Aleksey's Kingdom Read online

  I bent to his ear and whispered, “It belongs to me, Aleksey. No one else is allowed to touch it—even you.”

  “Pissing will be a little difficult, Nikolai. Let me up. Now.”

  “No. I actually do need to see to the horses. You will be quite all right until I return.” I then reached beneath him, unfastened his breeches fully, and lowered them off his backside, framing it with the material. He lashed out with his foot and kicked my groin very neatly. But he was barefoot, so I caught him by his big toe and bit into the sensitive part quite hard. “Be good.”

  And with that I left him trussed up and shouting obscenities at me that would have made a sailor blush. They only made me laugh. Aleksey was funny; he appeared to switch from German to French to English when cursing without noticing. He’d had a very privileged education, I could tell.

  He had untied himself by my return, which did not surprise me. But he had not relieved his need. He even whispered to me later that night when we were so enmeshed and in the throes of passion that I could not have rightly said who was in whom, “It is yours, Niko—my body. I am yours. You know that, yes? I would not touch another man even to help him up if he fell. You do know this, yes?”

  “What if he were an old man and could not then rise again without assistance? He would die lying in—”

  “Stop it—sometimes even you must be serious. I am serious. About the colony, the soldiers, I—”

  “You are serious about the soldiers? Aleksey, I am—”

  “You are very, very annoying! Stop it!” He hit me, which only made me laugh and thrust into him harder. “I want you to tell me that you acknowledge I would never—”

  I kissed the back of his neck. “I know. I would not make a joke of it if I did not know that.”

  There was a silence, and then he said somewhat testily (and muffled because I was pressing him down very hard), “And? You must say the same….”

  “I have not been flirting with Redcoats, so I do not—”

  “Oh, you are the very devil. You do not spend your time with the Mikky-makky just gutting animals. I know you go into their sweat lodges with them. I know you—”

  “Do you know what I most wish we had brought with us from that accursed country of yours?”

  “Huh? You are trying to change—”

  “Your looking glass, Aleksey. I wish we had a mirror. Then I would remind you what I have to gaze upon all day—when you are here, of course, and not off fucking soldiers.”

  He chuckled. “I like it when you curse.”

  “I know you do, which is why I don’t do it. It is very bad for little boys to be given—” When roused enough, Aleksey was almost as strong as I, and sometimes more willing to inflict injury to me than I was to him—but then I guess he reasoned my body could not be scarred worse, whereas I did not want to ruin his perfection—so he was well able to reverse our positions, thrust me onto my back, and ruin my fun for a moment, until he straddled me and took me back inside, only now in complete control of my pleasure, riding me as if to war once more, lying low, wild and unrestrained. We came together, his spill projected, wetting my face and landing in my eyes and hair.

  Our heartbeats seemed very loud as we came down, drumbeats in the darkness. Perhaps that sound propelled me into the inevitable dream I had that night. It is not a good idea to wander uncertainly between lies and half-truths before bed.

  At first it was a relief not to dream about statues of old kings talking in a crypt as they tortured me. I was instead running through trees until I came to a place of open ground, open only because it appeared to have been blasted by a firebrand hurled by an angry sky god. The trees were blackened and burnt to stumps, the earth dark and boggy. But lying all over the ground were the people of the Black Crow: the men, the women, and the children. They were wholly unmarked, and so I went to try and rouse a boy, for I was a child in this dream, and I knew him from another time I could not remember. I picked him up but then dropped him, and as I cried out in horror, a great black cloud of crows rose from the bodies and took flight in the frosty air. He had been as a shell, so light even my thin arms had borne his weight with ease. He was hollow. Unmarked yet hollow they lay, white upon the scorched earth, men, women, and children, all that remained of the great Crow nation, their spirits now returned on strong wings to their ancestral lands. I turned back into the dark trees and then felt hands upon me, warm and loving, and Aleksey murmured, “It is just a nightmare, baby. Hush. They are not torturing you.” I kissed his hand and held it warm in mine, turning into his embrace and finding comfort, only half-awake.

