Game: Session 4
I’m
I’ve been sitting here for a good quarter-hour trying to think of a way to finish that sentence. The ink has dried on my pen twice now, and I have stains on my lips from tapping the point against them.
Here’s the thing: I’m pregnant.
It’s not even a bad thing. It’s just such a big thing that it’s hard to wrap my mind around. When I woke up this evening, my first thought was “Whoa. That was a weird dream.” And then the sounds of strange birds and strange men and the smell of more living growing green things than I ever thought possible penetrated, and I remembered that I really had crossed to the other side of the world and why, and that I really really really was pregnant.
Just this morning, I wasn’t. Gods. This morning I was still a virgin. Now I am most emphatically not. Normally a girl wouldn’t know for at least a moon or two, but I get to be special again. Yay me.
The day before yesterday started out ordinary enough. Before my shift started, I got into my pretty new saffron dress and went to go tell Ahmed the news about his taxes. He was pretty happy to hear it, but wanted to make sure it was really real for himself, from the judge. Which made lots of sense, I would’ve wanted to do the same thing in his place. Just guessing by the way he left his house with me still inside, he was pretty excited. It would mean the difference between being poor and being enslaved for him and Cinta. I’d be excited if I were him.
I was expecting – hoping – that Cinta would be there, but she wasn’t. He said he thought it would be better for both her and the baby to have a place of their own, and he’s probably right. Before he left, he gave me directions. It wasn’t too hard to find.
I was not expecting the door to be answered by a whore. It’s not really a bad thing, being a whore, but it can be. Some Houses don’t treat the girls well at all, and the women who have to walk the streets have it even worse – paying a procurer nearly every copper fiq they make for “protection.”
“We don’t usually get girls here,” she said, looking out the door at me.
“Uh…”
“Or are you applying?” She gave me an appraising look, and I got the impression she knew exactly how much money I could bring in.
“I’m looking for Cinta?” I’m afraid I squeaked.
“Oh. C’mon in. She’s down the hall on the right.”
“Thanks.”
“Sofiyah, hello!” Cinta had a small, tidy room, and she was knitting something small when I came in. She gave me a smile, set her needles down, and told me to sit on the bed – she was in the only chair already.
“Hi, Cinta. How are you?”
“Fine, dear. And you?”
“Oh, I’m great. Tired, but great.”
“I hear you’re working for the guard now?”
I nodded. “Mm-hmm. They’d been asking the school for help for a while now, so they sent us.”
“How do you like it?”
“Parts of it I don’t. But it’s interesting, and I’ve seen more of the city in the past few days than I have in my life. What are you doing here?”
“It’s not a bad place for an unmarried pregnant woman. Besides, father said I might learn the trade. It is an honorable one.”
“Sure. Um. There was something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“About the baby, and the judge. If you could have whatever you wanted, what would it be? Would you want to marry him?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want, Sofi. The judge will probably take the child when he’s born, if he’s healthy. If I’m fortunate, I might be hired into his household as a nursemaid. He almost certainly won’t marry me. He’s already married, and his wife is not without influence.”
“I’m not talking about what’s likely to happen, Cinta. I want to know what you want. I have some influence myself, and I’d like to use it to help you.” She took both my hands in both of hers and squeezed. I had to swallow all of a sudden – my mouth had gone completely dry. Gods, I must look like a complete idiot, I thought. We talked around that for a little while before she told me.
“Of course I’d like to marry him, Sofi.” She was smiling the way she did when she talked about her baby. “He’s a kind man, generous, and it would be a very advantageous marriage for my father.”
I nodded, feeling like my heart wasn’t in my chest any more. “I don’t know if I can get him to if he doesn’t want to, but I’ll put in what word I can with him. I should be going.”
“All right.” Cinta stood when I did and hugged me tight – if a little awkward from the size of her belly. “And don’t worry, Sofi. You’ll find someone who loves you some day.”
Apparently I was that obvious. And she was very sweet about it all – even if she wasn’t interested in me, she did like me. I wanted to curl up and die. I was headed vaguely homewards, thinking very seriously about getting stinking drunk when a couple of the guardsmen found me. “Sofiyah? Would you come with us, please?”
