“I have given the sign of passage,” I state triumphantly. “Now, escort me inside, please.”
“Crazy bitch…” the doubled-over guard wheezes, groping toward the ground for his dropped weapon.
His companion rushes over and places a restraining hand on the bent guardsman, his other hand grabbing me about the wrist. “All right, that’s enough,” he says brusquely, looking from me to his partner. “Don’t lose your cool over one loony civilian. And you,” he adds to me, “you’re coming with me.”
“You have my gratitude,” I inform him as he leads me, rather more forcefully than I believe decorum calls for, to the imposing door of the prison. He produces a ring of metal rods from his belt, each about the length and thickness of one of his fingers, and sticks it into a matching hole on the massive portal. The rod twists and rattles, then he swings the door slowly open to usher me in while his companion glares angrily after us, still slumped, one hand still cupping his hidden squishy bits. He looks to be in pain for some reason, and I feel a pang of sympathy for whatever his ill is before the doors clang shut, leaving me and my chaperone in relative darkness.
The guard tugs on my wrist again, grumbling under his breath while half leading and half dragging me down a cold, rocky tunnel lit by small fires hung on the walls. Fire, like legs, is another surface oddity with which I am acquainted but not familiar — I have heard stories of it, bright like sunlight come down from the heavens and hotter than the fastest-rushing vent in the ocean floor. After the awe and wonder of these secondhand accounts, to see it in person simply adorning a wall and casting flickering shadows is strangely disappointing to me. Other corridors, all identical to this one and sporting more rows of hanging fire, branch off from the path we take, disappearing into steadily deepening gloom. The whole atmosphere is quietly oppressive, and I question the wisdom of my plan for a moment.
Then we turn a corner and pass through another doorway, down a shorter corridor and around a second corner, and I see the cells come dimly into view as the hall widens into a kind of impromptu room. Another guard rests here on one of those small shelves with legs and a back, a handheld vessel with a looped handle in his hand, small squares of paper scattered on the wooden table in front of him. He looks up at our approach with a puzzled frown. “What’s this?”
My chaperone stops at the other side of this table and tugs me up next to him in a rather ungentlemanly fashion. “She showed up outside and demanded to be let in,” he explains. “Said she was a princess of a country she wouldn’t give the name of. Then she kicked Gamlen in the jewels.” He turns to glare at me, brow furrowing again. “Thought it might be best to get her outta harm’s way, ‘least until we can tell if she’s truly batty or just off her head on something.”
The other man grunts and pushes himself to his feet, producing another ring of metal rods similar to the bunch that the man holding my wrist used to open the outer door. He crosses over to a thick metal gate, and I turn to watch as he finagles with a metal box attached to the door with a prolonged, rumbling clank, then a final squeak as it swings open. There is a woman-shaped shadow in the far corner that I can barely make out, and my heart leaps unexpectedly in my chest. “Throw her in here with the other one, then,” the jailer grumbles, though my chaperone need hardly put in the effort himself, eager as I am to meet the lone prisoner.
I hear the gate door clang shut behind me, but do not think much of it in my haste to kneel before and lean over the prone figure behind it. It is indeed my Captain, curled like a mollusk on her side on a rough, threadbare piece of cloth draped over some relatively soft bundle of what feels like sticks that bend and crack dryly beneath our weight. Her head is buried in her arms crossed over her knees, her pointed ears still poking up from behind her hair. The shackles are gone from her wrists, but the one I can see is marked by a deep red band of bruising that stands out against her otherwise light brown skin.
I place my hand on her head, smoothing the hair out of her face. Her eyes are closed. “Captain?” I ask quietly, worriedly. “Captain Vine?” I jostle her shoulder slightly, unsure whether she is merely asleep or something worse.
To my great relief, she stirs reluctantly and, with a groggy moan, squints up at me through the stray strands of her bangs. “Lorelei?” she asks, blinking unconsciousness away. “Is that you?”
My heart flutters in my chest at the sound of my name on her lips. “It is, Captain. I came to get you.”
