The Morrigan’s Kiss sailed into Melos with its standards flapping in the wind and its crew whooping, jeering and hollering abuse at the other ships that had cast up against the harbor. The world of Purgatory had changed in uncountable ways over the past two years, but Melos remained as Melos ever had been: hideous, ramshackle, prone to burning down, and the only place that Kailey and Quinn could find true peace. Quinn leaned against her lover as Kailey caressed her hair. The Tuatha demigoddess looked like she was already counting coins in her coffers, her grin wide and greedy. But Quinn was more contemplative.
“We’re not rich yet,” she said.
“Mmmhmm.”
“We’re going to need to suck up to Pleon the Fat,” Quinn muttered, her fingers touching one another in a fluttering pattern – tip to tip. She pursed her lips. “You should do that.”
“Because I can throw him through a wall?” Kailey asked, perking up.
“Mm, yes, that,” Quinn said, then squirmed. “Come on. Let me up.”
Kailey did no such thing. Instead, she held Quinn closer to her chest and kissed her cheek, then her neck, then captured one of her pointed ears. She sucked and nibbled, then, finally, released her. Quinn stood and adjusted her shift with a quiet humph. But she was smiling as she walked off, heading towards the forecastle of the Kiss. As she stomped off, Thaddious bellowed orders at the crew who were casting lines to the docks, while others leaped off the ship to tie down. As they worked, Kailey’s sharp, sharp eyes spotted a standard being borne by a slave with broad shoulders and bronzed skin. He was standing beside an open topped sedan chair carried by a quartet of ugly looking lizards.
It announced the emergence of Pleon the Fat from his little fortress at the heart of Melos.
Kailey sighed.
The lizards moved with steady, ground chewing lopes that didn’t disturb their master and owner. Their slave collars glittered in the brilliant sun, and were all the more obvious when they knelt to the ground and bowed their heads forward so that they could hold position without their arms wavering. By the time Kailey reached the edge of the Kiss, Pleon the Fat was already speaking.
Pleon the Fat was an example of what pure, pig-headed willpower could do to a man. Scarred and burned in some long buried vendetta, Pleon had cast off his name and his old allegiances and embraced the character of a pirate dockmaster. But what was most impressive was his single-minded obsession with gluttony. He was eating grapes as he spoke, spitting seeds into a metal bowl held by the standard bearing slave – and the efforts of his hard work bore fruit in the folds of fat that surrounded him, the bulbous swell of his neck, the rolls of his cheek.
It was all the more impressive that Pleon was an elf.
“Well, well, well-” spit, tink! “-if it isn’t my favorite sapphic marauders-” spit, tink! “-returned from bringing down the wrath of the one true god on my-” spit, tink! “-poor head. Oh, what words do you have to excuse this trouble, this woe, this-” spit, tink!
“Have tales of our exploits traveled so fast?” Kailey asked, trying to sound polite. She was worried her disgust was curling her lips against her will.
Pleon grinned. The combination of obesity with the normally narrow frame and lithe built of an elf was nearly as off putting as the glistening grape-juice that dribbled from his stained purple lips. But none of it had anything on the ugly burn scar that covered his forehead.
“The world’s curvature did not hide it. Lord Vanderbilt isn’t the-” spit, tink! “-only man with a telescope.”
Kailey ducked her head forward. Her mind worked quickly, calculating the angles. She grinned slowly, then lifted her head up, already about to speak. Then the hatch to the cargo hold burst open and Quinn thrust her head out, gasping. “Kailey! Kailey! Kailey! I figured out what the torcs do!”
She ran forward – then skidded to a stop when she saw Pleon.
Pleon spat another seed into the bowl.
“H-Hello Pleon,” Quinn said, smiling.
“Hello, my pretty.” Pleon made a slick, slurping noise as he licked his lips. “Are you two lovely, lovely women going to kiss?”
“We’re not part of Arlan’s troupe,” Kailey said, jerking her chin at the nearest brothel on the island. “And we’re not here just to unload loot. We’re here to offer you a chance to never have to worry about bribing patrol boats again. Never having to rebuild after having the island burned to the ground around you again.”
