Riposte (Purgatory Wars Book 2)

by Cobolt, Dragon

  Liv snorted. “If you're going to fuck in public, the whole point is to show the people around you how unrestrained you are.”

  “Maybe if you're a half-Spartan bitch,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. “Us Athenians know exquisite, delicate pleasures your kind never would.”

  “Our kind?” Liv asked, her voice growing acid.

  “Ladies, ladies,” Liam said, his voice still weak from his earlier exertions. He sat up, his cock resting against his belly, his skin glistening with sweat. “Didn't you say you were both Greeks? Hellenes, I mean?” He coughed. “No need to fight.”

  Liv snorted. “Oh, no, we're not fighting.”

  Meg nodded.

  “If we were, this Athenian boy lover would already be passed out,” Liv said, grinning fiercely.

  “Oh, it's on,” Meg growled.

  “Whoever gets him to cum first is the victor?” Liv asked, jerking her chin at Liam's cock. Liam opened his mouth to object, but Meg's hand closed around his cock, stroking him eagerly as she smirked.

  “Just like a Spartan to forget the teachings of Athena,” she said, sneering. “Never fucking fight on your enemy's land.”

  “Uh, Thermopylae, anyone?” Liv asked, leaning forward, her tongue slurping along the tip of Liam's cock. Her lips closed around his shaft and she pushed herself forward insistently, forcing Meg to let go or get her hand swallowed up too. Liam wasn't sure Liv could unhinge her jaw that far enough, but he wasn't exactly going to bet against it.

  “Oh, were there Spartans at Thermopylae?” Meg asked, her wings mantling as she ducked her head forward. “I didn't notice over the three thousand Athenians who were there.” She kissed her lips against Liam's balls, closing her mouth around them. Liam closed his eyes and panted as Liv drew her mouth back. A line of spittle connected her lips to his cock for a moment as her hand stroked up and down his cock. She was rough but the slickness of his cum and her spittle both made the roughness feel so very good. Meg added a tiny twist to each pump of her hand, and Liam bit his lip so hard that he almost thought it would start bleeding.

  “Leonidas!” Liv snarled.

  “Blowhard!” Meg drew her mouth back, her hand fondling Liam. “Let's not even get into the post-Purgatory history.”

  “Oh, let's!” Liv snarled, leaning closer, her nose bumping against Meg's. The two of them paused to kiss either side of Liam's cock. The sensation of those firm hands cradling his balls made him squirm, his hands grabbing onto his pillowcase. “So, was it Spartans who were tricked into the Lokiomachy and had three hundred ships burned to the waterline?”

  “I distinctly remember traitors being involved there...” Meg muttered under her breath, darting her head up and kissing the very top of Liam's cock. Liam closed his eyes and leaned his head back and listened to the string of battles and names…

  It was going to be a long night.

  Not that he was complaining.

  * * *

  Liam came down the stairs in the morning, creaking and groaning and feeling rather like a cat that had not only eaten the cream and the canary, but had also gone on a Jason Voorhees-style killing spree through the canary's summer camp. He walked into the main room of Neb's apartment, taking time to admire her collection books. In a world without indoor plumbing and an overabundance of muscle bound warriors with bronze swords ready to hack you into pieces, having this many examples of the written word was a sign of refined taste and more than sufficient funds.

  Then he noticed the scrawny looking eleven year old girl rummaging through his fannypack, left beside the front door so he could grab it in a hurry. She was the same urchin that had picked his pocket the day before, her hands moving with increasing desperation. She pulled out the last gold coin he had tucked into his fanny pack, then stood and turned – and froze.

  Liam frowned at her. A dozen tiny thoughts that had been bouncing around inside of his head since he had woken in Neb’s bedroom yesterday solidified in a single moment of insight. He stood there for a moment, his eyes widening slightly.

  The girl – what had Neb said her name was? Aithene? - bolted for the window. Liam shook himself out of his shock, grabbed the nearest thing at hand and hurled what turned out to be a heavily-bound bestiary at the girl. The spine of the book slammed into her spine and sent her pitching against the wall. She rebounded and hit the floor. Before she could get to her feet Liam was over her, grabbing her by the scruff of her neck.

