Free Icarus Descending by Elizabeth Hand Page A

clawing at Ratnayaka’s back even as the other’s hands raked his own. His teeth pierced the flesh on Ratnayaka’s shoulder—brutally, not with the razored softness of an animal’s teeth, but with enough force to cruelly bruise him. Blood spurted onto his lips and spread across Ratnayaka’s shoulder, marbling the smooth ivory skin with crimson and black. Still Ratnayaka made no sound. Kalaman’s will was stronger than his, was his, in a way that their Ascendant Masters had never understood—and that, of course, had been their undoing.
    A minute passed, and Kalaman’s face grew rosy with his brother’s blood. His great long-fingered hands splayed across his brother’s chest, moved to brush his forehead and left the gold rings there hanging each with its ruby pendant. He was too tired; he needed another, now.
    “Choose one,” he murmured.
    Ratnayaka pushed up on his strong arms, so that he hung above his brother in his blood-spattered hammock. He closed his eyes, gently tugged his thoughts from Kalaman and let them wander the softly lit corridors and vast dark chambers of Helena Aulis until he found another there.
    Sindhi.
    Ratnayaka summoned him: an energumen with brick-colored skin like Kalaman’s, Kalaman’s eyes, Kalaman’s hands. And from where he slept, in the bedchamber that had belonged to the station’s Tertiary Architect, Sindhi answered: a thought that would have been a sigh if it had been given breath. A few minutes later he appeared in the doorway of the stim chamber, passing through the generated image of falling water and entering, miraculously untouched. Nearly invisible tendrils from the oneiric canopy descended to brush against his neck, a sensation like walking into a mist.
    “Brothers,” Sindhi whispered. The tendrils sent their visionary fragments coursing through his brain. The impression of sunlight was so intense that he blinked, shading his eyes. He smiled as he stood and waited for Kalaman to welcome him. His bare feet left no impression upon the white sand he felt burning beneath his soles.
    Come to me, Kalaman beckoned. Sindhi nodded and crossed to where Kalaman and Ratnayaka were tangled in the hammock. Without speaking, Kalaman slid from the fragile-seeming web. Ratnayaka followed, filaments from the canopy brushing against his face and chest and leaving a tracery of blood upon his arms. Kalaman embraced his brothers. The three of them sank to the floor, Sindhi between the other two.
    Kalaman sighed, feeling Sindhi’s hands upon his thighs. It should not have been like this, with only the three of them savoring each other. He should have summoned all of his brothers, the seventeen of them who had survived the rebellion and then Kalaman’s depredations. One by one all the rest had been chosen, and shared, until only these few were left, much stronger than they had been before. But always Kalaman was the strongest, Kalaman was the first; Kalaman was the Chosen of the Oracle. It was an honor for Sindhi to have been summoned like this, a greater honor in a way since there were only three of them.
    Kalaman drew away from the other two, his eyes narrowed, and after a moment Ratnayaka drew back as well. Sindhi knelt between his brothers with head bowed. For an instant, the shimmering impression of sand and lapping waves that surrounded them looked less solid, like a poorly transmitted ’file image; but then the likeness of a tropical beach grew strong once more, its heat and dampness seeping into their veins, though none of them cast a shadow. Sindhi laughed, his filed teeth flashing. His hair was very long and black, with a reddish, almost violet tinge. He wore it pulled through a small copper ring atop his skull. Ratnayaka sat behind him, nearly straddling him, and took the end of Sindhi’s hair and pulled gently until Sindhi’s neck arched. Beside them Kalaman watched. Without moving, he reached beneath the hammock, until his hand found the little raised panel there. His fingers