Steel Sirens

by Maxx Whittaker

  I kneel before her. I’m exhausted beyond anything I’ve ever known, my body screams at me with aches and wounds, and the killings have left me hollowed. But I smile, place a hand over hers. “I’ll get us out.”

  “I know you will.” And then she’s gone, wisping away, glittering dust absorbed by her blade.

  I pick it up, stand. Strap it to my back. Put my face to Glaer’s nose, inhale his earthy scent. The comfort I take from the simple contact almost breaks me, and the effort of mounting almost finishes the job.

  I take the reins of the other horses, and then we’re gone, chased by the scent of burning flesh and the caws of already circling ravens that move like dark smudges of ink across the emerald sky.

  21

  The Ambitious Temptress

  The card depicts a shade with auburn hair, eyes of amber and a black gauntlet. Its arrival illuminates the past and is associated with a memory or unseen deeds. Inverted, it represents a false victory, a defeat, or a spiritual loss. Its reverse is black embossed with a gold mirror.

  When the Seer rests her fingers atop the mirror she is granted a vision…

  “It will take days to search the castle.”

  Cabhan doesn’t tell his mistress anything she doesn’t know. Myranda stands above him on the great staircase, making the difference in height between her and her captain even greater. She tucks away his prize. “One. Hour.”

  Cabhan sags.

  “I’m sympathetic to your plight, but time is thin,” Myranda repeats for the second and last time tonight.

  “Castle Lowe was an underground for Dehuene rebels during the Border Wars. There are probably rooms here no one has entered in two hundred years.”

  “That’s what Straithe is counting on: You searching the scullery maid’s knee crease and not the chamber wardrobe. Obvious places first.”

  Cabhan salutes.

  Myranda continues up and slips into the solar; it was shut up hours ago and is dark save one lamp. Bodies were been cleared away – Straithe denied her these until she got tired of trying to make her case – but the floor has yet to be cleaned. Blood spoils in the broken marble and on the moldering drapes. To Myranda, these smell worse than the musk perfumes of death and decay.

  She exits the solar and navigates corridors she could pass through in her sleep. How much time has she wasted in this pile of rubble?

  This was the last time she would ever pass through Carven’s gallery, a fact because when she came back down, Myranda intended to light the room on fire and let Straithe worry about extinguishing it.

  She opens no doors she passes. It’s not her job to find the ranger, and she isn’t looking for him.

  She wants information.

  At the next landing, she stops.

  Three doors, one on each side, leading to the guest apartments.

  Which chamber? Her mind skips over the dormant rooms where decay is old and faint, nearly indistinguishable from dust.

  Myranda inhales, drawing the scents through her nose and into a deep primitive part of her mind.

  Blood, sweat, death and –

  Her eyes snap open.

  There.

  Myranda ignores the heat in her face and belly at the sensation, the image in her mind.

  She rests fingers on the latch.

  Old sweat; weariness, fatigue, bloodlust. She jerks her hand away at the ferocity.

  Inside, the air is delicious, trapped like a bottle of wine just left to breathe.

  She trails her finger along the mantle and sticks a hand over the grate. No coals, but the bricks hold heat.

  An empty goblet lays half in the firebox.

  Myranda raises it to her lips, tasting plum wine and the woman’s spit. A hunger for both flares inside.

  “Ser Lanlath?” Cabhan calls from the hall.

  “Mm.”

  “Straithe says the taps are working again, if you’d like to have a bath and make yourself comfortable.”

  Uston. Such a sarcastic, prickly thing. “Isn’t he amusing. Tell him to come up and keep me company, then.”

  Cabhan retreats with an unamused cadence.

  The bed. She stands and takes it in.

  How long since she’d slept in a proper bed, and not a straw pallet, or lice-ridden inn mattress of filthy rushes?

  The bed before her is a monument, big enough for four people, made for sleeping till midday, laying drunk and content, and for fucking.

  She circles the bed, skimming a rumpled linen sheet. Dampness lingers in the folds.