“What are you doing here?” More alert now, she pushes herself up on her arms. “You were supposed to be gone by now. What the hell did you do to get arrested?”
“I couldn’t leave you,” I argue, scooting back to give her room. “It’s okay, I’m not a prisoner. I got in with the secret gesture the merchant taught me.”
“Secret gesture?” She sits up, frowning at me in confusion, and rubs the marks on her wrists.
I nod. “I placed my foot swiftly between one of the guards’ legs, as per the merchant’s instructions. I was well informed that it was the most expedient path into the dungeons.”
“You placed your …” She trails off, staring at me in bewilderment. Then, suddenly, she bends double and bursts into the loudest fit of laughing I have yet to hear from her, making both me and the remaining guard start in shock. “You kicked — you kicked a guard in the balls … just so you could get arrested with me …?” she gasps out at last.
“Arrested?” It is my turn to sound confused, and I glance over my shoulder to see the jailer glaring suspiciously at me through the bars. Only then does it occur to me that my being put behind them with my Captain is perhaps for reasons other than the privacy of our visit. “But … but I didn’t mean …” I turn, panicking, back to Vine. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You kicked a man in his coin purse,” she chuckles, wiping tears from her eyes and smiling pityingly at me. “That’s assault, my misguided little pearl. That’s the same reason they put me in here.”
So it was his money pouch I’d nudged with my foot? That went a way toward explaining the yieldingness I’d found, but not why I’d be labeled a criminal, even if he were keeping jewels inside. It’s not like I had tried to take anything from it. “I didn’t mean to!” I argue. “I thought … I was just …”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m afraid,” she tells me, calm now. “Men have few assets, but they protect them vehemently. If you’re lucky, they’ll think you’re crazy instead of outright malicious.”
“What do we do?” I moan, slumping into myself. “I meant to sue for your release! I can’t do that if I’m a prisoner as well! We can’t both be trapped here!”
“Hmm.” My Captain stops smiling, leaning her back against the cold stone corner of our cell and gazing out between the bars. “You, they’ll probably just hold for a while to let you calm down and see the error of your ways. You should be free to go sometime tomorrow, I would think.” She sighs, turning her gaze toward the ceiling. “I, however, have dug my pit a bit deeper when I lost my temper out on the docks. My otherness —” and here she spits the word with a small grimace, “— is also working against me. Any favor I may have curried by being nice now is off the table. It’ll be a blessing if I get a fair trial. More likely they’ll lock me up somewhere deeper and forget about me, or else string me up in town somewhere as an example to ‘the rest of my kind.’”
Her words do little to encourage me. The hope I’d felt lifting so recently plummets, and I fight to control my rising panic. “I can’t leave you here,” I resolve once more. “I’m lost in this world alone, and I won’t have your punishment on my conscience. All you did was defend me and your own belongings.”
“My belongings,” she repeats wistfully. “My clothes. My sword. My ship. Your scales. All our food.” She turns an apologetic glance on me out of the corner of her eye, then sighs again. “All forfeit. They’ll be confiscated by the city for municipal use or sold off to line someone’s pocket. If we don’t get out of here before tomorrow night at the la
test, everything I have in the world is gone forever.”
Now it’s not just panic but also tears I have to choke back. The worst scenarios I had imagined were coming true, and my sorrow for my Captain was matched only by my own rising guilt. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I’m so, so sorry, Captain …”
“Don’t be,” she says quietly, suddenly pushing herself forward off the wall onto her knees. “Because we’re getting out of here now.”
