by Silas Post
“As you like,” Merla said. “I’ll take my tea to my bed and leave you all to rest until breakfast time.”
Merla disappeared into a side room while Rikki finished her tea, then Jarah’s. She had a mischievous gleam in her eye, so I reached under the table and snuck the liquor bottle away from her.
“Tomorrow is another day,” I said.
“And tonight is another night,” she replied. She stood and placed her hands on my hips from behind, guiding me toward our temporary room.
The bed beckoned my weary body. I approached it and Rikki pushed the middle of my back, a persistent nudge that I gave into voluntarily, flopping face-first onto the mattress before me. She lifted my legs and laid me flat.
“How’s this?” she asked, straddling my body and digging her fingers into my back. I sank into the mattress, its plush comfort a welcome change from a day of hard travel and brutal emotion.
“I could fall asleep just like this,” I said, my words muffled by the pillow that enveloped half my face.
Rikki huffed. “Well we can’t all be Sadine Lavar.”
“It’s a compliment,” I said. “You don’t need tentacle limbs with pliant strength. Your touch relaxes me, loosening my rigid muscles and soothing my aching body.” I rolled over beneath her, my hips trapped in the tight space beneath her spread legs. She loomed over me, her body lit by a faint glint of moonlight that filtered in through the window pane.
“Really?” she asked. Her breath carried the sweet scent of tea stiffened with bold spirits. Her lips were still tense in disbelief, but her fingers began to unlace my vest and pull the leather halves away from my center.
“Really,” I said. “Come here.” I pulled her toward me, her long reddish-brown hair sweeping over my face as my head lifted from the pillow and my lips touched hers. We kissed in the dark, our hands tracing gently over each other’s bodies.
Rikki’s hips were wide, and my hands swept along her curves, rounding down her firm, plump haunches until I reached the bottom of her shorts. Her fur was short there, a smooth soft suede that grew gradually longer the further down her thighs I traveled.
She lowered herself toward my body until her breasts pressed against my chest. Her breathing came heavily now, but we were only guests here.
“This is a child’s bed,” I whispered.
“Let’s make it a man’s bed,” she replied.
“It’s not just that. I worry for Jarah.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “I wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t. She needs us as deeply as Redelia. I’m glad we won’t flee this challenge with our tails between our legs.” She slapped her own tail against the mattress by my side in playful emphasis.
“We should sleep,” I said. “We owe it to Jarah to meet the sunlight with full strength.”
“You sleep,” she said. “I’m too distracted.” She slid down my front, kissing my chest on her way toward my waist.
“Rikki,” I said. She popped the top button of my fly and kissed below my navel, trailing her nose further down along my skin as she unfastened my pants the full way.
Her hand reached below the base of my shaft, cradling my testicles as my length grew rigid beside her face.
“Rikki,” I said. “Should we not refrain, at least this once?”
“Shh,” she replied. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
I relaxed against the mattress after that, sure of only one thing: I would not be sleeping anytime soon.
17
I woke to an empty bed and the enticing aroma of fresh baked pastries. I reached for my boots when something beneath the bed caught my eye. It was a small wooden carving of a creature the likes of which I had never seen. The head and torso were much like a woman, though the arms ended in oversized paws with leonine claws, as did the feet. A pair of angel wings grew from her back. Her face was austere and young, with a faint coat of pink painted onto her lips and fading rings of emerald green set within her eyes.
I tied my boot laces and carried the small toy into the kitchen.
Rikki sat at the table, a sticky bun in each hand and a wide grin stretched across her face. Jarah pulled the outer ring of dough from a single pastry and placed it in her mouth while I sat down to steal a breakfast for myself.
“What’s that?” Rikki asked, her cheeks round from a mouthful of food.
“A sphinx,” Jarah answered. “The forestkind fabled to spring from Okkor’s Isle, but only a very long time ago.”
