Powder And Shot

by Dragon Cobolt

  To be fair…

  Liam, though, wasn’t looking interested in getting his monster of a cock out and into her. A shame. But the spymaster that lurked, sleeping with half an eye open underneath Fizit’s limp pleasure was happy to see Liam thinking. He rubbed his chin with his thumb and shook his head.

  “They have a point,” he said.

  That jerked Fizit upright and provoked such shock from Meg that her hand closed tight enough against Fizit’s breast that it provoked a squeak of pain from the lizardwoman.

  Liam held up his hands. “Hear me out. Brax’s army occupied this city and enslaved its people – they used Babylon to make the weapons they would then use to try and conquer-”

  “Under duress!” Fizit said, squirming out of Meg’s grip to stand. Her knees quivered as she clenched her hands. “Liam, if we hadn’t done it, Sysminor would have turned our bones into radium and ripped our hearts out! You know what he could do with the Codex.” The words were familiar on her tongue. She had said them to herself, a lot, while laying in bed at night, wondering how she had gotten here. She had hissed them to a furious Liv and a coldly distant Tethis.

  “Which he didn’t have until your men found it for him,” Liam pointed out, drawing her focus back to the present.

  “Fine, but even without it, he was still a god,” Fizit said. At Meg’s glare, she coughed. “Of a sorts.”

  Liam leaned over his desk and clasped his hands. “That’s not entirely an excuse. ‘I was just following orders’ doesn’t excuse atrocities. Or crimes against humanity.”

  “Well, humans and lilin and elves and-” Meg started.

  “Crimes against sentients, then,” Liam said, his voice holding a tiny edge of annoyance. Meg, seeming to realize that her light tone hadn’t been taken well, flushed and closed her wings behind her back. “Mass executions, crucifixions...”

  Fizit felt every last bit of her good mood drain out of her. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “Fine. But if we start down that road, how long before you have me on trial?”

  Liam flinched as if he had been slapped. He put his hands over his face and leaned back in his seat. The wood groaned. “You’re the mother of my child,” he muttered, his voice soft. “But...”

  “But?” Fizit felt her belly growing colder. When she had first become Liam’s spymaster, she had made plans. Schemes. Ways to get out, if things went bad. She hadn’t been sure how they might, but there had always been reason enough to scheme. Now, the idea of bringing those plans out of storage filled her with dread.

  Liam groaned. “Fuck. Why are things so complicated?” He dragged his hands off his face, leaving furrows where his fingers pressed to his skin. He groaned again. “Remember the good old days, when I was just an adventurer, fighting monsters?”

  “Most of the time, you were homesick, terrified, or worrying about if banging the baker was cheating on me,” Meg said, grinning with playful maliciousness.

  “Oh, right,” Liam said, chuckling. “Thanks for reminding me, Meg, life was always shitty.”

  “You’re welcome, honey!” Meg said, her voice so full of sugary sweetness that Fizit had to laugh. She felt some of her tension uncoil further as Meg continued: “You’re also feeling grim because you haven’t had dinner. Come on. Let’s go eat something slightly more appetizing than Fizit’s pussy.”

  Liam smiled. “Can we still have Fizit's pussy for appetizers?”

  Meg pursed her lips. Cocked her head. Considered. Then she closed her wings around her back and nodded, as solemn as a queen accepting an invitation to dance.

  ***

  Dinner was delicious. With the new farms and the slow recovery of trade – not to mention the mixing of several cultures across Purgatory – the meals were fresh and always surprising. Liam wasn’t entirely sure what went into the sugar crystals and seared meat that he was eating, but it tasted divine. Fizit sat across from him. Meg next to him. Brax was next to Fizit, while little Marion was tucked under Fizit’s arm, her mouth fastened to Fizit’s nipple. She slurped and sucked happily – and Fizit looked faintly amused.

  Liam chewed on his bite of steak and noticed Meg pouting at Fizit.

  “It’s not fair. Lizards aren’t even mammals...” she muttered enviously as she looked at Fizit's mammaries.

  “I hatched from an egg!” Brax said, cheerfully.

  “No, you didn’t,” Meg said, snickering.

