Joined at the Hilt: Union (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 1)

by Caleb Wachter

  But increased business meant increased security, and the ranks of the rotating garrison stationed within Three Rivers had swelled until they were nearly a tenth of the city’s one hundred thousand total population. That was well over twice the number of people the city held when Randall had been a child, and Three Rivers had become a veritable hotspot for traveling dignitaries and merchant caravans from the farthest corners of the world.

  Randall absently weaved his way through the press of bodies and delivered the pitchers to their respective tables, until he arrived at the final table at which the soldiers he had ‘entertained’ earlier.

  “Ah, he returns,” the coin-tossing soldier bellowed. “And not an instant too soon,” he added as he swiped the pitcher from Randall’s hands, sloshing some of the frothy liquid up and over the lip of the pitcher. Randall’s reflexes were good, and he avoided the splashing mead as he deftly spun away from the soldier’s mess.

  “They’re quick, too,” laughed one of the other soldiers, this one a woman. She leaned forward across the table, exposing her ample cleavage as she did so and Randall did his best to keep his eyes respectfully away from the admittedly impressive display. “Can I touch it?” she asked almost hesitantly as she stared at the center of his face.

  Randall suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as he nodded and leaned forward. This was yet another part of the dance he had learned to make with Federation soldiers and, demeaning as it was, he knew he needed to endure it.

  The soldier reached up with her outstretched hand and her fingers touched the tip of his nose. Her hand withdrew almost immediately and she began to giggle uncontrollably. “It almost looks like a bird’s beak!”

  While it was true that Randall’s—and anyone else whose blood was ‘tainted’ with Ghaevlian lineage—nose was longer and narrower than a ‘pure’ human’s, Randall hardly thought it even remotely resembled a bird’s beak…even though his best friends often referred to it as such, as well.

  “Bah, it’s just the elvish blood,” explained one of the others. This one was a burly man who reached a dark, sweaty hand up to roughly brush aside Randall’s hair, exposing his ears, which the soldier appraised for a moment before continuing, “This half-elf’s prob’ly got ‘tween six and eight generations separation from its last elf ancestor, judgin’ by the ears.” The soldier took a swig from his newly-filled mug and squinted at Randall as he shook his head in what he clearly thought to be a show of sympathy, “Even if he wasn’t sterile like the rest of the males, he’d not live long enough to see his bloodline purified since it takes twelve generations for pure human blood to purge the filth completely.”

  Randall bowed his head politely. “As you say,” he agreed. The truth was that Randall was only a third generation Ghaevlian/human hybrid, which technically made him one eighth ‘elvish’ (the term humans had opted to use for his ancestor’s people, owing to the difficulty of properly pronouncing ‘Ghaevlian’ for a human’s tongue).

  Determining the amount of Ghaevlian blood in a ‘half-elf’ was a relatively simple task which consisted of assessing physical attributes, such as the shape of the nose and ears, skin tone, and also the presence of certain birthmarks which denoted which particular Ghaevlian bloodline a person belonged to. In a pure Ghaevlian these markings were multi-colored and intricate, appearing to be incredibly detailed, masterwork tattoos. But the more diluted the blood, the fainter and less colorful those markings became.

  Not long after the Federation had moved into Three Rivers they had begun to round up anyone with Ghaevlian ancestry less than four steps removed from their last pureblood ancestor. Those who were rounded up were never seen or heard from again, so Randall had taken measures to prevent such an outcome.

  Immediately following the Federation’s takeover Randall had, along with Yordan, Ellie, and a few others, sought out a flesh-smith to perform a relatively simple—yet horrifyingly painful—procedure to remove the tips of their ears and burn off their birthmarks. Fortunately for Randall, his mark was hidden in the hair of his head—of which pure Ghaevlians, and first generation hybrid Ghaevlians, had none—so he and his friends had always managed to pass as a more diluted type of ‘half-elf.’

  The woman soldier’s lips pursed in a pout and she stood from the table as she made her way to Randall’s side. “Poor thing,” she said as she pressed her body against him. This was not the first time he had gotten such a reaction from a human woman, and he knew from the smell of alcohol on her breath where this particular encounter was likely to end. “You know…I’ve never been with a half-elf before…” she purred.

  Pure humans were considerably taller than Ghaevlian mixes, so even though Randall was a well-built ‘half-elf’ of full physical maturity, he stood almost exactly face to face with the woman soldier who was no larger than average for her kind.

  “I’ve heard things, though…about your kind’s virility,” she continued quietly as her eyes seemed to hungrily lick his body. “Are they true?”

  Randall shrugged his shoulders. “Depends what you’ve heard,” he replied with a wink. “But you have to wait ‘til last call if you want to find out.”

  The woman returned his wink and turned to face her companions. “A man who is literally incapable of finishing before me is something I must experience to believe,” she said triumphantly with a pointed look at one of the men, who shook his head in annoyance as the rest of them broke into roaring laughter at her implied rebuke of the man’s sexual prowess.

  Taking that as his cue to return to his duties, Randall made his way through the crowd looking for empty pitchers to refill.

