fact about what was happening.
“What are you doing?” Aleytys whispered. “Why… ”
The kipu’s face swam into her limited range of vision. “Calm yourself, slave,” she said coolly. She
rubbed a strand of Aleytys’ hair between her thumb and forefinger.
“Red… ” Dropping the hair she stepped back and spoke with a curious remote quality in her resonant
voice. “You were purchased for a high and noble purpose. You shall live in luxury, your wishes demands
on us until our purpose is fulfilled. Accept it, for your own comfort.” She broke off and moved farther
away as a series of hoarse shrieks rose in a crescendo of pain, then cut off abruptly.
A motion at the edge of her field of vision distracted Aleytys. At the cost of aching neck muscles she
forced her head up and looked along her body. The middle nayid, a lanky female, bone-thin with a
severe sharp-angled face, drew a sponge over her thigh, leaving a pale blue stain behind. Repeatedly the
nayid dipped the sponge in a basin held by a second white nayid and smoothed the viscous liquid over
the pale amber skin of Aleytys’ left thigh.
Aleytys dropped her head back a moment to rest her trembling muscles then lifted it again as she heard a
soft meaty slap. The tall thin nayid was peeling back the skin on the thigh while the basin holder had
ditched her basin and was controlling blood flow with a quivering green jelly. When the skin was clamped
back, the surgeon sliced deeper, cutting neatly between the big front muscles until she’d opened a cavity
the size of a fist. Quickly, efficiently the cutter propped the cavity open with a pair of evil-looking
spreaders, then stood back, patiently waiting.
The doctor with the gray-barred hair came from the bed, her hands cupped reverently around a rubbery
ovoid, a grayish-green object with concentric ochre stripes.
Sick with horror, Aleytys watched the cold-faced surgeon lower the ovoid into the hole in her thigh.
When she had it settled to her satisfaction, the nayid removed the clamps and eased the flesh back into
place. Gently, with the same care she had shown with the egg, she pulled the flap of skin into place and
ran a buzzing rod along the wound to seal the cut. With a quick sure twist of her long supple fingers she
altered the setting on the rod and placed it against Aleytys’ temple.
Aleytys gasped and spun off into darkness.
Chapter II
Groaning as pain pulsed around the back of her skull, Aleytys opened bleary eyes and cautiously moved
her head. Her body ached so that she could barely gather enough energy to think through the fog in her
brain, while the damper in her back triggered waves of itching. She moved restlessly, rustling the crisp
sheets, a small pleasant sound that soothed her aching spirit.
Lacy, elaborately frilled pillows billowed up around her head. Impatiently she shoved against the
mattress, pushing her aching body erect. She threw the covers off her legs and stared unhappily at her
thigh, her fingers tracing the fine red line around the shrinking lump. “Damn.”
Floundering to the edge of the bed she hauled the cobwebby lace curtains back and slid onto her feet,
wincing as her skin touched the cold tiles. She stumbled to the center of the room and stared around.
Blue-green shrouds falling from a gilt bee-like insect splayed out against the ceiling. She spun around. In
the narrowest wall of the wedge-shaped room, an arch closed by a heavy blue-green tapestry. That
room. The old queen’s bed. She could see once again the bulky decrepit figure of the ancient nayid…
aaaagh!
Moving stiffly to the arch she pulled the tapestry aside.
The guard outside stepped in front of her, her blue-green tunic rippling softly about her stringy form.
When Aleytys tried to move past her, the guard shook her head and pushed her gently but inexorably
back into the room. The tapestry dropped between them with a heavy finality.
The damper still jumbled her thoughts but her mind was adjusting rapidly to a hippity-hop style of
thinking. “Well.” She rubbed her queasy stomach. “So I sleep in that hag’s bed.” She shivered and
looked around.
The room was a blunted wedge with the long side walls covered by ornate tapestries suspended on rings
from long polished poles. Imposed on an intricate and lovely design of leaves and flowers woven of earth
tones with accents of rose and violet, a line of rampant male figures cavorted through a wild erotic dance,
their lurid, explicitly sexual forms contrasting grotesquely with the delicacy of the background.
Aleytys examined the figures with interest, her body heating a little as she noted the genital similarity to
the men of her own species. Glancing over her shoulders at the tapestries, she moved to the wide end of
the room behind the head of the bed.
