by Aaron Crash
Ymir bent and lifted his tankard. He set it on his leather-clad thigh. “Now, Ziziva, you spat in my kaif just this spring. And I told you, Jenny and I don’t do the Amora Xoca. That’s someone else. Toriah Welldeep, I think.”
Ziziva watched with mischievous eyes. When he lifted the tankard, she swept over, stuck her little face next to his, and lapped up some of the beer. She then dove back and landed on the table, wiping her lips. At the same time, she grimaced. “Beer is so beer-y. Give me sweet wine all the time. Almost a rhyme sublime. Very well, you big bully of a barbarian, you tell me how you can afford the schoolie-doolie without the work study, buddy? Hmm? You are getting shecks from somewhere, and though I can’t scry you and your princesses, Toriah included, I do know you’re in the business together. So don’t lie. Liars wake with their throat cut.”
Ymir was fast enough to grab the fairy without her flying away. He had her in his fist.
Her mouth opened in a surprised O.
“Don’t threaten me or my women again. Do you understand me?” He had his hand around her waist and upper legs He felt the warmth of her skin and the little bit of fat on her shapely hips. He didn’t crush her wings.
Ziziva’s O closed, and her lips trembled. Those blue eyes shimmered with tears. “Don’t hurt little Ziziva. I’m just a little fairy. Please, Mr. Ymir, please let me go. It’s just a saying where I come from. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Ymir opened his fingers. He expected her to insult him, or fly at him, or threaten him again. She didn’t. Instead, she stayed on his hand, a far more serious expression on her face. “I forgot the trouble you had with that Siteev-y snake, that bad ol’ Moons professor. No threats. No assassins. No trouble. It’s just...”
Jenny shifted in her chair, watching quietly.
The fairy winced as if she thought she’d be grabbed again. Or struck.
“Sorry, Z,” Jennybelle said softly. “We won’t hurt you, but you have to understand our situation. And the Fayee don’t have a very good reputation when it comes to business or magic. You guys keep it secret.”
“We do.” Ziziva smiled uncertainly at Jenny. “And it’s sweet, you calling me Z, and I’ll call you J, and it will all be okay, okay. It all will be okay.” She sighed. “You know some of my secrets, of a certain Nan nature, and I have my reasons for that, just as the Fayee have reasons for our many, many mysteries. My business is doing well, but it can always do better, and I think we can come up with a dealio. Perhaps not today, but keep me in mind when you are talking profits. Will you do that?”
Ymir wondered at the game this little fairy was playing. She seemed sincere. She felt kind of good in his hand, her body warm, her skin soft.
Ymir furrowed his brow. “Ziziva, this is a change. Perhaps current events have you worried? Are you feeling like a fish out of water?”
The fairy smiled and then waggled a finger at him. “Ymir! Oh, you...Such a wit, and such a handsome face, and aren’t you just as cute as pupa puppies?”
Jenny collapsed into laughter. “I don’t know what pupa puppies are—really, I don’t—but yes, Ymir is cute.”
Ziziva struck his index finger with her tiny hands. “Jennybelle Josen, you know a caterpillar? Well, a pupa puppy is just a doggerpillar, silly!” The fairy beamed. “You get to see Ymir in all sorts of ways, now don’t you? You get to see him coming, and going, you get to see him sweaty and glowing, and you get to his long, thick uhter. Now don’t you?”
“Uhter?” Jenny struggled to keep a straight face.
The fairy leapt from his hand and fluttered down to the table. “An uhter is an outie, and a cooter is an innie, but you know that, J. You know all about outies and innies and the ways of sex, love, and magic. It’s big, isn’t it, though? Ymir’s cock is big. Tell me it is.” The fairy blinked and had the most lascivious grin on her face.
The princess struggled to keep from choking on her beer. “It’s big, Z. Maybe almost too big...at first, anyway. Then, once you get used to it, it touches you in just the right places.”
Ymir shook his head, unamused. “I don’t think we need to talk about my cock, Jenny. Not with this fairy. She might get all sorts of ideas about me. Fairies have magic to seduce you, and they can make you forget all about it.”