  When morning came I could not separate dream from memory. Had I actually run into that clearing as a nine-year-old boy? Is that why I had been beaten—because I had returned screaming about hollow people and the hand of God striking them down? I did not know. But the image of the empty bodies upon the dark ground stayed with me, and I was out of sorts and angry with myself for being so disturbed by things that existed only in the mind—whether dream or memory.

  I wish now I had seen that nightmare as an omen and heeded its warning.

  Chapter Two

  I WOKE without the usual tangle of warm limbs I was accustomed to. The bed was cold, but I could see Aleksey across the small room, sitting at the makeshift desk I had fashioned in the corner. He was surrounded by his memories. They were prettier than mine. When I had freed a young king from his tomb, I had inadvertently liberated a large portion of his country’s crown jewels as well: he’d been wearing them for his lying in state, and they had not yet been removed from his body before the sealing of his tomb. In all the agonies of that awful flight from Hesse-Davia, we had only been aware of them really many days later, and then he had been too busy helping me in my wounded state to do much more than wrap them in a cloth and push them to the bottom of his pack. So we had a coronet, made, Aleksey assured me, of solid gold studded with emeralds (the Hesse-Davian color, green being prominent on their flag). We had seven rings (originally eight), as each of his fingers had been dressed so in death. These bore a variety of gems also set in gold. He had a vast necklace, more a chain of office, I suppose, which consisted of heavy gold coins on twisted gold ropes. He had his medals—twelve in all and all in solid gold or silver—and a sword, ceremonial, to bear the king to the next life in the ancient halls of his fathers, and so this was gem studded too.

  On arrival in the New World, we traded one ring for things we needed to survive: some tools, seedlings, household goods. Now we made what we needed, but then we could not have withstood that first winter without that initial trade. I was not well enough to hunt or build a cabin without the weapons and tools we bought. But we had traded this remarkable gem only in a large colony at the seaport and then traveled far away to this remoter spot. I saw the jewels as nothing but deadweight and would have thrown them into the deepest part of the lake had I been allowed. But Aleksey seemed to need them. When he was sad or upset about something, he got them out and studied them, as if trying to trace in their flawless beauty the path that had brought him from where he had once been to where he was now. Which is probably why I disliked them so much.

  But that morning as I lay sprawled on my belly watching him, a very unpleasant suspicion crept into my mind. Despite his reassurances of the previous night—because of them, I suppose, as it was not like him to say such specific things about the soldiers and possession of his body—I had an immediate and horrible suspicion that he had indeed met someone in the colony, only did not know how to break this news to me. He was reviewing the paths of his life once more, because his had now taken a new direction—one he had not the heart or the words to tell to me.

  I rose and went out into the crisp autumn morning naked, explaining this by saying I was going for a swim to wake up, which was not that unusual for me. It gave me time to think as I padded across the frosty ground to the unpleasantly cold water.

  All the signs had been there, after all. His visits to the town had become more and more
frequent and now stretched up to two weeks at a time. He talked incessantly about one officer or another, relaying activities they enjoyed, his favorites changing daily.

  Aleksey and I had met at opposite ends of a journey for men like us. He had been right at the beginning of his, with all his experiences—good and bad—ahead of him. I had been through more experiences (and men, come to that) than I needed or wanted. I had been his first man. I intended him to be my final one. How could I blame him, therefore, for wanting to explore all there was to find on this journey? And what a discovery it could be: the glance, the knowing, the need. I had passed a man in a street once in a small town in England and had known by the tiny glance he had given me that I could take him there and then to an inn and fuck him. Such power makes a man heady, and I had been as one drunk for many years when I had first arrived back in the land of my birth.

  So I think he had tried to tell me. I have to give him that—Aleksey did not lie, so this betrayal must be hitting him very hard. I had tied him down and cut off his access to air and sunlight just as he was beginning to taste their delights.