“This is an admirable representation,” I said. The wooden toy had joints carved and pinned in delicate fashion, allowing the sphinx to bend and pose. Her shoulders and hips swiveled outward, allowing her to stand upright or on all fours. She was a fine little puppet with no strings.
“They were known as guardians,” Jarah said. “That toy likely doubles as a talisman in the hands of the superstitious, meant to keep a child safe from harm. Some good it did Ketson.”
“He might be the safest of all,” Rikki said. “Missing from the village at just the right time. Perhaps the gods did bless that sphinx to spare him from a life of dread. A world with gods cannot discount the possibility of divine intervention.”
“There are infernals in this world as well,” I said. “Let us not underestimate their cruelty.”
My thumb traced the outline of the carved forestkind.
“Do leave something for Merla,” I said, catching Rikki in the act of taking two more sticky buns from the platter in the table’s middle. “Where is she this morning? Already scouting for Ketson’s return?”
“Left for a bucket of milk,” Rikki said, her speech muffled by a mouthful of sugared dough. “Apparently there are cows not far.”
“I would gladly have run that errand,” I said. “A stiff walk is good for a morning stretch, and I hate to think I haven’t earned my sleep. How long ago did she leave?”
Jarah shrugged. “I only sat down a minute before you. I meant to keep watch all night, but I fell asleep in the old rocking chair the first moment I let my eye close.”
“Twenty minutes ago, I think,” Rikki said. “Long enough that I finished the first platter of buns when they were still warm and fluffy.”
“There was a second platter?” Jarah asked. Rikki shrugged.
“Wait,” I said. “Twenty minutes is a long time. How far are those cows meant to be?”
A thud sounded outside the house followed by a woman’s panting voice. Footfalls against the dirt road suggested a dozen or more people approaching.
Rikki opened her mouth to speak, but I held a finger to my lips. We sat in stunned silence, listening for any proof that our momentary safety might endure.
“Victor Coin!” came a booming voice from just outside the door. “Come out with surrender in your hands and nothing else!” The footsteps that we had first heard continued to shuffle, getting louder and spreading around us in every direction. Outside, a lone woman cried.
“Prince Wick,” I said. “It was foolish to think the brilliant spectacle of Redelia’s failed temple wouldn’t draw Wick’s men back up the mountain.”
“We’ll fight him,” Rikki said. “I’ll spear his gut with my horns, and any others that come for us.”
“It’s over,” I said. “Redelia wanted us home, and I refused. My escort to Jarah’s stolen kin is Wick’s arrest, and my task fails here.”
“No,” Jarah said. “I will escort you. I know the island well. If we slip out the rear—”
“We have you surrounded, foul murder,” Wick’s voice boomed again.
“This is a danger inescapable,” I said. “I will go now, and alone. Otherwise they’ll break in here and find you both as well.”
“Let them,” Rikki said.
“I must fight them, Victor,” Jarah said. “My soul will mock my heart for all of time if I let this evil go unchallenged. They have my family.”
“And they have me as well, but they don’t have us all,” I said. “I need you two to protect each other. And Redel
ia. Keep her soul safe. I’ll return with a cyclopean army, you’ll see.”
“Don’t go,” Rikki said, but I was already on my feet, a half-eaten sticky bun left behind on my plate. I tucked Redelia’s pendant into my vest to hide its gleam, walked toward the front door, and opened it just wide enough to step outside.
“My name is Victor Coin,” I said. “And I surrender.”
I kept my eyes from landing on Merla, though my heart tugged at the sight of her. Her face was bleeding, the red diluted in narrow trails where tears washed away the blood. She knelt on the ground, her arms and legs covered in dust and mud, while her ankles and wrists were bound tight.
Two dozen of Greenloft’s guards formed a semicircle around us, leaving only the option to run back inside the house. With Jarah and Rikki crouched behind the kitchen table, that was no option at all.
Wick narrowed his eyes at me, but whether he saw me as Victor Coin or Humbert Carver mattered little to me and, apparently, to him. After only a brief pause to scan my face, he motioned for his guards to launch into their roles.
