by Sarah Hawke
I smiled and knelt down next to her. “I’m the one who should be having trouble concentrating,” I said, gently cupping her bare breast.
“Do you wish me to relieve you?”
“No, not right now,” I said. “But I think we should talk.”
Kaseya sighed and glanced back into the flames. “I do not understand what happened. It is not possible for a female to become moshalim.”
“Red, there are sorceresses are over the Northern Reaches,” Valuri said. “That Silhouette girl, for one.”
“She is not an amazon.”
“It doesn’t make any difference.”
“It makes all the difference.”
I sighed and slung my arm over her shoulders. “Kaseya, you’re acting like this is a death sentence, but it’s not. It just means we have another thing in common!”
She closed her eyes and remained silent. I sighed and rubbed at her shoulders.
“Look, I’m as surprised as you are. Most people born with the gift figured it out the hard way—they have scary visions or hear their friends’ thoughts or set their houses on fire. The fact that nothing has happened to you in twenty some years…” I shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, but it’s not a bad thing.”
“You do not understand.”
“I’m the sorcerer—I understand better than anyone.”
“No,” Kaseya insisted. “You do not understand because this proves my sister right.”
I grimaced. “Because she said the moshalim were lying to you?”
“Yes. And if they lied about this…what else could they be lying about?”
“Anything and everything,” Valuri said. “It’s not fun when you find out you’ve spent your whole life in service of liars and monsters, is it?
I whipped my head around and glared at her. “You’re not helping.”
“It’s the truth. The sooner she comes to accept it, the better.”
“The moshalim are not monsters,” Kaseya said. “They’re just…”
I squeezed her shoulders again when she trailed off. “Maybe you should come lie down for a bit. I’ll fetch us some more tea and food.”
“I would prefer to remain by the fire.”
I sighed and nodded. Personally, I was excited by this revelation—I couldn’t wait to try and discover what if any natural abilities she might have—but I was trying to hide my enthusiasm for her sake. She didn’t need the collar flooding her with my giddiness right now. Back in Vorsalos, I had known a priest who had lost his faith one day, and the result had been…well, tragic didn’t begin to cover it. He had never been the same person afterwards.
Valuri had gone through a similar transition when she had turned against the Senosi, though her natural cynicism had shielded her from the worst of it. Kaseya wouldn’t be so lucky.
I stood and gestured for Val to follow me into the adjoining room where the wenches had drawn us some water. She gently shut the door behind us and crossed her arms over her chest.
“She’ll be fine, Jorem. She’s a tough girl, and this isn’t actually bad news.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m just a little worried about what might happen if we run into her sister out here.”
“You weren’t worried already?” Valuri asked. “You did see Ayrael fight before, right?”
“Yeah, and we won’t stand a chance unless all of us are ready and focused.” I pursed my lips. “I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it anyway, but I’m worried. People do strange things when their whole world starts collapsing around them.”
“You’re especially cute when you’re all warm and compassionate,” Valuri said with a smirk. “But seriously: she’ll be fine.”
I smiled back. “You’re just happy you have another place to feed.”
“Ecstatic is more like it. Everyone loves a little variety now and then.”
I snorted. “You really are a glutton.”
“And yet I keep my perfect figure,” she said, bumping her hip against me. “The world isn’t fair.”
I glanced back into the main room where Kaseya was still sitting. “No,” I murmured. “It most definitely is not.”
5
The storm was still raging outside when we fell asleep, though I found the rhythmic patter of the rainfall against the window oddly soothing. The room only had one bed, which meant I was greeted in the morning by a naked Kaseya in my arms and a naked Valuri pressed up against my back. I might have actually enjoyed the sensation more than waking up with my cock in their mouths, as hard as that was to believe.
Not that I really had to choose. Valuri, eager to feed, stroked me to full length barely a minute after I first stirred, and Kaseya dutifully took me into her throat once I was ready. Just before I burst, she pulled away and pumped my load all over Valuri’s tits and stomach, and while the Senosi rolled around in gluttonous, post-coital bliss, Kaseya and I cleaned up and organized our equipment.
