Game: Session 6

We’re in Kesser, sort of. Swords Landing is more Mercenary Coast than Kesser proper, but once we leave here, we’re definitely in Kesser. I wouldn’t have thought that a few hundred miles made such a big difference, but it’s cool here, and misty, and it rains. A lot. Not storms like back on the Mercenary Coast, but thin drizzly stuff. The veterans tell us it can do this for days. It’s hard to imagine. And if it’s this cold here, what would it be like somewhere even farther north like Gregor?

At least the Company gives us warm clothes. The quartermaster-corporal looked at me strange when I asked for winterweights, but I’m cold. Part of that’s just being from the desert, but I think being pregnant doesn’t help any. So much of my energy goes into making a baby that there’s less than usual for keeping me warm. Felicitation hates it, pure and simple. As soon as we arrived, she made an unhappy noise and climbed down from my shoulder to inside my clothes. It wasn’t exactly comfortable – she has sharp nails, but I couldn’t blame her a bit. I wanted to duck down inside my clothes. Maybe I can find or make a charm to keep us warmer.

And they don’t skimp on the food. “An army marches on its stomach” is a watchword among the Mercenary Coast’s officer corps, and they take it seriously. The food may not be great (and they make you pay for it), but there is a lot of it. Good thing, because I feel like I’m always eating.

We’ve finally done our rank tests, and we all came out as rank three, which is pretty damn good for a raw recruit. Now that I’m away from the School, I’m more impressed by it. They might not have been the best school for learning magic, but it seems like it was almost perfect training for what we’re doing now. We’re in good shape physically – I couldn’t run on board ship, but climbing the rigging was real good exercise – we’ve got decent weapons skills and very good personal weapons, and we’ve got a fairly practical assortment of spells available. We can read. Damn few mercenaries below officer rank can read and write, even senior NCOs.

The test pushed us to our limits, mostly physically, but there were mental challenges too. Most Company maps are in a sort of visual code, and every Company’s code is different. We were tested on those, and arithmetic (even if the quartermaster guys can’t read, they keep good tallies of what they have in inventory), and things like that.

You can get your proof of rank in two ways. One, you can get it in writing. Problem with that is that paper can be lost, stolen, damaged, destroyed. And you have to re-test for your current rank every year. But it doesn’t hurt. The other way is a brand, usually on the arm or leg. I got mine on my left arm, just below the shoulder. Sal got his in the same place. It hurt like anything. It hurt way more than the tattoos did, even when they were doing my hands.

Being a girl, I didn’t have to act all tough about it and I screamed till my throat was raw when they branded me. My skin isn’t as tough as a horse’s, or an ox’s, or a cow’s. If they pushed the brand in hard, it’d burn through the skin and into muscle. That would be bad.

It still hurts, and all the veterans I run across make sure to tap me on the arm – it’s sort of an initiation ritual. I don’t really mind the pain much, now that it’s dulled down some (one thing about being a healer, I don’t have to hurt if I don’t want to – but I don’t want to heal the brand all the way or it won’t scar).

We’ll be here a couple of days still, getting things together. For some reason, I’ve been picked to lead the seven of us: Quin, Sal, three green troopers, a veteran, and me. I’m a temporary corporal. I don’t get a corporal’s pay, but I do get the authority. I hope I don’t screw this up.

~`~

I didn’t screw it up. I feel good about that. There weren’t any major problems, everything went pretty smoothly. It helped a lot that I found a senior sergeant to talk to before setting out, asking him what he thought I should know before taking command of this small unit. It was good advice, too, including the very first rule of command, one to keep in mind at all times, is “Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed.” There are few better ways to undermine your authority.

Right before we left, I went to the Company clerks’ office and asked if they had any dispatches for the Farm. They seemed real happy to see me – the sergeant told me that it was a really good idea to stay on the clerks’ good sides – and handed over three dispatch cases full of paper. The first night we bivouacked (another new army word), I set out the camp assignments and the watch schedule and gave myself both latrine duty and mid-watch. They’ll respect you more if you show them you’re willing to do the scum work alongside them, the sergeant had told me. So I gave myself the least pleasant tasks the first day out and rotated them every day, so nobody was stuck with any one thing.