There was not a second to dodge or sprint away. Two guards, one on each side, raised heavy black manacles and threw them hard. Those infernal shackles flew fast, one high and one low. They changed their arc through the air to home toward my limbs with perfect precision. They clasped around my wrists and my ankles with a searing hot pain that sparked a deep near-purple sheen in the shackles. They were heavy, like lead, but I suspected they were energy condensed by the fervent prayer of a vile infernal the same way Redelia’s holy light coalesced into the weighty sunstone that harnessed the morning light at her behest.
My face and chest flattened against the ground, my body contorting against my will as those cuffs tightened around my joints. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out in burning anguish, for Rikki and Jarah’s sake if nothing else. The iron taste of blood filled my mouth as my teeth pressed harder.
“How sweet the day,” Wick said. “One of our wanted foes brought to heel.” He stepped toward me, and bent down as I brought my legs under me and forced them into a kneeling position. My arms were restrained behind my back, but my face tilted toward him.
“Don’t worry,” he said, leaning his face near mine. “It’s not a long journey. You’ll have your royal execution nice and quick as soon as we get back to castle Greenloft.”
I spat, forcing a wad of bloodied saliva flat against Wick’s face. He backhanded me, cutting my chin with his gauntlet.
“Mouth manacles,” Wick said over his shoulder, wiping his cheek with the tips of his fingers, the only area his armored glove left bare. “Tell him that’s what we need next. Hot metal gags.”
“You have me,” I said. “Let go of the woman. You have no further need of her now.”
“I’ll judge what use she is,” Wick replied. “We need muscle to build what’s next, and ways to boost the men’s moral while we’re off to war. We’ll see which role she plays best.”
The prince whistled then and turned toward the path that led away from the village and down the mountain toward the shore, with his guards closing in behind. A handful of guards focused on myself and Merla, kicking and prodding until we stood and marched between them. I stayed by my hostess’s side, concerned that she might not hold up on the long trek down.
Her face was gaunt, but her bleeding seemed to have stopped shortly ago. Her brow furrowed deeply.
“Did you—” I started. Find him?, I would have finished. Merla seemed to sense that, shaking her head sternly as I spoke. The guards listened too keenly to risk alerting them to the presence of another life on this island. Instead, I changed course. “Did you betray me?”
“They beat me,” she said. “They showed me your picture, on a poster. They told me lies about who you really were, then they laughed and kicked me when I gave you up. I’m such a fool.”
“No,” I said. “You’re not a fool, to give them one man. That’s all it was, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” she said. “That’s what I gave them.”
Good, I thought. They didn’t know about Jarah and Rikki, let alone Redelia.
“Have faith,” I said. “There is a way through this.”
“I know that,” she said. “You serve his purpose now. Okkor brought you here because he is wise and he is good. You will set my people free.
“Plus,” she continued, leaning close to speak in a breathy whisper, “you must get me home before Ketson shows up. I’ll have to wash those sheets twice before he can sleep in that bed again.”
18
This side of the island sloped steeply downward, which made for a faster trek than the gradual climb I had endured the day before. I spent much of that time staring at the smooth black surface of the shackles that bound me. There were no seams or screws; no imperfections of any discernable type. There wasn’t even a lock that might be picked.
At the same time, I had to be careful not to peer into the featureless black surface of that infernal material too hard. While the burning sensation of its touch against my bare skin was a constant drain, allowing its emanations to invade my sight permitted dark thoughts to seep into my psyche.
Images of Jarah locked in the castle’s guillotine flooded my mind, sharp and prescient. Each time those visions overtook me, they were clearer and more gruesome. At first, I watched her struggle as I stood on the pageant stage, just as in my memories. Gradually, the nightmarish scene warped, sending the blade toward her exposed neck with hope of protecting her evaporating quickly.
