. 14

Homelands: Autumn

Part One

Chapter Fourteen

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You might want to read Chapters One through Thirteen first.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy. Supernatural forces play a prominent role throughout the novel.

All characters are over eighteen. All acts are consensual.

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I saw at the hotel bar, staring at my watch. By 8:20, I was starting to worry that maybe Iva wasn't coming. The waiter came by to check on me and I was about to ask for the check instead of a second beer when I saw Iva from across the room.

She wore a black skirt that hung past her knees, a white blouse, and black silk vest. Sheer black stockings and black pumps rounded out the ensemble. In a certain sense, it was a modest, professional outfit. On a woman with a different body, that would have been true. But her outfit was so tight, I wondered how she was able to move. Every guy in the place stared his eyes out at her. Not that there were many in this shitty hotel bar.

If not for the provocative slit in the skirt running half way up her slender thigh, I'm not sure she could have climbed into the stool to sit across from me. She laid her tiny purse on the table and offered me a warm smile. "Sorry I'm late."

"No problem," I said. "I'm sure you had...other things to take care of."

"I was taking a nap," she said.

I snorted. "Look, it's not like I'm asking you to tell me wh-"

She slapped my forearm. "I don't care if you know who I fuck. If I was busy getting some play, I'd tell you that. Seriously, I was taking a nap. After you left, your father hit a second wind. And Mark is just unstoppable. I mean, sure, I drained him what good, but the boy had a lot to give, and it was hard work taking it all from him."

I started to apologize. But I didn't want her to see me as a meek little lamb. "You're lucky. If I'd been in that kind of mood, you wouldn't have had the energy for that."

The waiter chose that moment to come take our drink orders, forcing Iva to swallow her retort. Which didn't seem to be easy for her to do.

Naturally, she ordered what I could only assume was the girliest drink in the world: a cosmotini. I didn't even want to know what that was.

When the waiter left, she glared at me. "So. I was lucky, was I?"

I stared back at her for a moment then cracked. "Okay. Maybe it was me who was."

"Damn straight," she said with an emphatic nod.

"At any rate, glad to hear you enjoyed yourself," I said.

Iva cleared her throat. "And you? How was the rest of your afternoon? Hopefully more exciting than it would have been if you'd stayed with us."

"It was good."

"That's it? It was good?" she asked, glowering at me so seriously that she had to be kidding around. At least mostly.

I shrugged. "Well, after a loaded question like that." My voice trailed off.

She laughed. "Okay, okay. Of course it wasn't more exciting. I mean, I wasn't there with you, so it

obviously

had to have been at least something of a letdown. But, you know, variety, spice, yadda, yadda, yadda."

"No, it was better. I fucked the hell out of my mother and her sister for hours, and the two of them are absolute goddesses. I just didn't want to be a dick and rub your face in it."

She slapped my forearm. "Dick."

"See? Like that."

Iva forced a chuckle. "I guess I asked for that. Anyway, I'm sure you did have plenty of fun. And you should be getting around as much as you can, if you're going to do what it's painfully obviously that you are getting ready to do."

I didn't reply.

She studied me carefully for a few moments. "Okay, so play it close to the chest then, my international man of mystery. But that's an answer itself, since, if you really had no grand aspirations, you'd have had no trouble saying so. Which means you're in need of some serious advice from someone who knows a little something about this game."

"And that would be you?"

Iva scrunched up her nose, made a teasing face. "If you don't wa-"

"I wasn't being sarcastic," I said flatly. Well, okay, maybe I'd been teasing her a little. She'd asked for it. But I didn't actually doubt that the answer to my question was yes. Our one encounter so far had been plenty to establish her credibility.

"Oh." Her shoulders slouched as she exhaled. "Well, for starters, your cousin has put some real effort into suppressing people's memories. Just seems that she's focused more on some than others. Far as I can tell, she didn't bother much with your brothers and sister. Guess she's mostly worried about you. Well, and, surprisingly, Skye. Who I don't think is all that strong. She might also be worried about Jack and your mother, but if so, they're even more powerful than I realized, because they seemed to remember who they were pretty quickly. The point of all of which is that I'm willing to bet you know more than you realize you do. You just haven't shaken her veil off entirely yet. If I made it sound like I thought I was infinitely wiser than you, well, I was mostly kidding." With a smile, she added, "Mostly."

