Heart Wood, page 21
Dagan floated, eyes closed as if in perfect rest, prick outlined in clingy, wet linen for all the world to see —well, no, actually, just for Hendrik. And if Hen had kept himself from ogling back at the Apricot winery and in the Mushroom settlement room, he could show as much respect here, now that he hoped he could count Dagan as a friend as well as a savior.
Hen dropped down into the water and took a deep breath, determined to try again. At least the water was chilly. That’d help. The surface stirred beside him, and Dagan rose up, but Hen concentrated on trying to be lighter. He leaned back, submerging his ears, then lifting his toes off the ground.
His ass sank like a stone. Kass used to say he had an ass like a granite-block wall and made it sound like a good thing. Now, Hen wasn’t so sure.
Dagan loomed over him, dark braid like a silken scarf over his shoulder. He smiled. “May I?”
Hen nodded and rubbed the wet from his eyes and nose before trying to lean back again. A touch at his lower back as Dagan found the right spot, then firmer pressure, lifting Hendrik’s lower half. Instinctively, Hendrik tensed before his mouth could drop below the surface.
Dagan’s hand flattened against his back, still lifting. “I’ve got you.” He settled his other hand against the center of Hen’s chest, using the pressure there and at his back to keep him from sitting up. “Just look up through the branches.”
Heart pounding in his ears, a sound magnified tenfold by the water rushing around them, Hen shot Dagan a look, but obeyed. Now, his face was staying out of the water, but his feet seemed to drag him down. He tried to lift them once more, and once more, his ass sank.
Dagan lifted him from beneath. “Relax your legs, sweetheart.”
Hen did, and wonder of wonders, they began to float toward the surface.
“Just let the water take them; don’t fight it. There you go.” Dagan’s voice swayed strangely, distorted by the water, but was somehow still encouraging. “Now your arms. Now your neck.”
With each new command, Hendrik bent himself to following it to the letter. Again, he seemed to float higher and higher in the water. Dagan took the hand off Hen’s chest but left the one at his back. He said, “Now your face.”
Hen darted another look his way, but Dagan only nodded at him. Hen fixed his gaze on the sky rather than the pretty face looming above him and took a deep breath. As he let it out, he let go of the tension that had built up in his jaw and brow.
“I’m going to take my hand away—”
Hendrik tightened up, and his ass immediately began to sink again. Dagan put one hand beneath his thigh now, the other returning to the small of his back. His hands were warmer, so much warmer than the water, and gentle. They looked gentle, or perhaps just finely made.
“Right, not yet, then,” Dagan said with a little chuckle.
It made Hen laugh too, stirring the water around them. He tried to relax again with mixed results, but Dagan held him afloat effortlessly. It was nice. Hen could stay like this for a long time and not mind at all.
Were his shorts above the water now, or plastered obscenely across his hips? Fuck. He twitched to look down and see, but Dagan pressed his thigh and back again insistently, saying, “You won’t drown in four feet of water while I’m here, I promise you that.”
Hendrik gave a little snort of laughter but tried to relax again. Except, now he was thinking about Dagan’s hands against his skin and his own prick floating to the surface, and that was not making relaxation particularly easy.
“Legs first, just like last time,” Dagan cooed. When Hen managed to let go control of his legs, he was rewarded with a murmured, “Beautiful. Now your arms, let them go. See how they bob upward naturally?”
They did, as a matter of fact, and it was surprisingly easy to maintain. If he could just stop thinking about—
“Is your back tense? Your shoulders?”
Hen took another deep breath, banishing all thoughts of anything related to bodies or skin or Dagan’s pretty hands, or attempting to, anyhow. Eventually, after struggling for a few seconds to find his old soldierly discipline, he managed.
“There you go. That’s it, darling. Perfect.”
There was something relaxing about Dagan’s voice, even from underwater. Hen closed his eyes with a little sigh. His knees broke the surface naturally, and he tried not to wonder what his shorts were doing, let alone his dick. His chest moved slowly, falling into the water and then rising, his belly keeping barely submerged.
