The docks of Babylon – the largest city in Purgatory – thrummed with activity, day or night. Pickpockets stole through alleyways, cutting purses and filching coins or crinkly paper money from unwary traders and merchants. Prostitutes, many of them daubed with the shining blue face-paint of the Guild of Venus, walked the street.
And, of course, conspirators muttered and whispered.
These particular conspirators met in a beerhall that sat in the seediest part of the dock district. A thin, leaky tile roof that had been perfectly sufficient when Babylon had been a desert city was now supplemented by buckets set out to catch the sluicing, magically generated rain that poured down onto the city’s massive farms (the city itself was struck more by accident than anything else.) The only barmaid was a lilin who served any who tossed her a coin but hissed whenever someone asked for something more. She stepped past the table and the robed and cloaked figures, setting down several more mugs of ale.
Then she was off again, leaving the conspirators to their quiet muttering.
“Another five hundred,” one said – his voice was soft and raspy. It was as if, at some point in his life, he had screamed and screamed and screamed until his voice had shattered like a dropped vase. It still hadn’t recovered. “They’re in the Babylonian Navy, with fancy uniforms and walk as if their shit don’t stink. As if the whole war hadn’t happened.”
The other hooded heads bobbed.
“How do we act, though? That lizard bitch has everything sewn up tight. Remember the sniper?”
Each of them paused, contemplating.
“I do remember the sniper,” the third man from the right said. His hand – a circular pockmark graced the space between two of his knuckles. Despite the best healing the city had offered, his middle finger and ring finger refused to quite work properly. His knuckle clicked as he drew his hand into a fist. “His mistake was he tried taking out the Free Lord when he was in the city.”
“But when will he leave?” Another conspirator – this one, a woman – hissed.
The door to the beerhall swung inwards. The sound of the rain ratcheted up several notches and the members of the conspiracy all swung. As if expecting the Cross Guard to come tumbling in with pistols and swords drawn, the conspirators tensed to spring up and flee. But rather than heavily armed and armored members of the Babylonian army, the only person who came in was a robed woman. Her tail dragged along the ground – as red as the lilin bartender’s.
She sat down, then leaned forward.
“We have an opportunity,” she whispered.
“What news do you bring?”
They didn’t use names.
The woman fished out a parchment, then slapped it down. It was torn from a larger scroll. The printing press that had stamped it out had used cheap ink, and so a few droplets of the rain had pushed and smeared out the lettering. But it was clear enough.
The conspirators read.
And one by one, they began to grin.
***
Sunchaser sprawled in his hammock, his wings spread to catch the warmth that filtered through the ceramic walls of his watch station, and tried to not feel smug as he looked down on the storm hammering Babylon. The clouds looked like geometric patterns and when viewed from above, it was clear to see the magical lines of blue light that transcribed their formations. The worst of the storms were located in the farmland surrounding the city – well, best, if you looked at it from the point of view of a plant.
Plants were desperately thirsty.
The door to the watch station opened with a rattle and rasp. It, like everything else, was made of ceramics and carved magical runes. The hinges were glazed ceramics, fitted together and greased to make them easy to turn, while the actual structure of the door was layered plates, interlocking to cover every single possible chink or hole.
Opening it let in the almost unfiltered sunlight beyond the watch station and made Sunchaser throw up an arm to shield his eyes. Then the door closed and his partner started to take off her protective helmet. Smoked glass, crystal, ceramic plates attached to flexible cotton, all of it covered in heat resistant runes and temperature control. Sky Cutter had both refused to change her name when the tribe had integrated with Babylon and refused to bow to anything like ‘practicality’ in the face of her style.
Hence why every time she put her gear on, she had to wind up almost two feet of blonde hair up and crammed it into her helmet.
But the upside was that she looked uniquely lovely as she tossed her head and let her wild mane of glittering blond tresses cascade down her shoulders as she folded her wings behind her.
“Sunchaser!” Cutter snapped.
