by Lucia Ashta
“Are you seriously asking me if I can deal with a dozen oafs in uniform?” Lila’s hands were at her waist, daring me to question her abilities. She was petite and mousy-looking, but the fire that flared to life in her eyes for a few seconds then made her appear as fearsome as a giant, and just as difficult to contend with. A true she-dragon.
I had a healthy respect for she-dragons, and I gave them wide berth whenever possible. “Very well. Go with Kai now. The sooner we make sure no more alerts go out, the sooner we can contain this mess.”
Kai asked, “What about how you and Dolpheus communicate? And you and the princess? Isn’t there a chance they can do the same thing? That they could get their messages out without comms?”
Lila, Dolpheus, Kai, Ilara, and I all turned to study the group of outfitted men a hundred or so horse lengths away from us. Many of them stood looking self-important and pompous with their royal guard insignia emblazoned across their tunics and chests. The others stood around looking bored. Dolpheus hadn’t even bothered to confiscate their swords earlier, realizing they posed no real threat to Dolpheus and me, or even Kai, who seemed more skilled in sword fighting than the average guard.
When one in front of the pack, staring aimlessly at the waves of hills beyond the vale, began to pick his nose, Dolpheus said, “Unless one of them is a very good actor, none of them possess the intelligence or imagination necessary to mind speak without comms.”
“Agreed,” Lila said. “What a bunch of louts. Come on, Kai. Let’s get on with it so we can leave already.”
Lila grabbed Kai—who bristled at first at being manhandled—by the arm and started dragging him along, until he brushed her hand off and walked alongside her.
Kai was as tall as Dolpheus and me, if not a finger-width taller, but he was lanky, lacking the bulk of muscle that filled Dolpheus and me out, making us look more proportional. Kai’s orange-haired head bobbed along, towering above Lila, who was nearly as short as a prepubescent child. But her mousy-brown hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense tail, and everything about her posture proclaimed that she meant to take care of business.
“They’re an unusual pairing,” Ilara observed, and Dolpheus and I chuckled.
“You don’t know how much so,” Dolpheus said. Then, “Do you think they’ll be safe with the guards? I didn’t see the need to disarm them since either you or I were watching them at all times. Kai’s good, but he’s not that good yet. And Lila…” He shrugged. What could we say about Lila? She was fierce, but she was a smallish, unarmed woman untrained in the ways of combat.
“We should’ve disarmed them,” I said.
Dolpheus shrugged again. “I don’t think they’ll do anything, knowing you and I are here. But it’s still a risk.”
I huffed again. I was getting tired of huffing already and the day was just beginning. “I need you here with me. We need to do all these bindings and then figure out our next step.”
“I know.”
“Go. Just go. But try to make fast work of it.”
Dolpheus flashed one of his legendary grins and took off at a run, one hand clamped against each side of his belt to keep his sword and knives from bouncing with his steps.
“Hey Olph,” I called, and he stopped running and turned.
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and do the bindings with them too? So we can be done with all of that with them?”
“Good idea,” he said and was off again.
It was just Ilara and me again. Instantly, I was tempted to lose myself in her again, in the reprieve from the lunacy of the burgeoning day I knew she could offer. She had ways to make me forget anything and everything but her.
Before I could give in to temptation, I took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go get started on the bindings. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish, and they’re lots of villagers to get through. And we still have a mess to unmess that’s far larger than any one person here.”
I started walking toward the villagers, Ilara’s steps in sync with mine. But never had I experienced them as uncertain as they were now.
I pulled the woman, not the potential princess, close to me again. “We’ll get through this. You’ll see.”
“If you say so,” she said.
The Ilara I’d first fallen in love with had never deferred to me like this.
7
We made as quick work of it as we could, but even so, a couple of hours passed before we completed all the bindings and prepared to leave. When Dolpheus got Aletox to do the binding with him and me, I realized the advantage of having the person make the oath to two of us instead of one. Bindings were supposed to be unfailing. But I’d had little need to use them, doing my best never to have secret information ill-meaning people could use against me. All that had changed when Ilara seduced me. By necessity, our love affair had to be clandestine.
Better to overdo things than to underdo them where Ilara’s safety was concerned. So we effectively did double bindings with every single one of the villagers. They repeated the words first to me, then to Ilara, and next I completed the binding by having them stare into my eyes. I’d wanted Ilara to do this step, but she’d resisted, insisting I knew what I was doing better than she did.
I had to move a nagging concern aside. Since Ilara appeared inside the main room of my estate, more or less in my arms, she’d continuously claimed she couldn’t do the many things I was certain she did know how to do. Was this further proof that she wasn’t the princess? Or was it still possible that her time off planet had merely interfered with her memory and idea of herself?
It was possible that her time away from O could have altered her memories. The only people on O that went off planet were the workers of the sand industry, and even then, it was only an elite team of specialists that traveled to Planet Sand to harvest the pure white sand Planet O didn’t have. From what I was aware of, the specialists were isolated both before and after any travel to Planet Sand to allow them time to adjust to the rigors of space travel. Ilara hadn’t had any of that.