I searched and searched for any way to dissemble the shackles that seared my skin, but all I found was the sickening image of Jarah’s beheading — a crisis once averted, but the terror of that close call still haunted me today. Somehow the shackles new this, drew my deepest terror to the surface and twisted it like a knife in my gut. It drew pain from my fear, pain which sent a mocking glint of violet light across the manacles’ black surface. The infernal was winning, drawing power from the torment it inflicted on my mind.
I forced myself to recall the truth. Rikki had protected Jarah. Rikki’s impenetrable horns blocked that blade and no blood was shed. Images of Rikki appeared then, strapped to the butcher’s table. In these visions, I failed to save her. The blades tore into her flesh and stripped her hooves from her shins, leaving her to bleed on a metal gurney.
I gave up my fruitless effort to discern a weak spot in the slavers’ cuffs as my feet sank into soft sand. Greenloft’s legion marched us across the beach that ringed Okkor’s Isle, though this spot was on the opposite side of the island from where we were tossed ashore.
Six boats lined the coast here, massive cargo ships that flew the king’s green flag. Their sterns extended toward the shore and their noses aimed at the open sea, ready to launch into motion with their cargo captives at Wick’s earliest command. His guards stood on their ships’ bows, armed with swords and full quivers.
This was not a beach of simple dunes like I had woken on the day before. This was a harbor built of sand, with docks carved from the same fine powder that spread beside my boot as I walked.
Every ship that lined the harbor had a pier of sand that led to its side, with sand columns supporting them beneath. Planks of sand built walkways. Ridges of sand formed retaining walls. Every piece of architecture was a million fine particles, held together by Araine’s passing whim.
So too were the sand sirens. They emerged before us, swirling upward from the powdery nothingness at our feet until moments later they were three beautiful maidens, draped in loose-fitting garments imagined from sand.
“Welcome back, Prince Wick,” they said, harmonizing their three voices in perfect time. “Our mistress requires a word.”
“I don’t give a feck what she requires,” Wick replied.
“She built you this harbor,” they replied. “A word maintains it.”
“Are you threatening me?” he asked. The sirens walked alongside us as Wick led our growing group toward one of the cargo shi
ps docked at the shore. Planks of compacted sand led to the boat’s side.
“Our mistress wants to know when you will fulfill your end,” they said. “The mountain’s peak beckons.”
“It doesn’t beckon me,” he said.
“She cannot sustain herself on the tears of a single child,” they said. “There is power in the island’s heart she cannot yet reach. He promised her!”
“Whatever he promised isn’t my problem.”
“What child?” Merla asked. I ducked and turned my face toward the sand, hoping her question wouldn’t draw the sirens’ attention to me.
One of those sand women looped her arm inside Merla’s, fine particles flaking away from her body and blowing behind her in the wind. “Can we have this one?” she asked, as did the other two who kept their eyes trained on Wick.
“What child?” Merla asked again, her voice cracking as its volume rose.
“I’m keeping everyone,” Wick said. “The king didn’t barter away any of our spoils for your mother-witch to play with.”
“Tell me what child!” Merla screamed. She stopped walking and stomped one foot in the deep sand. The guards marching behind her stopped short before plowing into her.
“He thought to build a fort,” the sirens said. “He only built a grave. Our mistress delights at the new sensation of a tiny boy buried before his death.”
“Ketson,” Merla said. Her throat muscles worked rapidly, caught somewhere between an oncoming sob and the potential for vomit.
“We don’t know that,” I said.
“We do,” the sirens said, splitting their attention between Merla and Wick, their three faces swiveling from one to the other. “Ketson Yanna. He had a mother he cried for sadly, at least at first. You are that mother! Please let us take her, she’s already mourning.”
“I’ve had enough of this charade,” Wick said. He stabbed his sword through the heart of one siren, forcing her body to collapse into an inert pile of dry powder. The other two women didn’t falter or flinch. They just stood with their hands clasped before them and waited while the beach behind them materialized into the third member of their shifting triad. They followed Wick with their eyes but stood perfectly still.
