Desert World Allegiances (14 page)

“I’m being honest,” Temar pointed out. “You aren’t dead yet. But if you don’t stop and think for a second, you’re going to be.”

“I’m not sure that thinking is such a good thing right now.” If Shan stopped to think about things, he’d have to consider the possibility that he had passed Spence Valley. And Landing was a small town, perched on the edge of a rock shelf, and he had no chance of finding it in the middle of all this shifting sand. If he stopped to think, he would be tempted to sit down, drink as much pipe juice as it took to finally quench his debilitating thirst, and then lay on the hot sand and go to sleep. That plan had been slowly fermenting in the back of his mind, and he was trying hard to keep it shoved as far back as he could.

“I think that you need to stop and look around, or that fantasy may be the only option left.” Temar’s voice interrupted Shan’s sudden desire to just lie down.

“There’s nothing to look at except sand.” Shan turned in a circle, his hands held wide, and all around him was sand… sand and that one point of light that had never faded.

“What would it hurt to investigate?” Temar asked.

“Potentially? Potentially it could cost me my life,” Shan answered truthfully, but he held his life by such a slender thread that it no longer sounded like much of a threat. He’d counseled people facing death. He’d sat by bedsides and in the clinic, and he’d held people’s hands. He’d watched people face death with calm grace or with terror and denial and fury, but he couldn’t seem to feel anything at all for his own death—nothing but a vague, nagging regret. High on that list was the regret that his murderer might get away with this. He was a priest. He was supposed to forgive. But right now, he didn’t feel like forgiving anyone. Give him a gun, and he would seriously considering shooting someone… just as soon as he figured out which someone he was supposed to be shooting.

“I’m going to shoot you if you don’t pull your head out of your ass,” Naite threatened.

“Alright. You two are a bad influence on each other.” Shan wiggled his finger between Naite and Temar before he took a ninety-degree turn and headed for that distant, blinking light. As he got closer to the base of the huge sand dune, the top of the dune swallowed the point. “This is so stupid,” Shan muttered to himself when the light slipped below the horizon. Not even his hallucinations wanted to try and climb this monster with him, so Shan set his feet into the rippled sand, sank in up to his knees, and started wading up the uneven surface.

A half dozen times, he had to stop and lay on his stomach, his arms outstretched as he let his trembling and burning legs rest. A dozen times, he fell and tumbled down the steep slope. Each time he stopped, the wind dusted him with sand, but Shan kept climbing until the sharp and rippled top edge appeared, white against the blue sky. When Shan’s hand reached the top of the dune, clawing at it, the ridge collapsed, and sand showered down on him. Only then did the twinkling light reappear, this time attached to a sharp point of metal that rose high into the sky.

“Oh Lord.” Shan’s heart pounded in relief. “Thank you, God.” He’d found the signal tower for Spence Valley.

Chapter 11

T
EMAR
shifted in the bed. Ben’s body was hot and heavy against his side, and his skin crawled at the contact. Only now, in the night, when darkness hid his face, did Temar let himself truly feel the emotions washing through him like a giant sand dune, shifting in the wind and threatening to bury him under his own hatred. He hated Ben.

Before his slavery, he thought he’d known hate. He’d hated the pipe trap juice that his father would carefully funnel into old juice bottles and then hide, as if his children wouldn’t notice he was drunk. He hated George Young, who would drive past and look at them with disgust. He hated the slow encroachment of poverty and despair, the way he couldn’t afford the nails to fasten down the roof boards to keep the dust out.

At least, he thought he’d hated those things, but he hadn’t. What he’d felt then were soft, little emotions that tickled at him and annoyed him until he wanted to strike out. But what he felt for Ben Gratu wasn’t soft or little. Temar shifted slightly, hungry for some space.

Ben shifted, throwing an arm over Temar’s stomach, and Temar froze. He wished he still felt the need to recoil from Ben’s touch, but the fact was that he’d grown used to Ben’s heavy, hot hands on him.

“Going somewhere?” Ben asked, his lips so close that his breath tickled Temar’s ear.

