by Scottie Kaye
But what if he sent word?
The thought chilled her. There were ways for Ossyne to send a message down the mountain faster than the lift could descend. What if she found an assassin waiting for her? What if he'd posted spies at a few nearby inns?
Yes. Yes, he would do that. If he hadn't already, he'd do it once he realized what had happened. If indeed she did get off this elevator, she had to run somewhere that he wouldn't look. Somewhere that no one would find her.
And it was only then, as she thought this, that Lassyne knew what she was doing. She wasn't trying to return to her family. Not this time.
Instead, she'd escape them. For good.
Ten
Inside the compartment, Lassyne sprawled out, rubbing her hands at the dirt that had collected there. It seemed servants rarely cleaned the storage unit, because she found enough dirt to smother herself from top to bottom. She also tore her dress yet again, at the hemline, ripping off the last of the solid-gold coins. These she fed into her ample hair, hiding the shining metal amid her heaped curls.
And then she waited. And then the cage landed.
It set her chest aflutter again, the adrenalin greater than any she had felt before. She was escaping. Escaping forever.
As long as she stayed calm. As long as she did it right. As long as she didn't burst out of these tight, choking walls.
"Where's the mason, again?" she heard the maid say, her voice passing out of the cage. "I'm not sure which of us will be back here first."
"You'll find the seamstress first," Boris said. "The mason's on the edge of town. But we only need some stone polish, to rub off the char marks. I won't be too long. Having the curtains replaced will take longer."
"You'll go up ahead of me?" said the maid, sounding a little put out. After all, Boris had gone before her once already, if in a more carnal sense.
Boris was now the one stepping off. "Why would I wait?" he asked. Lassyne gritted her teeth at his flippancy. Far be it from him to make sure his lover got hers. Sometimes, Lassyne hated men.
After that, silence, as their feet crunched away. Lassyne waited for her moment, fighting her fear of the space. Everything was so close here—but she needed to wait—
They were talking about the fire, she realized, belatedly. She nearly laughed. Ossyne's own distraction was the whole reason she'd escaped him. If someone hadn't gotten into the lift at just the right moment, Ossyne would have found her in the compartment before she could escape.
Despite the irony, she vowed in that moment to never rely on luck again. Everything she did from now on would be her choice. She would decide what came next.
And so, Lassyne waited a bit longer—say, twenty minutes—before she slid open the compartment door and rolled out, groaning loudly.
Footsteps, instantly. The bottom of the elevator was guarded, of course.
"What the hells?" said a male voice.
Lassyne's eyes flung open, and she wobbled onto her hands and knees and looked up at the guard.
"Please," she said, her voice grating. "Please, help me."
The man frowned. "What—what were you doing in there, miss?" Another guard crowded in behind him. Both of them tried and failed not to look at her breasts. They could clearly see her nipples through the coinless threads, and it served as a healthy distraction.
"Form," she sobbed, and then she snatched at the first guard's uniform. "Form, he—he hurt me—I escaped, but—please help me. Please...."
The two men glanced at each other. Lassyne wondered what kind of men they were, and if they were on Ossyne's payroll or not. They didn't seem to recognize her, so that was something. No one expected to see a dirt-covered truth mage, much less one from the family Read.
"I—I'll pay," she said. She licked her lips, taking care to speak in servant's lingo. "I know how to please a man. I'll please you. Just get me out of here. Somewhere he can't find me."
The second guard stepped back in repulsion. "I'm not letting you anywhere near my lunch meat, lady." He tapped the first guard on the shoulder. "Trust me, Gaan, you do not want to engage with this. You don't want to make enemies with nobles. Just throw her on a street somewhere, and pretend it never happened."
"Throw her on the street? In that?" the first guard replied, dumbstruck. "Hells no. Do you know what'll happen to a half-naked woman around here? Everyone's drunk as it is, with the Arrival happening. She wouldn't last a minute. You stay here. I'll drop her off at my friend's house. He's close by."
