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When Calendau comes back to his room that night, he is not stumbling and fuck-drunk. He is not blissed out on Eiquem’s mesmer. He is not too overstimulated to function. He has no excuse for how the stranger gets the drop on him—none but the fact that he is tired, and he has no reason to be on guard in his own room, and there is no whisper of alarm from the warding charm he has keyed to one of his earrings.
“Don’t move,” the man says, and twists Calendau’s arm up against his back, and presses the point of a tiny dagger to his pulse.
Calendau freezes. He cannot see the stranger: the man is behind him—slipped out, he thinks, from the shadows beside the wardrobe, and how did he get in? Where did he come from? Calendau does not know his voice, or the faint, woodsy scent of his body that is now drifting up to his nostrils. The room is dark, the candles yet unlit, and there is a knife at his throat. “What do you want?” he says. He does not waste his breath asking who the stranger is.
The stranger takes a slow breath. “You,” he says finally, “are interesting. I’ve been watching you for three days, you know,” he adds, and then carries on casually as though what he has just said is not profoundly alarming, both personally and for the Harbingers’ cause. “Or, rather—not watching you, specifically. Watching this house and all its comings and goings. But you.” He nudges his hand against Calendau’s jaw, the edge of the dagger digging in just enough to draw a bead of blood to the surface: an emphasis. A warning.
“What about me?” Calendau says neutrally. He has no idea what the man wants, or even what he is referring to. “I’m not so interesting. The commander is a powerful mage, and there are others here who know far more about our plans and operations. Go to them.”
“Mmm,” the stranger says. There’s the lilt of a smile in his voice. “But all of them are loyal to your cause. You—you’re a spy, aren’t you? Which is interesting,” he continues, in defiance of the way Calendau’s throat has closed up in horror, “because I know you’re not spying for me.”
It takes a moment for Calendau to make his voice work. If the stranger knows Calendau is spying, he must know what he’s doing to earn his information—he must know about the deal he’s struck—no. No. Don’t think about that. “Bastion,” he chokes out. “I knew it was a mistake for them to kill that fucking spy. Eiquem and his goddamn ego.”
“And yet he hasn’t killed you,” the stranger—the Bastion—says lightly. “He’s even supplying you with information himself. Does he believe you’re not a threat? Or do your goals align?”
Not as such, no: but Eiquem still hasn’t figured that out. “As you said,” Calendau says. “I’m not spying for you.”
The Bastion laughs, wicked and delighted. “A man with an ego is useful in so many ways,” he says cryptically. He digs his blade in harder; a trickle of blood runs down Calendau’s neck. “What is your goal, then? You’re going to tell me everything.”
Calendau has to fight not to flinch from the knife; he knows that would only make it worse. “If I haven’t told him,” he says, his voice steady, “what makes you think I’d tell you?”
The Bastion lets out another peal of golden laughter. “Oh, darling,” he says. “He wants to fuck you so badly it makes a fool of him. It’s in his interest to keep you alive. But I don’t care if I leave you bleeding out on your bedroom floor. So you’ll tell me, because if you don’t, I’ll kill you, and then all your grand schemes will come to nothing at all.”
A strange calm comes over Calendau then. If he should die now, with his work undone—well, what would it matter? He won’t be around to care, or to see Casarie again at all. “Fuck you,” he enunciates clearly. “I’m not telling you shit.”
The Bastion sighs, but there is an edge of amusement to it. “Yes, I thought you might say that.” He nudges Calendau towards the bed, jamming his knee against his tailbone. “Sit,” he says. “And don’t try anything. It makes no difference to me if you give me that crystal of yours willingly or I take it off your body, but I suspect it makes a difference to you.”
How, Calendau wonders, even as he’s stepping toward the bed. He never takes the crystal out unless he’s reading it or copying information, and he’s always been alone. How does this stranger know?
The Bastion keeps his knife at Calendau’s throat as Calendau sits down, though he releases his wrist to let him take a seat. The other man is a dark shape in the shadows of his room, smudgily outlined in the faint moonlight; he nods toward the candle at the bedside and says, “Light it.” Without moving his head, Calendau does. His hands do not shake. Firelight leaps to life in the darkness, and for the first time Calendau gets a look at his attacker.