I mulled that over while the waiter came back, dropped off the beer and the cosmotini.

"I'm confused," I said after the guy left.

"Tell me something I

don't

know," Iva replied. She mimed a drumroll as she did, including the snare finish. Her movements were overly dramatic, and cute as hell.

"Ha ha. But seriously. If I've got this right, my one grandmother, Noreen of House Orwin, used to rule our little slice of the Homelands. And then my other grandmother, Kaitline of House Farrier, deposed her. Your mother retired recently, that kicked off a succession ritual, and Brianna won handily. All of which was a few months ago. By mortal time at least. Which I seem to remember being different."

Iva urged me on with a twirling motion of her hand.

"So I've got to imagine that her hold on power is reasonably solid now. She's got to have staved off a few challenges, right? I saw her make an example out of one poor soul already. Why then is she recruiting vassals and sniffing out threats? Like she's, I don't know, coup-proofing. And if she is, why are you here? I mean, you were apparently exiled by your own mother, so you're obviously not only ridiculously fucking irresistible, but talented and ambitious. Not things my cousin likes to find in a Farrier, I can only assume."

Iva blushed as she fluffed her hair with an upturned palm. "No points for originality or subtlety there, tiger. But feel free to keep the compliments rolling all the same."

I snickered by way of response. What I'd really like to do was kiss her till I couldn't breathe. But I tried to stay focused.

I continued. "Tara and her kids were banished under my other grandmother. But Brianna's got Tara on her side, and Tara's supposed to deliver her kids as well. So no mystery there. Pretty clear why Tara was welcomed back. Even if Skye winds up being a problem, it's a clear win, especially since you said Skye's not all that powerful."

"Sounding good so far," Iva said.

"So, yeah, I guess the big mystery is: what's your story?" I asked at last. "Did Brianna invite you back? If you sensed weakness and were getting ready to take the throne back for House Farrier, wouldn't you be in hiding somewhere? I think even I'm smart enough to know that it would be madness for an obvious contender to moving about freely."

Iva twitched one shoulder in the faintest of shrugs before raising the martini glass to her lips. "Neither, really. I petitioned her to let me return. So I wasn't invited, exactly, but I'm here with permission. And no, I wouldn't be back at all, in hiding or otherwise, if I wasn't. Don't underestimate your cousin, Frank. From what I gather, she was a little soft at first, but not anymore. She's a bit overconfident, maybe, and still a lot weaker than my mother. But she's closing the gap pretty steadily."

"She Devoured her mother and father, didn't she?" I asked.

Iva took another sip of her drink. "I don't know. But that wouldn't surprise me. She definitely has Devoured someone. I mean, 's all over her aura. Probably only two or three. We're not, you know, in Silas territory here. But she's definitely done it."

I sipped my beer. "Silas?"

She stared down the bridge of her cute little button nose at me. "You don't know who Silas is?" Iva asked.

I shrugged. "Sorry."

She tsked at me. "Can you at least name any of the other kingdoms?"

I took a few big gulps of my beer, delaying my response. "Nope."

"Wow." She stared at her drink, gave it a gentle swirl, then downed some more of it. "I'm sorry, that feels like the kind of moment that begs for a smartass comment, but I'm not coming up with any. Cuz, really, that's...just...sad. You were dealt a nice hand, but you're sitting at the high stakes table, and your cousin came to win."

I gulped my beer some more. "I'm woefully ignorant. What can I say."

Iva flashed me the look girls usually make right before saying "Awwww," with about seventeen syllables. Like when a puppy can't manage to stand up until the third try or some thing like that. "Frank. You poor thing."

I hope she didn't see the blood drain from my cheeks. Though I couldn't imagine how she wouldn't have. So much for not looking meek.

Iva smacked her palm down on the table. "Okay, so, here's the basic rundown. Our houses, the Farriers and the Orwins, have been the strongest in the Third Autumnal Court for years. There was a third house that was often in the running for the throne, but my mother married its last heir, and he's been dead for years, so now it's just the two houses in the Third Court. King Silas rules the

First

Autumnal Court. Actually, by year's end, he'll probably be the Patriarch of Autumn. But I guess that's neither here nor there. Worth filing away for future reference, though. Anyway, I was involved with his daughter for a while. Until, things sort of got out of hand and, well, I Devoured her. After that, I went into hiding. For a looong time. Right up until your cousin granted me asylum. And, there you go. All caught up. Wasn't that easy?"

