Lupe Sebiestor - Part I

A week into the cruise, and still fresh water erupted from showerheads dousing Rengal Sanq. Knowing the extravagance – the spoiling luxury of it – each evening, the attractively aging Intaki red head vowed to spend no more time than needed among tomorrow’s geysers. Each morning, she washed away restraint. Quafe had spared no expense on the tour, why suffer? The previous night’s inaugural concert went off without hitch and Rengal, staff sergeant to Amarr’s Lady Ghiselle Arghelos, deserved some luxury! Their repurposed Moros “Four Winds” (one of the most secure liners yet built) drifted lazily across the face of New Caldari, its first capitol stop, and Rengal’s shower chamber appeared to float on a translucent disk surrounded by stars and the sparkling factories of that heavy world.

Such magnificent projections only encouraged her to waste more water….

Someone tapped on her shower door. “In space, no one can hear you tap.” It returned – insistently timid. Only one member of their delegation tapped like that. If the others had sent Bunnibal, they expected Rengal to flip out. Bloody hell. She flipped off water, on lights, crossed an absurd distance to the shower’s now visible door – and flung it wide. A lanky Sebiestor stammered apologies. Rengal locked on to him with a long, hard kiss. Bunni became excited. When she stepped away, he tried to hide his embarrassment. But that boy was a monster.

Shortly after Sevat Arghelos completed his “Jade Munnin,” his House sent “Brother” Sauol to every armpit and ass crack in the empire looking for Sebiestor youths resembling the masterpiece. The Arghelos firmly believed function followed form. If a space wight had engineered one awkward Sebiestor into a bipedal slaver, others that looked like him necessarily possessed “qualities.” Sauol now peddled those qualities in his exclusive “Lupe Sebiestor” line of consorts. All the fashionable ladies wanted one. Rengal initially dismissed it as “eccentric marketing,” but beneath off color flesh, lumpy skeleton, lanky limbs and protruding veins, Bunni did possess more than any young man’s fair share of “quality.”

How could such a narrow body move that much blood so quickly?

The creature tried to physically compress his sanguine emotions back into a state of composure. Was he serious? Increasingly, variations on “you’ll never believe what my Lupe did today” prefaced giddy girl talk at exclusive salons from Sarum to Khannid. Rengal felt compelled to watch for several moments before diving into morning bulletins. Nothing outrageous leapt out of the projections, and she wondered if she misinterpreted Bunni’s presence. The squirming beast approached. That spring would stay sprung all morning, Rengal knew, and she felt a twinge of guilt… before crushing the sensation mercilessly. His purpose was to spring.

“All right what happened?”

Bunnibal produced a thin crystal from somewhere and handed it to her. Rengal waved it over her desk and the contents flickered into sight: a review from one of Scope’s performing arts editors. Oh come on, she sighed, they sent Bunni to distract her because of a bad review? She wasn’t that unstable! The boy shook his head. It was much worse than a bad review, he insisted. Lupe Sebiestors could talk like normal people two tries out of eleven. Bunnibal stretched out a long slender twitching finger that mesmerized Rengal with its shape and inappropriate odor. Only after he tapped the air several times did her eyes focus on the words beyond its quivering tip. No, seriously, these boys were weapons.

Words, blah blah blah…

“With some horror, I found myself nodding along as a member of Imperial Amarr’s troupe observed: the Caldari sent Zan Mareiyaa; the Matari, Qaim Bok; and we, Ghiselle Arghelos. Who did the Gallente – sponsors of this undertaking – place on the same stage? Javierre Babelle.”

