4: I’ll Stop the World (And Melt With You)It was good Fox had taken the afternoon for himself. He y on a deserted beach on a deserted isnd in the middle of bright warm waters. The air smelled tropical, fresh, unbearably sweet. Fine white sand stuck in pces to his naked body, but his skin baked pleasantly in the sun.

  “We should come back here,” Eagle was saying from where he turned ft shoreline fish on a spit over the fire. He was naked, too, small and powerful looking at once, like a miniature statue in dark olive wood instead of marble, but there hadn’t been sex. There hadn’t needed to be. If nothing else, Fox himself was good enough for Eagle, without a lot of nonsense about his shes and his hair and his two pretty holes.

  The sun was dipping fast over the blue sea, not quite sunset. What color would it be then, the water, the sand, the light? The fat diamond in Eagle’s left ear caught the sunshine. Fox sat up and shaded his eyes for a better view of his best and only friend. “I agree,” he said. “At least so far. Give it time, though.”

  “What more time do you need? It’s definitely warm, and all this stuff means it probably doesn’t freeze at night.” Eagle waved his hand behind Fox, where a dark frondy jungle stood watch, flinging longer shadows behind itself.

  Fox didn’t even look back. “Precisely. As yet, nothing’s tried to hug my face. Give it time.”

  They both ughed, and perhaps more than the joke was precisely worth. “I could do that,” Eagle said.

  “And then what?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  They both ughed again, and Fox lifted a pebble he’d found stroking his fingers through the sand. It was a tiny fossil of what he thought must be a snail or simir creature, and quite shiny and bck, like patent leather. Between finger- and thumb tip, he held it up into the light for Eagle to see. “I’ll have to take this back with me.”

  “Why that one when there are so many others?” Eagle spread his hands out across the sand. The sun dropped impossibly low. Before them, the sky hastened toward dark—if dark it could be called. Even though the night rushed on, it never really fell.

  Fox shut his eyes and probed the sense he still wasn’t used to having: the ways in which the unimaginably hot core of the pnet—breathtakingly vast and powerful—was affected by different bodies in its celestial environment. He pressed his awareness against the soft curtain of atmosphere, then out into open space.

  “Hope we missed the rains,” Eagle said, “because it’s dawn over the treetops behind you.”

  “There are three suns,” Fox said, frowning as he groped out with his mind, testing; they were bzing furnaces, but completely unintelligent, inanimate—at least as far as he knew. He still hadn’t become accustomed to all the power his title afforded him.

  If he hadn’t been so badly torn before, he would have been better at this, surely, but how was his fault in any world?

  “Three suns? No wonder this pce is uninhabited,” Eagle said, wrinkling his crooked nose.

  “It gets worse. They orbit the pnet.”

  “That’s ass-backwards.”

  “Isn’t it!” Fox threw up his hands. He hadn’t gone into a gulf of stars when he’d tried to press farther yet. There was simply nothing. “Never mind! I don’t want to come back here after all.”

  “I can put some shit in my map, though. You said three? You sure?”

  “Very. I don’t feel anything else.” Being Rev Liedan, Crown Prince of All the People, had its upsides. As yet, he understood his control over the gravity of pnets poorly; he ought to have been able to localize the effects far more than he already was, and he didn’t dare to experiment and knock even the slightest thing out of alignment. That bathroom had never been the same since. Still, he had a far better grasp than Father would ever have allowed—or even than Father knew about.

  Knowing that pleased him down to the ground. Father would never understand the deep connections Fox had found to magic itself. He let himself feel this world’s song ringing to the ends of his fingers and toes, and for a little while it was enough; he was whole.

  “You smile so pretty when you do that.”

  Startled from reverie, Fox blinked at Eagle, who crouched with a pte of fish and rice ready for Fox. Earlier he’d darted back through the Door to fetch the cooking pot, but he must have fetched the herbs back too.

  Fox had known as much from the delicious cooking smell, but the scent wafting from the battered tin pte made his stomach growl emptily even while he took it from Eagle. “This is wonderful, and you, of course, maintain your title of Court Genius. I’m famished.”