The stranger is a little shorter than him, and slighter, with bark-brown skin and green-tinted lips and a glorious cascade of honey-blond curls. His horns sit like two crescent moons on his head; his eyes are a brilliant autumn gold. A jagged scar splits his face nearly in two, pale against darker skin; he looks like a tree that’s been struck by lightning. A flicker of memory and rumour sparks in Calendau’s mind, and: “Taskill Sorley,” he says. “You’re—”
Sorley gives him an ironic little bow, not moving his dagger an inch. “A walking oak, yes. Does that sufficiently explain why your wards didn’t go off?”
“And how you got in here at all.” It’s a stupid hole in his defences; he’ll have to adjust the wards. He levels a grim look at Sorley. “I told you I’m not telling you shit. What is the point of all this?”
“Oh, you are going to tell me,” Sorley says. He digs one-handed into his belt pouch, pulling out a little vial of something the same mellow gold as his hair. “Hold still and open your mouth. This will be better for you if I give you only a few drops.”
Calendau eyes the vial. It doesn’t look like any poison he knows, but that doesn’t prove anything, and besides, there are plenty of unsavoury substances in the world that wouldn’t outright kill him. He raises an eyebrow to Sorley and keeps his jaw clamped firmly closed.
Sorley just shrugs and pops the cork from the vial. “Suit yourself,” he says, and slams his palm into Calendau’s solar plexus, making him cough and gag for air. The second his mouth opens, Sorley has the vial between his teeth, the liquid within rushing out eagerly over his tongue. Just as quickly as he opened it, Sorley forces Calendau’s jaw closed, trapping the liquid in his mouth and pinching his nose shut. His options are to swallow or choke. He swallows, gasping for air.
“Good boy,” Sorley all but purrs, petting soothingly at his throat. He has removed the dagger; Calendau has the distinct sense that Sorley doesn’t think he’ll need it anymore, and the growing fear that he’s right. “Now, when you start to feel it, do remember that I did warn you. You’re going to have an interesting few days.”
“Bitch,” Calendau hisses, the air not quite back in his lungs. “What the fuck did you feed me?”
“It won’t hurt you, darling,” Sorley says. “In fact I’d venture to say it’s less invasive than the mesmer you’ve been taking from your dear commander. This only affects the body, not the mind.”
Calendau has a horrible suspicion, right before the first pulse of arousal throbs to life in his cunt. It’s followed by the sudden ache of his cock swelling to fullness, and then a full-body spasm that makes him double over, groaning with need and desire. His hands are shaking. Resolutely he clenches them into fists.
“Fuck you,” he spits. “Is this how you—you think I’m going to just—this isn’t going to make me talk, you motherfucker—nngh.”
Sorley is observing him with a clinical interest, his head tilted to the side and a slight smile on his lips. “Look at you,” he says. “You’re already sweating. It’s barely been two minutes. A dose like that won’t reach its peak for hours.” His smile turns vicious then; he hasn’t looked away from Calendau’s face for even a moment. “If you give me what I want to know, I’ll take care of you until it passes. If not… well, I could kill you, I suppose. Or I could take your crystal and simply leave you here to the tender mercies of your commander. Or to anyone else who finds you.”
Calendau snarls. He has to close his eyes through another dizzying wave of arousal; his entire body is screaming to be fucked. He has never felt a need like this. It’s all he can do not to jam his hand down between his legs and fuck himself till he comes.
He thinks it wouldn’t be long. He also thinks it wouldn’t so much as take the edge off.
“Why,” he grits out. He doesn’t open his eyes. It’s easier if he doesn’t look at Sorley.
Sorley only laughs. “You’re already for sale, aren’t you?” he says. “Pretty little whore, spreading his legs for information. Let’s just say I want a share of the spoils.”
“Fuck you,” Calendau says again.
“Yes, I know,” Sorley says, and spreads his palm against Calendau’s chest. Calendau has to bite back a horrible needy sound. “I will fuck you, darling, if you give me what I want.”
Calendau knows he shouldn’t give in. There is nothing good that can come of sharing what he knows with a Bastion spy. But that thought seems so terrifyingly far away with the arousal roaring through his body. His cock is outright throbbing, so hard already that it hurts. Sorley’s touch is the only thing that makes it any better.
