Wen and Tik Take a Lover - pt 1

Hello folks! Below is the first installment of a side-story starring Tikani, Wenzai, and Lady Lakai. It concerns how their thing started, and it takes place between volumes 2 and 3, during Wen and Tik's house arrest on Sykora's orders.

This one is going to either be two or three parts long, I'm not sure which. Once it's done I'll put out a vote for the next side story.

***

Tikani, Count of Korak, kneels on the dock’s wooden planks. Baroness Wella’s cobalt-blue tail wags as she pulls him into a parting embrace.

“This was fun.” She kisses his cheek.

He smiles. “It was.”

And it was, really. Tikani had fun with Baroness Wella. But Tikani has lots of fun with lots of people.

“You’ll pardon us, ma’am.” A marine hands Wella her bag. “Just making sure you’re passing no contraband.”

“Contraband. Goodness. I feel like a video secret agent.” Wella laughs. Her touch lingers on his wrist. She blinks her bright, lined eyes. “Are you going to ask me to stay for dinner?”

Tikani smiles with kind apology. “I’m afraid we’re under a few restrictions when it comes to how long our guests can stay.” He brushes her midnight hair behind her ear. “And you have plans, remember? You and the Baron had an overnight sweepliner to catch.”

“Well… we do, yes.” Wella laughs uncertainly. “I suppose so. All right, Count Tikani. Give my love to the Countess of Korak.”

He gets back to his feet and bows. “I surely will.”

Wella looks past Tikani’s shoulder to Anakai, his daughter, who’s followed them from the garden, her corduroy overalls streaked with fresh-turned earth. “Goodbye, little lady.”

Ana bows, a little lower than she needs to. “Bye, Mistress Wella.”

Tikani and his daughter climb back up the stairs beneath the shadow of Wella’s shuttle.

“What’s under restrictions?” Ana asks, as the shuttle streaks away into the sky.

“It’s a fancy way of saying there’s a rule,” Tikani says.

“We’re under restrictions with how long our guests can stay?”

“We aren’t, actually,” Tikani says. “But sometimes when there’s a nice person you have to be less-than-nice to, you tell a little fib that makes someone feel better.”

Ana’s brows knit as she considers this.

“You can give it a try when you’re older,” Tikani says. “Let’s stick to honesty for now, okay?”

Ana’s ears perk up. “Okay. So Mistress Wella’s nice?”

“Very nice.” Tikani scratches his daughter behind her big flappy ear.

“She’s pretty,” Ana says.

“Sure.” Tikani nods to the guard waiting for him by the bungalow door.

“Mom’s prettier,” Ana adds.

“Yes, she is.” Tikani boops Ana’s little nose, its graceful swoop so much like Wenzai’s. “You wanna be a dinner helper tonight?”

“Uh huh,” Ana says.

“Okay, then.” Tikani scoops his daughter onto his hip. “Let’s go ask Kroie if we can be helpers.”

Wenzai and Tikani were allowed one servant during their internment here. Kroie was a no-brainer. Despite his youth the man is a total professional; meticulous and scrupulous in a way that never seems put-upon or difficult. Like a perfectly groomed blue swan. Ana is obsessed with him; she swoons every time he bows to her, and regularly asks him to marry her, only to be crestfallen when he declines on the grounds of their vast age difference, and also the fact that he is, in his own words, “thoroughly gay, I’m afraid, milady.”

With great magnanimity, Kroie allows the Count and his daughter access to the black-and-gold kingdom of his kitchen, and a role in making dinner—a seedpod salad, bright red and buttery. Tikani shells, Kroie chops, and Ana peels the zaikem berries.

“Don’t eat too many of those before dinner, Ana,” Tikani says.

“Umm not,” Ana says, with her mouth full.

“Will the Countess be joining us tonight?” Kroie asks.

“She’s dining at the Wellas’, I believe,” Tikani says. “I sent ahead word that the Baroness was coming back early.” Normally, two people on internment would never be permitted to leave their home for any reason, let alone barter, but an exception has been made in Tikani and Wenzai’s case. The Count hopes this means the Prince and Princess haven’t shut the door on being friends, but he doesn’t presume to understand friendship the way he used to. The man he thought was his best friend in the firmament is traitorous ashes in a noncitizen crematorium.

Tikani banishes the thought with the crisp crack of a seedpod and looks over his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you gents might want to help sort?”

The two marines in the kitchen stand solid as statues, faceless in their tempered glass.

“Sometimes you actually reply, you know,” Tikani says. “It’s no use pretending you’re not allowed to. Kindek’s out of the bag. I know that’s you, Ajax.”

“No you don’t, milord,” Sergeant Ajax says.

“Dad.” Mava is hovering in the threshold to the kitchen. “Orlo’s scared.”