The fairy turned on her heel to face him. “Lots of stories about the Fayee, which is how we like it. What to believe? What not to believe? Who can say? But to seduce you? All it would take is for me to take off my little sparkle gown, touch my honeypot, and maybe bend over so you can see my horny little dirt box.”
Ymir felt the lust stir in him. Ziziva might only be a foot tall, but she was beautiful, dangerous, and sexy. There was a magic about her, and those wings on her back, so strange, like dragonfly wings on a fragile little doll. He gazed down, taking in her miniature curves.
Ziziva saw it. She stepped back, casting a glance at Jenny. “You wouldn’t mind that, would you, J? I think you can appreciate a girl’s body. You and Lillee share this big man between the two of you, and yet, I think there’s some sniffing there, and some kissing there, and licking there. Have you licked Lillee like a lollipop?”
Jenny’s nipples hardened through her loose shirt. Her eyes gleamed. “Z, are you trying to start something with us? I think you came here for business but might stay for pleasure. You don’t think that will work, do you?”
The fairy giggled. She shook her hips a little and swayed a little to the music, the thumping drumbeat coming from the Sea Stair Market. The winged woman reached back, untied the top of her dress, and drew it down. Her tiny little breasts came into view, with nice little nipples, picture perfect. She continued to dance, turning and then pushing the dress down over her hips. The material stretched, and Ymir’s eyes went to the dimples on her back, the slope of her butt, the onion shape of her hips. She drew it down over her crack, and kept going, pushing it down.
She bent over, shifted, and let her ass cheeks part.
Ymir could see her, both her tight crinkle and her pink slit, parted by golden pubic hair. And her blue-eyed pixie face was visible between her two legs. She winked at both Ymir and Jenny.
Then she kicked her dress into the air and caught it. Wings whirring, she rose from the table. She giggled some more, which made her tits jiggle. “Oh, you two, looking at little me, and with such thoughts on your faces. I think you’re both thinking about my little butter hole.”
Ymir had to wonder which part of the fairy’s anatomy that might be.
The fairy giggled more. “Think of me when you fuck. I know you will!” She then fluttered off, over the balcony and out of sight.
Ymir finished his beer and set it down. “Well, Jenny, that was strangely arousing. But odd. Why show us her body when she’s too small for us to enjoy it?”
Jenny sat with her fist to her mouth. “I think I enjoyed it a lot just now. She’s crazy, obviously, and she’s playing a game, clearly, but she knows what she’s doing. I bet she’s a hundred years old if she’s a day.” The Josentown princess got up and dropped her loose black pantaloons.
Ymir’s eyes went to the black triangle of hair between her legs.
Jenny straddled him in his chair and kissed him. “I’m not sure I’ll be thinking about Ziziva when you fuck me. But I’m not sure I won’t be either.”
“We can’t do anything with that creature,” the clansman insisted.
The Josentown princess laughed. “Fucking your enemies before fucking them over? That’s how we do things in the swamp. It makes everything sweeter. We’ll go in protected, you know we will, with a little Obanathy magic. I’m curious to see what her honeypot tastes like.”
“Honey, I would imagine.” Ymir grinned. “There’s still problems with our biology and the physics of such an encounter.”
“There is Form magic to shrink or grow. I’d want to shrink. I’d be twelve inches tall with boobs to match.”
Ymir’s hand strayed to grip Jenny’s thick ass. She was already rubbing herself on his crotch. H
e lifted her shirt and found her tits. He sucked on a nipple, arching his groin up to meet hers.
Ziziva had gotten to them. Her strip tease had been hot, and then that final act of bending over had left him breathless.
The swamp woman drew back and helped him get his pants unbuttoned. She lowered her sex onto his straining, dripping prick. When he got up inside her, it took her a minute to get used to the stretch. Then she cast off her shirt. Now he had access to those big, wide-nippled tits. He worked himself in and out of her, sucking on her breasts, as she worked her ohi against his pelvic bone. A second after she came from the rubbing, he filled her with what Tori called his sporram.
The act was so quick, so hot, he hadn’t had time to think about the fairy at all. He thought that was good. He didn’t want Ziziva in his head. The rest of the evening passed, a quiet little time with just Jenny and him. Lillee came to bed late and curled up against him. Ymir woke. He felt for Lillee’s cuff. She wasn’t wearing it, so he knew what that meant.
