“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 h
is 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.
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