Tikani opens one last seedpod and puts the shellcracker aside. “What’s he scared about?”

“He got challenged today,” Mava says. “At school. And he said a bad word.”

Tikani tsks and turns on the sink. “Okay. You guys are in the den?”

Mava nods.

“I’ll wash my hands and be right there.”

Orlo’s perched on an easy chair in their book-lined den, snuffling into a napkin. Mava surreptitiously picks up the tear-soaked ones on the side. “I’m sorry,” he blurts, as soon as Tikani comes in. He uses the Kov word, which they all agreed was an okay one to use.

“Oh, no. Hey, Orly. It’s okay. Scoot over.” Tikani picks Orlo up and nudges him into his lap. “Who challenged you, bud?”

Orlo wipes his cheek. “Ravi.”

“Raviki of Clan Tavari? Aren’t you two friends?”

“He said we aren’t anymore.” Orlo shakes his head miserably. “He said we can’t be friends because your parents are traitors. And I said, um.”

“Go ahead,” Tikari says. “You’re not gonna get in trouble twice.”

“I said go suck shit,” Orlo says.

Tikani lets out a choked laugh before he can clamp it back. “Who taught you that word?”

Orlo glances at Mava. “I forget.”

“All right,” Tikani says. “And he challenged you?”

Orlo nods. “To math.”

“Is that too scary?” Tikani asks. “Because if it’s too scary you can tell him no. You know you can do that, right?” Wenzai wouldn’t love him saying that, but they agreed they wouldn’t pressure Orlo to accept all the challenges that came his way.

“I know.” Orlo takes a shaky breath. “I’m gonna say yes.”

Tikani smiles. “You remember you can counterchallenge, too, right? However you want. Spelling, maybe. You’re great at spelling. Or a footrace, maybe.”

“Do you want me to?” Mava asks. “I’m the Countess-in-Waiting.”

“That’s really good of you to offer, Mav,” Tikani says. “But if Orlo’s gonna answer this, he should do it himself. Okay?”

“Why?” Mava asks.

“So he can prove that he rocks,” Tikani says.

“I don’t rock,” Orlo says.

“You do rock,” Tikani says. “And Ravi sucks shit.”

“Dad.” Mava is gleefully scandalized.

“You’ll kick his butt at math, and then you’ll kick his butt at whatever your counter is.” Tikani holds his hand out. “Let’s go over your multiplication, yeah? Till dinner?”

Orlo nods and sets his tissue aside. “Okay.”

Tikani finds a pencil and paper, and leads his scurrying flock of children to the dining room. A marine ambles unobtrusively after them.

They’ve made it up to the nines column when the lights of a descending shuttle bloom through the Ptolek fog. Tikani looks out into the night. His heart leaps as the vessel docks.

The marines murmur into their radios. Tikani puts the stationery away. The escort ascends the dock, up the footpath, to the bungalow.

The kids run into their laughing mother’s arms.

***

The door to their room clicks shut. A frilly black nightie glides across the floor and hops through the lace curtains surrounding the recessed bed. Tikani puts his journal aside and catches his wife as her ample curves flow into visibility beneath the gossamer.

“Hey, handsome.” She rains kisses on his chest and shoulders. “Hey, my lovely man.”

He kisses the top of her head. Her horns are poking out through her space buns. “You came back early today.”

She kneads her face against him like a kindek. “I missed you too much. And I wasn’t about to miss seedpod salad night. It was easy enough to leave. I think the Baron wasn’t comfortable having a bunch of marine escorts idling around in his house. How was Baroness Wella?”

“Uhh. What’s to tell, really.” He scoots over and drops his journal on top of the nightstand. “She was fine. She has a tattoo on her ass.”

“No. Her?”

“Mmhmm. Of a cupcake. And she yowled like a kindek.” She laughs at that; he joins in. “A bit sheltered, I thought, or someone would have let her know it was a touch atonal.”

“A touch atonal.” She catches her breath. “You are so fucking funny, Tikani of Korak.”

“She was newer to bartering than she told us, I think. A bit of bravado.”

“Sheltered and an ass tattoo.” Wenzai snuggles up to him. “What a contradiction.”

“Compensation, you’d suppose.” Tikani rests his hand in the dip at the small of her back, just above the generous curve of her butt. “What about Baron Wella?”

She sighs.

“No. Him?”

Wenzai shrugs helplessly. “Maybe it was just nerves, if they’re as new to the game as you think.”

“Do you think so?”

“They did have that energy. He’s too used to letting the compulsion do all the work for him, I think. He was a bit shaken when I told him we’re nme’yanai. Asked if we’d make an exception.”

“What’d you say?”