The amazon didn’t say a word about sorcery or the moshalim or anything else related to our discovery, and I respected her silence. She seemed completely focused on the task at hand, which was probably for the best. Still, I dreaded our next encounter with her sister. I had no idea how Kaseya would react to another round of Ayrael’s taunts. I wasn’t looking forward to getting chopped in half, either, but for whatever reason the threat of painful death seemed paltry by comparison. Relationships were strange like that.
The roads and fields were so muddy and slick that we left our horses at the stable and braved the path south on foot. On Kaseya’s suggestion, we hugged the edge of the lake south as long as we could before we eventually veered southeast towards the pass. She called out all the most obvious ambush points as we passed, and I made a mental note of each of them in anticipation of our return trip. I really hoped these Falcon Guard mercenaries were worth the gold Telanya was paying them…
We camped one last time on the plains before reaching the Highvale Pass early the next morning. That gave us almost half a day before the scheduled rendezvous, which was exactly what I’d hoped for all along. The rocky terrain between the mountains featured a thousand potential ambush points, and I wanted to ensure that the Senosi weren’t already waiting for the caravan. While I stretched out with my magic and searched for any signs of Aetheric echoes, Kaseya swept the area for tracks and Valuri set up traps in a few choice locations. We spent so much of our time traveling and fucking around—often literally—that I had almost forgotten how well our skills complimented each other.
By midafternoon we found ourselves a comfortable perch along the ridge where we could watch the whole pass, and we settled in and took turns keeping watch. A few hours before sunset, we finally found what we were looking for.
“There they are,” Kaseya announced, squinting through the spyglass. “I see five soldiers on each side plus the driver and three horses.”
Valuri flipped over and shielded her eyes against the sun. “What are the odds they start shooting at us the moment we approach them?”
“Too high,” I murmured, taking the spyglass. The carriage was larger than I expected and probably heavier too, considering the size of the mighty draft horses pulling it along. The soldiers on either side were traveling on foot while their leader steered from the saddle.
“They certainly look professional enough,” Valuri commented. “Expensive armor and weapons, elaborate tabards…no one would ever confuse them with any of the rag-tag companies back home.”
“Should we move out to greet them?” Kaseya asked. “The longer we wait, the more suspicious they’ll become of us lurking in the ridgeline.”
I let out a deep breath and nodded. This was all going precisely according to plan so far, but I still couldn’t unwind the anxious knots twisting in my stomach. Something just didn’t feel right…
“Let’s go,” I said. “But keep your guard up.”
We shimmied our way down the hill and slowly maneuvered through the rocky path back to the road. When we finally emerged i
nto direct view of the mercenaries, I was careful to ensure that we were plainly visible for a solid quarter mile before the caravan reached us. Unsurprisingly, the guards stopped the wagon and sent a man ahead to greet us.
“Identify yourself!” he called out, his hand clenched around the handle of his unsheathed sword.
“Our employer thought you could use some backup,” I said, holding out the symbol Telanya had given me. “We’re here to help.”
The man stopped a good fifty feet away from us, his eyes squinting at the symbol. I could barely see his face beneath his upturned visor, but I could tell he was one ugly son of a bitch.
“Lord Martel promised to send a whole squad.”
“Well, we’re all that’s coming,” I said. “But we pack a punch, don’t worry.”
After staring at us for another moment, he made a hand signal to the rest of the caravan before he approached closer. “Two women and a fop with a ruffled shirt,” he sneered. “And here I thought Martel was taking this seriously.”
“Well, he did hire you,” Valuri said. “So evidently not.”
It was hard not to wince. It was even harder not to elbow her in the gut.
“We can handle ourselves just fine, don’t worry,” I said, opening my palm and summoning a crackling ball of Aetheric energy. “The boss thought you might need a little extra firepower.”
