by Logan Jacobs
But when I had emerged from my dancehall with the rest of my girls, I saw that most of the dead were elves, along with just a handful of human guards. There were plenty of injured on both sides, although there were definitely more wounded elves than humans, but the injured elves had already been rounded up and taken to the jails to have their wounds treated there. That just left the humans for us to take care of, along with the few halflings and dwarves who had joined in the fight as well.
The halflings and dwarves had waited until the last minute to join the revolt, of course, but I was still glad to see that they had made an effort. Besides, I couldn’t exactly blame them. Other than a few dwarves and halflings that Wade knew he could trust, he hadn’t brought the other races on board with our plans because it was too dangerous to spread that kind of information around. If it had fallen into the wrong hands, our rebellion would have been over before it even began.
Still, at least the smarter members of the other races had taken up arms the moment that they sensed the city was on the edge of total revolution. They had stormed into the streets with any weapons they could find, but most of them only got in a blow or two before the few remaining elves surrendered and laid down their arms.
Leif and the rest of the human guards had been absolutely clear that no one would be refused mercy if they asked for it, so they promptly collected up all their elven prisoners, carted them off to the jails, and then knocked on the door of my dancehall to ask if we could help clean up.
I bent down to check the pulse of an elf a few paces away, just to make sure he was really dead, and then I turned back toward Ashlin and the human guard. The dancer had pulled out one strip of fabric to pretend to bind his wounds, but she hadn’t even applied it, and the man was already limp in her arms.
“Come on,” I said as I stood up from beside the dead human. “We’ll leave them for the burial crew.”
Ashlin nodded and stuffed the clean fabric back into her bag.
“We should check around the theatre for any survivors,” I said, “since you know how many hiding places there are around there.”
“Yeah, I still think I would have been okay if I had just stayed hidden in the theatre,” Ashlin said as she followed me down the street. “Cim just insisted that I stay with you and the girls during the fight.”
“And she was absolutely right to do so,” I said with a smile. “Would you have liked to be all alone inside the theatre while all hell broke loose outside?”
“Well…” Ashlin hesitated.
“And more importantly,” I said as I stopped and turned toward her, so I could place one hand on each of our pregnant bellies, “do you think the king would have liked you to be all alone during the fighting?”
“No,” Ashlin said immediately and then put her hand on top of mine. “No, you’re right. It was much safer for me to stay at the dancehall with you, Twila.”
“Cimarra will be glad to hear that you finally agreed with her logic,” I laughed.
“Oh, don’t tell her I tried to argue!” the brunette dancer said.
“Relax, I’m only teasing,” I said with a smirk before I dropped my hands back down to my sides. “So do you feel any changes yet?”
“Not really,” Ashlin replied. “I feel a little hormonal and like my breasts are bigger, but my stomach is still really flat. But yours is, too, I guess.”
“That’ll change soon enough,” I said with a wink. “But in the meantime, you have to remember how important it is to take care of yourself, not just for your sake or for Wade’s sake, but for the sake of your baby, too.”
“Thanks, Twila,” Ashlin said as she bit her lip and then looked around in front of the theatre. “I don’t really see any wounded people over here, do you?”
“No, but… oh, that’s why,” I said with a nod.
Ashlin followed my gaze to the horse cart at the end of the alley beside the theatre. A number of elven bodies were stacked on top of each other in the back of the cart, and as their blue blood dripped down to the street, the driver turned the horse around the corner and rolled the cart out of sight.
“The burial crew is working fast, I guess,” I said.
“That’s good, right?” Ashlin asked.
“Oh, yeah, that’s good,” I replied. “The sooner they get the streets clear, the sooner we can start to establish a new sense of what’s normal.”
“And we’re, uh… safe, right?” Ashlin asked as we turned to head back down toward the dancehall. “Because I know Leif already led the Elite through the portal, so they’re not here anymore, and--”
“We are absolutely safe,” I interrupted. “Just because the Elite aren’t here doesn’t mean we’re unprotected. There are still enough human guards in town to keep everything under control, and they’re under Dryson’s command, so you know they wouldn’t let anything happen to us.”
“Okay,” Ashlin said. “The fighting just sounded so scary from inside the dancehall, so I just… I just want to know that it’s over.”
“I understand,” I said, “and basically, it is over, but that doesn’t mean we can let our guard down.”
“Not until every city officially recognizes Wade as the king, right?” Ashlin asked.
“Exactly,” I said with a nod. “Not until the king’s forces have conquered every city in the empire, and that includes the Blood City itself.”
“We’re not waiting to…” Ashlin trailed off and then dropped her voice down to a whisper. “I thought we were waiting before we attacked the Blood City.”
“The king had thought about that, yes,” I replied, “but he decided that it would be better to attack while the element of surprise was still on his side. Why do you think Leif already led the Elite through the portal to join Wade?”
“Oh!” Ashlin’s green eyes went wide. “No wonder the fighting sounded so fierce this morning. They had a schedule to keep.”
