Freedom Rising 2: What Price Freedom? Read online

  Silken spared a moment to wonder -- what had become of her? She had favored him above all others. Of course she would not have visited the House he had fallen to, the Lotus Garden, as it was for men only. Still, he knew Nanashi’s claim and Silken’s purchase of his freedom with the Nightwalker’s gold would have been whispered behind every fan in the women’s gardens, passed from small crimson lips to lips.

  Aliana would have known he’d been set free. Surely she would have sent a small gift of honor. A sachet of the fragrant tea he used to love so well. A note. Or had she, like others he knew of for certain, disdained him for consorting with a vampire?

  What choice had he been given though? Nanashi had been Silken’s ticket out of a whorehouse run by a greedy Keeper. He had been gentle and loving, and generous with his gold, but ah! Even then, while robing Silken with embroidery and pearls, he had held his mastery overhead. The last gold coin needed to purchase his freedom would not be handed over until Silken had agreed to bond with Nanashi. At the time, he had been glad to do it. The Nightwalker had been kinder to him than any human in far too long and certainly gentler than any man he had bent over for at the Lotus Garden. Nanashi made pain into pleasure and changed pleasure into rapture.

  All for a price though…

  Unable to help himself, Silken shivered. Nanashi’s cool hand was on him at once, sliding down over his shoulder to rest on his ribs. “What ails you?” Nanashi murmured in his ear, voice like roughened velvet. A lazy jungle cat, purring, prey securely caught within its grasp.

  Silken forced down another tremor. To voice a complaint was ill-mannered. “Nothing, my lord,” he lied. He put his hand over Nanashi’s lightly as a feather, letting him know the touch was appreciated yet allowing him to lead.

  “Silken, are you lying to me?”

  “What? No, my lord.”

  Nanashi was silent. Then, he said, “No. You were, and are, and will continue to tell me lies unless I order you to stop, won’t you? Something does bother you, and you refuse to let me know.”

  Lalasa, help me! Silken’s mind raced. He had mis-stepped somehow, and must race to right his wrong. Lovers were not permitted to complain when their protector held them. Polite half-lies were acceptable to all humans. Why would Nanashi be different?

  “So silent, now?” Nanashi asked, tweaking one of Silken’s nipples. The rough touch sent a thrum of pleasure through him as plucking the string of a lute produced a sweet note. Silken closed his eyes and arched briefly backwards, his cheeks coloring when Nanashi chuckled. “Have you no words?”

  Silken gave up. “I do not know how to answer you,” he said honestly, his voice a shameful whisper. Such a poor showing reflected badly on him. It threatened his standing not to understand and anticipate his Consort’s needs. If anyone should ever find out, he would be made a mockery.

  “Speak only the truth then.”

  Silken hesitated, biting quickly at his lip. The truth? I fear you as much as I love you, Nanashi. Half the time I do not understand you. How can I lead my half of our life together without comprehension of the role I am to play? No, honesty would never do.

  “I am cold,” he blurted. Softening his voice, he pushed himself backwards against Nanashi’s torso with a low laugh. “You are a block of ice when we are not riding the horse.” There! Truth enough, and lover’s teasing was certainly permitted.

  He managed not to sag in relief when Nanashi laughed again, his low rumble an incredibly welcome sound. “I have nowhere near the quarts of blood in me which keep you warm as an ember. Cold, yes, you do feel chilly. Sticky too.” Nanashi trailed a finger over Silken’s stomach. The hot blood his Nightwalker had referenced flushed Silken’s cheeks in shame as he realized he had forgotten himself so far as to wash off the evidence of their fucking.

  Bed sport, he corrected himself. The rougher word was fine to use in the heat of a moment, but otherwise crude in the extreme. Though Nanashi did seem to love to coax it out of him… But for all the thoughts crowding his mind, one stood up and demanded top recognition: he was filthy, as was Nanashi, which made him a terrible lover indeed for ignoring such a basic need. Forgetting soap and water. Gods and Goddesses, he might as well have been back at the Lotus Garden!