Rengal leaned back, closed her eyes, and wondered aloud why it couldn’t have been Sansha drones eating through the hull. She knew the pompous editor had overheard nothing and manufactured this scene to pimp a pet contention: Quafe’s teen lacked “qualities.” In fact, that young man had the best (correction, second best) ass Rengal had ever repeatedly laid eyes on. However, “Imperial Amarr” was blamed for dismissing him because “no reasonable person” could agree with superstitious slavers unless the stated facts stood undeniably before all. While any other performer on the tour would politely insist there had been a misunderstanding, the thought of antagonizing the young star would have been abhorrent to the Arghelos. “Make no enemy!” Rengal spoke to her Gallente counterpart, promising action. She called her “troupe” together and told Bunnibal to take a long shower. He tore off his designer rags on the spot and ran for the flowing heavens.

Twenty odd professionals sat somberly in Rengal’s parlor. The only young face otherwise among them was at that time contorting with autoerotic tension in her shower, and she knew it would take him all morning to rain down on New Caldari. The waiting list to enter bondage with House Arghelos stretched to a distant future. After graduating the University of Caille, Rengal spent a decade running the careers of Luminaire’s bohemians while waiting her turn at servitude. Finally enslaved, she spent another decade rising from kitchen help to Lady Ghiselle’s majordomo. Now composers, musicians, fashion designers, historians and coaches waited for her to speak. None possessed the genius of those eventually given the Arghelos name, but each commanded sufficient technical and artistic skills to be called “master” in one or more fields.

“Ghi Ghi will realize the story is asinine fabrication,” Rengal sighed, “but she must act decisively. I will recommend she send us all back to Dam-Torsad, keeping only Bunnibal here.”

They discussed this for some time. Apologies would not erase all doubt, and Babelle’s youth would render him more likely to take accusations at face value. Several individuals volunteered to confess and accept punishment. But Lady Ghiselle would refuse to single anyone out over a fabrication. At last, the soprano entered. She looked nothing like a glamorous model, celebrity, or socialite, but possessed a social gravity all her own – bending reality to its will. She sat near Rengal on an identical chair; immediately it became a throne. Ghiselle recognized there was a problem. Rengal explained. The star agreed with the proposed solution, however “Bunnibal might be happier with the larger group.”

The larger group diluted his “qualities.” Ghiselle was no squeamish prude. She spent her life around libertines, and avoided debauchery not from moral conviction, but a need to maintain robust artistic health. Bunnibal was certainly too much for any one person to handle, was he not; in fact, where was the boy? Masturbating in Rengal’s shower. Well, see, that was the Lady’s point. She couldn’t send him away, Rengal insisted. He would not see the politics, only the rebuke. They conferenced Sauol, and he promptly agreed with Rengal. Bunnibal recognized Ghiselle as alpha…. Oh come on!

“A Lupe’s loyalty is fanatical,” Sauol continued. “Bunnibal may appear immature, simple, deviant, but he will sacrifice without thinking. Sending him away denies that. Please Ghiselle – give him a chance to make you happy.”

Ordinarily, Rengal found everything about Sauol Arghelos distasteful. He rarely “acted” appropriately, as other members of the family strove to do. But when sincere, he was very sincere. Ghiselle agreed. Done with his rain, Bunnibal fidgeted damply as Rengal explained developments. The boy’s tangled hair pulled in more attention when wet, droplets sparking on tips. His long, inhumanly flexible spine shifted incessantly between curved slouches. Each motion flowed sensually, musculature stretching and bunching like rope in heavy cream. Rengal put palms forward, took a deep breath, and rushed to gather discarded clothing. Bunni had managed to fling musky stained fabric to every corner of the huge stateroom. Finished, she handed the pungent mass to him as a lump. Lifting her hands to pat her own hair, she realized his scent tainted her from even that simple contact. Weapons, they were weapons! Bunnibal continued to hold the pile of clothing.

“Put them on,” she instructed patiently.