  An auburn-haired woman, thighs parted, knees drawn high. Her body shakes with his thrusts.

  Myranda picks a hair from the crisp white fabric.

  He tangles fingers in her hair and pulls, filling the woman’s mouth with his cock.

  Hungry, a little brutal. In her mind’s eye Miranda watches the exchange unfold.

  She rests hands on the sheet mound, centered on the mattress, corners flipped back.

  They bolt from the bed; a faint sour note of worry still drifts beneath the canopy.

  “That wouldn’t be my arrival, would it?” she whispers to the empty room.

  She draws back the sheet, presses her face to the bedding and inhales.

  Their bodies grind, noises animal and vulgar. They come; his seed spills over the woman’s thighs.

  There’s a power in their coupling – from the woman, definitely, but from him… Something Myranda has never felt before.

  She doesn’t fight it anymore. Primal excitement at his energy floods her; her nipples draw taut. A heartbeat pounds between her thighs.

  “I’m going to have that bath,” she whispers, moving toward the wash closet, “And lay in that bed and –”

  Myranda stops herself, needing to keep control and denying herself any advanced pleasure.

  She unlaces her breastplate, her pauldrons and sleeves. When was the last time she was nude? Like a proper bed, the event is hard to recall. Why has she gone so long without basic pleasures?

  “I’m spending my time in the wrong places.” For a reason, she chides, twisting a pair of ceramic knobs set into the wall. The Hand, slaving, being half-hostage to Lord Arundel…this wasn’t her destination. She was passing through; rising like the morning sun. The ranger? He would speed her rise immeasurably.

  Myranda steps into cloud of steam from the copper tub. Water sears the tops of her feet. Who did Straithe find to fix the plumbing and stoke the boilers? Maybe the new duchess has herself together.

  She sits. Braid untied, waves fall over her breasts. She twists her shoulders

  The sloped wall holds her back, letting her recline.

  I would lie this way for him, teasing and brazen, a hunter on the edge of taking some rare prey.

  Myranda wets her hand in the pooling water. The motion sloshes bathwater against her cunt. Her belly clenches.

  “Mmm.” One hand caresses her breast in a damp palm. She delays any greater pleasure for imagining the hunt a little while longer.

  He would not be gentle with her. She’d smelled his hatred, small particles of his soul dying under rage for her.

  He wouldn’t kiss me; he wouldn’t touch me with kind hands.

  The ranger would dominate. But not like the men in Warkworth, noblemen who want a hasty fuck with someone more exciting than their lady.

  He would think of possession and punishment before pleasure for himself. Myranda parts herself with two fingers and slicks them over her swollen bud.

  He would be demanding, rough. Skilled.

  And despite this, she’ll break him.

  She rubs, flicks, teases herself.

  He will hate her and belong to her, she promises, swirling harder against tender flesh.

  Water laps in a gentle sound at her efforts, a rhythmic, soothing splash. Myranda sinks deeper. Water catches her hair, floats and fans it over her straining nipples.

  Her fingers slide further; a pair slip inside and massage that secret place no man ever seems to discover. Her swol
len lips, belly, and thighs feel hotter than the water.

  All of her strains.

  She can’t wait, not any more than she could if he were here. Myranda cups the soft mound of her cunt and squeezes.

  Water splashes violently from her frigging.

  Her cunt tightens, beating in time with her heart. It’s not enough.

  She needs to feel what the red-haired woman felt. The sensations are too pale.

  Myranda licks her lips, searching for a hint of what she found on the sheet.

  He drives into her, pounding her womb; her body flinches at the impact.

  She slides deeper into the water, smooth copper pulling her to the foot of the tub.

  She wriggles her bottom desperately. Her legs drape the rim. Myranda arches and lets the falling water beat against her cunt, begging it to violate her swollen lips the way his tongue would.

  I would make him beg, she thinks, delirious from the water. I’ve made so many men beg, but his would be more delicious. He would beg, and then I would beg once he was broken.