  “Sure I did, Mom Meg,” Brax said, then grinned up at her, his tail whipping back and forth .”That’s why my head’s so hard! The tutor said so!”

  Meg scowled. “Did he now?”

  “Were you not doing your work, kiddo?” Liam asked, sticking his fork into his meal and letting it rest there. Brax blushed, then looked back at his plate.

  “Yeah...” he said. Meaning, of course, no.

  Liam reached over and tousled his son’s hair. His son. It still didn’t feel real. And yet, he couldn’t imagine a life without him, or Marion. He looked down at his plate as a dark snake writhed through his mind and sank its fangs into his heart. If they vanished, it wouldn’t change much, would it? He sighed. He saw his son and his daughter at the beginning of the day and near the end. The rest of the time, they were with tutors and wet nurses. Fizit had a bit of milk left from the short time she had spent nursing Brax. Apparently, lizardfolk had litters of kids... usually. But that didn’t mean that she was free to feed Marion whenever required.

  As if she could read her mind, Fizit looked at the door, her hand cradling Marion’s head. “Is Liv going to come by?” She spoke the words as if they were required – not as if she actually believed them.

  “Or Tethis?” Meg asked. She also sounded resigned.

  The dark snake had gone from fangs to constricting his heart. Liam forced the feeling down, then set his fork to the tabletop. He grinned and said: “Well, no. Liv’s practicing her swordwork and I think Tethis is still, uh, working on the healing spells. The new ones.”

  The awkward moment slipped past and the other started to eat. But Fizit caught Liam’s eye. Liam shrugged one shoulder, as if to say: Well, what can we do?

  Fizit, as part of her job as the spymaster for Sysminor, had needed to do her job well. Like it or not, it had been her only choice. She hadn’t even felt particularly guilty at the time, paying men to assassinate Tethis. She had said so, once, when Liam had asked. But now? Liam wasn’t sure how she felt. And he wasn’t brave enough to ask. But Tethis had made it clear what she had thought. She had never visited the manor once, not while Fizit had been there. Every time Fizit left for business, Tethis had come by. And as Fizit was a spymaster, not an actual agent, that happened once in a blue moon.

  Hell, Liam hadn’t even touched Tethis in what felt like a year. Tethis. The first person he had met on Purgatory after Meg who hadn’t been trying to kill him. One of his oldest lovers. He had been overjoyed when she had survived her assassination. But just as he had gotten her back, he had lost her again.

  Liam felt the discord like a splinter in the brain – but one that he didn’t know how to remove. But as he looked at the empty space in the table it made him think about the empty space in his home and the empty space in his heart... and the empty space in his city.

  “Anubis,” Liam said, breaking into Meg’s conversation.

  “Well, no, I don’t think we can have Anubis for breakfast...” Meg said, making Brax gasp and start to look excited at the idea.

  “No, no,” Liam said, grinning. “I know how to kill two birds with one stone.” He leaned forward. “But it may require a bit of a trip. And, fortunately, the trip’s one we need to take anyway.”

  Meg perked up, and Brax’s eyes shone with excitement.

  “No, you can’t come.”

  Brax pouted.

  Two

  Sea spray spilled over the nose of the Morrigan’s Kiss and washed across the deck. Foam and warm water alike sluiced past the toes of bare-footed sailors – burly humans, scarred lizardmen, a single elf who l
ooked as if she could still barely believe that she was there, and a few goblins hurried about the deck. They tended to the wild profusion of cables and lines that connected to the sails, keeping them in position to catch the endless trade winds that rushed across the face of the Platonic Sea.

  Kailey loved it. She held the wheel of her ship and felt her thrumming through the waves. Every plank felt like it was in alignment, and the new way of rigging the sails seemed to catch the wind better than the last. And there wasn’t a single crew on the oars, which were stacked in the hold. Hopefully never to be used again. Her hands squeezed the wheel tighter as she closed her eyes to thin slits.

  She felt, for the moment, like a bird on the wing. A hunting bird.

  A sharp bang came from behind her. Kailey opened her eyes, then looked back over her shoulder at the forecastle. Smoke roiled from the cabin that she shared with Quinn.