“What?” Sunchaser blinked, then sat up. He grabbed his dog-eared copy of The Villainous Conquests of Grand Admiral Thrawn and his Heir to the Empire of the Galaxy by Timothy Zhan, translated by Kapes the Scribe, and jammed it underneath his hammock. As the hammock was made of laced together rope, this proved to be a less than perfect hiding place. He spread his left wing as Cutter tilted her head to the side to try and get a better view of the cover.
“Are you reading?” she asked.
“No!” Sunchaser squeaked.
“We’re on duty!” Cutter snapped.
“We’re on stormwatch duty,” Sunchaser said, his cheeks flushing. He was defending himself, but his gut and his heart knew he should feel guilty. He squirmed as Cutter – still half armored – stomped forward.
“What if one of the vortexes overloads! An entire quadrant of our farmland could be drowned!” Cutter slapped the top of his head. As both were valkyrie, she didn’t bother to pull her strength. The blow sent Sunchaser sprawling to the ground, his face mashed against the bottom of the watch station. The whole structure – suspended in microgravity and rooted in place via a complex webwork of spells – wobbled slightly.
Sunchaser groaned and pushed himself to his feet. He looked out the window, his expression sullen. Then he brightened. “Ah! See?”
The storm below was starting to flash as the magic started to overload in specifically designed ways. A storm could create a great deal of energy by natural means – spinning winds and gathering static electricity could be channeled into different magical spells, or could be fed back into the storm itself to produce a continual feedback cycle. Like most feedback cycles, this was inherently unstable and would eventually cause the storm to self destruct.
The mages who had designed it had taken that natural inclination and used it to end the storm just like clockwork.
Gathered energies surged into the vortexes that poured rain down onto the deserts surrounding Babylon and snapped them apart. The clouds wobbled like a plate of rendering fat in a soup...and then dispersed. They scudded away from Babylon, as if flung away by gods.
But there were no gods at work. Only men.
Sunchaser beamed as he looked down at the city. The old city walls had been knocked down to celebrate the return of a victorious army bearing the (mostly symbolic) corpse of Sysminor, the false god. The new buildings sprawled past the original walls were a mixture of those that had been constructed on firm grid-like patterns and those that had been simply thrown up wherever. Bribed officials, sloppy engineering, mistakes in planning. Whatever the cause, it looked like dough after someone had slapped down a grid pattern cutter.
The docks had been expanded as well. The harbor of Babylon, which had already been one of the finest in Purgatory, now had a pair of artificial piers flung out that served both as a place to dock many more ships – ranging from old style triremes and longships to the newest sailing ships that had been knocked together by ever shipwright who had pawed through the three Patrick O’Brian novels that had been part of the Library of Vanderbilt.
There had been frustratingly few exact details, but a great deal of inspiration, and now, there was a heady race from every merchant and shipwright to see which one could build the perfect ship first.
Surrounding the outskirts of the city were the farms. These had been mercilessly organized and directed by the Free Lord and his offices to ensure that nothing was wasted. With a massively expanded population and the rest of Purgatory still ravaged by the War of the False God and the continuing civil war between the factions of the Dodekatheon, Babylon could not rely on grain imports like it once had.
Sunchaser smiled.
Then Cutter slapped the back of his head again – gently this time. “Idiot!”
Sunchaser blinked and started as he realized that a light was winking up at him from Watch Central. The large tower had a wide array of bronze mirrors, and they used them to catch sunlight (or torchlight at night) and wink them at the watch stations overhead. The coded flashes were easily translated, but Sunchaser still had to furrow his brow as he tried to catch up.
“Observation report request...” he muttered. “Sector 40-20.”
He looked at Cutter. “Obser-”
“I saw it!” she snapped, then hurried over to the side mounted mirror controls. The mirror mounted on the side of the watch station was one of the few parts of the station that wasn’t ceramic. That meant it was very hot – this close to the sun, it wasn’t even cool to touch during the night. She started to work the control – hardened clay clicking and clacking as cams, leavers, shafts worked in the wall. She read from a scroll showing the Morse Code signals, muttering under her breath.
“Observation report request. Sector...”
“40-20,” Sunchaser said, reaching down to tuck his book safely away.