“I have to use the bathroom,” Temar answered. If he stayed in bed with a fully awake Ben, he had no doubt where that would lead. His hips and thighs were still bruised, and he wanted some time to heal. He wanted to walk down to the bathroom and spend ten minutes pretending that he wasn’t trapped in the middle of a nightmare. He’d lie to himself for that long.

“Without permission?” Ben asked, and that was his mock patience. That was the tone of voice that suggested Temar was about to be bound or gagged or leashed or pushed down over a table and a belt taken to the backs of his thighs, all in the name of teaching him a little discipline.

“No, sir.”

Ben pushed himself up on one elbow, his hair sticking up and his eyes blurry with sleep. “Do you really want to lie to me?”

“No, sir,” Temar quickly answered. “I wasn’t going to leave without permission. I just….” His mind blanked out with fear as Ben frowned.

“Yes?” Ben’s voice was the voice of an imperious ruler, annoyed by some subject about to get beheaded, like in one of those old vids of Earth history.

“I was squirming. I have to pee, but I didn’t know if it was bad enough to be worth waking you up.” The words tumbled out. Temar fisted the sheets as he waited to see if it was enough, if he had placated the monster inside Ben Gratu.

Ben’s frown slowly faded, replaced by a look of sympathy. “You know I’m always here for you. You should have woken me.” Ben put his hot palm on Temar’s chest, and his hand slowly drifted down until it rested over Temar’s abdomen. Then he started slowly pressing down. The urge to pee made Temar squirm and hiss. He tried to control the reaction, because he knew that pain just made Ben more curious, more voyeuristic. It was as if Ben drank up Temar’s despair and pain like a dying man in the desert drank water—greedily. Temar only wished the analogy was complete and that Ben would get stomach cramps and vomit from ingesting so much.

After a second, Ben gentled his touch. With one calloused finger, he traced a pattern over Temar’s stomach. “Such a very good boy you are to worry about what would please me… or displease me. But I don’t ever want you to hold back when it comes to your needs, Temar. It’s my job to take care of you.”

Temar swallowed. He hated the fact that his body was reacting to Ben’s tone. Ben was happy, so for just a second, Temar was safe. He felt like glass that was cooled too fast, like he could hear the creaking that came right before the glass shattered.

He’d been in a glass shop once when that happened. A wind had picked up the edges of the tent where the glassblower had been working, and Temar had been about six, so he’d sat in the sand, watching. The artisan had pulled the orange-hot glass out of the oven, blowing it into a giant bubble and twirling the blow rod. But he’d gotten the shape he wanted too quickly, and he tried to save the piece by putting it under the cooling fans. The glass creaked, and even though it wasn’t a loud sound, every artisan in the tent had stopped. Men and women had looked around, and then the glass bubble shattered.

He still remembered the tiny red trails up the artisan’s arms, tiny scores made by the passage of glass fragments. Sometimes Temar fingered the bruises Ben left, the purpling finger marks and the straight-edge belt scores, and he felt like that glassblower. Other times, he thought he was the glass bowl, ready to shatter.

“May I go to the bathroom?” Temar asked quietly. Ben didn’t answer immediately. He traced patterns in Temar’s skin, his warm hands sliding over the curve of his hip and his thigh. Fingers brushed Temar’s balls, and he felt a warmth start. And he hated himself the most for this. Ben chuckled and leaned down to kiss Temar’s shoulder.

“Such a good boy you are. My colleagues were so certain you were a threat, that I should do to you what they did to that priest, but they don’t understand you at all, do they?”

Temar thought it was a rhetorical question, but Ben pulled at his nipple, and sharp pain flashed through him.

“No, sir, they don’t,” Temar hurried to agree.

“You just need a strong hand to guide and shelter you. You aren’t anything like that priest, are you?”

