by Taki Drake
Jenna murmured to Ruth, “Are you sure you really want to touch that?”
“No pain, no gain, Marine. Also, I think I’m being challenged, and I’m really not up to being submissive, in case you haven’t noticed.”
As Ruth bent over to pick up the box, she heard a low voice, “Noticed.”
Closing her hand around the burning box, Ruth was a bit surprised when instead of burning her, the flames slipped up her arm and disappeared into her skin. There was astonished murmuring from her visitors. Looking up, the first thing the Mage saw was the open-mouthed amazement of the lizard men party. Their widened eyes and gaping mouths would have telegraphed their discomfort, even if the changes in skin color had been absent.
As she straightened to her full height, the three took a step back. Reacting to some inner prompting, Ruth opened her mouth, formed a circle with her lips, and blew out a large breath of air. It took every fiber of her determination not to jump when a 4-foot tongue of flame erupted from her mouth. All three of the lizard men promptly fell on their faces.
“Well, that was not exactly what I expected to happen!”
Jenna responded, “I have no idea what you just did, and I have no idea how you did it. However, I’m reasonably certain that whatever dominance game was being played, you just won.”
“I think, you’re probably right.”
“Oh, Ruth?”
“Yes, Jenna?”
“I bet your morning breath is going to be something deadly from now on!”
Ruth just shook her head in disbelief at Jenna’s ability to interject humor into everything and turned to face the winged beings again.
The box of bone was still where it had been placed. Looking carefully at it now, Ruth could tell that there was a movement of air around it. Almost as if the box was residing in the center of a small breeze. Reaching out with a careful hand, she picked the box up. Abruptly, she stood at the center of a maelstrom, clothes whipping around madly, hair spinning and twisting and tangling all over. She could see Jenna about three feet away from her, vainly trying to get closer to protect her.
The wind was too strong, even for those in battle armor but Ruth was strangely calm. She felt no real sense of danger. Instead, felt as if the wind was caressing her. It reminded the Mage of some of her large dogs, powerful but affectionate. Operating again on instinct, the Mage took her left hand and made the gesture that she had used to tell her dogs to sit. Instantaneously, the wind gentled and settled, forming a slowly spinning column about 4-feet tall.
The column was iridescent, with different colors and pictures rotating rapidly, forming and dissolving in quick succession. Entranced, Ruth leaned over to see more closely what was displayed. Her forcibly unbound hair swung forward and touched one part of the column. A deep-seated roar of wind transmuted from loud and harsh to quiet and comforting in the space of a split second. The column seemed to be sucked into her hair, disappearing without a trace. As an almost absent-minded side effect, her tangled, windblown hair once again was put in order. Her braids were redone, her hair was combed as if she had just come from the attentions of her maid.
Straightening up, Ruth realized that somehow she felt lighter, more energetic. Meeting the gaze of the astonished leader of the winged man, Ruth was struck by a sudden fit of whimsy. Once again forming her mouth into an ‘O,' Ruth blew a breath at the winged man. What issued from her mouth was not a tongue of flame. Instead, it was as if the air had been hardened into a lance or sword. Yanked to a stop by Ruth’s ironclad will, that weapon of solidified wind stopped a short distance from the head of the leader of the group. Never taking their eyes off the suspended air lance, the entire party of winged men fell directly to the ground.
“On most people, I would say that it probably was something you ate. Unfortunately, with you, things are not that simple.”
“Thanks, Jenna. Things are confusing enough without commentary from the noncombatants.”
“Ouch! Don’t you know, Ruth, the Marines are never noncombatants?”
Ruth smiled briefly at Jenna before turning to face the last of the groups once more. She bent over and picked up the burl of wood that had been left on the ground, reaching with two hands to grab the unwieldy thing. The moment that she touched the wood, it was as if she had been granted vision into the depths of the earth. She could feel every hot spring, every river, every stream, anywhere in the surrounding land. Reaching out with her mind, she could feel the soft touch of new grass as it grew and rejoiced in the sun. Close by, the darkness of the night produced a soporific experience for the woods and gardens that comprised her home. She could feel the lands reach out arms of comfort toward its ruler and his mate. Almost in passing, she noticed a faint tracery of green tattoo-like patterns that seemed to be moving up her arms from her wrists to her shoulders.
Somehow it felt like the completion of a ritual for her to form her lips into an ‘O’ again and blow at the tree men facing her. She had no idea what would happen but somehow knew it was important. The breath that she blew toward them was redolent with the smell of flowers and newly cut hay, the happy buzz of bumblebees and the soft song of early morning birds. The impact of her breath on the treemen was far greater than it had been for the other two groups. As soon as the air from her mouth touched them, a profusion of flowers burst open along their limbs and from the greenery on their heads.
It might’ve been amusing in different circumstances, but in this case, the amazement that finally brought expression to the treemen’s faces, coupled with the speed of their deep bow of respect moved it from an amusing event to an uncomfortable acknowledgment that unknowingly she had accepted a position that she knew nothing about.
A sharp breath from Jenna was all the warning that Ruth had as the three groups of beings shifted to a sparkle of lights and dissipated. Feeling slightly dazed, Ruth looked at Jenna and voiced the first thing that came to her mind.