  The next morning Randall awoke to the sun’s first rays peeking through the gaps in the roof shingles, as he always did. Ghaevlians and their mixed heritage offspring were especially sensitive to the presence of sunlight, and required far less true ‘sleep’ than pureblood humans. Simply basking in the sun’s midday rays for an hour or two would serve the same purpose as a full night’s sleep in the absence of injury or total physical exhaustion.

  He looked over and saw the soldier he had bedded the previous night. She was sleeping peacefully with a look of contentment on her face, and the sunlight on her dark, glistening body made Randall wish his own skin was such a perfect hue instead of the sickly, pale mockery which his Ghaevlian blood had given him.

  After last call, she had tracked him down and they had done as he had done so many times before with curious, human women. The Last Coin was not a registered brothel, but Lorie had a good relationship with the local Magisters—a relationship which Randall had never inquired after, fearing he knew the answer only too well. That relationship allowed her to host ‘private engagements’ between consenting adults, so long as such engagements were kept to a reasonable number and conducted out of public view.

  The soldier stirred beside him, and he stroked her arm gently with his fingertips as she rolled over against him. “That was incredible,” she breathed as she sleepily placed her cheek against his chest. “I always thought it was a myth, but it’s really true…”

  Randall allowed a false smile to spread across his lips as he nodded absently. To say he felt nothing when he looked at or touched her naked body would be a lie; he felt the same urges as any man in the presence of an attractive woman whose unique charms were on full display.

  But his heritage carried with it a special curse for men of mixed Ghaevlian blood: the inability to consummate the act of love. Participation was a simple enough matter—and was even enjoyable to a degree—but there was no physical way for a man of mixed Ghaevlian/human heritage to complete the deed. This condition—some would call it a handicap—had a natural appeal to human women of a certain appetite, and so it was with dozens of such women that Randall had indulged their curiosity…for a fee.

  The unique sexual limitation for half-elven men did not apply to ‘half-elven’ women however, whose fertility was roughly equivalent to human women’s. So the creation of offspring was a simple enough matter for them
—as long as it was with a pureblood human, since half-elven men were, in fact, infertile.

  As such, half-elven men were utterly incapable of siring progeny and this was a subject of much consternation among Randall’s fellows. The psychological impact caused by being incapable of fathering children had a profound impact on ‘half-elven’ society, to the point where such a thing did not truly exist. The women could only have children with human men, so those who wanted families had little or no interest in men of their own species. The men, on the other hand, knew that physical pleasure and passion would only lead to frustrations both physical and emotional, so they often withdrew to lives of solitude, public service of some kind, or occasionally even crime.

  Randall turned his thoughts from such matters as he focused on the morning’s work ahead of him. Lorie was almost certainly already working on cleaning up the common room, as well as repairing whatever damage was caused during what he remembered to be a fairly typical evening—meaning at least a half dozen pieces of furniture would require a carpenter’s attention before they would be usable again.

  “Randall,” she said in a low voice which wrenched him from his thoughts. He ran his hand into her curly, close-cropped, black hair and looked into her eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked, fearful for a moment at the look on her face.

  “Didn’t you enjoy it?” she asked as she looked out the small window of the rented room on the third floor of The Last Coin.

  Randall chuckled as he absently scratched her head. “I’ve known a few women in my time,” he began in a well-practiced lie, “but none so passionate, and none so genuine. What we shared last night was…unique. I’ll never forget it.”

  She looked up at him skeptically, but he had delivered this precise line many times before. From the look in her eyes, he deduced that she needed to hear a soft lie which would give her just enough truth to believe in so she could move on without feeling as though she had done something wrong or immoral.

  In Randall’s experience, most of the women who sought his services were caring souls compared to men, and he had no desire to shackle someone with the thought they had taken advantage of him. The truth was it had been a mutually beneficial engagement, and he harbored no ill will toward her or any of the others which came before.

  Besides, the better he performed—between the sheets and afterward—the better the pay. Life was a cold bitch, and it had only gotten harder on his kind in recent years; he could ill afford a chance at a healthy tip.

  Apparently satisfied to the degree that she didn’t wish to pursue the matter further, she reached her muscular arm across his chest and squeezed him. “I doubt we’ll see each other again,” she began as she looked out the window. “My unit ships out for Fissalia in two days’ time.”

  Randall felt his breath catch momentarily at hearing her destination. Fissalia was the latest front in the Federation’s expansion, and it was some three weeks’ travel across the ocean from Three Rivers by the Federation’s fastest ships, which were the fastest in the world. The information he had gleaned from his nightly eavesdropping on The Last Coin’s customers suggested that Fissalian forces were resisting Federation incursion into their territory, and the fighting was turning into a literal meat grinder for Federation infantry.

  Apparently Fissalian engineering and magical ability actually rivaled that of the Fed’s forces. But the kingdom of Fissalia was dwarfed by the massive, sprawling Federation. It was merely a matter of time before Federation forces were able to establish a stable beachhead, and when that happened…

  Randall pushed the thought from his mind. He hated that the Federation’s expansion appeared to be unstoppable, and that everywhere it spread people would come under its boot just as they had at Three Rivers. But dwelling on such thoughts only made the tasks of everyday life that much more difficult to contend with, so he tried not to think on them overmuch.

