‘Have I been very good?’
‘Oh my dear Faran,’ Ceri replied, ‘you’re never that good.’
~~~
There was, indeed, no noise from the other rooms, but they were at the front of the building with a window overlooking Main Street, and the noise coming up from below kept going well into the night.
‘Don’t these guys have jobs to go to in the morning?’ Ceri asked. She was lying on the bed with Lily beside her. Washing after several days on the road had definitely helped her mood.
Faran was sat on a stool beside the window, looking out at what was going on below. ‘They work in shifts. There are always some of them awake and wanting recreation.’
‘Huh, yeah, obvious really. I need to get some sleep, however.’
‘If we blow out the candles you’ll sleep,’ Lily said.
‘I guess. Faran, would you take care of that? Then come and lie down. You can’t sit at the window all night and it’s a big enough bed.’
The incubus turned his head to look across at the bed. ‘You’d trust me in bed with you? I may be insulted.’
‘We both know you won’t do anything serious. Our game is suspended until we get back to Earth.’
Faran smiled, pulled the curtain across the window, and walked across to the pair of candles on the washstand. The room fell into darkness. Ceri watched the shadow which was Faran walk around the bed and lie down beside her. It actually felt rather good having him there; she felt snug, as though she was lying between Lily and Michael.
‘You’ll summon me back then?’ Faran asked in a soft voice after a minute or two of silence.
‘Yes,’ Ceri replied. ‘Well, it’s really up to Lily, but I have no objection. Lil?’
‘We have to go to Otherworld to get Twill,’ Lily replied. She turned onto her side to lay her head on Ceri’s shoulder. ‘If we summon you back before then, you’ll just end up here again.’
‘Ah,’ Faran said. Ceri heard the tone in his voice which suggested he was hearing an excuse.
‘Once we’ve done that, though, I’d like you back with us.’
‘Thank you, daughter.’
‘You’re my Dad, of course I want you back. Now shut up and go to sleep.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Day 35
Shulti’s General Store took “general” and ran with it. It was a large place full of shelves packed with everything you could ever want in a mining town. From Ceri’s point of view, the fact that it stocked ropes, winter clothing, dried rations, and heavy boots was quite sufficient. Ceri was determined that Lily was not marching into the mountains wearing only a pair of sandals. They had left Faran at the brothel; he had not fed in a few days and Jubilia was quite happy for him to take on a client or two.
The store’s owner, who was presumably Shulti, looked rather like Yeland, the smith back in Nedarim, just older and more tired. He shuffled out of the back of the shop, gave a little bow, and said, ‘How may I be of assistance, Lady?’
Ceri smiled at him. ‘I need a few things… Provisions for a ten day trip, two lengths of rope, as long as you can manage, a large bag of salt, a heavy coat, and my slave needs suitable clothing. I’m not stopping for her if she gets frostbite or something.’
‘A wise precaution, Lady,’ Shulti said, seeing a big pay out heading his was. ‘I’ll get your supplies. The clothing is over in the corner there, please feel free to try anything on.’
The clothing, at least the female clothing, seemed to follow something of a Victorian model of travel gear. There were some heavy skirts in some sort of woollen fabric. Whatever form of animal the wool had come from, the resulting material was a lot tougher than the wool Ceri was used to. She found a skirt which fitted Lily quite well, and an underskirt in a silky material to go beneath. She was hunting for suitable upper body clothing when she heard noise from the front of the shop.
‘Tannal wants his money, ugly runt!’ The voice was rough, rumbling, and there was a hint of humour in the background of angry intimidation. Its owner had to be big, and a bully.
‘I’ll have it tomorrow.’ Shulti’s voice; he sounded scared, which made sense. ‘I have a Lady here who’s…’
‘Tomorrow not good enough. Tannal say if you don’t got money now, I break hands.’
Ceri glanced at Lily, grabbed her staff, and walked out through the shelves. ‘Shulti? Have you any shirts in that wool…?’ She stopped as though she had not known the thug was in the building. ‘Oh,’ she said, apparently undisturbed by the fact that the small shopkeeper was currently hung by his apron from the thug’s fist.