When she pulled the tapestry out away from the wall she discovered that it was apparently a single sheet
of glass with a greenish blue tinge that was cool and restful on the eyes. Outside she could see a walled
garden. Neatly clipped grass. Gently rolling ground. Patches of flowers. Short, flat, slender umbrella-like
trees… mimosoids… with delicate lacy foliage… leaning gracefully over a small lively stream…. She
gazed hungrily at the crystalline water leaping down the miniature waterfalls, dancing around scattered
boulders, passing under the heavy, nearly horizontal limb of a rugged live oak. Her need for flowing water
was almost as demanding as for hunger or sex. She felt along the glass, searching for a way into the
garden. “Hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys jumped and wheeled, startled out of her concentration on the stream. She moved hastily around
the bed and stopped in front of a small brown figure that knelt, eyes fixed servilely on the floor, a pile of
clean sheets and towels heaped neatly beside her. The diminutive female had neatly braided dark brown
hair tied in loops over small ears, light brown skin flushing pink on the cheekbones, a coarse brown
wrapper pulled tight emphasizing a dainty waistline with an elaborately embroidered sash-belt.
Abruptly conscious of her nudity, Aleytys pulled the lacy cover off the bed and wrapped it around her.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Aamunkoitta, hieno-nainen. I am hiiri assigned to care for these rooms.”
“You’re not a nayid.” Aleytys eyed the full breasts thrusting against the wrapper. “You’re mammal like
me.”
The brown face flushed. Full lips thinned for an instant then the stolid face mask slid back. “I am hiiri,
hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys tucked the cover absently around her. She hates them, she thought. I suppose she’s a slave too.
I wonder…
Damn! If I could just…..She wriggled her shoulders as the itch intensified and her thoughts veered wildly
until she disciplined her mind and seized hold of a remembered word. “Rooms?”
“Hieno-nainen?”
“There are other rooms here?”
“Yes, hieno-nainen.”
“Hah! Aleytys glared at the petite woman. “If you think that stupid act is fooling me….”
The hiiri gaped at her. “Hieno-nainen?”
Rubbing a palm that itched to slap the tiresome little creature, Aleytys sighed. “Never mind. Show me
the other rooms.”
The hiiri rose gracefully to her feet
“Wait.” Aleytys hitched up the trailing ends of the cover. “Where can I get something to wear?”
Silently the hiiri glided to the far side of the room. She reached up, got a handful of the tapestry and
pulled it to one side, the rings clattering along the wooden pole. As she tugged more strongly, a portion of
the hanging broke away from the rest, uncovering a section of wall pierced by another of the arches.
The hiiri reached up and spread her hand across a milky white square. A light came on, illuminating a
small inner room.
Aleytys stepped on a trailing end of the bedspread and nearly strangled herself. Muttering impatiently she
caught up a few more folds and padded cautiously through the archway.
Empty shelves, rods, hooks… the old queen’s clothing had been swept away except for a few shapeless
tent-like garments hanging from hooks beside the arch. The hiiri slipped past her and frowned thoughtfully
at these. She lifted a shifting mass of blue-green from its hook. “There is this.”
She shook the folds briskly and held the garment out to Aleytys. “The kipu must have put these here for
you. If you want more, see that one, hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys sighed. After a minute’s struggle she got the multiple layers of the shimmering blue-green silk
over her head and slid it down over her body, letting the cover drop to the floor. She settled the
brooches on her shoulders and shook her body so that the silken layers of material slid across her skin
and settled into graceful folds falling to her ankles. She felt immediately less vulnerable and turned to the
hiiri with a new sureness in her movements. “The other rooms?”
The hiiri bowed her head and left the closet. Farther along the wall she pulled the tapestry apart again,
touched the light switch and waited for Aleytys to come up with her.
“This room is for your body’s needs, hieno-nainen.”
A huge sunken tub took up half the room. An elaborate throne-like commode made of beaten gold
studded with jewels had a matching fur-cushioned footstool. Aleytys blinked, then giggled. “My god,”
she said, voice vibrating with awe, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Yes, hieno-nainen.” The hiiri’s bland colorless voice sucked away Aleytys’ sudden high spirits. She
looked at the small stolid face and sighed. The hiiri lowered her eyes meekly and moved away toward
the other side of the room, passing behind the big bed close to the glass wall.
“Wait.” Aleytys ran lightly up to her, stopping in front of the clear glass. “The other rooms can wait. Is
there any way out there?” She splayed her hand out on the glass and looked hungrily at the sunlit garden.
“Yes, hieno-nainen.” The hiiri pulled the tapestry farther aside, baring a section of glass with two milky
squares set in it. She tapped her fingers on the topmost square and stepped back as a section of the glass
slid rapidly and silently upward, “To close,” she said colorlessly, “tap there twice.” She pointed to the
lower square, now more than a meter beyond her reach. Aleytys brushed past her and stepped onto the
grass.
