The Prisoner's Release and Other Stories (43 page)

The giggle of girls as I approached the tavern down the street from the Jackal’s Staff told me that Kigi and Rashi had waited for me. I pushed the door open and braced myself to meet them.

The Cup and Crown was a large pub, with two front windows and an entrance over which the owner had painted “Serving the palace for seventy years.” Inside, the first thing that always hit me was the smell from the pine shavings, scattered on the floor to reduce the smells of the customers and soak up spilled alcohol. Tonight, the giggling came from the benches and chairs arrayed around the crackling fire, the social area. To the left, fifteen to twenty lamp-lit tables of various sizes accommodated those customers who wanted to eat or drink in peace. The host, a large bear, was at one of those tables talking to an important-looking couple, but besides him, the only employees in the room were two barmaids. The bartender worked in the back room. I'd never met him.

This was where Kigi and Rashi had taken me to get me drunk on ale for the first time, about a year ago. At the times we were allowed to go, it was usually not very busy. I’d been there late twice, but it was hard to find a place to sit when we went that late, and the crowd was loud and smelly. We preferred to go early and have the place to ourselves.

If I’d had to guess from the noise, I would’ve said there were at least five giggling girls, but there were only two hovering by my brothers: one of the barmaids and her sister. There weren’t many other customers, which was good, because as far as the barmaid was concerned, Kigi was the only one there.

He was in one of his usual poses, shirtless with his chest thrust out, arm flung casually over the back of his chair. The firelight cast flattering shadows on his chest fur—not that there was a light that didn’t flatter him. Usually that made me wish he weren’t my brother, but this evening I just wished he were a little thinner, and that his eyes were green.

They lit up when they saw me. “Hey, there’s our li’l brother. Wow, Cef, you were there a long time. Fall in love?”

The giggling took on a different tone. They must’ve told the girls where they’d sent me. I flopped down into a chair and grinned my most casual grin. “Don’t worry, Kigi, I wouldn’t piss on your rock.”

“What’s that mean?” He hadn’t quite lost the amusement, but he did sit up and look at me.

I held out my paws, mocking placation. “Hey, hey, settle down. I didn’t ask for your favorite muzzle, what’s-his-name, the raccoon.”

I’d intended to pay him back by getting rid of the girls, but for some reason they were eyeing him with more interest than before, if that’s possible. Maybe they hadn’t understood. Rashi definitely had; he was giving me a warning look, no doubt remembering what
he’d
claimed to have done in the Staff.

Kigi growled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cef.”

I affected innocence. “Sure you do. You told me how that raccoon’s muzzle felt so good, better than any bitch you’d had…”

He looked for a minute as though he was going to lunge across the table at me. Then he remembered the girls; I saw his eyes flick back to them. “We’ll talk about that later,” he said.

“Okay.” I shrugged. I probably shouldn’t have kept smiling, but I was still warm with the glow of my evening and I couldn’t really help it. I’d deflected the questions and that was all I wanted to do.

When we left, I stayed a bit behind the others. Kigi had chosen the smaller and cuter of the girls, keeping her arm locked through his as they strolled along the sidewalk. She wouldn’t be able to come into the palace, but that didn’t mean this time was wasted; Kigi would come down for an afternoon sometime and a quick tumble in the back room of the pub, or maybe he’d just take her in some alley somewhere. He’d only done that once, but he talked about it every time Rashi or I brought up our much more limited experience.

As a matter of course, the rejected bitch would console herself with Rashi’s company, usually not letting him touch her, but walking next to him. This night, however, she dropped back to walk alongside me.

“Caf? Is that your name?”

“Cef.” I saw Rashi look back at me and gave him a grin. After all, he’d been in on this too.

“I’m Dasha. Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure.” I didn’t really know what to say, but watching Rashi’s ears fold back was incentive enough to keep going.

“Did you really…you know…in there?”

Now I
really
didn’t know what to say. I settled for ambiguity. “I just want to be like my brothers.”

“Your brothers said they played a joke on you.”

“Maybe they were playing a joke on you.”

She looked ahead at Kigi and the girl on his arm. “I don’t think so. They don’t smell like it. I can’t tell about you, though.”

“You can smell it? What’s it like?”

