Helpmeet

HELPMEET

Willa Okati

® www.loose-id.com

Warning This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

Helpmeet Willa Okati This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Loose Id LLC 1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924 Carson City NV 89701-1215 www.loose-id.com

Copyright © February 2008 by Willa Okati All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59632-612-5 Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: Olivia Wong Cover Artist: Anne Cain

Dedication To M.K., Esq., for being both a joy and an inspiration.

Prologue

I was, I think, seven years old and an acolyte when I first learned that the world was full of evil. I do not remember my parents, who sold me to the monks, who, in turn, were supposed to teach me reading and writing, as well as show me how to share such skills with others. My instructors were thin, gray men whose lips were pinched so firmly together that their mouths all but disappeared. Their redwood switches filled with soft, lead plugs were always ready to discipline any acolyte who could not learn the first time, every time. Despite such a grim environment, the monks fulfilled their duty and taught me to read and write. Unfortunately, I struggled with sharing what I’d learned, for the monks were not interested in the unfortunates among and surrounding us. Chief among their lessons, you see, were greed and intolerance. I particularly remember one day when I peeked through the heavy, coal-dark curtains behind the temple sacristy; the coldest of all my teachers had been behind me, insisting that I pay adequate attention. “Do you see her?” His voice sounded of ice crystals grating against the other. He pointed to the woman waiting outside, clearly in the hope that a monk would notice her plight. Not that any of them would, as she was the sort of poor, insignificant person my instructors considered unworthy of their aid.

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The supplicant looked terrified, and my heart went out to her. She was small and thin and plain, her simple, undyed peasant tunic and pants both grubby and rent asunder, her woven grass sandals ready to fall off her muddied feet. Smears of blood decorated her face in a mockery of Noh paint. Her hands shook, and she whimpered as she twisted and searched, desperate for the sanctuary the monks were supposed to provide -- but didn’t. I saw a woman in need of help. The monks saw an ignorant peasant too stupid to avoid soldiers and, more importantly, a woman with no money to pay for protection and not even enough beauty to make her sexual favors any kind of a decent trade in place of coins. I tried to help her, as I was still young enough to think I was meant to do so; thus, I did not stop to consider the consequences before I pulled away from my instructor and went to her side. Afterward, I was punished. You see, although I had assessed her as my teacher had ordered, I had come up with the wrong response. The lesson I had been meant to learn was that the peasant woman and those like her were useless, worthless -- beneath the monks’ contempt, in fact. Yes, my failure to comprehend such a basic point was rewarded harshly. I could not walk without limping for nearly a week because my legs were so sore and bruised from the beating I took for my “ignorance.” I had known then that I would do anything to escape this life, this travesty of the monks’ “mercy” -- their overt, unapologetic hypocrisy, greed, and venery. Now, no longer a boy trapped in a dead temple, I have set myself free. It’s the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done, and if they catch me, they will shoot arrows through my heart and throat -- but I will not be sorry. It is better by far to live one day as a free man who can help others in this new life that I have found than to be one who demands payment in exchange for human decency. I never forgot the frightened peasant woman, though I never knew her name. I was told that she was slain by soldiers soon after leaving, after the monks refused to help her. No doubt it was she and my sudden memory of her etched horror, of the cruelties to men and women alike, that made me act so strangely in the Tribunal’s antechamber later, at a time when I would otherwise have been focused on my chance at escape, escape that was so close I could taste it sweet as honey on the tip of my tongue.

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Yes, perhaps that memory was why my heart reached out to Nori when I first saw her. Beautiful Nori. She, I could not read as I had learned to do with others. She was and remains, in her way, an enigma. Nori turned my world upside down, and when such particular changes come to a man, who can hope to understand those transforming winds that blow across their destinies?

***** In the antechamber of the Tribunal, Ko waited patiently to hear his sentence. He had to press his lips together tightly to keep from grinning like a schoolboy. Who would understand his delight? Certainly not the other prisoners crowded together in the tiny, claustrophobic cell that was positioned directly to the left of the ruling benches from which the lords of the Tribunal presided. This antechamber had not been designed for far fewer bodies than it currently contained. No, the architects had known exactly what they were doing; there wasn’t enough space to move, and the narrow wooden seats were rife with splinters. In addition, cold iron manacles bound ankles and wrists. The room held no light save for that which blazed with mocking cruelty from the Court itself. The thick air smelled of dried blood and fear. Ko wore the tight-fitting leather suit of a high-priced but low-caste sex worker and the false mien of one deeply shamed to suit his cover story of having been caught out when stealing from his procurer. All lies, of course, as false as the costume he wore, but they sounded convincing when one considered the revealing leathers and his state of carefully arranged dishevelment. His long, blond hair, usually bound in a neat queue, hung lank and loose over his shoulders, tangled into snarls. But Ko was happy. His plans were proceeding exactly as he’d hoped and he was exactly where he wanted to be. Money that he’d stolen from the padded purses of the monastery had greased palms and seen to it that he’d been able to buy his way in as a fake prisoner, ensuring he was among a group of criminals doomed to be sentenced to the lives of Helpmeets. His fate still depended on the willingness of those he’d bribed to play along, of course, but if his gamble should pay off…he’d be free. He couldn’t hope for full freedom, of course. That was a foolish, childish dream. No one could ever escape the Tribunal completely, not unless a day should come in which some group made a successful rebellion. However, by choosing this fate he assured himself as much chance of disappearing as was possible. No one would ever look for a runaway monk among the poor bastards condemned to a Helpmeet’s life -- lower than a slave and wholly the property of their masters. Worse still, the Helpmeets he intended to join were bound for Sheol IV, a prison planet populated solely by convicts, hardened murderers and thieves all. No one in their right mind would want such a fate. Once they landed on Sheol IV, the Tribunal would almost assuredly

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turn a cold shoulder to them, leaving them to survive or die on their own. The Tribunal hardly cared whether or not the Helpmeets lived through their journey to places like Sheol IV, located as it was at the farthest reaches of the Empire, a mostly arid and inhospitable place. And so it was perfect for him. Ko had survived trials and purification rituals involving extreme temperatures and brutal conditions during his days as a monk. Sheol IV did not frighten him as it would others. Once he arrived, he would linger long enough to allay suspicion and get the lay of the land, then run away, seizing his opportunity to truly live for the first time since he was too young to talk. At twenty-three years of age, he knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do for a chance at freedom. The playacting he had to engage in to get there…well, it was just that, a drama with props. He had survived worse, and he would survive this too. He listened to the proceedings in the outer court with only a crumb of his attention, noting vaguely that a young man with soft skin and far-too-pretty eyes had, as expected, been sentenced to join the Helpmeets soon to be deported. The sound of his hoarse, bittenoff cry struck Ko to the quick. He wanted this, yes, but he wouldn’t have sentenced the unwilling to such a life.

Perhaps one day there will be a leader who’s able to save men like that young one out there, he thought hopefully. One day, such a leader could win us all our freedom. No man should ever be another’s slave. His shoulders felt strangely light without the accustomed burden of his vocation. It seemed amazing to him that no one could tell that he’d run away from his life as a monk and was, as such, the worst sort of traitor and a bad-luck man now in hopeless disfavor with the gods. If the Tribunal knew the truth, his would be a sentence of execution. But no one suspected him yet. If they ever did… The young man just sentenced stumbled back into the antechamber where he would remain until judgment had been rendered over all those waiting there. His ankles were shackled tightly so that his steps were both short and clumsy, and his eyes were red and puffy with tears. Ko didn’t think the man could see two paces in front of him. On an action borne of pure instinct, the sort of reflex that had gotten him into trouble all his life, Ko reached for the young man and awkwardly clasped his wrist. “Peace,” he whispered when the male whipped his head around to glare at Ko. What was his name? Isao? “Shh. Peace, Isao. This isn’t the end.” Isao snorted thickly. “It’s not? What would you know about it?” Ko opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it for once, and sealed his lips. He squeezed the Isao’s hand, sighed, and let go.

One day, he thought stubbornly to himself as the other man stumbled back to his place on the splintery benches. One day, there will be justice for men such as he. One day there will be sweet revenge on the Tribunal for all.

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When another’s hand touched him, it startled Ko so that he flinched and nearly yelled. He laid his hands on others, not the other way around, not unless they were holding him still for beatings or worse. He turned, baffled, to see a woman of incomparable beauty next to him. He’d noticed her before, some distance away, but in his focus on Isao, he hadn’t been aware of her approaching him. He wouldn’t have expected anyone to willingly change seats, as the antechamber was cramped and it took nerve to make any move under the eye of the court. Still, there she was, sitting beside him. Plump as a peach and dark as a chestnut tree, she looked nothing like the icons of the goddess Jingmei, the goddess of mercy, but he saw the compassion in the depths of her wide, uptilted brown eyes. For a moment, the air rushed from his lungs and he stared. The woman laced her fingers through his, her skin warm and dry and surprisingly rough. “The gods hate kind men,” she said with a faint, wry twist of her lips. “The gods are stupid, sometimes.” Her statement startled Ko into a short laugh. Other prisoners glared at him, and many hushed him. No one wanted more attention drawn to them. He winced, steadying himself. As the woman, who might or might not be mortal, seemed to be expecting a reply, he answered as quietly as he could. “Sometimes, yes.” There. If she was the goddess Jingmei, she would punish him for his insolence. She exhaled heavily; despite her beauty, the look in her lovely eyes was suddenly old and sad enough to break his heart. “You’re the first man I ever knew who agreed with me.” “I have my reasons.” The prisoners shushed them, frantic now. The woman glanced back and forth between them and Ko, then smiled half-heartedly and gracefully raised one shoulder. She placed a finger over her lips and winked at him. He wanted so much to ask if she was human, goddess, or dream, but his tongue had gone dry. His gaze had, without intention, slipped down the dark column of her throat and, from there, to the rise of her firm, full breasts beneath the coarse tunic she wore, so poor a quality that only those with no other stitch of clothing to their name would wear it. The antechamber had no heat, and the firm nubs of her nipples poked through the thin fabric. Or, he realized with a shock of hunger that arrowed to his groin, it might not be the cold at all. Their hands were still laced together, and her forefinger was sweeping slow, feathery brushes over the back of his hand. The look she gave him had changed somehow from weary and wry to soft and…yearning. Her breath quickened when he locked gazes with her, unable to look away. When the tip of her pink tongue swept out to flick over her full lower lip, Ko bit back a groan. He yearned to weigh her breasts in his palms, to discover the firmness of her nipples and to taste. To bite. To please her.

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His breathing grew shallow to match her own, and his prick rose up hard and hot in his leather trousers. What was going on? He liked men, had always preferred men, not that he’d ever enjoyed more than a few stolen kisses and furtive handjobs or blowjobs with other acolytes. Women had never inspired him to more than compassion or platonic admiration. Then why did he now want nothing more than to tangle his fingers in her soft black curls and pull her to him so he could taste her lips? To strip off her shapeless clothing and kiss her from throat to ankles? To dip his fingers in her quim and taste her cream? His prick had grown swollen enough to hurt. He shifted on the bench and shook his head in baffled amazement. He risked the other prisoners’ wrath by whispering, “You are a goddess. Jingmei?” She laughed, a bitter sound. “No. Not in the slightest. My name is Nori, and I’m as mortal as you are.” Her delicate eyebrow quirked. “You are human, aren’t you?” “The last time I checked, yes.” Nori touched her curving lips to cover her smile. “You’re a strange man…?” Oh. She wanted his name. “Ko.” “Ko,” she repeated, the arch of her eyebrow pointing higher. His face pinked under her scrutiny. “Ko” was a name that had no meaning, just an addition to other names that added a twist of humility. It was a nothing name for a nothing man. Any other woman alive would have asked or perhaps have made a joke; Nori didn’t. Instead, she leaned forward and brushed her lips over Ko’s cheek. “May you be blessed with luck, Ko. I think you’re going to need it.” Ko’s eyes had closed at the light touch of her lips. His limbs shook, fighting back the urge to seize her face in his hands and drag her to him for a brigand-rough kiss. Her breath warmed his cheek as she hesitated for a moment, then whispered over his mouth. She kissed him, still light, still gentle. It was enough. He realized that she wanted his kiss as much as he wanted to give it to her. He could no longer restrain himself. The chains didn’t give him much room to turn, and the angle meant that he couldn’t clasp her pretty, flowerlike face as he wanted to, but Ko did the best he could. Gripping her upper arms, realizing seconds too late that he’d leave bruises but unable to relax his hold, he dragged lovely Nori to him, crushed her to his chest, and savaged her sweet lips with a kiss that had no finesse. Instead, it contained all the heat and ravenous hunger that roared through his blood. Her small hands, bound by harsh iron at their wrists, were still nimble and agile when they slid into his lap and covered the rigid length of his prick. He gasped into the kiss, biting her plump lip. She moaned, shivers rippling under her skin.

It’s the danger, Ko thought wildly, hazily, even as he thrust his tongue between her lips and tried to capture every nuance of her flavor that he could, tracing the ridge on the roof of

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her mouth and licking her sharp teeth. That’s all. It’s reminding her -- me, no, us -- that we’re still alive. Funny how he couldn’t bring himself to care or to want to stop. When she broke away, he tried to chase her mouth with his own, nipping her lower lip between his teeth before her affectionate hands lifted from his prick to press at his chest. Her gaze had gone hazy and several of her rich, dark curls had tumbled over her forehead. “You’re a beautiful man, Ko,” she said, winding some of his own hair, long, silvergolden strands, around her fingertips. “Handsome and gentle and eager. You’re too good to be true.” She smiled, another bitter curve of her mouth. “Too good for the likes of me.” “But --” “Shh,” she said, putting her fingers over his lips. He couldn’t resist the urge to trace the pads with his tongue. A savage jolt of lust and satisfaction made him shudder when she gasped and her lips parted. “If I only had the time and if we were alone,” he rasped, amazed at himself. She was a woman. He was an escaped monk. This was too surreal not to be a dream. Perhaps the gods were laughing at him again. “The court calls Nori of the Oiran to stand before judgment,” a bored bellow informed them. Nothing else could have managed it, but the word “Oiran” jerked Ko to a dead stop, his ardor sizzling, but his shock numbing the frantic desire for the moment. The highly skilled, highly prized courtesans were trained to please a man -- or woman -- in every sexual taste under the suns and across all the worlds, and she’d touched him, kissed him, as if she not only liked him as a man, but wanted his prick in her quim? Him? “You?” he blurted, forgetting to keep his voice down. “You’re of the Oiran?” She looked briefly pained and sorrowful. “We all have regrets, Ko, but I won’t regret kissing you. I only wish I could have…” She stopped. “Good-bye, gentle Ko.” Holding her head high, Nori walked toward the Tribunal courts. She took small, graceful steps that, even with her ankles chained, lent her a nearly royal elegance. Ko stared after her, his plans and his determined courage all forgotten in the face of his astonishment, the gnawing hunger in his heart, and the stiffness of his prick. An Oiran. Unbelievable. Wait. An Oiran with hands as callused as Nori’s? Ko turned his own hands palms up. His skin was hard and tough, as could only be expected from one accustomed to the life of a holy man. Not an easy life, and yet his hands were still considerably smoother than Nori’s, and that wasn’t right. Oiran were supposed to enjoy lives of pampered luxury, the treasured and petted toys of rich men or women. Then how did she come to have hands as rough as a peasant slave?

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I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. Ko resignedly sat back as best as he could along the splintered plank, waiting for his turn to appear before the Tribunal bench where his fate would be decided. If only the Lords would rank him as a Helpmeet and send him away from the twenty-three “civilized” planets that made up the Emperor Worlds, which had been conquered one at a time as in the old tales of Genghis Khan. The worlds were ruled by the Tribunal Lords rather than any single emperor -- and far more dreadful they were too. He’d be safe. He could live. He could be a real man with a real destiny of his own choosing. “Can you, Ko?” He looked up sharply. Who had addressed him? At first, he saw no one -- and then, so quickly he almost missed it, he noticed the small, dark head of a peasant woman. She stood at the entrance to the antechamber, dressed in the garments of a peasant, her sandals nearly falling off her feet. Ko’s mouth went dry. He recognized her, though he hadn’t seen her since he was a boy: the woman whom the monks had refused to help, for whom he’d been beaten when trying to assist her.

Ghost, he thought with alarm, heart hammering too quickly. “What do you want?” he whispered, earning himself some strange looks from other prisoners. They couldn’t see her, then. “Why are you here?” The peasant woman lifted her finger to her lips. “Shh,” she said as she faded into nothingness. “You’ll see.” And then she was gone. Ko shuddered. Seeing the dead was a bad, bad omen. Having the dead take an interest in you, that was even worse. It could mean the worst luck of his life was ahead. Or, if he somehow pleased her, he might be rewarded and be counted the most fortunate man alive. Ghosts were tricky creatures that way. In any case, he’d much rather have avoided her notice. He didn’t need more to worry about now. Ko tried to distract himself, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to forget this visitation, by listening to the Tribunal pass its judgment on Nori. She might be quite the riddle herself, but at least he was reasonably sure she was a living, breathing mystery!

***** I had no idea then how well I’d come to know Nori, soon -- or why -- or how a roughneck convict named Lin Yao, the hardest, toughest, most erotic creature I had ever known, would change both our lives forever.

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Chapter One The sunlight at noon on Sheol IV, hot enough to kill a man where he stood in the straggly fields of barley and rye -- Lin Yao had seen it countless times before -- scorched through his hair and to his scalp, leaving it prickly and itchy. He swore and dragged his forearm impatiently across his forehead, knowing better than to scratch his head. Infection occurred all too easily, especially when a man had been out in the sticky, tilled red clay. He paused to assess his condition and knew it was time to stop, to recharge enough to keep going. When he gave the clay water bottle hanging from his belt a shake, perhaps a few mouthfuls of liquid sloshed within. Good enough. Lin Yao unstopped the unevenly shaped wooden cork and lifted the bottle to his lips. Slow, slow, couldn’t drink too much too quickly or he’d make himself sick, and water fit for drinking should never be wasted. Rolling the liquid over his tongue and letting it moisten the inside of his cheeks, he took a moment to breathe and squint around at the remains of his summer crop. Not such a bad year for growing. He’d reaped a good three-fourths of what he’d sown, only losing a small percentage to the pesky ground vermin and a little more to the screeching black crows that generally weren’t afraid of anyone. The dark birds feared Lin Yao, however -- he’d long since figured out how to hunt with a homemade sling, and more than a few of their fat, feathered bodies had ended up plucked in his stewpot. When he got within hitting distance and raised his voice to yell at them, the crows fled. Watching the coal black murder of crows gathered among his field erupt with squawks of alarm, night-hued wings, an explosion that scattered feathers in every direction…now that was satisfying. There was precious little satisfaction to be found otherwise for a convict. Life here on Sheol IV was damned barren, without benefit of a real hearth and home or anyone to love who’d love one back. No one to make love with either.

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He’d had interesting dreams the night before, though. As he rolled more cool water over his tongue, Lin Yao tried to think back and remember. They mostly escaped him, as dreams do, leaving him with only a jumbled handful of mental images. However, as dream fragments went, these were worth savoring. He recalled finding himself in a silken bower filled with the best Oiran in all of the Emperor Worlds, women with high, full breasts that they rubbed against his face. Cherry red lips kissing his own, pink tongues kitten-licking his mouth -- or better still, laving his prick until it ached with the need to find a home in one of their tight quims. As he recalled, there had been another man with him, enjoying an Oiran he’d once known, a woman with an endless appetite for sex, an almost impossibly perfect fair, fullbreasted beauty. He’d done that before, running races with his friends, seeing who could last the longest and who could make the Oiran beg the loudest for their cock. And sometimes, after they were done with the Oiran, they’d be so hungry for one another, he and his friend, that they’d roll together and put on a sexual show for the ladies. Stiff pricks rutting into smooth hips, hard fingers clutching asses, the harsh scrape of stubble on throats, and best of all, the firm surety of a man’s wide mouth surrounding his prick in preparation for sucking him off. All in all, Lin Yao wasn’t surprised that he’d woken from his dreams to find his belly and chest a mess of cooling cum, his skin still flushed and damp with sweat from spending the night fucking beautiful shadows in his dreams. Woken to this ugly reality and disgustedly acknowledged that he would only ever enjoy that kind of sensuality again in his fantasies. Dreams! What was the point in them? They never came true. If they did, he’d order himself up a tasty, talented fellow and a soft, supple woman to satisfy every last need. Yeah, well, if dreams came true, he’d be off Sheol IV and able to go find a pair for himself. Lin Yao sighed, shaking off the last of the tempting, arousing images. He licked his lips, weighing the pros and cons of swallowing the last drops in his flask. He could go fetch more, true, but that would mean walking away from his field, and he knew better than to do that except in cases of emergency, especially when many of the other convicts -- fools who hadn’t figured out how to farm this unforgiving land -- would be looking at their scrawny, stunted harvests and eyeing his own relative wealth. He’d been a thief, after all, and thieving was what had made him end up on Sheol IV. Lin Yao knew how itchy fingers got and how easy it might seem to slip in and take what one needed. Except “just enough for now” was never enough, would never be enough. A man craved more and more until someone’s blood was shed, the red soil soaking up a waste of a life. Thus, no. No leaving before he’d cut and bundled the last of these sheaves. With any luck, he’d get the job done before the second of the planet’s double suns slid below the horizon.

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He grimaced in irony. It appeared he’d developed an appreciation for honest hard work since he’d come to Sheol IV. Twenty years, three months, and seventeen days. Lin Yao never forgot how long it had been since the moment the roughneck excuses for frontier-traveling soldiers had shoved him, jeering, off the transport shuttle, so that he’d landed face first in the red mud. He’d picked himself up, head held high despite his coating of clay, and sworn to himself that he’d be damned if he laid down to die, even out here at the edge of all the worlds, in the farthest field from the way station, far from any “hope” of protection from the soldier guards. And he hadn’t. Lin Yao had grimly outlived two-thirds of the convicts who’d arrived on the same shuttle as he had, and he planned to drink a toast over the grave of the last one who finally wasn’t too mean to die. After that, he planned to live until he was the oldest convict on this gods-forsaken planet. After all, a man had to have something to look forward to. Recorking his water bottle, Lin Yao picked up the digging stick he’d placed carefully in a cloddy furrow before taking his break. Lifting it point up, he narrowly eyed the charredhard tip, once viciously sharp and used for hunting, now blunted but still with a decent point that was good enough for plowing and rattling among the rye stalks. Cutting wasn’t an option without a decent blade. The best he could do was shake the tangled vegetation apart and snap the stalks off around shin level, then throw them on the woven reed mat he trailed from row to row. He got on with his work, the way a convict had to in order to survive, but if he chose to dream while he worked about having some tasty company -- a plump, dark woman he’d made love to in his fantasies the night before, reaping rye beside him, and a winsomely handsome young man guarding his back, both of whom he planned to have his way with among the harvest -- well, that was his own business. He’d just settled into his work when he stopped again, sharp ears pricking up at the sound of footfalls. They weren’t close yet, no, but approaching fast and clumsy on the rutted dirt track on the far side of his field. Someone in too much of a hurry to care whether or not they were heard, then, or maybe a poor bastard who’d gone crazy -- and that happened too, too often -- or a convict forced by the soldier guards to perform a summoning run. If it was the last of those possibilities, he’d be forced himself to leave his fields, regardless of the thieving crows, and walk to the way station. Lin Yao’s jaw tightened. The soldier guards had already ordered the lot of them in for gatherings twice this year-cycle, and neither meeting had been necessary in his opinion, just a lot of useless jabber about rehabilitation, lectures about how grateful the convicts should be for a chance to redeem themselves rather than swinging from a tree or facing down an executioner’s sword, or blah, blah, blah. He always tuned out the droning speeches and waited, face set in stony lines, for a chance to get back to the life he’d fought for and killed to claw out for himself.

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The only thing he’d taken note of at the previous meeting was how Tatsuo, commander of the soldier guards and the only one among them worth his bread and salt, had stood at the back of the station, a data pad incongruously small in his broad, callused hands, delicately tapping in information every time a convict spoke. When Lin Yao hadn’t said a word, Tatsuo had winked at him. Lin Yao hadn’t winked back, but it hadn’t dampened Tatsuo’s mood. Lin Yao had reflected on the stories about what the soldier had done on battlefields to end up stationed out here on Sheol IV, probably none of which were true, except the tale of how Tatsuo had defied the Tribunal and saved the lives of half his squadron. Indeed, punishment for common sense dovetailed with Lin Yao’s intimate knowledge of how their worlds and the Tribunal worked. He scratched his chin now, stubble rasping under his callused fingertips, and weighed his options. No way a runner wouldn’t come hunting for him through the fields -- the messenger would be under orders to locate and deliver his summons to every one of them as soon as possible. Well, Lin Yao’d be damned if he’d tolerate a clumsy oaf bollocking his way through the harvest. Fine, then. Lin Yao carefully planted his digging stick point down in the dirt, thrust his feet into the braided grass sandals he’d kicked aside earlier in the morning, and went to see what new bastard annoyance the soldier guards had come up with now. When he reached the road, the runner was skidding to a stop. The man, more of a boy barely old enough to need to shave -- trickster god, what had he done to end up here? -skidded to a stop, sucking in air. Foam flecks decorated the sides of his mouth as if he were an overtired horse. He reared up in surprise when Lin Yao emerged and nodded to him, wariness settling fast. “I won’t hurt you, son,” Lin Yao said to intercept the back-and-forth posturing bullshit that’d be second nature to the runner, although he threw in the “son” to tweak the boy’s pride and establish his dominance. Survival wasn’t always about braving the scorching heat and freezing snows, and it was simpler this way. No matter how long he’d known the convicts, it always threw every man jack of them. The boy tried twice to get his words out before finally gasping betwixt noisy breaths, “Way station. Soon as you can get there.” “Why?” The runner had apparently expected that question, as he rightly should have. “Don’t know. Tatsuo said. That’s all.” “Uh-huh. And was it Tatsuo who told you to run until you dropped? I doubt it. Who was it who promised you a hundred-odd lashes if you didn’t get back in a set time?” The boy boggled at him, his breathing evening out as he got his full wind back. “What, you think I’m a tattletale? I value my hide too much to go chattering like a mockingbird,

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thanks. You know what the soldier guards do to those who ‘turncoat’ on them. They’d do far worse than beat me, then, and well you know it.” Lin Yao huffed, irritated, and waved him on. “I’m coming. Go on, get the others.” When the boy hesitated, Lin Yao lost the small shred of patience he possessed and issued an animal snarl. “Get out of here!” That was what the boy would be used to. Had to be, from the way he growled and ran off rabbit-fast, employing a decent turn of speed despite the occasional stumble from exhaustion. Lin Yao shook his head. What did they say in that old story, the one his old grandmother, his amah, liked to garble out between her few teeth? “Lord, what fools these mortals be.” He tasted the words bitter as lye ash. “Aren’t we all.” Three steps in his grudging journey down the dirt road, a harsh mechanical noise flooded his ears. Lin Yao stopped, still as a stock, shading his eyes to squint up at the blindingly bright sky and the heavy, dark shadow roaring overhead. A transport ship? When was the last time one had come here? It’d been at least three years, maybe longer. New prisoners arriving meant new troubles stirring up old unrest and brewing a cauldron full of conflict. It was with an ever-darkening mood that Lin Yao walked on, traveling the dirt road to see what nonsense their so-called “guards” had cooked up now. Though he saw one or two others straggled well apart up ahead, no one walked with him. That didn’t come as a surprise. The convicts would all slink along one at a time, avoiding each other as best as they could, getting a feel for the changes in the wind before choosing a plan of attack, if attack they decided on. Those shifts on the breeze? They all smelled like trouble to Lin Yao. By the time Lin Yao reached the way station, he knew himself to be one of the final arrivals. Smart runner, to have gone to the easier marks first. The only convicts straggling along behind him were the hardest of cases, their skin like leather from stubborn years of survival, mostly gray hair trailing down like rat tails over their shoulders, their hard muscles tense, always itching for a fight. To tweak their stiff pride, Lin Yao nodded to the lot of them. They glowered at him, some spitting in disgust, yet not a one stepped forward to challenge him. He didn’t give it much thought except for a brief flash of satisfaction, glad to see his reputation for toughness hadn’t suffered any tarnish since they’d last met. Leave Lin Yao alone, that was the way of things, and it suited him perfectly. Stalking his way through the milling crowd of men dressed in rags, Lin Yao chose a good vantage point to watch from, his back to the wall in a corner near the broad, barnlike door. He crossed his arms and then his legs at the ankles, hands good and loose where they were tucked underneath, ready to curl into fists if need be. Then he waited, but he didn’t have to hang fire for long.

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Tatsuo, commander of the soldier guards, exited the private barracks of the station and lifted his chin in terse, silent greeting. As always, he looked a little older and more tired than the last time Lin Yao had seen him, the job wearing him down day by day. The stubble grew so densely on his cheeks and chin that it might as well be a half grown-in beard, and his hair was disarranged atop his head as if he’d been pulling at it for some time now. He plowed through the milling ranks of rat-mean soldier guards lower in rank than he, stopping every now and then to tear one or another a new hole with hushed, vituperative wrath while he waved the data pad clutched tight in one fist. Interesting. When Tatsuo had collared the last of the other soldier guards and warned him about something -- concerning whatever they were all gathered here for, no doubt -- Tatsuo stood up straight, shaking irritation away as if it was a too-heavy cloak. A good man by nature, Tatsuo. Even Lin Yao, who hadn’t liked anyone in twenty-plus years, had some respect for the man. He knew Tatsuo would have deepened respect into friendship, but Lin Yao didn’t get that close to people. In his experience, it always led to trouble in the end. Also, from nearly the first moment they’d met, Tatsuo had made no secret to Lin Yao of his fiery passion for rebellion. With three swigs of raw, contraband rye whiskey simmering in his belly, Tatsuo had spilled that which drove an immediate and permanent wedge between them: he wanted the convicts and soldier guards to rise up against the Tribunal -- and he wanted Lin Yao to lead them. I’ve got the authority to lead if I choose to

use it, and the strength to goad them, but I don’t have the charisma to make them follow of their own free will, he always claimed. Spoke of Lin Yao’s “natural leadership powers” and other such bullshit. No. Lin Yao had neither the time nor the inclination for such foolishness. He knew what such dreams were worth -- less than spit in the wind -- and he marveled that Tatsuo hadn’t yet learned. “Ladies!” Tatsuo roared, a bull’s bellow, pitched to carry his voice over the surly growls of the convicts. “Settle down, or I’ll settle you down myself!” Cursing, griping, the convicts slowly formed ranks and waited, watching Tatsuo suspiciously. “All right. Thank you.” Thanks were another one of Tatsuo’s peculiarities. “I know it’s the end of the warm season, okay? I know you don’t have the time to spare.” His mouth twitched in a parody of a smile. “You’ll have even less time for this, at first, but none of us have a choice, so suck it up and deal like adults, understood?” Warning prickles ignited along Lin Yao’s spine. He patiently waited to see what would happen, already sure he wouldn’t care for it one single bit. Tatsuo dry-washed his face, rolled his eyes toward the heavens, and dragged out the bad news. “That transport shuttle I’m sure you all saw fly in…it’s full of Helpmeets, men. Helpmeets that are here to stay.”