With that, the first guard held out a hand. She took it, keeping mum as he took off his coat and covered her with it. She was too dumbstruck by the kindness to do much more than follow him. He had believed her. He had believed her.
Of course he did, she told herself. That was the plan, wasn't it? But now that the ruse had worked, it stunned her. All her life, she'd told the truth about a specific nobleman's cruelty... and it was only when she told a lie that someone believed her?
"What's your name?" she asked. The guard gave it: Gaanis. "Why—why are you helping me?" she asked.
"I've got a wife, that's why," he said, hugging the shadows under the eaves of a row of houses. "She got hurt, like you, when she was young. Messed her up. Only thing that can fix it is love."
Then he ascended a set of steps, and knocked on a door, and Lassyne crossed the threshold into a brand new life.
After that, it was a simple matter of taking a bath and putting on a dress before she had the homeowner eating out of her hands. He and his wife were stunned to see the gold she'd "stolen" come tumbling out of her hair in the bathwater. "Hire me passage to Soma," she'd told them, "and then leave me two coins. You and Gaanis can keep the rest."
She left those kind people much richer than before. Lassyne hoped they had the sense not to tell anyone what had happened, or else Ossyne might find them. And find her.
But during the long, bumpy weeks of her travel by carriage, Ossyne never appeared in the road to entrap her. She arrived to the capital city of Touch with money in her pocket and a few homespun dresses to her name.
"We've arrived, miss," the coachman said, pulling the door open for her and revealing a dumpy-looking inn with a sagging front porch, the carriage parked in its shadows and chained to a post. "The cheapest boarding house in Touch, as requested."
"The Sleeping Lotus," she read, squinting at the scuffed wooden sign. She wrinkled her nose. "It doesn't look like it's ever seen a lotus."
"You said the cheapest," the coachman replied, shrugging. "Is there anything else I can do for you, miss?"
She smiled. Miss. Not milady.
"Actually, yes," she said, ruffling in her pockets for her one remaining coin. The other had been spent on meals during her passage. "Get this exchanged for me. Smaller coinage. Use some to put up your carriage and horse for the night, and to get us a very big room." She couldn't wait to be free of this tiny little carriage. It was almost as bad as the elevator compartment.
The coachman blinked at her. "Us?"
She grinned brilliantly at him. She had never felt so alive. She was here, she was free, and she had a plan. And she wanted to celebrate it with all she was worth.
And so, Lassyne leaned closer to the coachman, so that her high-cut dress managed to reveal the tiniest cavern of cleavage. "Tomorrow," she purred, "I'm going to find my future husband. So tonight is my last night of freedom. I'd like to spend it with someone that deserves it."
The man's cheeks pinkened. His name was Polimo, a low-class name, and he was older than her by a decade. In fact, that was part of what had attracted her; he was much older than most of the guards she was used to. She wanted to know ahead of time what it might be like with Loren. And gods knew she had the energy to burn.
As expected, Polimo took the coin. She remained in the carriage until, as expected, he returned with the money, handing over the exchange rate rather honestly. His hair was wet, which meant he had bathed during the hour he'd been gone, which was more than some of her guards used to do f
or her. As he led her up to the room he had purchased for them, she held his hand, a smile stealing onto her face. This was the first time she would do this because she simply wanted to. This would not be an exchange for a knife, or a book, or a bottle of wine, or any number of the things she used to trade for. In fact, that life was behind her now. As long as everything else went to plan.
When the two of them arrived, she nearly laughed; the room had two beds. Polimo wasn't terribly confident.
Once the door was closed, Lassyne turned Polimo to face her. He was not a handsome man, nor tall; perhaps a bit overweight; but he had strong arms and red-gold eyes, and he'd never made a move on her during their entire trip. She unbuttoned the top of her dress while he watched, his mouth hanging half-open. She knew that he was not married.