She did not recognise the species of the thing, but it seemed to be a relative of the Dakags. It had a vaguely draconic head with the same sort of head ridges around the back of the skull, and the same three-clawed hands and feet. However, it was bigger by a few feet than any Dakag Ceri had seen, and it had a more muscular frame. It had a similar, lousy attitude though.
‘Gashikagig go away. None of your business.’ There was a sneer to the creature’s thin lips as it spoke.
Ceri smiled back. ‘But it is my business. I need Shulti’s help filling my order. If you have business with him, it can wait until he’s finished serving me.’
‘You shut mouth before it get…’
‘Oh, go away,’ Ceri said, stamping the heel of her staff into the floorboards. Shulti suddenly found himself falling as his tormentor vanished. The shopkeeper winced and then turned a panicked look at Ceri. He was opening his mouth to say something when she held her hand up, indicating that he should wait. The end of her staff was starting to glow brightly.
A second later Blue Guy burst in through the door. He roared and started toward Ceri. She raised her staff and let the ball of raw thaumic energy loose. It hit right under her target’s chin and his eyes widened briefly before he collapsed onto the floorboards at her feet. There were a few twitches and a sound like a cough, and then he lay still.
Ceri turned to Shulti, still sitting on the floor. ‘If you could hurry that order along, please?’
The little shopkeeper practically bounced to his feet. ‘Of course, Lady. I’ll have it ready for you immediately.’
Ceri nodded and smiled, and turned on her heel to walk back to where Lily was trying on a woollen jacket over a thin, silk shift. ‘That looks as though it could be good,’ she said.
Lily looked around. She deliberately said nothing about what had just happened. ‘I am not wearing this gear until we get higher into the hills though. I’ll boil.’
‘That good, huh?’ Looking around, Ceri spotted a coat made of a similar woollen material with a silk liner. That and a pair of boots would do her well. ‘And it’s, “I’ll boil, Mistress,” if you don’t mind.’
‘Sorry, Mistress,’ Lily replied, and then added in a purr, ‘Mistress should spank her unworthy pet for impertinence.’
‘In your dreams,’ Ceri responded smoothly as she took the coat down to try on.
~~~
‘Zeka, the Therim you killed, was one of Tannal’s enforcers,’ Jubilia said. Ceri made a note that the big, blue things were Therim, and not as tough as Brebbam had suggested. ‘Tannal is reportedly not pleased.’
They were sitting in Jubilia’s room at the back of the brothel, talking while they had a light meal of cheeses, meat, and some sort of berry. There was also a very passable bottle of wine doing the rounds. Even if Lily and Faran were technically slaves, here they got to eat and drink with their superiors. It seemed to be a Lorril thing.
‘Well, Zeka threatened me, and he was going to be a terrible inconvenience if he broke Shulti’s hands,’ Ceri replied with a smile.
Jubilia smiled back. She had a seductive, rather languid, smile which went with the rest of her chosen form. Ceri had spent a small amount of time considering whether her shape had been chosen for Ceri’s benefit, but she seemed to adopt it most of the time, so maybe not. ‘It may be more of an issue than you think. Tannal is a Devos, quite skilled in magic. He runs
a protection racket in town. Even some of the mines pay him to avoid mishaps.’
‘Mishaps… right. Well, Lilith and I will be leaving tomorrow morning. Faran can vanish here for a while. If that’s not going to cause trouble for you?’
The brothel keeper aimed a smile at Faran. ‘Faran will be no trouble. I’ve seen him with the customers, he’s very good and they came away satisfied. The problem will be Tannal. Tomorrow may not be fast enough. He generally prefers to make his lessons swift and violent.’
Ceri frowned. ‘If we’re going to put your house in danger we’ll…’
‘Leave? I’ll have none of that. I’d like to be there to see what you do to his thugs.’ Julilia’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. ‘You are far from a normal demon Lady. You claim you helped Shulti to avoid inconvenience, but he has assistants. You would leave to avoid bringing trouble upon lowly Lorril. Lords and Ladies are not noted for that much care.’
‘Mistress is the best, most unique, and kindest mistress,’ Lily said, ‘even if she did decline to spank me this morning.’