To his credit, the man didn’t recoil at the sight of magic. He just stared at us in contempt for another moment before the wagon finally caught up.
“They’re your problem—you deal with it,” he muttered to the driver.
The man in the saddle—a thirty something human with short hair and an out-of-place appreciation for basic hygiene compared to his companions—chuckled softly and held out his hand.
“The name’s Koth,” he said. “Romar Koth. Sorry for the rough greeting—we just needed to make sure who we were dealing with.”
“I understand completely,” I assured him, shaking his offered hand. “I’m Jorem. Kaseya is the one in red; Valuri is the one in black.”
Koth nodded at each of them and grinned. “It’s not often you see a man wandering the pass with two beautiful, heavily-armed women on his flank.”
“He’s just lucky,” Valuri said. “Incredibly, unbelievably lucky.”
“So it would seem,” the man replied dryly. “You’re Vorsalosian, huh? I haven’t heard that accent in a while.”
“I’m sure it’s a little strange given the nature of the danger you’re expecting,” I conceded, “but who better to fight your enemy than someone who knows how they think?”
“Fair enough.” Koth eyed the rest of his men and signaled for them to fan back out around the caravan. “You’ll have to forgive my soldiers for leering. Some of them haven’t seen a woman in weeks…and most of them have never seen an amazon.”
“They can stare all they like, so long as they do their jobs,” Kaseya said matter-of-factly. “I noted all the most likely ambush points during our trip south from Highwind We’ll pass through two high-risk areas before we stop tonight—your men need to be prepared.”
Koth chuckled. “They will be. Lord Martel hired the Falcon Guard because we’re the best. And with the help of an amazon and a sorcerer, I’ve no doubt we’ll succeed.”
I smiled back at him. Something about his calm demeanor had already set me on edge. Mercenary captains weren’t usually smooth talkers, in my experience, though I was probably extra biased against the man purely based on his point of origin. Falcon Ridge was called “Buccaneer’s Bay” for good reason—the city’s king had been murdered by a coalition of pirate captains about ten years ago, and those men were still in power as far as I knew. The Ridge was a cesspool of crime and corruption.
Not that Vorsalos was any different.
“We had hoped to clear the pass by sundown, so we should really keep moving,” Koth said after a moment. His eyes flicked between Valuri and Kaseya. “There’s an open seat in the saddle if one of you lady friends would like to rest her legs a bit...”
“I cannot effectively watch for an ambush up there,” Kaseya said. “I will take point.”
“You go ahead and do that, Red,” Valuri said, smiling wryly as she climbed up next to Koth. “My feet have been aching all day.”
Kaseya scoffed. “Why am I not surprised by your laziness?”
I clamped my hand over her mouth. “We’ll both take point,” I said. “We’ll have plenty of time to chat tonight.”
Koth grinned again. “I look forward to it.”
I took Kaseya’s wrist and escorted her in front of the wagon as the horses started moving again. She was at least savvy enough to wait until we were out of earshot before she questioned me.
“I am sorry for upsetting you, Jorem,” she said. “But there are times when her habits are too maddening to ignore.”
“Val’s not being lazy,” I said. “She wants to ride next to their captain so she can loosen his tongue and figure what he’s up to.”
Kaseya blinked. “Shouldn’t she be paying attention to the roads and helping us spot an ambush?”
“She trusts us to do that. In the meantime, she’ll feel out our new friends and tell me what she thinks tonight.”
Kaseya paused in thought for a minute. “Perhaps I have underestimated her.”
I grinned. “Everyone always has. Even the Inquisitrix. Even your sister.”
“I had assumed your previous attraction to her was purely physical, but perhaps I was mistaken,” Kaseya said. “In any event, we have other duties to attend to. My sister is out there somewhere.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I bet she is.”