I let out a low whistle. "How many kingdoms or courts or whatever are there?"

She threw up her hands. "Really? That's the part you want to follow up on?"

I shrugged.

"You think I just go around telling everyone that I Devoured Silas' daughter? I'm tossing out gold here, kiddo. Gold."

We both laughed.

"Well, the whistle was for you," I said.

"Jerkface," Iva said as she reached across the table and once more pinched my nose between her fingers. My heart skipped a beat at that. "But okay. To answer your question, it depends on how you define them. The easy ones are the seasonals. There are a few courts each for Winter, Summer, Spring and Autumn. Summer has the fewest, with only two. But both are really big. Winter has five. The First Wintry Court is huge, but the fourth and fifth are smaller than our court by a fair margin.

"Then you have your independent courts. Most notably, the Eternal Garden of the Sun and the Shadowed Glade of the Moon." She sipped her drink, giving me a chance to let that all sink in. "Where it gets tricky, politically, is with the breakaways. A bunch of minor nobles have tried to secede from larger territories. Maybe half succeed in the long run. The others get crushed, though not always right away. And since you never know who will ultimately emerge as their own court, it's always hard to know how to count them. But we're talking somewhere between eighteen and twenty five courts at the moment."

"Okay. Think I got that," I said.

"Of course," Iva continued, "there are also a lot of principalities within the kingdoms, but we won't go into that."

I felt like I should be taking notes. "So how influential is our kingdom?"

Iva held her hand out flat and twisted it back and forth as if to say "so-so". Then she said, "We matter. Enough so that the other courts care who sits on the throne, and there's always pretty vigorous negotiations going on over various matters of foreign policy. But all the same, we're not a real player. It's been a long, long time since the Patriarch or Matriarch of Autumn came from the Third Court. And, if we're talking big picture, Autumn isn't even where the real power is. Not even Silas has half as much power as Daphne, the Matriarch of Winter." She all but finished her drink. "It's unusual for anyone to hold a throne for two years. That's Homelands time, not mortal. My mother ruled for just over two years, in fact. But Daphne? She was queen of the Second Wintry Court for almost a year before she became Matriarch. And she's been there for almost seven years."

"So, since the conversion rate is ten to one, right?" I asked. Iva nodded. I continued. "She's been in power, in one office or another, for eighty years? Damn. That's a freaking lifetime." Remembering that we didn't really age, at least not the same way mortals did, I promptly added, "At least, it would be, for a mortal."

What must it be like to have sex with a woman like that, I wondered?

"You wouldn't last a quarter of a second, unless she wanted you to," Iva said.

I raised an eyebrow at her.

"I know what you were thinking."

"Can we read minds?" I asked.

Iva laughed. "No, no. But some people are just transparent."

When I frowned, she patted my hand softly and offered me a sweet smile.

"But hone your talents enough and you can read Libidos, which is sort of just like reading auras, even though it sounds dirty. That's not really the best way to put it, because we don't really have auras, but it's close. Anyway, we certainly don't read

minds

."

"Oh," I said, confused. "So what's this business about reading Libidos?"

Iva looked around for the waiter before answering. "Well, the more times you've coupled, the stronger the connection you've got with a person. Having an emotional connection on top of that helps, but it's mostly sex. Establish a connection, and you can sense certain things about them just by being near them. Some even if you're not. Like if they're fucking someone else, you can generally get a sense of who. When you're near them, you can tell how much energy they're carrying, how powerful they are overall, what kind of mood there in, stuff like that. But otherwise, not much. No telepathy, sorry to say. And no, you and I haven't spent enough time with each other for any of that to kick in." She hesitated. "At least...well...."

"What?" I asked.

She winced faintly. "Probably going to regret telling you this. But me, personally, I don't really need much connection before I can read someone."

"Oh."