Temar didn’t need to even think about that. “No, sir, I’m not.” Shan had been a strong man. He wouldn’t have lain under another man’s hands and let someone abuse him. He would have killed Ben Gratu before yielding to him. But Temar wasn’t that strong. Nope, he had a warm bed and good food, and that’s all it took to make him lay still while Ben tied him spread eagle on the bed. He even helped by being as unstable around the others as Ben wanted. When Ben raised his hand a certain way, Temar threw a fit and cursed and spit until Ben kindly restrained him and slipped a gag in his mouth to save him from slander.

A little voice whispered that Temar didn’t have a choice in any of this. Maybe he didn’t have a choice when it was him in Ben’s bed, with Ben’s hands around his thighs, bending him in half so that Temar’s ankles were around his ears. However, he didn’t have any doubt about his own culpability in Shan’s death. He’d only said what he’d said to Shan because he’d wanted to fantasize about rescue. He had his stupid little dreams, and making that comment about water—that was just so he could lie in bed next to Ben and dream about the council breaking in and confronting Ben with the evidence of his water thievery. Temar wanted his fantasy, and Shan had died.

And the worst part was that, even knowing Ben’s group had been involved with Shan’s murder, Temar still climbed into bed with the man every night. He stayed quiet while Ben’s hands caressed and pinched and held him against the white sheets. He got hard when Ben stroked him, and he wanted release. In the past, he’d always thought of himself as a good person. Never before had Temar realized that he was weak and disgusting.

“What are you thinking?” Ben ran a finger across Temar’s forehead, brushing hair back, away from his face.

“That I want to have you happy with me.” Temar thought for a moment that he’d said the wrong thing. Ben frowned and studied his face by the light of the double moon that shone through the window set high in the bedroom wall.

“You are such a beautiful boy. Such a prize. The others are fools, who crash around like panicked sandcats in a glassblower’s shop. If I’d had a choice of partners, I would pick men and women who had the insight to see how beautiful it is when someone bends to your will. They could have taken that priest and molded him into something useful to the cause. Instead, they destroyed him. No matter, though. I’ve saved you from that kind of reckless action. I’ve saved you and your sister, haven’t I?” Ben ran a finger over Temar’s lips, and Temar could only nod.

“So, you have to go to the bathroom.” Temar nodded again. Ben smiled, a look that made Temar nervous. “Gag yourself, boy.”

Temar tried to slip out of bed, but for a second, Ben kept his arm over Temar’s chest, easily holding him down, not that Temar tried to fight. He yielded as soon as he recognized the game. That made Ben laugh.

Slapping Temar on the hip, he repeated the order. “Go on, then. Gag yourself.” There were two gags Temar knew intimately. One was a small mouthpiece with a leather strap that Temar often wore in front of the others. The workers all agreed that it was good for Temar to learn to control his mouth, and even when he wasn’t gagged, the others listened carefully for him to say a word out of line so they could go and get Ben and have Ben put the gag back on. The second one Ben only used in the house. It was large and thick, and it made Temar’s jaw ache. Even though he hated that gag, it was the one he reached for.

He turned as he buckled it in place, and Ben was smiling at him. Truly, Temar was weak, because the man’s approval soothed some gibbering, terrified animal, deep in his chest.

“When you get back, I think we should take advantage of the fact that we are both awake at such an early hour.” Ben crooked his finger, and Temar stepped close. Ben’s hands encircled his wrists, holding him still. “Get the rope.” Ben’s smile wasn’t reassuring, but Temar also knew that Ben was more likely to be gentle when Temar was restrained and compliant, and so he moved to get the rope the second Ben released him.

He still needed to pee, but he stood patiently while Ben looped and knotted the rope in complicated patterns, tying his wrists together. The rope made his wrists itch, and the sweat gathered where the insides of his wrists were pressed together. Leaving the two ends of the long rope hanging, Ben put his hands on Temar’s hips and turned him.

“We’ll have so much fun that we may need to sleep in tomorrow.” Ben laughed. “After all, I’m the boss, so I think we can get away with it.” He pulled the two ends of the rope around to the back and knotted them. Temar had some room to move his hands, enough to be able to hold himself while he peed. But the second Ben dropped him, stomach down, on the bed, the loose loop of rope would make him totally helpless.