“All right.” She sighed. Then, with a snarl. “I’m still going to report you, you know.”
Sunchaser groaned.
***
Fizit frowned and looked down at the report from Watch Station 40-20. The script was spidery and cramped and full of the kind of spelling errors that she was used to sifting through. She didn’t even notice the fact that ‘fire’ had been spelled ‘fyire’ and that ‘troops’ was missing an O or that cannon was spelled with two Ks. Instead, she just read what was there and what was there was enough to make her tail lash like a metronome. She snarled and then resisted the urge to tear the report apart with her claws.
Venting her frustration on papyrus would be a pale imitation of venting her frustration on a real, live person. She had some bloody fantasies, starting with Ares and working her way down to the least of his lackies. She stood her stool scraping as she pushed it back. Then she walked around her desk, scooping up her paper and starting for the door to her office. She opened it and saw that both of her guards were looking strained. They were both human, and they wore simple cloth uniforms, muskets (ceremonial, for the most part) resting at the ground beside them.
It was the look on their faces that made her slitted eyes narrow.
Then she wheeled around. She narrowed her eyes at a bit of curtain that was twitching slightly. The large silk curtains were decorated with the symbol of Babylon and had been put in place after Hierophant Mary had, with a note of exasperation in her voice, pointed out that she’d have an easier time convincing visiting dignitaries to respect her and the Free Lord of Babylon if his palace didn’t look so…
Spartan.
The figure behind the curtain froze.
Fizit stalked forward, her worries focusing down into a single moment. She knew that the wrong move, the wrong step, would spell doom for her. She couldn’t trust the guards. It was clear they had been bribed. But she was a canny woman. Years of being a spymaster had come after years of being a spy. Changing her side hadn’t changed that. And so, she leaped aside as the curtain flipped open and grabbed the form that darted at her.
“Awww!” Brax squealed as Fizit swung her son up and away from the floor. Her son was…
Odd.
But Fizit would have cheerfully disemboweled the first person who remarked on it. She held him and beamed at him and wondered what on Purgatory had made her lucky enough to have him in her hands.
He looked, at one year, roughly the same as a three month old. That would be for one of her kind. But Liam, the father, had said that he was closer to the human five year old. It had seemed logical to her that a mix between a lizardfolk and a human would have something near the midpoint of their ages, but it had produced nothing but confusion and muttered speculations from Liam about biology and impossibilities.
Well.
If he was impossible, Brax was her impossible. His face was human-ish, flat without a muzzle. But his eyes had the curved ridges of a lizardfolk, and his hair was interwoven with the long, flat scales that served as a lizardfolk’s ‘hair.’ More, his hair was closer to her coloration than a human’s: Blues and greens, mixed and flashing. His shoulders had a few more scales, but most of his arms and chest were pale, pinkish human skin.
He had a long, thin tail, which twitched from side to side as he stuck his extremely long tongue out at her. “Nyaah! How’d you catch me, Mom?”
“Practice,” she said – then forced herself to remember her job. “And you should be with the tutors.”
“I hate the tutors...” Brax muttered.
“I know, honey,” Fizit said, then set him down. She shot a glare at one of her guards. “And you! You’re supposed to send him along.”
“Sorry ma’am,” the guard she transfixed with her glare said, his face like carved granite. “He was too stealthy for me.”
Fizit made a face. Bribed, without a doubt. Brax could bribe anyone by just being too fucking adorable. She knew it. That was why it was slightly less effective when he tried to be cute at her.
Slightly.
When she sequestered little Brax with his adopted sister, Marion, Fizit had to jog to get to Liam’s offices. She jogged past the meeting rooms for guild representatives, the administrative offices where taxes and payment rolls were kept. She jogged past the cartography office, where the reports from the watch stations that were suspended like a necklace of jewels around Purgatory’s sun were turned into the finest maps that had ever been crafted on Purgatory. At last, she came to the office itself. The guards there saluted and let her by, and once she was in, she found Liam frowning as he held up a parchment.
Liam Vanderbilt had changed from the first time Fizit had seen him.
