a Pleasure Rites, #1 by Ines Johnson (top ten books of all time TXT) 📗

"Where's your mate? Where's Lord Khial?"

Anguish returned to Chanyn's face. "I don't know," she said.

The man was grieved. He was likely out assuaging his grief. "I'll stay until he returns." Then Jian would have to figure out what to do with his life.

"That might be a long time," Chanyn said. "He hasn't been home in days. Not since Dain..."

Jian played Chanyn's words over again in his head. They couldn't be right. The man wouldn't abandon his pregnant wife. It was simply unheard of.

Jian's own plight would have to wait. There was only one thing for him to do. "I'll find him for you."

22

The moon pulled anchor and sailed high into the heavens while the sun released its hold on the horizon and sank. Somewhere between the two celestial bodies, Khial drifted. He'd wandered around for days. Two days? Three, maybe? Time scattered around him, stretched and distorted like the pieces of a popped balloon.

Looking up at the moon left Khial light-headed. The white orb filled the sky, its body swollen, its seams set to burst. Memories of old swirled in Khial's head, sending him back to boyhood.

As a boy, to escape the incessant mind games played by his parents during mealtimes, one day Khial ventured out into the street market. Khial's first trip to the market was also his last. He clutched his throat, watching a man fry gray meat in a grease-laden pan. His toes curled at the screeching of a three-piece, musical ensemble. He flipped up his collar at the sight of two scrawny, unwashed street boys near his age.

Turning his back on them, Khial spotted a blue orb. The balloon stretched and yearned for the sky, but was tethered to earth by a silver string. Its captor, an old man with gray hair and clear gray eyes, like a reflecting mirror, gazed down at Khial. His gnarled hands twisted oblong balloons into animal shapes.

Khial reached in his pocket and withdrew a piece of copper. In exchange, the old man handed him a contorted balloon in the shape of a lion. Before turning away, Khial cast one final glance at the captive blue balloon. It bobbed and weaved, testing the restraints of the string. And then suddenly, it was yanked down, free.

Khial blinked as the gnarled hand placed the string before him. He reached into his pocket before reaching for the proffered balloon, but the old man shook his head. He released the balloon into Khial's hand, with a wink.

On the way home Khial's hands were full. He cradled the lion in one arm, in the other hand his five fingers wrapped around the silver string, tight. No one had ever given him a gift before.

Khial returned home to the sounds of fists popping jaws. His fathers were fighting over his mother once more. His mother, Lady Danyell, stood at the top of the stairs monitoring her mates' progress.

Early in his young life, Khial believed his mother was the Goddess, Herself. Her skin was as dark as the fertile earth, her hair a fluffy cloud that haloed around her face. The vacancy in her eyes proved his infantile theory wrong.

Lady Danyell held no tablet in her hands to record whatever experiment she'd set into motion. She possessed a photographic memory that catalogued and compartmentalized everything she witnessed, read, or heard. His mother was fascinated with the emotions of jealousy. Not being able to feel the emotion herself, she doubted, its existence and used her husbands to test its variables.

The crash of one of Khial's fathers falling startled him, and his grip relinquished the silver string. His gift sailed up to the high ceilings, far beyond his reach. His face fell. His eyes teared. Before he could correct his mistake, his mother appeared before him.

Danyell's calculating gaze looked from her son's face, to the floating balloon before settling on the contorted material still in Khial's arms.

"Why are you crying." There was no inflection in her voice to indicate that the statement was a question. For Lady Danyell it was a problem, a hypothesis she meant to investigate.

"It’s still present," she indicated the floating balloon. "It’s simply beyond your reach."

She cocked her head to the side at her statement, turning it over and over again in her clockwork mind. She held her hand out for the contorted balloon that remained in Khial's hand. Khial knew it was fruitless to deny her. He shuttered himself against further loss and handed the balloon over. Without preamble, his mother squeezed the balloon until the air burst from it, rending the elastic into pieces. The stretched and distorted pieces landed on the floor in a quiet crash.

"This one is also still present." She held up the pieces, ticking off the variables. "This one is in your reach. Though its function is now useless."

Danyell tick-tocked her head in the opposite direction, investigating from a different angle. Khial focused on his mother's shoulder, his head high, his teeth grit, his face blank.

"So, why is it that you cry? Is it the loss of function or the loss of proximity?"

Khial didn't answer. They stood there for a long, silent moment. Until another crash broke her contemplation. Lady Danyell tick-tocked her head in the direction of her mates and followed in the wake of their debris.

Khial ran out of the house and hid in the woods. That day he stayed in his hiding spot until it grew dark.

It was dark out now. Khial didn't know where he was, nor how he'd gotten here. The last thing he remembered was the light go out of Dain's eyes and the silence that crashed around him. Dain's body remained present, perfectly intact, but empty and beyond Khial's reach.

Khial glanced up at his surroundings. He was far from the clean, wealthy side of town where women lived. He was beyond the market where the rich and working class bartered. The three story high-rises crunched together on dirt patches of land signaled that Khial's wanderings had brought