by Zack Finley
Argon was concerned about the foresters. Gera assured her they were now much happier in the loving hands of a group from the temple. He was confident they'd convince the trees to let the barges out of the secret mooring area.
We told Gera to call us if he had need.
Although the piracy at Omba had worsened with the coup, it was problematic for generations. While we wanted to help stabilize Augun, we had too many other problems for us to get bogged down in a wide-ranging internal investigation.
"Maybe we need to step back from this one," Argon said. "The immediate problem is resolved, but we aren't the only ones who can pursue the investigation into how it happened. That should be King Rufix's job to root out any pervasive graft within his kingdom."
It was hard to know where to stop, but I agreed turning this over to Olive and King Rufix made sense. I expected the king wanted all the perpetrators found, questioned, and dealt with. With the current state of the kingdom, it would take some time to get to all the guilty parties.
We advised Olive we were walking away from the Omba investigation and leaving it in her capable hands. She, too, had more than she could juggle but seemed to understand our reasoning. We told her to keep us in her mage net and call us if she needed our help. We assured her we were still committed to helping with the ex-slaves and with anything directly connected to bringing the coup leaders to justice.
As we were finalizing issues with Olive it dawned on Argon she hadn't heard anything from Findot.
Argon messaged Findot and found she was still at the first slave camp. Argon agreed to meet her there. I knew better than to get in the middle of this.
“I’ll ‘port home to shower. Call me if you need my help,” I commed.
◆◆◆
Chapter 7
"Should we warn Tobron we'll be late for dinner?" I sent Argon. I was keeping an eye on her journeys with Findot from slave camp to slave camp. Her emotions were a moving kaleidoscope of irritation, exasperation, anger, sadness, and disgust.
I waited as long as I dared to avoid pushing her.
"No, Findot will check out the rest on her own. I need a shower and a hug."
Damn, I want that double shower.
Allo and I waited for Argon to finish her shower. I was sitting on the bed when she slid onto my lap, still naked from her shower.
Being late for dinner no longer seemed a bad idea.
"I hate being apart from you," Argon said. I nuzzled her in agreement.
"No, sweetie, it would be too rude for us to be late. They would know why. I know they'd indulge us, but it would be too easy to make a habit of it." She wriggled free and dressed quickly, pulling on a clean under armor shirt, panties, and leggings.
We separated to get into our armor and pick up our weapons.
A quick kiss and I 'ported us to Tobron's barely a minute late.
I was relieved to learn Inoa was cooking today.
Tobron was very taken with our new armor. My armor's enchantment charge was filled, except for the force element. Argon's was nearly full in the four elemental magics and a small health enchantment not apparent earlier.
Tobron couldn't figure out the enchantments either. We needed someone with better enchanting skills than we had to read them. He suspected we could get a top armorer in Losan to tell us what we had for an exploitive fee.
I thought that was a great idea and felt it might lead to introductions within the Losan armorer community.
We kept our chest armor on but stashed our main weapons and helmets on the stand near the door. The armor fit like a long leather vest, and the only thing it interfered with so far was hugging. It was counterintuitive to believe it could protect better than steel plate.
We moved into the kitchen to be with Inoa as she finished up the dinner preparations.
Argon was assigned to set the table. Tobron was tasked with providing libations. Argon told him to pour us both glasses of graal.
“I think you will like it,” Argon commed on our private channel. “I find it very refreshing, and it helps me relax. It is one of the mild intoxicants brewed in Jaloa. Some of the stronger libations should be avoided unless you want an out-of-body experience. Give graal a try, if you don’t like the effect you can always heal it.”
I agreed to try the graal. I couldn’t help but wonder about the stronger libations.
Inoa was still bustling around in the kitchen.
“Can I do anything to help?” I asked.
“I’ve got everything under control, have some graal and relax for a few minutes,” said Inoa.
After last night's combat, I no longer saw her primarily as Tobron's mate. She was my friend and a formidable warrior in her own right. I suspected many past foes had underestimated her, to their detriment.
Once Inoa finished, she and Tobron ushered us into the living room.
"Cleon and Alba are running late," Tobron shared. "An emergency case at the hospital. Everyone seems confident they'll be here in time for dinner."
He had opened a flask of graal and poured glasses of the clear ruby red liquid for the four of us. As we trooped into the living room, he handed out the glasses and suggested we get comfortable. Argon pulled me to join her on a puffy couch.
"So far the only problem I've noticed about this armor is it blocks cuddling," Argon said leaning against me as she draped my right arm around her. "I won't complain if it does as good a job on spears and magical maces."
"Is that how he hurt you?" I asked. We hadn't had a chance to go over our after-action assessment.