“Don’t panic,” Dagan said quietly, “but you’re doing it.”
Hen struggled not to attempt to sit up again. Relax. Relax. Let it go. Let it all go. You can do this. “Am I?”
“I’m hardly touching you.”
No, he wasn’t. It was just the barest warmth against Hen’s thigh and back, now, skin separated from skin by half an inch of water, maybe less. He said, “Yeah. I guess not.”
Slowly, carefully, Dagan floated away from him. The water was cold all over now, and a flutter of disappointment tripped down Hendrik’s spine and into his belly. But the important thing was that he stayed buoyant, and Dagan said, “There you are. Floating. That wasn’t so hard.”
It was, though, because it was surrender. Dagan might not think of it as such, but to Hendrik, that’s what he was doing: surrendering to the water, refusing to fight it, letting it take him. And he had never been good at surrender.
Maybe it was time he learned. Time he learned a lot of things, apparently. Even if some of them hurt, this moment, suspended between water and sky, was proof that not all of them had to.
*
While Dagan swam laps around the lake, Hendrik took himself into the nearby forest, barefoot and dripping. He was used to being a few trees away from Dagan while relieving himself, but this was the first time he’d ventured any further than that. He made himself touch the trees, feeling the smooth or rough bark, wondering at just how much of it there was and just how beautiful it had become to him. Trees had been his only shelter for so long now, the only living things he could rely on for protection—before Dagan, anyhow. He wondered if there was a Prayer to the forest gods, and if it’d be blasphemy for him to say it in thanks, since he wasn’t of the Heart Wood. He’d have to ask Dagan.
But he had more pressing issues than weird little forest gods at the moment. Who knew how long Dagan would be content splashing in the lake, or when the next opportunity would come. While he didn’t think Dagan would mind that he was having trouble keeping his prick calm lately, Hendrik didn’t want to make it awkward. They both had dicks. They knew how they were. They knew nothing would happen between them for all sorts of reasons. But Hen’s dick had been relatively lifeless for the last few moons, and now that it was back in order it was like he’d forgotten what to do with it. He hid himself in the densest copse of oak trees, which he recognized by their leaves thanks to Dagan’s impromptu nature lessons. He pulled his soaked shorts down around his thighs and took himself in hand.
All it took was a squeeze to get him from half-hard to full erection. He’d tried a few times, back in his lonely camp, when he was desperate to turn off his mind and just sleep but couldn’t. No matter how long or hard he’d jerked it, he hadn’t been able to make anything happen but an uncomfortable amount of chafing the next day. Nutting in his sleep? Not a problem. But apparently a lucid orgasm was too much to ask.
It only took a few firm strokes for him to get that first twitch in his dick that said this time, he might fare better. To speed things up, he pinched his right nip with his free hand. For some reason, that one was always more sensitive, and sure enough he had to bite back a moan as soon as he clamped down on it. He should be keeping watch, even though he knew Dagan wouldn’t come looking for him if he disappeared for a few minutes. For all he knew, he’d be interrupting Hen having a squat in a bush.
Actually, he did have to piss, but that wasn’t about to happen until he took care of this, clearly. His prick felt so heavy, and his balls so tight, and every time he pinched himself he rocked his hips forward to fuck his own hand a little harder.
How did Dagan do it? Surely, he must’ve had to get off a few times, at least, while they’d been on the road. Did he muffle the sound of slapping skin in his soft-looking blankets? Or did he sneak off in the woods and cum on some unsuspecting tree when the mood took him? And—fuck, he hadn’t expected that thought to be so hot, but now he was leaking, and he could cum right now, and it’d feel so good, but he didn’t, because he wanted it to last just a little bit longer and—
He spurted all over his hand and into the underbrush, absurd little plap sounds making him want to laugh even as he shook with pleasure. He stroked himself a few more times, slowly, milking out every drop of cum until one last little dribble slipped between his fingers. He bit back a groan as overstimulation kicked in, that after-orgasm sensation of too much that, by all the burning hells, he had really, really missed.