  Silken made a graceful move to raise himself up. “Let me go for soap and water,” he suggested, trailing his fingers along Nanashi’s arm. “I will clean us.”

  Nanashi mock-groaned but let Silken go. As Silken stood, he heard the rustling sounds of Nanashi rolling over onto his back. “Use the warm water,” he was advised. “From the tap on the wall. You do remember how?”

  Shame colored Silken’s face again. Did Nanashi think him so simple as to forget such a thing? He had been so amazed by the device, a pump on the wall that dispensed steaming water from a reservoir heated by coals. He had bathed himself in the fragrant softness of the liquid, washed from head to toe, all but mewing with delight. Nanashi must have considered him simple to think he would not remember.

  Hurt, Silken nodded and said, “Yes, of course.” He slid out of bed. Habit made him want to reach for a robe, which should have been hanging nearby, to cover himself, but Nanashi disdained modesty in the bed chamber. He said prudery was for the young and the old, and they were neither. He wanted to enjoy the sight of Silken’s body when he had the chance.

  Silken could feel Nanashi’s eyes on him as he padded toward the spigot. Long years of training imbued Silken’s gait with a gentle swish, so that his hips swayed enticingly. He knew his ass was tight and firm, the skin flawless save for a small ring of bite marks where Nanashi had once gotten carried away. He could all but feel his lover’s eyes fixed on the marks. Hungry.

  “You were delicious,” Nanashi said idly, confirming Silken’s thoughts. “I remember how free you were when I had you splayed across my body. All your Arts forgotten in the heat, yes, heat of the moment we shared. You are a wild thing when you lose control, and it delights my heart so very much to see you letting go of all your rules.”

  Silken paused with his hand on the spigot. “Nanashi…” spilled from his lips before he could stop the sound. He would have slapped his hand to his mouth, but so ill-mannered it would seem, just like a child! “Forgive me,” he murmured instead, bowing his head. He touched the cool marble of the wall, resisting the urge to roll his over-warm skin against it.

  “Silken,” Nanashi warned, “have we not just discussed honesty between us? Talk to me. Tell me what you are thinking.”

  Silken stood still, trembling. Words on his tongue fought with the demands of silence from his mind.

  “Must I beat you?” Silken caught his flinch halfway but could not resist a trembling. Nanashi sounded exhausted as an old man and bitter as willow bark. “Is the lash of willow across your back what it takes to break down the walls of all your Arts and Skills? I sought you out as a Courtesan, yes, but I bought your freedom out of love, Silken, love, and I took you to my bed as a Consort. I want no paid whore sharing my blood, wearing my mate’s earring. I want the you I have seen glimpses of. Yet you cannot open yourself up enough to even tell me if you are hot or cold, dirty or clean, afraid or confident, unless I give the order. Can you?”

  Silken pressed his hands against the wall, palms flat, shivering from head to toe. If Nanashi were to beat him, it would leave marks. Anyone who ever saw him again would be aware he had failed. “I am trying,” he whispered.

  “Say that again, Silken.”

  “I said, I am trying!” Silken turned sharply from the wall, his hands clenching into fists. “You do not try at all! You, with your ‘openness’ and ‘honesty,’ do you have any notion of what a Courtesan’s life is truly like? We worship Lalasa not only because she is the Goddess of Love, but so she will protect us. Keep us safe, and the way we stay safe is to abide by the rules of our caste. You’ve plucked me out of the layers of men and women and made me something -- something -- I know not what! How can I know what to do when I do not know what I am?”

  Nanashi sat with
his hands folded under his chin, gaze level, eyes revealing nothing. “Go on.”

  Silken dragged his hands through his hair, further disarranging the tangles. “The bond we have formed has not been known in decades. Perhaps centuries! Men of mortal blood and those who walk the night are not supposed to mix. Your nerve in approaching my first keeper, Mama Luck, was enough to terrify the servants. No doubt they thought you would tear their throats out when I sent back my first denial.

  “Keeper Illia was greedy enough to take your gold, even though she probably suspected you wanted me for a meal, not a -- a fuck. You have taken me from one life but not carried me over into another, and I don’t know where I stand. Whose rules should I follow? Who am I? So many questions, and I have no answers at all!”