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The convicts held quiet for one long, shocked beat before erupting into shouts, whoops, and outraged protests. Tatsuo stood quietly before them, looking as weary as an old watchdog. For his part, Lin Yao knew he’d dropped his jaw far enough to catch flies, but damned if even he wasn’t too dumbfounded to recover right away. Helpmeets? Here? What in the nineteen hells?

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Chapter Two The clamor from the convicts quickly broke into two nearly equally divided camps, as Lin Yao had expected once he’d managed to shake off his own shock and slide his empty mask back on. Half of the ragtag group were all but dancing up and down in place, howling and hollering and pounding one another on their backs, damn near alight with the promise of Helpmeets, ‘cause everyone knew what Helpmeets were for, right? Oh, they were supposed to be hardworking, hard-bitten criminals under sentence of forced slavery, sure. However, everyone knew that a Helpmeet’s value wasn’t in two hands that could be used for hard work. No, what they were truly valued for nestled between their legs, and under the law, no Helpmeet could refuse their master anything that was asked of them. Lin Yao eyed the convicts who surrounded him. For the first time in almost longer than he could remember, he felt a flash of pity for the incoming bastards who’d drawn such a short straw as to be sent as Helpmeets to a piss hole like Sheol IV. As much as the horny convicts celebrating bothered him, Lin Yao’s mood blackened faster over the second group that was huddling together, growling and muttering, shooting filthy glares at Tatsuo and his contingent of soldier guards. Lin Yao understood these men better, at least in part, for they didn’t care at all for the idea of the new arrivals. Helpmeets were chosen from the foolish beauties and the helpless clowns, a harsh punishment for the crime of insulting their betters or offending the mighty. They were deliberately selected to be a hindrance rather than an actual help -- the Tribunal’s little joke, and were, more often than not, soft, privileged men and pampered women who’d no idea how to survive outside the rich cities, much less last longer than a week on Sheol IV. They’d need care and feeding a convict didn’t have to give, didn’t have to spare, and then they’d up and die like caged birds. Worst of all in this case, those who were given a Helpmeet didn’t have any choice about the matter, not usually. The convicts would have no say in whether or not they wanted to shoulder the burden of care and feeding a helpless lump of a dependant.

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Damn the Tribunal, anyway. Propped in his corner, Lin Yao kept his thoughts to himself, of course. When Tatsuo nodded at him in greeting, Lin Yao looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw. This isn’t a grave I dug, he thought darkly. I’ll not smile and pretend I’m glad to be here. “Shut up!” one of the lesser soldier guards bellowed. No one paid him any heed. Lin Yao swallowed down the urge to laugh. “Shut your gods-damned mouths, or I’ll slice the tongues right out of you!” “Kwan,” Tatsuo warned, rising to his full height and strength, looming over his subordinate with the presence of an angry bear. “You even try, and yours is the first to go.” “You treat them too kind, and I’m about finished with you,” the man snarled in return, rounding on Tatsuo with his teeth bared. His skinny, grimy hand wrapped around the handle of his narrow rawhide whip, fingers twitchy. “Me and my boys, we’re this close to --” “To what?” Tatsuo shoved the scrawny weasel back. “You think you can take me down? Take your best shot.” The convicts, those who could be distracted, fixed on this new entertainment with catcalls and whistles and clapping hands. Gods have mercy, Lin Yao half expected to hear them breaking into a chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” -- or hells, as stupid as they were, getting it in their heads to attack the guards. He shifted his weight from one foot to another, firmly reinforcing his decision to say nothing and to draw no attention. If they pushed Tatsuo too far, Tatsuo would do what it took to restore order, and he’d do it himself, not trusting anything to his soldier guards. He did have some smarts that way. Lin Yao tilted his head back until he could rest it on the relatively cool mud-and-stone wall behind him. He lowered his eyelids to half mast, watching and preparing for trouble from beneath them. Sad thing was, he could understand where both factions of convicts were coming from. He had more provisions and comforts than most, but he himself didn’t know how he’d feed a Helpmeet through the winter -- if he or she survived that long. Yet for all that, as soon as he let the partially formed thought float behind his eyes, he grunted with a surprised shock of lust that arrowed down to inflame his lower belly. Uncoiling white-hot, red-sparkling need for soft skin to grasp, tender lips to devour, and a willing quim or tight hole to sink into. Other convicts got desperate enough to barter or sell their bodies for quick, joyless sex; he didn’t. A man was too vulnerable after fucking. It was an easy way for a convict to get himself killed. Which meant that, other than a couple of drunken mistakes, he’d been celibate save for his hand for far too long than was healthy for any man his age. Alive, but going deader inside by rapidly marching inches every year. To have a Helpmeet in his bed… Well, that thought appealed more and more by the heartbeat though he despised himself for the weakness. Visions of small, supple women with silky, dark hair cascading over their shoulders and curling thickly over creamy quims stole his breath away. And the thought of gentle-mannered men down on their aristocratic knees,

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pretty lips accustomed to speaking niceties wrapped around his prick…hells. Lin Yao grunted and resisted the urge to reach down and readjust his erection, maybe give it a firm pull or two. What stopped him was his mind circling firmly back around to the no-status position of a Helpmeet. They couldn’t say no, or wouldn’t think they could, anyway, which amounted to the same thing. Or they’d fight in ways that would get them killed straightaway. Pick your poison, eh? The Helpmeets wouldn’t clue in that it was all kill or be killed out here, nor would they learn to trade smart or learn how to play clever tricks, at least not before the harsh climate had done its job or the assigned convict became enraged. Lin Yao chewed on the inside of his cheek, wondering what in the hells he’d do when -- if -- he was assigned his own Helpmeet. Couldn’t be too soft on him or her. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of himself if he treated the poor thing like a work animal. A nice conundrum, wasn’t it? Annoyed past irritation, he looked up at Tatsuo, who happened to be gazing his way. He jerked his chin up, shaking his head in short, disapproving tics at the soldier guard. Tatsuo raised one shoulder, dejected. Lin Yao recrossed his arms. Tatsuo glared. Lin Yao lifted one corner of his mouth in a You’re on your own smirk, one he fully intended to keep in place. Then, one of the convicts, denied his front row seat to a soldier guard fight, fell back on his earlier roaring enthusiasm for the Helpmeets, who were supposedly ready to file out of the transport shuttle, and tried to rush the soldier guards, probably to beat past them and take his first pick of the men and women beyond. Tatsuo tensed, but Lin Yao could tell in a heartbeat exactly how this would go down, and that it would end in blood and flames. Something inside him snapped despite his firmest intentions otherwise. Between one blink and the next, he found himself bellowing like a maddened bullock and shoving his way through the convicts, not stingy with kicks to the backs of knees and openhanded blows to the backs of heads. An empty storage crate served as a speaking pedestal, and before he’d quite figured out what he was doing, Lin Yao stood raised above and in front of the soldier guards, roaring for quiet. When it came -- and with it the realization of what position he’d just taken upon himself after years of swearing he’d never do this -- well, he wasn’t sure whether he was shocked more by his actions or by the way the convicts obeyed, falling silent almost immediately. Refusing to glance back at Tatsuo, Lin Yao squared his shoulders and let rip with a string of curses at the convicts, calling their mothers everything from randy she-goats to two-coin whores, insulting family and ancestors and faces and everything else he could think of, enjoying it with a savage rush as well as a sense of amazement. Gods, he’d have thought

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tearing into the convicts this way would get him killed, but they were staring at him as if they’d never seen him before, their attitudes just shy of respectful. Tatsuo had always said he’d have this kind of power over men if he only made the effort, but he’d thought Tatsuo was out of his mind. Now, he didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t let them spy a moment’s uncertainty, though, not when they’d fall right back to rioting and the Helpmeets wouldn’t stand a chance against them. If he couldn’t undo the latter’s arrival, then he could do his mightiest to hammer some common sense in the convicts’ heads. He refused to linger on that abrupt certainty and found a calm center within his heart, looking at each and every convict in their turn, all ninety-odd, until even the mutters and whispers dropped to total silence. When he spoke, he let the words fall quietly, knowing they’d hear him, aware that growls truly meant would hit hard and sink deep. “This is how it’s gonna be, you sorry sons of bitches, and if I see one of you acting out, you and I are meeting in a dark field at midnight. Only one of us will walk away, and it’ll be me, that I swear. Understood?” Faces twisted in anger, but no one protested aloud. They knew him well enough to take his reputation as a hard-bitten bastard seriously. He’d follow through on his threats. Of course, if the miracle ever came to pass that a few could fight back their distrust of one another and band together to come after him some midnight, he’d be done for before he could scream. But would that ever happen? Lin Yao doubted it as no more likely a circumstance than a ring full of fighting cocks deciding to work together. Lin Yao went on despite the uncomfortable twist in his gut. I’ll take the time to figure this out later, he vowed. “So the Tribunal figured it’d send up Helpmeets. Big joke for the Lords, right? Pack off the helpless lily-fingered pretties and let the convicts tear ’em apart. Can you see those overfed, never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives bastards laughing until they choke? I sure can.” Uncertain, wary mumbles rose from the crowd. “You keep your flapping traps shut,” Lin Yao barked. “Any one of you says a word before I’m done, and we’ll meet behind the way station right now.” Gods, no wonder Tatsuo looked exhausted all the time. This was like trying to tame lightning. “You really plan to give the Tribunal Lords what they want? Gonna let them cackle all the way to the punch line just like they planned?” Frowns lined the faces before him. “Last I heard, that wasn’t what you were sent here for,” Lin Yao continued, finding his stride though he still had no idea what madness had seized him. “Last I knew, us staying alive was just to rub it in their faces. Could be they’re trying to punish all of us for being too mean to lie down and die. You ever think about that?” He hadn’t, himself, not until the

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words jumped off his tongue, but he saw the clear sense in them and didn’t stop, honest wrath starting to sizzle in his veins. Be damned to the Tribunal, trying to pull this kind of horseshit on them. He’d make the foully corrupted government choke on its joke, see if he didn’t. This was a line the Tribunal ought not to have crossed. “So what are we supposed to do?” one of the convicts yelled, a man Lin Yao only halfway recognized as a ten-years-since arrival, weathered beyond his years, thin as a rail, and stubborn as a mule. Smarter than the others or stupid enough to be brave, Lin Yao didn’t know. Didn’t much care either. He decided to allow the question, as it led into what he had next to say, although he was getting accustomed to his pseudo authority far too quickly for his liking. “Don’t give ’em what they want,” he ordered. “Don’t fall on these poor bastards like we’re starving dogs, even if we are, and tear those Helpmeets to scraps of meat.” “But they’re only supposed to be good for --” “Shut up! I don’t care about ‘supposed to.’ You shouldn’t either. ‘Supposed to’ is meaningless. Chew on this: these Helpmeets aren’t as innocent as you might think. Why are they here, softer lives or not? Because they chose to step outside the law, and just like us, their luck ran out.” “They’re slaves,” a dark, stunted man protested. “And we aren’t?” That shut ’em up. Almost all of them, anyway. The ten-years convict spoke up again, loud but tired. “So what do you say we do, instead?” Lin Yao drew in a deep breath and stood as tall as he could, aware for the first time in a long time that he stood shorter than a good two-thirds of the convicts. Didn’t matter. He was as tough as ever, sharp-edged as a fighting cock, and he’d make sure no one forgot. “We act like we’re men, not animals.” His tone brooked no disobedience. “We remember we’re humans, and we shove this big old jest up the Tribunal’s collective asses until they can’t breathe. We treat these Helpmeets like they’re our own brothers and sisters in crime, ‘cause they are, and anyone who doesn’t remember what I’m telling you now, well, they’d better run fast, hide good, and pray I don’t find them.” He dragged his hand over his mouth, dry lips protesting under the roughness of his palm. “It comes down to this,” he said, almost done with talking. “You give these sorry souls a chance. You show them convicts are less animal than the Tribunal is. We’ll rise above the Lords, and we’ll be the ones laughing. Anybody have a problem with that?” Mutters, grumbles, scornful laughs arose…and no arguments. Lin Yao smirked at them, stepping down from his empty crate and elbowing his way through the crowd, heading back to his corner. His heart was beating like temple gongs. No way he planned to look at Tatsuo, not after that little show.

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Didn’t matter what had happened or what he’d done. He’d not give in to the soldier guard. No matter what sort of pipe dream castles Tatsuo wove, he refused to be anybody’s leader. Not even now. Not ever.

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Chapter Three The time had almost come, and now that I had only the barrier of the transport shuttle’s walls between myself and freedom -- albeit in the guise of slavery some would call worse than what I had escaped, if they ever uncovered the truth -- I found my limbs leaden with a fear I had not known since I was a boy when I didn’t understand why missteps resulted in bruises. And yet at the same time, hot blood coursed through me, and the part of my thoughts not frozen like a deer stumbling into the hunter’s path fizzed like the prized wine only monks knew how to make, sparking halfformed thoughts full of random words: free, safe, not much longer, be careful, careful, careful. It all hung on what came next, you see. My luck thus far had been so good that it had become dangerous, leaving me waiting in suspense for the moment when it would all go dark. Though she hadn’t reappeared, I dreaded seeing the peasant woman’s ghost again. Ghosts were not bound to one place and time as a rule, and as she had shown up in the Tribunal courts antechamber, I knew she’d caught my scent and could follow me anywhere. If she manifested again, I did not know if it would be to spell my doom or pronounce my good fortune. At least for the moment, she didn’t turn up, and I breathed a little easier for a while. I had accomplished my will through the Tribunal, recognizing the minor Lord who cast the deciding vote as a small, dry husk of a

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man all too glad to accept stolen temple treasures in exchange for something so pitiful as condemning one lone man to the position of Helpmeet rather than the execution my being a runaway monk required. He had no idea I was the one who had arranged all this, of course, and I was hard put not to laugh when he’d sneered at me. I survived the long, cramped, malodorous journey in the transport shuttle, living on when others fell prey to fouled water and the havoc wrought when other prisoners’ minds broke under their burdens. Without anyone to stand by me and without understanding why, I wished for Nori and bided meekly on my own, avoiding unwanted attention. I lent a hand in small ways where I could, slipping my crust of bread to tiny, too-thin women with huge eyes or murmuring a quiet word into the ear of a man on the verge of insanity. Little things. I didn’t know if anyone had noticed; I didn’t think they had. Still, my heart beat hard and coppery in my throat every time I forgot myself or could not turn away, and I swore each time that this one was the last even though I’ve never been able to keep my promises to myself. Well, I’d fled the temple, so I know many would say I couldn’t hold true to any oaths at all. They were wrong, naturally. I only saw, then and now, where the real worth lay in life, and it was not in the cold temple of a dead god. I might have escaped into the life of a slave, but it was life. Dirty, ugly, glorious life. And I did not plan to stay among the Helpmeets for long, after all. As soon as I found myself alone, I would run as fast and as far as I could and live out the rest of my days without any shackles. Unfortunately, the saying about “the best laid plans” held true for me, as it ever has and always will in the lives of men.

***** “On your feet, on your feet, on your feet,” one of the nameless soldier guards brayed without enthusiasm, slouching his way through the corridors and rooms of the transport shuttle. He dragged the butt of his solid metal club along the corrugated tin inner walls, producing a raucous cacophony of clanging and clattering he barely seemed to hear. “Get up, you lazy dogs, get up double-quick time, hear?”

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Ko looked up from his examination of his hands, folded quietly and resting in his lap between his crossed legs. He watched the guard pass him by without any further reaction except to swallow once, hard and dry on his thirst-swollen throat. It was time, then. They’d landed what felt like hours ago, though his sense of time had disappeared on the windowless shuttle. Many of the other Helpmeet prisoners clustered around him, most of whom had barely moved since they’d touched down, grasping the sleeves of one another’s threadbare tunics and babbling in high, panicked gasps. Unable to stop himself, Ko bent to soothe a woman who no doubt had once been someone’s cherished princess. He petted the tangled mess of her hair, which must have been her crowning glory not so long ago. She turned wide, sad eyes up at him, glossy with tears. “Hush,” he crooned. “It’s almost over.” Her lips quivered. “It never will be, Father. Not until we’re dead.” Ko’s blood chilled. “What did you call me?” She blinked, tears forgotten in her confusion. “I’m sorry. I only meant you’re as kind as one of the monks, or the way they’re supposed to be in the stories. I --” “Quiet.” Ko’s voice was brittle in his ears, giving too much away, but he couldn’t soften it. “I’m no one’s ‘father.’ Don’t you see the way I’m dressed?” He gestured to his leather suit, which despite being filthy now still advertised his false position as a sex worker. “I’m just a man like your brothers and cousins, a man whose luck ran out.” “You’re not just a man,” she said, surprising him with her sudden, keen insight. “Whatever else you might be.” He couldn’t listen to any more of that. “Get up,” he said abruptly, turning away from her. “Are you just a man?” the voice Ko had dreaded hearing asked him, the ghost’s tone laced with amusement. “Are you just a man, or are you more than one of the common, cowardly breed?” Ko refused to look up to try and spot her. If he acknowledged the ghost’s presence, it might give her more power -- and if she meant to do him harm… Fear made him gruff when he clapped his hands together as best as he could with the short-linked chains binding his wrists. “All of you, get up! Do you want the guards to beat you for being lazy? Move!” Ko hadn’t expected the soldier guards to let them go without one last session of fun and games, and he’d been right. The grim satisfaction at having anticipated this correctly sat heavy in him. Now that their traveling lethargy had been shaken off upon planet fall, those soldier guards were full of ginger and nasty mischief.

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Their favorite forms of entertainment were predictably childish: pushing and tripping the weaker Helpmeets as they shuffled past in a ragged line toward the nose of the shuttle. Ko kept his eyes forward, though his hands twitched in helpless frustration every time he heard a muffled cry of pain or a malicious laugh ring out. A bellow, perhaps twenty prisoners ahead of him, jerked the line to an abrupt stop. “Well, now!” Crude laughter and jeers echoed through the shuttle, letting Ko know a target had been found for all to share. He didn’t try to look as the others did until the meaning of the soldier guards’ taunts unscrambled in his ears. “Look at you, pretty lady. Boys, see what we’ve been missing out on, eh?” “Where have you been hiding yourself, sexy?” “Hiding, that’s it. Thought she was too good for us, I’ll bet.” “Too good to keep us entertained during the long flight. Her loss, huh?” “Her loss.” “Could’ve made this easier on yourself, pretty lady.” “Never too late, sexy, not at all. Come on, now, you be good to us and we’ll --” The cacophony of ugly lust shattered abruptly when one of the guards yelled with a sound of pain, not pleasure. The Helpmeets, not stupid despite their capture, began to laugh, and Ko, too, guessed what had happened. A knee to the balls, most likely, and although he couldn’t but flare with brief pride, he knew the woman in question had just signed her own death warrant. Something within him broke then. Suicidal or not, Ko found his bare feet hurrying him along the freezing metal grating of the corridor, pushing laughing onlookers out of the way until he reached the impromptu clearing around the fallen guard, his companions, and the woman they’d chosen to torment. He looked at the woman and recognized her. Her face had been etched in delicate lines in his memory, a face that had kept him awake during long nights on the shuttle, his hand trailing down to his full, aching prick while others slept. He’d spilled his seed so many times with her name silently formed on his lips that he’d lost count. He wondered, once again, why she’d tried to pass herself off as an Oiran. A woman as beautiful and graceful and kind as Nori would have won any man’s heart without the need for tricks; she would have had them falling at her feet. Why had she wanted to pretend to be something else? On the other hand, Ko thought he might understand. Wisely, she likely hadn’t wanted to find a man who’d make her his pet. She’d chosen to stand on her own instead and take charge of her life. That he admired and respected, finding himself caring more deeply for her still. Her eyes widened briefly. “Ko, stay back.”

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“Only if you come with me.” He reached for her hand. She might have taken it. He thought so in a crazy moment, given the abortive start she made in his direction, causing him to wonder for a brief, wild instant if she had slipped her fingers in her wet quim with his name on her tongue -- but no, no, that couldn’t be. The sudden vividness of the mental image gave him a moment’s pause, long enough for the soldier guards to recover. One of the brutes whipped his club from its loop on his belt and slapped the length at Ko, catching him on the temple. He staggered and gasped and bit his lip to keep from yelling, tasting blood. The soldiers jeered and cheered. “That’s it, Pao, you show him! Thinks he’s going to play hero, huh? Teach him a lesson!” “Don’t,” Nori demanded in her husky tones. Ko wondered if any of the guards picked up on the small break hidden well beneath her icy calm. “He’s done nothing to you.” “You shut your mouth!” The guard who’d struck Ko rounded on Nori, his club clashing on her delicate forehead. Her cry of pain ignited something heretofore unknown in Ko’s chest. Red rage rushed through him in a burst that left him breathless and seeing nothing but crimson. A roar he didn’t recognize as his own ripped from his throat as he threw himself at the guard, fists knotted tight, striking without mercy. Surprise gave him a few seconds’ advantage, but no more than that. The rage carried him along through the first few blows from half a dozen clubs, as well as kicks from boots with steel toes. Agony only sunk in with a bright, harsh crunch when they flipped him on his back and he found himself unable to breathe, a club pressed tightly enough to his throat to almost crush his larynx, cutting off his air. “Too bad,” he heard the guard snarl, his breath stunk as he spat in Ko’s face. “Thought you were some kind of big hero, huh? Figured you were gonna ride in and save the lady from scum like us?” “You tell him, Pao, you tell him!” “Leave him alone!” Nori begged. “Nori, don’t,” he rasped back, trying to fix on the soldier guard’s face, which was swimming in and out of focus before his eyes. He aimed his next words at Pao. “Kill me, if you’re going to, but do it fast before your stink does it for you.” A stifled gasp from Nori was the last thing he heard, and the guard’s enraged snarl the last thing he saw, before the sizzling snap of a laser gun firing, followed by blazing, blinding agony drove him out of the world and into a sort of hell he’d never imagined.

So close, he thought, and almost laughed at the farce his plans had become. So close, and now it ends. For Nori, I’d do it again.

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“Shh,” the ghost crooned in his ear. “Shh. You’re not killed. You please me, Ko, as the man you’ve grown up to be. It’ll be all right. You’ll see.” The ghost and the pain combined to make Ko light-headed. He gave into the urge to laugh and was still choking out hoarse barks when the air around him lightened inexplicably. A callused hand slapped his face; the fact that the firmness held no trace of cruelty startled him out of the white-hot emptiness and drew him back to the reality of the transport shuttle. Ko blinked, dragging in a deep, shocked breath and found the underfed narrow face of Pao replaced by one that was older and broader, weathered by the sun and covered in a halfgrown beard with more salt than pepper mixed in. “Good. You’re not dead. Try to keep it that way.” “What…?” He tried to clear the muzziness from his head. “Who…?” “Not now.” The older soldier -- he hadn’t seen this one before, Ko was sure of it -stood, grimacing when his knees popped. “Lady, can you help him? I’ve got to make sure nothing like this is happening farther back in the line.” “If he’ll let me.” “Don’t give him a chance to say no.” The new soldier guard’s chuckle sounded genuinely warm, such an unbelievable note that Ko had no surprise left over to spare when Nori knelt beside him. “Don’t do that again,” she said quietly, cool fingers running expertly over his bruised eyes, swelling throat, and down the length of his body, shifting on her knees as she went, never once less graceful than a queen. He ached with a sudden need to kiss her, to taste her breasts and sink his prick as deep as he could get in her tight quim. She made him crazy with lust for her without even trying, even now.

Called herself an Oiran, he remembered -- as if he could have forgotten. “Nori…” “Keep still.” She hesitated as she reached the end of him. “Ko, do you understand what they did to you?” He tried to piece together action and reaction and came up with a foul answer. “Shot me,” he rasped, trying to sit up. “Where?” “Lie down.” “No.” He forced himself up the rest of the way, supporting his weight on his arms. “Where am I shot?” Nori huffed, tucking loosened strands of hair behind her ears. “The beam whipped around your leg, Ko. It’s worst near the ankle. Be glad they can’t aim and that that’s all they hit.”

A wounded leg. Gods and goddesses. I can’t run. “It’ll be all right,” the ghost said. She lied. I’m trapped.

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Chapter Four Our arrival at the way station of Sheol IV was nothing like I’d expected, whether in my moments of hope or in my darkest dreams. Nothing at all. I remember it vividly and for more than one reason. Pain can draw a hazy cloud over memory, or it can imbue the world with shocking clarity. Which is to say, when I limped into the station, I saw everything as realer than real. Edges too sharp, colors too bright, smells too strong and, disturbing me to the core, every man’s voice as clear as if he whispered in my ear. That, however, is not the main reason I remember that point in time in flawless detail. I remember it because Nori’s hand rested atop mine when I first saw Lin Yao, and though I didn’t know it then, once again, my destiny had taken a turn down a road on which there was no traveling back, a path that was choked by spirits to boot. Lin Yao is not the sort of man to recognize greatness in himself. He has always and would forever leave the seeds of power unwatered, but if they grew, he’d choke them out with weeds. Or so he believed. I, at least, soon learned better. Indeed, Lin Yao’s heart and soul and charisma changes every life he brushes, and he would do the same to me. And Nori.

*****

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Lin Yao chewed the soft meat of his lower lip, tasting blood, drawing on the dull pain to steady his thoughts. It wasn’t working. All he’d ended up with was a sore mouth and a growing sense of bafflement. Tatsuo emerged from the ship, expression twisted as if he’d bitten an unripe fig, dark with wrath as a threatening thunderhead. Though he spoke too low to be overheard, Lin Yao could tell he was ripping into his soldier guards, forefinger jabbing fractional inches from their noses. It took a lot to shake this particular contingent, none of them model citizens and all of them poor excuses for fighting men, but as one and then another and another paled, Lin Yao had to marvel at the force of Tatsuo’s temper. Gods on high, what had happened when Tatsuo had walked into the transport shuttle? It sure wasn’t the “basic clearance check” he’d mentioned before disappearing through the vacuum-sealed airlock now connecting shuttle and station. “Filth I wouldn’t keep a corpse in,” Lin Yao heard him growl. “They’re human beings and…” Lin Yao grimaced and tuned him out, choosing not to listen. He didn’t need the complications. Oh, he had questions, he did, but he’d had enough of plunging in head first for one day, so he stuck to the back of the room and watched all that transpired as carefully as a cat and with the same native sense of suspicion. Tatsuo wasn’t the only changed man in there; that was for certain. If he hadn’t witnessed the shift in personalities himself, Lin Yao would never have believed how, after a few words of his angry speech earlier, the crude, bastard-mean convicts of Sheol IV had changed. They didn’t shake hands like brothers in arms or even look at one another with favor, no. However, they most certainly did frown at their workday disarray, shake dusty soil off their sandals, and brush it off their hands; did straighten their farming clothes as best as they could; and did scrape their overlong hair back into queues as neat as unpracticed fingers could form with their bushy locks. Lin Yao stared, shaking his head in silence. This didn’t make any kind of sense. Such a turn of events couldn’t have been the result of his losing his temper and shooting off at the mouth. His speech couldn’t have wrought this much of a change. Could it? “Listen up, ladies!” Tatsuo shouted, drawing the attention of everyone, Lin Yao included. The older man stood before them, burly arms stiff, thick hands knotted into fists, enraged. “Are you all with me, here?” Tatsuo demanded. The blond convict who’d answered back to Lin Yao -- Guy, that was his name -- spoke up again. He’d done a better job than most with his efforts at tidying up. “With you, Tatsuo. What’s the situation?” Never once before had Lin Yao looked at one of his fellow convicts with anything besides distaste and wariness, sizing up their fighting skills rather than how likely they’d be to show a man a good time during a bed tussle. Now, however, the dully muddied, grayed-

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out features of Guy had sharpened, and if he wasn’t a tasty bite, then Lin Yao had never seen one. The man had lost his lazy slur too, his consonants and vowels coming out not only clear but in a rich, musical tenor.

Musical? What in all the hells? Gods almighty, Lin Yao was beginning to think he was asleep in the middle of the rye field, ergot seeds in his ears. Tatsuo blinked at Guy, clearly as taken aback as Lin Yao. He recovered well. “Good man. Your cooperation is appreciated.” Guy shrugged as it wasn’t anything, though he rubbed his stubbled jaw with a faint grimace of distaste, seemingly for its bristly disarray. He nodded in the direction of the transport shuttle. “Something amiss in there?” Tatsuo stared briefly at Guy, then flicked his glance back to Lin Yao, who tightened his jaw and looked away. He didn’t want any more attention brought to him that day than he could possibly avoid, be it the fawning of convicts gone crazy or even a would-be friend’s assessment. As soon as he felt the pressure of Tatsuo’s querying gaze lift, however, he turned right back, drawn in by the bizarre fascination. Which was, as it turned out, a bad idea because Tatsuo apparently knew him too well, the wily bastard. The moment Lin Yao looked toward him Tatsuo nailed him with a direct, piercing stare and pointed dead between his eyes. “You treat these Helpmeets with respect the way Lin Yao told you to,” he stated amidst a sudden, gravelike silence. “If you don’t, it won’t be me coming after you. It’ll be him.” Dozens of men turned to gape at Lin Yao, who would’ve taken a step back if he was the sort of man inclined to public displays of fear and if he didn’t already have his full length pressed to a wall. Lin Yao lifted his chin and faced them down, swearing internally at Tatsuo. After three beats more of silence, Tatsuo nodded in a seeming sort of grim satisfaction. “The Helpmeets are going to come out now, one by one, and you’re not to touch them. I have a list here.” He raised his data pad aloft and waved it. “One Helpmeet for one convict as it states in the law, and you’re all assigned by number. Those of you who don’t care for who they get, I won’t have time to deal with you right now. Take it up with Lin Yao.” Lin Yao ground his molars together. He and Tatsuo were going to have a good, long talk as soon as this was over, and he planned to hold up his half of the conversation with his fists. All the same, he said nothing, not willing to lose face. He nodded, short and clipped, and kept his mouth shut. Tatsuo grunted, far too satisfied. He directed two soldier guards standing on either side of the vacuum seal. “All right, start ’em walking in. Anyone needs a hand, you lend one.” For once in their miserable lives the soldier guards moved into action swiftly and competently as if they were the prized elite of a Tribunal Lord’s train. One rapped on the inside of the walkway wall, calling the all clear to the waiting line.