  “You alive back that, Q?”

  “Yes!” Quinn’s slightly dazed voice came from the doorway.

  “Is anything on fire?”

  The delay was just long enough to make Kailey nervous. “No!”

  Kailey nodded again and then looked forward, port, starboard, and up. The Platonic Sea cupped her ship like a palm filled with water, with dry land providing the horizon and the skies. The sea itself made it easy to see any ships that were far enough away to clear the waves and the mist, but those that had fallen above the horizon could be easily seen. Especially if they were built with low hulls. She had noted several ships that might have been near, but most of them had moved in convoy and had the sleek, broad tipped look of warships.

  And the Kiss didn’t go after warships.

  Thaddious – a broad shouldered human whose face had met a trident at some point in his violent life – hurried over to her. His puckered cheek and split lip and missing eye made his grin extra horrific. He looked down at her, as he topped her by at least three feet, and put his hands on his hips.

  “Captain, we hear a song coming from distance – sounds like Hellenes.”

  Kailey leaned slowly back, letting herself hang from wheel. Her eyes half closed and she felt the spark of power that crackled in her breast. She caressed it with her mind, feeling the thundering excitement. The power she had been born with was urgent, desperately eager to be used. Kailey held it on a taut leash. She had never wanted to be her mother’s puppet. And that was what happened to those who became too dependent on the gods.

  They became puppets.

  She opened her eyes and saw that a spectral raven was now seated on the ship’s wheel. Crackling blue claws dug into the wood and a beak as sharp as a sword gleamed, pitiless black eyes set in feathers made of pure energy glared at her. Kailey gestured with one hand, a tossing motion, and felt her view snap from herself to the raven. She laughed a harsh, crowing laugh as Thaddious looped an arm around her shoulders to keep her from falling flat on the deck.

  She looked like a child in his arms – a child in size, if not in proportion. And no human child had ever had green skin. But Kailey preferred not to look at herself when she was in the raven. The call of the sky was too strong. She beat her wings, caught the thermals that rose from the Platonic Sea, and soared upwards in a spiraling arc. She looked outwards and upwards, craning her head around. There was the sun, there were the tiny black specks of the thrice damned Watch Stations that made attacking any Babylonian ship nothing more than a slow motion suicide.

  And there was the ship that they had heard. Hidden by the curve of the waves and its own low deck, it looked like it was in trouble. One mast had broken, the wild tangle of canvas and ropes making it clear that the sail design they had tried had either failed spectacularly, or the captain hadn’t managed to get them reefed before the blow last night. Either way, she could see the crew were all humans and they were working hard to try and correct their course. The ship rode low in the water, though. Low enough to make her think…

  Treasure.

  Kailey risked it. She beat her wings and shot towards the ship. She soared over the deck fast enough to catch the sounds of the voices – translating the Greek as easily as she could breathe.

  “Get the wreckage cleared! God commanded us, we shall not fail him!”

  “Amen!”

  Ah, she thought. One of them.

  Her wings beat and sculled and she came around into a dive. She slammed into her own body and her eyes opened – the transition from large raven to only slightly larger gobliness as natural one way as the other. Thaddious had set her down carefully, and Quinn had joined him. Quinn was, in many ways, her opposite. She was the stereotypical goblin, always streaked with alchemical oozes or gunpowder or bits of oil and grease from the tinkering she got up too. Her hair had gone sheet-white during her failed attempt to ascend the ladder of hermetic magic in the university of Brigid, and she had never dyed it. Kailey wasn’t sure if that was because she had simply never had the time, or if she had utterly forgotten her hair was unusual.

  “Kay?” she asked.

  “There’s a ship!” Kailey dragged herself to her feet. “Men! Ready weapons! Quinn, are you ready for some plunder?”

  Quinn frowned and considered. “Well, no. Not really.”

  Kailey made a face at her.

  “I mean... yes?” Quinn said, then flushed. “I mean, very yes! I love plunder! I am a pirate who likes... plunder...” She trailed off, her forced grin growing more strained with every moment.

  Kailey chuckled and shook her head. She reached out and cupped Quinn’s cheek. “Nice try, love. But I’ll need your magic for this – it’s a Monodeist ship.”