Jubilia gave a throaty chuckle. Ceri said, ‘I do put up with more than some might accept. If this Tannal is going to do something tonight, I’ll spend the evening in your parlour. There’s no sense in making him look for me.’
‘As you wish. Just be prepared for a few propositions.’
Ceri smiled. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time, believe me.’
~~~
The last of the light had drained from the sky when something actually happened. Ceri had positioned herself on a chaise at the back of the room with Lily curled up between her legs and the back of the seat like a cat. Ceri had resisted Lily’s urging to put on the outfit she had worn to get into Grey Castle, but there had still been three attempts to get her into one of the back rooms. Apparently a non-Lorril in the brothel was a novelty. Ceri was almost happy when the three thugs pushed in through the doors.
The leader was a Dakag and he was backed up by two Therim. With the two species side-by-side, the differences and similarities were more obvious. Ceri found herself considering the possibilities of a distant shared ancestor, but they had clearly diverged at some point. Dakag were known as the thugs of the summoned demons; big, brutish, ugly and stupid. That one of them was leading two Therim spoke volumes about their distant cousins. There was, she noted, no smell of sulphur about the Therim she had met earlier, but she could smell it now, so that had to be a Dakag trait.
‘Where is stupid gashikagig who murdered Zeka?’ the Dakag rumbled. At least his grammar was better than Zeka’s.
‘What the Hell does “gashikagig” mean anyway?’ Ceri muttered as she swung her legs off the chaise.
‘Roughly?’ Lily replied. ‘He’s calling you a cunt.’
‘Oh, that makes me feel better about this then.’ She got to her feet and raised her voice. ‘I’d imagine you mean me. I’ll give you the one chance to leave now under your own power.’
The Dakag sneered. ‘We’re going to rip your limbs off one by one, and then we’re going to take you back to Tannal so he can use your corpse to get off.’ Just keep talking, arsehole. ‘And we’ll pass your slave around until she’s used up, and then we’ll feed you the pieces before we rip your head…’
‘Oh shut up,’ Ceri said, and he did before he keeled over asleep on the floor along with his two friends. ‘If you’re going to hurt someone, hurt them, shit-for-brains.’ She walked around the furniture and sighed. She knew what she had to do, it was just not something she really wanted to do. Her gaze rose to Jubilia. ‘Do you want to have them carried outside before I kill them?’
‘I think that would be neater,’ Jubilia replied.
‘Right. And then you can tell me where to find Tannal. He’ll just try again if I don’t do anything about him.’
‘I’ll take you to the warehouse he uses myself.’ The Madam really looked far too pleased.
~~~
The banging on the barn door was loud, very loud, and rather ponderous. Tannal looked up from the ledger he was going over and frowned. ‘Idik, go see who that is.’
Idik was a Devim. Small and not too bright in general, Idik was something of a simpleton, even for a Devim. He made Dakags look smart. He was, however, a useful servant and having him do the chores meant neither Tannal nor any of his lieutenants had to do them. The little demon bounced up onto his hooves and darted across the warehouse to the door. A second later, the door was opened, and then closed, and Idik ran back. ‘Osdek is back, Boss.’
‘Has he got that woman with him?’
‘No, Boss.’
Tannal sighed; you just could not get the staff. Standing up, he walked out into the main room of the building and came to a grinding halt. Osdek was standing in the middle of the room with Polba and Forn, the two Therim who had gone out with him. All three were standing there, unnaturally still, and each one had a large hole drilled through the middle of their foreheads.
‘What the…?’ Tannal got out just before Osdek began lumbering toward him, arms rising to reach for his throat. The only sound the Dakag made was a low groan, and there was no expression in his dead eyes, but his intent was quite obvious. Tannal raised his hand and fired off a bolt of flame which struck Osdek in the chest. There was the smell of burning flesh, but the zombie barely slowed his progress.
Outside the warehouse, Lily said, ‘I didn’t even know you could raise zombies,’ in a low voice.
‘I’m a fucking sorceress,’ Ceri replied. ‘I can do anything if I want… or I have to.’ She raised her hand and threw out a ball of orange light to land beside the door. It exploded into ten feet of flame which swallowed the door and revealed, once the smoke cleared, the chaos inside. Osdek was visible in the back of the room, his clawed hands wrapped around Tannal’s neck. Tannal was kicking and clawing at the zombie to very little effect. The rest of his people were currently trying to deal with two zombie Therim, but when they saw the door explode they seemed to decide that running away was the better part of cowardice.