The first ‘glimpse’ she had had of the man had been a hazy collection of intelligence reports and whispered comments from spies. They had described a blond headed giant of a man who towered over the average Purgatorian, bearing an enchanted sword and a magical tome full of a thousand books. They had talked about a frightening skill with arms and a fiendishly clever mind, matched with a kind heart.
She hadn't expected her first real glimpse of him to be Liam standing naked except for a tight, white thong that was groaning under the stress of keeping his immense package covered. Part of Fizit was actually happy about that little oversight in her intelligence gathering. Uncovering that package and the delicious feeling of shock, awe and raw lust that it had set off inside of her remained a treasured memory.
A lot of those other early whispers had been right though. Liam remained the biggest man that Fizit had ever met. His shoulders were broad and slabbed with muscle, while his face remained boyishly handsome even with the addition if a few nicks and scars. The only thing that marred him, really, was the stump of a foot he had resting on the broad desk. His other foot was unharmed, but the artificial foot that had been crafted for him by Hephaestus sat beside the desk like a discarded shoe.
The flesh of his injured looked utterly smooth, as if his foot had been plucked off and placed in storage. There was a bit of a callus that had been built up in the place where the curved stump pressed against the leather and metal of the artificial foot, but other than that, it was smooth.
“Hey Fiz,” Liam said, casually as he looked over the paper. “How does this sound: If you don’t remove your troops from the Barrier Mountains and return to the border agreed on, we will take punitive action first on the trading field, then on the battlefield.” He frowned. “Too harsh? It sounds kind of harsh to me.”
Fizit frowned, her tail twitching from side to side. She crossed her arms over her breasts and sighed. “I think it sounds harsh, but those Thorites are one bad day away from just openly raiding our trading caravans.”
Liam frowned, considering. “They’re mostly refugees.”
“They’re bandits,” Fizit said, her voice flat. “The refugees come to the city itself and pay taxes.”
Liam sighed. “All right.” He set the paper down. “I’ll send it by valk to the mountain passes. Uh, what’s up?” He set his feet – foot – down and sat up. His lips quirked in a slight smile. “Our little terror didn’t escape from the tutors, did he?”
“He did,” Fizit said, her smile breaking across her face despite her best efforts on the contrary. “But, uh, no. I’ve got another observation report from the Hellenic League, and it’s bad.”
She set the report down. It had come from Watch Station 20-40. Each watch station had two valkyrie (as they were the only ones who could reach and man them.) Because there were a limited number of valkyrie who could draw with any sense of accurate scale or speed, Fizit had quietly made sure that the best of them were in the watch stations that hovered, perpetually, over the vast jungles of the Hellenic League.
The scroll had been slightly singed in the drop from the helioproximal level of Purgatory’s atmosphere, but the middle was dominated by the lines of a battlemap. No detail beyond the elevation markings and the disposition of forces, which were marked with rectangles using specific symbols that could be drawn and recognized quickly. Liam frowned as he leaned over them, his brow knitting.
“Fifteen thousand musketeers?” he muttered. “Ten cannon, five thousand cavalry, these numbers are insane, how the hell is Ares getting these many troops? How is he feeding them?”
Ares. The God of War. The mastermind behind the False God Sysminor. He had been a thorn in Liam’s side for years but Fizit’s tribe had been kept under Ares boot-heel for decades. Shaped and honed into his army via the puppet Sysminor, they had been the forefront of the attempt to conquer Purgatory. But with Sysminor’s death, everyone had expected Ares to resume being Zeus’ pathetic lickspittle son. Instead, he had split the Hellenic League and the Dodekatheon in two and had been waging war against his half-siblings and father.
Everyone had expected it to be one-sided. War god or no, Ares was still only one god.
Instead, his troops were now ringing around New Athens.
“Those walls can’t take those cannons for long, even with Zeus’ tricks,” Liam said, frowning. “We’re going to be sucked into that war again soon.”
Fizit nodded. “That we are.” She didn’t say what she was thinking: We should have joined months ago. But both she and Liam knew that.
And both she and Liam knew why they hadn’t.