Pleon’s almost ludicrously avaricious facade slipped for a moment. For that moment, Kailey could see the cold-snake focus that had led him to build Melos, then rebuild it again after Zeus had sent a small flotilla to burn him out. He leaned slowly back in his sedan chair, the weight shifting on the backs of his slaves.
“Go on.”
Kailey grinned, then jerked her chin. “You’ll need to come up here to see it. Because if we just told you, you won’t believe us.”
In the end, Pleon came up the gangplank on his own two feet, flanked by his slaves, each of them bearing a bared kopesh sword, save for the one who carried his standard. That one had the extravagance of a flintlock pistol – clearly Hellenic made by the shoddy quality of the firing mechanism. That wouldn’t keep it from killing anyone stone dead, and it made Kailey subtly push Quinn behind her back as she gestured Pleon to the cargo hatch. The slaves glowered at her crew, who glowered right back. Pleon though waddled forward, and then stepped down the hatchway.
After Kailey went first, of course.
Once they were in the hold, Kailey held up a mage light and Pleon’s eyes widened in his rounded cheeks.
“Oh, by the gods...” he whispered.
“This was what the Monodeists were carrying,” Kailey said.
Despite his clear shock, Pleon quickly went straight to brass tacks. “You can’t possibly use all of these guns, not on the Kiss. I can take all but, say, four of them off your hands in exchange for, hmm, free use of port for a year and a day.”
Kailey snorted and then spat on the deck. “Like hell.”
The slaves, who had finished clambering down the hatch, growled at that.
Pleon waved his hand to silence them. “For your life.”
“We’re keeping twenty four guns,” Quinn said, reaching up to brush some of her luminously white hair behind one ear. “Twelve for a side.”
“What?” Pleon looked at her. “Every ship on the seas puts their cannon on the prow. Anything else will shatter a ship to pieces! By weight alone-”
“Leave the ship design to her,” Kailey cut in. “But that leaves you twelve guns. Six on the north spit of land, six on the south, and you can turn any ship that comes into the harbor into kindling. We’ll even help you make the gunpowder. In exchange for these guns, we want access to your docks for as long as it takes to finish the upgrades to our ships, and access to your slaves and your shipwrights.”
“Well, the docks, of course, of course, the slaves, maybe, yes,” Pleon said, waving a single fat hand. “But you would ask me to make Happy and poor Dimas work for nothing?”
Kailey beamed. “No, no, no, we figured that you would pay them, Pleon.”
“For twelve guns?” he asked. “Hmm...”
“Twelve guns and gunpowder,” Quinn put in, peeking over Kailey’s shoulder.
Pleon scoffed. “You pay for half of the shipwright’s wages.”
“Half those wages are going to be dreampowder and hashish!” Kailey said, waving her hand. “We’ll pay half of the coin that you give them, but you cover the other half of the coin and their...” She searched for a diplomatic word. “Entertainment.”
“Two thirds of the coin,” Pleon said.
“Half,” Kailey said, her arms crossed over her chest. “And I’ll throw in a chest of the pleasure herbs we have in the stores.”
Pleon scowled, then waved his hand in a choppy motion. “Done!”
As he started to awkwardly climb his way up the ladder, Quinn whispered in Kailey’s ear: “I feel like I need a bath.”
Kailey managed, somehow, not to laugh. Instead, she turned to face Quinn. “So, the collar things.”
Quinn blinked. Then she gasped. “Right! Right.” She walked Kailey over to the collection of strange artifacts. She flung the container case open with a grunt, then picked up one of the oddities. “I’ve been researching them and I think they’re null-collars.”
“Like for valks?” Kailey asked, her brow furrowing.
“Not quite. They’re several times more powerful.” Quinn paused. “I think that if you put one of these on a god it’d cut their powers off.”
Kailey frowned. She looked down at the curved collars.
“And here,” she murmured. “I thought Ares would be screaming for the cannons.”
***
Tethis opened the door to find herself face to belly with Fizit. The day was another one of those torrential downpours required to water the fields and green the deserts, but Fizit treated the rain as her kind treated any kind of water: something for other people to worry about. Rain ran in shining rivulets down her arms and dripped from her fingertips. It slicked her breastband to her chest and caused her feathered crest to lay flat against her neck. It beaded along her tail as she held it stock still behind her – only the tip quivered to show any sign of emotions.