He let go of his cock, letting it hang heavy between his legs, still swollen, as he turned to lean one arm against a tree for support. As pleasure subsided and relief set in, he sighed.
Ugh. It was going to take forever to piss, now.
*
The moon was still dark, but they didn’t bother with a fire beneath the willow tree; it was too hot an evening. Instead, Dagan lit one of his fine little beeswax candles, and their eyes adjusted quickly. Hen had changed his shorts as soon as he’d taken another quick dip to rid himself of lingering stickiness, and Dagan changed after emerging from the lake with wrinkly palms and a huge smile on his face. They both washed their old shorts and hung them to dry on a low branch, then stretched out on the less-fancy blanket, nibbling fruit leather and summer sausage from their full packs.
Most evenings on the path, Dagan let Hendrik lead the way, socially speaking. If Hen had something to say, he’d listen and respond thoughtfully; if Hen had nothing to say, Dagan sat with him in comfortable silence, watching the stars or the leaves or the bugs or the birds. It was a skill few people had, in Hen’s experience, and one he wouldn’t have expected from someone like Dagan, who seemed so keen to charm everyone he met before they could…
Before they could do what, Hen didn’t know. That was part of the mystery. But with his mind newly cleared and the sultry summer heat bearing down on them, he felt better equipped to ponder the puzzle of his Heart Wood rescuer. They fell into their rhythm easily after eating, packing things away and preparing for the morning. Dagan retrieved the fancy blanket from his bag, as he always did before settling in for the night.
“That’s beautiful. What’s it made of?” Hendrik took the corner of it between two fingers and rubbed it, testing the texture. It was almost like Jak’s silks but furry, somehow.
“Goat hair, I think, but some very special goats. Or something. It smelled like goat armpits for a while, but now I’m quite attached to it. Two of my siblings made it for me before I left. My brother spins and my sister weaves.”
“Which brother and sister?” Hen asked.
“Erron and Alexia. They’re twins—the younger pair of twins. The babies of the family.”
“Tell me about them. And the others.” Hendrik leaned back on his elbows, stretching out his legs.
Dagan turned to face him, pulling both legs up beneath him with remarkable flexibility. “What do you want to know?”
“What do they do, I guess? In the City, you’d never get a license for more than two kids in a family, let alone ten, and parents still fret about their careers and lives.”
“A license?” Dagan’s forehead creased. “For children?”
Hendrik nodded. “You have to use birth control unless you have a license. Otherwise, the City couldn’t support the population. Of course, they give licenses to anyone blooded who asks, even if they already have two or even three, which…makes a lot more sense now than it did before.”
“For the sacrifices,” Dagan supplied, not even a question, really.
“Yeah. It’s—it’s wild to think about how the blooded families live, now that I have some perspective. They have everything handed to them, but they hand over their children for—for that. That’s fucked up.” Was it any wonder Kass’s family never came to see him? Yes, his existence was why they had money, jewels, silks, a big house, the best food. But it was also why the new refugees and criminals in the mines never saw the sun their whole lives, sometimes. It was an imbalance that had never seemed right, exactly. But Hen hadn’t even questioned why it was so wrong.
How could he have been so blind? And even allowing for the fact that Hen was no great thinker, how could hundreds of thousands of Stone City residents be so collectively blind? People with education and intellect like Konstantin and Kajja? Hen had been so wrapped up in his own personal loss, he hadn’t spent much time thinking of the bigger picture while alone in the woods. Now, with someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to stimulate his mind out of its stupor, all kinds of things were coming up.
He hated it, in a way. Not thinking about these things had been convenient, except that it left him free to obsess over the loss of Kass, of everything he’d ever known and loved. Forced him to think about the huge, empty hole that was his life.
So, maybe it was a good trade, after all.
Dagan was nodding, lips pursed thoughtfully. “It doesn’t seem like being allowed to have more children is much of a blessing, for them.”
