Raine. Elizabeth Amber
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V-shaped flock of medical men followed in his wake as if they were a formation of geese that had begun migrating now that September had come.
Salerno’s sharp gaze cut to the curtain as though sensing she watched. His small eyes were cold black pits, void of empathy.
Jordan’s head snapped back like a turtle’s and she twitched the drape shut.
“Per favore—on the table!” the artist urged.
Carefully, she folded the edges of the curtains one atop the other as though to seal Salerno out of her life. If only it were that easy.
With a sigh, she turned back to Mondroli. “How do you want me this time?”
“On your back! On the table, please!” He spread the square of satin he’d taken from the chair over the top of an elongated table. “Signore Salerno requested a series in all the same positions as in these other portraits of you. The only one I have not yet completed is…”
He thumbed through a stack of likenesses done of her last year, plucked one out, and set it upon another easel nearby. “This one.”
The portrait was only a partial view, she saw. Good. That meant it wouldn’t matter if she put her shirt back on. She looked around for it and then remembered Salerno had removed her clothing when he’d left her with Mondroli earlier that morning.
A cloak hanging on the peg in the corner caught her eye. Detouring on her way to the table, she snatched it up and draped it over her shoulders. It was rich and fine. No holes or other defects marred its velvet or its satin lining. It was Salerno’s.
Jordan turned her back to the table and sat, pulling herself up on it. Swiveling lengthwise, she lay on her back and snuggled the cloak around her shoulders and breasts. They wouldn’t be depicted in this particular sketch.
The legs of the artist’s chair scraped as he moved closer. She bent her knees high and wide, exactly as she’d been posed in the portrait from last year. Mondroli positioned himself like a midwife, his sketchpad resting on the table just between her ankles.
“Si, that’s it.” He flicked a glance at the other portrait. “And spread your, um—”
“Labia majora and minora,” Jordan supplied, reaching between her legs. Over the years, she’d learned all the medical terms for her body parts from Salerno and those he brought to examine her.
Mondroli was already sketching her outline. Once he filled it in, his final drawing would be a close-up of her genitalia. He’d cropped her body so the resulting shape of her belly, nether regions, and lifted thighs formed a sort of M on his page.
Forking two fingers, she unfurled the ruffles of her labia. They were plump and full. Unusually full. In fact, whenever she stood, they hung low on either side of her slit. Turning her head to the side, she glanced at the portrait from last year. It was an accurate, detailed depiction, and showed her labia had been far thinner and more feminine then. What had caused this strange thickening? It was worrisome.
Mondroli cleared his throat. Flicking two fingers up and down, he gestured toward her crotch. “Your, uh, thing. It’s in the way.”
With her hand, Jordan reached to adjust that part of her that had so complicated her life—the shaft of masculine flesh that had grown from her body where a clitoris would have been on any other woman. She lifted it to lie on her abdomen, pointing its tip toward her navel as it had been in the other portrait. Far too large an appendage for a woman, yet rather small for a man, the presence of this rod forever doomed her to hover in limbo somewhere between the sexes. Not quite a man; not quite a woman.
Yet at her birth, a choice in gender had been made for her. It had been decided by her mother and Salerno that this appendage would be deemed a phallus. And that she would live her life as a male. Of late she had begun to fear they had been more accurate in their choice than they knew.
Ever since her labia had first thickened some ten months ago, her phallus had begun troubling her. It sometimes awakened, thickened, pulsed, yearned in the pitch of night. When the dreams came to haunt her.
“Esteemed colleagues!” Beyond the curtains, Salerno’s voice boomed throughout the theater.
Jordan and the artist flinched simultaneously. She snatched her hand away from arranging her privates as though she’d been caught doing something naughty.
“Today you will witness a true marvel,” Salerno proclaimed. “One you’ll surely deem worthy of your travels here for this medical debate. For behind this very curtain, I have obtained for the purposes of medical study, a”—he paused here for dramatic effect—“person—of a nature you’ve likely not seen before, nor ever will again. Some may call such creatures monstrosities…”
He droned on, but Jordan tuned him out. She’d heard it all before. “If only he could locate conjoined twins and a goatboy as well, I do believe he’d have the makings of his own carnival exhibition,” she muttered.
The artist ignored her, intent on finishing his work. His fingers moved furiously, his strokes more hurried now that he knew his time at his task was drawing to an end.
Jordan watched him work between her legs, wishing he would slow his pace. She dreaded the examination that would certainly follow this portrait session. However, at the same time, she longed for an explanation for the changes that had taken place in her body over the past year. And Salerno and his medical cohorts could undoubtedly supply one.
Salerno’s voice rose, catching her attention and signaling the imminent unveiling.
She let the cloak drop away, revealing her nakedness. Pushing up on her elbows, she awaited what was to come.
“Gentlemen! I bid you behold—”
The curtain swayed as her tormentor tugged on its tasseled pull cord. The heavy velvet parted and swept back with a flourish. And Salerno’s gloating voice introduced her as…
“—the hermaphrodite!”
2
Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!
Lord Raine Satyr—the secondborn of the three wealthy and sought-after Satyr lords—sneezed in triplicate. Pigeons scattered as he stalked across the expansive Piazza San Marco toward the streets that would lead him to the theater where the lecture he planned to attend was to take place.
Behind him, a pair of bronze figures clanged their hammers on the great bell in the clock at the top of the Campanile.
Five o’clock. It couldn’t be. He pulled out his watch. It was.
By the seven devils, he was late! The afternoon lecture regarding the grapevine-destroying pest known as phylloxera would be well underway by the time he arrived. He disliked not being punctual. He disliked this cold. And he thoroughly disliked Venice at the moment.
Unsure as to how long his business might keep him here and not wishing to spend any more time in the city than necessary, he had taken rooms just southeast of Venice on the island of Lido. The palazzo hotel he’d chosen had once housed a wealthy family, but times were hard and they’d been forced to vacate when they could no longer pay their hefty tax bill. One of the Austrian interlopers, who’d come in the wake of the departing French, had bought the place and now rented its rooms to visitors who could afford such luxurious housing.
He’d left Lido an hour or so earlier and crossed the lagoon toward Venice in a private gondola. However traffic in the Grand Canal, the main artery of transportation through the city, had been congested because of some sort of accident farther ahead. So he’d chosen to disembark at San Marco and was now making his way on foot to his destination along the Riva del Vin on the far side of the Rialto Bridge. After the completion of his business, the gondola would await him at a prearranged location on the southeast bank of the canal near the terminus of the bridge.
Though he determinedly kept his eyes from straying as he walked, familiar sounds assailed him. Like vipers waiting to strike, memories lurked everywhere