Tethis crossed her arms over her breasts and frowned.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice as cold as the rain falling from the heavens.
“I heard about Liv. May I come in?” Fizit asked, her voice stiff and formal.
Tethis narrowed her eyes. “No.”
She closed the door with a thump, right in the lizardwoman’s nose.
Tethis turned back and away, sighing quietly. She walked away from the entrance to her small home, past the piles of books and scrolls that she had been meaning to sort for the past, oh, several months. She came to where Liv lay groaning on the bed. Her headaches and migraines persisted, even days after Liam had left on his diplomatic mission. Some days, she could sit up and grouse and grumble about Coptic cooking. Most days, she simply lay there and groaned.
Thus far, Tethis had managed to simply determine what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a tumor, it wasn’t an imbalance in hormones, it wasn’t brain damage, it wasn’t internal bleeding, it wasn’t a change in Liv's diet, and it wasn’t a curse. But the migraines kept getting worse, and new symptoms would come and go, seemingly at random. One day, her nose would simply not stop bleeding. Another day, she would complain about a screaming pain shooting along her arm.
Now?
Now she was feaverish, panting and whimpering in bed, tossing her head from side to side. “No. No. No. Brax. No.”
Tethis felt her blood run cold.
This was why she sometimes didn’t rush very quickly to cast a spell that might reduce Liv’s pain or discomfort when some new facet of her sickness came to the fore. Liv looked at the man who had almost gotten Tethis – and Liam, and Meg, and the whole of Purgatory for that matter – killed and saw a lover. Rather than the monster he was. A tragic monster, if Tethis was being generous.
He had ordered mass crucifixions, by Bast’s tits. He had assassinated Odin! Successfully! Permanently.
Tethis sighed and stepped forward. Her palms spread over Liv’s forehead and she focused, drawing magic into herself. The patterns of thought, gesture, and mumbled words that caused the powers that surged through Purgatory to leap to her whim were so ingrained that it was nearly as easy as thinking. She would simply reduce Liv’s pain, then maybe-
Tethis slammed into the wall and then slid down with a clattering of shelves and crash of pottery. She was... in the kitchen? Her head rang and her eyes blazed with a pale white light. She groaned and slowly shook her head, then squeaked as a pot filled with cherry preserves landed on her. It didn’t break, but it did clonk against her skull and splatter her face and her cheeks and a good bit of her chest with red, drippy goop.
Distantly, Tethis could hear a voice. It sounded like it came to her from the bottom of a deep well, barely audible and muffled.
“Tethis? Tethis? Speak to me, Tethis!”
It was a hissing, familiar voice. Tethis groaned and pushed the clawed fingers that were touching her neck away. “I’m okay, I’m okay...” she mumbled, then shook her head again. The white flare that had obscured her vision faded and she saw Fizit, kneeling before her. Then water started to sluice across Fizit’s back, pattering down like a spigot had opened. She looked up and Tethis rolled her head back as well.
The ceiling was full of…
Cracks?
Fizit hissed something in lizardspeech and Tethis groaned as she was slung over the taller woman’s shoulder. The upside down view this afforded her of her own home showed that one wall had fallen completely down. The roof that the wall had sported remained up, by the desperate efforts of several still intact beams and wooden pillars. A pale white glow surrounded Liv’s bed – pulsating faintly.
Then Fizit bounded out of the house. She sprang through a splintered door – splintered inwards, Tethis noticed – and into the sleeting rain moments before the home collapsed. Tethis saw it all, watched as the roof fell downwards with a plume of smoke and spray of dust and grit. When the smoke cleared and the onlookers – the crowd of people who had come running at the explosion and the collapse – parted for a moment, Tethis could see that the only thing that remained intact in her home…
Was the bed that Liv lay on.
Shrouding the bed was a crackling bubble of glowing force. Rubble sat on the top, but the hemisphere was clearly slippery, as chunks were sliding slowly to the side, leaving the field clean. The surface rippled like water for a few more moments before it winked, once, twice, then vanished.