I decided it was better to keep the details of exactly how fierce the fighting had been to myself, even though I had seen everything from the dancehall window. Before the sun came up, I had made sure that Ashlin and my girls were all safely hidden inside my room, just in case shit went south or in case the elves got any brilliant ideas like they might want to hide out inside my dancehall, but once they were tucked away, I had gone to the window to watch the battle myself.
Of course, I would have preferred to hide the girls in the secret, soundproof room, but since the day elf Belis was still a prisoner inside of it, I decided to just make the best of it and hide the girls in my own bedroom. But I knew that Wade wanted me to keep Belis alive, so until the king came to claim the day elf, I would make sure that he was kept safe in the dancehall’s hidden chamber.
It had been difficult but beautiful to watch the chaos. The elven soldiers had been totally unprepared for any kind of attack during the equinox festival, so when a unit of human guards jumped up out of the sewers, they had barely enough time to register their surprise before the humans charged them.
And, of course, that was only after elves had started to drop left and right from the poisoned wine.
Half the elven soldiers had gone to try to help the poisoned elven nobles as they choked on the wine, so there were only about half of the soldiers left to meet the human guards, anyway. The humans had destroyed them even quicker than I would have guessed, but it helped that the elves hadn’t stationed any magic casters in the Entertainment District.
I wondered if the same thing had been true for the rest of the city, but I would just have to ask Cimarra about that when I checked in with her later. By then, she would have collected reports from all over the Capital, so she would have an initial tally of dead, wounded, and any other statistics that Wade would find helpful.
“Ruby!” I called when I spotted one of my girls down the road.
“We called in carts for the wounded,” Ruby replied as she picked her way through the bodies down the street toward us. “And there’s a wounded elf that we called for an armed
escort to take up to the prison.”
“Where?” I demanded as I started to reach for the collapsible baton in my skirts.
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere,” Ruby chuckled and nodded over her shoulder. “Jane and the others have him tied up like a prize hog at the spring fair.”
I followed her gaze to where the rest of the dancehall girls all stood by a seated elf. The elf was bound with so many ropes that he looked like he could barely breathe, but since it didn’t look like he was going anywhere, I figured that we were safe enough.
“It’s a good thing some of your clients like things a little kinky,” I told Ruby. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have enough experience to tie somebody up like that.”
“It did come in handy,” Ruby said with a grin.
“Any word on when the armed escort will get here?” I asked.
“When I went to talk to the guards, they said it should just be a few minutes,” Ruby replied.
“Good, then why don’t you go back over with the other girls and wait with him until the guards get here?” I asked.
“No problem,” Ruby replied. “I’d rather run around and look for other elves to tie up, but I guess I can wait a few minutes before I do that.”
“I understand,” I laughed. “Actually, you can leave the other girls with him. You come back to the dancehall with Ashlin and me.”
“Sure, what do you need?” Ruby asked.
“I want to go ahead and run up to the halfling district, but I just need to grab my bag from the dancehall first,” I said. “I think I’ve done all that I can do here, and I really want to talk to Cimarra sooner rather than later.”
“What does that have to do with me and the dancehall?” Ruby asked.
“She doesn’t want to leave me alone,” Ashlin said with a shy smile.
“It’s true,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not sure what I’ll see on my way up to Cim, but I think it’ll be better if I go alone and leave Ashlin here, in case anything else comes up that needs attention.”
“Ah, I get it,” Ruby said. “That’s fine, and don’t you worry. I won’t let anything happen to this pretty little thing while you’re gone, or to her pretty little one.”
“Thanks, Ruby,” I replied, “but first, let me just grab my things from inside.”
After Ruby told the other girls to wait with the captured elf, she rejoined Ashlin and me on our way up the front steps into my dancehall. During the first onslaught that morning, one or two elves had actually tried to retreat into my dancehall to hide, but the human guards had quickly pulled them back down into the street to keep my girls and me safe.
I knew that part of that was just what they had been trained for, but I had a feeling that the king might have told his guards to keep a special eye out on the dancehall, as well as on Osman and Marver’s bakery up in the halfling district. Even though he was in another city in a totally different part of the empire, Wade always made sure that we were protected. That was just the kind of king he was.
And really, that was just the kind of man he was.
Once the three of us were back inside the dancehall, I let Ruby and Ashlin head to the kitchen for some tea, while I hurried toward my bedroom to grab my bag so I could get ready to leave. There wasn’t much in it, just a few essentials that I didn’t like to leave home without, so I knelt down by my bed to look for it.
I had just pulled the small bag out from underneath the bed when I heard a crash from the kitchen.
Instantly, I pulled out the collapsible metal baton from my skirts, flung it out so it reached its full length, and then raced down the hallway. The moment I entered the kitchen, I realized what had happened, and I also realized how quickly I needed to act if the three of us didn’t want to end up on the wrong side of an elven spear.
A fully armed elven soldier stood on the other side of the kitchen. He had one hand buried in Ruby’s hair, and his other hand pressed a knife up against her throat. A broken tea tray laid on the ground in the middle of the kitchen, and Ashlin kept glancing back and forth between the tea tray and the soldier, as if she wanted to try to grab a broken ceramic shard and try to use that to attack the elf.