I think it worked pretty well. The three new kids weren’t used to marching all day and we all had new boots except for the one veteran, so I wanted to be sure nobody got blisters too bad. I had everyone take their boots and stockings off and I washed their feet and treated the blisters with an ointment that should toughen the skin so the blister won’t break and get infected. There was a lot of teasing about having a pretty girl rub everyone’s feet – I just grinned at them and added taking care of my feet to the duty roster.

~`~

The war has devastated Kesser. I already know what it’s done to Sayd. This is just… there’ve been so many horrible things done on both sides that even without the demon, I don’t know if the war will stop. Back in Swords Landing, the Captain had given us a brief overview of the regional geography. There’s the temple of Alexi to the north, the Mother’s Grace Temple, which I might visit if I get any leave. There are forts and keeps here and there, and then there are the places that are known because of the atrocities that happened there. There’s a manor house on the coast haunted by the people who were slaughtered there (by Saydeans. By us). Another place, thousands of Kesserits were pushed over a cliff so that the last thing they saw would be their homeland. That was answered by place called Son’s Cry, where Saydean boys and men were thrown from a tower the same way.

I hate it. I hate everything about this damned war. It kills thousands of young men a year, bleeding out their lives in one atrocity after another. It beggars the people in both countries – the first morning we were on the road, a family of five came up to us, looking afraid. Afraid of us, afraid to hope. They were terribly thin with hollow cheeks and dark, sunken eyes. A young woman held a baby at her hip in a sling and I couldn’t tell if it was alive or dead.

A man who looked like he was eighty, but was probably only half that coughed into his fist. “Do you have any food you can spare?” he asked, too hungry for shame, though I could see it on him. He was long past caring that I was Saydean, a soldier, anything but the fact that I had food. “Anything at all. Crusts, scraps, anything? Please?”

“Please take what’s left of our breakfast,” I told him, gesturing at the morning’s dishes waiting to be washed. We weren’t going to eat it, and it’d just end up in the latrine with all the shit before I buried it. They fell on the little food there like it was a banquet, and I guess it might as well have been. It was horrible to watch, but I made myself. This was what the war really cost. Families begging for the least scraps of food, hanging on to life by their fingernails. They ate everything possible and then licked the dishes, scrubbing them with fistfuls of grass to clean them. We finished packing up everything, cleaned up the bivouac site, and got ready to set off again. The Kesserit were still there, talking quietly to each other. I didn’t understand the words, but it sounded like they were trying to figure out what to do next.

“If you go about a day up the road,” I told the man, pointing in the direction we’d come from. “You’ll get to a town of sorts – Swords Landing. It’s a mercenary town, and you might be able to find work there.”

I knew they could count on at least one kind of work. Maybe it’s not the best thing in the world, but even whoring was better than what they had. The young woman, if she was willing, could probably support all of them. The blue shields regulate whoring like they do everything else. It’s not a bad life. They all thanked me much more than I was comfortable with – I hadn’t done much at all for them. I didn’t know if it would even be enough. “Gods all bless,” I told them. “And good fortune.”

“Bless you, lady! Bless you!” the father said, snatching up my hand and kissing it. “Thank you. You’ve saved our lives.”

What could I say to that? “Uh. I’m glad,” I told him, feeling awkward and stupid.

The rest of the trip to the Farm was quieter. We didn’t see too many people once we got away from Swords Landing, and the people we did see weren’t exactly friendly. But we were armed and they weren’t, so nobody wanted to start anything.

~`~

The Farm is actually a working farm village, pretty much entirely owned by the company. We didn’t see too many people on the way through the vill, but the people we did see looked healthier than most Kesserit we’d seen. They actually got to keep enough food to live on. It makes me feel better to see that the Company treat these people well, not just us.

The two closest keeps are home to lords loyal to our patron in Kesser-the-city, which makes it a pretty safe place to come back to. Lieutenant Tedir, the Farm’s commanding officer, said we won’t be spending a lot of time here – we’ll be off on assignment, but we can come and recuperate between missions. I like it. It’s nice being surrounded by green growing things, the spirits are calm around here and whisper to me instead of shouting. The spirit of the ship shouted. As soon as it realized I could hear what it was saying, it wanted to talk to me all the time. I hated to do it, but I ended up needing to make a ward to be able to get any sleep. Here, I don’t think it’ll be as much of a problem.