“The Split,” he gasps. “I’m researching the Split, I need to keep it open, to stabilize—ah, ah—I’m—looking for someone,” he says all in a rush. “Someone who was lost—on the other side—”
“Lost?” Sorley says sharply, his fingers tightening on Calendau’s chest. “I haven’t heard of anyone who’s been lost. Killed by hostile Outsiders, or displaced by the drifts, but not lost. Not through the Split.”
But Calendau just shakes his head, not caring what spills from his lips. Now that he’s started speaking he cannot seem to stop. “Not through the Split,” he says. “She was lost twelve years ago—please, please, I need—ngh—she’s there, I know she’s there, I’ve seen her on the other side—I was right, after all these years, and now I just need to get her back. Sorley, please—”
Sorley’s silence is thoughtful. He pushes Calendau down onto his back, crawling over him and sliding his hands inside his shirt. Calendau shudders, arching shamelessly into it. “Your people,” Sorley says finally. “The Harbingers, or whatever you call yourselves—it wasn’t in their plans to tear a hole to another reality, was it? But it was yours.”
“Yes,” Calendau says. There’s no point to keeping it back now: Sorley has already ripped more from him than anyone has managed in over a decade—more, in fact, than anyone since Casarie. He’s so desperately aroused that his head is spinning. “Their plan was for—making a, a wellspring of magic. They wanted power. But I wanted—it wasn’t—” He has to stop, taking in a tight breath. “I thought from the start that it was—it wouldn’t work how they wanted. I—nudged it, a little, I didn’t, I—I could have corrected—” He shakes his head, hips bucking up against Sorley’s, fingers digging in on his thighs; the other man is rocking down against him, slow and deliberate. “And it worked—except it didn’t—I can’t get through—”
“And you think you could,” Sorley says. He lifts himself up onto his knees, pushing Calendau further up onto the bed and peeling the shirt from his body. His fingertips leave blazing trails of sensation on Calendau’s skin. “With the information you’ve gathered, and the time to design a ritual.” He leans in, burying his nose in Calendau’s jaw where there is still a thin trickle of blood leaking from the cut. “I’m right, aren’t I? You reek of magic, but you’re not a mage.”
Sorley’s question flees Calendau’s mind immediately. All he can think of is his lips on his pulse, his body pressed close to his, the overwhelming, heated intimacy of him knowing things about Calendau in a way so far beyond his control. “I’m not—you can smell that?”
“Taste it, I suppose,” Sorley says, and drags his tongue over the cuts he left at Calendau’s throat, “might be a better way to put it.”
Calendau’s whole body convulses. He nearly thinks he comes. “Please,” he gasps, bewildered and utterly aflame with want. “Please, fuck, I need it, I need you—”
“I know,” Sorley soothes. “Darling, I know. But you have to do something for me first. Two things.”
Calendau can’t breathe. He can barely think. “What things?”
“First,” Sorley says. “I’m willing to let you live, but you have to promise me you’ll keep this quiet. If you don’t, I can certainly arrange for your people to find out what you and your commander have been up to. I don’t think they’d like that at all.”
“I promise,” Calendau says, the horror of it twisting sickly in his gut—or maybe that’s just the arousal. He’d be killed if he was found out for a traitor, or Eiquem would be, or he’d kill Calendau himself for the humiliation of having been seduced into giving up secrets, never mind that he’s the one who made Calendau do it—or else Calendau would be left alive, with all their people knowing he was for sale, and ready to take advantage—
His cock throbs. He swallows hard. For a dizzy, spinning moment he cannot remember why that would be bad. “What’s the second thing?”
“The second thing,” Sorley says. “You’re going to let me make a copy of everything you’ve got on your crystal. And if you learn anything else of interest,” he adds, grinding his cock pointedly down against Calendau’s pelvis, “you’re going to bring it to me.”
“Okay,” Calendau says, hands clenching desperately on Sorley’s thighs. “Okay, yes, I’ll bring it to you.”
“Good boy,” Sorley says, and holds out his hand. “Crystal, please.”
Frantically Calendau scrabbles through his belt pouch. He pulls the crystal out with shaking fingers, pressing it into Sorley’s waiting palm. “It’s keyed to me,” he says. “It’s—it’ll let you make a copy. Please, fuck me, fuck me.”