Jenny slept through their fucking. His eyes kept going to her sleeping face, hoping she would wake up, but she didn’t. Again, he didn’t think of the fairy, only of Lillee’s lust as he pounded her into heaven.
The next night, Ymir saw Ziziva again at the Harvest Festival. After a very big meal in the feasting hall, the Throne Auditorium was packed with scholars, professors, and staff. The Ohlyrran musicians played on the stage while people danced.
Ymir and his three princesses danced an Akkridorian quadrille, a famous dance from the Age of Discord and another gift from the vempors. It was designed for one man and three women, and the movements were fluid and rather fun.
He liked the looks they garnered: he was the tall man in the middle, while the women, all in blue, danced around him. Lillee was the most graceful, Jenny didn’t do too badly, and while Tori was the most awkward, her cheer won the day. She laughed, her sweet face sweating and her red hair a frazzled mess. What she lacked in dexterity, she more than made up for in endurance—she was dancing after working all day helping to prepare the feast.
Ziziva, Zorynda Gold, and the other fairies, including one professor, Lolazny Lyla, weren’t being their normally absurd selves—no silliness and no giggling. No. Their eyes were intense as they gazed at him. They spoke in conspiratorial whispers.
Ymir wondered if all the fairies weren’t in the xocalati business together. Could it be Ziziva had help in the shop? Could they disguise themselves with magic? That would answer Jennybelle’s question as to how Ziziva could run the shop, work the counter, and keep up with her schoolwork. Maybe the automaton was a cover for the professor so there wouldn’t be any kind of impropriety.
The clansman had to admire the Fayee—if they had all of Thera fooled, for the most part, that was quite a feat.
It had been a year since they’d forged the Black Ice Ring, and so much had happened since then. He’d vanquished some enemies, made some others, and he was relaxing into the life of a scholar at Old Ironbound. His path was strange, and, most likely, it would only grow stranger.
He needed to craft the Yellow Scorch Ring. It would be important in the coming battles with the merfolk.
Charibda was dancing with three other mermaids—the various pastel shades of their hair gave them away, as did the scales that appeared on their skin, exposed by their short, shimmering dresses. One of them, an older woman with pale green hair, acted as the man for the quadrille. The way the older woman looked at the troublesome Ribrib made him think the two had a close relationship, not as lovers, but as mother and daughter.
So Ribrib had a mother. He wondered, when the war began, which side would mother and daughter fight on?
Chapter Nine
THE HARVEST FESTIVAL was going well, and the Honored Princept Della Pennez was glad. She did have some business, though.
Della waited until Beryl Delphino finished the dance and went to the feasting hall to cool off and get some water. The woman was striking, with her pale green hair the color of Ethra mint. Her eyes were equally as pale and equally as green. She was pretty, very tall, and yet, what Della liked about her was the timeless quality of her age and how she held her pain.
Beryl Delphino had known pain. Her husband and three of her four children had been murdered right in front of her. She’d barely survived. Charibda had been home sick. Even though Beryl had been there, her memories were hazy. Was it from the trauma? Or was there magic involved?
When the Princept first got the sand letter from Beryl, she’d been surprised and skeptical. Why would former royalty want to come early for the summit? It stank of conspiracy, and after surviving Hayleesia Heenn, Della didn’t want any more conspiracies on her campus. That was her main goal for the year—no more murders.
Beryl Delphino had arrived the night before. Francy Ballspferd, the head of the kitchen, had seen the woman come walking out of the waves, naked, dragging a large net that contained her travel trunk. No servants, no guards—the mermaid had come alone.
After discussing the matter with both King Velis IX and Yannc Winslo of the Alumni Consortium, they agreed that Beryl might be the perfect person to bring peace between the two peoples. Unlike most merfolk, Beryl didn’t believe that humans were behind the Red Tide Massacre. Beryl thought it was a rival merfolk family that had slaughtered their enemies and shrouded the butchery in magic so the survivors wouldn’t remember and no one could divine the truth.