She smiled. "If it helps, it's kinda cute the way you look like you're barely treading water right now. Most guys I talk to fall all over themselves trying to prove how manly and confident they are. It gets old, fast. Maybe some women go for that. They must, I guess. But there's pretty much no surer way to guarantee my pants are staying on." She looked in her lap. "And I'm not even wearing pants. So lucky you."

"Thanks," I said. That was just about the strangest compliment I'd ever received. But the fact that she meant it as went a ways towards easing the sting of being told most women wouldn't be attracted to me. Which was sort of what she'd just said, if not quite exactly.

She actually blushed before continuing, which I hadn't expected. "So, anyway, even accounting for overall strength, some of us are particularly good at specific applications of our talents. Like, you may not realize this, but most people need

much

much experience and raw power before they can control their appearance the way you seem to be able to. That's why everyone's talking about you."

I coughed up a mouthful of beer.

She continued as if she hadn't noticed. "Me, I've always been perceptive. When I started to come into my powers, that translated into the aura slash Libido thing. Only later did I realize everyone could do it, but only if they had enough of a connection first."

"Okay, so I obviously need to pick up a textbook or something."

Iva laughed. "Fraid we don't have those. No one's too keen on mass education. Would make it hard to maintain the feudal power system after all. So everyone learns the hard way. Them that learn much of anything, that is."

"Why don't I ever run into other powers, or whatever we call each other, in this world? I mean, besides my family. They are actually my family, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, we're actually family. There's no real term for us, by the way. If you want to call us powers, go for it. We come into this world the same as ordinary mortals. Though, of course, that whole reproduction thing doesn't work quite the same for us."

"No? We, ah, seem to have all the parts."

She smirked at me. "Yes, Frank, we have the parts. I mean, we can't get pregnant unless we decide we're going to. And once we decide we want to, it only takes one try. None of this business of trying to find the right time in the cycle or any of that."

"So does that mean...you don't get periods?" I asked, blushing.

Was it okay to ask her that?

And how had I never noticed that neither Mom nor Natalie kept tampons or pads or anything around? Not that I'd ever gone looking, but still.

Iva laughed. "Yeah, it does mean that."

"That's a nice feature," I said with an awkward laugh.

"Tell me about it," she said.

"We can mate with mortals though, right? Isn't Brianna...do we say halfbreed?"

"Yes, and sure, you can. Kind of derogatory. There's not really an acceptable term for it, because no one really pays a lot of attention to that. She's got way more in common with the rest of us than she does with mortals. So it's kind of irrelevant."

"Okay, but back to my question. Why aren't others running around the mortal world?"

"You wouldn't necessarily know it if they were. And to some extent, they are. We've known for a long time that other courts occasionally infiltrate this world to spy on us. But the thing is, each court is connected to its own mortal playground. They're all more or less interchangeable high quality replicas of the real McCoy."

"Weird. Or cool. Disturbing. I don't know. This is a real mindfuck."

Iva laughed musically and cupped her chin in her hands. "You're adorable."

"That's...patronizing."

I thought only TV witches could wiggle their nose. Apparently not so.

Fucking hell, she was cute.

"All right, so what's a Shadow?" I asked.

"One sec," she said, finally flagging down the waiter.

She ordered another cosmotini.

Then, after he left, she turned back to me. "Those things are just so awesome. I'd tell you to try one, but then you'd have to do your little ritualistic display of masculinity and insist that you don't drink fruity drinks, especially if they're pink. Am I right?"

I laid a finger on my nose. "Don't want to get kicked out of the tribe, you know?"

She smirked. "So, anyway. The Shadow is a lot of things. Depends on how much authority the king or queen that he or she serves is willing to grant him or her. Some Shadows rule in all but name, some share power equally, others are glorified enforces. But, while technically it doesn't have to be anything more than a political position, it's pretty rare that the Shadow isn't the king or queen's favorite lover, whatever else they might be."

If I'd known that, I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised that Brie made Dom her Shadow. That didn't sound so bad anyway. How much worse could being a vassal be?

"So what's your plan now?"

"Wow. Blunt, much?"

I'd actually been trying not to be blunt. Clever I was not.

I reached out and took her hand in mine. She didn't resist.

"Sorry. Forget I asked. But I do want you to know where I stand. I'm going to ask Brianna to make me one of her vassals."