“I didn’t so much say something as make a noise like—” She lets out a throttled scoff. “And he got the message.”

He laughs and gives her tail a gentle tug at its root. “You are so brazen.”

“It’s not like we switch up on them. I make it very clear in the approach. The anticomps stay on or the dress does.”

Nme’yanai was the option that appealed most to Tikani, and he was relieved at how readily Wenzai agreed to it. They barter freely, and share the bedmates who are willing to be shared, and let themselves enjoy the lives of virile, horny nobles in the Imperial court.

But Tikani wears his anticomps. And Wenzai doesn’t use her compulsion with anyone but him. They share their bodies with the firmament. Their minds are exclusive.

“I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I caught some cling off the Baroness,” Tikani says. “Guess they’ve scratched themselves out of the rotation, then.”

“Yeah.” Wenzai folds her cushiony thighs together. “He was a pretty shitty lay.”

Tikani clicks his tongue. “Really?”

“Without compelled longevity, he was a two-pump chump.”

Tikani exaggerates a scandalized gasp. “Just two pumps? For the Countess of Korak?”

“Scandal,” Wenzai says. “I know.”

“Is milady unsatisfied?”

She shimmies her shoulders. Her plump cleavage pushes together beneath her jet nighty. “Does milord feel like satisfying?”

He grins. “Always.”

Her eyes flash. “C’mere, boy.”

Tikani feels her caress along the ridges of his mind, a silky come hither encoding into him on an instinctual level.

He takes hold of his little wife around the middle and bears her with him. They roll into the center of their wine-dark bedspread; she comes up straddling him. Her breasts spill softly against his chest. Her midnight lips brush his. He plays hesitant for a moment, hard-to-get. Then he ambushes her, pushes forward, his forked tongue capturing hers, and wins a gorgeous little mmf of delight from her. Her hips start a slow, indulgent rhythm. Her thighs flex around his waist.

Tikani has complicated feelings about the Empire into which his wife has brought him. He does not have complicated feelings about his wife. Wenzai is the consolation prize of an uncaring firmament and the evil empire that runs it. She is smart and funny and the best friend he’s ever had, and—to depart sentimentality for a moment—her fat purple tits knock the air out of him like a knee to the gut every time he sees them.

“One sec, Tikky.” The soft warmth of his wife’s butt departs its perch. She reaches above his head, granting him a look up her black satin nightie, and pushes the button on their headboard.

The world outside muffles as the soundproofing field kicks in, and suddenly he can hear her heartbeat and his own.

“They’re asleep already, y’know.”

“I know.” She tugs herself free of her PJs. Her breasts slide up with the fabric. Gravity takes hold of them and bounces them playfully into Tikani’s face. She laughs and squirms as he tastes the violet feast she’s displaying for him. “But you’re acting like you wanna make me sing tonight, lover boy.”

He does.

***

The kids chase each other out the door to their podbus. Orlo insists on one last hug from Tikani before he goes. No arguments there.

Tikani and his wife break their fast in the kitchen, seated on either side of their onyx island. Tikani has his notebook open, chipping away at a troublesome trios of trochees in a ballad he’s balancing. Wenzai’s reading a crime thriller with a yellow Criminality Depicted warning sticker half-peeled on the cover. In the corner, a lady marine whose name escapes Tikani sips some coffee the Count offered her.

Wenzai’s ring-heavy finger taps the edge of her mug. She looks up from her book and gazes out at the cloudy redness of Ptolek. His three-fingered hand finds hers and laces into it.

Tikani nods to her book. “Is it sticking the landing?”

She inclines her head. “Sorta. These noncitizensploitation things get so preachy toward the end, lately.”

“Is it a Kastroi House publication?” he asks. She flashes the spine at him. He squints and nods. “They were dinged for some depiction stuff a while ago. It bollocksed a launch up. Quite the scandal. I imagine they’re being extra-jumpy about the Content Adjutancy.”

Wenzai rolls her eyes. “They should use your guy.”

“Administrator Shuei is fantastic,” Tikani says. “But I believe he’s poetry only. Different departments for fiction. Did Orlo tell you about the challenge he’s doing today?”

“He did. This Tavari boy.” Wenzai tuts. “Little bastard. He wouldn’t be making a move if we weren’t in the throok-house right now.”

Tikani blows across his coffee’s surface. “I ought to be used to the cutthroat pod stuff by now.”

“It’s not cutthroat. It’s just… finding out where the kids fit. They work hard to make sure every kid gets to the top of the heap in at least one subject they can counterchallenge with.” Her eyes wander from the planet they orbit to his face. “He says his dad took an hour to help him with addition.” She squeezes his hand. “Thank you, lover boy.”

“Of course.”