Liam rubbed his hands against his face. He groaned and leaned his elbows against his desk. “We can’t win a war without the support of the people – these new taxes aren’t exactly the most popular thing in the universe. The Guilds are hammering at my door for more freedom to make magical wares and firearms. And let's not even get started on the various cults and churches that each want to have the others banned.” He smirked, sliding his hands away from his face. “At least no one is actively trying to murder me anymore.”
At Fizit’s expression, Liam sighed.
“Who is actively trying to murder me now?”
Fizit smiled. “Agent Rao infiltrated one of the groups.” She spread her hands. “She’s fed them some intelligence that you’ll be leaving the city soon.”
Liam frowned. “I... will?”
“You will,” Fizit said, walking over, then sitting her rump on the desk. She grinned. Like a predator. “And I’ll grab them up when they try to assassinate you. I don’t want to wait like that madman with the musket.”
Liam made a face. He leaned slowly back in his seat again. “Do we have their grievances? Maybe we can resolve this before it gets to murder?”
The door to the room opened. Liam tensed – and then relaxed as he saw who it was.
“Oi! That’s my seat!”
Fizit blinked as she was unceremoniously picked up and a new form slipped underneath her. A pair of hands cupped her breasts through her shift, squeezing her playfully as Megara Vanderbilt purred against her cheek.
“But I am willing to forgive you,” she whispered, her voice hot against the side of Fizit’s ear. Her fingers found and tweaked Fizit’s nipples through her thin silk. Fizit squirmed and writhed, her tail coiling around Meg’s belly. The valkyrie woman was, in many ways, incredibly similar to Fizit. Like Fizit, she had an astounding rack. Like Fizit, she was muscular. Like Fizit, she was utterly unashamed of her sexuality. In that case, the differences that were there – the lack of tail, lack of scales, lack of feathers and lack of frills – seemed so minor as to make them near twins.
“Meg, I’m, ah, trying, ah, to... ahhh!” Fizit moaned as Meg tugged gently on her nipples. “Woooorrrk!”
“I know, that’s why I swooped in to save the day,” Meg said, chuckling. “It’s time for dinner, Liam.”
Liam blinked. “It is?”
“It was technically dinner a half hour ago,” Meg said, her hands sliding from Fizit’s now tingling breasts to her belly. “And you can’t just eat lizard pussy for dinner. Breakfast? Sure! Brunch? Totally. But dinner? That’s just absurd.”
Fizit gasped. Meg’s fingers, questing and devilish, had slipped between her thighs. Her shift crinkled and scrunched upwards, fabric tugging against the grain of her scales, revealing the puffy softness of her labia. Her sex was already moist, with just a few squeezes, caresses, and whispers purrs. Fizit hadn’t been entirely prepared, when she had started living in the Vanderbilt household, how quickly Meg would be able to rev her up. It had been the fifth most pleasant thing she had discovered about working here.
Fizit clenched her jaw as Meg’s fingers slipped into her sex. Meg grinned wickedly as she whispered in her ear. “So, you two ready to cum with me and get something in your bellies?”
Liam watched with a tolerant grin. “Meg.”
“Yes?” she asked, voice sweet as the fingering she was giving Fizit. By this point, Fizit’s hard nosed exterior had started to peel aside against the pressure of a single dexterous finger grinding against her center. She felt the growing heat buzzing in her, spreading outwards from her sex in waves. The pleasure wasn’t merely the raw sensuality of Meg’s touch – it was also contained in the warmth of her arms, the playful tone of her voice. The way that Liam watched. It was a heady mixture of emotions that Fizit was still getting used too, even after a year.
“We were discussing some affairs of state,” Liam said. “You know, the usual. Assassination, attempted destabilization of all we have built, Purgatory wide conquest, that kind of thing.”
Meg scoffed. “So, a Tuesday?”
Fizit gasped out her pleasure – and then forced herself to speak. Well. More ejaculate between moans of orgasmic bliss. But if that was what it took to deliver an intelligence briefing – getting fingerbanged by the most sensual valkyrie on the whole of Purgatory – then that was a sacrifice Fizit was willing to take.