Beryl’s brother-in-law, Marrib Delphino, thought that was preposterous—he blamed the humans. And yet, it was Marrib who had first reached out for the conference. And so, Della had accepted Beryl’s request and offered her a room in the Imperial Palace, right next door to Gharam Ssornap. If there was trouble, Gharam would simply love hacking apart merfolk.
Most would. The merfolk were despised, which didn’t help their cause. Nor did Charibda’s attitude—the troublesome Ribrib sided with her uncle as to who had murdered her father, her other mothers, and her sisters. Like the land dwellers, the merfolk had also been affected by the Withering.
Della had all that in mind when she approached Beryl Delphino at the windows overlooking the Flow housing and the ocean in the distance. Both the Warrior Moon and the Artist Moon were crescents, seeming to battle in the sky. It was a rather ominous sight.
The mermaid turned at Della’s approach. The Princept wore an orange-and-brown dress with a long green scarf. She wore her short-strap sandals. All in all, the outfit was acceptable. Della liked her new short haircut—she thought her white hair looked jaunty and whimsical. Her gray eyes, though, kept their seriousness.
Beryl’s gown shimmered green, a little looser than her daughter’s, which befitted her age. The woman held a glass of white wine in webbed fingers. She tipped her head. Beryl was queenly, without a doubt. She stood a head taller than Della, who wasn’t as tall as a full-blooded Ohlyrran, but she wasn’t short, either.
Della caught the fragrance of the mermaid, a fresh smell, like a clear day near the ocean. Instead of salty tang, it was a subtle flowery perfume, almost like lavender, but less intrusive. It was an exquisite odor, and somehow sexual.
“Good evening,” the Princept said. “My first instinct is to call you Queen Beryl Delphino. But that would be incorrect.”
“I suppose so, but I wouldn’t take offense,” the older mermaid said. “The honorific of my station is Former Ocean Mother Divine, but that’s far too formal, I think, unless we’re in the conference room.” The woman put a hand to her mouth. “Unless you prefer such formalities, Honored Princept.”
Della shook her head. “I don’t prefer formalities unless they make one truthful. May I call you Beryl?”
“May I call you Della?” The mermaid’s green eyes were searching and kind. She didn’t seem like a spy or diplomat. She seemed matronly yet stylish, worldly yet intimate.
“You may,” the Princept said. “I searched you out tonight, for us to talk, really talk. We have three weeks until the summit. I’m wondering why you’ve come, Ber
yl. I don’t need formalities, but I do need the truth.”
The woman sipped her wine and held it to her chest. “How is my daughter regarded at your school?”
The Princept had to smile. “I’m hoping you don’t want the truth because where your daughter is concerned, I’d rather lie.”
“She’s despised,” the mermaid queen said softly. “Her only friends are other merfolk. And I tried my damnedest to set her up for success. I insisted that she live in the Zoo. That has failed, has it not?”
“There’s a Morbuskor girl living there, Toriah Welldeep, and she is trying to be friends with Ribrib...excuse me, Charibda.”
“She hates the nickname,” Beryl said sadly. “I find it cute in its own way. So, yes, Della, I came here to check on my daughter. I also came here to check on other aspects of your school. This summit could stave off war. That is our hope, mine and Marrib’s. We don’t see eye to eye on much. What I think doesn’t matter, however. He is the Ocean Father Divine of the Delphino family. He can decide on our actions. The other families will follow his lead.”
“I understand what you are saying. What other things have you come to check on?” This conversation had put a bad feeling in the pit of Della’s stomach.
The mermaid, this former Ocean Mother, frowned. “I wanted to make sure Old Ironbound is safe for my people. Also, and most importantly, I think, I wanted to see what kind of person you are. I’ve heard stories.”
“Tell me one,” Della said quickly. “Tell me the worst one. And I’ll tell you if it’s true or not.” She hoped to the old gods and the Tree that the mermaid mother didn’t bring up Della’s past in the Silent Scream.
“There was a student here, five years ago, who was dabbling in the dark arts. She wanted to recreate the magic in the Fractal Clock, and you caught her. You burned her alive with Sunfire magic.” Beryl paused, her forehead wrinkled and her mouth small. “What kind of Princept murders her own scholars?”