But at the moment, Ashlin stood totally frozen in front of them, but every time she or Ruby moved even an inch, the elf just pressed the blade even deeper, until it looked like he was about to draw blood. If I tried to attack him, he would slit Ruby’s throat before I could get across the kitchen, so instead, I did the only thing that I could think of.
I lied my ass off.
“Oh, thank the Ancients, it’s just you,” I said as I let my weapon fall to the ground. “I thought for sure it was one of those human rebels, but I’m so relieved that they didn’t slaughter all the elves, after all.”
“Sorry, what?” the elven soldier demanded, but he relaxed the knife a few inches away from Ruby’s throat.
“There’s a few of us still on your side,” I said, and then I tucked my hair behind my ears so he could see how pointed they were. “I know we can’t offer you much, but I can at least give you a place to hide until… sorry, could you maybe let my friend go while I explain?”
“Are you a half-blood or something?” the elf asked, but he relaxed the knife a little bit more.
“What matters is that I’m here to help you,” I said as I suppressed my rage at the offensive word.
“We’re already hiding a couple of other elves here,” Ashlin chimed in. “Just let us help you, okay?”
The elf now had the knife several inches away from Ruby’s throat instead of right up against it, so as I started to move across the room toward him with my hands raised, I glanced at Ruby with a look that I hoped she understood.
Every now and then, we had an unruly client, but the girls all knew how to handle themselves, and they also knew that I was always there to back them up. Ashlin was a different story, since I didn’t think the pretty dancer could hurt a fly, so I wanted to make sure that we didn’t involve her in what came next.
When I passed the table, I grabbed a leftover glass of whiskey and raised it toward the elf like I just wanted to offer him a drink.
“Everything’s okay,” I said. “You’re safe here, so you can put the knife down.”
“What the fuck is going on out there?” the elf swore, but he lowered the knife a little bit more. “I saw--”
“Now!” I shouted.
As soon as I gave the word, I threw the whiskey on the elf’s face to make his eyes burn, and at the same time, Ruby slammed her elbow into the elf’s side. The clap of her bone as she hit him in the ribs sounded at least as painful to her as it probably was to him, but his armor was only made of leather, so Ruby hurt him just enough that he released his grip on her, and she immediately squirmed away.
The three of us ran back toward the kitchen door, but I bent down to grab my baton when we got there.
“Ashlin, get out of here!” I said. “Go get help!”
Ashlin didn’t put up a fight. Instead, the pretty dancer fled down the hallway toward the dancehall entrance, while Ruby and I turned back to face the elven soldier. He snarled and wiped the whiskey out of his eyes, so I glanced at Ruby and shrugged.
“Double-team it?” I grinned.
“You know it,” Ruby panted.
We both turned and sprinted down the hall at the same time, and the elven soldier followed us exactly like we planned. Ruby even threw in an extra scream to make him think we were really scared, but when we were halfway to the room, I stopped mid-stride, whirled around, and held my baton out like a sword.
It hit the soldier right in the stomach, and based on the way that the air wheezed out of his lungs, I figured that I had given him a pretty good hit. His leather armor might be worth something against weapons that sliced, but it didn’t keep him safe from a blunt object aimed straight at his abdomen.
My blow to his stomach gave Ruby just enough time to open her bedroom door close to the end of the hall, so when I turned and started to run after he
r again, the elf just cursed and followed us right into our trap.
The moment that the elven soldier followed us into the bedroom, Ruby jumped to the side and grabbed a length of rope off the wall. While she got it ready to throw around him, I distracted him with the baton, and every time he sneered at my attempts to hit him, I just smiled to myself because he so clearly underestimated the two of us.
He easily dodged another one of my blows and then pretended to strike at me with his blade, but he just laughed and twirled the blade in between his fingers instead.
“You will both be fun to toy with,” the elf said, “and when the elves take control of the city again, you will--”
Ruby lassoed him before he got a chance to finish his sentence.
As soon as she threw the rope over his head and arms, she pulled it so tight that he stumbled and fell to his knees, but his arms were pinned down to his sides now, so he couldn’t even try to rip off the rope. While Ruby made another loop to throw on top of the first one and draw it even tighter, I didn’t stop to celebrate our victory just yet.
I grabbed another rope, looped it around the elf’s neck, and started to pull it into a tight noose against his throat.
“You… can’t…” the soldier gasped. “Fucking… half-blood!”
“That’s the last time you’ll ever get to say that,” I growled, and then I kicked his chest to knock him down to the ground.
I stamped my boot on his face to keep him in place, and then I tightened the rope around his neck even more until his skin began to turn purple. He wriggled and tried to squirm out of the ropes that Ruby had bound him with, but she was a goddamn expert, so all he could do was look up at me as I choked the life out of him.
When Wade was king, no one would be able to call me a half-blood anymore. I wasn’t ashamed that I had one human parent and one elven parent, but I fucking hated it when someone tried to make me feel like shit for something that I had no control over.
When the elven soldier finally stopped struggling, I kept the rope in place as I heard commotion from the main dancehall floor behind us. I wanted to make sure he was good and dead before I released him, so I nodded at Ruby to go check it out.