  “So,” he said, “I’ve been running around since you picked my pocket - never had a chance to think twice about it. But I just realized something.” He paused, staring into her eyes. Slowly, he smiled. “You are a terrible pickpocket. What pickpocket steals from a man then stands there, gormlessly, until he starts chasing her? What street rat lets herself get chased down by people literally fresh off the boat?”

  Aithene opened her mouth to respond, but Liam shook her slightly, his voice dropping an octave.

  “One. That. Wants. To. Be. Caught.” He frowned. “The assassin paid you to get me to the roof, didn’t she?”

  Aithene nodded, her cheek pressing against the wall. Her eyes were wide with fear. Liam felt faintly sick to his stomach. Sick that he was scaring a little girl like this. Sick that he knew that it was a very good thing. But what was more, he was starting to get really mad.

  Try and kill him?

  He could grasp that, as much as he'd prefer people didn't.

  But use a kid against him? Send her back in when you fucked up?

  That was crossing a line.

  Liam realized that he was grinding his teeth. To keep his dental health intact, he continued: “So, the girl hired you. Since she can become a freaking raven at will, she must have gotten here well before the ship. Right?”

  “She flapped down out of the sky,” Aithene said. “Said that the underground said I was the best. Fishy job. Thought it'd be okay. Then she came back after. Said that she wanted me to go in. Said she'd kill me if I didn’t go in and get the iPod back. Listen, mister, I didn’t want to get involved with this again. But I can smell a poisoner from a mile off.” She nodded, earnestly, tapping the side of her nose for emphasis. “Never cross poisoners.”

  Liam sighed. He let go of the back of her neck, frowning slightly.

  “What's her name?” he asked.

  “Dunno,” Aithene said, her eyes darting away. She was a good liar. For an eleven year old. Liam crossed his arms over his chest as he heard the faint sounds of others rousing from bed. Aithene, seeing his look, sighed. “I snuck after her. She goes by Bryn.”

  “Bryn?” Liam asked.

  “Sounds Aesir.”

  Liv stood at the base of the stairs. She looked less than shocked to see Aithene.

  “Not surprising, considering that she's from Odin,” Liam said.

  “If she's from Odin, uh, why'd she pay me in Hellenic coin?” Aithene asked. She tugged a golden coin from somewhere in her rags, showing it to him. It looked similar to the Coptic coins that Liam had been given by Sobek, though the language around the edge was different, and the side showed the serene face of Athena. Liam frowned, taking the coin, twirling it around.

  He looked at Liv.

  “Say, Liv,” he said. “You ever hear of the Iran-Contra affair?”

  “It's from Earth, so, no,” Liv said.

  “How'd you know it was from Earth?” Liam asked, sounding defensive as he felt Aithene pluck the coin from his fingers.

  “Cause it sounds stupid and made up,” Liv said, her voice dry.

  Liam looked wounded.

  But it was okay.

  He had a plan.

  * * *

  The heart of Olimurias was centered on an immense building that was one part library, one part palace, and one part temple. Celtic artistry adorned the pillars and were carved into the walls, and the building itself had been hacked out of the mountain center of the island like a kind of Irish Minas Tirith. The insides, though, smelled of ink and parchment, and the faint sound of conversations in dozen
s of languages drifted down broad corridors with high ceilings. The guards that he had seen throughout the city were clustered more thickly here – two at every corridor intersection.

  Neb lead the way – her tail twitching nervously from side to side – and tried to not look at Liam. Liam had noticed this and kept wondering about it until Meg stepped to his side and whispered in his ear.

  “I wonder if her nose is as good as an actual jackal's.”

  Liam remembered he hadn't bathed since last night's exertions. Momentum had caught and pushed them forward so quickly that-

  “Sir?”

  One of the guards held up her hand, stopping the party for the moment. She pointed at Liam's scabbard.

  “You cannot bring that weapon here,” she said. “Only the guards are allowed to bear weapons.”

  Liam's hand went to the belt that looped around his hips, though every instinct demanded that he put his hand on his hilt. But he stopped himself – trying to think of what it would look like if he had done the same thing with a pistol while at the local airport. He'd have been riddled with bullets faster than you could say violation of constitutional rights. So, instead, he bowed his head to the guards.