Mutely, he pulled the rags over his skin, smooth and sensual… Rengal turned to face the original art on her walls. Bunni would be the only one remaining behind, she cautioned, and the tour had just begun. It was a lot of responsibility. Was he ready for that? Oh yes, the elongated half-naked beast insisted, he was ready! Strapped opposite one another as their drop ship shook furiously toward a resort hotel two miles tall, Rengal exchanged first a smile and then uncontrollable laughter with a wizened old Amarrian pianist named Piehtor. Above, somewhere in space, a middle aged artistic genius of uncompromising professionalism prepared for an elegant evening with the “help” of a young sexual mutant of uncompromising appeal.

Asked about their good spirits, “Heaven works its will,” Piehtor replied.

The Jade Muninn

That decrepit priest had found a remarkable slave, Sevat Arghelos sighed as curtains rose and singers warmed their arias. But was the boy’s price so ruinous as to preclude the purchase of a robe? No, the celebrated painter conceded, Oseguira Tash-Murkon’s narrow beast demanded freedom from any pious obfuscation. The recital chamber atop Emperor Family’s Oris bauble melted from dusk to night. Amarr’s blue arc glistened beyond glass and stars flickered to the score. One evening’s grace, however, could not keep Sevat’s focus from Oseguira’s prize.

The youth was no pretty pet in the tradition of such concubines. He was instead quite unattractive in a most attractive way – gaunt, feral, aloof, timid, protruding, sunken, skittering, bald with thick eyebrows and then hairless to an off-putting mat of fur over a priapic root. The lines of a tattoo, not quite in an expected style, peaked beneath his skin when Oseguira touched him well – no, it responded instead to the performance. Was it a jellyfish? Inexorably, the profane creature forced itself into an obsession of Sevat’s Muse. He could bear it no longer! At intermission, the artist asked permission to paint Oseguira’s Sebiestor.

“It would be a great privilege,” he insisted humbly.

“Kind of you, my beautiful Arghelos,” the corpulent gentleman replied. Appearances aside, his voice was deep and refined. “For such recognition of my selectivity, the privilege would be mine. But this pup belongs to me no longer than contracted. Moreover, he is a blank, and so to consort with him beyond the confines of his unseemly ghetto requires another fee – to ensure proper authority holds proper distance.”

Bringing a blank naked prostitute to such a gala fell on the far side of eccentric, but Sevat said nothing of the sort. For several moments, he said nothing at all. While beyond any branch of succession to his house, Oseguira remained a man of clout. If this boy lacked formality, nothing would prevent the priest from simply taking possession – no need for bribes. Consequently, the feral youth could not have been an urchin born in some crevice. He looked barely old enough to fight. Was he a rebel written off by previous owners, the comfort of a fallen Brutor messiah?

“You hide your reflections,” Oseguira hummed. “But Muninn is a pod’s flotsam, recovered from the aftermath of some request and now an entry on a hangar’s asset sheet. I have no desire to provoke technology’s wights unnecessarily; nor will state security enter their barrows without great cause. But should a ‘terrorist’ leave the nest, hooks wait. I therefore pay for dereliction to maintain the status quo; yet I cannot recommend you do the same, because it is not in you to do it well. And risk prowls those slums that spring from the storage capacity of pod people. Consider all of this.”

Sevat thanked Oseguira sincerely and would think on it.

Having thought, his Muse would not bow. Several days after the concert, Sevat moved purposefully through his bourgeois enclave, greeting passers-by with charm. House Arghelos hewed studiously to the periphery of influence. Disavowing political roles, it provided trappings of wealth to those in power – art, music, fashion, drama, medical miracles. “Make no enemy.” Sevat never lacked a kind word, not even for the third son of a minor baron who lost his fortune in a freighter tragedy.

“You’ve been exercising with dedication, I see.”

“I have, thank you!”

An imposing Ni-Kunni met Sevat at the entrance to Oseguira’s villa. Leading across catwalks over space, the butler at last gestured to a couch with a view. An elegant woman drifted forward with wine. They knew his preference in advance. When Oseguira entered, Sevat complimented the vintage warmly. Whatever his internal dialog, the artist strove always to elevate contentment in all around. For his own contentment, he requested instruction on how to find the youth Muninn.