With the rounded tops of her breasts suitably exposed, she led him to the nearest bed and pushed him onto his back on the shabby coverlet. He looked bewildered, almost terrified as she untied his peasant clothing and pulled his pants to his knees. He had a small penis, and she smiled. He'd be easy to please. Small ones were never a challenge. Hells, she could probably finish him twice without ever having to fight back a gag.
She stripped to the waist, her heart racing as he stared at her. He didn't stare with hunger, not like the guards had. To them, she'd been an object to covet, a pristinely perfect doll of a woman that they'd never have. To Polimo, she was simply a goddess.
Lassyne took the rest of his clothes off, and then she ran her hands down his chest. He wasn't in perfect shape. He wasn't young or beautiful. He was just a commoner.
This would be a nice change.
She backed away, her hands caressing down his sides and over his hips. She dropped her face to his groin, nuzzled his penis with her nose.
"Any requests?" she asked, her lips brushing his flesh.
"Yeah," he breathed. "Forgive me when I don't last."
Lassyne laughed, and then she started to work.
Eleven
Polimo the coachman was noisy. So noisy that he set a fire inside her, a fire so hot that one of her hands abandoned the base of his shaft and wandered between her own legs. Before, Lassyne had always done this work the way she did any chore—buckle down and keep going until the job was complete. It was a simple enough task, in the long run: get a cushion beneath your knees, open your mouth, do a dance with your tongue, and try not to get tired. Her hands and her cheeks didn't get sore anymore. Her throat had never been prone to a gag reflex anyway.
"Oh—Roseless—King—" Polimo groaned, his voice tightening, his shaft giving that small twitch that warned of release. But Lassyne herself wasn't done yet, so she pulled back, laying her face on his flabby, hairless chest as she rubbed his wet penis between her hanging breasts.
His hips rose with the motion, until he was sloppily having sex with her cleavage. Men had done this to her before, but never with such desperation. He gripped her back, fingernails sinking into her flesh as he pushed at her.
She finally slipped her fingers from her clitoris and into herself. She orgasmed with her teeth on his nipple.
Polimo noticed her shudders. "Oh—oh—oh—"
Lassyne rolled him over on top of her, eyes closing as he spasmed onto her breasts. He came hot and thick, and what distance. Some of it splashed at her throat.
"There's a good boy," she heard herself say. This was always her favorite part.
He pressed a hand to her chest, smearing his own cum across her nipple. "Five gods," he breathed. "No offense, but do you do that for a living? Roseless King below. I've never had it so good."
The words made her laugh as he laid down beside her. She expected him to do something possessive then, to grip her butt or bite her neck. Instead, he kissed her on her nose, like a whisper. The small, thankful act left her speechless. No one had ever done that before.
They fell asleep, woke up, and had dinner. She made him come twice more before he left in the morning, his exhausted face now consumed by a grin. He never once asked her to spread her legs for him; such a thing was not proper for unmarried Olfactory women. But Lassyne had never been wanted so much in her life. He was gone twenty minutes, forty minutes, and then a full hour, and even then, she was still high off his need.
After Polimo had left the Lotus to go back to Olfact, Lassyne washed and scented and dressed herself as best she could in the big room, spending the very last of her money. Afterward, she settled her account with the stonefaced innkeeper, and asked him where she might find the residence of Lieutenant General Loren Stone.
The man eyed her as if he disliked the question, wrinkles forming around his old eyes. The tavern was mostly empty—the calm before the lunch rush. The only patron was a Gustatory woman sitting in the triangular shadows of one corner, sipping something that steamed as she stared out a window.
"Northwest corner of town," said the innkeeper. "Why?"
Lassyne's smile faltered. She realized she didn't have a proper answer for that.
"I've business with him," she said.
She expected the innkeep to look her up and down. It's what most Olfactory men would have done. But his frown merely deepened as he held her gaze. His eyes were deep blue—what her mother called "thinking eyes."
"Let me give you just a drip of advice, milady," the man said, leaning over a bar counter, his elbows sinking into years of drunken scribblings. "Keep business and pleasure separate, with that one. I wouldn't let my own daughter near him, if I had one. Catch my drift?"