  Eagle pretended to buff his nails on the shirt he wasn’t wearing and fondled the diamond earring. He was possessive, in his way—but of Fox’s comfort and pleasure, of Fox’s happiness. It was something of a change.

  Though he would never admit it, Fox was fiercely possessive of Eagle. The man who would do anything Fox asked was a treasure indeed.

  If only he would stop acting beyond his brief. And if only he would keep his eye on Fox, where it belonged, instead of letting it rove where it would. To be sure, Peony’s uncle’s ass was fine and round, and his legs were smooth and muscled, but Fox would have been happier if he hadn’t known Eagle noticed.

  The fish was fvorful and delicately white; the rice, luscious, with a sticky, sweet brown sauce Fox couldn’t help but devour. He ate until all that was left were fine bones and the st trace of sauce he couldn’t scrape up.

  To ask Eagle to sleep with only him seemed a bridge too far. Requesting exclusivity wasn’t done often, and certainly Fox couldn’t promise the reverse. His business dealings still required, every so often, a seal nothing would suffice to imprint besides his very soul.

  Still, how long was he meant to deny he wanted only Eagle? Making himself so vulnerable with another didn’t please him.

  Fox gred sightlessly at his empty pte. If he wasn’t required to compromise one thing, he sacrificed another. How was life at all fair, even outside his tower prison?

  Even so far as he’d freed himself from the endless strictures imposed on him, the inside of the prison loomed huge in his memory. When he’d seen it from the outside for the first time, it had seemed squat and threatening. Now it just seemed small.

  “Hey,” Eagle said, drawing his eyes up.

  “I’m sorry.” Fox said it automatically.

  Eagle clicked his tongue, dismissing the apology, and wiggled his fingers for Fox’s pte. His bearded face stretched into an eager smile, and his eyes fshed with the not-quite light of magic, and he was enchanting—whether or not he realized it. “No dark roads. Not today. I’m having a good time with you.”

  “So am I.” Hopefully, Fox held up his own hand; Eagle took it and helped him to his feet on the sand—white speckled bck.

  He would have as much Eagle as there was on offer, and more besides. Together, they walked across hot sand to the ferociously blue water and washed the dishes.

  After that, Fox waded out a little way and let the pping tropical sea steal water from between his toes and beneath his feet. He gazed out at a seascape unthinkably far from his tower, a vast uncountable distance away from everything he knew. The water shaded to bright green like lime punch. He breathed in the air of another world. Eagle was behind him; he felt himself settle at st.

  “Now we’ll go,” he said a little sadly over his shoulder.

  “There’s always another.” Eagle licked his lips, and the not-quite light fshed in his eyes. “I don’t know if you’ve thought of this, but we never have to go back there.”

  “I’ve thought of it,” Fox acknowledged. He’d be a fool not to know it, but he had made a promise.

  “Just making sure.”

  “I know I have only to ask you.” He turned full and came toward Eagle. Silent, they dressed. Fox’s pin things were as much a pleasure as always. It was a relief not to have to dress like a fashion pte at every moment.

  Eagle’s head disappeared into thin air as he stuck it into the pce they’d come from. When he drew back, his hair dripped all over his clothes, pulled ft by water—not that there was much to pull. “Well, it’s raining.”

  “So I see,” Fox said, ughing. “Take us back anyway. I’m sure we can find a way to keep ourselves busy until the rain stops.” If nothing else, his square portable desk could be set up in the tent just as well as outside it.

  Eagle lifted one brow, smirking in the weird light of nightless dawn. “Like I don’t know exactly how to keep you entertained.” He stuck out a little pink end of tongue and cackled when Fox scoffed.

  “I have plenty of work to do, too, you know.”

  “Sure, you do. You always have work. What about it? I gotta make up for lost time here.” That st, Eagle said with his hands at the small of Fox’s back. His voice dropped low and husky in the way that never failed to send excitement skittering down Fox’s spine. “Never get bored with you…”

  “Then take me back,” Fox said, ying hands on Eagle’s shoulders. They were as warm and strong as they’d ever been. Even through a shirt, the muscle there was unmistakable.