He gave us each something magical – the things weren’t useful to him, and might be to us, so. Quin got a book, which made her happy, Sal got a crystal stick with a ball on one end that blows things up, and I got a very beautiful scrying bowl. It’s heavy, thick hammered silver, and dimpled from all the hammerstrikes. I’ve spent some time polishing the inside, and it almost glows when I put water in it. I haven’t tried using it yet, but it still feels good having it. Felicitation is especially fond of the bowl and keeps trying to curl up and sleep in it. She’s too big, but that doesn’t keep her from trying.

Tedir is a good officer, and seems to be a good man. Professional, competent, confident. I got to explain to him that I was pregnant, that was fun. “Don’t worry, sir,” I told him. “Being pregnant shouldn’t get in my way for another few months.”

He stared at me. “You’re pregnant?”

I winced. “Wasn’t that in the dispatches, sir?”

“No.”

Shit. “Well, I am.” And I explained that being pregnant actually was good for my magic – not that I had any plans to get pregnant again just so my magic would work better. I must have looked pretty strange when the lieutenant said something about adoption, because he sighed and massaged his eyes with one hand.

“You want to keep the baby?”

I checked inside quickly. Nothing had changed, I still wanted the baby. I smiled at the lieutenant. “Yes. I do.”

Another sigh. “Fine. But I’m not sending any babies out in the field.”

My eyes went really wide and I hugged my belly protectively. “Gods no. Of course not.”

“We’ll have to find a wet nurse, dammit.” He was just grumbling by this point, so I just let him. He kept at it for a while, cursing various people for dumping responsibility for all this into his lap. Me, captain Navarr, the motherless goatfucker who spawned this brat on me (his words, not mine). I tried not to listen too close.

I’m still getting bigger. I have more curves than I used to – my hips are almost as broad as my shoulders, my breasts are heavier, and my belly is definitely starting to show. I don’t mind. Most of the changes are actually pretty nice, and I like the way my body looks. (I’ve been cheating a little bit. Even young skin doesn’t stretch fast enough to accommodate the growing I’ve been doing, and I’d have stretch marks in all sorts of places if I hadn’t been healing them away. I’m allowed a little vanity, right?) Given how I’ve been growing, I should be able to keep working for another couple of months

I’m not the only one who likes how I look. The baths (showers, really) here aren’t exactly private, and I’ve had an audience every time I’ve cleaned myself up. Considering how much I stared at the Northsail troops (and especially at Otaan) back in the desert, I wouldn’t be in much position to complain if I’d had a mind to.

One thing about the Farm is really disturbing, though. We’re here replacing three other wielders who’d been found in their beds one morning, each with his or her throat cut. And nobody seems to know what exactly happened. They were assassinated, obviously, and by professionals, but other than that? Nothing. It was probably political, but that’s a guess. I’ve asked Felicitation to keep a watch out while I’m sleeping. It’s not paranoid, is it? These poor people really were killed, after all.

The sorcerer who didn’t have his throat cut is still here, and a very strange guy. Apparently he was pretty strange before the murders, and no one’s been able to figure out how much they affected him. He doesn’t want to know our names and won’t tell us his. He fully expects us to get killed soon and doesn’t want to know us even that much. So we leave the guy alone.

In the morning we leave on our first mission. Two line troopers will be going with us, but Sal’s been given command of our little unit. I think they’re trying to find out which of us have any taste or talent for command, and just picking one of us at random for command right now.

There’s a manor called the House of Seven Doors that’s been a problem for the Company for a while. There’ve been at least three attempts to raze the place, but nothing works – all the parts of it that hold the building together can’t be cut, burned, or bashed through. It’s obviously something magical going on, so send the wiggly-finger folks, right?

Makes sense to me.

~`~

Well, we didn’t do so great on our first mission. Getting to the place was easy – and we didn’t make the mistake of trying to go in and talk to the locals ourselves. It would’ve been a wildly unstealthy thing to do, since hey! We’re the enemy. Bad idea. Instead, the two soldiers we were with went in in civvies and tried to find out what was going on while I tried to talk with a local spirit or so.

