hunter’s moon and as I drew closer to the derelict building I realized how truly gigantic it was. The Paperlands broke around it. Ridges of paper adhered to it like buttresses and thinner web-strands reached up and anchored to the base of the dome.
The tops of adjoining walls were still visible, kept upright by Insect cells, but the roofs had fallen away. Insects had eaten the timber rafters and the entire structure was unstable.
The broken dome loomed beneath me, rounded and silvered with moonlight. I landed on its cold stone apex and looked back toward the jagged Darkling peaks, while I ate some honey sandwiches and glugged the last drop of water, then threw my pack away. I was utterly exhausted and my wings ached so much I couldn’t close them. The landscape was dead; no birdsong, the silence pressed me like deep water. For hundreds of kilometers, nothing was alive but Insects. I was the alien here.
I dozed until I felt some energy returning, but all the time I listened for Insects. I lay on the dome and looked through the lightless hole. I couldn’t hear any beneath me so I dropped through, landing awkwardly on a slope of rubble and roof blocks that had collapsed onto a travertine-tiled floor. I only had seconds before the Insects smelled me-some new food in the Paperlands they had chewed bare-and they would amass around the building, race up the echoing steps.
Moonlight lit the angular corners of fallen masonry blue-gray. I could see just a small part of the circular room but it was empty. Insect mandibles had scoured the fabric off the walls leaving grooves like chisel marks.
Perhaps it was a municipal building rather than a royal residence after all. I curled my toes around a carved cornice block. I dared not leave the circle of moonlight directly under the hole; the room was in shadow. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw a dull shine among the farthest blocks. I picked my way over them and reached down. It was a bronze castor from a table leg, and three more were scattered nearby. Presumably they were left by the Insects when they ate a wooden table. Anything inorganic left on the table would still be buried. I hefted a couple of the smaller bricks aside-and uncovered the lair of a spider as big as my hand.
I fled to the top of the cone of debris, glanced back. The spider did not move. Its ovoid abdomen glittered darkly. I approached with great caution and prodded it; it skidded over the stone dust with a tinkling sound. I lifted it carefully. It was a brooch made from two flawless emeralds fixed in peculiar curlicues of silver wire, a reticulate casing ingeniously twisted into eight jointed legs. I pinned the spider to my shirt and was about to dig around between the blocks in the hope of uncovering more jewels when there was a clattering noise outside.
My pulse soared so fast blood rushed in my ears. Feelers waved in the doorway and an Insect charged into the room. I scrabbled up the rubble. I jumped, grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled myself onto the dome. Claws thrust out of the hole and snatched at the air. The open ground around the building bristled and seethed with Insects. I watched them erupt from the tunnels, like red-brown droplets racing toward a simmering sea.
The ache of the return flight and the anxiety of proposing to Tern are all too easy to remember now I am speeding toward Gio’s meeting in Eske. I recall that it took me a fortnight to recover my strength, muster my courage and present myself decorously at Wrought manor. I dropped the filigree spider, the priceless gem of old Awia, into Tern’s comely hand and her sloe eyes lit with admiration.
I said softly, “A talented jeweler must have crafted it before the Insects invaded. It held some wonderful meaning for a lady in antiquity, maybe one of your ancestors.” I looked down. “I want you to wear the spider when you kiss the Emperor’s hand.”
“You mad bastard,” Tern pronounced. “You could have got killed.”
“The aim is to give
She examined the emerald spider that sparkled in the light from twenty candelabra. “You mad, crafty bastard.”
I had turned away, wondering if this was a compliment or slight. She poked a finger under my chin and lifted it. She kissed me; we kissed for hours.
Tern dismissed her suitors from the mezzanine where they queued with their plumed hats in their hands. A gust of wind through the tall sash windows swirled out white gossamer curtains and the dust covers on the furniture in her nearly empty bedroom. Outside, snow clouds passed over a crescent moon. Wrought’s twisted river roared in spate through sparse black woodland. Beyond the doorway three cats postured in the long hall where the shadows of spindly trees moved on the polished floorboards.