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Lin Yao frowned, waiting for the first to emerge, wondering with a sudden curiosity what these Helpmeets would look like. Gently reared or tough and desperate? Pretty still, or made ugly by their newly hard times? The one who first emerged didn’t look like much at all. Hair a shade between brown and gray that was almost no color at all, and a face so plain and bland, he could only ever be remembered for his ordinariness. Average weight, dressed in the sort of undecorated gi and pants you’d see on every man of the working class on near about every world. In short, no sort of man at all who should have caused Tatsuo to draw up sharp, his breath hissing angrily out of him, yet he did. Lin Yao thought for a split second that normally calm Tatsuo might well be the one to throw the first punch. The bland man raised his hand as if he was a gentle monk bestowing a blessing. “Tatsuo,” he greeted, serene as a spring day. “It’s been too long, old friend.” He cut off Tatsuo’s first bark of wrath with a small, colorless smile that nonetheless made Lin Yao twitch. The more he looked at this man, the more disquietedly his blood ran. Something had to be extraordinarily wrong with a person who went to such trouble to be forgettable, Lin Yao understood, and he realized that the Helpmeets’ arrival was likely only the start of trouble. “I do appreciate your efforts,” the man continued, humble as undyed cotton. “I’ll take it from here, thank you.” “The hells you will.” The thin man smiled kindly. “Tatsuo, I would have thought you’d learned since our last little encounter. Let’s see, when was that? Ah, yes. Shortly before you were posted here. Life’s full of strange coincidences, isn’t it?” Lin Yao heard his own voice raised, before he’d realized he’d begun to speak. “Thanks, friend, but we don’t care to hear you jabbering on.” The thin man clearly hadn’t been expecting the interruption. His pale eyebrows climbed toward his forehead, and he turned fully toward Lin Yao, surprise obvious in his fractionally small stumble and the flicker in his emotionless smile. “And you are --” “Lin Yao,” he drawled, deliberately changing his stance so that he leaned nonchalantly against his wall, instead of covering his back, mocking the fellow in a way no one could call him on. But he decided that such subtlety wouldn’t do, so he blatantly needled the man. “And who the hells are you, you skinny, dried-up stick?” The convicts roared with laughter, and the thin man’s eyes darkened to a muddy hazel. Oho, he’d found the man’s weak spot already. Lin Yao smirked at him. “You’re insubordinate,” the man remarked at last, visibly trying to regain his oat pudding-bland calm. “Tatsuo, I assume the punishments for disobedience are still in force?” “He didn’t break any rules as far as I could see. Smarted off to you a little, but as you’re not a commanding officer, I can’t see that it’s worthy of discipline.”

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“You don’t maintain order, then. Interesting.” The thin man sneered at Tatsuo, then at Lin Yao. “So. Lin Yao. I’m happy to know the name of the convict I’ll petition for a flogging.” “I’d love to see you try, just for the fun of watching you fail,” Tatsuo murmured, which boggled Lin Yao’s mind. No doubt Tatsuo had truly lost his grip on sanity at some point. He guessed he must have, too, as the hot retort on his lips popped right off them without permission despite him knowing better and not wanting the trouble mouthing off would bring. “Is that so?” he queried the bland man, sarcastically indulgent, as if he spoke to a slow child, listening to himself with horror. “You’re a cocky son of a bitch if you think you can take me down.” The thin man’s scowl deepened. “We’ll see, won’t we?” “Take your best shot, if you think you’ve got a chance against me,” Lin Yao replied affably, a hot thrill of pleasure warming his chest. He stepped forward, fists swinging loosely at his side. “If you think you can take me, that is.” The thin man didn’t back down; Lin Yao had to give him credit for balls. He folded his hands before him as if to demonstrate he came in peace with only the purest of intentions -did he think he was fooling anyone? -- and chuckled quietly. “Oh, I won’t jump into a fistfight with you. I am not a moron, and you’ll find that I know how to bide my time. You’ll be taken care of in due course. This is my home now, a position I chose rather than was punished with, and make no mistake, I will teach you to respect me, later if not sooner. All of you.” He smiled blandly at Tatsuo, whose lips curled back over his teeth. Undaunted, the man bowed to Lin Yao. “I represent the Helpmeets as you represent your excellent convicts. We’ll all be one big happy family, all of us.” Lin Yao snorted, not bothering to be discreet. Well, now. Wasn’t this day just getting more and more remarkable by the moment? Happy family, huh? If that was the case, he had a new sympathy for fratricide. “My name is Gyen, honored son.” The thin man paused a beat. “Honorable Tribunal Representative Gyen, son of the High Tribunal Court’s superior Lord’s mistress Hanasus, once his favorite. I am an honored son of the Tribunal, acting as a free agent on behalf of its best interests, here to observe the way of this world for a time. I am most fascinated by what I’ve noted so far. I think the Tribunal will find my initial reports fascinating. Don’t you, Tatsuo?” Then he rapped sharply on the tunnel leading to the ship. “I’ll watch with interest to see how this present scenario unfolds. Helpmeets, enter and present yourselves!”

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Chapter Five The calm Lin Yao had won through the strange magic of his earlier words shattered at the hollow tolling of Gyen’s knock. The convicts’ voices rose in loud chatter, some angry, some indignant, some hooting with laughter, and all as full of questions as a summer plum was full of juice. Lin Yao expected Tatsuo to knock the sorry son of a bitch on his ass for pre-empting his authority, mild-tempered as the commander of the soldier guards was or no. Tatsuo’s fists clenched at his sides. Lin Yao could see how much he wanted to strike the man down. Why didn’t he? “Have it your way,” he growled, “and let it all be on your head.” “That’s not very courteous of you,” Gyen chided. A sly light winked on in his narrow eyes. “You,” he said, daring Lin Yao with his smile. “Ling, wasn’t it? Come assist me with the assignment of the Helpmeets.”

When the hells freeze over and I’m down there enjoying the cool air, and not before. Lin Yao said nothing aloud and remained against the wall. He caught the barest flicker of wrath under Gyen’s façade, and it did his mood a world of good. “Help the convicts instead,” Tatsuo asked him out of the blue, surprising him. “Keep them in line. I’d be in your debt.” Debt was not something any man took lightly. Lin Yao eyed the commander narrowly, choices and options he hadn’t wanted to deal with wrestling in his mind. He could help Tatsuo, yes. Tatsuo had never been anything but decent to him, even if his generally mild temper struck Lin Yao as a serious character flaw. Gyen, however -- he didn’t trust Gyen, not so far as he could throw the oily snake. He felt another flash of pity for the Helpmeets, knowing for a certainty their journey here with Gyen would have been a slice of hell deeper and darker than any Sheol IV could offer.

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“Men!” The convicts quieted and turned to him. They still had fire and spark, but they did listen, by damn. “Behave.” Tatsuo mouthed silent thanks to Lin Yao, who, in turn and equal silence, thought, You owe me. Gyen recovered smoothly as a serpent, smirking at Tatsuo and Lin Yao, acting as if this relative peace had been his own doing. “The thanks of the Tribunal go to you, Ling.” Lin Yao offered Gyen a hand gesture indicating exactly what he could do with the high and mighty Tribunal’s gratitude. Childish, but it made him feel better, and the rolling snickering of the convicts tickled his sense of humor. Tatsuo stepped in to wrest back some control. He stuck his head in the tunnel and called out a welcome to the Helpmeets, encouraging them to enter the way station even as Gyen fumed at Lin Yao’s insolence and Tatsuo’s usurpation of his authority over the Helpmeets. They’d pay for this later, Lin Yao knew. For now, he resumed his lazy position and waited to see the cause of all this ruckus. As far as he was concerned, the Helpmeets had damn well better be worth it. As it turned out, they weren’t, in his opinion. Lin Yao made a face when the burly commander led a Helpmeet past him. Helpmeet? Helpless, just as he’d sourly anticipated. This particular example was exactly what he’d always heard Helpmeets were like, as well as typical of her kind so far as he’d seen among the prisoners creeping timidly out of the transport shuttle. Small, frail, a slip of a woman with angry bruises and red chafe marks around her wrists and ankles. A split and puffy lip distorted her face. He rode the wave of anger at the sight of such mistreatment -- not the time, not the time, as his odd, new inner sense told him. He kept silent until Tatsuo had, with the consideration of an unpolished gentleman, led the Helpmeet to Guy, laid a hand on the man’s shoulders, and spoke a quiet word for Guy’s ears alone. Lin Yao watched in amazement at Guy’s bow to the tiny bedraggled waif and her stillfearful stare suddenly lightening into a daring hope. Without looking, Lin Yao shot out his arm to clothesline Tatsuo and keep him from walking past. “Later,” Tatsuo warned, trying to push Lin Yao’s arm down. “The hells it’ll be later,” Lin Yao retorted, angry and low. “What’s going on here?” The commander snarled and scrubbed his palm over his beard in frustrated jerks. “Do you want to be the one to keep tabs on Gyen right now? No? Didn’t think as much. Let me go do my job, and you do yours. Go on as you’ve begun and make sure these men stay civil.” “Haven’t I already done enough for one day?” Lin Yao demanded, too late. Tatsuo had dodged left and made good his escape. “You think you’re smart now, don’t you?” He chafed under the assumption that once he’d given in, he’d roll over every time Tatsuo asked it of him. “Don’t you walk away from me!” he burst out, irritated beyond belief.

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Ignoring him, Tatsuo did just that, the hard line of his back telling Lin Yao he wasn’t getting anything more out of the man just then. Fighting the urge to wade in with fists flailing, Lin Yao slumped back in his familiar position, recrossed his legs at the ankles, and kept a tight watch on the men almost without conscious decision. What he saw next, he hadn’t expected, nor had he ever thought the day would come. In fact, he wasn’t at all prepared for this new development. Lust and arousal hit him fist-hard in the belly, fire flooded his veins, and he found himself standing straight and tall, shoulders back, head held high. Gyen led two Helpmeets his way, a toothsome, dark young woman and a tall, slender man with long, tangled blond hair who wore the bedraggled remains of what he suspected to be a prostitute’s outfit. Unable to stop himself he stared first at the plump woman, at her sloe black eyes full of compassionate intelligence, and then at the fair young man at her side. This blond stranger was the kind of man who’d always unnerved him with that particular brand of soul-deep intensity burning in his eyes. Lin Yao damn near heard his destiny clicking into place, just as he’d heard it over twenty years ago when his sentence was pronounced. Whoever these two were, they were his future, and he knew with an inescapable certainty that his life would never be the same. It’d be a lot more complicated, and no mistake. Therefore, he wasn’t really surprised at all when the twist he’d found himself in doubled over and tangled further. Gyen stopped the pair with a few words from his sly lips and nodded in his direction. The two, lovely lady and pale, almost saintly looking man -- saintly man? Lin Yao ran over the words in his head, and found he couldn’t shake off the rightness of them -- turned to look at Lin Yao, both sets of lips parted in surprise. Whatever this strange sense of fate was, did they sense it too? Lin Yao’s head ached. Gyen spoke again, a too-thin and too-pale hand gesturing as he murmured to them. The fair man looked away first, covering the lady’s dark fingers when she laid them to rest over his heart. Lin Yao caught sight of his small, wry grimace as he immediately removed her hand. A gesture he might have easily missed. Then, Gyen sent the man away; he went, limping awkwardly on an apparently crippled limb. Lin Yao turned his full attention to the lady, drinking in the sight of her, drowning fast and forgetting to care as she drew near. His ears roared with a rush of hot blood, and his heart hammered under his ribs. His prick, not titillated at all by any of the others -- except, perhaps, for the pale man who had been with her -- rose up undiminished when he glanced briefly past her to the lame man, straining full and firm against his clothes. “Behold, Ling,” Gyen said smoothly, presenting the beautiful woman to him as if she were a princess on her first visit to court. “Look what I’ve brought you.” Awe couldn’t stop Lin Yao’s tongue now he’d allowed it to be loosed, it seemed. “‘What?’” he drawled, fixing his attention on Gyen, scanning the man and curling his lip to

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show how very unimpressed he was by all the pomp and circumstance. “This is a ‘who,’ you chattering squirrel, and a lady at that. How about you show some of those Imperial manners? And I don’t mean those inner court courtesy cruelties, either.” Intrigue flashed in Gyen’s eye. “Fascinating. How do you know anything about refined circles?” “I’ve known my share of princesses, and there’s probably still a queen or two who remembers me fondly. Oh, I’m not lying. Think about it. I’m sure you know how the noble ladies love flirting with dark, dangerous men, the kind they’ve been warned about all their lives. They do get their thrills out of dallying with the wicked, don’t they? And then there were the jewels I stole from them once I’d curried their favor.” Lin Yao shrugged, deliberately taunting Gyen with his insolence. “Do you really want to hear my life story, or do you want to move this process along?” He turned away from Gyen and his nasty curiosity in favor of taking the woman’s small hand in his and pressing it, acutely aware of his ground-in farmer’s dirt and convict’s scars. Surprisingly, her palm was no fine lady’s, firm and strong as it was, and she didn’t have a drop of finely mannered demure timidity. She met his gaze without fear, measuring him with equal frankness, which appealed to him probably more than it should. When she smiled, he knew he was lost. “Hells,” he whispered. “What’s a beauty like you doing in a refuse pit like Sheol IV?” She smiled at him, revealing dimples. “Much the same as you, I’d expect.” “I doubt that.” “Everything all right, Lin Yao?” Tatsuo queried as he approached. Keeping one wondering eye on the lovely Nori, Lin Yao nodded to the commander, inquiring with a gesture whether or not he could borrow Tatsuo’s belt flask for a sip of water. The burly commander passed it over without comment, at the same time reaching behind him to pull someone forward, their identity obscured by his bulk. “Are you still good to walk?” “Who’s this?” Lin Yao asked without bothering to look again, lifting the flask to his mouth for a measured swallow of lukewarm water. An idea tickled at him and he glanced at the soldier guard. “Tatsuo, is this your Helpmeet?” Tatsuo shook his head. “No, not mine. I’ve got a different fellow.” He blushed. “What I’ll do with him, I hardly know. His name’s Isao.”

The shoe pinches a bit when it’s on the other foot, doesn’t it? Lin Yao thought cynically. He might have said as much if Gyen hadn’t piped up before he could. “I’ve a Helpmeet as well.” He pointed past them to a small, dour and dark youth sulking across the way. “My lovely new companion is called Mor. Isn’t he a beauty?” Lin Yao ignored Gyen. “Who’s this, then?” “Your Helpmeet.” Tatsuo helped the man behind him limp forward. Limp.

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The blond dressed as a whore. He locked gazes with Lin Yao. “Tatsuo, he appears to be spoken for already.” “I am.” Lin Yao gestured to Nori. “She’s my Helpmeet.” Tatsuo stared at him. “No, she’s not.” He nodded to the man beside him. “He is.” Lin Yao groaned. Yet another twist to his already convoluted day. Fantastic. “What’s going on here?” Gyen tittered meanly. “Tatsuo, you must be confused. I’ve already brought Lin Yao his Helpmeet, and there she stands. One convict, one partner, as the Tribunal law declares.” Tatsuo swore. “I’ve checked the manifest. Go review it yourself, if you like.” “I will.” Gyen sketched a mocking bow and walked to the door through which the Helpmeets had entered. They watched as he called up records on a comm unit and examined them. Gyen’s eyebrows lifted. When he returned, it was with a seething look. “If this is some kind of fool-ass joke --” Lin Yao started to say. “Curiouser and curiouser, Ling. You appear to have been assigned two Helpmeets, one listed on the primary manifest and a different one listed on the backup manifest. One of them belongs to you, one does not, but who’s who? One may not even belong amongst this august company.” “So what do we do?” Lin Yao wanted to know. His head hurt. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his male Helpmeet. He wondered at the man’s fleeting expression of terror but was distracted when Tatsuo spoke. The commander scratched his jaw, looking both rueful and pissed off. “Gods help us. Take them both home with you, I guess, while we look into what’s going on. Might take a while.” Lin Yao groaned. Trouble, he’d predicted from the Helpmeets, and trouble he had indeed. Just perfect.

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Chapter Six The first lesson of an Oiran was not, as idle gossipers thought, how to please a man in bed -- or a woman, if the clucking hens were actually cackling cockerels. Men did so love fantasizing about two women engaging in sexual congress. But beds? Unimaginative. Beds were ordinary places, in the opinion of the Oiran, far more suited for sleeping. Why confine themselves to one mattress or mat when every ordinary spot in a dwelling could be so much more? An Oiran worthy of her training could inspire lust in a man or woman no matter where she stood; if she was a truly talented Oiran, it would take no more than a smile or a beckoning finger to drive a client mad with need. Nori was not a true Oiran, no. She had not been born to the position nor come from a family with enough money to buy her a place. Her ancestors were peasants and servants, and until she’d broken free with the wild plan of passing herself off as the genuine article, she’d been no more than a slave-of-all-work in a training house for the Oiran proper. Lack of a title, however, did not mean she was not as good as the best of them. Thus, she knew the first true lesson and had long carried it in her heart for safekeeping. The genuine skills of the Oiran were learning, foremost, the art of silence and all that quiet moments contained. If you knew why someone refused to speak of a thing, you knew it mattered to them, and with a minute amount of effort, you also knew what they needed to soothe the troubled waters of their tangled thoughts.

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Thus, Lin Yao and I became the beneficiaries of Nori’s knowledge and talents.

***** Walking three paces behind Lin Yao, but not out of any sense of misplaced propriety, Nori watched him and cataloged what she saw. Stiff gait, a constant, faint twitching that indicated that he itched to stop her and Ko and question them, and a painful tightness to his jaw that showed his pride would not let him do so. Lin Yao was a complex man, but for a near Oiran, he was simplicity itself to understand. Her new lord was a strong, hard man struggling to comprehend how his world had come to turn itself on its end. Anger, thought Nori. And fear. He’s afraid of all these new changes we Helpmeets will bring, I think, and worried about what those changes will be. She walked behind Ko not out of respect, either, nor to study him as she did Lin Yao, but to keep careful watch on him and to be ready to help if his injury caused him to stumble. Hands tucked into her ill-fitting tunic’s sleeves in the way of a proper Oiran, Nori smoothed her expression into serene calmness, untroubled as still water, all the while keeping her brain busy and her senses on high alert. She took note of everything around her, from the slightly sticky quality of the red dust on the dirt “road” they traveled along, choked with spindly weeds and jagged chunks of rock, to the stunted cherry trees on either side, to the mostly emptied fields of barley and rye, to the ungainly black birds occasionally flying past, reminding her of ravens. She took note of Ko’s ridiculously stubborn insistence on walking despite his damaged leg and sighed in silent frustration. Honestly. Men! Did he think he’d win a prize or perhaps gain Lin Yao’s approval for refusing to take care of a dangerous injury? Tatsuo had offered them a cart, a rickshaw, and then finally tried to press a crutch on Ko. Ko had refused every helping hand, even hers. He had shuttered himself away inside his skin and become nothing more than a riddle enfolded in an enigma, one that even an Oiran would lose her patience over. Compared with Ko’s annoying mask, Lin Yao’s seething anger came almost as a relief. Almost. Nori knew, probably before Lin Yao did, when he’d stop abruptly, turn on his heel, and glare at her. When he did, she was ready to pause and listen. His words, however, surprised her enough to throw her off balance. “You’re not a real Oiran, are you?” Her lips parted as if she’d never had a day’s training in her life, the small reaction clearly enough to tell him he’d been right. “Figured not.” He tugged at the ragged hems of his tunic sleeves, an unconscious motion she had seen before, though not in years, remembering men who came to the Oiran

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who shouldn’t have. Highwaymen and thieves, rogues well beloved by the women, who used the sleeve tugging as part of their system of code signals to one another, though not to the ladies they frequented. Interesting. “I thought, at first -- it’s been a long time -- you have those airs and graces they breed into the Oiran I knew when I was younger and still a free man, but you also have the rough hands of a common-bred woman. I get you, now. I think I know why you ended up here. Pretended to be what you weren’t, didn’t you?” Damnable man. Nori scowled at him. “You’re very wise,” she complimented him sarcastically. His insights were bad enough, but what almost disturbed her more was how powerfully she craved him as a woman desires a man -- and for what reason? Loyalty? Duty? She couldn’t wrap her head around it, but while her thoughts were tangled and confused, her passion was already fixed on him. It made no sense at all. The only other man she’d wanted like this, instantly, hot and dangerous, raw in a way a true Oiran would never contemplate, was Ko. If they’d been alone in the sentencing antechamber, she’d have let Ko tear open her garb and given him lusty permission to act out every filthy fantasy she’d known he must have yearned after. She’d have let him luxuriate in all his dirty, wicked, wonderful experiments, and would have wound her legs around his waist and begged for more when he fucked her. The madness hadn’t faded until long after her sentencing. Long nights later on the ship, she hadn’t been able to sleep without closing her eyes and remembering the heat of Ko’s passion, imagining his lips and tongue and fingers, and stroking her wet quim until she came with his name silent on her exhaled breath. Ko was a fluke, she’d decided. He’d called to her on some sort of hormonal level, his yang too strong to be denied. She had thought she’d never see him again, and finally, near the end of their journey, she’d managed to put him out of her mind. Then, he’d saved her life, gotten himself maimed, and her instinctive urge to help, as she’d help a stranger, had changed in a second, all her passion and her hunger for him raging back in a fiery flood that left her breathless. She’d hidden it quickly and didn’t think he’d noticed. Who would, after they’d just been shot? And before she’d even had a chance to process what had happened, she had been taken to Lin Yao. At her first sight of his harshly angled, proud face, she’d known that lightning could strike twice. Lin Yao inspired passion so strongly in Nori that she thought her heart might burst. With all this to consider, Nori decided she had best swear herself to silence until she was required to speak, or until she understood what was going on, whichever came first. A hard resolution to stick to when walking in the company of both Ko and Lin Yao.

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Lin Yao tugged his cuffs again as he watched her as narrowly as a deer ready to walk across his path. The movement triggered a flood of new memories, stories she’d heard when she was too young and ushered out of the private rooms of the Oiran, but old enough to remember what they had said and who the Oiran remembered as the best men they’d ever gone into service with. As if they were swooning shepherdesses, they spoke of highwaymen, whispering lushly about brigands, thieves, and rogues whom they risked a death sentence to service. The Oiran had delicately fanned their faces even a decade or more afterward, murmuring behind lace fans of the men who snapped crisp linen cuffs in their silent introduction. Gazing back at Lin Yao now, taking in the elegant lines of his profile, his tight rump, and his strong, sturdy legs, and catching glimpses of tensile, muscled arms and once-elegant hands, Nori suddenly understood why the Oiran had giggled and told tales out of school about those dashing brigands. Her pulse throbbed as she imagined Lin Yao stopping her carriage after the gongs had rung for midnight, leaning in her window to demand her jewels or an equal worth to their weight in kisses. Desire tingled between her legs, her quim warming. Perhaps everything the Oiran said about such man was true, that they could steal your good sense away, as well as your virtue, your reputation, and every cent you owned, then leave you thanking them for it, begging for more. Nori stepped back quickly. So, now she knew why he was here, and who he’d once been. “As you’ve already guessed, I’m not a true Oiran, no. And you’re not a common man. You seem at home on a road. I wonder why that is.” Her question and her demeanor both seemed to irritate Lin Yao. He lashed out against the latter. “Why are you so calm?” “Shouldn’t I be? Why do you ask? Does it bother you?” Lin Yao huffed. “Hells yes, it does. And am I asking? I’ve spent twenty years not asking anyone questions. Not wanting to know, not caring a red credit’s worth. Looks to me like I don’t have a reason to keep my mouth shut anymore, do I? No, not me. I can say any fool thing I want, as it looks like trouble is going to keep on coming my way whether I’m quiet or shouting.” His jaw worked, betraying a rage that concerned Nori. Ko, too, she thought, as he stopped trying to disguise the pain of his injury and turned to Lin Yao with the watchful wariness of a wounded feline. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” Lin Yao said abruptly. “Whatever this is. None of it. Didn’t want a Helpmeet, didn’t want a cripple and a woman slowing me down --” that hurt, but Nori let it gloss over her; he spoke out of anger alone -- “I don’t have time for this, and I don’t care to make the time.” “There’s nothing we can do about it now,” she replied.

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Her words incensed Lin Yao more, if that were possible. “You think I don’t know that? Don’t play stupid, woman, because I can see right through you.” “Can you?” Lin Yao’s temper flared darkly hot. He closed the distance between them and seized her chin between work-worn finger and scarred thumb, jerking her head upright until she met his eyes. Angry now too, less Oiran than woman, she faced him without any fear. “You and he, you’re nothing but trouble, aren’t you?” he growled, releasing his grasp on her face as if disgusted. “I wish to all the hells that you and your bunch had never come. What gods are laughing at me now? What kind of joke are they playing on us bastards? Why?” “The gods, if there are any, don’t ever need a reason,” Ko said, so quietly Nori almost didn’t hear him. Lin Yao either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He crowded her closer, the ripe scent of a hardworking man’s body flooding her senses, blocking everything else out but the burnished color of his skin, the rock-solidness of his muscles, and the towering personality just barely restrained within his shell, his heat such that she thought he would reduce her to ashes if he touched her again. Her heart thundered and her lips were dry as dust. She licked them, unable to look away from Lin Yao. “I wish by all the hells you’d never come here,” he ground out once more, then sealed his mouth over hers. Not a gentle kiss, hardly what you could call a kiss at all. It was more of an animalistic claiming. Nori moaned low in her throat and threw her arms around his neck, a disturbing shock of coming home warming her limbs. She knew, though it had never happened, what it’d feel like to spread her legs for this man, how his tongue would tickle her clitoris when he was in the mood to tease, and exactly how it’d make him come apart when she took his prick in her mouth. She could vividly imagine what it’d be like to lock her ankles at the small of his back and ride out a merciless fucking deep in her core, driving her higher and higher until she flew to pieces. All these thoughts and more flashed behind her eyes at dizzying speed. When he broke away without warning or any kind of care, pushing her from him and stepping back, tearing his hands through his hair, she could only sway drunkenly, desperately hungry for more of his hard lips and ruthless tongue devouring her whole. Behind them, Ko stood white as the moon, as luminous and far away, and as tightly wound up as an abacus. He didn’t speak. He barely blinked. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came out.

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Lin Yao stepped further back, higher on the road, swinging his gaze between the two of them. “It’s like that for both of you,” he said roughly. “I’ll do what I have to do by law, but outside of what I must, you stay away from me. I didn’t want…didn’t need…fuck.” Nori let him go, too caught up in trying to balance without falling, her head reeling as if she’d drunk far too much rice wine. Her quim ached and her hands trembled. Like it or not, this was the road down which they now traveled. Therefore, she swallowed down her uneasiness, refusing to call it fear, and forced away her body’s urgent demands, refusing to give in to their shouting, and did the only thing she could do at the moment. She kept walking, head high, going to meet her fate. Nori had never accepted her lot in life without an eye to bettering it, and she wasn’t going to start now. Not even if it proved to be the end of her.

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Chapter Seven Lin Yao kept up the fastest pace he could in all good conscience enforce while behind him, that damn fool Ko insisted on walking on a laser-damaged leg. Easy on the eye or not, Ko apparently didn’t have the sense that would be needed to come in out of the rain, did he? Lin Yao strode stubbornly ahead, refusing to consider the insistent urge to go back and help Ko, to support the idiot’s weight on his shoulder and get him back to safety. He ignored the needling knowledge deep inside him that Ko was far too valuable a prospective ally and far too precious a possible lover to risk losing. No. He walked faster, determined not to care. Let Ko keep up if he could. It wasn’t like Nori wouldn’t keep pace with the man in her maddeningly calm Oiran way, forever extending a hand and offering a smile that went no further than her lips. Damnation. This had to end. He didn’t want to waste his time dithering over maybe and what if. He didn’t want to be the sort of man who thought over things until he made himself sick. Never had, never would. Not like Nori, who he could tell never stopped, and not like Ko, though he didn’t want to know what went on behind the porcelain-skinned man’s white-blue eyes. Refusing to look back, he forged their path to the shack he called home in the center of the patch of harsh land he’d fought and killed for twenty years ago. The shack itself had been built and rebuilt a dozen times, whether burned to cinders, infested by plagues of woodeating insects, toppled over in the killing winds, and torn down by the jealous. Lin Yao rebuilt every time, showing the convicts and soldier guards that he wasn’t going anywhere, and he wasn’t lying down to die. Before today, no one and nothing had ever knocked him out of his simple, hard-won life. His life alone.

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Now, in the space of a few hours, he’d been thrown so far off course he wasn’t sure he’d ever find his way back, and in his mind it was all due to the invasion of those godsdamned Helpmeets. If they hadn’t come… Despite his best intentions, when Lin Yao reached the plank door of his home, he paused on the threshold to glance back at Nori and Ko, following far behind. His prick surged at the sight of them, Ko, so tall and fair, and Nori, small and voluptuous. Her arm was wound about Ko’s waist, and her almond-tilted eyes were fixed on the pale man’s face. Ko, his far-too-pretty mouth shut tight, seemed unable to look away from Nori, as if she’d cast a spell on him. Lin Yao had never believed in magic. Foolishness and fairy tales, in his opinion. Now, given the way his lust for them held him in inexorable thrall, he wondered, nauseated and chilled to the bone, if he was under some strange enchantment. Didn’t matter, though. He wouldn’t let it matter. If they were Helpmeets, then that made him their lord and master. Lin Yao hated the idea of becoming that sort of man, but by damn, if that’s what it took, he’d use his position to get them dancing to his tune. Decisions made and determination reinforced, he waited at the door to his shack for them to catch up, which they did with such a painful slowness as to make him grind his teeth. Anger, though, anger was good. Wrath made it far easier to drown out other strong emotions. “Get inside,” he said shortly, not lingering on Nori’s lovely lips or Ko’s soft, fair hair. Most definitely not thinking about the taste of Nori’s mouth or how he wanted to wind Ko’s pale locks around his fingers and hold the man’s head steady while Ko licked a hot, wet trail up the length of his prick…

Fuck. Lin Yao shook off the haze that had settled over him, shrugging off the chill at the back of his neck at realizing how easy it had been to fall, regardless of his determination. He’d have to lay down the ground rules for them, he thought. Get it straight among all three of them that how they’d begun was not how they’d go on. To that end, he slammed the shack’s door behind Ko once the man had limped his way inside and pushed past them to take lord’s pride of place at the head of the shack’s single room. “Sit down,” he ordered, waving in the general direction of the one chair he owned, resolutely not caring who got the chair and who got the dirt floor. Not until Nori cleared her throat and he looked at her without meaning to. He fell silent, words dying unborn. Even grimed from travel and their long walk to his homestead, even likely starving and parched for want of water, she held herself with the poise of a queen and looked as lovely as the goddesses he’d long since rejected.