“Their grievances, ahhh! Are, um, ohfuckyes, that... ah, the fact that you’ve integrated both my tribe and Meg’s tribe into the city after the waaaa-aa-arrrr!” She rolled her head back, her tongue flicking the air as she trilled. Her tail twitched hard enough to almost crack the air like a whip as she shuddered in Meg’s hands. Said hands had gotten busier and busier with every word. Now, Meg was cupping and squeezing a single bared breast, tugging on Fizit’s hard nipple as she had added her thumb to work in the fingerbanging. Specifically, she was rubbing her thumb in a slow circle – with just enough pressure – against Fizit’s hard, eager clit.
“Racist dicks!” Meg exclaimed – a phrase that she had adopted from long exposure to Liam. Fizit personally found the whole concept of racism a baffling one. Of course there were differences between different races. Pointing that out wasn’t bigotry, it was just common sense. But she had decided to shelve that argument for another day – and right now, she was so languidly satisfied that Liam could have smacked her in the face with his dick and she wouldn’t have blinked.
To be fair…
Liam, though, wasn’t looking interested in getting his monster of a cock out and into her. A shame. But the spymaster that lurked, sleeping with half an eye open underneath Fizit’s limp pleasure was happy to see Liam thinking. He rubbed his chin with his thumb and shook his head.
“They have a point,” he said.
That jerked Fizit upright and provoked such shock from Meg that her hand closed tight enough against Fizit’s breast that it provoked a squeak of pain from the lizardwoman.
Liam held up his hands. “Hear me out. Brax’s army occupied this city and enslaved its people – they used Babylon to make the weapons they would then use to try and conquer-”
“Under duress!” Fizit said, squirming out of Meg’s grip to stand. Her knees quivered as she clenched her hands. “Liam, if we hadn’t done it, Sysminor would have turned our bones into radium and ripped our hearts out! You know what he could do with the Codex.” The words were familiar on her tongue. She had said them to herself, a lot, while laying in bed at night, wondering how she had gotten here. She had hissed them to a furious Liv and a coldly distant Tethis.
“Which he didn’t have until your men found it for him,” Liam pointed out, drawing her focus back to the present.
“Fine, but even without it, he was still a god,” Fizit said. At Meg’s glare, she coughed. “Of a sorts.”
Liam leaned over his desk and clasped his hands. “That’s not entirely an excuse. ‘I was just following orders’ doesn’t excuse atrocities. Or crimes against humanity.”
“Well, humans and lilin and elves and-” Meg started.
“Crimes against sentients, then,” Liam said, his voice holding a tiny edge of annoyance. Meg, seeming to realize that her light tone hadn’t been taken well, flushed and closed her wings behind her back. “Mass executions, crucifixions...”
Fizit felt every last bit of her good mood drain out of her. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “Fine. But if we start down that road, how long before you have me on trial?”
Liam flinched as if he had been slapped. He put his hands over his face and leaned back in his seat. The wood groaned. “You’re the mother of my child,” he muttered, his voice soft. “But...”
“But?” Fizit felt her belly growing colder. When she had first become Liam’s spymaster, she had made plans. Schemes. Ways to get out, if things went bad. She hadn’t been sure how they might, but there had always been reason enough to scheme. Now, the idea of bringing those plans out of storage filled her with dread.
Liam groaned. “Fuck. Why are things so complicated?” He dragged his hands off his face, leaving furrows where his fingers pressed to his skin. He groaned again. “Remember the good old days, when I was just an adventurer, fighting monsters?”
“Most of the time, you were homesick, terrified, or worrying about if banging the baker was cheating on me,” Meg said, grinning with playful maliciousness.
“Oh, right,” Liam said, chuckling. “Thanks for reminding me, Meg, life was always shitty.”
“You’re welcome, honey!” Meg said, her voice so full of sugary sweetness that Fizit had to laugh. She felt some of her tension uncoil further as Meg continued: “You’re also feeling grim because you haven’t had dinner. Come on. Let’s go eat something slightly more appetizing than Fizit’s pussy.”