The specialists were also aware of what they were doing as they did it. Again, Ilara hadn’t had that advantage. Further, only men and women that exhibited proficiency in off planet travel at the speed necessary to span the great distances between our planet and Sand could be members of the team. They underwent exhaustive tests and precautions.
Ilara lacked all those benefits when I yanked her from Sand into my arms, where I still believed she belonged, no matter which version of the woman she might be.
Ilara wasn’t a meek woman, yet she’d barely spoken a word since she emerged from the hut we shared the night before. I studied her curiously and wondered, until she caught my gaze and held it.
When she offered up the infinite swirl of the cosmos, I didn’t worry about her any longer. I wouldn’t worry about what I’d perceived as meekness. Because this woman I loved contained more power than any other woman I’d had the pleasure to meet. Whether she’d embraced the full scope of it yet or not mattered little.
Even if she wasn’t the princess, she could access the same abilities as the princess. Perhaps it would take time for her to learn how to do these things she claimed she couldn’t. But a woman like her could do anything—eventually.
All this woman before me needed was to believe in herself. Then she’d get there. Then she’d remember how to do everything I believed her capable of, even if she was another version of the princess.
I was ever her champion. If anyone could help her get there, it was me.
“Hey lover boy,” Lila said, interrupting my thoughts.
I glared at her, debating what to say. No one spoke to me like that other than Dolpheus, and with him, it was in jest and in private. I’d have to disabuse Lila of the notion that she could treat me with the disrespect she seemed insistent on showing others. Was this the time for that, though?
Her intelligent yet flat brown eyes and mocking features answered my question for me. Yes. Yes, it wa
s time to set at least this one thing straight.
“I realize our… relationship”—certainly, it wasn’t friendship—“began on… unusual terms, but I expect you to treat me, as well as the rest of us, with the respect we deserve. Just as I intend to treat you with respect.” As much as I didn’t particularly like Lila, she deserved my respect. As a default, I offered everyone my respect until they showed me they didn’t merit it. While Lila hadn’t earned my respect with her crass and uncaring remarks, she’d demonstrated extreme intelligence and usefulness. To a soldier, these demanded respect and caused me to overlook some of her other less desirable character traits.
Lila looked at me peculiarly, seeming surprised that I should bother to ask for what she appeared rarely to give, perhaps debating whether or not I deserved the respect I asked for, something I didn’t often have to ask for. Given my reputation, most Oers erred on the side of caution, giving it to me without question.
“Fine. But if you want me to stop calling you a doddling lover boy, you should stop acting like one. Anyone that looks at you can see you’re ready to chase after that woman like a puppy dog.”
Then she stalked off to join Kai, who was readying the horses, leaving me feeling as if that was a small victory not necessarily won.
“How many times have I told you?” Dolpheus said. “Don’t bother trying to make sense of women, especially not that woman. She’s barely a woman, anyway. More dragon than woman for sure.”
I chortled. “Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. We’ve never seen her without her lab suit. Perhaps it hides scales.”
Dolpheus chuckled again, then his voice softened. “How is she?”
He didn’t have to qualify which she he referred to. The instant we finished binding all the villagers, Ilara walked off on her own. I let her be while I ran off to join Dolpheus and help him with the guards. Perhaps doubling the bindings was an unnecessary precaution, but since I’d done it with the villagers, I’d do it with the Royal Guards, who were certainly more of a danger to us than any of the kindly tribespeople.
In all that time, Ilara kept her distance from the rest of us. Since I could watch her and she was apart from everyone, I allowed it. She was in no greater danger there than she was with this band of corrupt and traitorous guards.
I pondered what to say in response to Dolpheus’ question but ended up with no clear answer. “I don’t know, Olph. I really don’t. She’s worried, thinking she isn’t the princess and that she’s lost to the planet she belongs to. She really doesn’t seem to remember a thing about her life here and that makes her all the more sure she must be the wrong woman. But you know Ilara.”
I hurried along before I could dwell on how he knew Ilara far better than I’d like. “Even with all this uncertainty, she’s strong, even if she doesn’t realize it. She’s determined to do what needs to be done, for her people if for nothing else.”
My volume dropped another notch, even though Dolpheus and I stood apart from anyone who could overhear us. The guards were alone on the hill, the villagers dispersing to tend to their daily chores, and Kai, with Lila shadowing him, readying the horses.
“I believe she still loves me, Olph. As much as before.” I watched Ilara, as still as a permanent feature on the landscape, silhouetted in the distance. “And I love her too. If she’s not the princess after all, I’m in a whole stinking heap of trouble.”
“Yeah, you will be. Because the princess won’t take to betrayal well. She’ll lop your balls off, even if none of this is your fault.”
I knew Dolpheus was right, even if it made little sense. Ilara had actually had sex with Dolpheus, multiple times. Yet she’d consider my making love with a woman I’d reasonably mistaken for her a betrayal. Love changed everything. It made everything more intense, deeper, wilder—and infinitely more dangerous, the highs and lows annihilating.
“That’s why I refuse to fall in love, Tan. Love’s more risky than any trip through the Wilds. It can decimate a man more profusely than a spake to the face.”