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Satisfied she had his attention, Nori nodded to Ko, who hung grimly to the back of Lin Yao’s chair, too stubborn to sit before a lady. “His injury,” she murmured. “He’ll develop an infection if it’s not cleaned, and then he’ll die.” She didn’t pull any of her punches, did she? Lin Yao wanted to like her for that, he truly did. Damn her. “What do you want me to do about it?” One delicate eyebrow lifted. “Tell me where to find water clean enough for washing his wound and, if you have any sort of healing balms, where I can find them.” He scoffed at her request. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re short on little luxuries like medicine out here.” “The Tribunal doesn’t care if you live or die?” “If you truly have to ask, then you’re far less intelligent than I gave you credit for, woman.” She didn’t bat an eyelash. “My name is Nori, not ‘woman.’ And I know exactly what the Tribunal thinks of criminals too poor to pay the fines that would avoid their being sent to places like Sheol IV.” He frowned. “Then why --” “Why did I ask? To see what you’d say. Ko, sit down. I can’t hold you up much longer.” Flakes of pink brightened Ko’s milk-pale cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, instantly moving, clumsily but obediently, to sit in the chair. Clever, clever Nori. She’d known the exact means she needed to get Ko to do what she wanted, hadn’t she? Lin Yao wondered if she already knew how to tweak his strings fit for a grand master of puppetry, figured that was his own dumb question for the hour, and bit back a bitter laugh. Nori laid her small, dark hands on Ko’s shoulders as if protecting him. “No medicines. No bandages either, I assume. What do convicts do when they’re wounded like this?” “Die, mostly.” Nori nodded as if that came as no surprise to her. “Not here,” she said. “Not now. Not with a man I can save.” Rising above Lin Yao’s snort of astonished surprise, she faced him down without a qualm or flinch. “Show me where the water is, and where I can start a fire. If water boiled until the poisons are gone is all I have, then I’ll make use of it. Understand me about this, Lin Yao, I won’t sit by and do nothing.” Dark humor flirted over her lips. “That goes for all of us, you understand.” Lin Yao bristled. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve, woman.” “It’s Nori. And yes, I do. You’re not the first one to tell me that. Water, if you please.” “No. Not yet.” He jabbed a finger at her in the hopes that she’d shut up long enough for him to get this out. “First of all, we talk, the three of us. One conversation, one time only, and then you can go drown yourself in the water supply for all I care.”

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Nori stroked Ko’s hair. Ko’s light blue eyes had long since hazed over with exhaustion and pain, yet at her touch he moaned softly and pushed into her hands. Watching them, Lin Yao nearly went mad with the onrush of fiery, wanton lust for not just Nori, but for Ko’s elegant hands and his lips as well, which he’d swear were born for sucking pricks. She kept her mouth shut. After several beats of silence, during which Lin Yao watched her with the keenness and fierce intensity of a hungry hawk, he nodded grimly and told them what was on his mind. “You’re not welcome here. I can’t make it any plainer than that. Helpmeets and men like me, who’ve long since forgotten how to be civil -- it’s a bad idea, a miserably rotten notion, and it’ll get more of us convicts killed than a shipment of pox-ridden blankets.” Nori barely blinked, radiating her maddening serenity at him, never ceasing to pet Ko’s hair. “That’s probably all true. Still, you’ll only have to deal with a double helping for a short while. One of us will be out of your hair once they’ve figured out who’s yours by right. No doubt Gyen already has the investigation well in hand.” “Did I say you could interrupt me?” “You didn’t tell me not to, and I’m no longer bound to pretend to obey the code of the Oiran. I’m listening because I want to hear what you’re going to say, not simply because you demand I do so. Go on, if you’re going on, and then I’ll get to Ko’s injury all the sooner.” She caressed the other man’s temples. “If you’re only going to rant and rave and tell us things we already know, I’ll pass.” Lin Yao stared and spluttered, nearly lost for coherency. “By all the hells, woman,” he expostulated at last. “Do you enjoy driving men out of their minds?” Her lips quirked. “I’ve been told I’m very good at it.” “I’ll bet you are.” Lin Yao’s hard prick, undeterred by the anger choking his heart and breath, jerked in his loose pants. Stickiness leaked from the tip, dampening the taut muscles in his lower abdomen. He wanted, more than bread or salt or air, to pull Nori away from Ko, toss her bodily on his bed, and throw himself atop her. To strip off her hideous tunic along with her maddening superiority and savage her with his mouth on hers, on her breasts, and between her legs, to drive her until she screamed and proved she was vulnerable to defeat, until he lost himself in the tight, wet heat of her quim and claimed her as his own… Lin Yao gave a frustrated yell and turned away, whirling back after three steps. “Interrupt me again, and I won’t be responsible for my own actions. Are we clear?” Nori said nothing. Thought she’d bait him, did she? Hah! “I’m not a good man. I’m not a provider, and I’m not a caretaker. You two are on your own from here on out. Understood? Live under my roof or sleep outside, I don’t care. Don’t come near me. Don’t talk to me unless I speak to you first. Stay out of my way. Make a pest

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or a pain out of yourselves and I’ll leave you out on the dark plains for hungry wild animals to find you.” He stopped. “What in the hells are you laughing at, woman?” “Nothing.” Nori covered her mouth with the proper demureness of a noble. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Tell me, right now.” “Are you giving me permission to speak?” Her eyes danced with ill-hidden humor, probably undisguised on purpose. He growled at her, hoping she’d understand he was beyond the limits of his patience. “As you wish, Lin Yao.” Nori smoothed down Ko’s hair and stood tall, her breasts thrust forward, breasts a man could happily suffocate in, her hands at her waist, emphasizing the way it dipped above the swell of her lush hips. “As Helpmeet, I’ll remember my place. I’ll serve you as the law decrees, and I won’t bother you otherwise.” “Huh.” Lin Yao grunted, suspicious. “What’s the catch?” She splayed her fingers delicately over her heart, resting them on the rise of her full breast. “No catch, Lin Yao. Only a question.” He waited, knowing she’d ask even if he told her to leave be whatever it was. Nori didn’t disappoint, though the instant she’d voiced her question he wished he’d bound a gag around her mouth from the start. “A Helpmeet isn’t only to help out around here. A Helpmeet warms his or her master’s bed. One of us must go; I accept that as the law. But until then…” The hand on her breast trailed down between them, lewd yet so erotic he shuddered violently. She saw, damn her, and her voice was thick as smoky honey when she went on. “Which of us do you want naked in your arms, Lin Yao? Or do you want both?”

Both, Lin Yao thought right away, though he clamped his lips hard over the response. “Well?” “Neither,” he bit out, nerve breaking. He flung himself toward the door. “I don’t want either of you for anything, and don’t you dare to ask me again.” He burst out into the night, closing his ears to anything further that might sound behind him, and stalked in the direction of his fields. Rye made a much better companion, in his opinion. Gods be damned, what had he done to drag all this down on his head?

***** And so it was that the three of us came to our first stalemate, or so it would seem at first glance. I found, very quickly, that the reality was quite different.

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Chapter Eight I don’t remember much that took place at that first day in my new master’s home. My mind whirled with alarm over what had come to pass. I hadn’t taken someone’s place among this group, as I should’ve done. Instead, I’d had been tossed in like an extra bun in a baker’s dozen, and thus, the mix-up with Helpmeet assignments could be the only result. I was also dazed by the pain from the laser burn, which had grown with every step on the rough and rocky road until I could think of little else. Not only because it hurt, mind you. If what I had felt was only pain, I could have risen above such, as I had been taught well under the heavy hands of the monks and had had cause to reinforce those lessons time and time again with each beating I “earned.” Pain, in truth, was the least of my concerns. Do you remember what I said about the newfound clarity that came to me while on the transport shuttle? Yes? That clarity did not fade. When I was shot, I was acutely aware of each thin layer of skin crisping around the laser hole, of the deadly light arrowing into meat and bone. When I fell, it was as if I heard the secret whispers of the air parting around me. And from there, my strange new sense of clarity only grew stronger. When I forced myself to take one stubborn step after another, it was in the hopes that pain would overcome me, so I could stop hearing the anger in the drumbeat tattoo of Lin Yao’s

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heart, could stop listening to the hidden hitches of fear in Nori’s breath, could stop sensing the flow of blood to his prick and her quim while, as they argued, they grew as ravenous for one another as I… As I was for Nori and for Lin Yao. If the ghost of the peasant woman had shown herself then, I might well have bolted like a frightened rabbit, but I fooled myself into thinking that if I were only able to run, I would’ve left Nori and Lin Yao behind long ago…and it would have been the death of me. Perhaps that is why she did not appear during that encounter. I realized how foolish I had been to ever imagine I could’ve escaped from a hunter as keen and intelligent as I now knew Lin Yao to be, though he might have gladly let me go. I considered trying to leave regardless, once I had bound my wounds. But at the thought of never seeing Nori or Lin Yao again, of never soaking up their hidden and not-so-hidden fires, or never tasting her or learning his flavor… Well, that particular pain nearly bowled me over. Yet if I did not run, when the sly fox Gyen made his inquiries -there was no doubt they’d be quite detailed and thorough -- and discovered from the Tribunal that I had lied and tricked my way into this bid for freedom, I would be sent back to the Emperor Worlds or, more likely, executed on the spot. The concept of death bothered me far less than the idea of permanent separation from Nori and Lin Yao. With the peasant woman hot on my trail, I’d have some company; Nori and Lin Yao, though -- I belonged with them, despite the fact I could not explain this certainty at the time. I find it hard enough to puzzle out now, sometimes. So you see my problem. I might have dithered forever over the question of how best to untangle my heart and make my escape, or at least long enough for the decision to be irrevocably taken out of my hands, if clever Nori had not acted first. Nori has always and will forever amaze me.

*****

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The water Lin Yao had directed her to, a butt of rain cleverly gathered behind his shack, didn’t fool Nori for an instant. This was not what he drank from, that much was apparent from the sulfurous taste when she tried a drop. She might have hated him for such a cruelty, save for when he came back without a word to dig out a rough cloak and sling it around his shoulders -- the nights were chillier here than she’d have expected from the heat of the day -- and she mentioned the taste, ever so mildly, she’d been intrigued by his reaction. Lin Yao had darkened, almost as if he blushed, and grumbled about how he hadn’t meant for her to drink the rainwater. She’d wanted it for cleaning out Ko’s laser burn, hadn’t she? The good drinking water came from the spring, which he would not show her tonight. She was to take care of Ko, or so she supposed from his surly gestures, and get out of his way to sleep wherever she could find a place. For all that, when Lin Yao’s gaze fell upon his stuffed sleeping mat, he hissed out a curse and stormed back out of his hut. She could have slept there, if she’d liked. Instead, she guided Ko as she would a sleepy child, helping him lie down, removing his soiled leather garb as gently as possible, and then busying herself trying to make him more comfortable. Poor man. He’d retreated deep within himself, a tactic she had seen more than a few men employ when they needed to escape but could not or would not run from their troubles. His eyes were open, staring at nothing while she heated a rusted old kettle. She washed his wound with the cooling, boiled water, covering his abused flesh with strips torn from her own tunic. She didn’t think he even heard her when she crooned soft songs in the old languages to ease him into sleep. For that matter, she wasn’t altogether sure he’d succumbed to slumber when his eyelids slipped shut and his breathing eased into a shallow, steady rhythm. “Who were you?” she murmured, sitting on the pallet by his side and brushing tangles of silky electrum-pale hair from his cheeks. “What are you running from, Ko?” Aha. His chest hitched so subtly a less well-trained woman would never have caught the falter. Nori did and added it to her growing store of knowledge. She’d understand him soon. She hoped. “Please don’t be afraid of me, Ko,” she coaxed. “Never be afraid of me.” He gave her no response. Nori tilted his face up, studying the perfect beauty she found there, from the angle of his pronounced cheekbones to the fullness of his pale, pink lips to the heavy, dark gold lashes resting on white cheeks, all framed by the heavy fall of his strange, wonderfully shaded hair. In her eyes, Ko was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and yet…and yet, his handsomeness was not why she’d approached him in the Tribunal antechamber. She had seen in Ko the spirit of a truly good man, the sort she’d only ever thought existed in fairy stories, and had to discover if he was real or if she had lost her mind.

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What had happened to a man like Ko to push him along the path to Sheol IV? What sort of woman, of lover, would she be to him if only she could? “You are the challenge of a woman’s life,” she whispered, tracing the shadows under his closed eyes. “If only we were free, Ko, me from my past and you from whatever monsters haunt yours.” Ko stilled, far too quickly for a man who pretended sleep. “It doesn’t matter.” She tried to soothe him, willing him to believe her, for it was the truth. “Whatever your secrets, they’re safe with me. Why would I tell anyone anything?” Ko’s index finger twitched. Nori sighed quietly and bent to kiss his cheek. “Honor me with your trust, Ko.” When she traced the shell of his ear with the tip of her tongue and whispered, “Sweet man,” he shuddered, and she knew she had him. “Sleep,” she commanded. “Rest. I’ll go and look for willow trees, if any grow here, and proper drinking water. If I find what I seek, I’ll come back with bark to brew into a tea.” She smoothed her hand, regretful as ever for its roughness, over his forehead. “Sleep.” Standing, she drew her tunic over her head, baring her nakedness without thought or shame. Modesty was only a part of an Oiran’s life before the tea ceremonies were finished; it was certainly not part of hers now. She knew what she had to do. What she wanted to do, despite her confusion. Ko, the beautiful and the gentle, was the sort of man girls dreamed of. If Nori let herself, she could still slip joyfully into those fantasies and while away the night curled up against him, pressed to his side, humming soft songs, and coaxing him inch by inch to fall in love with her, if he hadn’t already, and if she hadn’t known she’d loved him almost from the moment he’d first spoken to her. If only…but no. Nori knew her path. Her face warmed, a flush of heat spreading through her chest; although she’d formed her plans with as little distracting emotion as possible, now that she was set on her path, she knew she hungered for the prize she sought. In truth, she hungered for Lin Yao as much as she did Ko. There couldn’t be two more different men, yet Nori craved Lin Yao’s hard, unforgiving touch as much as she did Ko’s gentle caresses and the press of his soft, inexperienced, yet intoxicating lips. Lin Yao could be won over. She knew, both as a would-be Oiran and a woman, how to conquer a man’s heart and win fealty as well as affection. She was going to spend the rest of her life on Sheol IV and refused to live that long without any joy or love or pleasures of the flesh. If he would let her, she could learn to love him as much as she now lusted for him. Therefore, as a wise woman would, Nori acted on her instincts. Naked, she left Ko behind -for now -- and walked out into the bitterly chilly night air of Sheol IV, pressing unafraid toward her destiny, walking until she found the hidden water supply, steam curling off the

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warm waters in which Lin Yao bathed. She knelt at the water’s edge before her master, her mind’s voice whispering its fealty. “Moon’s blessings upon you, Lin Yao,” she said, arms stretched before her and hands clasped. “Your bride has come to greet you.” Lin Yao spluttered, water splashing as he pivoted, startled. Despite her soaking, Nori had to swallow a laugh. If nothing else, even if she had perhaps gone mad, at least this promised to be fun. And if he fucked her as she craved, then she would become a queen.

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Chapter Nine Silver-toned melodies rose in slender, shimmering waves from water insects too small to be seen, except as tiny, gray flecks that sparkled around the reedy edges of the hot spring in which Nori had discovered Lin Yao. Above, the triple moons of Sheol IV, a large alabaster globe flanked by two smaller orbs, radiated a cool white glow not nearly as bright as three moons should have reflected. Purple clouds floated across their surfaces instead, casting flickering shadows on the hot spring, on Nori’s tender skin, and on Lin Yao, now standing as still in the water as if he’d been carved from fine marble and placed there as a trick. Nori regulated her breathing as the Oiran did, one of her first borrowed lessons, learned on the sly while she scrubbed the floors of the training rooms with a refined sea sponge. She could still feel the sting of the acidic soap and smell the false, hollow tang of mock roses. One breath, two breaths, three. She listened inside for the thrum of her heartbeat until she could measure and match the low pounding in her ears. She didn’t dare to lift her forehead from the grasses she knelt on, not even when the silence between them extended so far as to chill her heart with fear. What if her opening gambit had been false, a bad idea? After much too long, the water stirred faintly. She imagined translucent drops sliding down Lin Yao’s sun-browned, tightly muscled chest, gliding through the thin trail of hair leading down to his groin, just out of sight beneath the surface of the hot spring. The image drew a flush of heat to her quim, which ached with the need for him -- or Ko -- sliding between her thighs and burying him as deeply as he could go. She craved both men’s hot kisses, those searing brands on her breasts and throat, as equally as air and salt and life. She hoped she hadn’t made the wrong move. No men she’d ever known had ever inspired her to more than an appreciation of their looks, their wit, or their wallets; no, none that she’d known during her days as a humble servant, and none during her few glorious,

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stolen weeks after running away from her employers and posing as a true Oiran. Her brief foray into the new life she’d yearned for had been wonderful until she was recognized by one of the real Oiran she’d once slaved for -- who was visiting a friend at her new establishment -- and sent away to be punished. Even then, she hadn’t lusted after any of the men who’d paid her, much less cared for a single one of them. The Oiran didn’t indulge in the “fallacy of love.” Nori had never questioned that before. Now, she knew their disdain for true love was sheer idiocy. Poor Oiran! They might have riches enough to roll naked in, but they had no Lin Yao and no Ko among them. There was no one who cared two pearls’ worth about their hearts. She waited, sensing Lin Yao’s hesitation as the sound of the small splashes died. Was there confusion too? Anger? Yes, that would be like him. When he spoke, his voice was rusty around the edges. “What do you think you’re doing?” She had anticipated the question, of course, and already riddled out her answer. “What do you think, Lin Yao?” she replied, her words carefully modulated, seducing him with her honeyed tone, spiced with mischief enough to pique his interest. “I know what I think. I want to know if I’m anywhere close to right.” Nori was glad she could hide her smile behind her extended arms. “Do you believe you could possibly be wrong?” “Somehow, I don’t think so.” She understood his wariness. No one offered a convict anything of their own free will. She would have to teach him to trust her. “I’ve come to give myself to you,” she said simply, standing with the grace of an Oiran. Balanced lightly on her bare feet, she posed for him, displaying her full, dark-tipped breasts, the dip of her waist, the fullness of her hips, and the thick, dewy curls of her quim. She lifted and cradled her breasts, rolling the nipples between forefinger and thumb, humming low and sweet. A subtle, stolen look at Lin Yao filled her with relief enough to weaken her knees. She knew that dark glow in a man’s eyes almost better than her own face: hunger, ravenous hunger, warring with the last scraps of self-control because he thought he should. Lust tingled in her belly, heating her quim. More of her juices beaded up and slicked creamy between her thighs, gleaming in the moonlight. “Are you going to give me anything in return?” she asked. Lin Yao began to walk toward her, moving through the water as if he was its master. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” “As death.” Nori slid a finger between the folds of her lower lips, hissing when she brushed her clit. “And I will die if you don’t come out of the spring and fuck me right now, Lin Yao. Come and fuck me, or watch me perish.”

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“You’re a dangerous woman.” Darkness wrapped around every word he spoke. “One condition.” Her breathing hastened in time with her pulse. Her quim burned to have his prick sliding deep within. Any more delays and she wouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. “Name it. Quickly.” Lin Yao stopped, the head of his dark, heavy prick just visible above the water where it curved up to brush against his stomach. “You don’t ever bow or kneel or do anything similar before me again.” Nori blinked, surprised. “You don’t --” “I’m a convict, not a Lord. I won’t have anyone giving me sham honor. Understand? Go against me on this, and I won’t ever come near you as a sexual creature. You can get by with your own hand for the rest of your days, same as I’ve grown accustomed to doing with mine.” “One’s own hand is fine if one’s alone. We’re not, neither of us.” Nori decided to take charge and stepped into the shallow edge of the hot springs pool, water gliding over her ankles and up her calves in a soothing, soft wash, smelling of minerals and earth. “Do you really want to say no to this?” She lifted her breasts again and offered them to him. “No. I don’t.” Yet Lin Yao held steady. “Promise me. One more word, and this is all over.” Nori moistened her lips. Her fingers stroked the inside of her quaking quim, desperate for more. She was rapidly losing control of her words and deeds. “I promise. Now, either you come out, or I’m coming in after you.” Lin Yao grinned, startling her again. She hadn’t seen him smile before, and it did wonderful things for his face. “Good.” He retreated a few steps and stopped, waiting for her. “Come here.” She wasted no time, forgetting to be graceful as she rushed through the water to him. “You almost killed me,” she accused as she pressed her breasts to his hard chest, moaning when he wrapped his tough arms around her and pulled her tightly to him. The weighty length of his prick rested firmly on her belly. Lin Yao laughed, the deep, triumphant sound of a man who’d won a hard-fought victory. “What do you think you did to me?” He rocked into her, fingers skating down her hip and between them, searching. When he brushed over the throbbing lips of her quim, she moaned and writhed against him. “Gods be damned, I’ve lost my mind entirely.” “Don’t tease me.” “It’s been a long time, but I seem to remember women like some play before the main event.” “What do you call everything that’s passed between us since I first laid eyes on you?” She seized his prick in a firm grip, releasing it after a quick tug. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

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He guffawed. “You amaze me.” His fingers found their place and thrust knuckles-deep within her. Nori cried out, then pushed her hips forward. “More.” “More, hmm? More of this?” Lin Yao withdrew his fingers, then stroked them back in again. “Is this good enough for you? This is all you want?” She beat at his shoulder with one small, closed fist. “I will hurt you.” The hunger for him flamed hotter than any she’d ever known. Was it like this for other women, when they found men like Lin Yao? As though unless she had his prick inside her, she would surely perish? “Fuck me.” Lin Yao’s eyes flashed deep black. “All you had to do was ask,” he murmured teasingly, thumbing her lip so that she tasted her own cream and replacing the lost fingers with his prick. “Hold on to me.” Nori grasped his shoulders, fingers trembling, body quaking with tightly wound anticipation. “Now,” she ordered. “Your wish,” Lin Yao breathed against her lips, seizing them in a hard, punishing kiss. At the same time, he raised her leg and jerked their hips together, spearing her in a single, unforgiving thrust. As he penetrated her, Nori threw her head back and released a hoarse cry. Lin Yao nipped at her mouth, no gentleness in his kiss, nothing but a raw claiming. He pinned her inescapably with an iron-hard arm around her waist and then, thank the goddesses, began to fuck her in long, smooth strokes. Had she ever thought she could match an Oiran’s skill when it came to fucking? She must have been out of her mind. All Nori could do was hang on to Lin Yao with every drop of strength she could muster, kiss his demanding mouth, the taut skin stretched over his cheeks, and sink her teeth firmly into his jaw. He loosed a rough shout when she bit him and fucked her deeper, shoving in and out of her quim without pause. His prick, long enough to bump against the walls of her womb and thick enough that she hurt from the stretch needed to accommodate him, was simultaneously too much and yet not enough. “More,” she begged, dragging her nails down his back, gasping at the guttural groan that drew from him. “More, gods damn you!” He bit at the curve of her throat. “Bossy little thing, aren’t you?” he rasped out. “What do you want? Tell me.” “I don’t -- I don’t know.” “Maybe something an Oiran never got, huh? Or maybe that you never got enough of, hmm? A man like me,” he boasted between harsh drags of air, growling the words against the upper swells of her breasts, chuckling when she slapped playfully at him for his cocky bragging. He kneaded one mound and then the other, his pressure such that she knew she’d have finger-shaped bruises in the morning.

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Nori moaned, thrashing her head from side to side. He’d undone her, completely and totally, leaving nothing but a woman-shaped envelope over a twisted, tangled knot of lust. She used the water to buoy her free leg up, locking her ankles behind his back. Both stopped, Lin Yao cursing and Nori piercing the skin over his shoulder blades as they struggled, together, for control. “Can’t last much longer,” he warned her, tilting his head back. His features were drawn tight, his mouth a narrow, lipless line from the effort not to come. “Ready for me?” “Yes.” Nori squeezed her legs about him, drawing him as deep into her quim as was physically possible. “Fast. No mercy.” “No mercy,” he rumbled, dragging his callused fingertips in a searing line down her breasts and belly. He teased momentarily at the sopping curls of her mons, then chuckled low and triumphant. “Go.” Before she could ask, Lin Yao had thrust his fingers in her folds and found her throbbing clitoris. He brushed the sides, quick-quick, then pinched the hot bit of flesh between thumb and forefinger and pulled, slamming his prick home. Nori could no more have bitten back her long, high scream to the heavens as she fell apart than she could have forced her heart to stop beating. She spasmed about Lin Yao, drumming her heels on his flexing ass, unable to hold on even for dear life. But she didn’t fall. He wouldn’t let her fall. They drowned in the moment together, Lin Yao’s hoarse shout muffled in her throat when his pumping lost rhythm and, with his prick buried in her clenching quim, he shot thick gouts of seed that flooded her quim with hot stickiness. The shaking in his legs, the digging of his fingers in her waist, and the sharp bite of his kiss rolled Nori’s first climax into a second, the aftershocks stealing away her senses. When she returned to herself, one fragment of her mind at a time, with long pauses in between, Lin Yao was still as far inside her as he could go. He had drawn away from kissing her lips, and his mouth slightly parted. He stared at her, eyes hazed with satiation and alight with awe. He clumsily readjusted his hold on her to free a hand for cupping her cheek, his thumb stroking over her skin. “You’re… I hadn’t…gods curse my name and spoil my bones. If this is only a dream, I’ll have a serious quarrel to pick with you.” Laughter bubbled up in Nori’s throat, breaking free without asking permission. She pressed her face to Lin Yao’s neck, still too foggy-headed to form distinct thoughts but amazed at the power of what had just passed between them. She felt claimed and overcome, every inch a woman as she had never been before. She didn’t realize she’d gasped until Lin Yao pulled back, frowning. “Nori?”

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She blinked away the damning evidence of her thoughts, kissing him so he couldn’t see the wonder in her eyes. “Would it make you unbearable if I told you no man has ever made me come twice in a row, if they ever did at all?” Lin Yao rumbled, sliding down to cup and squeeze her ass. “Wait until next time,” he swore, kneading the firm flesh. His fingertips teased at the division between them, pushing slightly inside the furrow. “All the way, Nori. If you’re for me and I’m for you, then nothing’s off limits.” She gasped and clung to him, riding the soft yet intense spasms of a third climax. He bit off curses while her quim muscles clenched around his prick. “You’ll be the death of me,” Lin Yao gritted out. “Killing me like a man should go out.” Nori nuzzled his shoulder, struggling to breathe, knowing she looked like a whore but fiercely proud of who she was and what she’d done. She wasn’t just his Helpmeet now, but his mate, in every aspect possible but for his acknowledgment. There would be awkward questions and strange attempts to figure out what all this meant in the morning, but that was then, and this was now. Lin Yao slipped his prick from her quim, grimacing slightly. “Keep that warm and creamy for me,” he said crudely, his tone sizzling on her oversensitive nerves. “Going to taste you next. Lick both me and you out of your quim until you --” He stopped, straightening himself silently and rigidly, questing fingers gone hard and ruthless on her. Nori knew better than to ask aloud what he’d sensed. It seemed Lin Yao had heard something, sounds that shouldn’t have been there. The gods could be jealous of those who dared to be too happy, and there wasn’t much they wouldn’t do to knock them back down again, including physical attacks. She’d almost forgotten. She relaxed her hold, ready to spring free and dive under cover of the water, or to swim about and cover his back. Lin Yao held still as stone, only his eyes alert, flicking to and fro. Nori could’ve screamed with the tension. She moved her hands over Lin Yao, caressing him and pretending that she hadn’t noticed anything gone amiss, hoping to keep their observer ignorant of having been noticed. It would give her and Lin Yao an edge if push came to shove. A small gasp sounded as loud as the firing of a gun, drawing her attention -- and Lin Yao’s -- directly to the side of the hot spring, where a familiar face had risen from the reeds, white-gold hair cascading over his chest, lips slack with amazement and starving need. Seemingly unable to tear his gaze away, Ko extended his hand to them in silent request. Nori answered without looking at Lin Yao, knowing only what she wanted, what she knew with sudden, blazing clarity she and Lin Yao both needed to complete them. “Come,” she urged. “Come join us, Ko. Let us love you.”

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Chapter Ten Who could’ve turned down such a request? Not I, let me assure you. Yet who would’ve liked to make such a presentation of themselves to a woman like Nori and a man like Lin Yao as I knew I must have with my injury? Nori, gods and goddesses bless her, took the decision out of my hands.

***** “Come to me” Nori urged, beckoning the man with gentle curls of her finger. “That’s it. No fear, sweet Ko, no fear. Let yourself love us as you long to.” Lin Yao almost flinched as Nori opened her arms to enfold him, all deliberate seduction underscored by real affection, and stood on her tiptoes to reach his face. When she brushed his mouth, her lips mouth molded to his own, clinging, offering up again everything she was and all she had. He was just barely aware of Ko stepping into the water, wading toward them, not really registering the other man’s presence until Ko stood close enough to share his breath. Sounded like a good idea to Lin Yao all of a sudden, and maybe there was some magic in Nori’s embrace that inspired him with such madness as to turn away from her and seize Ko, hauling the man in to taste his mouth. At the initial brush of Ko’s cool lips, Lin Yao held his breath, stunned by the flavor of a good man’s kiss after nearly two decades. He’d been a boy the last time he’d done this and enjoyed it, barely old enough to grow a beard. The only lips he’d touched with his own since then had been mistakes. More, they had been hard and sour-breathed, given only as part of the price for a quick fuck.

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Ko wasn’t making a bargain here. As the man released a breathy moan and clung to him, eyes closed with the appearance of wanton passion, Lin Yao knew that for whatever baffling reason, Ko craved him like a drug, like water. It went to his head; Lin Yao decided then and there that no matter what Ko craved to do, Lin Yao would let him. He’d have his own fun too. Lin Yao growled, animal-like, forcing his tongue through the seal of Ko’s lips. The pale man tasted ever so faintly like dried plums, dark and rich and faintly spicy, the flavor of luxuries and decadence. “Gods,” he rasped into the other man’s mouth, devouring his breath. Ko’s tongue twined hesitantly around his, stroking the underside, as the foot of his uninjured leg hooked around Lin Yao’s ankle. “I’m yours,” he whispered, a brave soldier. “Take me. Do what you want with me.” “Don’t make an offer you’re not ready to fulfill,” Lin Yao warned, well aware of Ko’s tightly wound nerves. “Don’t make me do something that’s too much.” Ko’s eyelids fluttered open, starry lights pinpointed in his pupils. He looked as if he was drunk on the costly spiced wine Lin Yao had once lusted after back in the Emperor Worlds. “What makes you think anything would be too much?” Ko replied. “Please. Fuck me.” The dizzying rush Ko’s speech inspired drove away the last of Lin Yao’s caution and all of his restraint. He gathered Ko fully to him. The blond’s soft flesh molded to his demands as Lin Yao launched a sensual attack, pushing the other man forward with each ravenous kiss. He pressed his full length against Ko, pinning him there at his mercy. Ko lowered his eyelids halfway and gazed at Lin Yao as if he was drunk from Lin Yao’s touch. “Yes,” he breathed. “Give it to me.” “Fuck, yes,” Lin Yao snarled, barely hearing himself. His mouth claimed Ko’s again, thrusting his tongue over teeth and soft palate and under Ko’s own tongue, sucking on the tender flesh of lips that puffed beneath his savage demands. His hand found one small, taut ass cheek and kneaded the firmness of it. Gods, but Ko had a marvelous body. So much better than what he remembered of the gilded youths in the Emperor Worlds, so much more than what he’d dreamed about on long and lonely nights. He was unable to resist another fleeting taste of Ko’s mouth, though he forced himself to take a small taste only. “I haven’t fucked a man and enjoyed it or cared about his pleasure since I’ve been here. Don’t know how good I can make this.” Ko bit his kiss-swollen lip, seemingly dismayed. “Please…” “Hush, now. Hush.” Nori’s crooning startled Lin Yao and shamed him. He’d forgotten his second Helpmeet was there in the spring with them, a silent observer. “Nori, I didn’t mean --” “Shh,” she repeated, this time in Lin Yao’s ear, lips on the tingling shell. “Let me in?”