“What the hell just happened?”
“I think, oh wondrous Archmage, that you have just received three ambassadorial parties. Furthermore, you accepted their gifts and their proposal, all without speaking a word.”
“Shit!”
“Sucks to be you…”
Chapter 3 – Memories Intrude
Planet – Borachland Castle
A call on Jenna’s comm brought the remainder of their security team and the senior members of the household staff into the garden. Jenna gave a terse summary of what it happened while the security people combed the garden. The pressure of interruptions and the excited conversation was more than Ruth could bear. She desperately needed to escape and decided that while Jenna was busy that she could at least walk over to another portion of the garden that had a bench beside a quiet pool. Settling on the bench with relief, the Mage settled into a contemplative state. Trying to make sense of the experiences of the last hour, she paid little attention to her surroundings.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. It reminded her a bit of cinnamon and vanilla, an invigorating but strangely calming smell. All of her senses came alert. There was nothing in this garden that should have that smell. Looking in the direction that the small breeze came from, Ruth saw a series of low growing bushes that for one heart-wrenching moment reminded her of her roses at home. Just for an instant, she remembered nights in the garden of her lost home and smelling the soft, sweet perfume of her beloved flowers. The poignancy of loss struck her unawares, bringing tears to her eyes and a lump in her throat.
She closed her eyes to intensify the memory, hoping that she would still be able to see her garden at home. Even if it wasn’t home any longer. Tears leaked down the corner of her eyes and dampened her face. The vision would not form clearly. In frustration, she stretched out her hands as if to embrace the fading image of her life before it slipped through her fingers and from her mind.
Her left hand didn’t stretch out like the right one did. Instead, her fingers were buried into soft and silky strands. As her eyes snapped open an
d her vision focused through her tears, her only thought was that it felt like her dog’s coat. The comforting and gentle strands of hair that once covered the animal that had died in an unsuccessful attempt to protect her from an alien that outweighed it by over 100 times. Her dog.
What met her sight was not a dog. For one thing, it easily weighed 300 pounds. The second factor was that the only resemblance to her pet was the fact that this animal had four legs and a tail. Standing slightly higher than Ruth’s armpit at the shoulder, the quadruped looked like a strange mixture of cat and dog. Prominent upright ears framed an alert face. A slender and well-formed snout extended the face into a shape that Ruth’s mind kept translating into lion-like. Brilliant green eyes watched her carefully from the subtly striped head, held canted to one side. A broad chest backed by powerfully muscled legs and body spoke loudly of the power of the animal and its ability to move. Glancing briefly at its feet, Ruth could see the musculature for retractable claws. This was a predator and a fighter.
So was she.
There is no fear in this encounter. Ruth wasn’t sure if she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. The power and promise of mayhem and damage was only that, a potential. She realized with a startled jerk, her hand was still entangled in the fur near the shoulder of the animal. She felt the rumbling under her clutching fingers and stilled her body response to try to figure out what it was. It was possible that the animal was annoyed with her for the intimacy, but the muscle tension that she would’ve expected was absent. It took Ruth a few seconds to realize that the animal was purring, his pleasure in her touch.
Moving her left hand gently through the fur, the sound level of the animal’s contentment increased. The tension that had been coursing through Ruth’s body eased. The tactile contact brought current and past comfort together in a feeling that traversed time, trauma, and grief. For a few minutes, the Archmage was just a woman sitting in a garden and petting her companion.
Chapter 4 – Trading the Traders
Planet – Borachland Castle
Emerging from the side of the quiet pool the night before with an unknown species of an obviously dangerous predator at her side, Ruth had severely upset her security team. Jenna especially refused to stop muttering.
“Only person I know that can go to sit quietly by a pond in an enclosed garden and emerge with some weird pet. And if you think I’m cleaning that kitty litter box, you have a new thought coming!”
The rest of the staff had accepted the new member of their household with nary a ripple. The catog, the name that Ruth had assigned to the species for easy reference, accompanied her everywhere. Once Jenna realized that the animal wasn’t going to immediately attack Ruth, she started to see the advantages of its presence. Her only reservation continued to be doubt on whether the animal would actually protect Ruth in a dangerous situation. Only time would tell, and Ruth was not inclined to worry about it now.
Today was the day that they were going to start to actually make some movement toward building her fleet. The fleet that was the first baby step toward once again seeing Earth, and getting her boys home.
Ruth had hoped that Pawlik would have been back by now. This is the day that they were going to be meeting with some possible merchant collaborators and Ruth really didn’t feel comfortable with trying to set up that sort of situation alone. Knowing that she had thousands of spaceships was a burden on her, reminding her of not only the trauma of her capture but the horrendous event that had forced her to break her own mind. It also struck her as somehow wrong that those ships should be sitting idle, doing nothing useful. She had come up with the idea that since most merchant families could not afford to purchase a ship that perhaps a collaboration could be built around a merchant partnership. The seneschal, Harril, had strongly recommended that they discuss this with a few of the merchant families on Arkken. He offered to contact both the two that were on the planet and one, the Peregrine family, that had operated from a stationary orbit ship in this area for decades.