  “I’ll make love to you in our bed.” Eagle cocked his head, smiling up, and not quite a sparkle fshed in the depths of one eye. “No one but you and me can ever touch us there, and nobody’s around for miles and miles… only us.”

  There could be no doubt in Fox’s mind what he meant—particurly since he caressed Fox’s behind. “You’re more transparent than you think,” broke from Fox.

  “It’s not like that. I’m just bored.”

  “And fucking my ass will cure it, of course.”

  “Fine. That’s not what I meant and you know it, but fine.” Eagle backed off, raising his hands. Annoyance fshed on his face before he closed it into neutrality. “I’ll take you back and you can get some work done.”

  “All right.” Guilt stabbed at Fox’s heart. He looked at his feet. His soles and Eagle’s were buried in soft white sand with a myriad tiny bck speckles. Greeny light spilled from the next sun climbing swiftly to the horizon.

  “You and me, it’s complicated,” Eagle was saying, “but it’s worth it. So don’t think it’s not.”

  “All right.”

  He offered a hand, rough with calluses, clearly a man’s, with blunt fingers for all it was the size of a toy. It always surprised Fox to notice how small his lover truly was. Eagle had never seemed small to him.

  Fox id his hand in Eagle’s. He had given Eagle all the status he might afford a Movanar; no colr bound his beloved, nor ever would. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Nope.” Eagle swept Fox’s feet off the ground and took a sideways step. It was hardly fair py when one’s lover took one out of the world and into the next; rain bucketed down from the sky and washed among the heavy, dripping leaves of the jungle. Both men yelped and squawked at the chilly deluge. They were both soaking wet in an instant, both smiling. Water dripped off the ends of their noses.

  Eagle danced through the rain, not troubling to set Fox down on his way to a dark triangle of tent. Fox tightened his arms around Eagle’s neck and dropped his mouth close to one ear. “I love you.”

  Eagle stopped. “I love you too,” he shaped in the rain, inaudible. It sheeted through their clothes, but wherever skin touched, the intoxicating interpy of Eagle’s magic with a torn aura would begin, and Fox would be quite useless for at least a little time.

  “Are you happy?” Fox couldn’t resist asking. Bugger the rain.

  A surprising flick of disquiet passed over Eagle’s face. “I’m not real pleased with you killing yourself over some numbers. I know it’s important, but you gotta slow down. If you don’t take your time, you’ll make a mistake.”

  “I’m working slowly already,” Fox blurted. “You said it yourself. We’ve been at the Cavern a fortnight already.”

  Eagle set Fox on his feet. “I’m not pushing you to finish. Or I shouldn’t be. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “Well, I’m saying, maybe do it slower.”

  “Eagle! How can you suggest that? Just a moment ago you said you were bored!” exploded out of him. The rain hissed when it struck him. Careful, he cautioned the Mountain. Don’t give me any magic, darling. Remember what I said about the cavern.

  She said something in return, but who could listen? He had Eagle’s full attention to be sure, the little, moving shadow in front of the streaked shadow of the tent. “Well, I’m not saying you should work harder. What the fuck, Fox. I’m lonely! I miss you!”

  “What do you want me to do, Eagle? Shall I lie to you about what I must do?”

  “No!”

  “Then what? I have responsibilities!”

  “I just want to matter to you!”

  “Do you honestly think you don’t?” Fox shouted. Here they were, standing in front of a tent in a rainforest and shouting at each other. How had they come to such a pass? “If for one moment you think I wouldn’t rather be with you than anywhere else—”

  No more, Fox! she cried in his mind. The enemies are here! Hurry and kill them!

  He cut himself off in astonishment, blinking at the urgency of the cry.

  “Oh, sure,” Eagle was saying, “stop talking to me like you always do! Won’t hurt my feelings!” He threw up his hands and spun to the tent. Before Fox could stop him, he’d flung the fp wide.

  The faint light from the sky reflected off the muzzle of a weapon, there inside the tent. Without a second thought, Fox rapped out a few magical sylbles, commanding a tiny ram of air to fire down the barrel.