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“What?” Lin Yao shook his head, trying to work through the dizzying fog that demanded he shrug aside everything but pillaging pale Ko’s eager body. “You --” “Let me in.” Nori nuzzled his temple. “Please.” Lin Yao couldn’t say no to her either. He swallowed, his throat scraping dry. “All right,” he managed to say. “Join us.” The tickle of her lips firmed, becoming a kiss with the slickness of Nori’s tongue trailing down his ear, across his cheekbone and then drawing a circle under his open mouth. “You are a good lord,” she breathed before pulling back. “Kiss me too.” Lin Yao glanced quickly at Ko. Fair young men, as he recalled, didn’t like to share. Ko, though, curved his pretty, swollen red lips into a smile and nodded. “Both of us, if you want. We belong to you. Enjoy us if you want us.” Lin Yao squeezed his eyes briefly shut at the rush of lust coursing through him at Ko’s words. “Yes.” He pressed his mouth to the other man’s. “Gods, yes. More than anything.” Except he didn’t know how to orchestrate this, not that he’d ever say so. Two at once? How did that even work? Nori seized Lin Yao’s earlobe between her teeth and tugged. “Let me try this.” Lin Yao could no more have refused than he could have held his breath until he died. He nodded instead, too tense to say anything more, not while dealing with the fight to stand still between the heat and light pressure of two scorching bodies that belonged to him. He dragged his focus back to Ko, drinking in the sight of the pale man’s waking passion, and couldn’t resist taking his mouth in one more ravenous kiss. “All right,” he rasped out, loosening his hold on Ko. “What do you want to do?” “Mmm,” Nori purred, slipping behind Ko and offering him support, putting him between her and Lin Yao so they could enjoy the blond at the same time. “Like this,” she said, eyes dark with ravenous hunger. “Just like this.” Caught in the black glow of Nori’s eyes, Lin Yao didn’t understand at first. Not until nearly delicate movements caught his attention and he looked down to see Nori’s elegant hands with their long, tapered fingers sweeping gently over Ko’s chest, rubbing tiny circles over the taut flesh. Ko drew in a short, sharp breath, head arching back to butt into Nori’s soft shoulder. Lin Yao understood now. He glanced at Nori, who lifted the corner of her mouth in a faint smile and hooded her eyes before pressing her lips to the soft skin just below Ko’s ear, then trailed her tongue over the pulse Lin Yao could see beating there.

Slow, he told himself, fixing his determination. I’ll enjoy this madness, since I seem unable to stop being mad. Slow. Gentle. As long as I can. Make it good for both of them. Make it so good they’ll remember it forever.

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He carefully slid his palm around Ko’s waist and held him steady, then lowered his head to lick and suck at the opposite side of Ko’s throat. Ko hissed and cried out in appreciation. Lin Yao’s prick, already painfully hard, throbbed where it rested against Ko’s warm flesh, dampness seeping from the tip. Was Ko leaking too? Lin Yao bit back a groan at the thought. He hadn’t forgot how powerful a thrill that was, to smell and taste and caress a horny man through the demands of lust -- lust for Lin Yao because of what he did to and for his chosen lover. Lin Yao indulged himself with touches everywhere, light and careful, stroking out a memory he could keep forever. He skated his fingers over the firmness of Ko’s torso, learning the angles and the planes and the hot spots that made the other man cry out raggedly and thrust forward. He trailed firm lines down Ko’s belly, fascinated by the faded scars marring his otherwise smooth skin. He leaned in to lick the faint saltiness of the hollow beneath Ko’s throat, nudging his tongue in for a richer sample of his flavor. It would have been tempting to stay there for ages, and he might have done so if Ko hadn’t groaned and rolled his hips, pushing his throbbing prick against Lin Yao’s. He’d die if he didn’t have a taste. Carefully, he let the fingers resting on Ko’s belly glide down to circle over his prick. “Ever had someone suck you?” he asked in a raw whisper. “You’re about to.” Ko moaned, pushing his prick into Lin Yao’s questing hand. “Yes,” he said, breathless. “Will you? Please?” Light, warm pressure cradling his cheek surprised Lin Yao into looking up. It was a woman’s hand who had caught him, and a woman’s wide, lust-hazed eyes that gazed at him. “Yes,” Nori echoed. “He’ll be so beautiful like that.” Mischievous playfulness -- and it had been forever since he’d laughed during sex too -sparked in Lin Yao’s heart. “Want to help me make him fall apart?” Desire flared in Nori’s strained smile. “You first.” “Nice manners,” Lin Yao gibed, dizzy at the raw passion etched on Ko and Nori’s faces. “Me. Then you.” “Agreed.” Nori mouthed Ko’s neck, murmuring and pressing kisses to his shoulder. “Now. And let me watch you.” Lin Yao would not have denied her for the whole world and a king’s pardon on a silver platter, not that he’d have wanted to. Not anymore. “Keep him steady,” he directed her gruffly, staggering a few steps back as if drunk. Nori’s shapely arms tightened around Ko, one at the sharp angle of his hips and one around his waist, nudging him into a pose, putting him on display. Lin Yao had to count his own heartbeats for a moment so as not to lose control. Gods, they would drive him out of his mind, both of them, and when they did his last thoughts would be the kind legendary lovers only dreamed of.

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Ko stared at him rapaciously, the lust flaring so hotly in him that, together with Nori’s unwavering attention, Lin Yao thought they might roast him alive. “Lin Yao,” Ko said at last, barely seeming to breathe. “Gods. You would make a blind man weep for the sight of you.” Lin Yao’s cheeks warmed uncomfortably. What did Ko mean by that? He wasn’t anything special. Not like Nori, so supple and so womanly ripe. Not like Ko, with his soft fair hair and his beauty. The thought of Ko on his knees, those full lips wrapped around his prick to get him wet and ready for Nori’s quim, hit Lin Yao as a punch to the gut, leaving him dizzy and seeing explosions of light. His prick bucked, demanding attention. Only seizing the base and pinching cruelly tight kept this from ending right away. Again. He laughed, the sound cracked. “Nori? Now.” Nori shook away damply curling locks and nodded. Lin Yao closed his eyes for a moment in devout thanks to whatever goddess had chosen to smile down upon him and hurriedly went to his knees. He buried his nose in the coarse hairs surrounding Ko’s prick, breathing deep of his masculine muskiness. Nori’s fingers curled around Ko’s prick, holding it briefly for Lin Yao. He licked just under Nori’s forefinger for the fun of hearing Ko cry out and to see him jump in Nori’s arms. Nori’s warm chuckle filled his ears, as did Ko’s nearly swallowed curse, both driving him mad. He spared a beat to fill his eyes with the sight of Nori beginning to stroke Ko off, all while she sucked at the thin skin of the other man’s throat. Then he dove in to taste his fill. Ko yelled, the ululation pouring from his lips. His legs shuddered, muscles spasming, his good leg lifting up only to splash back down in the water. He jerked forward, grasping the back of Lin Yao’s head and thrusting into his mouth. His salty cum flowed over Lin Yao’s tongue, coating his mouth with Ko’s flavor. Lin Yao held firmly in place until Ko’s shouts died to whimpers, his own prick beating against his thigh in time with his pulse as he breathed through his nose in great, needy inhalations.

Damn me, he thought dizzily, sliding his lips up and down the length of Ko’s diminishing erection. The blond had nothing to be ashamed of in the size department, did he? Gods. Ko amazed him, as did Nori. Lin Yao didn’t think Ko knew what he was saying as he continued to spill phrases here and there; but then, he wasn’t inclined to pay too much attention to words when he met Ko’s eyes, dark and fathomless, as they stared into his own. “I never knew it could be like this,” Ko said in amazement and wonder. “It can. It is. Now shut up,” Lin Yao said. Nori reached for Lin Yao, who took her hand instinctively, letting her draw him back to his feet where he could slide his arm behind Ko’s back, tasting Ko’s sweet breath on his face. Then, with her other hand, she pressed down and separated her labia, exposing her

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swollen pink lips and the arousal-slick flesh. Lin Yao fingered her wet quim with increasingly urgent sweeps. Nori laughed, excited. “Make him. Make us. Or should I show you how?” She reached between the men and wrapped her palm around Lin Yao’s dark, full prick. He yelled and thrust his prick into the firmness of Ko’s stomach, shouting again at the rough friction. “Don’t stop,” Nori urged. “Ko’ll fall to pieces for us.” She bit at Ko’s throat, the pale column working under her mouth as he swallowed over and over again between breathless moans. Lin Yao felt her movement as she dipped her finger in her quim alongside his, then bucked when Ko lunged forward and kissed him almost desperately. He struggled for his last remaining crumbs of control. “Nori?” His voice was ragged as he fought to focus on his lovers through his haze of need. “Ko?” Ko licked his lips and nodded, wrapping his passion-drugged limbs around Lin Yao. Nori blanketed Ko from behind, whispering filthy promises Lin Yao had never known even the Oiran were capable of, egging them both on. “God, I love you,” Lin Yao growled without thought, and began to rut in earnest against Ko’s hip, the best he could do without oil or grease to ease the way. He gripped blindly, finding Ko’s tough biceps to hold and dig his fingers in, flexing without mercy while he thrust over skin soon made slick with his own spurts of precum. Ko moaned in his ear, speaking his name and sobbing things he didn’t understand. “Ko,” Lin Yao chanted over the thickness in his throat, running the other man’s name and Nori’s together in a primal song. “Nori, Ko, Nori, Ko, Nori!” Lin Yao released his seed in a creamy torrent over Ko’s hip and thigh. Nori fumbled, seizing his spasming hand and dragging it to her quim, to her swollen clitoris, and using his fingers to rub it, moaning and keening. She screamed and climaxed yet again, convulsing behind Ko. Ko would not be left out of this, it seemed. Surprising and delighting Lin Yao, Ko grasped Lin Yao’s flexing ass and refused to let go, humping him with the finesse of a wild dog. Pleased, Lin Yao darted in to devour Ko’s mouth, swallowing his ecstatic yell. Ko’s hips snapped as he bit Lin Yao’s tongue, drawing a trace of coppery blood, and he released his sticky, heated seed. Nori moaned, the soft sound trailing off into the lusty breaths all three drew, her trembling hands patting over both Lin Yao and Ko’s sweat-slicked skins. As Lin Yao regretfully drew apart from Ko, Nori looked at him with something he’d never seen in a woman’s eyes before. As Ko, too, raised his face, weary as Lin Yao knew himself to be, he saw the same thing: joy. Ko’s lips curved. Lin Yao forced the question over his tired tongue. “What?” Ko’s grin broadened. “Nothing.” He reached for Lin Yao once more. “Kiss me.”

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Their lips met and lingered in a long, lazy kiss, only parting to let Nori snuggle between them. She murmured soft, sweet nothings to them, her breath tingling on Lin Yao’s chest. Lin Yao figured that at that moment, he had to be the luckiest man alive.

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Chapter Eleven Dawn came on quickly on Sheol IV, cool night rushing to warming light almost, it seemed, before a man could blink. Lin Yao had seen thousands of sunrises over the years, usually after working through the easier night temperatures during summers or simply when he was unable to sleep and made do with a pipe of his carefully guarded smokeweed -- no one could call it “tobacco,” not with a straight face. He’d sit on the low stone wall he’d built with his own hands and tried to find peace in the rising of the sun. Some nights, it worked. Some nights, it didn’t. With Nori and Ko nodding toward sleep inside his shack, Lin Yao had no idea if the peace he sometimes found in the sunrise would ease into his heart or mock him from the perimeter.

I sound like one of those warted, gray-bearded court poets, he thought in amused disgust, tapping the side of his pipe’s clay bowl to settle the embers. Tatsuo would say that a touch of the finer things in life was turning me into a proper gentleman. Lin Yao sucked thoughtfully on the dry, bitter smoke and turned his attention to the red dirt road leading past his shack. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tatsuo popped up there not moments after he’d come to mind. The commander himself often couldn’t sleep and took to rambling the land to try and wear himself out. If it didn’t achieve the desired effect, he’d walk until morning’s light. And on a night like tonight… “Speak of the devil,” he muttered, unsurprised, when seventeen puffs later on his pipe -- smokeweed tasted like bone ash but did go the extra mile, smoldering away stubbornly and slowly -- Tatsuo’s great, grizzled shape hove into sight on the horizon. A smaller, slighter shadow followed him, other details indistinguishable at this distance.

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Huh. Lin Yao smoked thoughtfully. So. Tatsuo’s Helpmeet had gone ambling with him. He wouldn’t have thought any such young man would have been half hardy enough to keep up with the soldier guard, but what did he know? Looked like none of the Helpmeets might be as they first seemed. Lin Yao waited until Tatsuo had moseyed close enough to see the man’s craggy face before nodding in silent greeting. “Now, how’d I know I’d find you out here?” Tatsuo came to a stop, chafing his hands together against the cold. “Isao, this is Lin Yao.” The smaller man at his side hadn’t yet uncrossed his arms or looked at Lin Yao. “Isao,” Lin Yao said with a measured nod. Then he glanced at Tatsuo. “How’s he doing?” Isao answered before his master could. “I can speak for myself, and I’m…” he swallowed. “Sheol IV is not what I expected.” “Hellshole, isn’t it?” Isao’s mouth twisted. “That depends on your definition of the hells. I’ve been to worse.” Tatsuo frowned slightly at Lin Yao and tilted his head almost imperceptibly. Lin Yao hid a smile behind an impassive mask. Tatsuo, ever a champion for the causes of those weaker than he, had apparently, true to form, already set himself up as Isao’s personal guard dog. “I expect we’ve all seen darker times,” Lin Yao replied after a moment. “What brings you here, Tatsuo? Not that I’m surprised. Thought you might be coming around.” “You know me too well.” “Do I?” Lin Yao couldn’t bite down the disparaging remark. “After yesterday, I’ve got to say I wonder if that’s true.” Tatsuo’s eyes warned in a dark flash, flickering toward Isao. “Fair enough,” he said out loud. “Got any of that to share?” Lin Yao grunted and dug in his waist pouch, pulling out a twist of cotton with the last of his dried smokeweed leaves crumbled inside. “All yours.” “You’re a good man. Don’t look at me that way. I believe it, and that makes it true as far as I’m concerned.” He dug a clay pipe from his personal belt pouch and filled it with the dried leaves. “These never smell any better, do they?” “Nah, but they get the job done.” Tatsuo nodded. When he’d lit his pipe to his satisfaction, he found a reasonably comfortable seat on the wall next to Lin Yao, smoking in silence for a long, unmeasured span of time.

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“Isao’s settling in well,” Tatsuo said, too offhandedly for an old companion like Lin Yao to miss the subtle inferences. “He’s a tough one, aren’t you, Isao?” Lin Yao chose to bait the tiger, to check his quickly totting mathematical understanding of how things were unfolding between the other two. He essayed a sally. “Didn’t think you cared for men that way.” “I don’t.” Tatsuo kept his hands to himself, but a blind man could see the gruff fondness in the way he looked at Isao. Not a hint of lust or attraction, no, more the sort of connection a father might have for a wayward son. They’d almost certainly never mate, but what they had, in Lin Yao’s opinion, suited both far better and had the potential to last much longer than any purely lustful flash in the pan. “And neither does Isao,” Tatsuo went on. “We’ve come to an agreement.” “An agreement?” Isao took umbrage and bristled up scrapyard terrier style, placing his much slighter frame in front of Lin Yao and Tatsuo. In the brightening light of dawn, Lin Yao could now see there were fine crow’s feet at the corners of Isao’s eyes and a few silver hairs sprinkled among the coarse, dark locks. Older than he’d thought, then, fully old enough to know his own mind. “We’ll live as companions and honor each other as friends. That’s all, guttermind. Tatsuo is a good man. Show him some respect.” Lin Yao snorted a surprised laugh. “Your puppy’s got teeth, Tatsuo.” “I’m not a puppy, I --” “Isao.” Tatsuo knuckled the top of Isao’s head. “I can fight my own battles.” Isao didn’t move. The quick sweep of his assessing gaze left Lin Yao feeling like a tomato picked over by half a dozen disapproving housekeepers. “Is this a battle?” “No. You’ll know when it is. Lin Yao and I just like to butt heads, that’s all.” The commander addressed Lin Yao directly. “Are Nori and Ko inside?” “Last I saw of them.” “Isao, you want to go visit with them?” Tatsuo tweaked his ear. “That wasn’t really a question. Go on, now.” Isao broke into a ridiculous grin. “You’re sending me into the quiet corner?” “Might do you some good.” “Fine. Can I flirt with Nori?” Lin Yao inhaled too much smoke and began to cough. In between thumping him on the back and cackling at his plight, Tatsuo told Isao that wouldn’t be such a great idea, no, and bantered back and forth with the fellow about his dangerous sense of humor, then finally got him on his way. “Ask if she or Ko has any interest in the shrine we talked about,” Tatsuo called after him. Laughing, Isao threw a hand up in the air in noncommittal response.

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“Shrine?” Lin Yao eyed his nearly ashed-out bowl in resigned acceptance. “You mean that tumbledown snake pit out by the river?” “No, the tumbledown snake pit not far off from the way station. There’s a difference.” Tatsuo elbowed him. “You know how I feel about respect for the gods, and I know how you feel about the gods, period, so we won’t have that discussion. All that matters is Isao needs something useful to do. By damn, I’m not having him hang around those jackass soldier guards all day long.” “You could always leave him in your bunk.” Tatsuo glared disapprovingly. “He’s not an animal to be penned in a cage. If he is, then so are we all.” Lin Yao had to concede the point. He grimaced, realizing he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to determine what he’d do with Ko and Nori now. With Ko’s lame leg, the man might have to stay put for a while, and Nori with him. If the two were together and could watch one another’s backs, they might be all right. Tatsuo seemed to read his mind. “By and by, when your Helpmeets get a chance to stretch their wings, you might see if they’ll come and help with some of the odd jobs those sorry soldier guards do such a piss-poor job at, like maybe cooking or even someday lending a hand to rebuild the old shrine. The way I figure, that’d be a good way to transition into hard labor if they’re not accustomed to such on a daily basis.” “Damn you.” “What? What’d I do?” Lin Yao kicked Tatsuo’s ankle and chuckled. “Don’t make me compliment you on your good ideas.” “I won’t.” Tatsuo’s shoulders straightened. He sat more easily on the wall, fiddling with his pipe stem. “I’d like to say all this should work out without a hitch.” “Foretelling?” “Just cautious.” Tatsuo tapped out some ash. “Gyen. You’ll want to watch out for him. All of us do. Matching me, a loyal widower -- you didn’t know that? -- with Isao, the kind of man who’d be anyone’s meat if I didn’t claim him, regardless of whether or not we preferred our own gender -- that’s Gyen’s sense of humor all around, and believe you me, that sort of foolery is only the beginning.” Lin Yao digested that. “Think he’s behind the ‘mix-up’ with Nori and Ko?” “Could be, although I doubt it. He was a tad thrown, in my opinion, and he’s not good at being caught off guard.” Tatsuo’s sideways look told Lin Yao to remember that tidbit carefully, that it might be useful later. “He probably wishes it was his game. Whatever discord and chaos he can sow, whatever tangles he can knot, those are his reasons for living.” “Any reason other than the usual?”

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“Not that I know of. Raised rich, spoiled rotten, and always hungry for more wealth, more glory, more power.” “How in the hells did you ever get acquainted with this jewel among men?” Tatsuo shrugged, far too nonchalantly. “I was posted in a good few places before my punishment on Sheol IV. We crossed paths, he and I.” Lin Yao considered what went unsaid, as well as what Tatsuo had confessed to, and came up with what he thought was a decent picture of misplaced trust, false friendship, and betrayal. Out of respect for Tatsuo, he wouldn’t seek confirmation. “I’ve got to ask you something,” Tatsuo said without warning. “I know you won’t want to answer, and I can’t make you -- won’t make you. Wish you would, though.” The back of Lin Yao’s neck prickled in suspicion. “Ask. But if it’s about my leadership skills or begging me to lead a revolution or asking me to rabble-rouse or anything besides living out my life on this farm with whichever Helpmeet I get to keep, then you might as well save your breath.” Tatsuo huffed impatiently, defeated for the moment. “I’ll wear you down one day.” “I’d never say never, except about this.” “Stubborn bastard.” “It’s why I’m still alive.” Tatsuo turned over his pipe and tapped out the dead ashes. “That’s true enough, I guess.”

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Chapter Twelve “Told you I could outfish any wharfsman in the Emperor Worlds,” Lin Yao drawled as he pushed open the door to his shack. He half turned to display the shining silver green scales of the string of fish draped over his shoulder while he kicked off his sandals. “Is this enough for what you wanted?” He faced Nori, who appeared to be trying to hold back wide-eyed mirth. “Eleven fish should be enough for breakfast for three people, yes,” she said. “What should I have done, tossed them back?” he fired at her in return, the warmth of her presence enveloping him, softening his edges. Nori could be dangerous this way, oh, yes. “Whatever’s left over we’ll preserve for times when they don’t rise to the bait.” “Of course.” Nori sailed smoothly over his teasing, the arch of her eyebrow telling him she was biding her time for a comeback. “Are those fish shedding scales?” Lin Yao kicked at the hard-packed dirt floor. “Won’t be the first time, nor the last. Don’t tell me I have to start being mindful of someone’s sweeping job.” “Ungrateful wretch.” Nori glided to him, graceful despite bare feet and an earthen floor, taking the string of fish away and kissing him lightly in payment. “It’s not me who’ll challenge you over those dropping scales.” She inclined her head toward Ko. Ko glanced sideways at Lin Yao and winked at him, offering him a mischievous grin. “She’s right, you know.” The lightening of his somber mien pleased Lin Yao to no end. Then again, the way Lin Yao figured it, it was hard to take yourself as seriously as was Ko’s wont after spending nearly a full night naked in a man’s arms -- and a woman’s. A night in which they’d pushed Ko until he’d broken apart on waves of sweat and cum and was put back together again only to shatter a second time. In fact, not stopping until Lin Yao had ordered them to sleep and he’d stepped outside for his smoke.

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“What, Ko, you want to kick up a fuss about a little mess? Well, forgive me, Father, for I was about to sin,” Lin Yao said with a wry twist, brushing scales off his bare chest. He thought he caught a flinch from Ko. He might have asked about it if Nori hadn’t returned to loop her arms around his neck. She raised up on tiptoe to kiss him, heated and lingering this time, humming in appreciation when he seized her by the waist and pulled her tightly to him. Nori relaxed, settling more firmly on the flats of her feet, and gazed up at Lin Yao with her unique mixture of adoration and exasperation. “You smell like pond water.” “And you smell like --” Lin Yao paused. “You smell like food.” “That’s flattering.” “No, wait, it’s not you.” He looked over her head to Ko, who slipped past them with a small sack cradled in his arms. The aromas in the room filtered through his senses at last. Food. Cookery. Nothing like what he remembered from the Emperor Worlds, not the richness of expertly prepared caffeine or eggs frying in butter, but almost as good were the light sweetness of boiling herb tea and the aroma of flatbread baking atop an upturned bowl set over the fireplace embers. He swallowed twice, trying to subdue the sudden roar of hunger gnawing at his belly. “Who said you could cook in here?” he demanded, trying to avoid blubbering his thanks for the hot meal. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to --” “Shh.” Nori pressed her lips to his. “I know a few things about living simply.” “You?” he scoffed. “You’re practically an Oiran.” Her mouth tightened briefly. “Not now,” she said, dropping her arms and walking away. “Not always. And not any more.” “I didn’t mean to offend,” he said. Lin Yao considered his options, eyed the new, small fire pit ringed with sturdy rocks, and decided it wasn’t worth making a fuss. Whether she liked to admit to it or not, for whatever reason, even a pseudo-Oiran like Nori came trained with every skill under every sun. He could trust her. On the other hand, it looked as though Ko was the one doing the actual cooking. The other man had settled on his haunches by the fire, lost in contemplation of the browning flatbread. He took up two slivers of wood and used them as he would chopsticks, poking at a darker spot in the ashes that Lin Yao realized must be a buried clay pot or a previously emptied can filled with something edible. He thought he smelled spicy herbs in a breaking wave of moist air. Ko caught him looking and smiled, tucking an errant strand of long blond hair behind his ear. “It won’t be long. I can scale and gut the fish if you have a --” “And what if I don’t want to wait for you to finish?” Lin Yao interrupted him, enraptured by the sight of the man. His appetites had changed, and he was hungrier for something besides food just then.

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Ko blinked. “Excuse me?” “Stop working, and stop talking.” Lin Yao’s mind had made itself up for him and gotten his body involved in the action, carrying the rest of him along for the ride. He found himself squatting by Ko, close enough to smell the salt of his skin and the lingering warmth of sleep. He caught Ko by the chin and insisted that he turn to meet his gaze. “We need to have a few words, you and I.” Ko’s shoulders stiffened and his chin came up despite a quick flash of uneasiness in his eyes. “Regarding what? What have I done?” “Let me put it another way. I’m gonna have a few words, and you’re going to listen.” Ko caught his lower lip between his teeth, looking thoughtful. “Go ahead.” “For one, forget everything I said before, when I was pissed off,” Lin Yao instructed. “Yesterday, I’d have told you to be on your guard all the time. After what you did for me last night, though, and I for you? I won’t hurt you, not ever. You can believe me or believe me not, though I’d rather you accepted my vow not to damage you in any way.” “Eloquent,” Ko said, smiling. Lin Yao approved. “Same goes for you, Nori, although I don’t think there’s any force mighty enough to make you bow your head.” Her rebuttal carried no rancor. “I’m here, aren’t I? So I’d say you’re wrong.” Lin Yao twisted his head to look up at her, caught by an unusual note in her voice. What he saw there confirmed his suspicions. “Damn me. You’re --” “Not unhappy with Sheol IV. No.” She folded her hands before her, the modesty and courtesy of her pose belied by the trace of her pink tongue along her full lips. “Nor with you.” “Nor am I unhappy with you,” Ko said. “I could stay here, I think.” To Lin Yao’s ears, Ko sounded both surprised and dejected. He turned to Ko, waiting for him to explain. Ko exhaled quietly. “All of us,” he began, “We’d be good, the three of us. I think. It could be safe.” Lin Yao nodded. “Sounds strange, to call this place safe, but I know what you mean. Maybe.” “Possibly.” Ko poked the flatbread with one makeshift chopstick. “The problem is that it won’t last,” he went on to say slowly. “One Helpmeet to one master. So it is, and so it has always been.” His shoulders went rigid as he finished. “One of us won’t be able to stay.”

Ah. Damn. Lin Yao had been all too eager to put that from his mind, or so it seemed, in the face of warm, pliant bodies and hot breakfast. “Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” Nori remarked. “Leave it for now, Ko.” “Ignoring the unpleasant things in life doesn’t make them disappear.”

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“No? That’s how I’ve survived out here for twenty years,” Lin Yao said, surprised as the words tripped off his tongue, realizing they were true in their way. Suddenly, this close to Ko, Lin Yao remembered why he’d lost his appetite for flatbread and had developed a craving to taste the wet, heated silkiness of Ko’s tongue. “Yesterday can worry about yesterday, and tomorrow can worry about tomorrow.” Ko studied him, clearly confused. “Close your mouth, and put it to better use than fretting.” Lin Yao slid his hand between Ko’s legs and kneaded his semierect prick. “Nori, you with us?” He heard the soft fabric swish of her tunic gliding off her torso. She knelt, pressing full breasts to his back. “Wherever you go, either of you, that is where I’ll be.” She pinched Lin Yao’s ass, making him yelp. “I can start right here, if you like.” Lin Yao decided he liked that plan indeed.

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Chapter Thirteen Nori waited, although she found it difficult, until Ko had taken care of putting their meal aside for later. Practically, she knew these things had to be done -- removing the flatbread from the sizzling bowl before it scorched into inedibility, digging out the bowl of mashed seeds he’d tried to cook until they were soft and spiced, until they were not so bitter and sour, and banking the fire. Ko, she thought, was too careful in the way he did these things, taking one slow step at a time and making sure every aspect was perfect before moving on to the next one. Long before he’d finished with his tasks, Lin Yao had expelled a noisy, annoyed breath that blew tumbledown locks of hair off his forehead and tried to coax him to hurry. Lin Yao’s method of encouragement could, in Nori’s opinion, sway an ascetic monk from his vows. She didn’t think poorly of her own attempts, which were, namely, finding a comfortable spot to lie on Lin Yao’s bed, propped on her side, stroking the full line of her hip, and teasing at her breasts, tweaking the nipples. If any true Oiran living or dead saw her, Nori knew they’d faint from horror. Or, more accurately, they’d make a big show of how shocked and disgusted they should be at her crude display, all the while sneaking glances filled with envy at blunt, brawny Lin Yao -- or at Ko, as beautiful in his way without any artificial assistance than the Oiran ever could have prayed to a thousand goddesses to be, despite all their paints and creams and silks. Perhaps she was biased. Nori smiled to herself and rolled her nipples between her fingers, pretending the calluses were the soft slickness of Ko’s lips pursed around one nubbin and Lin Yao’s heated tongue tickling the other. Beads of slippery moisture trickled down from her swelling quim to gleam on the thighs she parted, tempting the men, wondering if she could make them hurry. Lin Yao pointed at her. “I know what game you’re playing.”

