Chapter 9 Perl
PERL
Perl leads Kerik into the Ice Hall. It is busy, far more full of fae than it had been when they arrived. And all of them wear their wings now, fluttering and moving on their backs. Kerik behaves sweetly, as instructed, walking behind Perl, posture erect in the strict collar.
As they pass through the hall the chattering fae seem to fall silent. Eyes are on them both. It makes Perl feel prickly.
He tries to focus instead on the sweet music that fills the air.
Music that is beautiful to Perl’s ears. The fae music he has not heard for a century.
Soft bells and chimes echoing over each other, building up and ebbing away like gentle tides.
He feels a strange lump form in his throat.
He has not allowed himself to feel homesick in the last hundred years, but he feels it now.
He is bound deep to this place in his soul.
Despite everything, it is the only home he has ever known.
But this feeling does not last. As they reach the centre of the room, Perl glances up at the most obvious reminder of why he hates Vylenor.
At the highest point of the hall’s domed ceiling the cage is still there.
It had been there when they’d been in this hall earlier, but Perl had been far too full of apprehension to look up at it.
He looks up now. He can almost make out the figure still inside, still burning.
Some of the fae in the hall are using their wings to fly around in the high dome, so distant they look like insects.
They stay away from the cage, not because it is forbidden, simply because they are so used to seeing it there that they pay it no heed.
Like so much of the strangeness and cruelty of Vylenor, they have simply become used to it.
A prisoner in a cage, burning in the eternal death.
But there is nothing Perl can do about that. Unless he wants to occupy a cage alongside it.
As he stops, Kerik moves up behind him. “Should I be crawling?” Kerik says, soft and low, only an inch from Perl’s ear. His breath is warm on Perl’s skin.
Perl turns. Kerik nods over to a group of fae whose thralls are crawling, behind them, leashed and dressed similarly to Kerik with painted letters on their chests.
“You should be doing ,” Perl says, low and slow, “whatever I command.”
“You’ve not commanded me do anything.”
“Apart from come here with me, dress in that outfit and refrain from speaking. The last of which you are failing at miserably.”
“I suppose that is quite a litany of commands. Is this really what faeries enjoy? I feel ridiculous in all this paint and jewels.” Kerik is smirking.
For once, Perl is glad to see it. He seems more comfortable in the outfit than he had been in the chamber, perhaps it is the sight of others dressed the same way.
“It is meant so you can beguile me with how entrancing you look so I will be eager to take you later this night.”
“Really?” Kerik makes a huffing sound and puffs out his chest.
Perl frowns at him. How hard is it to follow a simple order? “Don’t do that,” he snaps, using the most commanding tone he can muster. “Stand daintily like you are desperate to entice me into using you. You look like a guard.”
“I do not think your instructions are very clear,” Kerik says, his tone teasing. “How exactly do you wish me to stand?”
Perl takes a breath. This is a conversation they should have had back in his chamber. “Enticingly,” Perl glances around. Trying to make it look like a simple natural gesture to anyone watching them, he cocks a hip and flutters his eyelashes.
Kerik cracks a smile. “Oh, that does look very enticing. You're a natural.”
Perl swallows, prickling with shame, and turns away.
He finds himself looking towards a corner of the hall where a set of stocks has been erected on a small raised platform.
A fae thrall is in the stocks, in a collar and bitted bridle.
His wings are bound and pulled aside so he can be whipped by his fae Master.
The thrall’s face is twisted in pain as he cries out against the bit.
The sight of such savagery makes Perl feel strange and twisted inside. The casual cruelty of the fae realm, but he cannot deny the way it makes his blood hum.
Behind him, Kerik says, “Is that what I can expect if I disobey you?”
“No,” Perl replies through tight teeth, not turning.
“That thrall in the stocks is a faerie, isn’t he? He has wings?”
“Correct,” says Perl.
“So a faerie can be the thrall? So you could have been the one prancing around with my name written on your chest.”
“I hardly think that would be appropriate.”
“No?” Kerik says. Perl is not looking at him but he can imagine the teasing look on Kerik’s face.
“A fae can be a thrall, but not to a mortal,” Perl says tightly.
“That would be seen as extremely shameful. Even amongst the fae themselves there are rules about who can be the thrall and who the Master. A high fae could never do such a thing. But there are fae who dislike mortal thralls, so fae thralls are accepted for the most part if certain rules are observed. A fae who is thrall to another fae must be of a lower status. So the high fae, the courtiers here, cannot become thralls, although they can take them from amongst the wild fae or the low fae. These arrangements can be quite profitable for the lesser fae.”
“They get paid—?”
Perl cuts Kerik off before he starts demanding Perl give him coin for his own performance as a thrall. “Sometimes, but access to court and influence is of uncountable value.”
“So,” Kerik says thoughtfully, “a fae can be a thrall to a fae so long as the thrall is of lower status. And a fae cannot be the thrall of a mortal, but a fae can have a mortal thrall, but not of the opposite sex because a fae must only sire children with a fae. Is that right?”
“That is correct.”
“There are a lot of rules here.”
Perl turns to look at Kerik again. “And there aren’t in Azuria? Didn’t you get twisted up in such rules based on your parents not being wed?”
Kerik huffs. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
At that moment, as if summoned by the conversation, Perl sees Krem.
The burly fae guard is standing against the wall, clearly on duty.
He wears brown leather breeches and a complicated arrangement of straps across his chest. His wings are also brown, rising above his head.
Perl remembers how surprisingly soft they had felt, once.
Like velvet. The protuberance between Krem’s legs is studded in gold.
He is one of the rare fae who makes such a thing look good, even enticing.
Krem sees Perl looking his way and gives him a simple nod.
Perl nods back, out of politeness, and looks away.
