Idol of Blood Read Online Free Page B

covered in gold paint. This was Jak. Sweet Jak. She smiled at Jak. She could smell the desire, no phallus needed, that Jak’s body had at last professed. How beautiful Jak had been, spread before Ra on the floor of liquid marble— no, that was another —taken by Ra to the ultimate expression of pleasure. Aroused, laid, climaxed before Ra had ever touched the sweet temple of her lover’s sex.
    Perching her arms on Jak’s shoulder beside her, she spoke softly at Jak’s ear. “I want to fuck you.”
    â€œ What? ” Jak pulled Ra’s hands down to the bench, trying to keep her still like a mischievous child. Had she said what Jak thought she said? She was laughing. Rem and Peta and the rest of the mound had been discussing her expulsion from the moundhold, were calling her despicable things: psychotic, avaricious, indulgent, daft. They were shutting her out, replacing the woman they’d known with this folkloric creation, displaying their ignorance. They didn’t harbor recreant Meer. It was simply common sense. The Meer were no concern of theirs. They suggested she might murder someone without warning, to which Geffn, symbolically positioned among the rest of the moundhold opposite Jak and Ra, had nodded dully.
    And here sat Ra, smiling at Jak, whispering of sex. Inappropriately, her words had instantly drawn a bead of wetness from between Jak’s legs.
    Jak ignored it. “Why don’t you answer these absurd suspicions, Ra? Tell them they have nothing to fear.”
    â€œRenaissance prevaricates.” Ra returned to playing with her hair. “Someone told me that once.” The others shifted uncomfortably.
    â€œI must hear it from Ra.” Rem’s expression was grim. “Are you truly one of them?”
    Ra spread out her hands as if to show they held no weapons. Though for Ra, of course, none would be needed. “One of them?” she repeated. “ Maísch ahnahttas .”
    The moundholders exchanged looks.
    â€œAnd what did she just say?” asked Rem.
    â€œI don’t know.” Jak laid a hand on Ra’s arm. “Ra, you spoke in Deltan.”
    â€œDid I?” Her focus seemed vague. “I am one of you. I am Ra.”
    â€œBut are you Meer?” insisted Peta.
    â€œOf course.”
    It was so permanent. So final. So matter-of-fact. They were stricken into silence for a moment.
    Rem drew in a breath and spoke. “Then you’re not one of us,” he decreed. “We have never harbored any of that breed. We stay out of Deltan politics.”
    Jak jumped up from the bench, ears almost deafened by the blood pounding in them. “This is not politics, Oldman. This is one of your daughters. Her name is in the moundhold.”
    â€œNot anymore,” said Rem. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
    Dumbfounded, Jak looked at Geffn, but Geffn was silent, complicit. Why had they brought her here from Rhyman and her temple? Why had they even bothered?
    â€œIf you had consulted us,” said Rem as if in answer to Jak’s thoughts, “we would have voted against your going to the Delta. Yet you involved Geffn in this. You endangered both Geffn and yourself in pursuit of a recreant. She left. You should have let her go.”
    Jak stared at them, the silent, collective mind in agreement. They were the family that had been for Jak what Fyn and Kol had never been. They had accepted every awkward circumstance Jak had presented: the handfasting to Geffn, two years Jak’s junior, when he was only eighteen; the gradual change in Jak from female to ungendered; the divorce, unspoken but obvious; the insinuation of Ahr into the fringes of the community. And once, Ra.
    But now they stood against Jak, immovable, unfamilial. A mound of strangers. Jak took Ra’s arm above the elbow and held it out in its narrow kerum-brown sleeve. Ra smiled.
    â€œLook at her,” Jak insisted, pained. “Don’t you see