“Ten.” Now Iziz snorted. “I was fucking them before that.”

“It was a sheltered life.”

“It was a wasted one. No wonder you were all cock-rubbers and boy-pokes.”

“Never heard either word until I was sent out of the walls.”

“Lies.”

“God’s own truth. God’s and Gann’s.”

“Go on then. Your sick string of lies fascinates me.”

“There was a man in the training grounds. Eight years my elder. High-born, low-bred. A rough.”

“Used to crawl into other cupboards at night and poke the little boys,” Iziz guessed.

“Wouldn’t surprise me, but what he used to do to me was swagger around on the training field after the masters had left us to our targets and beat on whoever caught his eye. Just sneak up from behind with a practice staff and beat them down, calling out the techniques he used like he was a master at lessons, but really just beating on the boy. It wasn’t the first time I’d played his game—”

“But this time,” said Iziz dramatically, “you fought back.”

“I fought back every time, boy. I was a Sheulek in training, not a camp-born cock-rubber like you.”

They saluted one another, Iziz tapping his bowl respectfully at Zhuqa’s raised cup, and both drank.

“But it had been a bad run of days for me,” Zhuqa admitted after a swallow. “Angry days. Things I’d always been able to shake off were striking at me like lightning out of the sky, just—” Zhuqa brought his hands banging together, making Xzem jump and the baby let out one grunting wail before it resumed sucking. “—and I was burning,” Zhuqa finished, glancing their way. His eye lingered on Amber. “And I had been all day on that training field with Master Naxuuk chewing off my hide one scale at a time, and it was all I could do not to just let that lightning burn me up when that staff came swinging out of the black and caught me right here.” Zhuqa clapped a hand over his side, just below his ribs.

Iziz frowned. “God’s Hammer, Zhuqa.”

“Felt like it.”

“How old was this man?”

“He was three years after his ascension, they said, so he must have been at least twenty and two.”

“So you were fourteen?”

“Almost.”

“Fuck Gann.” Iziz put the bowl aside and eyed his leader with a disturbed expression. “What did you do?”

“You mean after I fell over pissing myself?” Zhuqa snorted. “He got in a few more good shots. I could hear him calling them out. Leaping Drop. Prayer Block. Radiant Twist. No matter what I covered up, there was something else for him to hit. And then he stepped back and let me get up. I could hear him talking, lecturing the other boys, and that lightning struck. And I went at him.”

“Like piss you did.”

Zhuqa drank, shrugging his spines. “He saw me coming and hit me again, ready with some technique or another. I don’t remember what it was. I do remember that he hit me…but hitting didn’t stop me. It was just more lightning. There must have been a time we were grappling because I remember climbing him…not on him, but climbing him, like a drop-stair. Then he went down and I began to beat on him the way I have never beaten anyone since. I have killed men, Iziz, and taken several days to do it that I did less damage. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. I hit him until I broke every bone in my right hand and even that couldn’t stop me hitting him. Have you ever been south as far as Kthuat?”

“Once or twice.”

“They have stands of trees around there. Dead trees, mostly. Full of beetles—”

“Oh, Gann’s fuck-stick, the yumont.” Iziz shuddered. “I heard about those. Saw scars men said came from them. Thought it was a lie to scare us boys from wandering.”

“They’re real. They live in the meat of those dead trees where it’s always warm and if a man should sleep up against one, they might come crawling out and bore in under his scales to live in his meat instead. Something in the bite keeps you from feeling it at first, but then they die. And they itch. If you’re quick about it, you can pry up your scales and dig the body out, but they melt away pretty fast and if that happens, that itch clings around for days upon days and there’s nothing anyone can do to help it. That’s what it was like for me. Hitting him was like scratching over my scales at the itch I could never reach under them. And when it was over, he was lying there on the ground, trying to crawl away. My whole body was on fire wanting to get at that goddamned itch…and my cock came out. Look at her.”

Iziz glanced around. Amber started to look at the baby, then gave up and looked back at them.

“Look at what? I can’t read that face,” Iziz said. “I don’t even know how you can look at it while you’re dipping in it.”

“Just the eyes, then.”

“I cry. What’s she thinking?”

“I don’t know,” said Zhuqa. “But there’s something in those eyes.”

Iziz looked back and forth between the two of them for a few seconds, then snorted and gave Zhuqa a sock to the chest. “Forget her. You’re just getting to the good part. Go on.”

“The good part.” Zhuqa checked his cup, but it was empty. He picked up a root and peeled it instead. “The only thing I knew about cocks at that time in my life was that I had one and I took that entirely on faith. Never seen it, mine or anyone else’s. I knew nothing about sex, other than Sheul gives a man the fire so that he could pass it into a woman and she could grow a baby. Go on and laugh, I know you want to.”

Iziz barked a few times, then rubbed at his eyes. “I was trying to hold it in.”

“You were never any good at that. So it came out for the first time in all my sheltered life and I felt air on it and the air was fire. There was this swaggering little shit of a boy, crawling on the ground in a puddle of his own piss and blood, more than half-naked because I had somehow torn most of his clothes away beating on him. At no time did I think it would feel good or that it would serve the slaveson right. I didn’t even hope it would hurt. I saw the pucker of Gann’s pipe and then I was in it.”

“Fourteen and didn’t know about fucking,” marveled Iziz. “How was it?”

“It didn’t feel right.”

“Noble Sheulek in training that you were.”

“Piss on that. It felt great, just didn’t feel right. It was that itch all over again, only six times worse. He was screaming and thrashing around worse than he’d done when I was beating on him, and all I could think was that this was close to whatever it was I needed and if I could just get there, everything would stop burning. Fucking helped, so fucking harder ought to help more, and that was what I did, without another thought in my head, until they pulled me off him. I don’t even know who. I fought, but whoever it was got me in a choke and when I woke up, the itch was gone and I was in the cell.”

“Cell? Did you kill him?”

“No. He was even at the tribunal, although he had to sit in a special litter and his face was mashed out of knowing.”

“Tribunal?” Iziz laughed, but quizzically, as if he suspected Zhuqa were having him on. “For throwing a poke into some bullying sprat?”

“No, for throwing a poke into some high-born bullying sprat after I’d beaten him into paste. They had it posted on the gate before the hour was out and they were ringing it to order at sunset.”

“Was that what you…?”

“No.” Zhuqa finished off the root and beckoned Amber back to him. Once she was again uncomfortably straddling his thigh, he went on. “No, that wasn’t what they had me for, although that might have been cause enough if they’d found anything in him. Fortunately, I hadn’t cum yet, so in the end, they let me go. I took a public whipping the next morning and I never heard another word about it, except I know they must have sent a message to my father because when I went home for the cold season, I found the little poke my father kept to scrub the floors waiting in my room without a stitch sewn on her.”