  “Where can I store it?” he asked.

  The guards conferred. Soon, he was holding a small crystal shard – why was everything here all about the crystals? - and one of the guards was hustling his weapon away. Meg cracked her knuckles audibly, while Liv shook her head. Neb, who had been standing nervously to the side for the entire conversation, coughed.

  “So, uh, the magistrates offices are, uh, here,” she said. Her nose flared. Once again, her thin shift made what she was thinking of all too easy to see. Liam tried to not look at her nipples and think of the golden chain connecting them. Of course, trying to not think about something was basically the same as thinking about it, so it all ended badly.

  They walked before the magistrates, several robed men and women who were seated behind a large shelf. A pair of stone chalices were set to either side of the shelf, burning with the flames that seemed to be Brigid's symbol. The leader of the magistrates was speaking to a group of people who stood before them.

  “We find the arguments presented here to be convincing," said the leader of the magistrates to the group who stood before them. "Repayment will be taken from their trade profits until justice has been served. Next presentation.”

  Liam stepped forward as the magistrate looked down at her paperwork. “Ah, the infamous Liam Vanderbilt. The man we hear is from another world,” she said, sounding skeptical. Then she looked at him. “Good Goddess, you're a giant!”

  Liam beamed. “Proportional too, ma'am.”

  Meg elbowed him.

  The magistrate controlled her face, though there had been a hint of a smile there. She looked down at her papers. “You are here to argue that you and your diplomatic envoy from the city state of Faiyum Falls has been threatened, attacked and stolen from by a visitor to this city – an Aesir woman by the name of Bryn.” She looked up. “Specifically, that she has attempted to steal a magical artifact known as an Eye-Pod.”

  “That is correct, ma'am,” Liam said.

  “Bryn is known to us and has come to contest your claims,” the magistrate said, gesturing to the side of the vaunted room. Through the doorway came Bryn. Finally, under the harsh light of day, Liam got a look at the woman he was pretty sure had been behind every single awful thing that had happened on this trip from the assassins in Faiyum's port, to the basilisk attack, to the multiple thefts of his belongings.

  She was pretty.

  Because of course she was.

  Her hair was blonde and straight, hanging around her shoulders and framing a heart shaped face, with wide, almost almond shaped eyes that were the most shocking shade of flint-gray. It looked like peering into a brooding Scandinavian sky. She was dressed in a simple, form-hugging leather jerkin and her feathered cloak. In the light of day, Liam could practically see an aura of magic around it and he wondered how, exactly, she shifted it from just being a snappy feather cloak to becoming a transformation aide. She had a tiny hammer pendant around her neck.

  It looked weirdly like a crucifix.

  “Magistrate,” she said, “I am here to refute these ridiculous claims.”

  The magistrate pursed her lips, but Liam felt his heart falling as Bryn held up her hand. The iPod sat on her palm.

  “I've been using this with your scribes – several of them can corroborate that I've been seen with it in my possession since I arrived,” she said, smoothly. Liam's hand went to his fanny pack, opening the zipper. The inside was empty. He looked up, his face shocked.

  “She's lying!” he spluttered.

  “Bring them in the scribes then,” the magistrate said.

  Bryn had it sown up tight. Five different scribes of ascending levels of seniority within the ranking structure of the Library of Olimurias came out to testify that they had been trying to ascertain the secrets of the mysterious artifact. Which, of course, had been recovered from an Ancients' tomb – not stolen from Liam's belongings. He tried to refute them but in the end, the scribes carried more weight than the word of several foreigners and the magistrate had thrown the case out with a stern warning to not waste the court’s time with frivolous claims. Liam bowed to the magistrates, his face a mask, then hastily grabbed Meg's arm. She snarled slightly, her eyes flashing dangerously as she glared at the smug looking Bryn. For a moment, Liam felt his mask starting to slip and he hastily made sure that he was looking as if he was trying his best to control his fury and confusion. If Bryn noticed he was having a blast watching his plan come together, then she didn't show any sign.

  “It's fine, honey,” Liam whispered. “We can't deck her here.”