“I don’t know, it’s just something you notice.” She nudged me. “What about you? Did you really?”

“Can’t you smell it?”

She flicked her ears. “I told you, I can’t tell from you. Look, if you don’t want to talk about it…”

I didn’t, but I happened to glance at Rashi, whose ears had come up again. “No, no, it’s just that I don’t really know what to say.”

“Well, did you or didn’t you?”

We were almost to the palace gate. “No,” I said. “Should I have?”

“I was just curious, you know, what it was like. Two boys together…” She grinned and nuzzled my ear. “Come see me if you ever try it and want to compare.”

Surprised, I looked up at her smile and returned it. “All right. I will.”

Kigi and his bitch were sharing a long kiss while Rashi was glaring at me, ears still back. I saw Dasha look at Kigi and then at Rashi, and so, impulsively, I brushed my nose against hers and kissed the side of her muzzle.

She focused back on me and cupped her ears forward. I tried to look charming, and I got a kiss back—nothing like Kigi was getting, where it looked like she was trying to crawl down his throat, but I could definitely taste her. I imagined she was Richy and dreamed about what he might taste like, if he kissed me.

“Come on,” Rashi said. “We’re gonna be late.”

Kigi disentangled himself from his bitch and touched noses with her. “See you later, gorgeous,” he said, and then walked to the gate without even looking at me or Rashi.

“Bye!” I waved quickly to Dasha, and hurried after Rashi. Kigi was already showing his papers to the guards. They knew us, but they had to follow procedure, so by the time Rashi and I were done, Kigi was halfway through the gardens.

He couldn’t hold a grudge, though, especially as he had a different bitch on his arm the next day. Rashi, on the other paw, collected grudges like fleas. He and I took History instruction together, a lesson I occasionally found interesting, but which paled next to my own recent history. I suppose Rashi must have misinterpreted my silly grin throughout the lesson, because he cornered me as we left our tutor’s chambers.

“Hey, runt,” he said, “You better not get any ideas about taking my girls.”

“She came up with the idea, not me.” I shrugged his paw off of my shoulder.

“We’re going out tonight and you’re not invited.” His finger stabbed me in the chest.

“Fine. Whatever.”

My indifference confused him enough to let me escape to lunch. Truthfully, I was glad he’d spared me having to feign illness or something to keep from tagging along with them. It was funny that he felt so threatened by me. Maybe he was worried I’d replace him at Kigi’s side. No fear of that. There was only one wolf whose side I wanted to attend.

To do that, I needed more money. My father was in his office that afternoon. I asked the secretary to announce me, and she came out accompanied by Dereath, the rat who was my father’s top assistant. He gave me a smile that didn't reach up to his eyes, and told me to go on in.

My father pushed aside a stack of paper and perked his ears up as I walked in. “Hi, Cef. Aren’t you supposed to be at your rapier lesson right now?”

I shrugged. “I wanted to ask you something. Torry won’t mind if I’m late.”

“You should always be punctual,” he said, but smiled. “What did you want to ask?”

“Well, I’m fifteen now, and I have…” That wasn’t feeling right. “There are some things…” No, then I’d have to explain what. Best just to get to the point. “I was wondering if I can have a raise in my allowance.”

He chuckled. “I should have known. Kigi and Rashi have been flaunting their money, haven’t they?” I nodded, though in truth they bought me drinks or sweets as often as they lorded their wealth over me. “I suppose that’s reasonable. We can give you two silvers a week.”

I smiled. “I was hoping for something like five.”

“Five? What could you possibly want that much for? You always seemed content with your allowance.”

“I was. But I met this girl last night, and…” I had prepared my rationale, down to letting him imagine why I wanted the money. He would be overjoyed at the prospect of having his youngest son courting, and he would grant what I asked for.

“Is she from a noble family?”

Here’s where it started to break down. A lie would be exposed quickly. “Nooo…”

“Cef, you know that I have some very nice prospects for you. Even Kigi won’t get to keep the girl he wants.”

“But…”

“And he certainly doesn’t spend five silver a week on all his girls. We’ll make it three, and you come see me if you need more for special occasions. Okay?”