If I was under arrest, they wouldn’t have said please. So we went to the guard house. When we got there, Sal handed me a parchment that basically gave us permission to do whatever we wanted, to anyone in the city, for the next three days.
“Holy shit!”
“That’s what I said,” the new corporal told me.
“So now what?”
Sal grinned, showing off a whole lot of teeth. They’re very pointy. “We’re going to go talk to one of the guys on the take and find out what the hell’s going on.”
“Okay.”
Which is pretty much what we did. Nine of the guards went with us for backup. The merchant had a house in a nice part of town, so he obviously wasn’t doing too badly for himself. He shouldn’t have been doing well enough to pay ten gold a month in taxes with no strain, but he was doing all right. We broke into the place and the guards bound everyone’s arms together behind his back. The guy had three wives and thirteen children. There should have been no way he could get his hands on the kind of money he was paying every month. He especially shouldn’t prosper doing it.
Even with Sal poking around his mind, he didn’t want to tell us anything. The man was surprisingly tough, holding up under torture even. Sal stabbing him in the hand made me uncomfortable, but it was the casual way the guard cut the man’s ear off and broke his arm that really got to me. I’d talked to the guy at first, but I couldn’t after it started to get bloody. I went and pretended to be really interested in the view out the window. Eventually they finished torturing the guy and killed him with one of his sons there as a witness.
When we got outside, I told Sal that if he’s going to do any more torturing to leave me out of it. I don’t have the stomach for it. Killing people is bad enough, but torture just seems so much worse when I know what kind of damage is done and what it would take to recover from it.
We did get one thing out of him that we didn’t know before – the runner that came ’round to set up meetings to give out the money was a guy called Green, someone Sal knew back when he was a street thief. So he told the guards to go back to their regular stuff, he changed clothes, and we went to find Green.
It took a good long time to find him, too. Eventually we came to a shack that looked like it was about to collapse – not exactly my idea of a safe house, but it meant something different to them. The two men had a long boring conversation that was mostly just them repeating variations on “Come on, tell me what I want to know.”
“No.”
“I could just rip it out of your head.”
“Yeah, but this is a safe house.” And around and around and around again. I thought about getting drunk. I made elaborate plans to get drunk, and started thinking of adjectives to go along with it. Some of it must have been out loud, because Green looked at me and asked, “Does she always mutter to herself like that?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I smiled at him and said, “At least I’m not talking to the lizard.”
Finally Sal asked why he was doing the runner job for Otaan. Green laughed and shook his coin purse. “Money. Forty gold dinari worth of money.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s really just the money?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
Very edifying stuff, this. It wasn’t going to get us anywhere unless Sal was prepared to start breaking some serious rules, which his wasn’t, so we left. I picked up a bottle of usha – it’s nasty stuff, distilled from the pulp of a cactus, but it’s strong enough to dissolve teeth. Which is about what I wanted. Sal and me and my bottle of usha were headed back to the house when we ran into the Lieutenant from our desert adventures with the Northsail company. As usual he wasn’t wearing much of anything at all and his muscles rippled under his skin and suddenly the ache where my heart used to be seemed a whole lot less important.
It got even less important when he smiled, obviously pleased to see us. “Good afternoon! Sofiyah, and… Sally, wasn’t it?”
“Salamander.”
“Hi. Um.” I grinned at him.
“I was just going to Shesha. Would you like to join me?”
Oh, good, an easy question. Out with the improbably gorgeous Lieutenant, smoking very nice hashish, or home drinking cheap nasty booze with my thoughts to keep me company? Hmm, lessee… “Sure!” I winced at how eager I sounded.
“All right,” Sal allowed, not grumbling too much about being called Sally. That wasn’t worth stabbing anyone over, I guess. Not like when Pirin called him Whitey.
So we went to the hash shop. Even with as little as he was wearing and us tagging along, the Lieutenant rated a private room with a few couches arranged around a round table, and instantaneous service. Three water-pipes were delivered, along with a pot of spiced tea. The combination was delicious, and I was very quickly feeling much relaxed and warm in the middle from watching the Lieutenant. I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but Sal asked if his name happened to be Otaan at some point. (”How did you know?” asked the Lieutenant.)