Lassyne's mouth fell open. And then she laughed. She knew Loren. He was the man who wept on the floor. The man who gave her the perfume. Who led Haru through the halls and tried to help them stay friends.
But of course, he was also a soldier. No one wanted their daughter to marry a soldier. Violence was all those men knew.
"A laugh wasn't the reaction I expected," said the man.
She covered her mouth with a hand. "Oh, I'm sure. The northeast corner, you said?"
"Yes." The man leaned back on his heels and tilted his head to the side, toward the door to his kitchens. "Cliff! Cliff, you back there?"
A pot clanged, and a man in his forties appeared in the door frame. "Yeah, Da?"
"Can you walk this young lady to that bastard Stone's gates? Let old Darrik know she's a friend o' mine. That we'll notice if she ups and vanishes like our Zai did."
Cliff frowned. "She went on her own, da. She left a note." But he started to untie his apron anyway. "Quail's in the roaster. Don't forget. You know how he likes it."
"Yeah, I know," the innkeep sighed. "Feeling Queen hold me, I know."
Half-amused now, Lassyne stepped back from the counter and waited for the innkeeper's son—for Cliff—to attend her. What was the point, though? Was the innkeeper hoping his son might get a fat tip from her? Because she had no money left.
"Who's Zai?" she asked.
Cliff opened his mouth, but the innkeeper cut him off. "Used to be one of our singers. Voice like an angel. Then one day, that Loren bastard shows up, and next thing we know, she's sold herself off to the palace—"
"Da," Cliff warned, tossing aside his apron.
"What?" Cliff's father looked affronted. "She ain't the first woman that's gone missing since his mansion got built."
Cliff rolled his eyes and flipped up a latched section of the bartop, stepping through.
"Women have gone missing here?" Lassyne asked.
"He's exaggerating," Cliff explained. "They go to work in the palace, that's all. The lieutenant general just paves the way for them. Likes to surround himself with pretty things—"
"Pretty things like our guest here," the innkeeper groused. He raised a finger. "And don't you tell me that I'm exaggerating, boy. You weren't here when that Blood mage went to town on our women. When girls vanish, it means nothing good."
Frowning, Lassyne offered her arm to Cliff, but he was already past her. "There you go again, Da," he said. "Not every new man in town is another Stain. Now come on, then
, miss. Not a long walk." He sounded tense.
She understood then. Stain—he had been a serial killer, in Touch. But he'd been caught over two decades ago, if she remembered correctly. And then he'd been murdered, and quite gruesomely, too.
As she hurried after Cliff, however, her thoughts shifted. Lassyne realized that Cliff had just called her "miss" while the innkeeper had called her "milady." She glanced back at the older man, but he'd vanished into the kitchen. Thinking eyes, indeed.
She dodged a few bent, protruding nails as she followed Cliff onto the porch and down the steps. He was moving fast.
"Big customer today?" she asked him, thinking of the roast quail.
He grunted. "The biggest." Then he missed a step, turned. "But don't spread that around. At the Lotus, we take pride in discretion."
She glanced back at the half-caved-in building. "Naturally," she replied.
After that, he led her quietly through the midday bustle of the market hour. It was quiet compared to the raucous din of an Olfactory bazaar, where the sales pitches often grew so heated, she could hear arguments between merchants from her palace. It was also dirty in this city—at least, compared to Scent. She liked it. The cobbles were crusted over; no one rinsed them daily. Women scurried about in their shabby slanted dresses, which looked as if someone had thrown fabric at them from the side, catching everything except their face and one arm. Everyone wore boots to ward off the mud and soil. Yet the pine forest surrounding two sides of the city made the air sharp, and though she heard no music, there was an openness to the place. Couples walked side-by-side, not with the man leading. And she saw more skin tones than she'd ever seen in one place.
"Sorry," Cliff said suddenly, as he turned and led her down a street marked by red doors and ornate facades, "but this way's fastest. I hafta be gettin' back."