  “How goes the war effort?” he asked, not knowing what else to say. Now that he knew her destination, he felt more than a little sympathetic toward the woman.

  She shrugged her shoulders as she continued to look out the window. “It’s impossible to know the truth,” she said bitterly. “The morale officers assure us that the foothold is already established, but if that’s true then why are we still sending only infantry? If it’s safe to land then the mages, engineers and war machines should be accompanying us, but I’ve seen none assigned to our flotilla’s roster.”

  This was new information to Randall, who kept his ear to the ground as well as anyone else in the Native District—the quarter of the city which had been assigned to the original inhabitants of Three Rivers.

  “How have you seen your flotilla’s roster?” he asked playfully. “They just show it to any ground-pounder that asks, do they?”

  She looked up at him sharply before a smile played out over her face as she slid to the edge of the bed. “I have my ways,” she replied in kind as she stood and began to dress herself.

  He watched as she did so, wondering if it was uncouth to press her for information when it was very likely that in two days she would be sailing to her death on the distant, bloody shores of Fissalia. Eventually he decided to let the matter rest; he would just spend a few minutes scouring the docks for more information when he went down to pick up the mid-morning catch from the fishmongers.

  “You never did ask my name,” she said after she had finished fastening her breeches.

  Randall shrugged as he placed his hands around her waist. “In my experience a woman will volunteer it if she wishes it known,” he quipped as he pulled her closer. “The shroud of anonymity has certain benefits, after all.”

  She laughed lightly and pressed him gently away. “I really need to leave; I’ll miss the morning muster.”

  Knowing from experience that she was serious and not just playing last-minute games, he nodded and stepped across the room to collect her boots. He handed them to her, and saw a look of concern come over her face. “What is it?” he asked.

  She shook her head, but he knew something was bothering her. “I once saw a man…” she began before chewing her lip. “He had been with a half-elf woman and became very ill.”

  Randall nodded knowingly. “It’s known to happen between human men and half-elven women, but only when she is past her fiftieth year. No such affliction passes between human women and half-elven men,” he assured her. It was not an uncommon concern, and one which he had addressed many times before. “In fact, if I understand correctly, it’s impossible for you to contract any kind of…undesirable disease from contact with one of my kind. We’re simply too different.”

  “But…you don’t age, right?” she asked skeptically as she slid into her boots. “How can someone know if a half-elven woman is past her fiftieth?”

  Randall laughed as he helped her into her leather, armored vest. “I assure you that we do, in fact, age,” he said a little too dryly. “Pure Ghaevlians have been known to live for hundreds—or, in rare cases, thousands—of years, but half-elven lifespans aren’t so different than a human’s. We simply retain our youthful appearance throughout our lives; but you’re right that it’s hard to know how old one of my kind really is from a glance.”

  He finished fastening her armor’s back straps and she turned to face him. There was an awkward silence before she turned toward the door and opened it. With one foot out in the hallway, she turned and seemed to search his face for something.

  After a moment she nodded curtly. “It was good to know you, Randall,” she said stiffly, to which he merely inclined his head respectfully before she added, “and my name is Shannon, for whatever it’s worth. It’s stupid, but I would like for someone to remember me after I’m…”

  Randall wasn’t sure what he should do. It was clear she sought emotional support of some kind, but he had never been good at genuinely connecting with people. He had been an outsider for too much of his life.

  The moment passed and she nodded again. “Goodbye,�
�� she said, before exiting the room and closing the door behind herself.

  Randall looked over at the bedside table, on which rested a lone, curious earring. He scooped it up in his hand and set off after her. He caught up with her at the stairs on the second floor, and she turned with a look of surprise on her face.

  “You forgot this,” he said, showing her the earring.

  Shannon shook her head. “I have no coin,” she said as she splayed her hands. “My sister and I shared that pair of earrings, and when she enlisted we promised each other we would reunite them someday.” Only now could he see the tears in her eyes, and Randall was at a loss for words. “I would like you to have it, so that some small part of her might survive this war.”

  With that she turned and clomped down the hallway, leaving Randall with a curious sense of empathy for the woman, whose life was clearly very, very different than his own.

  Chapter II: A Chance Meeting

  Morning, 25-11-5-659

  After Shannon had left The Last Coin via the front door, Randall made his way to the kitchen where Lorie was taking stock of the pantry.

  “Long night?” she asked dryly.

  He gave her a withering look, but remained silent as he pulled the loose coins from his pockets. All told he had collected a dozen coppers, five tin coins and even a small zinc bar which he had won on a bet from a pair of well-drunk sailors too far into their cups.

  “A zinc bar?” she said, clearly impressed. “You earn at least three times the tips of any other servers here. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, Lorie, I know,” he groaned. “Everyone likes to throw food at the animals, after all.”

  “You bemoan your heritage, but it’s the only thing that separates you from everyone else. You shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are,” she said sternly.

  “Oh?” he challenged, flipping the hair back from his ears. “And what about these; should I have been proud of them, too?”