Sal didn’t trust him to begin with, and trusted him less at this point, but I was more optimistic about it. I’d been wrong about the judge, after all. Maybe Otaan was the same way, doing horrible things to reach a goal he believed was right. Besides, he liked me. Me! He said I was what he’d been looking for the whole time, and he wished he’d known when we were sleeping so close to one another in the desert. He asked us what we wanted. Sal said something about wanting to resolve this whole thing with the gold and the bounty out on the judge and all. I said there was a girl, that I wanted her and her baby to be safe.
That was a simple, concrete goal. Otaan liked it. “What would you give to know she was safe?” I thought about that for a while.
“A really big favor?” I offered.
“How about just a small favor?” he asked. “Really big favors are between friends. You do small favors for someone you love, and I’d like to love you both.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know until then that I could blush with my whole body. “Okay.”
I was stupid. I admit that. And I even sort of knew it at the time. I was really stupid. But I was also inexperienced and heartsick and lonely and wanting very much to not think about Cinta and sex with Otaan seemed like it would help with all of those things. Sal left and we stayed until it started getting dark, me emptying my head with smoke while Otaan told me about far away places and about how lovely my eyes were, that he could see the demon in me and I was beautiful. Somehow, I was the thing that he’d been spending so much money to find, that was twisting the city so badly. And now he’d found me.
Is it any wonder I wanted to believe Otaan? (And I’m still pretty sure I do believe what he says. He’s never lied to me that I know of. I don’t trust him, but I believe him. It’s a different thing.) He took me home with him and had his servants pamper me in ways I never imagined. Dinner was excellent and several courses long, the wines selected to perfectly complement each dish, and I ate ravenously. Afterwards, his servants bathed me, washed my hair, and massaged every inch of me with sandalwood-scented oil. For the first time in my life, I felt beautiful.
I would have done anything by that point, but Otaan said he wanted me to be awake to enjoy my first time properly, and would I wait until morning? Sure. I could wait for the morning. So he carried me (still naked against his bare chest) to his bed, a huge, soft thing with satiny silk sheets. He laid me out in it and kissed me and whispered, “Sleep.” I did.
Waking up in the morning was very pleasant at first – I was warm and Otaan was doing something really, really nice with his mouth and the folds between my legs and it took me a while to figure out that I wasn’t in the same bed I’d gone to sleep in, or even in the same room any more. And that we weren’t alone. There were people chanting something I didn’t understand.
“Hey!” I opened my eyes and saw a circular room with an altar in the middle and eight people in black robes with colored sashes standing around us. At least they were facing out. The very pleasant feeling started to fade, but Otaan used his hands and body to encourage it. I tried to sit up, and found that my hands were tied together above my head, and my ankles tied with my legs spread apart. “Hey!” I yelped again, pulling against the soft rope. I’m not very articulate when I’ve just woken up. Maybe the weirdest thing about it was that I wasn’t scared. I didn’t think for a heartbeat that he would hurt me.
“Shh,” Otaan said, pressing his hip into me where his mouth had been. I felt my eyes roll back in my head. My resolve, what little there was of it, was disappearing fast. “Don’t squirm, I’ll cut you loose. This was just so you wouldn’t fall off by accident.” And he did, dropping the knife to the floor after the rope. He lowered his head to my breast and sucked the nipple into his mouth and my moan turned into a cry because it felt so damnably good.
“I didn’t think there was going to be eight other guys in the room when we were talking about this,” I protested. It was hard to put words together with my breath coming as fast and shallow as it was.
“You’re just going to be with me,” he assured me, his breath feathery-warm against my ear. He took the lobe between his teeth and bit gently. I hadn’t known until then that my ears were connected to the need in my belly. (Actually, pretty much everything was. If he’d licked the back of my knee, I’d have felt it echo in my cunt.) “Trust me. You won’t notice them at all when it’s time.”
Okay. Obviously it was some kind of ritual. It was obvious then that it was a ritual. And probably not anything good, either. But I was fast coming to a point where I wouldn’t stop for the world. I didn’t. He kissed me hard (I could taste myself on his lips, and that made me warmer still), the length of him pressed hot against me, and I couldn’t think about anything but feeling him inside me. He was holding himself back with some effort, I could tell. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. Probably because he was the only one holding us back at all. With a shift of his hips I could feel his head pressing gently against where I opened, and he paused there. “Sofi. Do you want this?” Otaan asked, his voice hoarse.