Unfortunately for them, Ceri had had time to charge up the next fireball. The small, orange projectile flew in through the gap, struck the ground near the centre of the room… And then the building went away. Flame roared out through the hole where the door had been and the woodwork collapsed as it was superheated by the explosion. Soon all that was left was a pile of burning timbers.
‘I don’t think Tannal will be bothering anyone again,’ Ceri said.
‘Consider your bill at my place paid,’ Jubilia said. ‘You just saved me more than it would have cost anyway.’ There was a slight pause and then, ‘That was awesome.’ There was a slight catch in her voice.
Awesome, derived from awe, and used correctly. ‘It wasn’t anything special,’ Ceri said. ‘Let’s get back, I feel the need to get drunk.’
~~~
Ceri fell into bed giggling. ‘Where’sh Faran gone?’
Lily also giggled, but primarily at Ceri. ‘He found a miner to entertain. Strangely, he looked just like you when he went off with him.’
‘But he should be here,’ Ceri protested.
‘He said that if he went to bed here tonight, you’d end up having sex. Tomorrow you’d regret it, and there was no way he was going to win that way.’
‘Very fair of him, but I could just do with some…’
Lily put a finger to her lips as a shimmer ran over her body. Ceri let out a small squeak and then sighed deeply. ‘You’ll just have to make do with tail instead.’
Ceri’s face went still. ‘Lil, I just killed a load of people. That’s not what I do. Not like that anyway.’
‘They were bad people, love. They were going to kill you, messily.’
‘Well… there is that.’
‘We’re not on Earth anymore. We have to play by the rules here.’
‘But then we’re no better than arseholes like Tannal.’
Lily looked down at Ceri, and then bent forward to place a soft kiss on her lips. And then her t
ail started moving and Ceri’s eyes crossed. ‘You are so far from him that you couldn’t see him with a telescope, love. Now I want to see writhing and hear a lot of moaning.’
Ceri moaned. ‘Yes, Mistress.’
Day 36
Faran went to the edge of town with them, carrying the pack which Ceri was going to take once they were out of sight of the town.
‘The legend of Lady Ayasha continues to grow,’ he said as they walked down a hill away from the buildings. ‘I expect that you’ll have destroyed a hundred ruthless criminals in one blow by the time this one gets back to civilisation.’
Ceri grunted. ‘Molech is going to hear about it and come looking. You be careful.’
‘He won’t come to Dorilla,’ Faran replied, sounding quite sure of himself. ‘If he knows you’ve been here, he’ll know where you’re going.’
‘You think he could catch up to us?’
‘Devos can fly, Ceri,’ Lily pointed out.
‘Good point. Okay, we’ll be careful.’
They reached the bottom of one of Khedra’s pimples and stopped. Faran swung the pack from his back and handed it out to Ceri. ‘You head south from here,’ he said, ‘until you hit the mountains. Then you’ll need to track east a couple of miles to find the pass. And then just follow that until you find Mount Khed.’
Ceri took the pack, but laid it down at her feet. ‘We’ll call you back as soon as we can,’ she said, and then she stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. Stepping back, she picked the pack up and swung it onto her shoulders. Without saying goodbye, she started off toward the mountains.
Lily stepped up to her father and kissed him on the other cheek. She looked like she was going to say something and then shook her head before turning to follow Ceri. Faran watched them go until they vanished over the next hill.
Interlude: Michael
Battersea Park, London, January 19th, 2013
‘The power station is fully manned again,’ Michael said. ‘The humans have resumed testing. I spoke to Cheryl yesterday and she tells me things there are back on track.’ He was giving his report to Alexandra and the Elders of the Battersea pack since, for the last several weeks, he had been Acting Captain. ‘As requested, I did some initial survey work for the Ministry contract. I don’t believe there’ll be any problem with it. We can include the grounds of the station in our regular perimeter patrols. It’ll make the runs a little longer, but I doubt any of the Guards will worry over that.’
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