Arrowmask: Godkillers of the Shrouded Vast

by John Ruch

  “Where is Nomen Convent!” she asked politely, startling Alfie so badly he chipped the crystal’s top while shrieking, “Mighty marmalade!”

  After Alfie made some more sounds like a horse that had stuck its nose in a dusty feedbag, he focused his watery eyes on her.

  “What’s that, my little whippet? Nomen Convent, you say?”

  She nodded firmly.

  “Can’t say as I’ve heard of it. However…” He paused to set down his tools, grip his lapels, and clear his throat. “Nomen is the Old Imperial word meaning ‘name,’ specifically the name referring to the gens, or tribal lineage. By extension, it came to mean anything dealing with one’s reputation, such as titles, accusations, and debts. Hence the now-obsolete term nomisma, meaning a coin. In the realm of magica, there is an entire obscure art, long lost, called Nominatum. Said to affect how others perceive one’s speech, posture, and the general cut of their jib. Some authorities claim it granted power to lord over any living thing by knowing its true name.”

  So basically, the name of the convent means Name Convent! That sounds totally crazy! Mieux thought. Plus she did not see any coins or magica when she further studied the picture of the bare-bottomed priestess. I will go see this play later and learn all about it, she decided, sticking her tongue out between firmly pressed lips as she carefully circled the play’s listing with her pencil.

  “Any other subject upon which I can shed light, despite being a devotee of Night?” Alfie asked, chortling at his own joke.

  Mieux looked over her shoulder again and blinked several times as she considered.

  “Does hitting that rock with the little hammer make you even more of a Stone Master!” she demanded.

  “Well, certainly can’t make me less of one, eh! No direct spellcalling info to glom on, but the more one knows about crystal lattice, the better one can turn theory into application.” He picked up the pink crystal and knocked it lightly on his temple, as if all of its secrets would leak into his brain, and then held it up to the light. It looked kind of like cherry-flavor rock candy.

  As Alfie launched into a long explanation of the crystal’s “resonant properties,” Mieux drew a packet of butter cookies wrapped in wax paper from her cloak. She unfolded the paper, plucked the top cookie from the stack, and nibbled it with it infinite care. She slowly closed her eyes until they sealed in pleasure as the buttery sweetness filled her mouth. When the crunching was over, so was Alfie’s speech, and she suddenly remembered Pesh was home also.

  “Thank you for that great information!” she cried graciously as she sprang up, the packet of cookies in hand, and trotted as fast she could to find Rinka’s pet bard.

  Pesh was not far away, just working with mouse-quietness in a side parlor, sitting on the floor with her legs tucked beneath her and trimming a strange red-leafed plant that did not need sunlight. She wore a short skirt and a bra-like top that clung to her curves, as well as open-toed heels and a wide leather collar—all the same bright blue color that offset the coppery tone of her skin. She was Weàlae just like Alfie, but he came from a place where everyone was called “Blue Weàlae” even though they were the color of a candle or the fatty part of a pork chop. Pesh’s family was “Green Weàlae,” meaning the people talked like Alfie, but they lived in the warm southeast of the Empire. But even though they were called Green they were not green at all! Instead everyone was coppery or like fancy wood or maybe a bottle of rum. The language here was super hard to figure out for this and many other reasons, even harder than solving a rope puzzle back home.

  Pesh was very shy, and Ashton Arrowmask and Alfie did not know how to talk to her, so they left her alone. But Mieux had learned that even shy people would talk if you just trapped them in a corner and asked a bunch of questions! It was easy!

  Mieux hurled herself to the floor and pressed tightly against Pesh, staring into her face. The bard flinched and stiffened, but then relaxed. She smiled faintly and looked away with her dark eyes. Her hair was black just like Mieux’s, but long and crinkly instead, and she hid her face with it.

  “Hi, Emi,” she said quietly, looking down as if the floor was her chatting companion.

  Pesh was the only person in all of Cor Cordum who ever called Mieux by a nickname, and it made her cheeks burn and her voice giggle. She could not believe she had so many friends after having none at all for a long time.

  “Do you want a yummy butter cookie!” she cried, holding the packet in both hands and thrusting it under Pesh’s nose.