“Oh, gods,” I hissed. “Yes. Please yes.” And quicker than I could say it, he was inside me, buried to the root. I’d heard that it hurt the first time, that there might be blood, and it did hurt, a bright sharp pain that faded almost as fast as it had come and there was nothing left but the two of us joined together and I’m almost uncomfortably wet just writing about it, remembering it.
It was incredibly good. I screamed, I clawed at his back with my nails, I bit him hard enough to draw blood at least once (I bit him more than that, but not so hard), we rolled over so that I was on top looking down at him (which I liked a lot). Suddenly he got an urgent look in his eyes and rolled us back so that he was on top and tried to drive himself through me and into the top of the altar. This was a wonderful idea and encouraged him by pulling his hair, hard. It was around then that the people chanting turned around to watch us, I think. I didn’t care.
Within a few more hard strokes I felt him spend himself into me. I’d heard that men had to stop after they did that, but he kept going until I reached my own climax and fell back limp on the altar. He slid carefully out of me and rolled to one side, looking down at me. I pressed my fists into my eyes and laughed for how good I felt. “Oh, gods above me. Again,” I told him. “Do that again.” At the edges of the circle, the people stopped chanting and left. I only barely noticed, and cared less.
“I will, Sofi,” he told me, smiling. “But you’ll have to let me rest a little first, greedy girl.” I’d heard that was true for men, but I didn’t know. It definitely wasn’t true for me – I was ready to keep going right then. And his mouth and hands still worked just fine, so I didn’t mind waiting for him to be ready again. Much. He was able to take me three more times in the next couple of hours, and I lost count of the times he brought me to screaming, sobbing climax. There was one point where I was like a rill of sand dunes with the peaks as, well, peaks and the troughs as just below that, and I just hovered there for a good ten minutes. A very, very good ten minutes.
He let me explore him, too. I wouldn’t have thought that a man’s skin would be so very soft there, but he is velvet-soft and I loved making him stir again. I especially liked having him in my mouth, teasing the sheath back from his head with my tongue, tasting both of us mixed together. It was intoxicating in ways that smoke or drink could never be. And when he was ready again, I climbed on top of him and impaled myself. If I moved just right, I could run his head over that hard-to-reach spot inside me that felt so, so good.
Otaan wanted to talk when it was all over, and I did my best. If we’d been in a bed, I probably would have gone back to sleep, though. After making him shift over so I wasn’t in the wet spot any more. He didn’t bother asking if he’d pleased me, which I liked. It was pretty obvious that he had, and he wasn’t exactly lacking for confidence. Unfortunately, what he was saying didn’t make me feel too great about myself – he’d used me and the taking of my virginity for his own purposes, which mostly had to do with serving one or more of the Dark Glories, the old gods of Shar deposed when the Nine rose to power.
I’m still not clear on exactly what he was doing with me. My mind still wasn’t working very well when he put his hand flat on my belly and told me, “Our son will be a strong warrior.” It felt like I’d run into a wall, going full out. Crunch. Mentally, anyway. My body seemed to confirm what he was saying.
“What? Son? You mean I’m pregnant?”
“Yes.” He looked very pleased with himself. He probably deserved to. Otaan had told me he wanted my first time to be the best. If it had been any better, I think I would have fainted.
“Oh.” I tried to think about that, but I felt dizzy.
Otaan wanted me to go with him. Not then, not immediately, but he said he’d wait for me evenings at the hash shop he’d taken us to yesterday. When I came, we’d leave together. I didn’t say I’d meet him, or that I wouldn’t. Regardless, he got up, put his pants and sandals on, and looked beautiful. I looked down at myself and found bruises on my breasts, belly, and thighs where his mouth had been. Probably there were more where I couldn’t see without a glass. My clothes were folded neatly at one side of the room. “There’s a pool just outside if you want to wash up,” he told me. “And one more thing. What’s the girl’s name?”