When he said “okay” like that, there was little point in arguing. Three should’ve made me happy, too, because Kigi and Rashi only got two a week. All I could think, though, was that it meant I’d only see Richy every other week. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t need it.”

“For what, Cef?”

I was silent at first, but he waited me out. A white lie about meeting a girl instead of a boy was one thing. To justify five silver, I'd have to make up something more elaborate than a getting-out-of-trouble lie. I couldn't begin to think of how to go about it, not even with Richy as incentive. “I dunno,” I mumbled finally.

“If you can’t tell me, I don’t like thinking about what that might be. So why don’t you go have your rapier lesson before your allowance goes back down to one.”

I knew that warning tone well, though I’d only ever heard it directed at my siblings. “Fine.” I turned and marched out of the office.

Dereath was hovering by the door as I walked through it. He followed me out into the corridor, and put a spindly paw on my arm. “Cef, I couldn’t help overhearing…”

“What?”

He smiled, and suddenly I felt his paw press a coin into mine. “I know what it’s like to be young,” he said. “What good is being a child of privilege if you can’t enjoy the rewards, eh?” With that, he inclined his head and slipped back into the office.

We’d never talked much before, he and I. I knew he’d screwed up badly, recently, but my father hadn’t told us any details. I had assumed that Dereath would be let go, but he had endured somehow, almost as if whatever it was had never happened. He can’t have much money, I thought, but it was a nice gesture to give me a silver.

Then I looked at the coin he’d given me, and held it up to the torchlight so I could be sure the gold gleam wasn’t just my imagination. It wasn’t—he’d given me a gold Royal, worth over three weeks of my new allowance, and two visits to Richy.

3: The Dinner

“Cef? Cef?”

“Urrr…”

Richy’s laugh echoed softly in my ears. “I guess you liked it.”

“Rrrrrrf.” I nuzzled his neck and kissed it over and over again, unable to form words. My arms were tight around his chest and my hips pressed right up against his, my cock buried in him and locked in there by the biggest knot I’d ever gotten, it felt like. I was still seeing stars from that climax.

He turned to lick my muzzle. “You’d never tied before?”

“Uh-uh.” I pushed my nose into his fur. His scent was freedom: chilly winter air and a pine forest, better than any wine.

He shifted his weight. One paw covered mine. “You feel good.”

“Rrrr. Did you…?” I slid the other paw beneath him. He was hard and wet, but I couldn’t tell if the wetness was before-wet or after-wet.

“Mm-hmm.” He nuzzled me again. “Couldn’t help it.”

“Mmmm.” I licked his ear. “How does it feel?”

He wiggled around me and smiled. “Good. Do you want to try it tomorrow?”

I was quiet, resting my muzzle on his shoulder. Finally I said, “I can’t come tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“We have this family dinner.”

“Okay.”

I sighed, exhaling through his fur. “And besides, they’ll start to wonder where I am every night.”

“You don’t tell them?”

“No. We—my brothers and sister and I—all need to marry into noble houses.”

“But you live in the palace…oh. Are you a servant’s family?”

“No! My father is the Minister of Defense. But we don’t hold land.”

“Oh.” I felt his tail twitch against my stomach.

“Do you have a family?”

His ears flicked. “Just the one here.”

I nudged his ear, because he sounded sad, and he let out a sigh. “They’re good people, but I miss some of the ones who’ve been here over the years. The only ones left from when I started here are Pike and Tally.”

“What happened to the others?”

He shook his head and smiled at me. “I don’t want to talk about them today, Cef.”

Through that smile, he could’ve asked me to walk out onto the street naked, and I would’ve done it. I settled for kissing him. It was nothing like Dasha; the taste in my muzzle was fire that I inhaled greedily, fire that fed the heat in my loins. My knot had been loosening, but the kiss brought a surge back into it.

Richy wiggled his hips, grinned up at me, and put a paw on my shoulder. “Hold on.” He lay on his side, rotating around my knot with a motion that made me squirm and yelp. He hooked his leg around my waist and lay on his back, looking up at me.

I looked down at his chest as I leaned over, resting my paws on either side of him. He touched his nose to mine. “Go ahead if you’re ready again. I don’t mind.”

“I think if I do, I won’t be ready when my hour’s up.” But I wanted to, so badly that my hips were pressing in again despite my words.