Seeping like a fungus through pressurized compartments of a colossal hangar, Tor Gaim spread as a tangle of cargo containers cut, welded, and stacked into habitat. Narrow paths and occasional tubes threaded courtyards to cramped plazas. What began as a few hundred refugees trying to make their way beneath an indifferent captor had blossomed into a tumor of miners and colonial laborers policed by a kameira centurio named Gaim and his troops. Purposefully collected in that space, Matari fighters feared little inside and much out; so they concentrated within the particularly inaccessible Spider’s Nest. At the bottom of that unnerving tenement, a “tavern” sprawled around gargantuan conduits servicing the larger station. Puddles of strippers, sex, gambling, narcotics and “music” accumulated between its porous walls.

Sevat gravitated toward a lethal woman to inquire on Muninn’s availability.

The Brutor might have seen an effete heir to a family that held titles of nobility as long as there had been titles of nobility. However, “make no enemy” did not depend upon the social standing of those potentially alienated. Though known as a painter, Sevat was first and foremost an Arghelos. In consultation with siblings and cousins, he had created a persona that belonged. For the duration of his performance, even the socialite’s closest friends would have believed he sought villainous dissipation to offset his boredom – such was the acting skill House Arghelos demanded of its painters.

Yryal Vhat wondered what compelled Amarr’s sodomites to overpay so much for such a homely boy. Sevat could not speak for others; he drew to calm only his own temptations, and Muninn’s ragged flesh suited that art well. Drawing or penetrating, scoffed Vhat, time was time and the price would be the same… but yes, the boy was available. Little demand existed for him among Tor Gaim’s miners. She even encouraged down time to ensure he could be up for any devout fetishist who happened by.

“You’ll pay more tonight than the rest of this filth combined will all week,” she growled.

The boy’s “room” was an open dumpster with a hole and a bed. It stank. Muninn lay casually on the mattress. He remained completely at ease as Sevat pulled out notebook and pen. Yryal snorted at the archaic implements: “a ‘serious’ artist.” Sevat invited her to stay. She held no interest in a customer’s dysfunction, only payment, and turned to leave. But the sound of the artist’s pen brought her back around.

Sevat did not capture what people saw at a distance in fussy strokes. He moved close, pressed hard, and shaded fast. His pen did not pause because its master wondered where to place it next. It fell silent only when the melody of a particular drawing so demanded. Muninn retained his unnatural calm at all times. When Sevat grabbed an arm or a foot to adjust it, the boy moved without resistance and held without instruction. He did not flinch when the painter buffed flesh to bring out color, opened the boy’s mouth, or spread toes and fingers.

Others came to Yryal with their matters and stopped to watch as well. So it went until Sevat covered every page, front and back. He stood. The crowd regarded him expectantly. When he asked them apologetically if anyone could find something adhesive, a utilitarian bonding agent was produced almost immediately. One by one, he fixed his pages to a wall, the texture of images on back bleeding through to front. What appeared at first looked nothing like the boy, but enough like something for the crowd to anticipate each addition – a foot, an elbow, those fertile testicles. Sevat’s earlier manipulation of his subject smeared through time and perspective. Eventually, an abstract distortion emerged of a youth on his twisted bed in a swirling room watched by a distant crowd. Sevat rubbed his fingers in the wall’s rust and smeared its color across ink. Back and forth, rust from the wall, dirt from the floor, painting with fingers and filth, Sevat Arghelos produced a masterpiece that belonged.

Muninn’s reaction triggered a sensation the painter ordinarily denied himself. The boy no longer flopped on his bed, pleasantly indifferent to surrounding circumstances, but instead perched on its edge – staring into the painting like a predator. Discoloration spread beneath his skin, filaments stretching the length of his narrow body.

Sevat took pride in that.