She undressed me and dropped my clothes to the floor one by one. Her small hands fumbled the front of my trousers, pushed them down and unhooked my pants from my hard cock. Her fingers traced the grooves on my hips that led down to it; she took a good look. She touched the tip; it swelled under her fingers. I moaned and she said, “Hush. You chanced your life to impress me, Eszai. Don’t you want me?”
She walked to the four-poster bed and sat on the counterpane. The spider brooch squatted on the pillow. I approached her slowly; she was five years older than my physical age and confident in her extreme beauty. I did not know how to have loving sex; I had only ever fucked whores and the ambitious. I had a horrible feeling that I was being tested but all I could do was surrender and follow Tern’s lead. She stroked my wing and encouraged me to slip under the covers.
She undressed elegantly, leaving her stiffened silk bodice, with white suspender straps to her stocking tops. The bodice covered her breasts to her belly; her panties had somehow gone with the dress. She lay on her side as Awian ladies do, but unlike the others I’d slept with, she did not avert her gaze. She was uninhibited, too proud to follow fashionable repression. I lay behind her on my left, my body fitted close to her. The smooth hollow between her shoulder blades was snug against my chest, my scarred shoulder high above her. Her warm wings were tight between us, tucked up in the small of her back. Her satin feathers rustled and rubbed, driving me mad with lust. She trapped my hard cock between her thighs. I moved my hips, pulling it over her silk stockings. I was not sure what to do. She made no move to help me so I pressed and only felt soft flesh. She leaned her whole body backward and opened her legs slightly. I pushed upward carefully and felt flesh part. She enveloped the tip of my cock.
She opened her eyes and looked back over her shoulder. “Oh, please…”
“My lady.” I propped myself on my left elbow and made quick flicks but not very deep. I couldn’t penetrate far, the angle was wrong. Just the head of my cock rubbed slickly in and out of her. I felt her cunt yield and stretch, hot and wet.
“Keep going,” she ordered quietly. “Harder. Fuck me harder.” She began to whisper filth. I was shocked to hear her murmur, calling up wisps and bodies in twos and threesomes that populated the dark room with ethereal fucking. She was not delicate; she kept straining to see my chest. She raised a knee, backed into me trying to impale herself deeper. Her thighs were becoming very wet. I wiped a hand over her outline, pausing in the softer reprieve between ribs and hips. I wriggled my left arm under her waist to angle her higher, all the while hoping that my best performance was good enough.
“You’ll do,” she said with wonder. “You’ll do…you’ll do, you’ll do, you’ll do.
She firmly pushed my hand between her bodice lacings and flattened it against a small breast, encouraging me to rub it in circles. No other girl I’ve slept with has ever done that. Her brown nipple was hard against my palm. Her locks coiled on the pillow. A braid hung down from my hair and brushed her neck.
I pumped and struggled. I changed my stroke, long and slow. I could see my cock going in and out of her. Amazed, I thought: It’s actually happening. This is really happening to me. Her small rounded buttocks pushed me back every time she rolled against me. I bent my arm that was underneath her and easily lifted her body up. I rubbed my stomach on her black glossy wings and felt the tips of her flight feathers bristle into my crotch.
I brushed my hand down to her front and wiry pubic hairs. I found her left hand already working away there; her fingertips traced wet circles. She took shallow breaths through parted lips. She pushed my hand away. Low, under the skin of her back, her wing joints moved as if she wanted to flex them.
“Open them around me.”
She spread, either side of my waist. Her black wings shuddered with every thrust I gave her, and brushed my skin. I almost came helplessly into her. I paused, held myself still.
“Look at me,” she said.
I was right on the edge. Another thrust and I’d come. I paused to gain control; Tern moaned her displeasure. She shook her body on my cock.