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“Me? A game?” She pretended innocence, but she knew her eyes gave her away as they greedily drank in the sight of the coiled power in Lin Yao’s legs while he crouched by Ko, She then stared at the long, slim line of Ko’s back, the skin sliding over bone as he bent and lifted and tidied away. Lin Yao put a finger to his lips and winked at her. Nori bit back a laugh, knowing right away he was the one playing. He’d noticed Ko’s reluctance born of morning-after shyness just the same as she, and he planned to do something about it. So did she. She wanted all that the men had to give and planned to return the favor in kind. If she hadn’t, she would’ve left her tunic on in the first place instead of making her desires plain. She would’ve smiled polite, useless smiles at Lin Yao and murmured courteous inanities while pouring him tea. Nori had had enough of ritual, and more than enough of thinking that she couldn’t be happy today because of what she didn’t have. If she was going to lose Ko or Lin Yao or both when the ruling came down about the Helpmeet mix-up, then she was going to go out with good memories to keep her warm at nights. It didn’t hurt that in the back of her mind, Nori hummed with deliciously wicked contentment, telling her she was doing the right thing. “Ko,” she said, but thinking my love, when Lin Yao seized him around the waist from behind and hugged him tight, swinging the other man around as if he weighed nothing and holding him steady, facing her. Breath hissed from Ko’s lips, and he stared at her as if drunk. She sat up, thrusting one leg to the side and rising up to kneel on the other. She cupped her breasts temptingly again. Lin Yao’s strong, square hand skated over Ko’s bare stomach, teasing the twitching skin, spreading his fingers wide, then sliding them down beneath the loose tie of his pants. Ko swore and looked two different kinds of pained, reminding her of a child on a feast day who was ravenous for the treats but feared punishment for taking what he wanted. Nori thought that between her own will and Lin Yao’s, they’d soon teach Ko how to dip his fingers in the honey without fear. “Bring him to me.” She spoke from low in her throat and arched her neck, dropping her head to one shoulder. “It’s always polite to thank the cook for his hard work.” Ko laughed. It was hushed soft but steady, a good start. Lin Yao jostled Ko forward, walking him to her as if Ko was an oversized manikin in a parade. By the time they reached her, Lin Yao’s grin blazed out brightly, and Ko’s laugh was nearly full-throated. The two wrestled together like the oldest of friends, careful only of Ko’s injured leg. It was Ko who struggled free, only to push Lin Yao onto the bed, climbing up after him. Nori moved fast, shifting so that Lin Yao could push his head into her lap. She moaned at the brush of his hair against her oversensitized quim, digging her fingers into his scalp.

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Lin Yao looked up at her with a devil’s own gleam in his eye, then spoke to the man in his arms. “Ko,” he rumbled, grabbing the man with a hand around each of Ko’s upper arms. “Like this.” Ko hesitated, until Lin Yao’s grin grew savage. Lin Yao shoved down his tunic pants, freeing his prick. The organ curved back to meet his stomach, gleaming wetness on the tip smearing over his skin. Ko’s eyes dilated, and his lips parted in what Nori knew was lust. She didn’t mind his preference for prick over quim, not when he still appreciated what she had to offer, which his actions with her had made clear the night before. After all, they each had something to give one another, didn’t they? Three equal sides. Nori purred, hoped she was guessing correctly at Lin Yao’s plans, and raised up on both knees, lowering her master’s head and straddling his face. Lin Yao’s tongue tickled the damp sides of her mons when he spoke, breath streaming hotly up her quim. “Ko, take care of me, and I’ll take care of her. Deal?” Ko swore again, the words vicious and harsh. Then, surprising Nori, he laughed once more, but with an edge of desperation. “No, don’t ask,” he choked out before she could, waving his hand in the air to stop her and crawling a little clumsily between Lin Yao’s sprawled legs. “It’s nothing.” Lin Yao snorted. He tugged his own prick, squeezing work-worn fingers around the thick red length. “This is nothing to you?” “That’s not what I --” Lin Yao raised his knees and planted his feet flat on the bedding. “Shut up. Do as you’re told.” Ko found his position and carefully wrapped his hand around Lin Yao’s, sweat glistening on his forehead and a small groan escaping him when Lin Yao arched into their combined grip, teeth gritting. “If a deal sounds too good to be true…” Ko said. “…Then enjoy it while it lasts,” Nori finished, as firmly as she could, tired of waiting. “Suck him.” “Better do what the lady says,” Lin Yao goaded. Honest amusement brightened Ko’s face and made him remarkable. “You’re both as bossy as old cats.” “Thanks,” Lin Yao replied dryly. “Now obey us.” Nori might have responded, teasing him about how he didn’t seem to dislike pussies, but forgot about jesting altogether when Lin Yao’s long, agile tongue snaked into her quim and began to lap in deep, wet strokes. She gasped and closed her eyes as he hissed and bucked in turn, knowing Ko would have taken Lin Yao’s prick between his own rosy lips and begun to suck.

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All Nori could do was close her eyes, grasp Lin Yao’s shoulders, and hang on. Meanwhile, he kneaded her inner thighs and bit at the tender skin beside her quim, drawing back only when the wet suckling sounds from Ko changed. Then Lin Yao grated out demands for more, faster, harder. She heard her own needy greediness added to the mix, ordering Lin Yao to go deeper. Her legs quivered with the rising force of climax, one she knew would hit her with the impact of a fist to the throat and leave her seeing white. “Almost,” Lin Yao grunted, fingers now flexing almost uselessly on her legs. The tip of his tongue tickled and dragged along the walls of her quim, trailing every drop of her cream he could lap up, darting up as far inside her channel as he could reach. Fingers, she burned for his fingers, yet the thought of coming from his mouth alone inflamed her. “Nori?” “Yes,” she managed, finding his hair and pulling. “Ko?” Ko shuddered forcibly. Nori forced her eyes open to see Ko’s pink mouth stretched taut and obscene over the bulk of Lin Yao’s prick, gazing at nothing, face slack with desire. His slender fingers hovered over his own erection without touching. “You too,” she commanded. “Ko, you too. Grasp your prick, yes, just like that,” she crooned, talking him through it. “Tug. You know how.” “Hells.” Lin Yao hooked his calf around Ko’s good leg, jostling him. “Hard, fast, now. Don’t stop until you come.” Ko moaned helplessly, his hesitant pulls speeding up. “Yes,” Lin Yao breathed. “Yeah. Just like that. Nori?” She stroked his temples in answer. His low laughter tingled inside her quim, her only warning before he raised his head sharply and finally, finally drew her throbbing clitoris between his lips He sucked, cheeks pulled hollow, tongue pushing relentlessly. Nori shattered, her consciousness flying into a thousand stars scattered across a velvet blue midnight sky. As if it took place in a dream, she heard Ko’s guttural moan and registered Lin Yao’s mouth tearing away from her cunt so he could yell, hips pumping. When she came back to herself, she was nearly too dizzy to sit upright. She braced herself with her weight on one hand and bent to kiss Lin Yao, his mouth tasting of quim and laughter. He let her lick the shiny coat of cream off his cheeks and chin, rumbling like a contented tomcat. “Somehow I get the feeling you haven’t had this much fun in years,” she teased. Lin Yao cracked a hazy eye at her. “Mmph.” Nori chuckled, checked on Ko. He dragged a fallen, ash-colored curl out of his eyes and shook his head at her. “Enjoying it while it lasts?” “It’s better than the alternative,” she replied, blowing him a kiss.

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Chapter Fourteen “Ko?” Nori appeared at the side of the door to Lin Yao’s shack, hand gliding to rest on the unsmoothed wood. The gesture came naturally to her, a movement taught to particularly graceful Oiran as a part of the art of finger dancing, meant to soothe and entice at the same time. She had learned to approach Ko with watchful caution, to assess his moods. “Ko, are you awake?” “What?” Ko’s head jerked sharply upright. He blinked as if he had been sleeping in truth, though she’d thought his eyes were open. “Nori?” “Who else would it be?” She smiled at him, hiding her concern over his disjointed behavior. “Or do you still think I’m a goddess? Jingmei, perhaps?” Ko’s grin, though it only caught up half his mouth, still brightened his features considerably “Of course not. I thought you were a ghost.” He winked.

I like the way he looks when he smiles, Nori decided. I’ll have to make that happen more often, not a hard goal to set when faced with a man so delicious and so easily led into pleasures of the flesh. “I always knew you were a goddess,” he said, rising only a little clumsily to his feet. The laser burn was healing nicely, aided by some mysterious quality in Lin Yao’s spring water. He limped to her, the hitch in his gait only adding to his charm, and caught her hand to raise it to his lips. “Something I’ve discovered to be the truth.” Well. Unexpected. “You’ve grown a silver tongue.” She stroked the tip of his nose to see if he’d blush, which he did. “Or have you been hiding one all along?” The pink deepened to red on Ko’s cheeks, but he replied without looking away, “I’ve learned the taste of your quim on this tongue, and it tries only to honor you in return. After all, I liked men and only men until I met you.”

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“Are you trying to flirt your way into her heart?” Lin Yao’s voice startled Nori, as he’d snuck up all unnoticed behind her. He nipped the shell of her ear and burrowed his chin in her shoulder, rocking her against him. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Ko. You see, Nori here…” He tucked one of her dark curls out of the way to give him access to the curve of her throat. “Nori’s a hard, hard woman. Mean as a snake before sunrise.” She dug her elbow lightly into his ribs, laughing. “And what’s the meaning of that bit of country wisdom?” “Huh.” Lin Yao paused, kissing the side of Nori’s throat. “You don’t know, do you?” “I think he must have made it up on the spot,” Ko volunteered in his quiet way. Nori had learned to understand the subtleties of Ko’s jokes. “I think you’re right. Shall we make him pay a forfeit for telling lies?” “Hey, now,” Lin Yao protested. “Ungrateful wretches, both of you. As ferocious as a mother bear denied her honey.” He sounded endearingly like a small boy, terribly proud of his intellectual accomplishment. Nori wanted to tousle his hair. From the indulgent way Ko watched them, she suspected he warred with the same urge. Really, sometimes Ko looked like the Good Monk from her grandmother’s old tales, stories told in secret to comfort those baffled by the glacial chill of the monasteries. Ko was all the monks were not, or he could be if he didn’t live with the fear she hadn’t yet figured out. Peaceful, kind, protective of those weaker than he -- that was Ko. She fixed her attention on Lin Yao. “You can’t insult me unless you try much, much harder.” She turned within Lin Yao’s loose hold, snuggling face-to-face with the “hardened” convict who’d turned to dandelion fluff under her care. “From the sex we’ve enjoyed thus far, I think you rather like honey, or at least my honey.” Lin Yao’s palm cupped her quim and teased at the lips through her tunic. “You might not have noticed this about me, but I have a sweet tooth, and it’s been too long denied on Sheol IV.” “Then by all means, make up for lost time.” She lifted her knee, which Lin Yao caught, propping it on his hip. He gleamed with feral hunger as he coaxed his fingers under her tunic and slipped them into her quim, gliding in smooth thrusts up her entrance and scissoring her open. She gasped, clutching at his shirt to hold herself upright and steady. Ko supported himself by leaning on the wall. “What are you doing?” “Wait and see.” “She’ll give you three guesses,” Lin Yao added. “Will I? Then, here, consider this the first.” Nori’s palms skated down Lin Yao’s sides. “Two.” She jerked loose the frayed drawstring on his pants and helped them fall, revealing his ruddy shaft.

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Lin Yao inhaled sharply, shortly. “You wicked wench. What kind of plans do you have in mind?” “Only the best.” She winked at Ko, whom she found gazing hungrily at Lin Yao, his own prick obviously straining to get free. Very nice, she thought in approval. Very promising. “I shouldn’t grow too fond of you,” Ko murmured. “One of us will have to go. I can’t fall in love with either or both.” “Do you mind not borrowing trouble when I’m about to fuck her?” Lin Yao growled. Nori saw the pulse in his throat speed up and could hear his heartbeat when she pressed her cheek to him, stroking him. Lin Yao shifted himself and Nori sideways, then fisted his own prick, the head bulging between the circle of his thumb and forefinger. “I want to enjoy myself and take my pleasure with both my Helpmeets right now.” Ko’s throat worked. Something flashed over him almost too quickly for Nori to see, much less interpret. Unable to bear it any longer, she parted from Lin Yao with a kiss, then dropped gracefully to her knees and undid Ko’s pants before he could do more than gape at her. “Let me savor both of you too,” she requested, lapping over the head of his rigid prick. She petted him, breathing directing thin streams of warm air over his erection and the full, wrinkled sac beneath. “No one tastes as good as you, Ko.” “Hey!” Lin Yao objected, albeit with a laugh. She tossed him a kiss over her shoulder. “You’re delicious in your own way. But Ko…” Nori returned to his prick, licking first the head and then down the shaft, humming out her pleasure at the flavor and texture. “Did anyone ever do this for you before Sheol IV?” “Not willingly and not without something in it for them,” he replied, cradling her head. “No one nearly as good as you.” She slid her mouth down Ko’s length while wrapping her fingers around the base, pulling his shaft from her lips and then sliding back down, covering every inch of him while her mouth was full. “You should see yourself, Ko. Wish you could, the way I do. The sight of you together…” Lin Yao hissed, and the wet sounds of his fist pumping over his own prick halted momentarily. Nori wriggled, squeezing her thighs together, quim throbbing. In time, in time. This was for Ko. “Bring him off,” Lin Yao ordered. “Swallow him down until he’s got nothing left to give, and then bring him to me. I’m going to fuck you, Ko. Spread you open and split you apart, and you’re gonna thank me for it.” Ko bucked, accidentally yanking Nori’s hair. Only training enabled her to keep her reaction down to a flinch. She feathered around Ko’s length with the tip of her tongue,

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letting the rush of endorphins following the brief pain do their work. Cream coated her thighs, warm and liquid where she pressed them tightly. “Nori, you too,” Lin Yao directed. “Spread your pretty legs for me and finger your quim. Wide apart, now, so I can see.” Ko’s muscles bunched, and he began to pant harshly. “You like that thought, hmm, Ko?” Lin Yao gloated. “Do as I’ve told you, woman. Make it good.” Nori rolled her hips, flaunting the roundness of her ass at Lin Yao. “It’s not just him I want to fuck there,” Lin Yao warned in a tiger’s voice. She drew off Ko, but only long enough to glance back at Lin Yao, her own wildcat peeking out. “I’m counting on it.” Lin Yao hissed again. “You’re a devil, aren’t you, woman?” Nori licked her lips. “If I’m asked nicely.” “You want me to come over there, don’t you?” She nodded, all the while absently gliding her fingers over Ko’s prick, slick from saliva and his own fluids. Then Ko spoke. “Please, Lin Yao. I hunger for you.” Startled, Nori stared at him before glancing at Lin Yao again. Lin Yao’s eyebrow shot up. He released his prick and bent forward to prop his elbows on his knees, hands dangling. “Well, then. Nori? Change of plans, I think. Ko’s asked for something. Should we reward him?” Nori hummed, turning more fully, only her fingertips remaining on Ko. “With what?” Lin Yao straightened, grinning stiltedly. Nori didn’t try to restrain her wicked chuckle. “What will you do with him?” He returned his hand to his prick, riding it up and down the length. “Get some oil.” When she frowned, he added, “Grease. There’s better things, we can hunt them down later, but for right now, grease. In a wrap of oilcloth under the bed.” “Why, Lin Yao, you surprise me,” she mocked in a maidenly manner, clasping her hands at her heart. “One would think you enjoyed this sort of thing.” She knew the exact moment his enjoyment of the situation shifted and became nothing more than pure, dark lust. “You have no idea, pretty Nori.” He entered the shack, strode until he reached his one chair, and sat down, legs spread wide, displaying his erection. “No idea. Bring Ko and the wrap of grease to me. Now.” Nori moved as quickly as she could, leading Ko as she would a blind man while she found the twist of oilcloth her master had mentioned. Without prompting, she knelt at Lin Yao’s feet, knees far apart and quim lips spread to present the swollen pink flesh with its engorged clitoris.

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Lin Yao manhandled Ko around until he faced Nori. Ko, dear man, looked as dazed as a sailor who’d just smoked a full ball of opium. Lin Yao guided Ko into straddling his lap back to chest, with a foot on either side of the chair. Nori could just barely see between Ko’s legs to where Lin Yao exposed the twist of grease with shaking movements and dug into the slick paste within. “Open for me,” he murmured to Ko. Ko gasped, leaving Nori to guess that Lin Yao had spread his ass cheeks with the other hand. About time too. This would be the first time Lin Yao had taken him this way, though Lin Yao had been preparing Ko’s ass for days once he’d learned of Ko’s inexperience. She’d been eager to bear witness to this. “Good boy.” “Not -- not a dog,” Ko gritted out. “Trust me, I’m well aware.” Lin Yao’s face disappeared from Nori’s view. Ko yelped. “You bit me!” Nori couldn’t hold back her laugh, especially when Lin Yao’s dark, dancing eyes popped back into her line of sight. Oh, but he had a mischievous nature when he let himself play! “Do it again,” she suggested. “Got something better in mind.” Lin Yao slapped Ko’s hip. “I’ve only got two hands, and they’re both busy. You have two you’re not using. Hold yourself open for me.” Ko made a choking noise. “Do it,” Nori encouraged. She rested her weight behind her on the fulcrum of one fist, arching her spine, and fingered her quim with her other hand. “Do it for me, Ko.” He shook his head as if trying to refuse, but obeyed Lin Yao and her nevertheless. He ducked when he adjusted his position to hold his cheeks apart, a veil of ash-blond silk blocking her view. She heard Lin Yao slap him harder. “Nori can’t see. Can you, Nori?” “I can’t --” Ko sounded slightly angry as well as aroused. “My hair’s too long.” “No, it’s not. Drape it around your shoulders, out of your face. I want Nori to get a good look at you while you do this for me. Wait, wait, here’s a thought. I want you to kiss her while I get you ready.” “Let me help.” Nori rose without waiting for permission, tidying Ko’s soft hair out of the way. She laid her lips atop his, flicking them with the tip of her tongue to coax them open. With a moan, Ko parted to let her in. She swallowed his gasp when Lin Yao moved, eating each increasingly desperate groan as it came, knowing that meant Lin Yao was hard at work. “Enough,” Lin Yao finally growled, sounding as short of breath as if he’d run for kilometers. “Nori, give him room to breathe.” Nori reeled out of the kiss, her empty quim clenching and pounding, craving fulfillment. She tried to catch her breath, a futile effort, before questioning him. “Why?”

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“I think you’ll figure it out.” Lin Yao indicated his own lap. “Raise up for me, Ko, and take my cock.” “Ohh…” Ko breathed, the first blink of startled panic swiftly giving way to slack-jawed desire. “Yes.” “Do it for me, Ko.” Lin Yao lifted his hips to help Ko along, his slicked prick almost obscenely engorged. “Slow, though, slow, just like that. Yes.” He shuddered under Ko’s gradual descent, groaning in time with Ko at the initial penetration. “Hells, you’re still so snug, even when you’ve been stretched.” “Not -- not so new to this anymore,” Ko muttered. “Wait -- wait -- gods --” He panted harshly, tendons straining in his neck. Nori crooned nonsense words to him and massaged his calves until he finally nodded, gritting his teeth. “All right. More.” “So good for me.” Lin Yao helped Ko the rest of the way down, the hand not guiding his prick smoothing over Ko’s stomach, teasing the fair man’s pulsing erection. He exhaled heavily, tightly, when Ko threw his head back and released a long cry. “Won’t -- last --” Ko finally forced from his lips. “Don’t worry. I won’t last too long, myself.” Lin Yao bit his words off and spat them out like coins. “Nori. Get on him. Ride him.” The brilliance of his idea inflamed Nori’s senses. Faster than she would’ve been had she been in her right mind and not drunk on lust, she climbed aboard Ko’s lap and the tangle of both men’s legs. Then she seized Ko’s straining prick, guiding it home while she greedily pressed her mouth to his. Ko surprised the breath from her with a savage twitch of his hips up and his arm shooting out to drag her down to him, spearing her as thoroughly as any man had ever done. The shock tightened Nori’s oversensitized inner muscles. Desperate for completion, sure she’d die if she didn’t reach her peak that very moment, she worked her hand between them and rubbed her needy clitoris until, with a lurch and a bump deep in her stomach, the blessed fist uncoiled and rushed wildfire though her veins. Her cunt clenched around Ko’s erection, drawing a ragged yell from him while he set the pace, trapped between her weight and Lin Yao’s, trying to hump him even as he released gushes of hot semen inside her. Beneath him, Lin Yao snarled as if possessed and thrust into Ko’s ass. Ko’s prick spasmed within Nori in the immediate wake of a vicious curse from Lin Yao. The power that came of having two such men coming apart spurred Nori into a second climax, during which she could only clamp her thighs down around Ko and hold on, praying she’d survive. This could never end, she thought, lightheaded, scratching Ko’s sweat-dampened back, leaving furrows in her wake. I won’t let it end.

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Chapter Fifteen Rap. Rap. Rat-a-tat-tat-rap. Blinking his eyes open, Lin Yao turned his face from the rising sunlight pouring through the cracks about his shack’s door and window. Some odd noise had dragged him out of the sleep he’d collapsed into at the height of the moons, Nori in one arm and Ko resting on the other. “Who’s makin’ noise?” he muttered. Nori sighed and Ko mumbled something unintelligible. “Quit it, whoever.”

Knock. Knock. Knock. “‘Said cut it out.” “Not doing anything,” Nori responded, lips tickling his arm. Ko lifted his head, wavering on the slim column of his throat, and searched about them. “It’s not her. Not the ghost,” he breathed groggily, which made no sense to Lin Yao. “Someone’s at the door.” “Pfft.” Lin Yao was already sliding back into sleep. “No one’s knocked on a door on this planet, ever. Get back here, and keep me warm.” “I think someone’s at the door,” Ko insisted, despite gliding his hand down Lin Yao’s bare thigh in a gesture more designed for seduction than prodding for wakefulness. “Can’t be. Maybe a woodpecker or something.” “I think we already have one of those,” Nori murmured, stroking Lin Yao’s prick, rousing it immediately from quiescence to half-erect and growing. “You know a lot of filthy jokes for an Oiran.” “I like to keep people on their toes.” “Shh,” Ko insisted, brushing hair out of his face.

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RAT-A-TAT-TAT. THUMP. Lin Yao frowned at Ko’s flinch. What on earth scared him about a knock on the door? Granted, it alarmed him a tad too, only because he’d told the truth; he’d never known a convict to knock when he could more easily stand outside and bellow for attention. He humphed and grumbled as he got out of bed, unwilling to extricate his sleepy and relaxed limbs from the tangle in their nest, and staggered toward the latched door. “Perhaps a Helpmeet?” Nori asked, sounding more alert. “Ko, what’s the matter?” “Nothing, my lady.” “Ko --” “Shh. I said that it’s nothing.” Lin Yao tugged the door open over the sound of a soft kiss, pleased that whoever had come to annoy him would be getting an eyeful. “You?” he blurted when he recognized his visitor. “Something wrong? Is Tatsuo hurt?” Isao stood his ground despite a small glint of fear at Lin Yao’s sleep-roughened tone. “No. He wants you to come and meet him in the deadwood grove.” “Deadwood grove?” Lin Yao rubbed his palm over his bristly cheeks. “Where’s that supposed to be?” “He said you’d know.” “Probably the grove of lightning-struck cherry trees to our sunward left.” Nori slid out of bed. Isao’s eyes widened, telling Lin Yao she’d not bothered to throw any clothes on to hide her voluptuous nudity. Lin Yao quirked an eyebrow at the man. “As you can see, I’m busy at the moment.” All the same, he relented. “All right. Tell Tatsuo I’ll be there within the hour.” “Sooner, if you can,” Isao requested. A hint of a smirk made him look impish. “And you can. That grove isn’t too far.” “Where do you --” “Just obeying orders.” Isao shrugged. “Tatsuo said he knew you’d try and stall, and that once I’d given you the message, he’d see you in fifteen minutes. I’d hurry if I were you.” Lin Yao would have objected, vociferously, if he hadn’t heard, underneath Nori’s giggle, Ko’s soft chuckle. All right, then. As he’d said the night before, autonomy deserved its rewards. “Fifteen,” he agreed. “Tatsuo best make this worth my while.” The humor slid away from Isao. “I think he will,” he said soberly before pivoting on his heel to run away. Lin Yao stared after him, baffled. What in all the hells is going on now? Full sunrise, and the day was starting to heat up. It’d be a scorcher later on.

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Lin Yao stood at Tatsuo’s side, some distance removed from their respective Helpmeets. He resisted, first, the urge to check up on them and, second, the itch to watch them for the sake of relishing the sight of their beauty. “Appreciate your coming,” Tatsuo said, not looking at Lin Yao but at something a great distance away that Lin Yao could not spy. The older man had a wrap of smokeweed and busied his hands filling his pipe, offering Lin Yao a puff once he had the bowl lit. Lin Yao accepted the offering and drew in a deep breath of the bitter smoke. “Beats tea ceremonies,” he said abruptly. “Manners, manners. With an attitude like yours, you’ll never be mistaken for a second Buddha,” Tatsuo remarked. Lin Yao told him, in precise detail, what he could do with his jests as well as a sharp stick, which left Tatsuo hooting and pounding Lin Yao’s shoulder. Letting a wisp of smoke escape from his nostrils, Lin Yao smiled again, more naturally this time. “So,” he prompted after an unhurried space of silence. “Why did you want to meet?” Tatsuo didn’t hear him, or more likely pretended not to. He shaded his eyes against the rising sun and nodded to Isao. “He’s coming along well, don’t you think?” Lin Yao studied Isao, assessing the new straightness to his posture -- he didn’t hunch over like a frightened rabbit anymore -- and the healthier tint to his skin, a piece of observation for which he had Nori to thank, as well as his own concerned frowns over Ko’s paleness. He cleared his throat, pointedly ignoring Tatsuo’s quiet snicker. “Better,” he allowed. “Not 100 percent. Might be getting there.” “That’s my hope, as well as my plan.” Something in the way Tatsuo shaped the words piqued Lin Yao’s curiosity. “You’re besotted with him!” he accused, already starting his campaign of joshing the burly man. “Look at you. You think the sun rises and sets in his eyes. Poet.” “Shut your trap.” Tatsuo shoved him, a friendly tap that nonetheless forced Lin Yao to shuffle one step aside or risk falling down. Tatsuo’s gruffness did nothing to hide the softness in his mood. “He’s young.” “And of consenting age, or he wouldn’t be here.” Tatsuo grunted. “In his case, he’s of age, sure. But you don’t think the Tribunal would hesitate to send a kid?” “Not when they could ‘foster’ someone not yet grown up in a workhouse for his ‘wellbeing’ until he’s grown.” “Which would be never, as I remember what those workhouses are like, and I can’t imagine they’ve gotten any softer. It’s a better life for them here, and they’re starting to understand. As are the convicts.”

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Lin Yao grunted. “What?” “Surprised, that’s all. I figured the transition would be paved with bloody noses and broken teeth. You’re not telling me about any.” “Because there are none to tell about. I’m surprised too. More, I find it interesting how there were sure to be plenty before you stepped up and told that rabble to mind their manners.” “Don’t start that again.” “I’m not. The stone’s already rolling, and it’s gathering no moss.” “Tatsuo.” “You’re going to hear me out,” Tatsuo said with flat finality. “The convicts need a leader. I’ve walked around the fields all night, and you’re not the first bunch of lovebirds I’ve spotted. The Helpmeets and the convicts are mating, loving. Soon, if not now. That means the convicts have something to lose. And if I know one thing about humanity, I know this for sure: now that these men have something to fight for, soon enough they’ll be eyeing up their enemies -- the Tribunal Lords -- with thoughts of protecting those they care about. Maybe even rebelling, as they’ve had the potential to all along. Lin Yao, you could --” “Save your breath.” Lin Yao turned away. “I’ve listened; now here’s my answer, same as ever. No. Find someone else.” “There is no one else. This rebellion will happen with or without your guidance. That’s just facts.” Tatsuo sounded defeated. Lin Yao looked back at him, curious. The man’s expression of bleak resignation took him by surprise with its intensity. “They’ll fight, and they’ll die. More will die unless you step up the way you were meant to.” Lin Yao fought a rising sense of unease, a pressing of emotion that made his muscles tighten. “You’re wrong. They’ll never gather the balls. Besides, it’d be suicide. None of ’em are that dumb.” “You don’t think so?” “And you do? Fine, have it your way, and let it all be on your head if your crazy dreams do come true,” he huffed, determined to grab his Helpmeets and head for home, well away from all lunatics. “Lead the rebellion yourself. Nori, Ko! We’re leaving.” “It’ll be on everyone’s heads when Gyen gets wind of all this and brings the Tribunal down to eradicate us.” Lin Yao stopped between one step and the next. “They wouldn’t waste the effort, not on folks sent out here to die anyway.” “You don’t think so? Look around you. This land is wild, but it’s full of riches we’ve barely tapped but will, now that we’ve got a reason to care. Gyen will fill the men’s heads with stories about wealth, tempting them to rebel and seize the planet for themselves, and I’ll stake my life that Gyen’s counting on a half-assed rebellion to use as an excuse for wiping

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the planet clean so the Tribunal can make better use of it without publicly showing themselves as monstrous enough to do such a thing. If we don’t take care of Gyen now and mount a proper insurrection -- if you don’t step up to lead them as you’ve shown you can -then everyone’s deaths are on your head.” The commander shook his head. “I know what you want to say. I can’t do it. I could make the rest follow me, but it’d be by force. They’d follow you because they’d want to. That makes all the difference between victory and defeat. We need you, Lin Yao. Please.” Lin Yao choked down his answer, alarmed at how the words of acquiescence to Tatsuo’s wishes flowed so eagerly up his throat. He clenched his fists and hung fire. “That means Nori and Ko too. That means my Isao. Please.” Lin Yao’s bitten-off fingernails dug into the meat of his palms. “I’m not the kind of leader you say I am. I can’t do this.” “You could at least try.” Nori and Ko had already reached them and overheard. She placed her hand on his arm, wide eyes filled with silent concern. “Ignore him,” Lin Yao said, voice clipped and low. “Tatsuo’s right.” Ko’s fair skin was blanched. He stared past Lin Yao, seeing something no one else could see, his head tilted to one side as if he was listening to someone no one else could hear. “I know Tatsuo is right.” Lin Yao’s spine prickled. Did Ko see a ghost? Was a ghost warning him? Oh, that’d be a bad omen. “Something else you should think about,” Tatsuo called as the three of them strode toward their shack. “Even if it doesn’t come to a war -- and it will -- Gyen’ll soon hear from the Tribunal about which of your Helpmeets stays and which goes. We could stop that.” Ko shook his head, his lips opening and closing on words that died before they were born. “Ko.” Lin Yao moved toward him, but his Helpmeet spared him a tight grimace of dismay before turning on his heel and running, the hitch in his gait from his limp only slightly slowing him down. Lin Yao forgot Tatsuo, forgot Nori, forgot Gyen and the convicts, and raced after Ko with only one thought in his mind. I’m not letting him leave us.

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Chapter Sixteen I ran because I had begun to believe in Lin Yao and Nori. To accept the false hope of remaining a loving unit of three as true, and to forget how things truly were. To think I could indeed stay with Lin Yao and Nori, whom I knew to be his rightful Helpmeet. When reminded of the ugly truth, my nerve broke. Sick with dismay at my own weakness, hating how my heart demanded that I stay and drown myself in their hot kisses and willing arms, and knowing how they’d loathe me when they discovered the truth… I ran. My folly this time was in believing they’d let me escape.