  I swam until I was too cold to think more and then made my way back to the cabin. Aleksey had warmed my clothes by the fire, and there was no sign of the jewels. As I dressed, I glanced at him. He was eating some smoked fish strips, his brow wrinkled as he decided whether he liked the taste. The freckles on his nose had increased over the summer. His hair was shiny and rumpled, his eyes the color of the emeralds he had been so recently handling, as if their bright beauty had leapt into his orbs and stayed there, even as they were buried back into the earth. No, I could not blame him. He was as a god, and all must fall at his feet. What deity could deny himself worship when it was so willingly given?

  “What are you thinking? You are very solemn this morning.” He did not look up. I did not think he had noticed me watching him.

  “I said I would take you to see the salmon leap. This would be a good morning for it. I was thinking of that.”

  “No, you weren’t. But you will not tell me what is on your mind until it suits you to do so.”

  Why didn’t I ask him there and then? God help me for being so weak, but I wanted a few hours more of not knowing. A few more hours of thinking he was mine.

  “Are you ready, then? Can we go?”

  I nodded. “Faelan must stay here. You will see why when we get there.”

  Aleksey folded his arms in protest at this, but as Faelan was stretched out in the warm spot I had vacated, on his back with his legs spread and not going anywhere this frosty morning, he eventually gave a rueful quirk of his beautiful lips and left him.

  WE RODE in silence, which was unusual for us, as normally I was treated to his endless chatter. It was ominous now, therefore, that he was mute. Clearly he had decided to tell me the real news he had returned from the colony with but had yet to find a kind way to break it to me. Aleksey did not have a cruel bone in his body and could not abide suffering. I actually felt sorry for him, having to be the cause of what he must know would be acute misery to me.

  I had brought a new bow I had recently fashioned, but my pleasure in it was ruined, and I could hardly be bothered to test it on a duck that flew up from the far lakeshore as we trotted through the shallows and up into the forest. When he saw the bird pass out of sight unharmed, he glanced across at me. “Is it not good?”

  “Huh?”

  He frowned and nodded at the weapon. “Does it not work? Why did you not shoot it?”

  I shrugged and took Xavier a little ahead of Boudica so Aleksey could not see my face. The ground was very uneven, and it was hard going through the forest, so nothing was particularly strange in this. Aleksey came back to my side, though, when we emerged to follow along the course of a small tributary of the larger river we were heading toward. “You were very restless last night. You should not read Johan’s letters if they remind you of Hesse-Davia so much. Let me read them, and I will filter the news for you.”

  “I was not dreaming of Hesse-Davia.”

  He glanced over, then said, exasperated, “Surely you were not back on that stupid ship again?”

  “I do not remember the ship being particularly stupid, but you may be right.”

  “So you were? Dreaming of—”

  “No, I was dreaming of what we had been talking about, the missing outpost, that is all.”

  “Oh.” He fell very silent at this, and I could sense guilt and loss sweeping off him like early-morning mist clearing the lake. It was tangible. He was thinking about his new love in the colony. I moved Xavier ahead once more. My face would have given away my pain to a man far less observant than Aleksey.

  After another hour conducted mainly in silence on both our parts, we arrived at the edge of the forest where I wanted to be. I had been planning this trip for us for weeks, waiting for the right time, but now my pleasure in it was wholly gone.

  I dismounted and tied Xavier very securely to a tree and bid Aleksey to do likewise with his horse. I would not leave them out of sight, given what we had come to witness. I told Aleksey to get low to the ground, which he did with some amazed looks, but he was so wholly himself now, so excited and intrigued, that my heart wept for what I was losing—and began to grow angry for what another had won from me. Nevertheless, I wriggled to the edge of the small ridge and beckoned him to lie alongside me.