“Uh. Oh! Her name’s Cinta. Daughter of Ahmed.” Otaan gave me another one of those dazzling smiles and kissed me (stirring something low in my belly that damned well ought to have been satisfied) and left. I was kind of sticky where his seed had fallen out of me, so I wanted to at least get that cleaned up before I put my clothes back on. Wherever I was, I found that I was about a mile from town and quite alone. I looked, but couldn’t see Otaan anywhere. Weird. But the whole thing was weird. I got back to the house about an hour before mid-day.
Pretty much everyone was waiting for me. Even Acolyte Telfor, who isn’t active very much during the day. He spoke first, though Sal was giving me a Look. “Miss Sofiyah, may I speak with you privately?”
“Um. Sure.” So I followed Telfor upstairs to the library. In my time, it was clean, but empty and unpainted (my air-spirit had scoured away whatever little paint was left inside the house). In his, it was richly appointed, lavishly furnished, and held over a hundred fifty volumes.
“Let me preface this by saying that you are a woman of age and what you do with your time and your affections are your business. Your choices are your own to make,” Telfor said. He always talked like that, and never paused for breath. Not having any lungs must be useful sometimes. “But I must ask you: what happened this morning?”
I bit my lip. It wasn’t something I was really ready to talk about yet – I was still trying to figure out what had happened myself. But I told the ghost the bones of it, about the room and the altar and the chanting people. The number of people was significant – eight was Kaith’s number, though she (he? I don’t know much about the Dark Glories) wasn’t specifically mentioned that I could recall. He had me look into one of the ghost-mirrors. There was a mark like a teardrop on my forehead over my right eye. “He has marked you as his own,” Telfor told me, brushing a cold, insubstantial finger over it. “Were you a virgin before this morning?”
I couldn’t help but blush. “Yes,” I whispered.
“Were you willing?”
“I didn’t say no,” I mumbled, looking down at my feet.
“But did you ever say yes?”
“Oh, probably.” He looked at me. I sighed. “Yes, I did. I didn’t know everything I was saying yes to, but I did.”
There was quiet for a while – nobody does quiet like a ghost. “Do you love your child?” he asked, softly. His expression held sympathy and mild affection, but no condemnation. Not even contempt. (And no doubt whatsoever that I was pregnant.) I remembered that he had served Kaith himself until shortly before Lord Axe killed him. He knew this ritual.
I thought about that. I knew I wouldn’t feel anything – it was far too early for that. The new life growing within me was smaller than the point of a needle right now – but I put my hands over my belly anyway, and couldn’t help but smile. “Yes.” I do. Gods help us both, I do love it. (Otaan said it would be a son – I’ll see when the baby’s born.)
“Will you fight for it?” I thought he meant Otaan, but there was more to come.
Fiercely: “Yes.”
“Then you must leave, and leave now. Go as far away as you can. If the Order were to find you, your child would not survive the extraction. Imagine yourself at Father Iyr’s mercies.”
More than just Otaan, then. And frankly, I’d rather Otaan than Father Iyr. Otaan at least likes me. And has reason to make sure I stay alive for a while longer. “Oh. Oh, shit.”
“Exactly.” I ran.
Back downstairs, the others were waiting. I explained what was going on and why I needed to leave now. I thought it was not going to be so bad – Sal had a suggestion about where we could go that the Order wouldn’t find us – when Elian suddenly raised a shield and pulled a wand out of his sleeve. “In the name of the Nine, I place you under arrest.” He was talking to me. Pointing the wand at me. I didn’t doubt he would shoot me in the back if I tried to leave.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, close to tears. It had been a very trying day so far and I just wasn’t up for this right then. Elian started on about how the three old gods were unblemished evil and the Nine would kill them all (I doubted that – if D’Shen had wanted to [or been able to] kill the dark glories, he probably would have) and just basically sounding like a fanatic. No human, however powerful, was going to be able to kill the old gods. Perhaps the Slave Who Serves The Darkness could have, but he seems to be dead now.
The standoff ended when Elian’s shield suddenly vanished and a rather large demon appeared under him and pinned him to the ceiling. The room suddenly smelled of burnt skin and hair. No one was hurt, it’s just the way that demon smelled.
“Whoa.” I was impressed.
“Hold him there, but do not harm him,” Pirin told it. “Give us an hour to leave the city, then let him go. Pack our things and bring them to us.”
“Yes, master.”