“What?” Her sudden and sure proclamation catches me off guard. I hazard a look at our jailer, still sitting on the far side of the corridor across from our cell and gazing disinterestedly at the square papers in front of him, casually rearranging them in new patterns. I turn back to Vine. “How are —”
Too late. She puts one hand firmly on my shoulder, wraps her other arm around the back of my neck, and yanks me in to meet her desperate kiss, lips crushing to mine and devouring them as though they were to be her last meal. A surprised gasp that emerges as a muffled squeak escapes me only to be swallowed whole by her sudden and intense attention. My hands, groping blindly in front of me on an instinct to steady myself, find only the soft, bare flesh of her taut stomach, warm to the touch after the stone and metal around us. She groans under my fumbling touch, the sound muffled but loud, pressing forward into my accidental hold and dipping just a bit, so that my hands slide up to cup her bosom. I can feel her tightening nipples even through the cloth that covers them as her breasts squish against my palms, the excess heft of them slipping out between my fingers.
Her lips release mine without moving away from them, her half-lidded eyes capturing my own for a moment. “Trust me,” she breathes, breathless herself, then takes my lower lip lightly between her teeth and tugs gently before claiming my whole mouth once more before I can protest. I do, however, have a moment to glance fearfully over my shoulder and see the jailer gawking at us, square papers slipping from his grasp as he stares mouth agape at the struggling pile of us behind our bars.
Trust her? I want to, but now her hands are sliding up my waist and above, taking my dress with it and then dropping it to the floor. My body beneath is bare, and one of her hands slides down my navel to the new softness below. At the threat of her touch, my legs part slightly on new instinct before I think to squeeze them shut on her searching fingers, wrapping one leg over the other. “C-captain …!” I gasp. “Please! He’s watching!”
She glances up at our guard over my shoulder, freeing me for another look. I feel my ensuing blush to the roots of my hair. This man, this human, this stranger is watching this incredibly intimate event, eyes wide and legs spread even wider, a sizeable bulge between his thighs where the guard out front had only a soft cushion. Our shocked gazes meet for the briefest of moments, and I wish fervently for him to leave.
But Captain Vine turns back to me with an evil smirk. “Good,” she purrs. “Let him.” She slips her hand not trapped in my thighs to the strip of cloth hiding her own breasts and frees it with one deft tug, revealing her ample bosom, the wooden charm of her necklace nestled snugly between them. Her hand takes me by the back of the neck and draws me in, placing one of her pert nipples to my parted lips. “Suckle,” she commands me, and though burning with shame, I have no choice but to take her in my mouth and do as she says, tugging lightly at the pink buds while the tip of my tongue draws circles around them, a churning wave lapping at a lone protruding rock.
Behind me, I hear the scrape of wood on stone and the light rustle of shifting metal, both noises so much sharper than they should be in this waterless vacuum. The guard is moving, doing … something. I look up nervously at my Captain’s face. She is flush herself from our impromptu coupling. “Captain,” I murmur against the soft flesh against my lips, “please. Can’t we wait? I don’t want him to …”
Again, I cannot finish my concern. She takes my face in her hand, lifting me up as she herself goes down to kiss me once more. Her tongue traces my lips, then draws a line down my chin and neck to the cleft of my breasts. I shut my eyes tight and whimper, caught between pleasure and humiliation. I can hear the rustle of cloth in front of me as my Captain slips her pants down and off her body. I can feel the velvety soft skin of her naked legs entwining in my own. And I can feel the man standing behind me, only a row of metal bars between him and I. Suddenly our cell does not seem so dauntingly confining.
“Mmmm, Lorelei,” Vine breathes against my skin, her tongue lapping lightly up the base of one breast. “I did miss you when they took me from you. I was afraid I would never get another taste.” Her hand cups the breast in question and squeezes firmly, the bud of it puckering between her finger and thumb, her lips dropping to capture it. I gasp loud enough to hear its echo from the corridor beyond us, and she takes advantage of my weakness to push my legs apart with her other hand, her fingers slipping up them before I can act to stroke the building wetness they’d been hiding. My resulting moan echoes even louder, and she chuckles around my nipple as her finger draws circles around another nub further below.
“Damn,” a deeper voice rasps behind me, and I jump a little at the closeness of it. “That is a fine sight if ever I saw one. You ladies could drive a man crazy.” The jailer sounds as if he’s right over my head looking down. I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter just in case I’m right.