  Pesh’s smile was visible beneath the curtain of hair. “Sure.” She took a cookie gingerly and gave it a small bite.

  “Noooooooo!” Mieux cried in alarm. “You must eat the corners first! It tastes better that way!”

  “Alright,” Pesh said with another smile, dutifully biting at the corners. “Have you ever thought of being a dominatrix?” she asked lightly.

  So silly! She must have sung Cap’n Trent’s songs one too many times! Mieux thought at she blinked slowly. “No! Hitting people on the rear end is Rinka’s job! I am an equilibrique and that keeps me plenty busy!”

  Pesh laughed quietly and gave Mieux a hug. Mieux smiled back and laid her head on the bard’s soft shoulder. She had never had anyone to share a cookie with before and it made her happy that it went so well. She blinked up at the bard. No one knew Rinka better than Pesh, and Mieux felt questions filling her chest up again.

  “I don’t know about Rinka,” she confided. “She is my friend, one of the only ones I ever had. Also she fed me quail meat once. But she acts totally crazy half the time!” She paused to screw up her mouth and think in Corcorid numbers. “That means she is half-crazy!”

  Pesh gave Mieux a small squeeze. “Well, it kind of goes with the territory.”

  “I don’t know this territory and it must not have a map!” Mieux objected, her brow knitting. “You have agreed to be her slave and do everything she says, but you don’t act crazy at all! Well, except for singing of those songs by Cap’n Trent, who also makes manticore jerky that tastes terrible. Other than that, you put everything in her house in order so it is the opposite of crazy!”

  “That’s right. Miss Rinka gives me order, structure, discipline. She makes all the big decisions for me. I can’t tell you what a relief it is. Maybe your tasha was something like that.”

  Mieux nodded, but warily. Pesh was the only person who could remember correctly what the Sénche-tasha is. But there was no way Rinka would ever be a master there! Just for starters, you could not swear or stab people who made you mad! Plus Rinka even fought the equilibrique one time!

  “Miss Rinka is a very complicated person, with many moods and experiences. Most mistresses are like that. She gives orders not because she is very disciplined herself, but exactly because she is not. It’s a way for her to find some order in her own chaos, and then use me to create it. Does that make sense?”

  Mieux’s eyes widened. “My stars and garters! Even though your aura needs some fixing up, you speak with a bunch of wisdom!” She rubbed her cheek on the bard’s shoulder. “Still, I’m frightened for Rinka sometimes. She keeps secrets and when she gets upset she cuts the skin off of people’s hands!”

  “I won’t lie, Emi. Miss Rinka is a warrior. She has some sharp edges and she can be very dangerous, even to her friends, if they push her too hard. Trust is the hardest thing in the world for her. Give her time and space.”

  Mieux was not as sure this part was such good advice. She pondered silently for a while, then said, “I wish you were coming on the wagon ride also.”

  “I do, too, and I will worry about you all. But Miss Rinka is right. I will be safer here, even though I’ll miss her attention.” She paused a moment to rest her chin atop Mieux’s head. “Do you have your little comb? I’ll brush your hair.”

  Mieux produced the bone comb and leaned in as Pesh went to work, remarking on how straight and glossy her hair was. Its teeth felt wonderful as they scritched at her scalp.

  “You’r
e not wrong about Cap’n Trent’s songs,” Pesh confided quietly. That made Mieux giggle.

  “There is much I don’t understand,” Mieux chattered. “Like when Rinka told me you’re her slave and I said she should probably be hanged on Redwave Reef for enslavement! She thought that was totally funny and said it is different, but I don’t know.”

  “‘Pet’ might be a better a term, but when we do say ‘slave,’ the meaning is different, yes,” said Pesh with a smiley-sounding voice. “I chose to give up some of my freedom, and that is all the difference. I did not give my humanity or my rights, and I can leave at any time.” She thought for a moment as she worked on a tangle. “Think of it as the difference between giving someone a large gift of coin, or having someone rob you of it.”

  “So this slavery is like being married!”

  Pesh laughed her light laugh. “I suppose there are a lot of similarities. You know, Miss Rinka must find you to be a good friend if she let you say that about Redwave Reef. Without breaking any furniture or getting the rosewood paddle out.”