  Myranda parts her thighs wider, toes kissed by a tapestry high up the wall. She parts her lips so the flow can pound her bruised bud.

  “Oh, oh…ohhh…”

  She writhes out her climax and suffers.

  Panting, Myranda admits she’s done, but not satisfied. Not nearly.

  Soon.

  She pulls a bath sheet across her goose pricked skin and washes her hair while teasing out the last twinges of pleasure that siphon to her clit.

  “Lanlath.”

  “In here, General.”

  “In the –” Uston skids to a stop, coughs and turns his face away.

  She would have had him once. Myranda still toys with it, but not in a serious way. It’s something about the men who say no.

  “You’re really in the bath…”

  Myranda sits up, letting the bath sheet slip to the tops of her breasts. “You made the offer!” She leans onto the lip blinking up at him. “And since I offered company, and here you are…”

  Uston meets her eyes. “Not a chance.”

  She inhales, catching the odor of wetness at the head of his cock, a bead that forms and begins to die. She chuckles, and again when his high cheeks color.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Well…” Myranda climbs from the bath. “I was going to poke around a bit longer and I have but this –” She takes the key Cabhan brought her from her clothes and holds it up, “this has suggested I ought to be going.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “So, you know what it is?”

  Uston closes on her. “Where did it come from?”

  “Not everyone left in Castle Lowe is your ally, General.” Myranda presses against him, wet skin clinging to silk. “I answered you…”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  She steps away and offers him the key. “Something strange happened just before I came up here.”

  Uston takes the key and doesn’t say a word.

  “A servant in the foyer, a man who has been trapped inside this rat heap for gods-know how long, passed me wafting the strongest odor of pink salt.”

  She watches for a reaction she knows she won’t get. Uston hardly ever slips, a byproduct of worrying for his boy. This almost makes her sad to test it.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering what’s so odd about that, and I’ll tell you: Pink salt is harvested from the eastern lakebed. At the forest’s edge.”

  Uston sighs. “Myranda. He was gone when you arrived. Gone. And he’s longer gone now. He’ll stop somewhere with that bloody sword and when he does, I’m sure you’ll hear about it. Catch him then. And meanwhile…take your obsession someplace else. And clothe yourself.”

  “We’re both lonely,” she whispers bitterly under the sudden realization that Uston might know her best in the world. She runs a palm hard up the silks beneath his tasses.

  He’s hard, hot, long.

  Uston closes his eyes and swallows. His fingers tremble at her wrist.

  Myranda knows before he does that Uston will step away from her.

  “Lonely and unhappy. Look at our lives; I don’t imagine either of us can solve that for the other.”

  “The key?” she asks again, hoping in a vulnerable moment Uston will be an ally.

  “He’s gone.”

  She swipes up her clothes. “Not far enough.”

  Uston stiffens. “Meaning?”

  “The Inquisition have resources. They’re sending me some.”

  He takes another step back. “What are you bringing to this castle?”

  “Think of it like a hound. A hulking, soul eating, relentless, ravenous, necromanced hound.”

  Uston turns on his heel and stalks out.

  Frustrated and ashamed, Myranda keeps her promise. She drapes across the bed on her belly, shoves a hand between her stomach, and the blankets and brings herself to climax in the spot where the woman was fucked. She’s ungentle, punishing, suffering for her pleasure.

  She’s still there, panting, when Cabhan knocks.

  “Ser Lanlath…it’s arrived.”

  Myranda shivers against more than cold night air. She can smell the Genglot dying, regenerating off its own decay.

  She gets up and dresses quickly, strapping on her sword, and stands near the wash chamber. It’s as far as she can get from the door.

  Myranda can her its chunks of tissue smack the stairs. It loses flesh in wet dollops. The pieces trail behind and join the whole.

  The Genglot extrudes into the bedchamber, resembling a writhing lump of maggots. It’s naked, not that anything reveals its nakedness or gender. It has none, made of men and women and creatures – whatever souls it’s consumed. It stops and looks at her with two eyes like a beetle’s carapace.