  The gun lit green along dozens of seams, showing a face that wasn’t quite a Movanar’s. The rifle-shaped gun ticked armingly in the woman’s hands as Eagle spun and lifted Fox off his feet again.

  “Well, shit,” she said briskly, fiddling with a mechanism on the gun’s side. The next moment, it let out a ringing report as it exploded in a burst of green and yellow fire. Shrapnel hissed through the leaves as Eagle smmed Fox to the littered, squashy ground beneath his little weight. The rain ran down all the trees like waterfalls.

  There was quiet dark, except that Fox gasped for breath. Eagle was in the middle of sliding off when he stilled instead.

  A bright electric light washed over Fox from the front, blinding him. At first he thought he heard a weird hissing, but no—it was a man’s voice. “Put your hands over your head, Rev Liedan.”

  Fox couldn’t see, but he could hear to pce his spell. He Spoke again with the Words tripping off his lips like fancy ponies. The man in front of him didn’t even have time to scream before the back of his head popped outward on the strength of Fox’s air ram, but Fox didn’t stop.

  Golden light woke, weaving itself around Fox until it sheathed him like licking fme. He touched Eagle, and the fmes spread.

  As he rose, still Speaking, Eagle caught the man’s rifle before it hit the ground. “It’s so fucking hot when you do this.”

  “Get me one,” Fox worked into his weaving.

  “You bet,” Eagle said, checking over the rifle while green bolts shattered off both of them with painful thuds. The foliage around them shredded into confetti. “I live to serve.”

  “Then please hurry,” Fox said, reinforcing the shield with gesturing hands. He had already begun to Speak. He would draw an elemental from the mud; that ought to have handled matters nicely, but whoever they were, they shot it to pieces with their green beams. A widening circle of jungle had been more or less denuded.

  Fox felt every impact on his shield, and on Eagle’s. His head was starting to ache. He shored up the defenses around them.

  Already, in the course of his casting, he had invoked an effect that let his eyes penetrate the darkness. He wished he could admit the sheer number of them, closing in a rough circle around his position, gave him pause.

  Why should it? Green bolts fshed off his sheathing of golden light. It hurt, but he gathered himself. Don’t give me any magic, he warned the Mountain again, showing her the image of a tap shutting off. The cavern is still below.

  She sent him concern, but he shook his head and hoped she would get the message. Words already flowed out in a deft py that always pleased him to hear, perfectly enunciated, perfectly timed. It took him with eager caresses so his hands danced in rhythm. Magic sparkled and popped now; what he took from Eagle showed more clearly when he employed spells with light side effects.

  He sent a hot spark fming dead among three beams and through another man’s head. After that, all he did was pick them off one by one—except for the man Eagle dragged bodily from the remnants of the forest and threw at Fox’s feet.

  With a st triumphant sneer, Fox blew the head off the st of the interlopers. It was still raining. The whole messy enterprise had taken less than two minutes.

  “Good work, Gorgeous,” Eagle said, as Fox’s golden fmes licked out. “Doing all right?”

  “Yes.” A headache pinched between Fox’s eyes, but he repeated, “Yes. Who are they?” The bck uniforms he’d seen reminded him of Muirrach.

  “That, I don’t know yet.” Eagle leaned his weight on one foot, but the soldier under his boot ughed hoarsely instead of groaning.

  “What’s with you, stupid?” Eagle said, forcing his weight down until something in the man’s rib cage gave way.

  But Fox had already seen the first woman by rifle light. A beam shone near her feet, illuminating her faintly as she got up. She groaned, shambling toward them, and the man Eagle had captured ughed again.

  Reflexively, Fox twitched his fingers to cast a light. The power tugged the edges of him as it passed through his aura and formed a soft ball at his shoulder, but he saw her deep burns healing as she moved.

  “Now you see,” said the man. He was back to hoarseness already.

  There was silence. Behind Fox, shuffling—someone getting to their feet.

  “What now?” Eagle said, ready as ever to do his bidding.

  Fox thought desperately, trying to answer that question for himself. An egg the size of a car hovered over the entrance to the Crystal Cavern. “I don’t know.”