It wasn’t until I got to the Mercenary Coast that I started to think how the spirits were like back home. The well-spirits and house-spirits were a little strange. The spirits of the wilds, the desert-spirits, were strong and healthy and didn’t give a shit about humans. At Minoth, the spirits of well and cistern were just fine. Eager to please, but in the way young children and puppies are, not like a cowed slave.

The spirits here in Kesser were in even worse shape than the ones at home. The School and Ashiri were a long, long way from the war. We had storms and monsters and the occasional desert raider attack to worry about. There were a lot of people who were just barely paying for their water and the poorer parts of town were violent, but there wasn’t the crushing, hopeless poverty that seemed to be the rule here. These people were close to having no hope at all and the spirits were the same way, many of them. When I asked, a hill-spirit came to me, but could not speak – there was some kind of gold thread or wire binding his mouth shut.

I can talk to spirits, but I can’t touch them any more than anyone else. (There’s one sort-of exception. When I shed blood for them – blood is the gold of the spirit worlds – they can touch that. It’s considered impolite to take blood from inside a person’s veins, but it’s happened. The blood of the spirit-called is best for this kind of trade. Even small amounts are enough. The only way you can use someone else’s blood for it is to take their heart’s blood. Death has power, but I’m not that sort of witch. I don’t think I could kill someone that way, just to use something I have so much of.)

So it was going to be tricky getting rid of the golden thread. Just communicating at all was tricky – I didn’t realize that the poor hill-spirit couldn’t see Sal or Quin, just me. So when I asked Sal to use his mindblade to cut the threads, the spirit could only see the knife. It scared the thing terribly. Eventually I figured out what was wrong and explained that the knife belonged to a friend of mine and I only wanted to cut the threads. The spirit held still after that, and we got the thread out with only a little cut in his upper lip.

The hill-spirit didn’t talk, but was able to communicate better. Using the dust from its hill, it made pictures for me, trying to answer the questions it had said it would answer (we only got three). That was really tough – I had to translate its pictures and gestures for Sal and Quin, and repeat Sal’s questions for it – and I got it wrong in the end. There was a chamber under the House of Seven Doors with an… altar? I wasn’t sure. There were fiery chains running from it in various directions – one came from the building to the hill here and went off into the distance. Those were probably force lines, which meant that the House was built over a node. Nice, huh?

I thought it was trying to tell me that we needed to hit the main roof beam with lightning, but that wasn’t it. All Quin was able to do was blow a hole in the roof. Someone inside noticed (hard not to) and came after us, nailing Quin with a spell. It didn’t hurt her much, but Sal decided that we’d found out enough and weren’t going to be able to wreck the building by ourselves.

The lieutenant was not happy that we weren’t able to do it, but was philosophical about it in the end. We were able to find out some stuff that the Company didn’t know before, like the entrance to the chamber under the House. I kind of thought we could stay and do more, but Sal was in command – it was his call.

On another subject entirely, I wonder when Otaan is going to show up in my life again. I have no idea what I’ll do when he does.

~`~

I almost died today. My baby almost died with me. I’ve never been so scared before.

~`~

What the fuck is it with demons? It would be just fine if they were just evil and cruel and sadistic – that’s how they were built – but they all know who I am. They might not know my name, but that ain’t nothing. Some of them get all oily and smarmy about it, but most of them just seem to think I’m an extra-tasty snack. Especially with this baby in my belly.

We were chasing after this dirtbag summoner who was part of the prisoner group we were transporting to Port Harm for ransoming – he’d gotten into Sal’s head and made him help him escape into the forest. I was so damn stupid about it. At the very least, I should have taken the time to turn my skin to tree bark. I didn’t do anything but take off after him. Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

There was a little clearing, not more than ten feet across. As soon as I stepped into it, this… cat made out of smoke thing came in from the other side. It looked at me, sniffed the air, and showed most of its teeth. “Ah. I’m going to eat your child and then you.”

I had just enough time to get really, really scared when it was on me, biting and clawing and I was on the ground bleeding. And dying. I’d been close to the void before, but always for someone else’s death, like the soldier in the desert I couldn’t save, and the one in Davin that I could. This was my death and it made all the difference in the world. The voices were there, all talking to me at once so I couldn’t understand any of them. The new voice, the one I’d never heard until I was healing that poor kid’s shoulder on the boat, was pleading with me to come back, please come back.