“I am beginning to think,” Tethis spoke the words slowly, carefully, despite her awkward position and her aching body. “That this is not a migraine.”
***
“Have you ever met this Dimas?” Quinn asked. Shouted, really. She had to shout to be heard over the sound of hammering and sawing wood and swearing workmen. Kailey, who was watching her ship being slowly dismantled and put back together again, frowned and shook her head. She looked at her lover, who was surrounded by rolls of parchment, looking at designs for what appeared to be a wooden carriage for a cannon.
“Well, I’m curious why we’re paying gold for a man who doesn’t seem interested in working,” Quinn said, casting the parchment to the ground. “Happy listens to my advice when I point out a design is unworkable. But I’ve sent a messenger to Dimas three times, and he hasn’t responded once! Can I just-”
“No,” Kailey said. She looked at her lover, her face darkening. “The last thing I want is any of our crew wandering town alone. I don’t trust Pleon farther than I can throw him. Without my riastrad.”
Quinn shook her head. “Listen, Happy has a great eye for rigging. But we need designs for the cannon carriages that the carpenters can work on, that won’t not fit on the ship.” She bit her lower lip. “Maybe we can go together? Since Pleon is clearly not about to ride herd on his own men...”
Kailey considered. Together, the two were a fairly formidable force.
“Bring your foci,” she said, quietly.
And so, a few short minutes later, the two goblinesses walked down the unpaved road that led to Pleon’s fortress. Melos was built around the harbor of the island, which itself was protected by sheer cliffs that formed a nearly perfect C shape. Thanks to the thick jungle canopy, the buildings were nearly invisible from a distance, and the harbor looked too dangerous for most captains to try. For those that tried, there were now twelve cannons aimed permanently at the entrance.
But for those who knew the way and flew the pirate standard, there was a nice little way to just burn through money. Lilin whores dressed in scanty scraps of silk and leather sprawled against the walls of cheap alehouses, while brothels and bordellos proclaimed their services with lurid signs that depicted everything. There were wooden panels that showed women with their mouths fastened around members of every race, while several brothels had their finest whores leaning out of their windows, showing off every inch of their beauty to those who walked by.
There was also a guard force. Of a sort. Slave-collared lizardmen, most of them twisted and hunched and mutated by some mistake in their birth or lives, stood near several of the storefronts, holding blades and clubs in their hands, glaring about themselves. A whore screamed as Kailey and Quinn walked by. Glancing over, the two women saw a pirate – his stance and posture showing he was clearly drunk as a sow – groping and squeezing her tits.
Two lizardmen seemed to appear from the shadows behind the man. In a few seconds, he was a pile of butchered meat, the whore kicking sand at the corpse, spitting at him.
Pleon’s rules were harsh.
And his fortress showed where all the money raked in by the stores and whorehouses went It was a perfect square solid stone, with a wooden roof and a Roman-style atrium. There were several slit windows that ringed the walls, with just enough room for someone to fire a gun or a bow out of them. The front door was narrow and made of wood banded with bronze bars. The standard-bearing slave – one of the few human slaves that Pleon used – was there. He was polishing and fiddling with his pistol as Kailey called out.
“Hail!”
The slave looked up. His finger went to the collar wrapped around his neck. “What do you want?”
“We’re looking for Dimas, the shipwright?” Quinn said, her voice slightly nervous. Glancing at her, Kailey grinned. No. Not nervous. She was shy. Now that she wasn’t focused on being disgusted by Pleon, she was noticing the sculpted muscles and bronzed skin of the slave. Quinn, like Kailey, was not actually purely sapphic. They just rarely met men who hit their standards: Tall. Muscular, but not too muscular. Clean shaven. Clean, actually, in general.
The only thing the slave lacked was a brain – which Quinn looked for – and a certain... spark. When pressed, Kailey had a hard time pinning down what she thought of as a spark. But she had sometimes pointed at men – those who had done something brave or foolhardy or skillful – and said: That!
The slave grunted at Quinn’s question. His response dampened the alchemist’s interest, though: “I dunno.”
He didn’t just not know, he also showed zero sign of wanting to know.
Quinn sighed and tossed her head as Kailey smiled, her voice faux sweet: “Then please, find out.”