  He flung his hands out in utter frustration. “Tell me, Nanashi. How can I be what you want when I don’t know the rules of this game?”

  “The rule, Silken,” Nanashi said quietly, “is that there are no rules. Do you not know this by now?”

  “You never told me!”

  “I see.” Nanashi sat still and quiet for a moment longer. “I would never beat you, Silken. For one, I place too much value on your beauty to ever mar it with stripes. You are worth a king’s ransom in gold, and I made certain by paying the full price before the courts that all would know you had not fallen in rank. Do you know they whisper about you in tones of envy, not malice? There are a few dissidents, of course; there will always be sour grapes in every bunch on the vine. But so few do not envy you. Many men and women who hold much wealth and power in their hands are watching us, to see if our union prospers or fails. If we triumph, it may mean the beginning of a new era.”

  Silken faltered. “I do -- I do not understand your meaning.” Mindless now of being naked, careless of the proper gait, he returned to Nanashi’s side and sank into a crouch at his master’s feet. He looked up, pleading blue eyes meeting those dark as the midnight sky, just as cool and emotionless as the moon. “Tell me where I have failed. Explain why I am so stupid. Help me know who I am.”

  Slowly, Nanashi shook his head. “I cannot do that,” he said, “not if you have not learned already. But I can do this. I can offer you a choice.”

  The breath stopped in Silken’s lungs. “What?” Automatically, he touched the swinging ruby drop dangling from his earlobe, his sign that he belonged to Nanashi and was no other man’s to play with. “But our bond?”

  “You may break it at any time, if you wish,” Nanashi said. He wavered, then, as if he could not bear to be so cool any longer, brought one hand down to stroke and caress Silken’s hair. “I wish that you would not. I love you, Silken, so very much. I only wish you could see. But if you chose, you could turn away from me, and I would let you go. You would have the monies already in your accounts to build your House and do as you wished. But, I wonder… would you miss me when I was gone?”

  “Nanashi.” Silken shook his head. “I would die.”

  “Yes. Now you speak the truth as you feel it, but how peculiar that it should be a falsehood! You would not die, Silken. You might grieve and mourn, but your life would be safe enough. Pain would pass as pain often does, and you would be heart-whole again.”

  Silken’s head swam. “You though,” he managed, sliding his hand up Nanashi’s calf to the knee. “What of you?”

  Nanashi’s smile was sorrowful. “I notice you did not say ‘I will never leave you’,” he said. As Silken drew in breath to protest, he held up his hand. “Peace, enough. Silken, I give you the choice. Either stay with me and learn, as most men do, through honesty and fair trial, the rules of your new life -- the price of your freedom -- or go free. But allow me to tell you a story first.”

  “A story?” Silken blinked, confused. “Nanashi, it is the Courtesan’s job to --”

  “Hush your mouth with all the rules of who is who and who does what and when!” Nanashi’s lips tightened with anger. “I have a tale to spin, and you will listen to it. Consider this an order. Do you understand me? Will you accept this one last condition? When I am done, you will choose whether or not you stay or you go.”

  Silken stared at Nanashi, unable to speak or move. His throat felt tight and swollen, as if packed with ice. From the heights of passion to this thunderous valley in less than an hour! It was more than he could tolerate.

  “Silken, answer me. Do you understand what I propose to do?”

  With a tremendous effort of will, Silken nodded once.

  “Very well.” Nanashi reached down. Easily, as if Silken weighed no more than a kitten, he hauled the man around to sit between his thighs, back leaning against his chest. “Lie against me. Listen to my voice. Lose yourself in the story, and think to yourself of what life would be like if you were the man whose thread I am about to spin…”

  And Silken, helpless against his master, his lover, his Nanashi, and the future, cooperated because he could do no less…

  Chapter Three

  “Once upon a time, as all good stories must begin,” Nanashi said, his fingers combing slowly through the tangles in Silken’s hair, “east of the setting sun and north of the rising moon, in a land where no one has traveled for years upon years, there lived a human who had been badly wronged by the man he loved. This is the story of his revenge. Yes?”