  A voice hissed, then spoke intelligibly in hituleti. Fox darted a gnce at Eagle; it was certainly in transtion, but how? “As you can see, Rev Liedan, we’re well prepared for your tantrums. Now that’s out of the way, isn’t it?” The woman—the first woman—spoke so condescendingly Fox wanted to sp her. Surely, it must be a fw in the transtion; otherwise, he couldn’t fathom being quite so rude to another sentient. Or maybe the rain distorted the sound.

  “How about this,” Eagle said, shifting his weight on the downed man and crushing his throat beneath a bare foot. “Fuck you.”

  There was a slight dey from normal speech. “Drop to your knees and put your hands behind your head. No one needs to be injured here.”

  Eagle opened his mouth. A series of hisses and pops issued from it: whatever nguage was being spoken. As always, it y bizarrely under Fox’s understanding of it. “I’ll repeat myself just this once. Fuck you.”

  With no dey this time: “Suit yourself.”

  Fox flexed his hands just as Eagle tackled him to the ground again. The impact stole his breath. Green bsts from every side rocketed overhead; a confusion of quiet thumping filled his ears. He bit back a cry of dismay when Eagle pushed him down ftter, so his cheek pressed the wet ground. The bsts ate charred holes through the tent until little more than the stakes remained.

  He made himself breathe steadily, no matter how little he felt like he could. Eagle’s weight bore him down harder for just an instant before Eagle rolled off. His chest ached. How had this come to pass?

  The rain hammered away, sckening as the sky cleared. Overhead, the bright bster fire tracked away, chasing Eagle deep into the jungle. “I don’t understand these readings, Commander,” Fox made out in the chaos; whoever they were, they’d left the transtor on. “Bearach is an even better source than expected, but this other guy—”

  Hot red panic sshed across his mind. Time to tack sails, and quickly. “Stop!” He scrambled off his front to his knees and threw his hands high. “Stop! Don’t shoot! Whoever you are, stop!”

  “—he’s off the scale. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life, ma’am.”

  “Right you are,” Eagle said sweetly over the fading rain, right before he slipped a knife between her ribs. She dropped next to the Commander, another woman with loose, thick, dribbling hair Fox knew covered a swiftly growing patch where he’d blown her head apart.

  The Commander smirked down at Eagle with her hands behind her back. The sun came out from behind a cloud and dazzled from the dripping stubs and shreds of greenery. Her sopping uniform pstered her form; she had broader shoulders than Fox did and was nearly as tall. “Do whatever you want,” she said. “It’s all right to feel frustration about this, but sooner or ter, you’ll feel just fine.”

  “Or,” Eagle said, making another knife appear in his hand, “I can tie you up while you’re dead. How about it?”

  “Or am I not better than you expected?” Fox said sharply. “Turn whatever instruments you have on me, and you’ll see I’m worth the trouble.” He spread his arms wide. He couldn’t reach all of them from where he stood.

  Eagle dropped the commander with a knife up her throat, and she didn’t resist. None of the other creatures drew close to him. Their uniforms were the solid bck of the void. Their small hats had been crushed by the rain where they still clung at all. They had hair like Movanar, but their faces had a ft lizard look, uncaring and unfeeling.

  Fox looked at Eagle instead, hoping the message would get through. “Run.” I need time to think.

  He knew Eagle protested, but it was already too te. Fox had Spoken. For a while now, he’d taken no hurt from heat or fme; when he let the phrase roll off his tongue, spectacur high gouts of steam gushed into the bright sky over the new clearing from everyone’s clothes—except Eagle’s, and the ones he couldn’t reach.

  When he released the spell, the kick of magic was sudden enough to surprise him. A breeze snapped through the broken stems. Fox staggered in pce, winded, pouring steam from his clothing, as the kidnappers he’d managed to strike with the heating spell screamed in agony.

  He lifted his foot to run too, while the distraction was still in py. His head ached ferociously.

  In the sunshine, steam clotted the sky for minutes on end, but Fox barely knew it. The stone exposed beneath his cheek was cool and smooth.

  It would be nice to know whether a few of them died by scalding, but in this case, he supposed he had better take what he could get.

  He wished it could be different, but he slept.