The slave turned and ducked back inside the house.
Kailey tapped her foot.
Quinn sighed.
A single mosquito went buzzing by. Kailey snapped her arm out, closing her hand in a fist. She opened her fingers and the mangled corpse of the mosquito dropped to the ground.
The slave opened the door.
“On the cliffs.”
Stomping through the jungle gave Kailey and Quinn plenty of time to get annoyed. Quinn growled under her breath as she ducked underneath low hanging vines, while Kailey pushed underbrush aside. “We hire him, we pay his wages despite giving his master twelve fucking cannons, flintlock cannons, and he goes off to work on Pleon’s job before us. What kind of shithead does that?”
“One who knows who pays for his drugs,” Kailey hissed.
The two women emerged from the jungle to the cliffs. The sudden gust of wind slapped their faces, causing the sweat that beaded on their cheeks to dry with a prickling sensation. But both were struck dumb by the sight that was before them. Not the cleverly concealed ditch where six cannons were mounted in wooden toughs, aimed downwards, with stacked stone shot and gunpowder kegs were being laid out.
No.
By him.
He was tall and leanly muscled, like a Greek god. His face had just a faint dusting of hair, enough to give his dusky cheeks a darker shade than the rest of his face. His hair was short and straight and snarled around him like an unkempt mane. But rather than looking slovenly, it just accented his untamed good looks. He was dressed in a kilt and nothing else, which meant every inch of his washboard flat abs and taut belly and smooth pectorals was on display and utterly delicious. He held a clay tablet in one hand and had scratched out some geometric proofs on it. His eyes – beautiful, hazel eyes – looked out at the curving horizon of Purgatory as he chewed his lower lip.
Quinn breathed slowly in, shaking herself.
“Is that Dimas?” Kailey whispered.
“Well, as Happy is a one legged human without a single hair on his head, I’m going to say that it is likely-” Quinn stammered, but Kailey cut her off by putting her finger on her lips.
“I know how to get him to work on our ship,” she murmured.
“Paying him?” Quinn whispered around her finger. Then she saw the look in Kailey’s eyes. “Oh.”
Kailey smirked, then started forward. She stopped moving her feet softly on the ground – instead, she let the tiny rocks and pebbles that covered the ground click and clatter together. But she also put a sway to her deliciously curved hips. Her long, wild mane of feathers and hair fluttered in the breeze as it caught at her simple shift. The sound made Dimas look up. His eyes widened and he blinked as he also saw Quinn. Quinn didn’t move with the sensual grace of her lover – but she knew how to make her own eroticism pop.
Where Kailey moved like a predator, Quinn stepped forward with a shy smile and her hands clasped behind her back. Her chest thrust out, making her tits strain against her tunic. Her nipples and her eyes bespoke the lie to her innocent smile; her eyes glittered with eagerness and her nipples were already puffy and hard, peeking through the thin fabric of her tunic.
“Can I help you, Miss...?” Dimas asked, his voice husky, trailing off as he looked between them.
“Kailey. Captain Kailey,” Kailey said, grinning as she put her palm on his belly. Her fingers spread, touching to the centers of several of his muscles. She pushed gently and Dimas was so startled that he sat down with a thump. This meant that he was more on a level with her, his lips near hers, his eyes looking into hers. Kailey leaned forward and purred in her ear. “And that’s Quinn.”
“Hey,” Quinn said, stepping to the other side of him. She knelt down, her palm pressing to his chest. “You, ah, are quite muscular for a shipwright...”
“Uh...” Dimas looked as if he had never been in the center of this kind of attention in his life. Kailey judged he had been with whores – since he didn’t tremble quite as much as virgin. But there were whores. And then there were whores. And Kailey was quite confident in her and Quinn’s ability to set a man’s heart aflame. She pressed her soft, pillowy breasts against his shoulder. Her teeth grazed his ear as she whispered.
“This stuff anyone can do. We need a real genius working on the Kiss right now.” Her finger caressed his chest. Her finger circled one nipple.
Dimas gulped. He whispered. “The, uh, Lord Pleon said we had to get this finished first...he told me, uh, to put your requests on the back burner...”