  Silken sat sharply upright, twisting around to seek Nanashi’s face. Nanashi gazed down at him, steady and level as smooth water in a silver bowl. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  Silken shook his head, searching his lover’s face. “I -- I don’t --”

  “Speak, Silken. How many times must I tell you? You are free, even if you do belong to me. I know you do not understand. Perhaps, someday, you will. A bit more if you listen to my story than if you do not.” Nanashi thumbed a wisp of hair off Silken’s cheek where it had stuck to his heated flesh. “If you have a question, give it voice. You will not offend me.”

  “Very well.” Silken swallowed hard. “I do not understand, Nanashi. I thought you would tell me a story to convince me of how Nightwalkers and humans could forge a bridge between them. But this? I could hear this sort of sordid story in a quarter-copper tale-teller’s booth!”

  “Sordid? You have not given me a chance to properly begin. This tale is far from low and common, Silken. Listen. Save your opinions until you have heard every word. But here,” Nanashi said, sliding back onto the floor cushions that served equal purpose as a bed. He dragged Silken with him, rolling him over easily as tipping a feather, until he lay on his back in turn.

  Nanashi sat upright, bracing himself with one arm. To Silken’s irritation, the Nightwalker was smiling. Smiling! “I think I know of a way to relax you,” he said, stroking down the length of Silken’s thigh. “There is no better time to do this, when your skin is moist from exertion and I am flushed with the blood from my lover’s veins.”

  “Nanashi, what are you --”

  “Hush. Watch.” Nanashi stood, presenting Silken with an exquisite view of his narrow waist, slim hips, and marble-white legs as he walked to a cherry-wood wardrobe. His own. Silken had never investigated the object, of course, though he had often wondered what treasures Nanashi kept inside. The Nightwalker bent over, rummaged briefly, then made a small noise of triumph.

  He emerged holding a small box of alabaster and garnet. “I still have them,” he said, sounding pleased as a boy. “I bought this kit many years ago, long before you were even born, but knowing I would one day find a mate who was worthy of the contents. They cost me forty gold.”

  Silken caught his breath. Forty! Twice the price of his own freedom from a Courtesan’s contract.

  Nanashi brushed his fingertips over the box’s lid, tracing carvings down its sides. “Oh, yes. A bargain. These are rare, for they come from a time when magic flowed like water in the street fountains. Days long since gone by. The days in which this story which I am going to tell you took place.”

  He opened the box and tilted it a bit for Silken to look inside. Curio
us though a little afraid, Silken raised up to investigate. “Brushes?” he asked, puzzled. “Inkwells full of sparkling powder? These are worth forty gold?”

  Nanashi tilted back his head and laughed. Silken bristled, insulted. “You can buy such a thing from half a dozen peddlers in the city markets!” he snapped, too wounded to hold his tongue; he had to bark, lest he bite. “What makes these brushes and dried inks such rare treasures?”

  “Ah.” Nanashi sank down next to Silken in their elegant nest of velvet cushions. He winked. “Their virtue is not in what they are. They are worth far more than forty gold for what they can become.” He lifted one pale wrist to his mouth. “Watch.”

  “Nanashi, no!” Silken raised a hand to stop his lover, but too late. One of Nanashi’s fangs pierced the large blue vein. Quick as a flick, he had uncapped one of the bottles of glittering powder and let the thin stream of crimson run through its narrow neck. Perhaps an ounce flowed, and Nanashi raised his wrist to his mouth again, licking the wound to seal it.

  He grinned rakishly at Silken, once again humiliated. “How quickly you forget my body heals within an eye blink,” he said. “My heart, though, it is a different matter. I chose to give it away, and you might destroy it with a careless word.”

  Silken drew himself up, affronted. “I am not the one talking more loudly than the mockingbirds!”

  “And therein lies your single, or perhaps greatest, fault. Here, now, stop desecrating the beauty I love to look upon.” Nanashi laid a finger over Silken’s mouth to stop his scowl of indignation. “Look at the ink, love. Watch what happens.”