“You’ve been at it for half an hour.”
She pointed the bone phallus at him like an accusation. “It’s because you won’t let me touch you, that’s the problem. How’s a woman supposed to make music when she can’t lay a finger on the instrument?”
The instrument in question hadn’t functioned since a band of goblin warriors had reduced him to rubble and the masons reassembled him. Aalis, the old head mason, had wept when she’d told him that he’d never fuck again, though in prettier terms.
“I’m afraid you’ll never sire an heir,” she’d confessed with a guilty look, as though she hadn’t performed a miracle patching him together from pieces. She’d mended a cracked skull, reassembled his ribcage, heart included, from a basket of fragments. But when she realized his cock would never work again, that was when the tears came.
She hadn’t written it in her records. It could heal in time, she’d told him, though her watery eyes said otherwise.
He tossed three silver coins across the desk. Pudding caught them neatly and tucked them into her bodice. “Same time next week?”
“Next time bring a bigger cock,” he said. “A gargoyle one.”
“Filthy devil,” she cackled, delighted. “I’d be fucking the Tower itself if it were up to you.”
“I’m sure you’d welcome the challenge,” he said fondly. Pudding was one of the few people in Solvantis whose company he tolerated, and that was because she never looked at him with pity or disgust. The scars that disrupted his face and crawled down his neck didn’t make her flinch. The ruined wings he bound tight against his back, their membranes shredded beyond any mason’s skill to repair, didn’t earn a sympathetic cluck. To her, he was merely a problem to be solved. A puzzle to crack.
“It’d work if you let me ride you instead of your roost,” she said again, standing and smoothing her skirts back into place. She was wrong about that. No hand or mouth or human cunt could make it move. But he couldn’t afford that rumor getting out, or there would be vultures from all the lower tiers angling for his eyrie.
“Unless you can give me an heir while you’re at it, I have to keep it dry.” His bitterness tasted familiar. He knew his parents wanted grandchildren. The seventh tier demanded an heir if his family was to retain their position. But his cock was a mere ornament, decorative but dysfunctional.
Pudding pouted, gathering her basket and tucking the bone phallus inside. He wondered how many of her other clients had seen it. “An heir? Do you plan to take a mate soon?”
“Me?” He laughed. Pity whoever found herself bound to him, mentally or physically. “Fallen gods, no. But my mother is determined. She spends every night in pursuit of the perfect female from the perfect family. Why do you think I work so hard to advertise my deviance? It’s to drive them off. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to deter them as much as you’d think.”
Pudding smirked and patted his arm as she passed on her way to the secret exit. “Poor, sweet darling. How will you ever survive?”
Before he could craft a reply bitter enough to match his mood, a sharp rap came at the door. “Nadir.” The keeper’s annoyance bled through the heavy oak. “There are eleven people in the waiting room and more in line. Shall I tell them to come back tomorrow?”
Rikard closed his eyes. The endless queue of complainants. Leaking roofs due to sloppy gargoyle landings, refuse dropped from the sky, too-noisy feasts, gargoyles perched too close to bedroom windows. Every petty grievance a human could muster against the species that stood between them and annihilation, all of it funneled through the Nadir’s office. It was a garbage chute. Everything foul flowed downward, and he was at the bottom of the Tower.
“Send them in,” he called. Then, to Pudding, “My thanks. That was very diverting.”
“Any time.” She kissed her fingers and pressed them to his scarred cheek, feather-light, gone before he could swat her away. The door clicked shut behind her, and it felt like a candle had been blown out.
The keeper ushered in the first human in line, a red-faced laundress furious about a gargoyle shitting on her drying racks. Rikard noted the address, the date, and the approximate height from which the offending droppings had fallen, and promised to post a reminder about garderobe use in the rookery.
The next was a woman complaining about noise from the Tower’s feast halls. Then a man whose cart had been overturned by a gargoyle landing too close to the road. Then a dispute between two families over whose roof a gargoyle guard was entitled to perch on during his watch. Then a young keeperreporting that an older keeper was smuggling gargoyle claw-clippings out of the Tower to sell them to a Seer.
By the eighth complainant, his skull ached from grinding his teeth. By the tenth, he was fantasizing about bricking up the door.
The eleventh was a woman, slight and fair-haired. Her pale skin gave him the impression of the moon, showing every sleepless night in the lavender shadows beneath her eyes. She sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap and did not look at him directly. Likely she was unsettled by his scars.
He picked up his quill. “Name?”
“Hannalinde Lamont.”
His quill paused. The name triggered a memory in the warren of his mind. Lamont. The traitor lord. His betrayal was the reason for Rikard’s near-death and the actual deaths of virtually all his watchmates.
Apparently, he’d had a daughter. Interesting. She had nerve coming to his office, given what the name meant in this city.
“Go on,” he said, setting aside his recognition. Whatever her father had done, she was still a citizen of Solvantis, and the Nadir was obligated to gargle human grievances, no matter whose mouth they came from.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “A gargoyle comes to my home at night. He enters through the window. He...” She faltered, her fingers twisting tighter in her lap. “He has his way with me. Forcibly. It has been happening for some time. I would like it to stop, if you please.”
The quill stilled once more. He did not want to believe it was true.
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, his tone harsh.