Quinn and Kailey glanced at one another. Kailey arched a single eyebrow.
Quinn smiled, then shifted around. She sat her rump down on Dimas’ skirt. From the way his shoulder tensed against Kailey’s breasts, she knew that Quinn had started to grind her cute little ass against his hardon. But looking over his shoulder, Kailey saw a moment of pouty sadness flash across Quinn’s features. Before she could ask more, Quinn leaned in and spoke to Dimas. She didn’t purr. She didn’t need to. She was grinding against his member and mashing her breasts against his chest. Anything would sound erotic in that context, even: “But we really need a new design for the cannon carriages!”
Dimas bit his lower lip. “Well, I had a design idea or two, but...”
“Pleon?” Kailey asked, her teeth nibbling at his earlobe. Dimas groaned. His hips bucked and his fingers dug into the sort dirt that spread behind him. Quinn leaned forward to start nuzzling at his neck.
“Pleon said he didn’t want you to be able to shoot up,” Dimas whispered. “It didn’t make sense.” He rolled his head slightly to the side. Quinn was licking and kissing at his neck. She nibbled, then nibbled again, more forcefully. Dimas’ hands moved from bracing himself to sliding along Quinn’s back. He reached down to squeeze her ass, tight.
“But why?” Quinn pouted.
“I don’t know,” Dimas panted. “Oh gods-” he was cut off when Kailey turned his head. She leaned over his shoulder and locked her lips to his. They were warm and soft and his tongue was stumbling. Inexperienced. Definitely only laid with whores. Kailey taught him, subtly, her tongue moving with his, pushing against him as her hands found his nipples, tweaking them gently. Dimas broke the kiss and panted softly.
Quinn grabbed onto her tunic, her voice soft and desperate. As if she was a virgin, giving into her wildest lusts. “Oh Dimas!”
Her tunic went sailing off to land behind her. Dimas showed that he knew at least something about his work – his palms cupped both of the smaller woman’s breasts, squeezing them as he leaned forward, capturing one of Quinn’s breasts. He sucked on her nipple with eager, wet, slurping noises. Quinn moaned, her head rolling backwards as she started to grind against him.
Dimas broke the kiss and started to push Quinn backwards – but as she laid back, Kailey made her move. She took hold of his wrist, guiding it between her legs. Her shift crinkled as his hand pushed under, caressing her thighs. Then his fingertips – soft, gentle fingertips, the fingertips of a scholar – pressed to her sex. He thrust one tentatively inside and Kailey put a bit of a theatrical gasp to her voice as his finger crooked inside of her. Questing. Questing.
Questing.
Still... fiddling around.
Quinn, meanwhile, had spread her thighs and used her feet to push Dimas’ kilt down, freeing his cock. Looking at it, Kailey had to bite her lip to repress a frustrated growl. This was exactly why she and Quinn rarely laid with men when they weren’t trying to, well, manipulate them. Like right now, for instance. Not only had he still not found her center of pleasure, but his member would only have been impressive for a goblin male.
And if Quinn and Kailey had been satisfied with even impressive goblin men, they would have never left their home villages.
Kailey reached down to start gently rubbing her own clit as Dimas seemed convinced that he was Odysseus and would need to spend ten years to find her fucking G-spot.
Quinn moaned, faking pleasure and shocked eagerness as Dimas slid into her. He had to be helped by her hand, guiding him in. His free hand was caught between Kailey’s thighs after all, while his other hand was pressed to the ground to give himself some support. He started to thrust into Quinn, his balls gently slapping against her ass. Quinn put her best acting into it, her back arching as she mewled and moaned and cooed: “Oh Dimas! Oh Dimas!”
Kailey’s own rubbing set her fireworks off as she quivered atop his hand, moaning his name as well. Dimas, as she had expected, lasted two thrusts more before burying himself deep inside of Quinn (well, as deep as he could manage.) As he panted into her neck and drew his hand from Kailey’s thighs, Kailey looked irritatedly at the sky.
“So, when can we, ah, do this again?” Quinn asked, her voice husky.
“Uh-”
“Cause we haven’t met someone like you for a long time,” Quinn whispered, her fingers caressing Dimas’ chest. “Maybe...we can come up to the cliffs while you work here and you can...relax?”
