At the far side, on a couch piled high with velvet cushions, Corean waited. She was naked to the waist, and attended by two smooth creatures of uncertain degree of humanity.
The monstrous insect stood behind her, in a darkness between the lights, still as a statue. The big woman unsnapped the leash, and Nisa rubbed her sore neck.
“Come to me,” the woman called, in a voice like music. She smiled and Nisa moved closer, as if sleepwalking. She stopped just out of reach.
Corean patted the cushion beside her, smiling. The creature on her right hissed, and Nisa saw that they were some sort of human-shaped cats. Their faces had a foreshortened look, their noses were black stubs, and their teeth were white and jaggedly sharp. A gloss of short black fur covered their otherwise naked bodies, except for muzzles and pink palms.
A look of vexation touched Corean’s perfect face and she made a shooing gesture. Immediately the two attendants slunk away, seeming to flow from the couch. Nisa heard a tiny snarl as one passed her, and she saw a casual hatred in the bright eyes.
Nisa sank into the soft cushions, and Corean shifted to make room for her. At close range Corean’s beauty was even more devastating. Her skin seemed almost poreless, and it had a silky gloss that made Nisa want to touch it, just to see how so unusual a substance might feel.
“Nisa,” Corean said, “I can’t say how happy I am to see you. Did you know, you are the first phoenix I’ve ever met?”
Nisa could say nothing. Corean’s scent was subtle, a warm ghost of scent, so tantalizing that it made Nisa want to bury her nose in Corean’s flesh, to find where that delicious odor was strongest. Stop it, she said to herself. Have you learned no lessons at all?
“Well, you are. I’ve seen other phoenix troupes, oh, many of them, but no other phoenix has lived.” Corean smiled again, showing small sharp teeth. “If they had, I wouldn’t have been half so pleased by them as I am by you. Flomel tells me much about you. That you’re the daughter of a King. That you are the finest phoenix that he has ever worked with, dignified, beautiful. Full of that brave acceptance that means all to the connoisseur of phoenix plays.” Corean seemed to be orating a carefully composed speech, though her voice never rose above an intimate purr.
Nisa responded to the one oddity she’d felt in that speech. “I’m the only one that lived? Why would that be? Wuhiya says…” She trailed off, sensing that she was on treacherous ground.
Corean leaned forward, so that one small white breast touched Nisa’s arm, a soft caress. “Wuhiya says…?” Corean prompted. “Go on, Nisa.”
“Wuhiya, he’s the man who cared for me when I was sick,” she temporized.
“Yes?”
“Well, he said, when I asked him why I was alive, why the scars were going, he said he thought that they must have very good doctors here. Is that true?” Nisa was a little less rattled. “And can you tell me, where am I?”
Corean sat back, a flash of irritation crossing the perfect features. It was only for the briefest instant, but Nisa was suddenly not so completely overwhelmed with Corean’s beauty.
“One question at a time, Nisa. Yes, we have very good doctors here, but the other phoenixes were dead before they reached us. Perhaps you are specially favored by the gods. That could be it. Or perhaps you had help that the other ones never got, a hidden friend. What do you think?”
“I don’t think of it at all if I can help it,” Nisa answered honestly.
Corean laughed, a soft practiced sound. “So? Well, as to your other question, here is Sook, the Bargerell Plate, the Blacktear Pens, my apartments.” A pause. “My couch,” Corean said.
“Oh,” Nisa said. Much of what Corean had said made no sense to her. “I’ve never heard of Sook. Is it far from Pharaoh?” In her childhood, Nisa had had a constant companion, an old woman who’d cared for her, soothed her hurts, and told her fanciful stories about magical lands that rose above the mists of Hell, far around the breast of the world.
“Yes, far. Now tell me: What of this Wuhiya? What manner of man is he?” Corean moved closer again, and Nisa felt Corean’s interest intensify. “Has he any other theories about you? Or me?”
“He has not mentioned you. In fact, he says very little, so I don’t know what I can tell you about him.” Nisa paused to look into Corean’s blue eyes, saw a warning there. Nisa took fright, spoke on in a quavering voice. “Wuhiya is strong. He hurt a coercer, Casmin, very badly, when Casmin meant to kill me. And Casmin was held to be a mighty man; he killed three men in the Blooding Festival last spring, they say.” Nisa had a sudden sinking feeling that she’d betrayed the strange man who had made such delightful love to her in the bathhouse. “But he didn’t finish Casmin, though Casmin was helpless.”
“Merciful, is he, do you think?” Corean asked.
“He pitied me,” Nisa said.
“That, I think, is only one of the emotions he feels for you,” Corean said. She laughed again, and moved closer yet, until she was pressed against Nisa. Her breath was spicy. “Did you,” Corean asked, “enjoy your bath?”
Nisa didn’t know how to answer, but she felt a blush climb in her face. Corean took her chin, and turned Nisa’s head until she was looking directly into Corean’s eyes, those eyes like hammered blue metal. Corean kissed her, all soft moist lips, and then Nisa felt the touch of Corean’s tongue, a light tingling stroke.
“You still taste a little of death, Nisa,” Corean said. “But it’s all right. That’s not a bad taste, to me.”
Corean’s perfect face was still heartbreakingly beautiful — and that, Nisa thought, was a terrible, incomprehensible thing.
Corean drew away and signaled the giantess. “Take my guest to her quarters, and give her a helot to see to her comfort.” The woman moved forward with the leash, but Corean frowned and said, “She won’t need that.”
At the wall, in the night, Ruiz waited for the snapfield to fail. As he waited, he twirled the hook moodily. He thought unwillingly of Nisa, who had already caused him so much trouble. And who, though she was gone beyond recall, continued to trouble him. A rational being — such as Ruiz Aw — formed his attachments based on rational factors: intellect, or a commonality of interests.
Here he sat, however, mooning over a woman from a world that, with extraordinary luck and a thousand more years of Terran tech seepage, might become eligible for limited membership in the lowest rung of the pangalac culture. It rankled. In his darkest moments, Ruiz Aw worried that he was no better than any other foolish romantic.
The snapfield failed, cutting short further maundering, and Ruiz stood up. Well, now, he thought.
He flipped the hook up the wall, and it arced over, trailing the leather rope. He gave a jerk; the hook caught, and he swarmed upward. At the top he straddled the wall, jerked the hook loose. As he did, he took a split second to look about, and his heart sank. The compound was vast, covering thousands of hectares. And worst of all, there was no corridor below, just another paddock, shaped like a bowl, much bigger than the Pharaohan pen, and at the center a lake, glowing with a soft blue light.
“Ah, well,” he said. He was acutely conscious of the snapfield rail, cold against his crotch. He made his decision, pulled his leg over, flipped the hook loose, and dropped off the wall into the strange paddock.
It was a long drop, but he rolled out of the impact along a grassy lawn. The reengineered bones of his legs absorbed the shock successfully. As he sprawled to a stop, Ruiz heard the sizzling whump of the returning snapfield.
He crouched under a low bush. The paddock was lush and green, the darkness alive with the songs of night birds. The bush he hid beneath was starred with tiny white blossoms and released a scent of cinnamon and apples when he brushed against it. He waited patiently for long minutes, until he was reasonably sure there would be no hostile reaction to his arrival. He watched the snapfields that surrounded this new paddock, and was disappointed to see that they all appeared to be in perfect order. He could only hope there was another way out.