***** “Think again, Ko.” Lin Yao’s hard shove to the center of his back sent Ko sprawling nose down onto the hard, untilled earth at the dead orchard’s edge. He gasped in surprise, inhaling old pollen and dirt and dander, almost choking. His master crouched beside him, fury evident in the trembling of his limbs. “You want to tell me what all that was about?” he demanded, hauling Ko upright with a merciless yank on his arm. Ko wheezed, chest aching from the force of his coughs. Humiliation added its berry bright stain to the redness lent by lack of air. I make a fine Helpmeet, don’t I? he chastised himself angrily. I can’t even handle so much as a simple fall. “Lin Yao!” Nori knelt on Ko’s other side, her hands gentle. “Let him breathe.” “Nori --”

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“Let him breathe. Then we’ll see what’s what.” She massaged the back of Ko’s neck. Despite all good intentions, Ko pushed into her touch. Her presence was as a balm to him, a healing tincture soothing away wounds both old and new; he’d pay any price to stay here with her forever and always…

No. Ko willfully ignored the tickle in his throat and gagged for air, forcing down one steady breath and then another. “Fine. He’s getting air, so back off. Ko. Look at me, Ko!” He glared at Lin Yao and spilled out in a raw, urgent whisper, “Let me go. For your own good, and for Nori’s sake. Let me go.” “I don’t think so. Can you stand?” Not waiting to hear his response, Lin Yao began to raise him up bodily, raking the crumbles of old leaves off his leathers. “Need you to get in front of me so I can kick your ass. What were you thinking? You nearly scared…Nori to death.” Ko barked a short, humorless laugh. “My apologies to Nori.” “Gods dammit!” Lin Yao shoved a hand through his hair and tugged, his mouth set in tight lines. “Either you tell me what’s gotten into you or --” “Or what?” Ko felt the weight of uncertainty and fear rise from him as if they were heavy blankets slipping away. He stood straight for what seemed like the first time in decades, crossed his arms, and faced Lin Yao down. He was taller by at least two inches, and he wasn’t the only one surprised at the realization. Ko recovered after a moment, determined not to lose this advantage. “What will you do to me if I hold my tongue, Lin Yao? Punish me?” “Not unless you ask nicely,” Lin Yao murmured, the light in his eyes gleaming suddenly dark. “Is that what you’re after?” “What? No!” Ko retreated automatically, though he regretted the display of submission before he’d stilled. “You’re twisting my words and forcing your own meaning in my mouth.” “I remember forcing you, all right, as well as filling your mouth with me, and I recall too how you begged me not to stop.” Ko’s tongue went dry. Despite the parched texture, he tried to wet his lips. “I must go. I am going. I’m doing this for you and for Nori. Don’t stand in my way.” “Or you’ll what?” Lin Yao goaded, neatly turning the tables. He crowded into Ko’s space, asserting his dominance as naturally as his heart beat. The hard heat of his body diminished Ko’s already rapidly dissolving will to escape. “Maybe you’d like to punish me.” “Stop making this all about sex!” Ko protested. “It’s not -- not all I --” “Say it again like you mean it, and maybe I’ll believe you.” Lin Yao pressed so closely to Ko that barely a breeze could have passed between them. “Do I need to order you? Tatsuo thinks when I tell a man to jump, all he wonders is ‘how high.’ Maybe I’ll try that on you.”

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“And prove Tatsuo right?” Lin Yao’s lips thinned. “If I have to.” “Why?” “Idiot. What have we been squabbling about? You don’t get to leave. I’m saying it’s not allowed.” “You can’t --” “Be damned to ‘can’t.’ I will keep you.” “Don’t promise me that.” “Why shouldn’t I?” “Because -- because --” Ko fumbled, lost for a fitting rejoinder, soon lost altogether. Lin Yao was the one who stood near enough for Ko to taste his breath, but it was Nori who wrenched him around to face her, took his jaw in her hands, and went on tiptoe to seal her mouth over his. He stumbled, falling into her. She caught him up in her arms and clung to him, teasing at the seam of his lips with quick flicks of her tongue until he opened to let her in. He groaned at the taste of her, her mingled flavors of spicy tea and sex. She tore away when she was ready and not before, looping her arms around his neck and holding his gaze without mercy. “Neither of us will let you go, and neither would either of you let me go. Don’t you understand how it is between us now?” Ko couldn’t have spoken if his life had depended upon it, regardless that her life hung in the balance. Weak, weak, weak, he thought, disgusted. “Stay.” Lin Yao crowded him from behind, aligning his body so that Ko’s ass snuggled into his groin, and Lin Yao’s chin fit over his shoulder. More aggressive still than the rest of him, Lin Yao’s fingers dragged furrows over the skin of Ko’s belly and finished cupped over his rising prick, kneading in a way that should have hurt but didn’t. “Stay,” Nori insisted, rising again, not to kiss him, but to lick and nip at the underside of his chin. Lin Yao applied the same method on Ko’s other side, never once ceasing to massage and encourage Ko’s erection to full hardness. “Stay, or I’ll kick your ass out myself.” Ko laughed breathlessly. “You’re mad,” he heard himself protest. “Both of you. Mad as March hares.” Lin Yao snorted rudely, then made up for his lack of manners by untying the string holding Ko’s leather pants up and helping them drop to the ground. He grasped the length of Ko’s prick and worked him in punishing strokes. “Crazy seems to be going around,” he mumbled against Ko’s throat. “Might as well enjoy.” “That hardly sounds like you,” Ko said, or thought he said. Regardless, he knew he’d undercut his own scorn with his moan and his thrust into Lin Yao’s callused palm. “Gods, don’t.”

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“Don’t stop, you mean?” Lin Yao bit, not breaking the skin yet drawing the same sort of bristling-bright pain. He rocked his own erection against Ko’s ass. “Nori, what do you think he meant?” She came to rest on her heels, mischief aglitter in her smile. “I think he doesn’t want us to stop.” “You must.” “Must and stop. Sounds like two different cries to me, eh?” “Which one’s the truth?” “One way to find out that I know of.” “Stop talking about me -- oh, gods -- as if I’m not here.” “Think we should, Nori?” “Mmm. Perhaps.” Nori stroked Ko’s throat, drawing complicated patterns that trailed lower and lower still until she finished by lacing her fingers through Lin Yao’s, helping him work Ko’s prick. Ko bucked into their grip, then doubled over, his head abutting Nori’s chest. Lin Yao swore, his mind wholly diverted. “Don’t have anything with me. Nori?” “Nothing but this.” She led Ko’s fingers to her quim, guiding one in. He cursed under his breath as her wet heat surrounded the digit, and again when she squeezed her internal muscles around him. She laughed, low and throaty. “Women are lucky sometimes.” “Don’t gloat.” Lin Yao harrumphed, clearly disgusted, yet at the same time lascivious, for he took his own share in fingering Nori’s quim, pushing in beside Ko’s digits. “Gods, woman,” he said in seeming reverence. “You’ve turned me into someone who can’t think about aught but fucking.” The crude language served to inflame Ko’s groin, his prick throbbing. “The argument’s not over,” he warned, the last arrow in his quiver. “Only delayed.” Lin Yao rocked another finger into Nori’s quim while biting at Ko’s jaw. “Shut up.” Ko fell silent, knowing any more words would be useless, and unable to form them anyway. He let Lin Yao direct him where they both wanted him to be, his prick pushing open Nori’s quim and gliding smoothly as silk into the heart of her. As she moaned and undulated with Ko, establishing a rhythm, quick thrusts and slow retreats that stole away almost all his awareness save for his prick and her quim, he lost track of what Lin Yao was doing. Until, that was, callused hands spread his ass open and a heated, pointed tongue pressed against his hole. Ko arched, pleas and vicious curses and near sobs boiling off his lips. He held Nori by her hips, grasping tightly and rocking with her as she rode him; he struggled not to fall from Lin Yao’s assault on the bundles of flaring nerves under his tongue. He came with a ragged yell, humping into Nori in short, spasmodic jerks. She laughed breathlessly between soft cries, not at her own peak but not too far away. Lin Yao surged up,

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stroking his prick hard against the firm pucker he’d just licked and pushing his way practically to Nori’s quim, where Ko’s prick was still buried. He fingered around the place where Ko and Nori were joined, his hissed exclamation adding fuel to the fire in Ko’s release, then stroked Nori above Ko so that he could feel him bringing her off. Sticky wetness painted Ko’s ass seconds later, Lin Yao relentlessly thrusting through the bursts of cum that escaped him. Lin Yao sagged over Ko, moving to squeeze Nori’s buttocks. “Neither of you are going anywhere,” he mumbled. “Get used to it.” Ko closed his eyes tightly and turned away from Nori’s questing lips which demanded kisses. No. He wasn’t escaping, was he? At least not until the moment the Tribunal came to take him away as an impostor…

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Chapter Seventeen I didn’t know what would happen next, though I should have. Nori and Lin Yao and I lost ourselves among the ruins of the old orchard instead, both of them relentless in their teasing and their never-ending caresses. I decided to temporarily put out of my head the knowledge of what I had to do and how soon I needed to run. I had stayed too long, I had gotten too close, and I could smell the danger on the north wind. Did I take the chance to escape while I could, when Nori and Lin Yao dozed off under the heat of the midday sun, tangled in one another’s arms with me in the middle? No. I lay there like a fool instead, petting their hair with the absence of reason that defines the besotted. I let myself pretend, for a little while longer, that the oncoming storm was nothing more than a springtime shower. Don’t hate me for this. Who could look at Nori’s ripe beauty and not want to live and die in her arms? Who could turn from Lin Yao without being forever changed? I couldn’t bear to face it, not just then, and so I turned my thoughts away, toward peace. I drifted off to sleep with the feeling that I had somehow come home. And because of this, we could not stop the war that began while we slept.

*****

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“Lin Yao! Lin Yao! Where are you?” He jerked awake, propping his weight on his elbows. “Not again,” he grumbled, rebalancing so he could rub at one dry, itchy eye. “Nori, Ko. Wake up. We’ve got company.” “Wha’?” Ko slurred. Lin Yao snuck a peek at him and was hard put to resist a smug smirk. He’d done that to Ko, he and Nori together, fucking the fight out of their third until he became as he was now, docile, eager, and beautiful in the way of a Luna moth, all pale luminescence even when basking in the falling afternoon sun. Lin Yao chided himself for such a foolish flight of fancy. If he was going to appreciate Ko’s body, then he’d rather gloat over the bite marks and finger-shaped bruises he’d left there, remembering each taste of Ko and the corresponding noises he’d drawn from the pale man. His nudge to Ko’s ribs was gentler than it might have been. “Up and at ’em, dozy. Someone’s coming.” Ko sighed, sounding extremely put upon. Lin Yao chuckled. “You too, Nori.” “Taskmaster,” she grouched. For all her protests, she kissed his shoulder as she sat up and stretched, yawning.

Who’d have ever thought? he pondered, amused, tipping his head back to let the sunlight play over his cheeks. Helpmeets were a good idea, after all. Lin Yao scratched his chin, in such a good mood that he idly wondered how he could make up for the argument with Tatsuo without trespassing on the commander’s unspoken rules of etiquette and without appearing to be a soppy maiden himself. He had just turned to Nori to ask her opinion when their visitor repeated his shouts. He sat up immediately, freeing his limbs of Nori and Ko. There was a note of terrified desperation and a lift of rage in the caller’s cry that drew him up in the way of a hunting hound when he heard the trumpets blaring. “What is it?” Ko tried to follow him. “Shh!” Lin Yao rose carefully into a crouch, heart pounding in his ears. He couldn’t entirely tell why he was reacting so strongly, but every nerve ending in his body felt raw, lightning struck, ferociously eager for action. “Get up, both of you. Get behind me.” “Lin Yao --” Nori started. Ko shushed her. “Do as he says, my lady.” The summoner came racing through the orchard with arms windmilling, came finally close enough for recognition. “Isao!” Lin Yao could have throttled the young man for being such a persistent annoyance. “What do you think you’re doing?” The Helpmeet stopped by tumbling to his knees. “I found you,” he rasped. “I found you.”

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“You did. What’s this all about?” Lin Yao repeated, trying to be patient. Not a drop of Isao’s panic had run off when he’d found them. Something was wrong. Something -“Tatsuo.” He lurched forward, gripping Isao far too fiercely by the arms and dragging him up face-to-face. “What’s happened to Tatsuo?” Isao’s face crumpled. “The way station. Gyen. There’s fighting.” “What happened to him?” Lin Yao roared. “Tell me specifically what’s happened to Tatsuo.” Not the one who least deserves this. Please, not Tatsuo. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.” Isao’s lips twisted, as if he knew that to be unlikely or a lie. “Gyen kept pushing and pushing, and now the soldier guards are rioting, refusing to follow Tatsuo’s orders. Tatsuo said he’d hold them back as long as he could, until you could get there. He said he needed you. Sent me to get you. Please, come with me. Please. He told me not to come back without you, and I have to get back to him.” “You love him,” Ko said softly from behind them. Isao didn’t deny it. “Come with me. Come with me now. I’m begging you.” “No need to beg,” Lin Yao replied shortly, rising. He shook back the tangles of his hair and let it consume him at last, the sense of righteous indignation and proud rage he’d fought for so long. He let a war leader’s wrath swallow him whole without questioning why, though he sensed if he stopped to riddle himself, the answer would be simple. If they shed Tatsuo’s blood, then they die too. Lin Yao finally let himself act. He bound his hair at the nape of his neck in a haphazard square knot and slapped Isao’s arm to get him moving. “Lead the way. I’m right behind you. Go!”

***** I lagged far behind Isao and Lin Yao and even Nori, the injury to my leg slowing me down until I nearly despaired of catching up with them. Halfway to the way station, a thought occurred to me.

What are you doing? Now is the perfect chance, perhaps the only chance you’ll have left. Run away from them, not with them. Escape into the unmapped lands beyond where the convicts live. You can’t help Tatsuo, no, but you can save Nori and Lin Yao. This trade-off is the only way. “Is it?” the ghost of the peasant woman asked, effortlessly keeping pace with me as I hurried. “Or is there something more you can do, Ko? Something you were born to do?” I knew I’d advised myself wisely, yet I couldn’t stop running. I didn’t want to stop. I seemed to shiver in the remembered icy chill of the old monk who’d blocked my attempt to help the peasant

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woman so many years ago. I knew that if I turned to save my own skin now, then I had lived my life and made this attempt at freedom on Sheol IV all in vain. I would not turn and escape from what I understood now to be my destiny. And so, though cold sweat poured off my limbs, and my lungs ached from the exertion, I did not cease running until we drew within sight of the way station. I hoped against hope that Isao had exaggerated. Foolish of me, for I had smelled the noisome smoke and seen its dark billows staining the sky long before arriving. Despite the unacknowledged disaster awaiting us, I think we all hoped the chaos that awaited us would not be so bad. We were wrong.

***** Nori turned away from the wreckage, nausea twisting her stomach. “Gods,” she choked, inhaling the stench of still-smoldering old wood and cheap plastics, gagging on the aromas of blood and fury. “Gods. Who would do this?” Lin Yao made no answer. She dared to sneak a glimpse at him and shuddered, for he posed as still as any statue, save for the tight flexing of his fists, the knuckles standing out whitely. Between them and the way station, still wreathed in flames, Isao had searched frantically, then flung himself at a sooty lump laid out over singed earth, frantically chanting Tatsuo’s name. Tatsuo and No. Nori saw Tatsuo raise his hand to stroke Isao’s cheek and had to look away, tears sliding down her cheeks. She couldn’t, however, block her ears, and she heard everything that passed thereafter. “Isao,” Lin Yao said after a terrible pause. “Let me talk to him.” Isao snarled an animal protest that Lin Yao ignored. His bare feet made no noise on the earth as he went to Tatsuo. His knees scuffed when he dropped to them. “Thought you’d come,” Tatsuo coughed. “If I’d known this was what it took…” Nori could too easily visualize the tightness in Lin Yao’s expression as he examined Tatsuo. He made no rash, empty promises and told no lies. “They’re all dead for this,” he swore instead. “I’ll kill them myself.” “…would’ve put my neck on the chopping block ages ago.” Tatsuo chuckled, breaking off abruptly to cough. “Isao,” Lin Yao said, the two syllables sounding a clear warning.

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“Make me leave,” Isao snapped back. “I’m not going anywhere.” “It’s not for you to see --” “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t --” “Stop it!” someone else roared from a short distance away. Nori lifted her eyes, baffled until the one who had commanded them drew to a clumsy stop by her side, lifting her to stand. “All of you. Stop, now. Don’t dishonor him this way.” Nori obeyed, gazing first through half-shut eyes and the tangle of her lashes, taking in the sight of Lin Yao’s rage, Isao’s heartbroken terror, and Ko’s white-lipped determination. She thought, though she knew it didn’t make any sense, that at that moment, history trembled. “Tatsuo?” Isao bent over the man who had rescued him and given him a home. The man who had stolen away his heart. “Tatsuo? Don’t sleep now. Don’t.” Lin Yao looked away, his lips twisting with frustrated anger, He stood, wrath evident in every twitch of his muscles, the mischievous lover and the good man gone in the face of the infuriated warrior he’d seemed to have become. “They die for this,” he vowed once more to Tatsuo, though the man could no longer hear his words. “Gyen dies, and so do the bastards who dared take his side. Let the Tribunal choke on our revenge. Gyen’s going to burn like this way station. That’s my oath.” He glared at the wreckage. “It happens tonight.”

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Chapter Eighteen You may think that I didn’t know how to fight, that I would be worse than useless in the battle hurtling toward us. You’d be surprised. The monks, my cold brethren, didn’t teach us hand-tohand combat, that much is true. They did make certain we understood the history of war -- which tactics failed and which succeeded -- and we acolytes knew very well when we were sent to the battlefields to collect the fallen soldiers’ valuables under pretense of blessing the dead -- to the victor went all the spoils, and the loser ended up forgotten. I knew that if one did not fight to win, one might as well lie down and wait for the carrion birds. Yes, I finally knew this was why the peasant woman’s ghost had clung to me. She had wanted to be here for this, though I was not sure yet whether or not she would help or hinder. I also understood this: the tables can always be turned. The weak can snap off the strong’s head with what they have learned to use to their advantage. Hotter heads don’t think of this in their battle madness. I did, I, who had trained my whole life to assess people. So I knew how to win, if not to fight physical battles, and it was with that in mind that I approached Lin Yao with my offer. However, I could not tell Lin Yao how I knew these things. I still hoped I would somehow escape without his discovering my betrayal, my lies, you see. The problem was that Lin Yao did not want to listen to me.

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***** “I don’t have time for this, Ko.” Lin Yao shouldered his way ahead of the pack, of his battalion, which so far consisted of Isao -- a mouse that roared -- a pseudo-Oiran who had never held more than a pearl-handled lady’s blade in her life, and Ko, who was quickly losing both Zen calm and patience. “You want to help? Fine. Go see what you can salvage out of the way station’s supplies. See if you can find the armory they weren’t supposed to have.” “No.” Ko tried to step in front of Lin Yao to block his progress. His master wrenched unwillingly to a halt, his scowl black and discouraging. Lin Yao’s forehead was smeared with red stains and with sooty ash. An aura of blood madness and a nigh-overwhelming thirst for revenge had changed him from hot-tempered yet lowly convict to a man to be feared. Ko did fear him, and considered that only sane. No man or woman in their right minds would challenge someone like Lin Yao in this state, not without enough firepower and muscle to bring him down. But he did not need to be destroyed, only subdued. Ko wasn’t certain he could get through to the man, but he knew that if he didn’t try, then the lives of Nori and Isao and Lin Yao would lie heavily on his soul. And he would grieve forever for their loss, unless the gods and goddesses were kind to him and favored them all with new lives. Ko had his doubts that the deities would be capable of such kindness, if they even existed. Now would have been a fine time for the ghost to appear and guide him, so of course she remained absent. He shook his head to clear it, annoyed at the trained-in habit he’d learned from the monks, which clouded his thinking with useless, scholarly nonsense. Lin Yao had sensed his distraction and tried to move past him. Ko stopped him with a great effort, planting his feet squarely, despite the flare of pain from his wound, and using all the upper body strength he had to command. “Lin Yao, listen to me. You cannot charge the enemy with no more than a broken branch. Such foolhardiness --” He could tell the other man itched to shove him out of the way. “I told you to go find some weapons. That’ll serve us better than twigs. If you want to be of use, then do as I said.” “No.” Ko drew himself upright until his back protested. “Weapons are only good for shooting yourself in the groin if you don’t know how to use them.” “What’s to know? Aim, fire, then again. Get out of my way.” “No. Do you even know where Gyen is? Where his Helpmeet might be? How many soldier guards he has behind him? You know none of this, and without a clear understanding, you race only to your doom.” Lin Yao’s fists flexed. Ko knew he was closer to being struck than he had ever considered might happen; still, he waited, refusing to back down.

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“Lin Yao.” Nori approached them on quiet cat’s feet, stroking their master’s arm. Her cheeks, too, were smudged with soot from the fires in the way station. “Listen to him. He has the cooler head right now.” “You think I care about ‘cooler’?” Lin Yao demanded, turning on her. “Isao. You, are you with me?” Tatsuo’s Helpmeet had advanced several paces ahead. He looked at Lin Yao over his shoulder, tight, angry lips parting to swear his allegiance. Ko met the young man’s eyes and held them, pouring all his empathy and firm resolve into their locked stare. Isao’s fierce expression faltered after a few beats. “I -- I --” It was enough to break the last thin thread of Lin Yao’s patience. “Are you insane? Tatsuo lies dead. Dead, Isao. He’s not coming back to you. You’re saying now you don’t want to make his killers pay?” Isao wavered visibly, torn between Lin Yao and Ko. “The question is not whether or not we exact our justice. The issue is wise fighting versus blind attacks. Listen to me, Isao, and we will emerge victorious. Listen to hot tempers, and all we’ll be at the end of the day is dead” -- Ko hesitated -- “dead as Tatsuo, and there is no vengeance for him when you lie together in a shallow grave.” He felt hideous at the way Isao paled. Lin Yao’s jaw worked. “Fine. I’m on my own. Go make your ladylike plans and fix up a tea party. I’m sure Gyen will sit down for the full ceremony and agree to come along like a perfect gentleman.” “Lin Yao!” Nori punched him in the chest, directly above his heart. “Enough of this. You listen to Ko. He knows what he’s doing.” “And how do you know this?” he demanded. She faltered. “I don’t --” Nori spread her hands. “It’s in my heart.” “Nori --” “What? You’ll tell me to shut my mouth? Screw you, Lin Yao.” Nori put her foot down. She blazed with as high a passion as Lin Yao, fearsome to behold. Lin Yao gaped at Nori. “What did you say?” “You heard me. We listen to Ko.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll take his orders before yours.” Lin Yao barked a startled laugh and faced Ko. “Both of you -- you’re unbelievable.” “Thank you,” Ko replied, not backing down. “Now, if we’re done stamping our feet and bellowing, we can make our plans and recruit our army.” “Army?” Lin Yao blinked at him while a light of comprehension dawned on Nori and Isao’s visages. Ko let the inner savagery that had been building within him release itself. “Army, yes,” he said, showing his teeth. “We won’t be fighting alone.”

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Chapter Nineteen “Tatsuo is dead. Murdered by Gyen. By the soldier guard traitors. Come with me,” Isao said, facing down the grizzled, scarred men grown old before their time from the hardships of their lives and appealing to the softer, younger Helpmeets by their sides. “Come and take what you’ve earned here. Fight.”

***** “For your own sakes,” Nori encouraged, holding herself as would an Oiran proper, yet with the kindness of a woman and the righteous wrath of a battle queen in her demeanor. “Convicts! Every man and woman of you, you know what you long for. We can do this. Join with us. Avenge Tatsuo. Be free.”

***** “Either you’re with us or you’re against us,” Lin Yao snapped at the reluctant Helpmeets and their masters that he’d rounded up from their hiding places. “You saw them? Gyen and his men? How many? Follow me while you tell me. Move!” He hardened his heart against the strange conflict of pride and alarm at how the convicts and their Helpmeets fell in line behind him, protests dying between one syllable and the next.

Lead, Tatsuo had told him. Fine. Lead he would. He ignored, too, how good it felt, how natural, to take command at last.

***** “This is your choice. Freedom or slavery until you die.”

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“Always thought we didn’t have a choice,” a particularly hard-bitten type replied, taking the responsibility of the voice for his group. “Yes? And I suppose you never thought you’d be drawn together as a unit either. Over anything. Or so Lin Yao tells me.” Ko refused to be baited, using the plain reason he’d sensed would be right in this situation. “Yet here you are.” The convicts shared uneasy glances back and forth, some looking embarrassed, as if they’d only just comprehended their gathering, more of them with Helpmeets at their side than not. “The Tribunal is unjust,” Ko said. “Their soldier guards are corrupt. Bastards like Gyen go wherever they want and play nasty little games to their heart’s content for no greater reason than the sort of whim a cat would act upon when chasing a rat. They do not see us as human but as vermin, to be toyed with or destroyed as they choose. Their ‘mercy’ is and always has been a sham. Don’t you see that?” The convict leader chewed that over. “They got around to thinkin’ they were stupid to hang on to old ‘mercies,’” he scoffed. “Laws thousands of years old don’t mean a pile of horse scat to them.” “The laws haven’t meant anything to them for centuries and don’t now,” Ko confirmed. “This will be the straw that breaks the backs of all small crumbs of decency remaining to the Emperor Worlds.” “In other words, if they kill us, they’ll start killing everyone they please. Already do that, some. Now it’ll be like every day.” The leader chewed his grimy thumbnail. “Right, then. All you sorry sacks get in line behind Ko, there.” Protests broke out, though ragged and half-hearted. Ko chose to play his trump card, the one he knew could not be refuted, to use the power he had been given. “Tatsuo spoke through Lin Yao, and Lin Yao speaks through me. These are his orders and not my own. Follow me.” The convicts silenced their protests. They followed.

***** Lin Yao stood before the ruins of the way station, watching impassively as the crowds of convicts approached, neither slouching lazily nor loud with jokes at his expense. Every convict and Helpmeet carried what farming implements they would’ve had ready to hand, from hoes of chipped rock to rusted saws, to knives with blades carved from fire-hardened bone. One by one, they came to stand before him, eyes going wide as they passed Tatsuo’s body -- which they had no choice but to do. The commander’s corpse was arranged as if he were only sleeping. Tatsuo had mostly been kind to all of them, never without a friendly word when a lecture wasn’t warranted, and an understanding ear when needed. The sight of

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his body affected each differently. Some swore and looked away, some paled, some hardened to obsidian rigidity, and some, a very few, bowed respect to Isao, who stood next to Tatsuo with his head held high. Convict by convict, Lin Yao’s army took their places, and there they waited, taut with anger and thirst for vengeance. He could feel Ko’s watchful warning as if it were a hand holding him back. He nodded once, briefly, to let Ko know he would not lose control now. Ko did not relax. To Lin Yao’s other side, Nori stood with her arms crossed beneath her breasts. She’d torn her ill-fitting sack of a tunic into strips and used the sturdiest to bind her chest. Her dark skin gleamed above and below the breast band and tunic pants she’d stolen from Lin Yao. She had the look of a haughty empress about her, yet it was enough to take Lin Yao’s breath momentarily away. He sensed Ko’s instant of humor as well as the flash of lust for proud, beautiful Nori. He turned to glance at the blond, and what he saw there also aroused him. From the electrum gleam of his pale hair, severely drawn back into a braid, to the planes of his bared belly, taut with readiness, to the strength in his arms, Ko filled Lin Yao with lust and pride. Lin Yao reached to take both his Helpmeets’ hands. Borne up between them, drawing on the strength of his love for them, he faced his army. “Listen up, all of you!” Lin Yao roared, his blood hot and alive in his veins, eager for the fight. “We search for Gyen and his men, first. When we find them, you listen to Ko; he advises us. Fight behind me. Protect Nori.” “Nori will protect herself, thank you!” she flared, much to the dark amusement of the convicts. Several of the Helpmeets cheered. “Then, Nori, you’re in charge of the Helpmeets,” he decided, checking quickly with Ko, who nodded gravely. “Your guidance, then, Ko. Speak loudly so we can all hear you.” Ko began to talk but froze in midbreath. “You. What are you doing here?” All eyes turned with the convicts, angry men and women shuffling around only to find themselves struck dumb. Gyen stood behind the crowd, a lazy sneer stretching his lips. He carried a laser gun loosely in one hand. “Well, well, well,” he drawled, seeming nothing more than amused at their gathering. “Won’t this look interesting in my report?” He raised the gun too quickly to track its progress, and fired.

***** The shot went ridiculously wild, zipping over their heads, but it served to catch their full attention. “I trust that I have your ears now,” Gyen said over the barrel of his weapon. He polished the gleaming black casing with his thumb, readying the power pack for another

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blast. “Would anyone care to explain the situation? From here, I appear to have stumbled across an insurrection. How quaint.” Ko schooled his breathing into a meditative pattern he’d learned to quash irrational anger. After three inhales, he found his center -- tenuously -- and clung to it. This farce had not yet passed the point of no return. “You killed Tatsuo,” Lin Yao accused flatly. “Left him to burn.” Gyen shrugged. “He entertained disloyal thoughts. It was a lawful execution and within my authority as a representative of justice.” “You’d have done it all the same,” a convict muttered. “Wouldn’t have mattered if he was the top dog in the Tribunal, you’d have shot him down all the same.” Gyen twitched. Lin Yao smirked. “The Tribunal is not here,” Gyen enunciated clearly. “I am, however, and I represent their august dominion, far too good for the likes of you gutter rats.” The convicts burst into ragged, jeering laughter. Their reaction clearly took Gyen by surprise, as well as Ko. What did they think was so funny about the insult? Lin Yao snorted disdainfully. “Guess you never heard about what rats do to terriers when the numbers aren’t even, huh?” “Are you seriously suggesting I should worry?” Gyen sneered at him. “I have the weapons. All of them. The armory I assume you planned to plunder has already been cleaned out by my soldier guards.” “Yours?” a convict demanded. “You didn’t think they’d scattered? No, little fools, they didn’t. Where are they, then, you wonder? Look around you. They’re all here. Show yourselves, men!” He gestured magnificently at the night-cloaked circle around the way station. At first, no one appeared, and Ko’s lips twitched with black amusement, wondering if the cowards had abandoned their self-appointed leader. Then, one by one, the shabby, dirty soldier guards crept out of hiding. Their hands shook on the weapons they held, but they were armed while the convicts were not. “Good!” Gyen gloated openly. “Very good. Ah, my young Mor. Come here, pet.” The slight, dark youth Gyen called his Helpmeet separated from the stragglers and approached. He, unlike the others, walked with a cocky swagger in his step and a flat expression of boredom. “You look displeased, pet.” Gyen caught Mor by the neck and hauled him in, though he kept one eye on the convicts at the end of his gun. “What’s the matter?” Ko’s stomach threatened to turn. “The snake in the grass has eaten a rotten egg,” he murmured. The convicts roared with laughter.