Dimas beamed a huge, stupid smile.
“Sounds great!”
Kailey and Quinn walked down and away from the cliffs.
Muttering to one another
***
Fizit stood in the darkened corridor, watching as Tethis and several other court wizards – many of them specialists in fields other than healing – walked around Tethis. Books and tomes from the palace libraries were spread about, but Fizit could sense the lack of understanding from the collected wizards. Tethis threw up her hands and stalked off, walking past Fizit without even noticing her.
You’d think almost being assassinated would give you better instincts, Fizit thought.
Liv had remained in a coma – thankfully without exploding again – for the past week. In that time, Liam’s ship had sailed to distant Uten-Ha and started home. The watch stations had reported that he had Anubis. But until then, his palace remained a tense place. Without a home, and with something that the City of Babylon desperately needed to understand, Tethis hadn’t been able to refuse Fizit’s offer to stay here.
But that hadn’t made Tethis warm to her.
Fizit knew she should have just put the thought of it behind her. She should just... not care.
She had been quite good at not caring, before. Focus on the mission. Ignore the pieces, save for the factors that mattered to your objectives. People were tools. It was how you survived in the world of spies and ciphers, secrets and lies, kings and emperors. But... but... but... Tethis was one of Liam’s oldest friends. She was the second person on Purgatory he had met who hadn’t been trying to murder him. He made love to her almost as often as he made love to Meg. Meg! She shook her head and stalked after Tethis as the other woman walked to her chambers.
A clattering of scales and claws on tiles announced the arrival of Brax. He skidded around the corner, laughing, and then saw that he was about to smash into Tethis. He squalled, scrabbled at the ground, then smashed right into her chest. The two went sprawling on the ground. Fizit froze – her eyes wide. Tethis laughed as she rolled onto her back, wincing only slightly as she sat up.
“And who are-” she stopped dead.
Brax looked at her. The fusion of Liam’s features and Fizit’s had to be clear as day. Besides, who else would he be?
Fizit felt as if she was torn between three different instincts. Observe and report. Rush in to protect her son. Start scolding the little hellion for running around in the palace when he should be studying. Caught there, she simply froze as Tethis picked up Brax with a grunt and set him to the side.
“Hi,” Brax said. “You’re Dad’s friend, Tethis, right?”
Tethis gulped. “R-Right. I, uh, yes. And you’re...”
“Brax!” He puffed up his chest. “I’m named after Marion's dad. Auntie Liv’s her mom, and Fizit’s my mom, but Brax the Golden and Fizit weren’t related, but they were friends. So, she’s basically my sister. Are you a goblin? I haven’t met many goblins, but I hear you’re the best at flying gliders. Is that because you’re small?”
Tethis blinked, slowly. “Uh, maybe? I don’t know, honestly.”
Brax nodded, sagely. His hands gripped his thin, whippy tail, and he looked solemn. “When I grow up, I want to fly gliders. But Dad says that they’re too dangerous. But if they’re so dangerous, why does he get to go on a boat to sail around the world?” he paused. “I miss Dad.”
“I miss your dad too,” Tethis said.
“You do?” Brax asked. “But you never visit.”
Tethis looked as if she had been slapped.
“But Dad says it’s cause you’re busy. But Maid Theresa says that it’s cause you hate Mom. Do you hate Mom?”
Fizit felt her throat closing tight. Tethis sighed, quietly.
“No, I don’t, b-”
“Oh, that’s good!” Brax seemed to be entirely relieved. Then, grinning, he said: “You won’t tell anyone I wasn’t doing my maths, right?”
Tethis stammered something that could have been a yes or no. Brax beamed at her, showing off every one of his sharp teeth before turning and running off. As he rushed away, Fizit felt her freeze break. She reached out, caught him by the back of his shirt, then swung him around into her arms. She held him and glared down at him, emerging from the shadows.
“Brax Vanderbilt,” she said, growling. “What’s this about not doing your maths?”
“But Mom!” Brax whined.
Tethis was standing up. She rubbed her slightly bruised butt as she looked at Fizit. Fizit looked at her as Brax squirmed in her arms.