Captain Vine releases my breast from her mouth, though her hands do not stop their attention, so I cannot stop my squirming. “I’m a fae, aren’t I?” she asks the man, her voice low and sultry. I melt a little faster myself to hear it. “It’s been days since I’ve had my last fix. You know what that does to a girl like me, don’t you?”
The man behind me chuckles. “And do you only get your fix from girls?” he asks.
Vine’s tone somehow turns even more devious. “Sweet thing,” she says, releasing her hold on me and rising languidly, her body sliding along mine every inch of the way until she is on her feet, “when I’m starving like this, I’ll eat anything.” Her hand tangles in my hair, and again she pulls my face forward, this time into the damp curls between her thighs that are now at eye-level. I nuzzle in and lick gingerly at the soft lips within, assuming that this is what she next wants me to do. She is warm and wet in my mouth, and I feel her body shiver against me.
As if he too feels it, the guard behind me groans. “Anything?” he breathes, then there is a frantic rattling of cloth and metal. When it silences, he asks, “Then why not come over here and eat this?”
“Mmm,” Vine moans, though in response to me or the jailer I cannot say. “Looks delicious. But … you know I can’t.” Her hand on my head starts running through my hair, petting me. “You put me in this big metal box because you know what it does to me, right?” she continues in a pout. “I can’t get near you like that, lover. So much iron and steel puts me off my appetite.”
The guard grumbles. “You don’t have to touch the bars,” he argues, urgency heavy in his tone. “Just kneel here in front of them, see?”
“It’s the proximity,” Vine continues, still petting me, still pouting. “Touch burns, but the smell is also noxious. Like smoke.” She nestles her slickness closer to me, shuddering slightly again, leaning the upper half of her body back against the stone wall behind her. “That’s why I’ve been hunched in this corner back here. It doesn’t burn if I don’t get any closer.”
The guard groans again, louder this time. “I can’t let you out,” he says, though he sounds as if he’d like to. “Not even for a few minutes.”
My Captain groans too, but the sound carries only half as much disappointment as the jailer’s. The other half makes me quiver. “Mmm, but I need it bad, baby,” she moans, both hands now gripping my hair tightly, making me wince in a pain that is not wholly unpleasant. “Can’t you come in here with us? Just for a little while? Please, sir,” she adds, grinding her hips against me and audibly stifling a cry. “I’m melting …”
There is a tense pause broken only by Vine’s continued panting. Then the guard swears under his bre
ath, and there is another rattle of metal on metal as I hear him fumbling with the bunch of rods again outside our cell door. It swings open behind me with a squeak, and my tongue freezes its motion on Vine’s lower mouth. There is a clang as the door swings shut again, the man stepping in behind me — I can hear his heavy footfalls, feel him standing over me. My arms wrap around my Captain’s legs and waist, holding her lower body tight in fear, my fingers digging into the soft flesh of her butt. There is a stranger in here with us, the one keeping us trapped here, the one who had been watching what should have been private. My trust in my Captain falters; I do not want this man to touch me, and if he does, I am not sure how I will fight him off on my own. Why, I think, would she endanger herself to save me from these circumstances if she were only going to force me back into them?
Without explanation or reassurance, she reaches behind herself and gently but forcibly removes my grip, stepping out of my arms to meet our jailer. I turn my head to watch them both fearfully, huddling against the wall Vine had been using as support, hoping against sense that I won’t be noticed.
I see Vine smile up at the man as she steps up to him in the center of the jail cell, completely naked except for her knee-high boots. The man is a head taller than my Captain, wearing the same uniform as the guards outside but with the bottom half puddle around his ankles. His lower body is much hairier and more muscled than either of ours; and where my Captain and I have a second pair of lips, he has what looks like a stunted arm, a stiff rod of taut skin and veins with a rounded cap that twitches on its own accord as I watch, spellbound by fear and curiosity in equal measure. These humans seem to me to resemble starfish more than my own kind, all extra appendages, stiff and pink and fleshy all over. I can only wonder what this new one I’m seeing is for.
O Captain, My Captor Page 8