“I know, man. I felt the same way for a long time, until I met her. There’s no going back for me, not now that I know what it feels like to love, and to be loved by someone like Ilara. It’s maddening, I won’t deny it. But it’s… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s something I never want to do without again. Not if I can help it.”
Dolpheus studied me. Nothing I said came as a surprise. We’d talked about love many times before. It was the one thing we’d steadfastly avoided for centuries, united in our commitment not to let a woman take control of our lives. But he’d seen the changes in me since I learned to love Ilara. I thought that sometimes I even saw a glimmer of hope in him, that he might someday also find a love like the one the princess and I shared, and he just wasn’t ready to admit it.
“Well,” he said, “if you’re determined to hold on to Ilara, whichever one of them you happen to have, then we’d better get to figuring out what the fuck we’re going to do.”
“I know. We have to make a plan of some sort and get moving.”
“I hope you have some kind of idea how to get us out of this mess, because I sure as fuck don’t.”
“I’m sure we can figure it out. We always do.” But I wasn’t so sure. I just knew we’d do what we had to, just as we’d always done.
“Kai,” I called out, “get the horses fully ready to ride. Dolpheus and I need a few minutes to confer and then we’ll set off.”
“You got it,” Kai said.
“Come on, my friend,” I said, a hand to Dolpheus’ shoulder. “Let’s go do our version of faithum.”
“Have no doubt, that’s what it’s going to take to get us out of this. Faithum, and a whole lot of it.”
“Then it’s a very good thing that we don’t believe in limitations.”
“That we don’t. Hell no, we don’t.”
And with that, Dolpheus allowed me to lead him off to the side, where we’d have to come up with some way—any way—to save us all.
8
“So what are our biggest problems?” Dolpheus asked once we were far enough removed from the others that we could speak openly. “Let’s start with those and see if once we finish with the long list of big problems we have any brain power left to resolve the smaller ones.”
“Finding the real princess is a very big problem, obviously. If she’s someone other than this Ilara,” I said, beginning to pace with my hands crossed behind my back, as I’d done every other time Dolpheus and I had to tackle problems with no obvious solutions. “Determining whether this woman is actually the princess or not should be a priority. Our course of action will differ depending on who this Ilara is.”
“True. So how do we do that? How do we go about figuring out if this Ilara is the princess?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“That’s definitely a problem.”
“Aye. A big one. Because if the princess is still off planet, returning her must be our priority. But if she’s just over there on the hilltop, we spare ourselves a lot of trouble.”
“You saw her body free of clothing last night. Did she look the same? You know, underneath everything?”
I paused in my pacing to arch my eyebrows at him. “It was that obvious?”
He smiled. “Of course it was, Tan. Those huts have walls made of a single layer of scura. I’m pretty sure everyone in this vale heard you exploring every part of Ilara’s body.”
The life of a soldier often required living in close quarters without privacy. Knowledge that our lovemaking had been overheard didn’t embarrass me. However, I hadn’t wished to make anyone uncomfortable either. Perhaps they all understood. After all, it’d been more than three extremely long years since I’d gotten to appreciate any bit of Ilara’s body. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone a celebratory reunion if roles were reversed.
I resumed my pacing. “Her body’s identical. Well, except for that she apparently removed a beauty mark while she was on Sand.” I wasn’t about to m
ention that it’d been in the shape of a heart, at the swell of her left breast. I didn’t desire to remind Dolpheus of the times he’d gotten to see her bare body. He’d likely noticed the same beauty mark. “But it’s the same one she used to have. Everything about her looked—and felt—the same.”
“But she behaves differently.”
I looked back at my friend.
“It’s obvious, Tan, even to the rest of us who don’t know her as well as you do. The princess has an abundance of… how should I put this? Perhaps attitude will work, though it’s not precisely the right word. You know what I’m getting at. There’s no one else quite like the princess. She talks, walks, and carries herself in a way I’ve never seen any other person do. She has a certain way about her.”
That she did. And nothing got my blood boiling faster than watching her hips sway, her breasts bounce, and her eyes prepare to devour me as she approached. I was in a constant state of readiness around her, a part of me I’d definitely have to be mindful to turn off while in dangerous situations. In the past, most of my interaction with Ilara had been behind closed doors, where my cock didn’t have to behave. Out here in the open, none of us could afford having me distracted.
Dolpheus continued, “I’ve told you this before. Ilara is likely the most sensual woman who ever lived. Add to that her particular type of attitude, and there’s no one exactly like her. There’s no one that even comes close. At least, none that I’ve had the pleasure to meet.”
He stopped speaking abruptly, mindful not to cross the line that suggested he viewed Ilara in any kind of sexual way. Obviously, he had at one time. We both worked not to bring up the topic, and I already longed for the day when I’d no longer so readily remember how my best friend and lover had shared something I’d since learned to consider sacred.
I was quick to move on. “But this Ilara does have those ways about her. She walks the same way, with the same sway. Her hair’s the exact same shade of darkness, the precise length, at her waist, and it swings to either side with each of her steps. She carries her body and her head in precisely the same way, meeting everyone’s eyes when she considers them.”