“Fizit,” Tethis said, her voice formal.
“Tethis,” Fizit said.
Brax stopped squirming. He was young – far younger than a lizardman of his age would have been – but he was still able to sense that now was a time to keep quiet. His tail twitched from side to side. Fizit looked into Tethis’ face. She could see the warmth in the other woman’s eyes. Not for her. For Brax. She loved him, despite his origin, despite her, despite his name, despite everything. It had taken one meeting and Tethis was ready to accept her son. The small chink around Fizit’s heart was struck with the force of a cannon. She gasped and felt tears blur her vision. But she could see tears glimmering in Tethis’ eyes as well.
“I’m sorry!” Tethis and Fizit said at the same moment.
“What are you sorry for?” Brax asked.
“I had no...no excuse, no excuse, I shouldn’t have, I should have-” Fizit stammered.
“No, no, no, you were protecting your people!” Tethis said, stepping forward, putting her hands on Fizit’s arms – reaching up to do so.
Fizit sniffed. “But you were almost killed!”
“It was war,” Tethis said, nodding quickly.
The two women lapsed into silence. Sniffled. Then Fizit laughed, shaking her head. “You’re saying the same things I said to myself,” she whispered, huskily.
Tethis wiped at her eyes. “If I hold onto my grudge, I’ll have to cut this little guy out of my life. Hell, I’ve practically cut Liam out of my life. I miss him. And...” She paused. “My fear doesn’t need to spoil our relationship. Right?”
Fizit nodded, then sniffled. “I still owe you. So much. I owe everyone so much. For what I did. For what we did.”
Tethis smiled at her.
Brax, who had been looking between the women, blinked.
“Are you two going to fuck now?” he asked, innocently.
“Brax!” Tethis gasped.
“Who taught you that word?” Fizit growled.
“I heard Mom Meg say it,” Brax said, defensively.
And, as often happened in bitter wars, the most unlikely of friendships could be formed when faced with a greater threat.
Fizit and Tethis walked off, side by side, their eyes glinting not with tears, but instead with purpose.
***
The Morrigan’s Kiss unfurled her sails for the first time in almost a week and a half. It was a brilliant day and the wind blew through the harbor with a whistling howl. It caught in the sails and caused them to bell outwards. Quinn stood beside the wheel as Kailey held onto it with casual confidence. Kailey swept her gaze along her deck and shook her head. It was remarkable what hard work and magic could accomplish. The deck had been reinforced and cleared of the oar-locks. Those had been converted into places to mount their guns. Each slot was filled with crystal, the cannon set in freshly carved carriages.
The only thing different from the schematics were the elevation blocks that lifted the barrels. But those were nearly invisible from a distance.
“I can’t believe Pleon let you off without gouging us more,” Thaddious said, shaking his head as he walked up to the two women. He smirked. “Did you have to negotiate with him every day? You two kept vanishing.”
“Not quite,” Kailey said, smirking.
“I can’t believe I sat on his face the whole week and he still needed to be reminded to pay attention to my clit,” Quinn muttered.
Thaddious frowned. “Do I need to be concerned?”
“No, Thaddious,” Kailey said. “But Pleon is planning to betray us.”
Thaddious blinked. Then he laughed. “Ah. Let me guess, he wants to get every gun.”
“That’s the idea. Sink us, then salvage them from the harbor,” Kailey said. “But do you know why it is a bad idea to let us near your engineer?”
Thaddious rubbed at a bit of stubble on his cheek as Kailey lifted her right arm. The crew she had spoken to earlier saw the sign. They hurried to their posts, moving quickly and without shouting.
“I can guess,” Thaddious said.
Quinn grinned.
Kailey dropped her arm.
Twenty four cannons spoke at the same time. Smoke exploded from each barrel and the carriages rocked backwards onto the deck. Roundshot smashed into the cliff-faces, striking siege works that Kailey and Quinn had, while Dimas was sleeping off sex and drink, quietly sabotaged. Gunpowder improperly protected by weakened armor went up with a roar and debris reached into the heavens.
The Morrigan’s Kiss sailed from Pleon’s harbor, leaving two pyres as a warning to the world.
Never double cross Kailey and Quinn.