“No. It really doesn’t,” Hen admitted. Sure, everything else was a blessing. But did it really compare? Could it?
Hen didn’t even like kids, and he didn’t think so.
Dagan asked, “What if another class of family wants more children? Or need them to help with the family business or farm. You have farms, yes?”
“In the Ag District, yeah, but it’s not how you farm here. And kids do help. But they have apprentices from other families and paid workers to help. They don’t have to feed those. Well, some of the apprentices, I guess, but not all.”
“Who grants the licenses?”
“The See. The priests, really, some clerical types who get the petitions. Most families—at least, the families like mine, in the Mid-District, Tavern, or Manufacture—are usually allowed two, especially if one is promised to the Academy or the priesthood.”
“What if a noble child is promised to be a…” Dagan gestured elegantly, as if trying to pull the worlds out of thin air.
“Child of the Blood, yeah. Those families are always rich, and their bloodlines are important.”
“But anyone can marry into it?”
“Right. Well, not anyone, but someone who’s, let’s say, upwardly mobile.”
“Like you.”
Hen nodded, experiencing a sudden pang of worry for Kajja. Was she married already? Fuck, what a terrifying thought, for so many reasons. “Well, like I was, yeah. Now, I’m pretty sure I’m considered downwardly mobile.” Was it selfish or cowardly to hope Kajja might be, too? He couldn’t live with knowing his transgressions had gotten his family thrown back into the mines or shoveling donkey shit, and yet, even that sounded better than being blooded, in a way.
“Downwardly mobile.” Dagan smiled. “Sounds like much more fun.”
With a smile, Hen admitted, “It does, doesn’t it?”
“How many blooded families are there, then?”
“I should probably know that,” Hen admitted. “But I was never much of a history student. It’s a really small amount though. They all live up in the High City, which is the smallest district, so it can’t be that many compared to all the others put together.”
If Dagan was disappointed by Hen’s lack of statistical knowledge, he didn’t show it. He just gave another thoughtful nod, causing some loose hair to slide out of his braid and frame his face. “And the Children of the Blood aren’t raised by their parents, then, or the community?”
“I wasn’t either.” Hen looked up at the branches to keep from staring at Dagan’s hair. Honestly, it was even more distracting than his wet shorts, which was saying something. “My family and I stayed close, but that’s considered sort of, I don’t know, embarrassing? Lower-class.”
Dagan made a little humming noise. “That seems very cruel, to someone like me.”
“I wondered if it might.” Hendrik glanced back down. He was fascinated by the idea of Dagan’s massive family. The sheer disorder and chaos of it must’ve been overwhelming. And yet, Dagan’s eyes crinkled fondly every time he spoke of them, even when he was complaining. His face was so easy to read, far easier than any book. There was something charming about that, more charming than any desperate flirtation ever could be.
Dagan said, “We do begin apprenticeships early, and in some cases we go to live in another conservancy. I started training at 16. My oldest brother went to live with the Head Verder when he was 12. My mother cried for a week.”
“Even though she had nine other children at home?” Hendrik asked with a little smile.
“If Alexia and Erron hadn’t almost killed her, I swear she would’ve had more when he left.” Dagan chuckled. “But they were walking and talking by then, past the hardest age, so thankfully for our peace she didn’t.”
Hendrik shook his head. “She must be exhausted all the time. And your father.” It was funny, too, that they never called their parents by name, which everyone in the City did. Yes, Kon was his father, but he wouldn’t dream of calling him that. It sounded so odd and clunky. Like calling him master or brother as if he was some kind of…
Authority. Heh. Food for thought, right there.
Dagan had already moved on, though. “Now, if you ask Alonza—the apprentice Verder—no one cared when he left, and our parents had plenty to keep them busy, and he’s never been fully appreciated at home. But he’s just like that.”
Hendrik laughed. “So, Verders are the ones who are responsible for the health of the, uh, conservancy?”
