The Artifact of Foex (18 page)

Fenimore, who’d been sharpening his blade on
a leather strop, glanced up. “Rain’s stopped. Come on, let’s
explore this place.”

The farm was beautiful, Chet had to admit.
There were rolling pastures and bawling baby animals in pens. Masie
came out with a bucket of scraps and fed the free-roaming palaeoth,
who butted their blunt heads against her waist, nearly knocking her
over.

“Get on with you,” she said with mock anger,
slapping their furry haunches.

Saemion was outside in another cone-shaped
hat, weeding the enormous vegetable garden, domesticated peteinos
sifting the soil and making mewing noises at her side. For a while,
Chet weeded beside her, breathing in the scent of fertile, wet soil
while Fenimore poked about.

After a time, Fenimore grew bored and cajoled
Chet until he got to his feet. “Look, there’s a lake over
there.”

“That’s the doedicu range,” Saemion said,
pausing to wipe her brow. “Their tails are clipped, but stay away
from the male enclosure on the far side of the lake.”

Sure enough, Chet spotted his first doedicu
as they wandered to the wooden fence. It was enormous, over six
feet, its dome-shaped shell layered like ancient leather armor.
More doedicus rushed the fence upon spotting them, shuffling
quickly upon their short feet. Expecting treats, probably. Chet
felt guilty about his empty hands and pockets. As Saemion had said,
the doedicus’ tails had each been cut short at five feet long and
lacked their famous spikes. Chet hung back as Fenimore held out a
fennel bulb pilfered from the garden. A doedicu stuck its head out
of the shell and whiffled the vegetable curiously with its thick
beak. It took the bulb delicately, then scampered away on its short
feet, head retracted into its shell to avoid the other doedicus
crowding in for a taste.

“They’re really tame,” Fenimore said,
breaking out into a grin. “I bet they’ll let us ride them. Come on,
let’s try it.”

“But...” Chet swallowed as Fenimore vaulted
the fence. Chet hunched. He was no athlete; he was a
scholar
, for Pantheon’s sake.

Fenimore glanced over his shoulder. “Unbend,
you milk-livered pumpion. It’s time to grow a pair, eh?”

“If you think insulting me is going to make
me do something stupid—”

“They’re
tame,
cream puff! Don’t
make me come back there and get you.”

“Right. Tame, right.” Chet gulped and
awkwardly climbed the rough, splintery fence.

The beasts sniffed him curiously. They were
huge
. Chet had once read that the coteries of Palister had
required boys to ride an unclipped doedicu three miles before
permitting him to be a man. In that culture, Chet would have been a
boy
forever
. A baby doedicu, perhaps a season old, clung
to its mother’s side as she investigated Chet. Chet found himself
breathing easier around the baby animal. It was so
cute
.

“Come on, let’s ascend a big one together,”
Fenimore said. He grabbed Chet’s hand and hauled him through the
grazing herd.

Chet’s shoes, already damp from the wet
grass, were soaked through as they stomped through mud. Where did
the lake start, anyway? Chet looked over and saw several
doedicus—or at least, their half-submerged shells—in the water.
Amphibious grazers, they were at home in the lake as on land.

Fenimore stopped and surveyed the herd.
“There, that one, the castrated male. Seven feet tall if it’s an
inch.”

Chet groaned. “Fenimore, I don’t think this
is a good—”

Fenimore grabbed his hand and hauled him to
the doedicu. Then Fenimore let go and scrambled up its shell. The
grazing doedicu ignored him. Chet bit his lip and followed—or
tried, anyway. His feet kept slipping.

“You’re not going fast enough!” Fenimore
snarled. He grabbed the neck of Chet’s sweater and hung on as Chet
tried to find a foothold.

Perhaps it was his awkwardness that alerted
the doedicu to their presence, for it stuck its head out, bellowed,
and scampered on its tiny feet toward the lake. Terrified of
falling to the distant ground below, Chet screamed up to Fenimore,
“Don’t let go, don’t let go...”

Water splashed around them; the shell tipped
as the doedicu dove. Fenimore didn’t let go of Chet so much as he
lost his hold on the doedicu. They both fell into the lake. Chet
splashed down, accidentally gulping water. It was cold. Oh
Pantheon, it was
cold!