Pawlik had told Ruth that he thought it was a good idea, so she had Harril set it up for today. Ruth was hoping that some of these groups would prove to be good partners. Her experience with the planetary counsel was not favorable. Her awareness of politics had improved over the years, and all of her instincts told her that a political meltdown of some degree was in process on this planet. Having allies would give them a more stable position.
She walked into a meeting room with a full table of attendees. Accompanied by the catog, and trailed by Jenna and another security Marine, she felt ostentatious. No sign of that discomfort crossed her face as she took her place at the head of the table. As she sat down, she glanced around the table noting the relative positions of the different people in the room and the body language that defined dominance inside of their own groups. From the looks of things, this is going to be a pretty interesting meeting.
Ruth started the meeting with a simple statement. “I am the Archmage, Ruth. You’ve been asked here to determine if there is a way of forming some mercantile partnerships utilizing some of the ships that I now own. You have been recommended as possible collaborators in this effort by someone that Pawlik, and therefore I, trust. Harril, would you please be so kind as to introduce the people in this room?”
The seneschal cleared his throat noisily and nervously. “My Lady Mage, I would like to present to you the heads of three of the mercantile families that run spacefaring organizations out of Arkken.”
Harril nodded his head toward the group of four seated directly to Ruth’s right. With a brief smile at the oldest man in the group, the seneschal turned to Ruth and said, “I would like to present Master Trader Perley.”
A stocky man in conservative dress nodded his head slightly, keeping his eyes carefully on Ruth’s face. His deep brown eyes were sharp, and his face showed the signs of frequent smiles. Ruth liked him immediately. She sensed intelligence and kindness somehow in the man, noting his position to the rest of his party. His associates were drawn closely around him. One of them was a much younger man, probably in his early 20s. He glanced between the master trader and Ruth, the shade of his brown eyes and the cant of his head making it clear that he was a relative of the master trader.
To the other side of Master Trader Perley was the only other woman in the meeting. She appeared to be in her early 50s, with a worn and weathered appearance. A missing left hand and scars on a barely visible portion of her neck immediately classified her to Ruth as a combat veteran. Lurching as she stood, the woman had a military bearing and a pronounced weakness in her left leg that caused her to move unevenly.
Ruth was convinced that the woman’s injuries would translate into a somewhat severe limp when she was walking. The veteran spacer was carefully watching Ruth. Her past experience showed in the way that maintained situational awareness. Instead of being solely focused on Ruth, her encompassing glances checked out Jenna and the rest of the people in the room, her eyes never ceasing their movement.
Ruth connected the woman’s appearance with earlier conversations with some of her military personnel. This was a fighting captain who had retired to command merchant ships when her extensive injuries in combat had prevented her continuing activities within Arkken’s Space Navy. She had possibly more experience between her service record and the years since then than any other active merchant captain.
Supposedly, this captain commanded a very loyal crew and an extremely old ship. It would be interesting to see how she responded to Ruth’s ideas and proposal. Rumor had it that the captain was extremely gruff, which suited Ruth perfectly. She really didn’t have much time for empty and flowery phrases at this point, and it would be a relief not to have to do the ‘polite dance’ any more than absolutely necessary.
Ruth had heard that the woman was very protective of her ship cats, proud of her ship and devoted to her crew. She also was considered a mystery, due to an extraordinary emotional connection to a small fire-warped plaque that no one could read. The
plaque even came with her when she slept off her ship. The mage was intrigued, her curiosity raised by the mystery and the positive feeling she got from the woman.
The seneschal was continuing his introductions, so Ruth dragged her attention back to what he was saying. Harril had indicated the group to Ruth’s left while her attention was distracted, saying, “The head of the next group is Master Trader Isaac Wentworth. Master Wentworth heads up a consortium of small traders that operate from Arkken.”
Master Wentworth was also staring at Ruth’s face. He half stood up from his seat and offered a small bow, smiling cheerfully, and announcing in a booming voice, “Good day to you, my Lady Mage. We are very pleased to be here, and I look forward to having a fruitful discussion with you!”
Ruth could not help but smile in return. The man’s energy and cheerfulness were infectious. She noticed that everyone at the table also was smiling slightly, with the sole exception of the man directly to Master Wentworth’s right. This was a tall man with a severe expression. There were no laugh lines on his face, no sign of facial movement at all. His previous smile of greeting had looked forced and had not been reflected in his eyes. His cool blue gaze noted Ruth’s appearance and form, dismissing her immediately. He paid more attention to the armed guards and Jenna at Ruth’s side, deeming them of more import. The mage immediately disliked him, noticing in passing that Jenna had tensed beside her.
The man to the master trader’s left was similar in form, although younger in age than the master trader. The same pleasant expression, the same cheerful look. Ruth’s guess of kinship was born out when the younger man also offered a small standing half-bow, adding, “As my grandfather has said, Lady Mage, we are very pleased to be here and look forward to working with you.”
There was nervous shifting from the base of the table that drew everyone’s attention. Several people in that group had moved or cleared their throats, betraying their youth and lack of experience. At first glance, the people sitting in this group looked like a small mob clustered at the base of the table.