“Okay,” I said. “Leaving now!” Sal and Quin worked out some kind of misKnowing to make me harder to find with scrying magics. She stayed behind as part of that while Sal and Pirin and me took off.
Getting out of the city was easy. Out in the desert, Pirin summoned another demon, an imp. “I serve, master.” Then it saw me. “My queen!” it said, sounding delighted. “How honored is this insignificant imp to basks in your radiant presence.”
I glared at it. “Don’t simper at me. I’m not in the mood.”
“Will her majesties hurts me?” it asked. It was trying to sound afraid, but only managed eager.
I showed it my teeth and waited for a long moment. The imp started to look unsure of itself, and my grin widened. “No.” It would have liked the pain. Let it suffer.
“Go and find Master Somethingorother,” Pirin told the imp. (I’m just terrible with names right now. And it wouldn’t do to use his actual name, just in case someone finds this and reads it.) “Ask him to join us – I’m calling in the debt he owes me.”
While we were waiting, Pirin’s other demon brought our things, carefully packed. It did a nice job, actually. I was glad for that later. I changed out of my dress and into my uniform. I’m not sure why. I guess I still wanted to feel like I was part of the Order despite trying to stay out of their reach for the next nine months.
I don’t doubt for an instant that someone like Father Iyr would kill my child and not spare another thought about it. And if Archmage Ethan found me as an agent of the Order, he’d turn me in to them. But I also think that if Ethan found me as my teacher, it might go differently. He’d said something once about not losing any of his students.
I spent the time waiting sketching patterns in the sand with a fingertip, then smoothing them out with the flat of my hand to start over again. Mostly I was trying not to think too much. If I did that, I’d probably start crying and I hate crying where people can see me.
Pirin’s Master came along shortly, stepping out of an Archway. He suggested that the Mercenary Coast would be a good place for us to go next – it was as far away from Sayd as we could get without being in the Shensai Empire. We could join a mercenary company and get training, practical experience, the protection of the company, and some money along with it. No mercenary captain ever thinks he has enough magical support – we’d be welcome nearly anywhere in Minoth.
So the Master summoned a demon some twenty feet tall, with goatish legs and cloven hooves, enormous bat wings, and the head of something like the combination of a bull and a boar. It made for an impressive appearance.
“Master. You told me that you would not again summon me for a year,” he (the demon was obviously, emphatically male – he was nearly the size of my thigh, with heavy, pendulous testicles) complained.
The master summoner shrugged. “I lied. As you are wont to do.”
It’s strange to see a twenty-foot monster cringe. “Yes, Master. Thank you for the lesson, Master.”
“Take these three to Minoth by the quickest, safest route. They are to arrive there alive and unharmed.”
“There are hazards in the gray realms, Master.”
“Then you will guard them.”
The demon didn’t quite sigh. “Yes, Master.”
“Get going then.” The summoner turned to Pirin and said, “You are satisfied?”
“Yes. Your obligation has been discharged in full.”
“Fantastic. Now get out of here.”
The demon took my hand in his and told the others to hang onto the edge of his wing, and we transited into the astral plane. It was not a comfortable place. I had the feeling I could see to the edge of eternity and no more than ten feet at the same time. There was no discernable down. It made me queasy, feeling like I was always falling. I also could feel my magic much, much closer than it was in the material world. Was this its source?
It was also nearly impossible for me to know how much time passed. We fell for a while, and an island of sorts materialized out of the gray mists. It had trees and grass, and roots growing out from the bottom of it. If someone had ripped a chunk of forest out of the earth and made it float, it would look like that. The demon set down there, and suddenly there was a real down and I wasn’t falling. My stomach was instantly grateful for the change.
“There is food growing on the trees of the forest,” the demon rumbled. “Eat that, drink of the water you find there, and relieve yourselves. But be careful. Do not kill any living creature within the forest.”
“Okay.” The forest wasn’t like anything I’ve ever even heard of before. Trees are pretty scarce in the desert to begin with, but this would be unusual anywhere, I think. I had a sense that there was only one plant: trees, grass, roots, everything.