  Mieux was not sure Justina the Pirate Queen would totally agree, but she had learned a lot today, including that Pesh could leave without cutting off Rinka’s head, plus also that Rinka might really be her best friend. She nestled back against Pesh’s knees.

  “What about you, Emi?” Pesh asked. “No lover you have to leave behind? A cute girl like you?”

  Mieux’s moon cheeks burned again. “I did not even have friends until a couple of weeks ago! I went to see plays all by myself! I do not have any lovers here. Probably there is something wrong with me.” She looked down at her slippers.

  “Oh, come on, there must have been someone at the tasha, at least?”

  “Oh, at the Sénche-tasha all of the girls slept together and kissed all the time, over and over!” Mieux cried, tossing out her arms, her voice echoing in the marble halls. She heard Alfie “ahem” loudly and the bathroom door open as Ashton Arrowmask poked his head out. “But that is not the same! Everyone there is squeezed together for some years and then they all blow to the eight winds like seed pods of a giant milkweed!”

  Pesh pursed her smiling lips quietly a moment. Probably she does not know what a milkweed is, Mieux thought, and, inhaling deeply, prepared to enlighten her. But then Pesh spoke again while continuing her combing.

  “I suppose that at the tasha, they taught you mostly about philosophy and juggling and combat, and not so much about making friends or finding lovers. In the outside world, anyway.”

  Mieux felt her spine tingle with the unusual sensation of her thoughts being accurately translated. “Yes!” she cried. “Most equilibrique never complete even five of the Trials, so they will never wander the world at all! Only the Purple Robe equilibrique like me do!” She turned her head to look at Pesh, the little comb snagging in her hair. “You are super good at guessing! Remind me to never play Twenty Interrogations with you, that is for sure!”

  The triple clack of the front-door locks brought Pesh to attention like a reveille. She returned the comb to Mieux and trotted off to the entryway. Mieux followed closely, clutching the hem of the bard’s skirt.

  Rinka stood in the parlor, her naked-person armor with the baby drakes gleaming, holding the vase of violets in her hand.

  “My, aren’t you a cute little couple?” she purred. She tossed the flowers into the fireplace and handed the vase to Pesh. “Clean out my thousand-year-old artifact before it’s ruined by my secret admirer’s bouquet juice. Then meet me in the bedroom.”

  Mieux looked up at Rinka and clutched her belt loop instead as Pesh clattered away. Rinka looked super beautiful as usual, but looking straight up, Mieux could see some red lining the inside of her nose. Mieux flared her own nostrils and sniffed the odor of blood.

  “You have a bloody nose!” she cried.

  Rinka flicked her eyes down with amusement. “Yeah. I banged my face into the one person in this city who doesn’t want to fuck me. I’ll live.”

  She strode across the room, nodding at Alfie. “Those toys getting your rocks off?”

  “What’s that you say? Joy in getting a rock soft? Oh, no, no, it’s quite hard indeed. Resonant crystal, in fact.”

  Rinka rolled her eyes and kept strolling as Mieux trotted alongside, all the way to her bedroom door. She stopped and carefully dislodged Mieux’s hand. Mieux gripped two of her fingers instead. Rinka used to slap her hand for that, but this time she let her cling.

  “I learned from Pesh that you don’t buy slaves and whip them to death, so I’m sorry for saying you might be hanged on a reef!” Mieux cried, feeling sudden desperation over the way words so often came into her ears or out of her mouth all messed up.

  “I’ve been accused, tried, and convicted of worse,” Rinka said with a smile that made Mieux’s belly grow warm. “Now give my fingers back. I may not be selling Pesh to the galleys, but I’ll still need them for what she and I are about to do in here. I’ll spend some time with you later.”

  Mieux nodded and watched as Rinka opened the bedroom door. Her insides quivered like when the master told her about the very first Trial.

  “You’re one of my first friends ever!” she blurted.

  Rinka paused with her hand on the knob. “That might just make two of us,” she said with a charming flash of her eyes. The door patted closed behind her.

  Mieux looked at the door with its blank expression. She thought about how Rinka’s nose was bloody inside but looked perfect on the outside. She wondered if that was a description of Rinka’s whole life.

  She pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling.