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“Ignore them, pet. They’re only the wind rushing over barren soil.” Gyen stroked Mor’s narrow, foxlike face. “Come now. Tell me what ails you.” Mor sneered. “Why are you wasting time with them? It’s stupid. Kill them all the way you’re supposed to; then radio for a transport shuttle. Get us off this rock and back to our reward.” Ko spotted Gyen briefly faltering -- his heart leapt with hope -- and pounced. “How will you summon anyone?” he asked, falsely polite. “The only communicators were in the way station. They wouldn’t have trusted convicts with anything like that. You’ve burned up your own chance at escaping.” Gyen’s angry retort died before it was born. “You know that, don’t you?” Lin Yao also leapt on Gyen’s momentary display of weakness. “Now, isn’t this a twist? Why would you destroy your only chance of getting out?” Then Nori spoke up. “Perhaps it wasn’t him who started the fire at all. Perhaps it’s the dark weasel twined around his arm.” Gyen’s scowl deepened. “That doesn’t matter. Quiet! All of you! This can still be resolved peacefully.” The convicts thought that was hilarious. They baited him some more, hooting and booing. Some threw clods of dirt. Gyen fired his pistol. Rage caused his hand to shake; thus, he failed to hit any of the convicts, which only maddened him further. “Shut up, I said! If you agree to settle, to walk away from this, if you do as I say, you won’t all be executed for your treasonous crimes.” “Like we’d believe you,” Lin Yao said disdainfully, then addressed his collection of convicts and Helpmeets. “They’ll kill us all anyway, if they’ve a mind to.” “Then why rebel, if you’re certain it will lead to your deaths?” Gyen smirked. “I would have thought the certainty of failure would frighten any sane man out of such a suicidal notion.” “Times change. Someone, throw me a weapon.” Lin Yao caught the long-handled, flinttipped digging stick as he would a spear, whipping the sharp end around to point at Gyen. “How about we discuss your backing down? I swear on my life that you’re dead within seconds if you don’t.” “You’d offer me mercy. Charming.” Gyen brushed dirt off the arm which remained raised, gun pointed. “Now…I’d hoped to avoid this. I did. I’m not a bad man,” he said, ignoring the taunts from the convicts. “Lin Yao, I have a proposition for you.” “Doubt you’ve got what it takes to keep me satisfied, if you have any at all,” Lin Yao replied instantly. Ko thought he could see wrath threatening to overtake Gyen’s façade of calm. He wasn’t sure whether it would work in their favor or lead to disaster. “Say what you wish to

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say,” he interjected, trying to wrest back some control. The convicts, if not Gyen, were growing disquieted, their unity turning over into the blind wildness of a mob. “Is that your request, Ko?” Gyen looked suddenly sly. A cold spear of fear pierced Ko’s belly. He knows, Ko thought suddenly, nausea rising in his throat. He knows, and I can’t stop him from telling. Not unless -“Lin Yao, have you heard of bad-luck men?” Gyen asked. “Men who taint everything they touch and cast shame upon whatever they come near? Men with luck so bad, they turn safety into danger and friends into enemies? Who twist your way of thinking until…oh, until they think rising up in a lunatic rebellion is a good idea.” “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lin Yao said stoically. But Ko could see the doubt in his master’s eyes. He struggled to find the right balance on his injured leg, fought to aim the heavy spear he held and collect the strength to throw -“I do. The worst of all unlucky men is a monk who’s run away from his vows,” Gyen said. “You all know what must be done to such a traitor before his curse turns on you and kills you all, don’t you? In fact, the curse is what slaughtered Tatsuo.” “It was your own actions that killed him!” Nori protested over the confused rumble from the convicts. “No.” Gyen’s lips curved in an evil smile. “The former holy man among you has doomed you all. Kill him, and this madness all disappears as if it were only a bad dream.” Lin Yao seized the spear from Ko’s now-nerveless grip and clasped it with his own weapon. “There’s no such man among --” “Ko.” Gyen let the single word hang in the air. “Ko the pale, Ko the pretty, Ko the secretive. Ko, who was a monk and is now a whore. His bad luck has condemned you all.” “You can save yourselves,” Mor enjoined. “So easily, you can save yourselves.” He smiled sweetly and took Gyen’s gun, aiming at Ko. “Kill him.” “Like hell you will!” Lin Yao’s brutal shove nigh knocked the breath from Ko, who stared at him through a fog of dumb shock and desperate pleas. “Ko,” his master barked, pushing him harder. “Ko, run!”

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Chapter Twenty Convicts were many things, and they’d been sentenced for a thousand and one sundry crimes, but what they were not, was stupid. Even the slowest among them, who might’ve forgotten what the gods-sent punishment might be for a monk who turned his back on his vows, understood Gyen’s snide threats, saw Lin Yao’s instant decision, and knew they would help, be damned to the soldier guards with their guns. The convicts alone, much less with the added Helpmeets, outnumbered that sorrier lot and knew the bastards couldn’t aim worth spit in the wind anyway. That didn’t matter. Lin Yao had ordered; they followed Lin Yao. And so when Lin Yao seized Ko by the waist and threw him nearly head first into the crowd, dozens of scarred, callused hands hurried him on his way. “Pass him this way, this way!” a convict with more beard than face shouted, opening his arms as if Ko was a ball he wanted to catch and pass to the next receiver. Ko lost his balance between pitch and toss, the world lurching sickeningly around him as the convicts shoved him to and fro. “Got him, got him. Over there next, back, back, back! Raj, you got him?” “Got him! To Elijah now. Elijah, ‘ware!” Elijah, whose swarthy, dark skin had long since been baked nigh black under the suns of Sheol IV, dealt Ko a mighty shove that spat him out of the crowd. “Run,” the man ordered, already turning away. “Move! Can’t fight with you in the way.” A small woman, hair obscuring her face, caught him by the hand and pulled. Her fingers were as fragile in his as ivory bones, but her grip surprisingly strong. “This way,” she urged. “Follow me.” Ko tried to get away, amazed at how fiercely her fingers clung to him. “I’m not leaving Lin Yao. Not leaving Nori. Let me go!”

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“No!” She tossed her tumbledown hair out of her face and dealt him a piercing stare. “You know who I am, Ko. This is what I have waited for since you were a boy, when you would’ve aided the helpless if you had not been prevented. Now I have a chance to complete my unfinished business.” The bottom dropped out of Ko’s stomach. “If you have a grudge, then take it out on me. Don’t --” “What do you take me for?” The ghost looked genuinely affronted. “Not all of those who watch unseen mean to cause harm. I only want to help. If you do as I say, you can right the old wrong done to me and so many other wrongs done by the monks -- and by the Tribunal -- and I can help you.” She tugged at his hand, solid as any living woman he had ever known. “Many to help, now. Many to save. Follow me, quickly now. Come!” What else could he do? Limping on his aching leg, he followed.

***** Nori turned to the men. She wished she could’ve kept an eye on Ko to make sure he got away safely, but she knew she had to pay attention to what was happening in front of her. “Well? Why are you just standing there?” Gyen demanded, incensed, of the soldier guards. “Shoot them!” Not one of the men raised their guns. “Smart lads,” Lin Yao said dryly. “If so much as a one of you dares aim at one of us, you’re all dead as soon as we can get our hands on you. Don’t think we won’t do it.” As one, the cowardly guards stepped back, but they didn’t leave. And yet Gyen smirked, keeping up a cocky front despite the alarm Nori thought she saw in the man’s face. “So, they too have signed on in disobedience and will suffer equal punishment for this folly. Amusing.” He tipped his head to one side to sneer after Ko. “A fine Helpmeet you have, Lin Yao, who turns and runs rather than fights.” Nori gritted her teeth. “He’s not the only Helpmeet Lin Yao has. Our master gave him a command,” she retorted, whip-crack angry. “Ko obeyed. How is this a bad Helpmeet?” “Or, as you may have concluded already,” Gyen went on, ignoring her as if she had no more worth than a grain of sand, “Ko is not a Helpmeet at all. A liar, a cheat, one who bribed his way into your convoy with plans to escape, to laugh in your faces as though you were fools in his eyes.” She watched Lin Yao process this while Gyen gloated; Lin Yao’s expression betrayed nothing, not even when he spoke. “What’s that matter to me?” “You don’t care about the liar among you? Who no doubt wept your name and swore eternal love? Not even now that you know what his promises are worth?”

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“The only liar I’m concerned about is standing in front of me, chattering like a crow.” Lin Yao kept his spear pointed at Gyen. “What’s done is done with Ko. Gods speed to him if he gets away. Coward? Pah.” Lin Yao spat. “Trying to stall, Gyen? Think you’ll talk your way out of this mess? Think again.” Nori felt for the large, sharp-edged wedge of stone she’d tucked into her belt, one she’d plucked still baked-warm from the wreckage of the way station. She shifted her balance from foot to foot, assessing her trajectory, turn of speed, and the force she’d need to use. She didn’t allow herself to think about the risk she’d take. What did they matter?

For all of us, she decided, readying herself to strike. Knowing smug Gyen would never consider a woman a danger. Even if he had, she wouldn’t abandon this plan. New life was already growing within her -- she was certain of it, somehow; she wouldn’t see either of her child’s fathers dishonored so. For Ko and for Lin Yao. For the sake of all second chances. “Lin Yao,” Gyen crooned, walking toward him as if the sharpness of his spear and the murder in his eye meant nothing. “Foolish Lin Yao, gullible believer of lies. Have you convinced yourself that you are a leader among men? A tin-pot king? So foolish, so small.” Nori slid forward, feet barely leaving the ground, walking in the quiet way of an Oiran who wished to enchant a man with her grace. She readied her stone shard, laughing inside at how, for once in her life, no one noticed her. “You know nothing about me,” Lin Yao said flatly. “But I know plenty about you, murderer.” “This death?” Gyen stopped within breathing distance of Tatsuo, insolently nudging the man’s cool form with the tip of his boot. “Where’s the crime in killing vermin?” Lin Yao’s lips creased briefly with evident pain, and the convicts stirred restlessly; Gyen saw immediately and chuckled snidely over the sore spot he’d needled. She would get no better chance. Nori addressed Gyen as she raised her makeshift knife. “You think to finish us by destroying what we love. Why don’t we see how you like a taste of your own medicine?” Gyen stiffened. “What do you mean? No!” Too late! Nori darted quickly as a deer, reaching Mor before she could be stopped. The point of her weapon slid smoothly into his belly as if into butter. “For all of your crimes!” she shouted. Mor had time only for one shocked twitch, to stare in baffled disbelief down at the makeshift knife protruding from his stomach, before blood drooled from his slackened lips and he fell. Lin Yao threw back his head and crowed. “Think we’re not such a threat now, Gyen?” Nori made the mistake of looking at Lin Yao, thinking to share in his mockery of Gyen. The error in judgment cost her. All she was aware of was the numbness of a hard blow to her

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face, and then the shock of crashing into something solid and unyielding, realizing that she’d been knocked off her feet and that she’d fallen tangle-limbed to the ground. Then, all went dark and still.

***** “This way,” the ghost urged Ko. “Over here. Do you see these children? Look!” Ko stumbled to a halt, searching for those the ghost wanted him to see. Not children, whose mention had thrown him at first, but overthin young Helpmeets, three of them, clinging together while they chanted whispery, terrified prayers. “Help them,” the ghost ordered. “Take them to safety.” Ko almost laughed. “Safety? Are you mad?” “No. I’m dead. Do you want them to join me? Help them.” “But how? Where would we go that’s safe?” The ghost looked severely annoyed. “You can think for yourself, Ko, this much I’m sure of. The way station is destroyed, but the storage cellar remains intact underneath. Take them with you, and all the others you find on your way there. They should be safe beneath. I will meet you there.” She disappeared with these final words: “Find your strength again, former monk. Look inside your heart and you will see the truth of my words.” “I hear, and I obey,” Ko said, giving up the fight against her. He hobbled as fast as he could to the terrified trio of Helpmeets. “Follow me,” he insisted, not giving them a chance to question or flee. “One, two, three, after me, and don’t stop until we’re where I’ll lead you.” “But Lin Yao,” one protested even as he began to run, tugging the other Helpmeets along with him. “He needs you.” “I’m needed more here, I think.” Ko pushed at them, urging them to go faster. He spied another small woman huddled on the earth, arms over her head, shaking with fear. “We bring her with us, and any others you see. Move!”

***** Lin Yao restrained himself with a mighty effort. If he broke and ran to Nori -- gods, how could he resist? She lay twisted and crumpled like a child’s rag dolly, no telling if she still lived or had died -- then Gyen would pounce on his weakness and slit his throat while he laughed. “Isao,” he said, holding back all betraying emotion. “Go and see to her, as Tatsuo would have.” Isao did as he’d been told immediately. From the corner of his eye, Lin Yao noted his deft assessment and waited, focused 90 percent otherwise on Gyen.

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“She lives,” Isao called. Lin Yao’s pulse sped up with relief. “Bruises, a knot on her head, but she lives.” “I would have killed you, if she had died.” Gyen rubbed his already bruising knuckles, sneering. “She slaughtered my own. Why should I have not paid her back in turn?” “Why, Gyen,” Lin Yao mocked, beginning to press forward in a turning of aggression, playing with the foul fox. “Was Mor your weak spot? Did he keep you warm at night? What, did you promise the scrawny rat forever?” He paused to offer a sickly sweet moue of false sympathy. “I’ll give you that forever, Gyen. You’ll join him now.” He raised his spear and Ko’s and lunged.

***** A mighty roar rose from the throats of the convicts, the higher-pitched wail of a Helpmeet threading throughout, drawing Ko’s attention just as the ghost led him to the detritus-covered entrance to the way station’s cellar. “It’s more damaged than I had thought,” she told him, already shifting fallen bits of stone and the more dangerous melted plastics and hot metals as if she felt no pain at all. “I need you to help me, so they can be kept safe, as all helpless things should be. Hurry.” Ko barely heard her, all his focus riveted on Lin Yao, who feinted and sparred with Gyen, jabbing his spears in sharp, taunting jerks. Gyen’s hand was on his pistol, aimed at Lin Yao all the while. “Stop. Don’t look.” The ghost’s hand stung with cold. “If you must, then see. See how Gyen’s hand shakes? He’s no marksman. Even at so close a range, he does not trust himself to hit his target, and so he hesitates. In comparison, do you see how Lin Yao is not afraid?” “But even then, the soldier guards.” Ko tried to spy them out. “Look beyond their armor, foolish once-upon-a-time monk. Do you not observe they are terrified? They dare not fight lest Lin Yao’s spear turns on them or the convicts tear them apart. They won’t attack if Gyen dies -- and die he will.” She hastened him toward the hidden cellar door. “This is how we serve him best. Trust me.” She smiled, almost humorlessly but not quite. “Who knows the ways of life and death better than a ghost?” She seared him with her chill, the sort of cold that scorched a man alive as equally as fire. “Now, do as I say.” Ko reached deep within to find his strength. He nodded. “Helpmeets, all! With me. Quick, now, quick!” The ghost -- or was she something more than a ghost? -- beamed.

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“Fight me, if you’re going to fight,” Lin Yao goaded, feinting jabs at Gyen with his weapons. He thought he saw the light of fear in the filthy Tribunal’s pet, and did not fail to notice Gyen’s anxious glances toward his very much unmoving soldier guards. “Don’t think they’ll be coming to your rescue. That’s the thing about rats, Gyen, eh? They always flee the sinking ship.” Gyen snarled at Lin Yao, raising his pistol. His finger shook on the firing mechanism, and Lin Yao could see now that all his bravado had grown as thin as the Empress’s favorite china. “Now you die.” Lin Yao bellowed with laughter. “I don’t think so.” Two burly convicts crowded Gyen from behind. “We’ll hold him for you,” one offered. “Keep him good an’ pinned whilst he takes his medicine.” “A coward’s ploy, Lin Yao,” Gyen jeered, though his bared teeth were only a facsimile of a taunting leer. “The Tribunal will hear of this.” “How?” Lin Yao scoffed. “Men, back away. This is our battle, but Gyen’s head is mine. His blood is mine to spill, for Tatsuo.” He swallowed, throat raw from smoke and from yelling. “For Nori and for Ko. Isao!” He sensed Isao’s rising from Nori and heard the slight man running to him. “Gyen’s my kill, unless you want to strike the blow.” The convicts set up a dull, excited roar of approval. Lin Yao kept one eye carefully on Gyen. For all that they hadn’t taken a hold of Gyen, the convicts had not moved away. The prize rat couldn’t run. In another life, Lin Yao might have felt sorry for him. He did not now. Tatsuo would be avenged. He offered the butt end of a spear to Isao, keeping the sharp tip aimed at Gyen. “It’s yours, if you like. Say yes or no, else I do this myself.” The spear tugged as Isao seized the end. “Mine,” he growled, sounding more animal and less human. “For Tatsuo.” “For Tatsuo!” the crowd of convicts screamed, beating their hands against their thighs. “Tatsuo!” “For the best of men, who deserved far better than he got,” Lin Yao shouted, releasing the spear into Isao’s grasp. “May your spirit scatter like ashes in the wind, Tatsuo!” Gyen raised his gun, hand trembling violently. “You are not of a rank to threaten me, fools.” “Listen at how the rat squeaks,” Lin Yao remarked. “Hark to the terror of a rabbit’s heart!” Over their din of laughter, he placed his hand on Isao’s shoulder. “Strike hard. Strike true.” “I’ll kill you all,” Gyen frothed, flecks of foamy saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth. He attempted to take aim, fingers beginning to squeeze down on the trigger. “Dead, all of you, dead! You’ll roast in all the hells for your impudence --”

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“Save us a seat,” Isao snarled and thrust the spear with all his might into Gyen’s belly, just as the laser gun went off, firing wildly into the air as Gyen convulsed. The convicts ducked, then howled their approval to the skies. Lin Yao raised his fist and roared, leading them on as Gyen sagged on the spear impaling him, the wrath in his eyes dimming slowly, slowly, as the fire of his life force ebbed as quickly as a candle in a gale rising off the sea. Blood dribbled down his chin. “Traitor,” he spat. “Betrayer. Just like your Ko. No better than. Gods damn you for this. Tribunal slay you.” “I think not,” Lin Yao retorted, seizing the spear’s haft in front of Isao’s unrelenting grip. “Sheol IV belongs to us. As for you and I, we’ll meet again in the hells.” He forced the spear through Gyen until his bloodied fist struck the man’s flesh. With a last garbled sneer, Gyen’s lips parted to spill one final insult; then the light faded from his eyes, and he hung limp. Lin Yao stepped back, breathless. He and Isao had done it. They’d destroyed their enemy. Gods. He had only a moment to marvel and a moment to register Isao’s shout of anger mixed with pain, a moment more to register the shouts of alarm from the convicts, and then he smelled the foulness of old cloves on the breath of a man who’d pressed his lips to Lin Yao’s neck. “You’ll see the hells sooner than you think,” the man hissed. Mor. “Wound for wound, Lin Yao, and now you die.”

***** Digging a tunnel into the storage cellar for the Helpmeets to hide in had taken almost the last of Ko’s strength. He panted heavily as he watched the last of them scurry inside. “Don’t stir from there until I come and tell you myself that it’s safe,” he ordered. “Do you understand me?” The Helpmeets murmured back with acquiescence, their voices quavering with fear. He looked at the ghost for her approval. She grinned at him, savage with bloodlust, and offered him a fine bronze knife that gleamed as if it was new. He recognized it as one that would belong to a soldier guard of high rank, and when he peered at the haft he saw the character for Tatsuo etched in the metal. “Your turn now, Ko. You’re needed.” “What?” He took the weapon, startled at how easily the hilt fit in his palm, almost as if…as if it had been made for him. “What am I to do with this?” “Use it wisely and well.” She pointed at the cellar steps. “Up and around, and sneak behind, and strike true. Lin Yao needs you. Go to him, you and your knife, and may the gods guide your hand. Go now!”

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“Kill me if you’re going to, but are you enough of a man?” “Am I? You decide.” The stone shard-knife Nori had used on Mor, sticky-wet with blood grown old -- or perhaps his blood had been chilly all along -- dug through the first layer of Lin Yao’s skin, the sting sharp; what it drew trickled warmly down his back. “Who do you think tricked Tatsuo into coming out of the way station? Who do you think lay in front, moaning as if beaten half to death? Who do you think kicked him so that he fell for my Gyen’s strike?” The Helpmeet lowered his voice to a venomous whisper and breathed harshly in Lin Yao’s ear. “Who do you think formed this plan and gave it shape?” “Not Gyen? He didn’t have the balls. Not even enough to fill a spoon. Then again, it’s a bad plan. Who’s going to come for you now that the communication equipment is destroyed? Idiot,” Lin Yao derided, hoping his insult would distract Mor long enough for -- for -- yes. Mor’s blade relaxed for a split second, and Lin Yao used it to his advantage, corkscrewing around with a sweeping kick to Mor’s legs. Damn him! Quicker than he looked, Mor leapt out of the way, retreating fast. His abdominal wound obviously wasn’t affecting him too much; clearly, his vital organs had escaped injury. The convicts stared as if frozen while Mor slithered back sleekly as a viper, undulating toward Nori. “Think you’re smart, do you?” he taunted, suffused in the wild light of insanity. “Are you clever enough to stop me now?” Mor dropped to his knees and seized the unconscious Nori by the hair, hauling her head into his lap, his weapon poised at her throat. “Can you halt my arm between slice and strike? Come and get me if you can. Your choice, war leader.” His mocking use of the title dripped with scorn. Lin Yao’s quick-thinking skills abandoned him in a single heartbeat, leaving him numb as a frozen stone. Isao wouldn’t be able to reach Nori in time. Neither would he. He had no more weapons to hand, Gyen having fallen on his gun, the spear wedged deep within him. If he took the time to go for either, Mor would slaughter Nori before he could take one step. All he could do was throw himself at Mor, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough. Still, he’d do it; he wouldn’t let her die in vain. If they were killed together, then Ko could go on for the both of them. He clenched his fists and readied himself to lunge. Mor laughed, high and shrill, eyes rolling madly. “Come on, come on!” he gibed loudly. “Catch me, catch me if you can!” Lin Yao tensed his muscles for the leap. The bastard would kill Nori, and him, too, afterward, but he’d go down fighting. “Lin Yao!”

Ko? Lin Yao had enough presence of mind not to turn around or gape. Mor, on the other hand, didn’t. He stared, giving Ko the moment he needed for victory. His Helpmeet appeared in Lin Yao’s peripheral vision, racing toward Mor. A bronze knife flashed in Ko’s hand, delivering a deadly, lightning-quick strike, sinking the weapon in

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the meat of Mor’s cackling throat. He jerked the knife upward and split the man through his chin. Mor gurgled, choking on his own blood, and slumped to the ground. This time, Lin Yao knew he would not rise again. The convicts had fallen utterly silent, and remained thus when Lin Yao stood, reaching for Ko. Ko turned to him, no longer blanched gray as death. Yet he stared at the blood on his hands for so long that Lin Yao worried for his mental state. Then his Helpmeet lifted his red-stained hands to Lin Yao and began to laugh, a true laugh pouring forth from him for the first time in Lin Yao’s memory. “Free,” he croaked between whoops of triumph. “Free!” “We’re all free!” Lin Yao bellowed in return. “All of us, free!” The convicts shattered the night with their howls and ululating shouts of victory. Amidst that noise, Ko kicked Mor’s remains out of the way and knelt beside Nori. He laid a kiss on her full lips. Nori opened her eyes, slowly, slowly, lashes fluttering. She blinked as if confused, took in the scene around her, then grinned so broadly the whiteness of her teeth shone like stars. “Victory,” she whispered hoarsely. “We did it, didn’t we?” “My lady.” Lin Yao was weak with relief. “Ko, help her stand. Come to me, both of you.” He waited, arms outstretched for his Helpmeets, and gathered them to him. They smelled of soot and battle and exertion; of pain, joy, and exhaustion. Nori and Ko were sticky and shaking and overwarm, and they were all he had ever wanted, all he’d never known he had dreamed of. Nori fit perfectly under his arm, her head on his shoulder. His other arm wrapped around Ko’s waist as if it had been custom-made for this purpose. “My lord,” Nori murmured for Lin Yao’s ear alone, nuzzling the lobe. “My lord,” Ko echoed, laughing softly against the top of Lin Yao’s head. Lin Yao raised his voice to shout over the clamoring din of the convicts. “Vengeance and victory are ours! Let the Tribunal chew on that, and may it choke them!” The convicts bellowed their approval. They surged forward to surround him and his Helpmeets, to pound them on their backs and messily kiss what parts of the three they could reach. “Nori, our queen!” Isao cried out. “Ko, our guide!” “Lin Yao! Nori! Ko!” the crowd shouted, pressing against the trio so tightly that they could barely breathe, their zeal the source of a fire that would reduce the Tribunal to ash, Lin Yao thought. “King! Queen! Guide!”

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He fit his lips at Ko’s ear and breathed softly. “Did you think I would care what you’d run from? I only care that you got out alive. That you’re here.” He shook Ko. “Never keep secrets from me again.” Nori, who as ever had ears like a cat, leaned over Lin Yao’s chest to place her hand lightly on Ko’s stomach. “I only care that you are with us,” she swore. “I only care that we are one, as we’ll now forever be.” “My loves,” Ko replied, looking stunned by the depth of their affection, and rightfully thrilled. “My heart’s own. Both of you.” “And you,” they replied. Lin Yao yanked Ko about so he and Nori could both crush their third against them. Shaking with evident laughter and relief, Ko lifted his face to blaze a dazzling smile at the convicts gathered around them. Lin Yao saw him falter ever so briefly, eyes widening at something the Helpmeet saw. His turn of speed, which had returned to him, directed him to seek the new danger out before one breath passed to the next. He thought he saw a woman dressed in peasant garb, and then he didn’t. He blinked, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on them. “Ko?” he asked, for Ko’s ears alone. “Who was that?” Ko said, quiet and wondering, “At first, I thought she was a ghost. Now, I wonder. Now, I think she was a goddess with a message for me, or perhaps the embodiment of something I’m meant to pass on to you and all the other convicts on Sheol IV. Perhaps a message of hope.” He appeared to ponder that. “I think she was something wondrous.” Lin Yao rejoiced. “And I think you’re a madman!” He slid his hand down to cup and squeeze Ko’s taut ass. “And you’re mine, for now and for always.” “For now and for always,” Nori echoed, touching both their faces. “For now and for always,” Ko vowed. Lin Yao watched, bursting with pride as Ko kissed Nori first, a long sweet brush of lips that made the convicts cheer and whistle; he kissed Lin Yao second, parrying his tongue until the surrounding audience burst forth with a lusty song. He embraced Ko, swearing silent promises for later. Soon. “To the victor go the spoils, and to those who dare, their second chances. As it should have been, and as it will now be.” “As it will now be,” his Helpmeets said as one, lips pressing to him. Sparks from the still-burning fires flew to the heavens. Isao raised his voice to lead the convicts in a new song, and the world as they knew it altered irretrievably. A world they would face together.

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Epilogue And there, some might say, ends the story of Lin Yao, Nori, and me, as well as Sheol IV’s first taste of freedom. Yet no tale is ever fully told, I find. Beyond “the end,” there is a new beginning, yes? Always this is the case. So I will tell you what became of us, and Isao too, after the fall of Gyen and the convicts’ declaration of independence. The Tribunal did not take kindly to our insurrection, but after no few battles, which we won through superior knowledge of the terrain, it treated us with more caution. When not warring, we ruled together -- Lin Yao, Nori, and I -governing the ex-convict world of Sheol IV as wisely and as well as we could. Though it took us many years, we conquered not only the land already carved out and abandoned, but more, and still more. We worked hard, with the sweat of our brows, the blood in our veins, and our tears both bitter and joyful watering the earth. With my voice in his ears and Nori’s compassion guiding his hand, Lin Yao made of himself a wise lord that many gladly swore to follow. Many more than the original insurrection convicts and their Helpmeets. Yes, I tell the truth. When word spread far and wide enough for all ears to hear of how we had risen up in rebellion against the Tribunal’s might, others thought that they should go and see for themselves. And many, many of them were men and women of power and wealth.

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No matter their backgrounds, all the visitors desperately wanted to believe that there might be a better life out there for them, for their children, for their mates. A fresh world and a new start, as well as a wise king with a lovely queen and a trusted advisor. Not such a bad bargain, they probably thought, and they were right. Once past our first surprise at these arrivals, we welcomed the curious, hopeful travelers. Their hands added to our own made our world grow fast and pure. Their children, too, were added to our ranks, and the children of the convicts and their Helpmeets. Grizzled, scarred old criminals stood tall with pride alongside offworlders as they presented their descendants to the king. Lin Yao, of course, generally told them not to be idiots, and insisted they stand up like men and equals, instead. With the influx of so many immigrants of varied origins, we were no longer easy targets -- and the Tribunal took unhappy notice, which led to the skirmishes and outright battles we fought to an uneasy peace. Our world in the days after the attempted military assaults was not all defiance against the slowly dying Tribunal or hard, backbreaking work. No, we found plenty of time to enjoy the hot sun on our naked flesh. I drowned in my new husband and wife, spending days on end worshiping at Lin Yao’s throne and Nori’s dainty feet, sharing my body equally between them. Oh, such nights as we enjoyed, such afternoons and such mornings -- the heat of the two suns at their zenith did not match our passion. I drank of Nori until I was as a man drugged; I tasted every part of Lin Yao’s flesh even as he claimed me both inside and out with his prick and his kisses. Oh, yes, how we fought, and how we made our peace! And Nori, always Nori, with her soft hands and wicked sense of humor, who brought us both down a few muchneeded pegs when we males began to think we were important, as men often do. We require women to keep us in our places, I believe. Our own children were born to us, one at a time: a son with stubborn lips like Lin Yao’s, a daughter as dark and beautiful as Nori, and a daughter -- not a son -- as pale as milk, with eyes nearly white as the moon. I know she is my own. And a second son for good measure, though there is no knowing who fathered him between Lin Yao and myself. He seems to combine aspects of all three of us, and I see in him as well as my daughter the rulers who will be here long after we are gone.

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And now, my accounts draw to a close. I am wanted in our bed, the one built by Lin Yao’s hands and Lin Yao’s alone, both he and Nori forming a space between them where I belong. I will take my slumber with one on either side, but not before I have tasted Nori’s sweet quim and been claimed by my king once more, our vows reaffirmed nightly with sweat and cum. The tale ends here. Perhaps the next generation, they who fight on against the Tribunal after us, will continue the story. If they choose to, I pray they listen to what an old, ex-monk has to say, and that they’ll look for a lusty mate as well as a wise leader, that they are brave in the face of danger, and that they never, never keep secrets. Signed with the pen of he who is happy at last, -- Ko

Willa Okati Although a relative newcomer to the field of e-publishing, Willa Okati has been writing since before she was old enough to pick up a pen. She thinks she knows where those dictated stories are hidden, but she'll never tell. Willa is also very interested in the paranormal: magery, Wicca, New Age philosophy, transgender studies, and of course, writing. You can drag her away from the computer if you really fight, but you'd better be prepared for a battle. Just so she doesn't sound entirely dull, Willa has her fun: she is a practicing member of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and is involved in her community. She is owned by far too many cats, all of which have serious attitudes, and addicted to anything made out of chocolate or involving coffee. She is quiet, but has a very wicked sense of humor that springs out when you least expect it. A secretary for eight years, she now writes full-time -- and wouldn't trade it for the world. She loves to hear from readers, and always responds. You can contact her at willshenillshegmail.com, or feel free to visit her website to check out her work at www.willaokati.com.