  “Ares?” That did perk up Quinn. “Oh, I’ve heard stories! Let me get my notes!”

  She turned and rushed off.

  As she rushed, Thaddious glowered after her. “What do you see in her, captain?”

  “I have no idea,” Kailey murmured, her eyes settled on the firm, heart-shaped rear jiggling and bouncing away from them.

  Thaddious grumbled. “You can find that in any tavern.”

  “Oh, are whores regularly educated in the first three circles of hermetic magic and have a passing knowledge of alchemy now?” Kailey asked, her voice acid-sweet. Thaddious had served long enough to recognize that tone and so he did the smartest thing that a first mate could do. He bowed, then turned and started bellowing orders at the crew.

  Within a short time, the Kiss was cresting the wave and barreling towards the crippled Hellenic ship.

  As they approached, the sails belling and crackling against the wind, Kailey breathed in, centered herself, and tried to use the methods that Quinn had taught her. Magic required a specific set of gestures and words, a kind of focus, one that told the power that filled Purgatory to do as you wished, rather than what it wanted. It could knit bones and bring down thunderous lightning. It could even snatch someone from one place to another – though that required a shrine built by the Ancients for that purpose. For those with a foci (something built by the Ancients) it could be done easier.

  Kailey never could cast. The magic of the Ancients turned up its nose to the New Gods and to their children, as both had been banished to Purgatory to get them out of the hair of the Christian church. According to legend, they had been too feared on Earth, and so had been bundled off to this enclosed sphere, where they and their human and lilin followers (those who had chosen banishment over conversion) had met and warred with elves, goblinkind and lizardfolk.

  But in the end, lust was sparked almost as much as wrath. Hence why Kailey’s mother was The Morrigan and not some gobliness.

  But The Morrigan’s power could be controlled and refined and enhanced, Quinn had claimed. Meditation and focus had their uses even if the Ancient’s magic would never spring to Kailey’s hands as they did for her lover. She breathed in again, then out again. Her heart beat slower as she felt the power her mother had bequeathed her. She started to push into it, then expand it outwards. In. Out. In. Out.

  Like the tides.

  Li
ke the bellows of a forge.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  The feathers that grew through Quinn’s hair – a natural reflection of her parentage – started to glow in time with her breath.

  The crew saw it and cheered. As they cheered, they threw the grappling hooks. The Hellenic ship had managed to wallow to the side, enough to try and present their ram. But the Kiss was being piloted by one of the best helmsmen on the ship (other than Kailey, of course.) He kept them at a distance as grappling hooks bit into wood and ropes began to strain, dragging the Hellenic ship out of ramming formation.

  “Come on, lads! Pull!”

  From the other ship, a call came: “Ready! Fire!”

  The crackling roar of a half a dozen muskets filled the air.

  “No.”

  The word was a simple one and it came with the last of Kailey’s breath. She had stoked the power within her to its height. It roared like an inferno. The ancient hero Cúchulainn had been... unfortunate. When the riastrad, the warp-spasm, came to him, it came uncontrolled. Unrefined. Untempered by a focused mind. Kailey’s skin did not twist inside out and her bones didn’t burst from her back like red tipped spears. Her blood did boil. Steam exploded from her mouth and her eyes flared like coals in a forge, and her small body did seem to grow almost twice its size. She moved forward, blindingly fast, and drew her sword in a single, twisting motion.

  An explosion of water rose from the horizon that curved upwards behind the Hellenic ship, and the smoke from the muskets exploded away from an invisible line of force that she had cut through the air.

  The crew standing to either side of her gaped as musketballs rained into the ocean – stopped by crashing into the sweep of her blade.

  Kailey grinned, her teeth sharp.

  “R-Re-” the enemy master-at-arms started, before his voice died in a gurgle, his back slamming into the deck. A full ship’s length had separated them, and he looked faintly disbelieving at the bronze blade plunged through his ribs. But as Kailey was the one standing on his chest, she supposed that was proof enough. She stood, leaving behind smoldering foot prints on the deck behind her, steam hissing up from the water spilling over the decks.