  His gasp of wonder was infectious, and I smiled despite the pain in my heart. The escarpment fell away to a river to give us a perfect view of the point where it plunged ten feet or so over a small falls. It was full salmon season, and their glinting forms were leaping desperately, thoughtlessly, against the flow of the water. But it was not this that had elicited the gasp of surprise and pleasure from Aleksey. The valley was packed with bears catching the fish—gorging, grumbling, playing. Dead and dying salmon were scattered on the banks, flapping, flipping, gasping their last breath. Bears lumbered in the water, their great, clumsy, deadly paws missing but catching, tossing, and recatching with lethal claws, fur streaming with glistening water, sunlight sparkling around them. And in the shallows and on the banks, the cubs clustered, watching, copying, failing, learning, and growing bored and playing, tumbling and wrestling and fighting, mouthing harmlessly into fellow cubs and rolling with pure glee at being what they were and where they were in that glorious place.

  It was utterly captivating to watch.

  Lying there on my belly next to Aleksey, I could not help but remember the first time I had seen this spectacle as a very young boy neither one thing nor the other—not European child anymore, not Powponi. I was not quite captive, not quite slave, not quite adopted son. Had I watched the cubs, safe with their mothers, secure in what they were, and envied them? I think perhaps I had.

  “What’s wrong, Niko? Will you not tell me? I have been patient since you awoke in such a bad mood, but I am worried now. It is not funny anymore.”

  “There is nothing wrong. Come, we must go. The days are short, and I do not want to be out after sundown.”

  “Why not? You love the forest at night.”

  “Must you question everything I say? Why can you not just accept my words for meaning exactly what they mean! I have no hidden agenda in this, Aleksey. I want to return. It is getting dark.”

  I wriggled back away from our vantage point and stood up, then returned to Xavier, who naturally enough had not been all that happy at being tied to a tree in the proximity of bears.

  Aleksey came up to Xavier too and put his hand on my arm. “I am not returning with you unless you admit what is wrong.”

  “And pray tell me—where would you go? You do not know where we are.”

  “Actually, I do. I am not as stupid and helpless as you seem to think I am. I would follow this river downstream to the coast, and then I would turn south, and the colony would be a few miles farther on at the entrance to the big river.”

  Huh, he was right. He had clearly given the route to the colony some considerable thought. “Go, th
en.” I swung up into the saddle and pulled Xavier’s head to leave. Aleksey was holding my bridle. “Let go.”

  “That river will freeze over first.”

  “Aleksey—” I did not finish the sentence or the thought. Somehow he unseated me. To this day I’m not quite sure how he did. Perhaps he does not either, for he has not repeated the trick, and it was so successful that I am sure he would have done had he known what he was doing. But being unprepared, I was entirely winded when I hit the ground. It didn’t help that Xavier reared and accidentally clipped me on my forehead with one front hoof. Human scalps bleed fiercely out of all proportion to the amount of blood you would think would be in them. A bright red flow poured immediately over my face, and as I was so badly winded I lay like… well, like death. Which is what Aleksey thought I was. He genuinely thought he’d killed me. He’d pulled me from my horse, heard me hit the ground, and seen Xavier kick me in the head; then, when he’d secured the horse, he’d discovered me covered in blood and lying still. The howl he sent up unnerved me. I think it must have driven off every bear in the vicinity. I opened my eyes, and then he fell upon me, kissing and shaking me and shouting angrily. I may not have attended the new medical universities to become a doctor, but I did know that jolting and screaming at a concussed man was not a good idea. The kissing was all right; that, I was sure, would improve my condition. Eventually I sat up, with Aleksey pressing a piece of his shirt to my head wound. It was still bleeding spectacularly and hurt like all manner of unpleasantness, given pain was relative to me now after my experiences in Hesse-Davian dungeons.

  Aleksey shook me one more time. He looked as if he wanted to hit me, and I winced slightly in expectation of this. “Why did you do that? You stupid fool, Niko!”

  I think my jaw dropped in outrage, and he smirked. I snapped my mouth shut, annoyed at being teased, given I was in pain, confused, stunned, and heartbroken. He dabbed at my wound until I held his hand off and climbed unsteadily to my feet. I leaned against the tree for a moment and felt his arms come around me, his lips to my neck. “Tell me what is wrong. For I thought I had murdered you. And that would have upset me no end. I would take days to get over killing you so.”