Muse satisfied, the painter spent weeks back in his loft expanding more deliberately on treatments of the Spider’s Nest. Once he had drawn something “seriously,” he could revisit its inspiration at will. The architecture, crowds, and breasted underworld queen of that alien place spilled a fortune in rare paints across a dozen canvases, feral imp slinking through every shadow. On shorter visits, Sevat saw that his original remained in Muninn’s crate, sealed to the wall by thick plastic. The boy behaved in a more animated – and animalistic – manner now, switching from indolence to a squirrel’s frenzy without warning. He was also frightfully strong. Sevat looked for cybernetic clues, but saw only flesh. House Arghelos bred snooping curiosity from its line long ago, however, and so this heir remained content to merely wonder.

He wondered with alarm why Yryal might visit his residence.

She affected her own transformation for the trip: in a smart suit beneath neat hair, the Brutor terrorist presented as no more threatening than a university administrator come to fawn over genius. Sevat ran with her premise. If he seemed momentarily flustered, it was only in demurral to extravagant praise. They wandered off. There had been a fight in the Nest. Happened all the time, of course, but this one destroyed Sevat’s painting. A man was thrown through its wall from the other side. Vhat berated herself for not thinking of that. Of course, she wanted to move the painting immediately after Sevat finished it, but Muninn howled whenever it was touched. The Brutor berated herself again for relenting. Sevat expressed horror that she would place herself at such risk over the painting at all.

“Muninn is not taking it well,” she explained. “Can you come?”

Aristocratic reflexes warned of danger. Sevat timed his other visits whimsically, followed alternate routes, and behaved as an asset that did not want to end up pirate’s ransom. At the same time, any contact with authority – potentially triggered by accidental events beyond Yryal’s control – would lead to her death. He therefore felt a poetic obligation to match her risk with his own. When he agreed without voiced objection, she appeared stunned.

“One of Commander Gaim’s kameira will shadow us,” she said. “There will not be an incident.”

Her eyes misted slightly as she turned away. Sevat had agreed before she told him of the kameira, and his trust flustered her. There was no incident. Muninn sat rigidly on his bed, staring at the destroyed wall, pathetic flaps of plastic and paper hanging down. He did not look up when the pair entered. Sevat sat next to him.

“It’s still in here,” he whispered, “and in here.”

The genius tapped first on his own head and then on the boy’s chest. Muninn grabbed hold with ferocious speed and wailed. It was not a human sound. Sevat wondered then if the creature ever actually spoke. And wouldn’t it be comic if his obsession’s suffocating grip became the death of him in that intimate moment?

“We’ll replace it with something even better,” he promised after Yryal pried him free.

A tall order, but turning to his savior, Sevat asked if the colonies served by this place might turn up jadeites, preferably a boulder the size of Muninn’s “room.” He would of course pay. Yryal would of course inquire. Scarcely two days later, Sevat gasped at word the jadeite had been delivered – “though it is a bit larger than you requested.” Floating in a pressurized maintenance bay, the kidney shaped boulder was an order of magnitude larger than he requested. No payment was required.

“What are you thinking, cousin?” asked Berragan Arghelos.

Sevat was the family’s most gifted painter; Berragan was its sculptor. Sevat described his intention to carve something in the shape of an egg with the larger part of the kidney, and attendant pieces with the remainder. He could certainly have cut the rock himself, but subtle irregularities might then doom his work. Berragan and teams of his most skilled slaves crawled over the boulder – tapping, rubbing, and listening with unaided ears. Their examination went on for days. During all that boring time, Muninn left the observation deck only for the briefest moments. Finally, Berragan erected a polymer tent around the boulder, attached small explosives, and shattered it.

They pinned the “egg” and set upon it with water jets, sanders, torches, steel, and sonic utensils. Sevat knew what to carve and directed the teams; Berragan knew when to stop them. Their combined skill allowed the boulder itself to reveal Sevat’s narrative. What resulted looked as if the destroyed painting had been wrapped around the rock and illuminated from all sides, casting shadows of space deep into milky green white swirls. With the carving done, Sevat discolored the rock in places with blasts of intense heat. Finished, a ruined painting of paper, rust, and dirt rose again as a phoenix from its egg – ten meters tall in hard, precious stone.

