Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

And I had a new secret: I was beginning to understand the price for all those months that I’d wrestled my body’s feelings back into my fighting. I could scrub Lucky’s back after a cold creek bath, see Brax’s nipples crinkle when she shrugged off her shirt at night, lie with my head pillowed on Ro’s thigh—and never feel a thing except a growing sense of wonder at what complex and contradictory people I had found on my road. But when we met in practice, everything changed. The slide of Brax’s leather-covered breast against my arm during a takedown put a point of heat at the tip of every nerve from my shoulder to my groin. Ro’s weight on me when he tested the possibilities of a technique was voluptuous in a way I’d never imagined in my awkward days with Ad. Lucky’s rain-wet body twisting underneath me excited me so much it was almost beyond bearing: But I learned to bear it, to stuff the pleasure back inside myself so that it wound through me endlessly like a cloud boiling with the weight of unreleased rain. In my days with Tom I had learned to fight through cold and pain and misery: Now I learned to persist through pleasure so keen that sometimes it left me seared and breathless and not sure how to make my arms and legs keep working. I told no one; but I woke in the morning anticipating those hours, and slept at night with their taste in my throat. I was always ready to practice.

“I sweat like a bull,” Brax said ruefully one day when we were all rubbing ourselves down afterwards. “But you always smell so good.” I smiled and pulled my tunic on quickly to hide the shudders that still trembled through me.

It was a few days later that Ro approached me after supper, squatting down beside me near the fire. We smiled at each other and spent a quiet time stripping the bark off sticks and feeding it to the flames. Eventually, he said, “Share my blanket tonight?”

I’d seen from the first night how it was between them, bedding two at a time but in a relationship of three. I had already guessed at their idea of what a quad should be. I wondered how sophisticated people handled this sort of thing.

“No, but thank you,” I said finally. “It’s not you, Ro, you’re a fine person and I’m pleased to be part of your quad. It’s just—”

“No need to explain,” he said, which only made me feel more awkward. But the next day he treated me not much differently. By the afternoon I had recovered my equilibrium, and I’d noticed their quiet conversations, so I was only a little surprised to find Lucky at my elbow after practice.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said cheerfully. “Fetch water, or something.”

“Fine,” I said, and went to gather everyone’s water skins. “No need to rush,” Braxis said. Ro nodded agreeably.

“Fine,” I said again, and off we went.

We found a stream and loaded up with water, and then sat on the bank. I laid back with my head on my arms while Lucky fiddled with flower stems. Then she leaned over me and kissed me. Her mouth was dry and sweet. But nothing moved in me. I sat up and set her back from me as gently as I could. She didn’t look angry, only amused. “Would Braxis have been a better choice for water duty today?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Don’t you know what you like, then?”

“You know what?” I said, “Let’s go back to the others so I only have to have this conversation once.”

We all sat around, and they chewed on hand-sized chunks of bread while I talked.

“Anyone would be proud to have you as lovers, all of you.” It was nice to see the way they glowed for each other then, with nothing more than smiles or a quick touch before turning their attention back to me. “It’s not about you.”

I stopped, long enough that Braxis raised an eyebrow. It was hard to say the next thing. “If you need that from your fourth, then I’ll help you find someone else when we get to Lemon City, and no hard feelings.”

We were all quiet for a while. Finally Braxis wiped the crumbs off her hands. “Oh, well,” she said. “Of course we don’t want another fourth, Mars, we’d rather have you even if we can’t have you, if you take my meaning.” Lucky hooted, and I went red in the face, which just made Lucky worse.

“No, truly,” Braxis went on when Ro had finally put a hammerlock on Lucky. “We like you. We’re starting to fight well together. We learn from each other. We trust ourselves. We can be a good quad. The other,” she shrugged, and Lucky made a rude gesture, “well, it’s nice, but it isn’t everything, is it?”

It stayed with me, that remark, while I did my share of the night chores, and later as I lay on my back in the dark, listening to Ro’s snores and the small, eager sounds that Braxis and Lucky made together under a restless sky of black scudding clouds. It was strange to think about sex with them so intent on it just a knife-throw away. It’s nice but it’s not everything, Brax had said: But for those moments it sounded like it was everything for the two of them.