***
The Senosi didn’t attack us at either point Kaseya had marked dangerous. They didn’t attack us at all, in fact, which made me more and more nervous the more I thought about it. We were still at least twenty miles south of Lake Dunarthe, but by tomorrow we would be back in in the lower grasslands and much more likely to stumble into armed Silver Fist patrols. Our enemies wouldn’t wait that long to strike. If they were going to hit us, it would be soon—possibly even overnight.
“Perhaps I should stay awake just in case,” Kaseya suggested as the Falcon Guard mercenaries began setting up camp for the evening. “These men seem relatively competent, but I do not trust them to spot an ambush before it is too late.”
I nodded and blew a thin stream of air between my teeth. She wasn’t wrong, of course, but I didn’t relish the thought of walking another hundred plus miles to Highwind without getting any sleep. Then again, even if I did fall asleep out here, it wasn’t like Kaseya would be able to wake me the same way as usual…
“I hope you two had fun,” Valuri said, sauntering over to us. “I certainly had an enlightening day.”
“Stimulating conversation?”
“Let’s just say he’d lick dung from my boots if I asked him to.”
Kaseya frowned. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning she has him wrapped around her fingers,” I said with a knowing smirk. “Let me guess: he thinks he’ll be fucking you by the time we reach Highwind.”
“He think he’ll be fucking me tonight,” Valuri corrected. “He thinks I’ll be having his babies by the time we reach Highwind.”
I snickered despite myself. I almost regretted not being able to hear their whole conversation. Valuri could convince a monk to abandon his life-long vow of chastity in about ten minutes, given the chance.
“From your tone, I assume you were lying to him,” Kaseya said. “Did your deception have a purpose besides cruelty?”
“Only if you think it’s valuable to know about the people you’re working with,” Valuri replied tartly. “Whatever else Koth may be, he’s a natural bullshitter. I can’t even remember half the things we talked about.”
“Not necessarily the skill I’d expect from a mercenary commander,” I commented.
“He obviously manages the business side of things for the Falcon Guard,” Valuri said. �
��I’m pretty sure about four-fifths of what he told me was nonsense, but I get the feeling he was probably a smuggler or con-artist who realized he could make more coin going legit.”
“Charming,” I muttered.
“On the plus side, I’m fairly certain his soldiers know what they’re doing. They should be useful enough if we get into a fight.”
“I agree,” Kaseya put in. “They are reasonably competent, and their equipment is in excellent shape.”
“You could tell all that just from watching them walk for a few hours?”
“Yes,” the amazon replied as if it were obvious. “I have spent my life training as a warrior, Jorem. I know what to look for.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, glancing around. “I do know that they don’t have any channelers, wizards or otherwise. I haven’t decided if that’s good or bad yet.”
“It depends how many actual Senosi we run into,” Valuri said. “Anyway, you two get some shut-eye if you want. I’m going to sit down and try to win some gold.”
“Cards?” I asked.
“They think they’re good at sejaak. I’m about to prove them wrong.”
I grinned as she sauntered back over to the mercenaries. Hopefully they wouldn’t hold a grudge when she cleaned them out…
“We should probably try sleeping one at a time,” I said. “We could…”
I trailed off when I saw Kaseya staring hard at the carriage across camp. A couple of the mercenaries were perched on top as nighttime lookouts, but I didn’t see anything sense out of the ordinary.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I do not know,” she murmured. “When I look at the carriage, I feel…strange.”
“Strange how?”
“It is difficult to explain. It’s like I’m looking at something that isn’t really there.”
“It feels strange to me too, but that’s because of the vatari crystals inside. The Aether essentially doesn’t exist around it.”
Kaseya grimaced. “It must be something else. I do not have your powers.”
I frowned and studied her profile for a few moments. “Just because you’ve never directly tapped into the Aether doesn’t mean you’ve never felt its presence. Back when we first met, you said you could sense magic clinging to me. You said that ‘all amazons are taught to feel the natural ebb and flow of the Aether to better serve their Maskari.’”