"I thought we had him with our first blast, but he teleported about 15 feet away when the first spell touched him. All the spells smashed his former location. He was undamaged and the next thing I knew he was next to me."
"A smart combat spell," said Tobron. "Not sure what he used to trigger it, perhaps a force bubble set some distance from his skin? You'd need to set the trigger at least a few feet away to provide time for the teleport spell to work and avoid injury."
"He'd obviously been ambushed before," speculated Inoa. "We'll never know for sure how he did it, but that is quite clever. It does raise some delightful options for triggering other defensive spells, though."
Tobron said he would examine the enchantment on the mace to see how it broke through her wards and enchantments on Argon's helmet.
"Whatever he hit her with wiped out her shields very quickly," I offered. "I'm hoping this new armor can help with that."
Inoa wanted to know why we didn’t realize until too late that a mage was involved. Mages seldom hid behind fake mundane mental signatures. Now we seemed to have a bunch of them.
Argon and Inoa enthused about ways to detect similar mages with our app. They were so engaged Tobron and I shared a grin, watching them.
Inoa said she'd add that to the list of improvements she was developing. She was still working on detecting warded areas with it. Inoa intended to test it on a few buildings and rooms she knew had excellent wards before declaring that enhancement to our mind-reading app ready to distribute. While we wouldn't detect people within the warded enclosure, knowing it was cloaked would warn us about a potential problem. A definite improvement.
“I don’t think the raider mage suspected any mages were present when he attacked Flom,” said Argon. “My guess is he would have abandoned Flom if he’d known we were there. I’m surprised he counterattacked me at all. The smart move would have been to teleport out.”
"He acted like he didn't know you were there," Argon said to me. "Until the end, he just thought he was facing me."
My mass dispel blast coming from an unexpected location had overwhelmed his defenses and disrupted his planned actions. Then he died.
“The blow to my head hurt, but I didn't realize it was serious. I should have checked the damage and healed it before passing out,” she said.
None of us felt the need to comment further on that.
Discussions turned to Findot. Argon's apprentice was continuing to
create havoc. She arrived at the first slave camp and put herself in charge. Her assignment from Argon was to visit all nine camps, reassure them help was coming, assess their immediate needs, determine how long they could go without further aid, and then report back. Nothing was said about taking over or running a camp.
Tobron thought this was very funny.
Argon glared at him, but he was not affected.
"By the time I had that situation untangled, we had to rush through the remaining camps,” said Argon. “All the camps are miserable but reasonably safe. Each camp has coalesced around one or two leaders. I told them we'd transport one leader from each camp to Augun to discuss their options and needs tomorrow afternoon."
She'd warned Olive and Ramda about the meeting. Argon requested someone from the Augun King's Guard and a king's representative to attend.
Argon had relayed our offer of sanctuary in our new keep and told them King Rufix was recruiting for new king's guard.
She told them the king's guard was still chasing down a few stragglers from the raid on Flom. All the known raiders who had sacked and burned settlements around Flom and Asme had been executed.
Argon told the ex-slaves we would help any who remained at the camps to find transportation to Flom or Asme within a few days and if desired to Augun as soon as the river traffic resumed. She had emphasized the offer of transportation was not contingent on them joining either our keep or the king's guard.
We all agreed this was a reasonable approach.
“If we only get a few people interested in joining us we can teleport them straight to Klee headquarters once we have quarters for them. They can stay there until we start populating the keep,” I said.
“I can work with that,” said Tobron. “It is a shift but not drastic. I need to get the quarters ready anyway. It might even be a better solution. Klee still has plenty of food and other goods in the markets so I won’t have shortages to deal with.”
With that decided, Tobron became distracted. I could tell he was already redesigning our headquarters.
Inoa glanced knowingly at her mate and announced she had several days off work.
“I’m joining you for the first trip to our keep,” Inoa announced. “I can’t miss that after hearing about it from Tobron for 50 years.”
“You’ll see I didn’t exaggerate,” Tobron promised. “Why don’t we all meet at HQ after breakfast tomorrow and set the new wards. We can then leave for the keep.”
“You need to finalize the deal for the keep with the chamberlain,” said Inoa. “King Ruton gave him instructions to cooperate with us and wrap the deal up quickly. Let’s strike before something changes. I was there when the king said he considered the keep ours. He also said we could take possession of it whenever we wanted.”
“Some friends told me the chamberlain balked about just handing it over,” said Tobron. “I heard he was pushing for us to pay a lot of treasure to take possession of it.”
“He did, but that didn’t last long,” said Inoa. “The king told him he had no intention of giving us any excuse to set up our keep in Augun instead.”
