Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

I nodded, carefully lifting my foot off the ground. Some of the pain in my hip had returned, but not all of it.

Rilla wiped the cloth down my shin. A Contraire is a man who lives as a woman.'

I pushed my wet hair out of my eyes. 'Lady Dela is a man?'

'In body she is. Her maid says she even has a prick.' Rilla leaned back on her heels. 'But she has a woman's spirit. According to the Eastern Tribes, a Contraire has two souls: male and female. She has both Sun and Moon energy A Contraire in the tribe brings luck.'

'So it is accepted.'

Rilla snorted. 'It is in the Eastern Tribes. Here, she is tolerated by the court because it is the Emperor's pleasure. But there are some who whisper she is a demon with the sight. She was even attacked a while back. That's why she has a guard.'

'Did they find out who did it?'

'No, they are still searching. Lady Dela was sent by the Eastern lords as a gesture of goodwill to His Majesty He is embarrassed that their gift has been harmed.'

'Does it work the other way around? Can a woman have a man's spirit?'

Rilla sloshed water against my back. Are you thinking of yourself?' she asked, lowering her voice. 'But you don't have a male spirit. This is all play-acting, isn't it?'

I shrugged, hunching over as she sluiced the water off me. How could I explain that it was not all play-acting? That I felt more of the male spirit within me than the female. A fierceness that whittled me down to a sharpened spear of ambition. And as a boy, I was applauded, not punished, for such raw energy. It was not beaten out of me for my own good, or worn away by women's chores.

'I'm not sure what I am,' I said slowly 'Perhaps I just can't remember how to act like a girl.'

'Well, that's probably for the best,' Rilla said. 'Safer for us all.' She handed me the cloth. 'I expect you'll want to wash your front yourself

I rubbed the cloth over my breasts and belly, quickly dipping it lower when she turned to drain a bucket.

'Go and soak now,' she said. 'I'll lay out your clothes and be back to dry you.'

She patted my shoulder and hurried out of the room, shutting the door with a sharp click.

I draped the loincloth over the stool and walked over to the pool. A mosaic of the Nine Fish Wealth Circle wavered at the bottom. I bent and dipped my fingers into the water. Very warm bordering on hot: a good heat to ease the small gnawing pain in my hip. I straightened and started for the shallow steps that led into the water but my attention was caught by movement in the mirror. Myself. Naked.

So bony and pale. I ran the flat of my hands over my chest and sides, feeling the small softness of breast and corrugation of rib. There was no exaggerated flare of hip like Irsa — I turned side on — or round behind, but the curves of womanhood were still there. Luckily the heavy tunics and trousers of court-wear would hide them. I traced the scar that puckered my thigh. I was hit by a cart and dragged behind it. That's what my master said but I couldn't remember any part of the accident. Only the dim shape of a man leaning over me with a tattoo across his face: the driver, perhaps, or a bystander. Just thinking about it sharpened the pain in my hip. I faced the glass again. The scar was not as big as I'd thought. And the strange twisted set to my leg was not as severe.

I moved closer. My reflection frowned. Something was different about my face since I had seen it in the Rat Dragon mirror. Less softness, more bone. I touched my cheeks, feeling the sharper shape of adulthood. My eyes looked larger, lips fuller. It was a face that was tipped more to the female. I pulled back my wet hair, holding it up on top of my head in a straggly imitation of a Dragoneye loop. A boy wearing a man's clothing and hairstyle. May the gods let that be what they all saw.

But it was not just appearance. It was movement and attitude and something else that was hard to name. Four years ago, when my master bought me, we had spent the long journey back to the city turning me into Eon. I had studied the boys on the roads and at the inns. How they moved decisively, and took up space, and made competitions of hauling water and chopping wood. I began to act like them, feeling years and years of subdued female movement expanding into glorious freedom. My master drilled me in the men's world of letters and numbers, and I practised how to sit with my legs apart, my chin up and my eyes bold.

But most of all I learned how not to be watched.

It was Dolana, at the salt farm, who first told me about the gaze of men: that look of temporary possession that some men pressed against female flesh. About its dangers and possibilities. I) can be

used to survive, Dolana had said softly showing me the power that lay in reflecting a man's desire. And even at twelve years old, the knowledge of it was already in the way I moved my head, my hands, my shoulders. But Dolana had whispered her secrets to a girl. And I had to become a boy I had to stop being alert to the turn of a man's head towards me. Stop glancing up to meet his gaze in fleeting connection. Stop falsely veiling my eyes from his momentary interest. It was hard to train out of my body, but I practised and learned to cloak myself in the skin and gaze of a boy

Now that boy had to become a lord.

I let my hair drop down around my face and turned my back on the mirror, carefully taking the first step into the pool. The water closed around my feet, shins, thighs, and then I lowered the rest of my body into its warmth. A sigh eased out of me. It would be hard to act the part of a lord, but at this time everyone would expect me to be ignorant and awkward. I would do as I did before — find someone to watch and copy And my master would help me. I remembered the feel of his thigh and hip pressed against mine, and skimmed my fingers across the water to break the sensation.

The warmth settled into my thoughts and body, softening my pain and unfocusing my mind. I sat on the low underwater ledge that had been built into the sides and leaned my head back until my neck rested on the tiled edge of the pool. The room was almost perfectly balanced; no heavy furniture to block the dragon energy, the pool shaped to enhance the circular flow of Hua, and the mirror to compensate for the shortened wall. No doubt a Dragoneye had been consulted on its design. I let the heat rise through me, easing open my mind's-eye. The dragons shimmered into being in a circle around the bath. They were almost all the same size, their energy flows unencumbered. It was strange. They seemed to fit the space they were in

— as big as buildings in the arena, but here only halfway to the ceiling. And the Mirror Dragon — my dragon — was always twice as big as the others.

I stood up, trying to see him through the steam. His dark eyes drew me closer, his head tilted to one side, questioning. I pushed slowly through the water towards him, but my view did not clear. It was not steam obscuring my eyes. It was a haze that hung over the dragon like a sheer curtain, "iet the other dragons were clear in my sight.

Behind me, the sound of a soft knock and the door opening jolted me out of my mind-sight. I turned, ducking down into the water.

Rilla bustled in with folded drying sheets draped over her arms.

'What's wrong?' she asked, pressing the door shut with her back.

'You startled me.' I waded to the steps. 'I thought you might have been someone else.'

'No, Lady Dela has made it very clear to the other servants that your living areas are never to be entered,' Rilla said.

She shook out the sheet and held it up.

'You shouldn't be doing that with your sore hands,' I said.

'I'm all right. Now come on, we've got to get you dry and dressed.'

I stepped into the dry warmth of the sheet, pulling the edges around my body.

'Has this been heated?' I asked, stroking the thick cotton.

'Of course,' Rilla said, rubbing my back dry through the cloth. 'Do you think I'd let the new Lord Dragoneye get a cold arse when he stepped out of the bath? For shame.'