It was so hard. Back was pain and fear and me bleeding my life away and here was cool gray nothing. The new voice started crying. Oh, not fair, I thought. No fair crying. I had to go back.

“I’ll be back for you, sweetling. I’m going to eat your baby while you watch,” purred the demon in my ear. I opened my eyes in time to see it spring off me and beat the shit out of Sal, throwing him into a tree. My voice was not working well, but I managed to choke out the plea for a healing – it was just enough to keep me from dying, though I was still in really bad shape. There were gashes across my shoulder and chest, holes from teeth in my throat, and deep furrows down my belly where it raked me with its hind feet. Those were the worst of all – I was terrified that they’d gone deep enough to hurt my baby.

I don’t know everything that happened after that. Quin pulled me up, yelling “Run!” at me. There was fire. The Daughters of the Sky, the prisoners we’d been taking to ransom, fought the demon along with the Freemen troops. People screamed in pain, in terror, in rage. There was more blood – I healed someone, but I don’t know who. There might have been more than one person. Somebody shook me awake. “You have to wake up, Sofiyah. Please. She’ll die if you don’t. Please wake up.” It was eerie how much it was like the voice in the head telling me to come back. I opened my eyes and almost screamed.

Quin was there, horribly burned – way too much of her skin was charred black, cracked open in places showing the red meat beneath. All her hair was gone, and that seemed the saddest thing of all.

I gathered up all the energy that wasn’t keeping me (and, I hoped) the baby alive and put it into my hands to give to Quin. The burned black skin was gone and new skin shiny and fragile in its place. Good, I thought. Thank you. I passed out again, but it was only sleep I fell into, not death.

I checked on the baby, of course. It seems to be fine, but I’m still a little worried. I hope the little thing is all right.

~`~

So how’d we get into that mess in the first place? One thing about mercenary life is that mercenaries get captured by other Companies. A lot. Lieutenant Tedir has been captured more than twenty times in his career. There are rules about these things, among the mercenaries. Not all Companies follow them – the Legion Vast presses everyone it captures into service, others might sell you into slavery instead of ransoming you back to your Company. But most do, and the Freemen are as honorable about that as they are everything else. There were sixty members of the Daughters of the Sky, an all-female mercenary Company, who we’d captured in some operation or other. The ransom negotiations were done, and all that was left to do was take them home. For obvious reasons, the brass wanted some females in charge of the march, to keep the men in line. (I thought being outnumbered three to two would do nicely, but I didn’t say that.)

It was Quin’s turn to be in command of something – this time, she was given a temporary sergeant’s chevrons to give her authority over the corporals in charge of the squads going with us. About half of the men were wounded, able to walk but not combat-effective, they were going to Port Harm for recuperation. I was medical staff, of course, and Sal had decided that he was in charge of the special prisoner. This guy wasn’t a mercenary at all – he was a Kesserit summoner the Daughters had captured. The lieutenant was very emphatic that the summoner make it to Port Harm alive and relatively undamaged. He still had to be able to use his voice and hands. Okay, fine, he’ll get there.

Except he didn’t. We didn’t kill him, which I’m not sure is a good thing. The problems started the first day out. About four hours after we left, the wheel on one of the wagons broke. Suspicious (paranoid), I asked the spirits for the Sight and looked closely at the break. It was subtle, I could’ve missed it even with the Sight, but a demon had definitely caused it.

So we asked the summoner about it. He kept saying that he hadn’t told his imp to do anything, that he didn’t have complete control over it (as if). When he started getting abusive with me, I left to go calm down and talk with the commander of the Daughters – a few of them had been injured before they could surrender, and I wanted to make sure they were all right. I think Sal talked to him about torture, but I try not to hear about that kind of thing. The wheel got fixed eventually and we were off again.

Things got really bad the morning after the first night. All the food in the wagon the summoner had been tossed into spoiled badly and had to be abandoned. Quin had the idea that my healing him would really piss the summoner off good, and he needed it – he’d gotten pretty badly burned when a fireball spell fizzled (Sal had stabbed him in the leg, which broke his concentration). I could do that, I told her. But he was gone when we got to where he ought to be, and Sal was acting like the guy was his best friend in the world.