We had a few toasts with graal, forcing Tobron to fetch another flask
What a relief. We'd have to finalize the deal, but we'd cleared the first hurdle.
◆◆◆
Chapter 8
Cleon and Alba arrived for dinner just as our business meeting was wrapping up. We had time for another glass of graal and never lacked for conversational topics.
Argon and I were happy to see Cleon and Alba on a social basis. We'd become fast friends during the past weeks through too many shared ordeals. I had fought at Cleon's side against raider scum after Argon was hurt. And neither Argon nor I would be alive without Alba's intervention.
Okay, Argon loves Alba and totally agrees I'd be dead without her. Argon just doesn't agree she would have died. Go figure.
We had a great dinner together, and a little more graal than I expected. Argon was right, it tasted great, and its delicate intoxication buoyed the experience of getting together with friends.
King Ruton ordered Cleon to take a few days off, too. He was hoping for an invitation to see Mad Toffad's Keep with us in the morning. We declared the more, the merrier. Tobron wanted us all to 'port in together.
Alba felt a bit left out until we reminded her we would soon own the place and she could visit later.
Cleon was very jealous of our new armor. I told him if he joined our crew, he could pick out his own set.
Dead silence followed my announcement as everyone, but Argon looked at me. She was looking at Cleon.
"About that," Cleon started.
"Quit dragging this out," Alba interrupted. "We are in. We aren't sure what all you are up to, but we want to be part of it."
Everyone wanted to talk. I sensed while Inoa and Tobron had hoped this was why Cleon wanted to come to dinner, they hadn't been sure until Alba spit it out. The first time we met Cleon and Alba, we planned to invite them to join, but our news about the coup in Augun derailed that plan.
It was time for a group hug, as Inoa began adjusting the partnership zone of our mental shields.
Argon summarized the whole mission for them, only leaving out the name of the goddess and few of our own private speculations.
As expected, details of the prophecy knocked the happy atmosphere on its butt. The four original partners tried to comfort our new partners, while Cleon and Alba clung to each other.
"We knew it had to be something bigger than you guys wanting to start a keep," offered Cleon. "But we didn't know it was this big. Or, this bad."
"Who knows?" Alba asked.
"Just us, the god who recruited us, some unknown bad guys, and whoever else has heard the prophecy," I said. "Our patron god says everyone agrees some kind of end-of-the-world event is coming. They just don't know when it will happen or what it will look like. The consensus is it will impact the current generation. Our patron is aware other more powerful gods are working behind the scenes, but each is operating independently. And, no one is sharing. Our patron is hoping some of the gods will begin coordinating and cooperating as the event nears. So far that hasn't happened."
Apparently, that information did not help.
"I cried for a whole day when I heard," Inoa offered. "While that was cathartic, Tobron had a much better reaction. He threw himself into getting this enterprise going. I suggest we all follow his example."
"We've already made so much more progress than I ever imagined," Tobron offered. "We have our keep and some likely recruits. Still, a long way to go, but I now think we have a slim chance. You don't know how much hope that gives me. In the beginning, I didn't think we had any chance."
Inoa said she intended to remain on King Ruton's staff in the short term. She assured us if she ever felt a significant conflict between the two duties; she'd resign from Klee service immediately. She hoped the Klee ruler and our keep would remain close allies. She thought that would be better in the long run.
She urged Cleon toward a similar accommodation at least in the short term. No one expected Alba to leave her hospital in the lurch.
Cleon was troubled with how to juggle his oath to King Ruton with his duties with us. Inoa advised he should see this as a duty to his family. He lived with that balance every day. We could feel the relief wash over him as he looked at his mom and dad. "You are right, this is about family. I'd resign in a heartbeat if my oath to Klee conflicted with my duty to my family," Cleon said.
This also made it easy to come clean with his king. Cleon would tell Ruton he'd agreed to help his father get this new keep started. He'd offer to resign if the king thought it was an unacceptable conflict of interest. This way he'd do the honorable thing by telling the king of a potential conflict. He’d let the king decide whether his value to Klee was sufficient to keep him.
Inoa told him to be prepared for the king not to care. King Ruton knew an important asset when he had one.
"King Ruton is
a smart man," Inoa said. "I expect him to approach us in the coming months and ask for our help preparing his entire kingdom for whatever we are getting ready for. I think it might be a contest whether he or King Rufix approaches us first."
I hoped she was right.
Cleon, Alba, Inoa, and Tobron agreed to begin recruiting their entire extended families into the project. There was an emphatic "no" when I asked whether they intended to share the prophecy with them. Cleon and Alba pledged to keep the dire prophecy our big secret for now.