Soaked through, Chet gasped and swam toward
shore until he found footing in the soft, muddy bottom. Where was
Fenimore? Could he even swim? Something grabbed Chet’s foot,
hauling him sideways and underwater. Chet’s scream was lost in the
lake. A moment later, he fought his way back to the surface,
Fenimore laughing beside him.

“The look on your face.” Fenimore’s beautiful
eyelashes dripping water, cheeks dimpled with mirth.

“That’s not funny!” Chet cried out, splashing
at Fenimore. “I thought you’d drowned!”

“The venerable Countess LaDaven didn’t raise
her sons to be cowardly of the sea. I spent my childhood summers at
the seashore in Torque.”

“Bully for you," Chet grumbled, wading out of
the lake.

Sardonic applause caught his attention, and
he looked toward the fence: they had an audience. Saemion, Masie,
and
Othnielia had gathered there. Othnielia still wore his
cone hat, yellow slicker and knee-high waders despite the fact that
the rain had stopped.

“Good thing for you I clip tails and castrate
my doedicus,” he commented as Chet hauled himself over the fence,
Fenimore following lightly. “If you two had tried that with one of
the intact males, you would have ended up with broken bones.”

Chet didn’t reply, stomping back toward the
barn. He was wet, muddy, freezing and didn’t have a change of
clothes. Not even a change of underwear. Undoubtedly, Othnielia
could lend him something if he asked.
How humiliating.
Chet wasn’t going to ask if it killed him. Fenimore cheerfully
chattered with the others and followed them as far as the house.
Chet stumbled into the barn. It was warmer here, anyway. He
stripped off clothes and laid them over the wooden beams. They
dripped on the distant floor below, his shoes helplessly wet. Chet
huddled under a blanket, teeth chattering and attempted once again
to read the historically-inaccurate romance novel. He set it aside
after a minute, seething. How dare Fenimore make him a laughing
stock!

As if in reply to his thought, Fenimore’s
head appeared in the ladder hole. He’d already changed into dry,
borrowed clothing. “Here,” Fenimore said, tossing up a bundle of
clothes. “
These
are for you.” He disappeared, grinning
sardonically.

Chet unrolled the bundle, grateful despite
himself, then froze. It was
women’s
clothing. There was a
purple skirt and a low-cut blouse, a white bra and sexy pink
underwear. Chet couldn’t breathe. Part of him was furious. What was
this fresh humiliation Fenimore had dished up for him? Another part
of him was... curiously aroused. The cloth was soft, the underwear
and bra satiny. He’d never considered dressing in women’s clothing,
yet here was the perfect opportunity.

Fenimore poked back through the ladder hole,
hauling up a covered wooden bucket. “Still not dressed? You’ll
catch your death.”

“Why didn’t you bring me regular
clothes?”

“Is it not obvious? You scream so like a girl
I thought you might as well dress like one as well.”

Chet scowled at him. “You’re so obnoxious,
you, you...”

Fenimore touched him under the chin, and Chet
abruptly lost his train of thought . “I had also thought how
delightful it would be to pilfer you as a woman. Flame are not the
only ones who can play such games.”

Chet’s muscles contracted at the thought, his
penis hardening between one breath and the next. Fenimore noticed,
grinning down Chet’s naked body under the insufficient blanket.

“Get dressed,” Fenimore ordered. “If you’re
good, I shall undertake to educate you most thoroughly, little
girl.”

Chet picked up the pink underwear, his
chilled body suddenly warm with the thought of being fucked in
women’s clothing. He slowly drew them up. The underwear did not in
any way cover his erect dick; in fact, his circumcised glans stuck
out of the top.

Fenimore groaned at the sight. “Oh, you’re a
sweet package I’ll enjoy tearing open. Go on, cover yourself. Be
modest, girl.”

The bra was difficult. Chet had to fasten it
backwards just to see the weird clasps. He’d never actually taken
one off a woman, he realized—Journey had done all the work when
she’d fucked him. Now he wished he had more of an education in that
area. But once the bra was on and the right way around, he realized
just how sexy it was, even empty of breasts. Fenimore, apparently
awaiting this moment, handed him two small, unripe persimmons. Chet
tucked one inside each cup and grinned. Instant breasts, at least
for show. He finished dressing, noticing how the blouse accentuated
those little bumps even further, the skirt brushing against his
legs alluringly.