“The Jade Muninn,” he announced.

Confronted by its staggering beauty, this one time the artist permitted himself tears over his own work. Muninn inched forward so carefully his motion became invisible – as if any footstep might scare the bird away. His tattoo spread. Darker than before, and growing darker yet, it crept up the boy’s neck to his face. Each time the lines showed, their paths differed from any time before. When finally the boy touched rock, his filaments glowed. Arghelos saw color more accurately than most anyone; and still, Muninn’s light matched the jadeite’s million hues perfectly.

Sevat did not believe that to be a coincidence.

The colossal carving belonged in a fountain before some palace, museum, or cathedral; but it would go instead to the “unseemly ghetto” of Tor Gaim. That is, if they could figure out how to get it there. The masterpiece could easily be moved into the stream of commerce. But the ghetto’s corridors dealt with smaller and more regularly sized cargo. Wasn’t that a foolish oversight, thought Sevat ruefully? They considered their options carefully for a few days, and then a flurry of excitement among dockhands interrupted contemplation. A ship was being “towed” to a neighboring bay.

Sevat’s aristocratic sanctuary maintained its own small port to service yachts ferrying socialites between the station and Amarr – not “real” ships. Moreover, capitol chauvinism had denied him any interest in travelling abroad. With almost child-like glee, he hurried to watch the arrival, confessing his complete ignorance of spacecraft to Yryal.

“Anathema,” she said, and to clarify: “Amarr covert operations frigate.”

The maintenance bay pressurized and a ramp extended. Columns of kameiras in dress black marched forward. Two of the largest slaver hounds Sevat had ever seen emerged from the frigate. They were followed by a dark bald giant eight or nine feet tall. “Kameira Centurio Yzmal Gaim,” Yryal whispered urgently. Gaim meant to see the Jade Muninn for himself, but Sevat was not prepared for what the statue’s namesake would do when the slaver hounds entered its chamber. The boy circled an imaginary point once, his tattoo flashed, and he charged the dogs – fingertips drifting across the metal floor. It happened too quickly for Sevat to attempt any intervention, but surely Yryal could have…! Boy crashed into hounds, as a mass they broke against the giant’s legs like waves; everyone held their breath. Gaim allowed the snarling to continue several moments and then said simply, “Muninn.”

His voice was a distant glacier calving icebergs. Within a heartbeat, the dogs and Muninn fell into panting stillness on the floor. With a grunt and a nod, Gaim directed the slavers forward. The procession continued. Sevat forcefully suppressed uncomfortable questions. Gaim looked deeply into the Jade Muninn for a very long time.

“Most impressive, Lord Arghelos,” he smiled. “Where will you install it?”

Sevat explained his intentions, and the circumstances inattention to detail placed him in. Gaim thought for several moments, turned back to the Jade Muninn, and walked the bay’s perimeter. As he passed each one, the squat cubic death machines arrayed around the chamber twitched with exhilarated fear at their commander’s proximity. Returning to Sevat, Centurio Gaim nodded.

“Very well then, we’ll tear out that wall.”

Gaim strode back to the frigate alone, allowing Muninn and the slavers to remain outside and “play.” Eventually, Sevat forced himself to turn away from their disturbing frolic. After all, House Arghelos thrived on letting sleeping dogs lie. Gaim arranged structural details with Emperor Family’s plant and the Jade Muninn was floated into place. Rather than obstruct ground traffic, they suspended it in “moonbeams” high above. Nearby tenements installed rooftop gardens with benches, and charged visitors to sit. Sevat Arghelos gladly paid to gaze at his greatest work during quiet evening hours – a bottle of red wine by his side, fleshy Muninn curled contently at his feet, dreaming.