The sun was the wrong color, an egg-yolk yellow instead of red or blue, and it was single in the sky. She
looked up, shaking her hair out, letting the gentle breeze play through it.
The grass was cool under her feet. It felt right, though the green was not so dark as she remembered.
Even the water looked lighter, brighter under this yellow sun. Again she felt the abrupt disorientation as
her body reacted to the wrongness of the feel. She felt too light, too cool, too… it was hard for her to
bring to consciousness all the things her body found wrong here. But the smells of the green growing
things were just enough the same… She closed her eyes and took a few steps farther onto the grass,
letting the feel and the smell take her back in memory to the valley where she’d spent her growing up
time. For a deep aching moment she smelled the sharp clean penetrating fragrance of the horans that
grew along the Raqsidan, heard the laughing roar of that mountain river. She sank to her knees, tears of
aching homesickness running unchecked down her cheeks.
She jumped to her feet, ran back into the building, stretched up, tapped the square, stepped hastily back
as the glass door slid down. Shivering slightly she twitched the tapestry back over the glass, shutting out
the disturbing view of green and lovely garden.
The hiiri was gone. The bed was made up, the cover restored, the pillow slip a crisp unwrinkled white.
Aleytys walked along the wall, poking gloomily at the tapestry, her mouth twisted into a self-mocking
curve as she studied a prancing male figure with organ impressively erect. After a minute she turned
away, clamping down the disturbing memories that threatened to send her spinning futilely down roads
she couldn’t retrace.
She paced nervously around the bed, feeling disoriented and purposeless. An inchoate urge to do
something, anything, ate at her. The damper itched in her back and scrambled her thoughts so that,
without some definite point to claim her attention, she grew dizzy with the erratic leaps her mind took.
She clenched her fists and banged them against the glass wall, crying out in her anger and frustration,
wanting to hurt something, to strike out at something, and at the same time being appalled at the rage and
nervous irritation that blew her soul to shreds. She pushed away from the wall and flung herself around
the bed, determined to go out the arch, guard or no guard.
The nayid male standing at the foot of the bed smiled at her and bowed gracefully.
Aleytys halted and stared at him, for a long horrible moment incapable of any kind of response to her
presence.
“Parakhuzerim,” he said calmly, his voice lighter, more musical than a female nayid’s. “May I serve you
in any way?” The words were formal, but as he straightened he smiled at her again and his long feathery
antennas swayed gently, sending the blues, greens, purples, reds rippling in iridescent giddiness across the
crowning peacock eyes.
“What are you?” To Aleytys her voice sounded fumbling, mushy. She closed her eyes and clasped her
shaking hands behind her. “How’d you get in here?” Her voice rose shrilly on the last word, shocking her
with its touch of hysteria. She swallowed and said more evenly, “Can anyone who wants walk in on me?”
A muscle beside her mouth began to twitch.
“I am… Migru.”
She heard the slight hesitation. Although the alien faces were still too strange for her to read, the quick
jerk of his antennas and the flush on his pale cheeks suggested a certain dislike for the name. I don’t
blame him, she thought. To be named Darling. How sickening… Damn, if I just… The damper kicked
into high, sending her mind on a sickening spiral into chaos. It was a minute before she could see again.
Migru hitched up his short pleated kilt of blue-green silk and waited for her to say something.
“Migru,” she repeated, slowly regaining control of her mind and body. “Why—”
He bowed his head, the smile still curving beautifully chiseled lips. “I thought that you might perhaps have
questions when you woke. A strange place. Strange things happening. I knew the kipu wouldn’t think of
this, so…” He spread out his hands.
Aleytys lifted a hand to her head. “That was kind.” She looked around vaguely. “Sit down… yes… let’s
sit down and talk… talk….” She plucked at the gauzy curtains with fumbling uncertainty. “Sit down….”
She sank down on the end of the bed.
The nayid male stood quiet a moment, his mouth hardening for an instant. Then he walked quietly to her
and settled on the bed beside her.
Aleytys shivered, his closeness waking confusing emotions in her. So long since a man sat beside her.
Touched her. Held her. Loved her…
“Is something wrong, Parakhuzerim?” He frowned, reached out to touch her, then hesitated, fingers a
thread above her skin. “Are you ill?”
摘要：

 IrsudDiadem,Book3JoClayton1978 V1.0.Spell-checked,butnotproofread.V2.0Proofread Soldintoslavery,Aleytys’fatewastobeworsethanthatoftheusualslavegirl’sbondage.Forhernewownerswereinsectoidandshewastoserveasproxy-mothertotheoldQueen’ssuccessor.Inshort,likeanEarthwasp’sprey,shewouldbebothbearerandfoodfo...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：145 页 大小：403.12KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-18

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