“Business before pleasure, sweet thing,” Sorley says, and pulls out a crystal of his own. He sets them down beside each other on the nightstand, fiddling with the magic sparking off of Calendau’s until it is flowing in a steady stream into his own. Satisfied with that, he lets them go, focusing his attention on Calendau. Calendau shivers under the heat in his gaze.
“Take your clothes off,” Sorley says, low and warm, and Calendau cannot obey fast enough.
Sorley’s cock is bulbous and curved, shaped almost more like the centre of a flower than a bodily organ. Calendau comes the moment he pushes it inside him, spasming and crying out and gushing a slick mess of fluid. “Oh, you want it so bad,” Sorley croons, and then starts fucking him immediately, without giving him even a moment’s respite. Calendau gasps and throws his head back, tears leaking from his eyes.
Sorley makes him come twice more like that before he comes himself, spilling deep inside him with a satisfied grunt. Calendau is already beyond words at that point; all he can do, when Sorley pulls out, is whine. “Hush,” Sorley says, crawling down to settle between Calendau’s legs. “I know you want me inside you. I said I’d take care of you, didn’t I?” Calendau only whines again, and then Sorley presses three fingers inside him and closes his mouth around his cock.
Calendau loses count, after that, of how many times he comes. Sorley sucks him off once, twice, maybe more, and then puts him on his stomach to fuck him again, grinding his hips in slow circles against Calendau’s ass. There is a heat sitting low in Calendau’s abdomen; it hasn’t burned out, has barely even abated, is still suffusing him with desperation from his scalp all the way to his toes. At some point he starts phasing in and out of consciousness, coming back to himself every time with his body in a new position and his cunt still clenching greedily around Sorley’s cock, or fingers, or tongue. Sorley, pacing himself skillfully and working Calendau with his hands and mouth at least as often as his cock, seems to have endless stamina. Still Calendau keeps begging him for more, more, more.
The sun is well into the sky by the time he at last comes back to himself fully, blinking awake to find Sorley half-dozing beside him with his hand still rubbing at Calendau’s cock. The violent arousal has faded, but he’s still deeply, distractingly horny—and he doesn’t think Sorley’s hand on his dick is the sole culprit.
“You’re going to keep feeling it for the next few days,” Sorley murmurs into his shoulder. Calendau can tell by his voice that he’s smiling. “I gave you a lot, darling. I said it would be easier with only a few drops.”
“Fuck you,” Calendau says, too tired to snarl. “You could have not given me any at all.”
Sorley hums. “I could have,” he says, and sits up. Calendau cannot stop his hips from bucking in protest when he removes his hand.
Sorley laughs openly—mockingly, even. “Oh, you pretty thing,” he says. He is already dressing himself, his body disappearing quickly and efficiently into his clothes. “Much as I’d love to laze around in bed with you for the next week, I have places to be.” He scoops up his crystal from Calendau’s nightstand, tucking it away, and gives him a significant look. “Anything of interest,” he says.
Calendau’s cunt aches to be filled. He turns his face away, pressing it into the pillows. “I’ll bring it,” he says tonelessly.
“That’s it,” Sorley says approvingly. “You’re so good for me. Now get some rest, darling. I’ll be seeing you.”
Calendau doesn’t respond. When Sorley says nothing else, he eventually looks around. The Bastion is gone, out the window or through the door or by some other secret means. Calendau didn’t even hear him leave.
He tries—resentfully—to follow Sorley’s advice for a time. He’s exhausted and worn down, and his entire body is one giant ache. Slipping back into sleep ought to be easy. Instead he tucks his hand between his legs and grinds on it mindlessly until he brings himself off again.
And he’s still fucking horny.
“Fuck,” he bites out, and shoves himself to his feet. He cleans himself roughly with the water from his washbasin; he yanks on his clothes, grabs his crystal from the nightstand, and stalks out of his room. Hating himself, hating the nausea swimming in his gut and clawing its way up his throat until it threatens to choke him, he goes looking for Eiquem.
At least, he thinks viciously, when his commander fucks him until he can no longer stand on his own, he’ll get something for it.
He spends the next four days in Eiquem’s bed.