  “Remember how you said it was okay if I wounded her, though?”

  Liam nodded.

  “I'm upgrading that to maiming her, got it?” Meg snarled.

  Liam managed to not smile at Meg’s acting. She was good. “Come on.”

  “Who could have done it?” Liv asked, outside the magistrates' offices.

  “Where's Neb?” Tethis interjected.

  “Obviously, it was that fucking pickpocket!” Meg said at full volume, playing her role as loud-mouthed warrior woman to the hilt. “My only question is how did that Lokifucking piece of shit parade around a fake iPod for a week? She's good, Liam, we have to give her that. Maybe an illusion. Maybe a painted mockup. You can get glass easy, I think, and if people don't look at it closely...”

  Liam shook his head. “Or, Meg, she could have just bribed the witnesses.”

  Meg blinked, opened her mouth, then closed it. “Right. Occam’s Razor.”

  Liam was still slightly sad he hadn’t managed to convince her that it was Vanderbilt’s Razor. “Listen, Meg, we just need to find proof that-” he started.

  “Where's Neb!?” Tethis spoke up, a bit too hastily, her back ram-rod stiff, her eyes wide.

  Liam frowned and looked around himself. “I...” he paused, then held his hand out, getting the attention of one of the guards. “Sir, did you see a Priestess of Anubis pass by here some time ago?”

  The guard nodded. “She said she needed to use a private scribe chamber. They're that way.” He pointed.

  Liam sighed, looking at his friends. “Wait here,” he said. “Try and keep an eye on Bryn – she might slip up.” He slapped Meg's butt with one hand. “I'll find Neb and make sure nothing... well, nothing bad's happened.”

  Meg shook her head. “Have fun,” she said, sounding murderous.

  Liam started through the cavernous interior of the library, admiring how big the place was. The stacks themselves were tiered and surrounded by walkways, so that people could walk up to the book or tome they wanted. Scroll niches covered every free space. Thousands of years of history were contained here: plays, historical documents, poems. He wondered what had been carried here from Earth that hadn't survived two millennium of war and strife…

  Then
he came to the private scriptorium. A female scribe handled the front desk – it seemed it was a few copper pieces to use the writing areas, and you had to pay for your own ink. Liam smiled – his inner capitalist approved. “Did you see a Priestess of Anubis? She's a friend of mine.”

  “Oh, she took the room at the back,” the woman said, nodding. “Seemed to be in a hurry, but the muse strikes when the muse strikes.” She shrugged. “I know how it is. I've been wrestling with my opus for-”

  “Uh, tell me later, okay?” Liam asked, cutting her off, smiling. “Sorry, but we are in a hurry.”

  The girl blushed. “Oh, s-sorry. But, it's just, a story about a history of the world if we hadn't been banished from Earth and how that might have shaped history in a new way-”

  Liam held up his hands.

  The girl turned an even brighter red. “Sorry!”

  Liam stepped past her front desk and into the narrow corridor that wound through the private scriptorium. He shook his head, muttering under his breath. “What could have gotten into Neb?” He shook his head again as he came to the rear door, trying the knob and finding it was unlocked.

  “Neb, are-”

  “Oh, Liam!”

  He stopped.

  Neb gaped at him.

  He gaped at Neb.

  The sleek, black-furred jackalgirl was sitting on a stool, her shift tossed aside, leaving her completely naked. Her sex lips – a pair of dark black folds tucked between her smoothly furred thighs – were moist and gleaming against her paw-like fingers, spreading slightly as her hand pressed against her belly. Her other hand had cupped her breast, finger taking hold of one of her golden nipple rings, teasing it gently. Her glasses were askew, knocked slightly off where they should have been by the eagerness of her fingering.

  But what was more…

  She had been moaning his name as he spoke.

  Neb snapped her mouth shut.

  “So, uh,” Liam said, blinking a bit more, “S-Should I go?”

  “Oh Gods!” Neb covered her face with one paw, grabbing at her shift with the other. “I am so sorry, I just, you smell so... I was... I'm so fucking horny. I haven't been laid in a year, and you're so beautiful and handsome and kind and maybe I spied on you while you were with your lover and your slave-”