Fenimore lay back in the straw, hands behind
his head. “Go on, walk up and down the loft. I want to see you
wiggle your hips at me, girl.”

Chet walked, his face warm. He felt... sexy.
He tried to wiggle his hips, and Fenimore snickered; Chet grinned
back ruefully. “I just need some practice.”

“Mmm. I agree, practice is needed. You were
always more feminine than me, even if Foex prevented us from living
as actual women.”

“What?” Chet stared at him. What a weird
non-sequitur.

“Try wiggling again.” Fenimore reached out a
hand, and Chet sauntered toward him, trying for slower, circular
movements this time.

“Better,” Fenimore said judiciously. “That’s
a good girl.”

“Could I have your cock, please?” Chet said
with sudden courage, ducking his head shyly.

He blinked, suddenly alarmed at the question
that had passed his lips. How had this happened? How had he morphed
from a student of archeology to a, a homophile asking for something
forbidden from a male, um, lover? Had traveling with Flame changed
him so deeply that he didn’t even think before doing something like
this? Journey had put her finger right on it: he had always been
aroused by both men and women.

His courage would fail him, yet he was
wearing female clothing now, too. The clothes had certainly given
him the audacity to ask for what he wanted.

“May I have your cock, please,
sir
,”
Fenimore corrected.

Chet put his hands on his hips, deliberately
keeping his wrists loose. “May I have your cock, please, sir? I am
ever so hungry for it.”

Yes, the clothing was definitely making a
difference. How odd. The Flame weren’t present—and they certainly
hadn’t given him this strange power—but they’d shown him the way of
it, hadn’t they? Chet remembered Knife pretending with everything
he had that he was an innocent university student, even crying and
shaking as the police held guns on him. Changing his shape hadn’t
done that, not entirely. Knife and Journey had shown him that
shifting was more than magic. It was
attitude
.

“I think you need to dance for me first. Show
off your body, and give me something to look at.” Fenimore grinned
up at him. “You need to earn my regard, girl. Only then will you
get what you hunger for.”

It was so easy to lose himself in acting, to
bury himself in the performance. As an undergraduate, Chet had once
gone into a men’s club on a dare. Now he tried to emulate the dance
moves he’d witnessed there. He ran his hands up and down his body,
lingering at his breasts. He turned around and stuck out his ass in
Fenimore’s direction. He knelt before Fenimore and jiggled his
chest so that the bra and persimmons shook, too. He acted like a
slut, enjoying every moment of it.

No matter how shocked he was in the back of
his own head.

Fenimore, thoroughly engaged, unbuttoned
thefly of his borrowed trousers and pulled out his erect cock.
“Good girl,” Fenimore breathed. “Now take me lightly—lightly!—in
your mouth. Cover those delectable pearls with your lips and
swallow my sex. Do not brush me with your teeth, or I shall tie
your hands together and flog you thoroughly with the ceros whip I
saw hanging downstairs. Perhaps I shall do that anyway after I’ve
had you.”

Chet gasped at the thought. He knelt before
Fenimore, legs spread under the skirt. Chet’s dick popped free of
the underwear, and he self-consciously tucked himself back in.
Fenimore’s cock bobbed before his eyes as Fenimore stroked himself.
Chet gently took it into his mouth.
Oh, my,
he thought,
eyes wide. The taste wasn’t exactly to his liking, but the act was
intensely sexual in a way he’d never experienced. In his surprise,
his teeth brushed Fenimore’s penis...

Fenimore growled, grabbing Chet’s hair.
“That’s one stroke, doxy. I said no teeth.”

No teeth, right.
Chet tried to cover
his teeth with his lips, but it was a struggle, especially because
he wanted to feel Fenimore’s cock with his full mouth, enjoy and
explore the soft texture to the utmost. Fenimore had other ideas.
He controlled Chet with both hands, fucking his mouth. Every few
strokes, Fenimore pushed himself deeper inside. Chet mewled and
struggled for air. He would be released and the cycle would start
again. Fenimore kept count for every time Chet accidentally
uncovered his teeth, which was often.

Fenimore pulled out of Chet’s mouth when they
reached twenty one. “That’s enough or you’ll be a bleeding mess by
my hand.”

“...Sorry.”

Fenimore placed a finger over his mouth.
“Little girls are to be seen, not heard. Turn around and show me
your arse. On your hands and knees, mind.”