It was a spell, of course, and it wore off pretty quickly – Sal was beyond pissed when it did – but it was too late. We took off into the forest after him and things got real ugly real fast. Quin got burned by another fireball, though she tagged the guy with one of her lightning bolts. The same fireball killed ten of our men.

By the time I’d been able to heal the worst injuries (including mine) the summoner must have been long gone – there was no point trying to track him down after all that. We’re still headed for Port Harm. Even if we don’t have him, there are still the Daughters to get back to their Company.

~`~

I liked Port Harm. The walk (yeah, we’re walking) back to the Farm is going to suck, but we’ll be okay. We had to abandon the wagons with all our food earlier today. Sal was out ahead of us on point when he saw something metal ahead of him on the road. It turned out to be a bunch of dworn warriors and something huge, and there was no way we could stand and fight with just twelve of us.

Sal came back to us and told us what he’d seen. He did something so he could talk with Quin, turned himself into that godawful condor shape, and flew off. The rest of us grabbed our stuff, packed up what we could carry, and took off into the woods. We had one big advantage: we all could move faster than dworn could, and the steel giant thing with them was even slower. (The forest didn’t like the thing one bit. Not that the forest was actually talking to me, but I could sort of feel what it felt, and it did not like the steel giant.)

That was about it. The dworn guys were pissed that they hadn’t got us, but decided that free wagons, oxen, and food was better than chasing us through the bush.

But like I said, I liked Port Harm. The Daughters were all glad to get home – their commander asked them if they had any complaints, which they didn’t. She asked us if we had any complaints. Absolutely not. In fact, they were great – they killed that demon for us, which wasn’t really their job. They signed and sealed the paperwork, and that was that. I hope that when I get captured in this mercenary business, it’s by someone like the Daughters. They take good care of their prisoners. Just like we do.

After that, we didn’t have much to do. The men who were here to recuperate went off to the sanatorium – it’s not a building or anything, just a group of tents. There aren’t any permanent buildings here, though some of the tents have been here for decades. That’s life in the Companies. I kind of like it, actually. As I keep coming into my powers, I get more comfortable outside – even just a garden or courtyard – and less comfortable indoors. It’s not exactly claustrophobia. I can sleep in a building and be fine with it. I just like being outside better.

I want to start a garden somewhere, to put my hands in the earth and feel the growing things there. Maybe I’ll do that when I get too big to go out in the field. It doesn’t have to be big – an herb garden would be just fine. And some flowers. You can eat nasturtium leaves, did you know that? And lavender makes a very nice relaxing tea mixed with chamomile flowers.

And I’m getting off topic. One of the mercenary Companies in Port Harm was the Northsail Company, so Quin and I went to see if any of the guys we knew from the desert expedition were there while Sal went off to get drunk with the troops. (I don’t drink much any more. The smell of alcohol’s kind of wrong, and even though the morning sickness is tapering off, my stomach is still pretty tender.) We were lucky – sitting right out front of the Northsail compound was the sergeant-major we knew from then.

He didn’t recognize us at first – actually, his first words were, “It’s not mine!”

I grinned at him. “I know it’s not yours. Don’t worry about it. That’s not why we’re here. Don’t you recognize us?”

After a few moments, he did, and was glad to see us. “Gods all bless,” he said. “Look at you two! All grown up now, and Freemen to boot. Not bad, girls.”

“Thanks!” Quin did a lot of the talking, actually. Living in a world where near everything talks to me can be very, very distracting. It’s hard sometimes to pick out the voice of the human (or Athorian or Irosian or Dworn or whatever) from all the spirits talking to me. It takes a lot of concentration, which I don’t always have. So Quin explained what we were doing there in Port Harm, wearing Freemen Company uniforms.

“Is squire Palane here too?” she asked.

“He sure is. It’s lieutenant Palane now,” explained the sergeant. “Come on in, I’ll find him for you.”

Northsail isn’t a large Company, so the officers and NCOs share a mess. We found Palane there and went over to say hello. A smile lit up his face – he’s a handsome man, if not as beautiful as Otaan – and he hugged us both tightly. Palane must have felt my belly when he hugged me, because he looked down at me and asked, “It’s not one of my men’s, is it?”