As he turns, there is a loud squeal from somewhere in the crowds.
Before Perl has placed the source, it is hurtling towards him.
A slight fae, little more than a sparkling gown and a whirl of white hair slams into him, capturing him in a tight embrace of pale, slender arms and sweet-scented kisses on his cheek.
Diamanda pulls back, after a moment of crushing Perl to her, breathless. Her pink eyes dancing like candle flames. “Perl,” she says, voice bouncing with excitement. “My Perl. Oh, my Perl. My heart has been aching for a hundred years and now it is healed at once at the sight of you.”
“Diamanda,” Perl says. His voice sounds strangled. It has hit him hard as rock. All his other mixed feelings about being here, replaced only with the sharp pang of how much he missed her. Delight in seeing her again swirled through with guilt that he left her behind.
But he left them all behind.
Diamanda wears a gown of silver, tight to her waist before exploding in a froth of fabric that drips to the floor.
Its shape exaggerated even beyond the usual style.
It is cinched tight around her upper body and so wide in its skirts that it still envelopes Perl’s legs, even though she has stepped back from him.
It is also cut so extremely low on her breasts that it reveals edges of the skin around her nipples.
Her wings are silver and tipped with a vivid pink.
This close it is clear how much bigger they are than Perl’s, wider and taller by several feet in all directions.
She gazes at Perl with glittering eyes. Her wide smile lights her face.
“Oh, Perl,” she says. “Your wings. I have not seen you like this in so long.” She tips her head to one side.
“They’re not so bad, you know. They almost look normal. ”
“Thank you,” Perl says to Diamanda.
“Vane said that you had a mortal thrall who was very handsome and that everyone is obsessed with, oh” — she pauses and looks at Kerik — “oh, because of well, how it's you. You. With a thrall. Mother is so delighted. Oh, Perl…” Diamanda seems to run out of words and so instead embraces Perl again with a gasp of delight. Her jewelled gown crunches against him as her wing’s edges brush over his face.
When she pulls back she says, “And they said you’d never come back and I should forget about you but of course I didn’t and here you are.
” She looks again to Kerik, this time taking the time to appraise him, looking up and down.
Kerik watches her, looking very amused. She touches his chest with a flat palm, then squeals, drawing her hand back as if Kerik’s skin has burnt her in a way she finds thrilling. “By The Aeons.” She shakes her head. “Mortal thralls are such a delight.”
“Perhaps then,” says Perl, hoping to steer the conversations elsewhere, “a proper introduction. Thrall, this is Princess Diamanda-zeren-ai, honoured daughter of our great Queen, Exeinil-que-zeren-ai, Perfection beyond comprehension.”
Diamanda nods at Kerik and before Perl can make any signal to stop him, Kerik reaches out and takes her hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing it as if she is an Azurian noble woman.
Diamanda shrieks in shock. She snatches her hand back, cradling it. “Oh,” she gasps, “oh, Perlash, it really isn’t trained at all.”
“He is new to this,” Perl says.
Diamanda holds out her hand and shakes it as if trying to rid herself of Kerik’s touch. “You should put it in the pit for a spell. Sort out those behaviours. You know how mortals can be if they don’t go to the pit.”
Through tight teeth, Perl says, “There will be no need of the pit. I will teach him myself.”
“Oh, really? By The Aeons." Diamanda says, still looking at Kerik, “But it’s very fine. Are you going to lend it out? I’ve heard there are quite a few fae who are keen to know when it will be made available for wilding.”
“Wilding?” says Kerik. “What is wilding?”
Perl gives Kerik a look that he hopes reminds him to keep quiet and says through his teeth, “Take a guess, thrall.”
But Diamanda is looking at Kerik in shock, her pretty pink lips parted in surprise.
“Oh,” she says eventually, “it is completely unbroken. It just speaks at you like that? An untrained mortal and you leave it unbitted at a Silver Ball. Perl, you are the strangest creature. But you simply must wild it while it is still in this state. It would be such a spectacle. Imagine what it would say then?” She wrinkles her nose in delight.
“Or it might snarl.” She looks at Kerik.
“Would you snarl if you were taken roughly, thrall?” But she clearly does not expect an answer, still talking as she turns back to Perl.
“Please do it as a display. There are many fae who would enjoy seeing it being mounted. By you or…” She glances around the room.
“Perhaps by Krem.” Her voice drops and she leans in.
“They do say Krem has quite a talent for such things. I know many who have used him on their thralls. Or offer him to all.”
She nods over to the stocks. The thrall who had been taking cuts of the whip is now being fucked, and not by the fae who wielded the lash, but by another while his Master looks on. A few more fae are close by, watching, perhaps waiting their turn.
Perl feels like his entire body is going taut at the thought of such a thing being done to Kerik at his command.
But of course, it could be if he wished it.
Kerik is his property. Such a thing would be only a matter of his will.
Perl fixes Diamanda with a firm expression.
“He will not be wilded. He is mine.” His voice comes out in a low possessive growl.
For a moment Diamanda looks quite shocked, before she laughs and bats Perl on the chest. “Oh, Perl, you must be infatuated.”
“I must be,” Perl says coldly as he puts an arm around Kerik’s bare shoulders and pulls him closer.
His body is warm. The physicality of him is quite overwhelming.
He is so much thicker and firmer than Perl.
In response, Kerik presses close, perhaps aware that he ought to make a show of being equally devoted if he does not want to end up being publicly offered up in the stocks for the use of all.
Diamanda looks approving and claps her hands. “Oh, truly, you two are adorable together. Mother sent me over here. She asks that you take your thrall and pay her respects in her pavilion.”
“I suppose I should,” Perls says lightly, quite relieved this conversation seems to be over. “Come along, thrall." He takes a step forward and tugs at Kerik’s chain.