Wenzai gives his hand another parting squeeze then sits back and returns to her book, tail drifting back and forth in an invisible tide behind her. Her spoon swirls figure-eights in her coffee. Usually she’s halfway through her first cup by now.

“Would you like to talk about it?” he asks.

“The challenge?” Wenzai dog-ears her place. “I promise it won’t damage him. The podkeepers are there to make sure it stays proper. Nobody’s gonna make fun of Orlo if he loses. You’re not allowed to. No malice.”

“Not that. And he’s not going to lose, by the way. That kid nailed the sevens column.” Tikani takes a bracing drink of his own mug. Dark and full and robust. “Talk about whatever’s making my wife unhappy.”

“I don’t know.” Wenzai sighs. “I felt a shade of this before we got laid up, but I think I’m feeling it more. Now that we’re under house arrest and the pool is even shallower.” Her hand finds his. “I’m afraid you’ll take this wrong or think I’m being too clingy or something. I know that being fun and flirty is our thing, sort of. And I feel so weird saying this. Give me a second. I had a way this was going to go and I’ve lost my place.”

Tikani rests his chin on his free palm.

“I came home last night thinking—is it not fun anymore?” Wenzai takes her spoon from her mug and rests it against her lower lip. “It’s supposed to be more fun than that. Why was it so… perfunctory? And then I got into your bed, and you fucked the dye out of my hair, and I was like, oh, right. That’s how it’s supposed to feel. Am I being frumpy? Or crazy?”

“You’re not,” Tikani says. “One reason Wella’s exclamations preoccupied me is sometimes I close my eyes and imagine it’s you. And you don’t sound like an air-raid siren.”

She giggles. “You’re brazen.”

“You like it,” he says.

“I do,” Wenzai says. “Every time we barter, I end up just looking for you. Little bits of you. Wishing they knew me as well as you know me. Wishing they could do what you can do. I think… I don’t know what I think, really.”

The woman guard—Ximi, maybe? Something with an X—sneezes. Without looking away from his wife’s eyes, Tikani holds out an unused napkin, and feels a gauntleted hand remove it. “Thanks,” the marine murmurs.

Wenzai exhales heavily. “I don’t want to put you out, Tik. But what if we were done bartering for a while?”

She holds her other hand out across their onyx-swirled table. Tikani reaches forward and takes it. His thumb rubs her palm. “Do you want to go nme’kzai?”

“I don’t know.” She purses her lips. “Do you?”

“I guess I’d prefer it to right now,” he admits. “You’re right. It’s feeling… perfunctory, when we barter. Obligatory, maybe. It’s—” He chuckles at himself. “It’s kind of a fucking chore.”

“It is kind of a—” She blows air out of her nose with amusement as she gets him. “A fucking chore.”

“I didn’t grow up with monogamy,” he says. “Or exclusivity. But I’d try, for you. I think, if it’s you, I would be all right with it.”

“I don’t want to shut the door to the entire firmament. I like fucking new people. I just hate fucking without you. Can I tell you what I’m thinking?”

“Always,” he says.

“I was thinking maybe we stick to people we could share,” Wenzai says. “You like girls, I go both ways. So unattached ladies who like to duel. We look for those.”

Tikani tries to keep his hair tendrils from waving. “Threesomes?”

“Yep,” Wenzai says. “I’ve been wanting to have more threesomes. They’re always such a gas.”

Tikani clears his throat and attempts to give this sober consideration, caging the slavering throok in his mind going yeah yeah yeah yeah.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’d switch to that. If we find anyone, anyway.”

“My big green worrywart.” Wenzai chuckles. “Of course we’ll find someone. We’re hot.”

“It’s a little more exclusive, is all.”

“Well, I’m feeling a little more exclusive.” Wenzai wiggles her hips in her seat. “I can’t just cruise by on cheap takeout when I’m used to luxury prix fixe.”

“So we need to find a lady, then,” Tikani says.

Wenzai’s blackout lips curve into a grin. “Is that a lady or a Lady?”

Tikani leans across the table. “Do you have any specific Ladies in mind?”

Wenzai leans, too. Her breasts smush enticingly into the countertop. “Do you?”

“Do you?”

She wiggles forward. “Do you?”

“Well, I’m wondering do you?”

“I think you do,” Wenzai says.

“Maybe I do,” Tikani says.

“I wanna fuck Lady Lakai of Kyin,” Wenzai says. “I don’t know if she’d say yes while we’re on internment, but I wanna fuck her really bad. Will you fuck her with me?”

Tikani’s three-fingered hand caresses the top of his wife’s. “Wenzai of Korak,” he says. “Love of my life. Mother of my children.”

She giggles. “Yes, Tikani of Korak?”

“I would fuck any woman in the firmament,” Tikani says. “As long as it was with you.”