I shook my head and smiled up at him. “Nope. I know whose it is, and it’s not anybody in your Company.”

“When are you due?”

“In about four months, give or take. Babies come in their own time.”

“And they let you go out in the field like this?” Palane looked and sounded appalled. A pregnant woman in a combat zone?

“I’m a witch,” I told him, shrugging. “My powers come from life, and with a new life growing in me? I’m fine, really. Better than fine, I’m great.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. They’re treating me well, really. Thanks for worrying, though.”

Quin and Palane got caught up a little bit, and he offered us a tent in Officer’s Row if we wanted it. A decent bed with a servant and a hot bath? I’m so there. Well, so there after I take care of some business. I kind of sidled over to where the NCOs were throwing dice and asked if there was room for me in there. “Sure, pull up a chair!” (One of them got a chair for me, actually. Such gentlemen!)

“So what’s the game?” I asked, pulling my purse out. A nice looking guy about five years older than me put a platinum coin down on the table. My eyes got real big. “Uh, I’m out.”

“Aw, come on!”

“Seriously, I ain’t got it.”

“Whatchoo got, then?”

I counted out ten gold florins and pushed them into the middle of the table. “This I can do.”

“This is chump change, girlie.”

“It’s what I got. You in or out?”

“I’m in, I’m in.” For a while, I wasn’t doing so great. In fact, at one point I was flat busted. That’s when the guy who got me the chair spoke up.

“You could still be in it,” he said.

“With what?” I asked. “I got nothing left.”

“You could bet…” He looked me over, taking his time with it. I liked the way he was looking at me, but it made me fidget a little. Not a good thing to do when there are dice on the table. “How ’bout dinner?”

“With you?” I looked him over myself. He wasn’t bad, not bad at all. He looked solid, and I liked the way his beard ran along the line of his jaw but left his upper lip shaved. (His name, I found out, was Nanel.)

Nanel grinned at me. This was a whole different game we were getting ourselves into. “Yeah with me.”

I tilted my head a little and looked at him for a while. “Okay, I’m in.”

I was fully prepared to lose, I swear. But I didn’t have to figure out what I was going to do when I lost, because I won. I won everything. I got my stake back and doubled it. Nanel took most of the losses, but he didn’t seem upset by the money. He seemed more upset that he didn’t get me. So I leaned across the table and kissed him. “I can’t say I’m sorry to take your money. But can I buy you dinner?”

That brightened him up smart quick. “Hell yeah. I should get cleaned up first, though. Meet back here in an hour?”

An hour was enough time to get a bath, have my spare uniform brushed out, and get ready to go. No problem. “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

There is exactly one place in Port Harm where you can go out and eat, drink, dance: the Rare Book. Like everything else, it’s a big tent, strung with lanterns and bottles of water to keep the bugs away and open on three sides. There’s a wooden wall across the back with some storerooms, but the ceilings are all canvas. It was a lot of fun, actually. The food was good – mostly seafood with it being on the coast and all, but there were fresh vegetables and rabbit stew and olives in herbed vinegar and I ate a ton of it. Nanel was impressed. “I’m a growing girl,” I told him.

I danced with Nanel, who wasn’t bad, and at least five other guys – people kept asking, and I kept saying “Sure, why not?” Since Nanel didn’t much like dancing (he felt like he didn’t do it well, and was kind of embarrassed about it) and I kept coming back to the table we were sharing, it was okay. Quin danced very well. Even with no hair she’s achingly beautiful. I could be jealous of that, but it’d be like being jealous of Felicitation for having a venomous bite. It’s just the way she is. I’m not sure why she brought a book to the Rare Book (the eponymous Book is floating in a glass case – a first-year sorcery text autographed by Anselon Sandcaster his own damn self) but it definitely attracted a better class of people to Quin. The officers in the place kept buying her wine and asking her to dance. I liked my sergeants and corporals just fine.

Speaking of reading, I told Nanel that he should pay someone to teach him how to read and write – it’d help get him promoted into the officer ranks and there’s not much room to advance left in the enlisted ranks. He said he’d give it a try. I felt good about that.