Liam smiled. “Can we still have Fizit's pussy for appetizers?”
Meg pursed her lips. Cocked her head. Considered. Then she closed her wings around her back and nodded, as solemn as a queen accepting an invitation to dance.
***
Dinner was delicious. With the new farms and the slow recovery of trade – not to mention the mixing of several cultures across Purgatory – the meals were fresh and always surprising. Liam wasn’t entirely sure what went into the sugar crystals and seared meat that he was eating, but it tasted divine. Fizit sat across from him. Meg next to him. Brax was next to Fizit, while little Marion was tucked under Fizit’s arm, her mouth fastened to Fizit’s nipple. She slurped and sucked happily – and Fizit looked faintly amused.
Liam chewed on his bite of steak and noticed Meg pouting at Fizit.
“It’s not fair. Lizards aren’t even mammals...” she muttered enviously as she looked at Fizit's mammaries.
“I hatched from an egg!” Brax said, cheerfully.
“No, you didn’t,” Meg said, snickering.
“Sure I did, Mom Meg,” Brax said, then grinned up at her, his tail whipping back and forth .”That’s why my head’s so hard! The tutor said so!”
Meg scowled. “Did he now?”
“Were you not doing your work, kiddo?” Liam asked, sticking his fork into his meal and letting it rest there. Brax blushed, then looked back at his plate.
“Yeah...” he said. Meaning, of course, no.
Liam reached over and tousled his son’s hair. His son. It still didn’t feel real. And yet, he couldn’t imagine a life without him, or Marion. He looked down at his plate as a dark snake writhed through his mind and sank its fangs into his heart. If they vanished, it wouldn’t change much, would it? He sighed. He saw his son and his daughter at the beginning of the day and near the end. The rest of the time, they were with tutors and wet nurses. Fizit had a bit of milk left from the short time she had spent nursing Brax. Apparently, lizardfolk had litters of kids... usually. But that didn’t mean that she was free to feed Marion whenever required.
As if she could read her mind, Fizit looked at the door, her hand cradling Marion’s head. “Is Liv going to come by?” She spoke the words as if they were required – not as if she actually believed them.
“Or Tethis?” Meg asked. She also sounded resigned.
The dark snake had gone from fangs to constricting his heart. Liam forced the feeling down, then set his fork to the tabletop. He grinned and said: “Well, no. Liv’s practicing her swordwork and I think Tethis is still, uh, working on the healing spells. The new ones.”
The awkward moment slipped past and the other started to eat. But Fizit caught Liam’s eye. Liam shrugged one shoulder, as if to say: Well, what can we do?
Fizit, as part of her job as the spymaster for Sysminor, had needed to do her job well. Like it or not, it had been her only choice. She hadn’t even felt particularly guilty at the time, paying men to assassinate Tethis. She had said so, once, when Liam had asked. But now? Liam wasn’t sure how she felt. And he wasn’t brave enough to ask. But Tethis had made it clear what she had thought. She had never visited the manor once, not while Fizit had been there. Every time Fizit left for business, Tethis had come by. And as Fizit was a spymaster, not an actual agent, that happened once in a blue moon.
Hell, Liam hadn’t even touched Tethis in what felt like a year. Tethis. The first person he had met on Purgatory after Meg who hadn’t been trying to kill him. One of his oldest lovers. He had been overjoyed when she had survived her assassination. But just as he had gotten her back, he had lost her again.
Liam felt the discord like a splinter in the brain – but one that he didn’t know how to remove. But as he looked at the empty space in the table it made him think about the empty space in his home and the empty space in his heart... and the empty space in his city.
“Anubis,” Liam said, breaking into Meg’s conversation.
“Well, no, I don’t think we can have Anubis for breakfast...” Meg said, making Brax gasp and start to look excited at the idea.
“No, no,” Liam said, grinning. “I know how to kill two birds with one stone.” He leaned forward. “But it may require a bit of a trip. And, fortunately, the trip’s one we need to take anyway.”
Meg perked up, and Brax’s eyes shone with excitement.
“No, you can’t come.”
Brax pouted.