Overhead, the tree limbs fused together in cathedral arches, the shifting gray of the astral planes hidden by a canopy of green. I liked it rather a lot. There were fruit of some kind growing from the trunks, big fat acorn things. One of them sufficed for all of us. It was starchy and vaguely sweet, and very filling. We found water soon, a pool in what wasn’t quite a clearing. I’d bent down to drink from it when the water stood up, taking on some of the shape of a woman. She pointed to a stream not far away and I smiled and nodded her my thanks. ‘Don’t drink people’ seemed like a good rule.
We’d finished drinking when two tall thin people who looked a lot like Sal came out of the forest. They didn’t look happy to see us – one of them pulled a nasty-looking knife with a serrated blade. I couldn’t understand a thing they said, and Sal knew like a word of it. Things turned violent pretty quickly. Girls aren’t a threat – everyone assumes that, seems like, and they each went after Sal and Pirin. Pirin’s damn near useless in a fight, but I figured Sal could hold his own.
Not so much. The guy-thing Sal was fighting threw him into a tree with some kind of spell. I slashed at him, but only scored a scratch. Even so, blood dripped to the ground. It disappeared almost immediately, and the closest trees rustled with a really ominous hum. Don’t kill anything in the forest. Right. “Running might be a good idea,” I suggested. Pirin cast a fog about us, making it hard to see, and I ran in what I thought was the right direction. I got confused, though – one of the ugly guys did something to my head – and ran very much the wrong way. The two strangers came after me, Sal got all feathery and flew above the trees, and I guess Pirin found his way back to the demon.
Short version: We made it back to where the demon was supposed to be waiting and he wasn’t. The strangers came out of the trees behind us and started shooting arrow. I tried to duck, but they managed to clip me pretty good a few times before I got there. This time I seemed to have a better idea of what to do with the big sharp pointy thing I was carrying and hit one hard enough that he went down. Sal came back to earth and got the other one before he could stab me in the back.
Yay, we won, I found a bottle with some kind of swirling liquid in it (whirlpool in a jar!) and a heavy pouch embroidered with arcane-looking stuff. Very pretty. Sal finished off the last one and we went in search of the demon. I didn’t feel so bad this time as I did the other times I had to kill people. My stomach was unhappy with the smell of blood and shit and the uncertain gravity, but I managed to not throw up. Does it always get easier like this?
I kind of hope not. I can do it when I have to, but I’d really rather not get to liking it.
Anyway, we hooked back up with Pirin and the demon and were on our way. It looked really concerned when it saw the blood on me, but I’d already fixed the worst of the damage. I reassured it that I wasn’t harmed, and that it could continue its task in good conscience. Odd thing to say about a demon, but this one didn’t seem particularly demonic. Except for the, well, everything, he could have been human.
The rest of our trip was uneventful, with the demon carrying me and the guys hanging onto its wings. Eventually we came to a place where the gray got thin, and we were looking down a waterfall into a pool. So much water! It seemed really extravagant. In the desert, water is wealth. Here, it’s just there for the taking.
The demon left us there and we made our clumsy way out through the interface and fell a long, long way into the water. Ow. I was sore (for so many reasons) but not too bad, and I figured out swimming enough to get to shore, swallowing a lot of water on the way. My Felicitation wasn’t very happy about the fall or the water and complained about it. Poor girl. I’ll have to find her something especially tasty to make up for it. It shouldn’t be hard. This place teems with life. It’s everywhere.
We followed the stream down to where it met a road – a signpost pointed the way to Minoth. It was good we weren’t going the other way, there was a wyvern crouched in the middle of the road, busy eating. We left it very much alone and walked on.
Pretty soon the jungle stopped and opened into farmland, terraced along the contours of the hills. There were minotaurs, lots of them, working the fields. Probably that’s why the city’s called Minoth. Duh. There was also a human on a horse, moderately well armed. Given some of the things we’d seen in the jungle, it seemed like a perfectly sensible precaution. He also had a whip coiled loosely in his hand. He hailed us and rode over, asked us our business. We told him, and he gave us some advice about keeping our noses clean. And that if any minotaur so much as raised a hand to us, we could have them killed. Along with their entire family. Seemed pretty harsh to me, but it explained why the minotaurs we saw on the road into the city were so elaborately careful. Slavery is one thing, but this was a little too much. They had no hope at all, and they kept living anyway.