  Myranda twists her hands, weighing her approach.

  Before she can move, the Genglot writhes faster, thinning and rising. It seeps forward like a snake, and without leaving its place, extends and runs worm-riddled appendage over the bed. A hand, a snout; there’s no telling.

  But it’s clear after one pass the creature is excited, lusting like a hound after the hare.

  She considers the Genglot. “You’ve smelled him before…”

  It turns on her, blinking its shallow eyes.

  Myranda swallows down disgust long enough to set a finger on its clammy putrefied flesh.

  A horse; the taste of its dead flesh. A Hand slaver. A clearing near the lower swell. The Ranger.

  “Ewan Cuinn. But a dark-haired woman that time.” Myranda jerks her hand from the Genglot. “She frightened you away.”

  The creature glops and writhes faster.

  Her soldier. That was her soldier they decapitated in the forest. Cuinn must have known. He came to Minster Lowe tracking her.

  “What is he up to?”

  “Ser Lanlath?”

  “What!” Cabhan’s ceaseless interruptions grate on a night when she needs time to think.

  “A letter arrived from the Enclave; there’s no master or escort for the…” He swallows the last word.

  “Why not?” Someone has to hold the Genglot’s leash.

  “Lord Tarin and his cohort are missing. His sword was found in a forest near the High Wilds.”

  Too many coincidences. “I underestimated him.” So much more than just a ranger from the hinterlands. Myranda already knew this. But how much more? A shiver runs up her back.

  “Ser?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Lusleigh writes that he’ll have someone here day after tomorrow to master the Genglot.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Her plan seemed risky and unnecessary days ago. Now it’s perfect.

  “I don’t think the Enclave were asking.”

  She turns on her captain. “Then they can go and find it when they arrive.”

  Cabhan shrinks inside his black armor and disappears into the passageway.

  Myranda works up her fortitude and rests ha
nds on the Genglot’s body. She ignores its sticky oozing form, sloughing and creeping across her skin, searching inside the hell of souls it contains.

  Somewhere… Myranda steels herself and plunges deeper. Whoever seeded the creature left a rune inside; not physically, but on the spiritual plane.

  “If I can…just…” Myranda grips on to the pebble of black fire and floods it with her will.

  The Genglot stills. It puddles to the floor.

  “Damn it. It’s dead.” She shakes her hands compulsively, wishing she’d saved her bath.

  The creature thickens to the consistency of pale snot, bubbles, and starts to form up.

  Myranda exhales, trembling with nervous excitement.

  It turns on her with horribly adoring flat eyes, ready to obey.

  Ora be praised. “You’ve smelled him. You smell him now, in this room. Find him. Do not take him to your masters. Bring him to me.”

  The Genglot flows in on itself, back becoming front, and oozes from the bedchamber.

  With another steadying breath, Myranda follows. “Cabhan! Call the men; we’re leaving.”

  22

  A twig snaps, and I startle awake, reaching for my bow in blind panic.

  For long moments I stare at the tree line wildly, waiting for Myranda’s forces to spill through, to end my flight. But there’s nothing, no movement, no sound save the forest’s natural melody.

  Just a false alarm.

  An animal, searching for food, wandering through the trees. I slouch over Glaer’s back as he trudges through ankle deep water, cursing myself for falling asleep. Again.

  Blistering midday sun beats at my back as I slouch over along my horse’s neck, resting my face against his soft mane. I’m tired. So tired I can barely keep my eyes from closing, can only exist in a fugue of exhaustion. Blistering midday sun doesn’t help, and I long to fall from Glaer’s back, to lay in the cool, crystal water.

  But I can’t. They’re following, I know it. We’ve cost her too much, have killed too many of her men.

  Myranda. Why does she chase me so relentlessly? Is it because of the Sirens? Has word spread of their return? I can’t imagine Oranna saying anything, but the inn was crowded, the night of the fight. And we weren’t exactly circumspect as we fought in, and almost burned down, the duke’s main hall.