  Squatting on one knee, Rinka gripped the headboard and rode Pesh’s face. She closed her eyes and pictured Elsbeth Steeleye with her brutish muscles and savage rage lurking behind that cut-up face. How fucking good it felt to hit her, and to be hit by her. How her bloodied lips would shine with juice after Rinka finally got her down on the ground and used her like this. She tugged her own nipples and came the way she did everything else—violently.

  As she lay stretched out and sweat-bejeweled afterward, Pesh began ministering to her with fluttery kisses on her mound. Such a good girl, Pesh. She knows that when I’m this worked up, one orgasm isn’t going to cut it. She reached down to idly stroke the girl’s hair as a lump of hetbane dissolved on her tongue.

  “What did you and Mieux get up to today, hmmm?”

  “She told me something about life in her temple. And she ordered me to eat cookies according to a very specific ritual. I think Emi would make a good dominatrix.”

  Rinka had to laugh at that one. “Don’t give her any ideas. She’ll put me out of business.”

  But it wasn’t so fucking funny, was it? Mieux really was a bully and a pest, a clingy momma’s girl constantly barging in and grabbing and shouting her idiot questions. A shrimpy cunt-tease who would crawl onto Rinka’s bed and then play innocent as a five-year-old when she got offered the hottest lay in town. A flat-chested fawn who flashed those giant eyes the way talented strippers flashed other parts, with the same mind-melting intent. Worst of all, it worked. Every time Rinka should have been pinching and slapping those chubby cheeks until all the damnable cuteness washed away in hot tears, she ended up patting them instead and feeding the little bitch half of her own supper. What the fuck.

  On top of it, the girl was an equilibrique. Undoubtedly she really could read auras and probably many other nosey things she didn’t talk about. She constantly looked at Rinka the way a master thief looked at a bank vault door. There was no way some twenty-year-old brat, equilibrique or not, was ready to handle what she might find inside. But it was the nature of kids to never stop.

  “What does the little twat want from me? Why does a temple schoolgirl like me, of all people, so much?” Rinka asked herself. “Does she think she’ll fix me like a broken toy, clean me up enough to be an equilibrique-worthy best friend? Is she trying to worm out enough secrets to blackmail me into babying her even more?”
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br />   Admittedly, as she lay here with Pesh lapping at her clit and the hetbane swirling in her blood, the thought of cuddling Mieux and getting kisses from those plush lips made her nipples buzz. Blackmail could be a two-way street. Corrupting an equilibrique could be a lot of fun.

  But what then? Orgasms could be had quick and cheap. Overpaying for them made no sense—not that she’d tell patrons of the Incendium as much. Emotional entanglements were the highest price of all, investments that never paid off. No matter how fervent their licking, no matter how loudly they promised eternal friendship, people always left. Some had walked out on their own, crying or laughing or bitching. Some had left her to die in a ditch or dungeon; she’d left some that way, too.

  Then there was the one who not only left her, but left her this way.

  She examined a glittering fingernail broken in the duel with Elsbeth and casually sliced its jagged edge through the thin skin on the back of her hand. She coolly watched the blood patter on the coverlet as the wound stitched itself closed, scabbed over, and vanished.

  That’s what Little Miss Innocent doesn’t know. Even if she somehow made me a well-adjusted dumbass who cares about temple morals and how many shallow friends I can collect, she’s still gone in the blink of an eye. She ages, withers, dies, leaves me sitting here in my perfection. Like autumn grass around a cemetery’s oldest tree.

  She cast her gaze between her open thighs to Pesh’s bobbing face. Some nameless emotion curled inside her like a love letter in a fire. She twisted the slave’s hair in her fingers and forced the lapping mouth harder against her.

  “Do you like your life as a little whore?” Rinka sneered, rolling her hips. “Sticking your tongue up a cunt so you have a place to live? Are you happy your life turned out this way? Don’t you want to leave me?”

  Pesh gave a rote little shake of the head as if they were in some some wanker play at the Fleshopticon. I’m not fucking playing tonight.

  Rinka sprang to her feet, yanking Pesh off the bed by her hair and forcing her to her knees. She delivered two sharp slaps to the bard’s left cheek before forcing her mouth back to work.