Sal had a thought that we should probably not all be in the school uniform when we got to Minoth. I had my saffron dress – astonishingly, the things in my pack (like my few books) weren’t very wet at all – and changed into that. I was pretty glad to change out of the wet clothes. I’d keep them – they’re very well made, but I’m going to take the school arms off the tunic some time soon. But it felt much better to be wearing less. In the desert, the heavy robes help you survive the heat. Here, they were just hot and sticky and heavy.
We finally got to the city. We were challenged by a guard who seemed very happy to have someone he didn’t see every day come through his gate. “Where are you from?” he asked. We didn’t look even a little bit like locals.
“Would you believe Sayd?” I asked, smiling. He did, actually. Sal gave me a Significant Look, but I just shrugged. What else were we going to say? Wavecrest?
We chatted for a while, and he suggested that the Freedman Company (their sign was an eagle rampant against a white field) would be a good place for young people like us looking to join up with a mercenary company. I’m sure he’d get a little something from their recruiter if we joined up, but he seemed genuine nonetheless.
The last thing: “You all aren’t…” and he wiggled his fingers in a gesture that was supposed to look mystical. Us? Magic wielders? Surely not. Nope, we’re just kids.
“Good. That’s good. ’cause if you were, you’d have to register at the Hall.”
We smiled, assured him that we were no such thing, and passed into the city. It’s been a long time since I was in a proper city, and this one was wholly strange. Carried along in the currents of moving people, we found ourselves in a market square, noisy with the shouts of competing peddlers. There was even someone selling a Minotaur child, shaved and looking utterly pitiful. Fifty gold for a life, and you could just throw it away like the contents of last night’s chamber pot.
Naturally there were thieves. Sal and I knew what to look for, but Pirin was clueless. The kid couldn’t have been more than seven, but he kicked Pirin in the shins hard enough to make him bend over and grabbed the coin purse hanging around the poor bastard orc’s neck. Sal was being nice. He just grabbed for the kid. I stabbed him, and eventually we got him under control (though Pirin got stabbed in the groin during the process). “Hi, kid. You just volunteered to be our guide. Isn’t that nice of you?”
After a bit of conversation where Sal pricked his feet with the point of his knife, we had a deal. Pirin went to a moneychanger and came back outraged at having to pay a twenty-five per cent commission to the guy. He would not shut up about it. At least he gave us a purse each to carry for ourselves, so when he gets robbed, we won’t be broke.
The kid led us fair to where the Freedman Company headquartered, and we signed up. They were happy to get some magically-talented recruits in, and took care of the paperwork for registering as a wielder in Minoth. With throwaway names, yet. We’d be legal, but the only place our actual names would be down was in the company rolls.
So. We’re in Minoth. It’s kind of nice here. I think we’ll do okay. And since I’m not training as a line soldier, the baby shouldn’t cause too much disruption. (Wishful thinking, that.)
Now that I’m not running or fighting or otherwise occupied, I have time to think, and that’s not really a good thing. (And I’m sore. Being with Otaan used muscles that I haven’t exercised much, and my breasts and sex are very tender.) It’s hard to believe it’s been less than a day since I woke up on that altar, and how much my life has changed in those few hours. I don’t really have any regrets about it, but I’m still terrified. I want to be a good mother to my child, and I don’t have the vaguest idea how.
And I can’t get Otaan out of my mind. Part of why I ran was to get away from him. But if he were here, I’d probably be with him – he’d said he wanted more of me, in a bed and not on an altar, and my body aches to think about it. He made me feel beautiful, desirable, attractive. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.
What if he’s the love that Cinta was so sure I’d find? Do I sacrifice love for duty, or duty for love? I don’t know. I truly don’t know. Gods help me, please. All I know right now is that I want me to be the one making decisions about my child’s life. Not Otaan, not the Order. Me.
Still. School has been the only real home I’ve had in my life, and it’s very far away now. There aren’t any teachers any more to tell me what to do next. I’m scared and tired and feeling very lonely despite my friends who I can’t ever thank enough for what they’ve done for me and I keep dripping onto my book. I can’t make myself stop crying.
I’m just going to go now and let the tears fall where they may and maybe get some more sleep eventually.
I love you, little one. I hope I’ll make you proud.