Eventually we headed back to the Northsail camp, and we stopped outside the tent Quin and I were sharing. “Do you want to…?” he asked, raising his eyebrows instead of finishing the sentence. (”You can’t bring him here,” Quin told us from inside the tent.)

I thought about that for a while. In a lot of ways, I really wanted to. He was definitely attractive, he smelled good, he was nice, he wasn’t Otaan, and he was safe.

On the not-so-plus side, he was nice, he wasn’t Otaan, and he was safe.

There’s definitely something wrong with me. Though I’m pretty sure Otaan wouldn’t hurt me – I’m his woman and the one who’s carrying his child – he’s still a very dangerous, very scary guy. Not at all safe. Why do I want that so much? Gods above.

With my emotions being as screwed up as they have ever since I got pregnant, I was afraid I was going to start crying, so I kissed Nanel, putting my hand to the back of his head to pull him down to me. He kissed better than he danced. I didn’t feel like crying any more, so it worked as far as that was concerned. “I’m sorry. But I really can’t. Everything’s just really complicated for me right now.”

He didn’t look happy – who would? Hell, I wasn’t exactly happy about it. But Nanel was a perfect gentleman. He kissed me again and left. I felt kind of wobbly – did I make the wrong decision after all? When I thought I could walk without doing anything embarrassing like falling down, I went inside.

In the tent, Quin and I talked for a while – just girl stuff – and it was really nice. She’s changed a lot since becoming fully human, and she’s turning into a good person. I like her a lot, and the thought of her and Sal being my family is a pretty nice one. What with their help and the Company’s, I might just be able to pull off being a mother.

I waited until it sounded like she was asleep before I let my hand slide down between my legs. It felt hot and swollen and wet and I bit my lip to keep from moaning out loud. I tried to think of Orrin, or Ira, or anyone else, but my mind kept drifting to you-know-who. Damn it. My fingers were cramping by the time I was finally able to fall asleep myself.

At least out here on the road, I’m tired enough I don’t need that sort of thing to fall asleep.

~`~

Rial and Kiel guard my soul, but I have just done something very, very painful. I now owe the Freemen Company a little over five thousand gold thalers (or the equivalent weight in other gold coin). Five. Thousand. Thalers. And I was so close to having what I owed them for spell training paid off. I’d gotten my debt down to just thirteen thalers. Easy money, time served, and I was clear.This is just… I can’t even say. It’s so awful. Five thousand! But it’s necessary. To get any better at witchcraft, I’m going to need a spirit guardian. Someone who’s already walked the path and can help show me the way. And the Company is going to find someone qualified, get her or him here, and pay for half the training. If I was doing this on my own, it’d wind up costing me eleven thousand if I paid cash.

There are other ways I could get power. Easier ways, even. If I wanted to, I could get in touch with a demon and have power, just like that. It’d end up costing my human soul in the end, but I could have it. I could ask Otaan. He’d give me anything I asked for if I agreed to go with him, to be his queen. The cost is too high. The Freemen are making claim only on my service, not my soul. I can pay this off (oh, and it’s going to be more than five thousand by the time I get done, what with more magic training, the cost of hiring a wet nurse, and so forth) and be done with them and just walk away.

At least I’m not going to have to come up with, say, ten times that much when I try for my master’s initiation. Archmage Ethan, bless his fiery Vessan heart, has already said he wants to be the one to train us in that. And Quin’s gone and made the same agreement for a sorcery tutor, and even Sal is three thousand in the hole for advanced killing people school. So I’m not alone in this. I’ve still got my family.

(And later, I can tutor some bright young thing in the stuff I’ll be learning and pay off the Company that way. All is not so bleak.)

The youngest member of the family seems to be doing okay too. As I get farther along, the harder it is to know what’s going on with magic. The poor little thing has been exposed to high-level magic from the very beginning – it’s going to be something special. But it also means I can’t see much. From what I can tell just with my normal senses, everything’s fine. I think. Sometimes I worry, but I don’t know if I’m worrying because there’s really something to worry about or just because I like making myself crazy. But it’s been more than a week since the demon attacked me and everything seems normal.

Say it three times: the baby’s going to be fine. The baby’s going to be fine. The baby’s going to be fine.

The baby’s going to be fine.

Right?