The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Read Online Free Page A

straw while, outside, rain drummed on the packed dirt of Hanover Street. The boy had brought up the palace again, as he often did in their brief relationship, and he muttered about how his sister had been brought inside, and how much he hated the chatelaine for plucking his twin from the streets, as if she were a flower, a curiosity to be put in a vase and then discarded when she’d gone yellow and withered.
    Lying there, listening now to the beautiful girl talk about her childhood—a red-blooded kid, playing in the warrens of Jesthe, like only red-blooded kids could—the kholic stared up at a moist stain on the ceiling. He chewed at his nails. He could get used to ticking as soft as this. One hand was behind his head. The beautiful girl held his cock, slowly making it hard again. He licked his lips, thinking about mattresses and monsters, thinking about experiments in dungeon towers.
    He pictured the warrens, burrowed right into the foundation of the palace, and the nearly deserted hallways within.
    He considered the chatelaine’s beloved pets.
    As the hemo went down on him, and took his cock into her hot mouth, the kholic had begun to form a plan, to try get his sister back, and to teach the chatelaine a lesson.

    Grey rocks, grey clouds. Cold, grey rain. Father had gone inside, snoring loudly. No lizards here, in the rain. Very few birds. With an open mouth, head back, rain felt funny on his tongue.
    In the distance, lightning burst.
    His name was path. And he watched, squinting through the rain, listening for thunder, trying to remember what his father had said about counting the seconds. He smiled; path liked storms.
    But as the rain intensified, and winds picked up, the smile faded. Storms were good when he was inside , not deposited here, in the garden. He had forgotten this distinction. His father had been drinking spiritus all morning and would not wake up, no matter how close the lightning came, or how loud the storm got, or if path started to scream at the top of his lungs.
    Mud started to splash up the sling, as far as path’s torso. Anxious, he wriggled his stumps, croaking, “Da? Daaa?”
    Abruptly, the rain stopped.
    Remote thunder, rolling overhead, a few drops pattering the puddles—which were rapidly soaking into the sandy soil—and the land around released its heat, once more, in a stifling surge.
    Then path saw two lizards coming, sweeping low over the steaming rocks, heading for the small garden. Yellow lizards. He chortled, and was preparing to terrify the reptiles—as soon as they landed—when he saw another light suddenly appear before him; not lightning this time but a thin finger, pinkish, dead straight.
    From above the clouds.
    He cocked an eyebrow.
    He quivered his stumps.
    “ Da ?”
    Slowly the finger of light moved toward him, stopping at the base of his sling. Looking down at it, path felt his body tingle.
    When the light jumped, almost too fast for him to follow, there was a moment of exquisite pain—
    And he was taken away. Other worlds filled him, other times.
    Another life:
    Born with healthy ovaries and bad prospects, she was registered, naturally, for the lottery. Before her first birthday, the State interned her in one of their hospices, Balhaven, just outside Newark, where she lived with other girls who shared her history. Her biological parents could afford neither the money, the time, nor the patience to take care of her.
    By seven, she was a tall, gangly child. The birthmark across her cheek and nose darkened as she aged and added to her insecurities. She was sullen, and not very popular.
    Her childhood in the hospice was like that of a million others across the League of Nations, all of them born in the wrong place and wrong time, as most children were, it seemed, except that on her eighth birthday, she was selected by the Agency. The inconceivable. She had won the lottery.
    When the news broke, she said nothing. Sat on the edge of her cot, staring into the face of the