by Jasmine Walt
“Oh. Right.” I dropped the illusion. Almost as soon as I did, I felt a surge of warmth, followed by a soreness in my breasts and a tingling ache in my lower belly.
“Naya? Is something wrong?”
I pressed a hand to my belly. “My symptoms. They disappeared for a while.” At Comenius’s blank look, I explained, “I’m about to go into heat, and for the past couple of days, I’ve been experiencing the onset. But when I put on the teenage-boy disguise, the symptoms reduced so drastically I barely noticed them.”
“Fascinating,” Elnos said. He tilted his head, regarding me like I was one of the machines in his shop. “I wonder if it’s because you are more in tune with your mage half than your shifter half when using magic? Or if your use of a male illusion is tricking your female body to some degree?”
“All plausible explanations,” Comenius agreed. He had a strange look on his face as he stared at me. “Do you think you’re going to be okay this next week? Dealing with this insurrection as well as your…heat?”
His face flushed, and I grinned a little, understanding. I’d gone to Comenius twice in the past when my heat had become too unbearable to ignore, and even though we’d no longer been in a relationship at that time, he’d been more than happy to oblige. But now he had Elania and that was no longer possible, so he was concerned about what I might do without a ready outlet.
“Don’t worry about it, Com,” I told him. “I’ll figure out a solution, even if it means I have to walk around like a teenage boy for the next week.”
“Why are you disguised as a teenage boy, anyway?” Annia asked. “Are you also on a reconnaissance mission?”
“I wish.” I sighed, thinking back to Chen’s directive – that she wanted me to stay out of the way and not do anything. “Honestly, I’m just trying not to die.” I stood up and began to pace as I told them about the warning message the Resistance had left on my door yesterday, and the fire I’d narrowly escaped in the early hours of the morning.
“Heiliger Strohsack, Naya!” Comenius exclaimed. “You waited to tell us about this until now? You could have been killed!” He wrapped me in a tight hug.
“I know, but I wasn’t.” I hugged him back, briefly resting my cheek on his chest as I inhaled his woodsy, herbal scent. The ache in my lower body flared up in proximity to a male, and I hastily extricated myself from his grip. Logic and heat didn’t really go together, so it was better if I didn’t touch Comenius, or any other male I wasn’t planning on taking to bed.
“Anyway, I’ve got to stay in disguise when I go out in public, which sucks. But at least it helps with the heat, so that’s something.”
“You could always jump the Chief Mage,” Annia said, waggling her eyebrows. “I’m sure he’d understand your…situation. He’d probably even be happy to help.” She grinned.
“Annia,” Comenius scolded.
“I’m afraid he’s a little busy,” I said, not sure whether I should laugh or cringe. “Don’t worry, guys. Seriously. I’ll figure it out.”
“I might be able to help.” Elania’s musical voice drifted from the stairwell, and I turned as I heard her footsteps creaking on the wooden steps. She sashayed in a few moments later, and I was surprised to see her in a black top and pants rather than the tight, low-cut dresses she preferred. Over her clothing, she wore a stained apron, and the smudges of dirt on her usually perfect face and the duster in her hand told me she’d been cleaning downstairs.
“Help with what?” I asked as she glided over to Comenius. “The heat?”
“Yes.” She planted a kiss on Comenius’s cheek, then turned to face me. “My mother used to make an anti-aphrodisiac that was quite effective. Her customers were usually tired women who wanted to stave off their randy husbands. They would mix a few drops in their man’s beer when he came home from work, and unless said man had an extraordinarily powerful libido, he was content to leave her alone for the evening.”
“Huh.” I’d never even considered such a scenario between married couples, but I could understand an overtired housewife wanting to go to bed early every so often without spreading her legs. “Well, if you’ve got some, I’ll try it out.”
“It’ll only take a few moments to make,” Elania promised. “Let me just get washed up.”
She disappeared into Comenius’s bedroom, then returned a little bit later with the dirt removed from her face, wearing a long, high-waisted black dress with no sleeves. She tied a glittering purple apron over her dress as she went into the kitchen, then bustled around, chopping up herbs and boiling water.
Resigned to the wait, I sat down in the wicker armchair next to the sofa and turned back to Elnos and Annia. “So are you two already packed, then? Do you need help with any other preparations?”
“No, we’re good,” Annia said softly. There was a faraway look in her eyes as she stared at the opposite wall. “I’m not sure how long we’re going to be gone for, Naya. It could be a week, or it could be months. Part of me feels I’m being selfish by doing this, that I should be staying here to help defend the city and fight off the Resistance.”
“It’s okay.” I reached over and squeezed her hand. “You’ve done a lot already, between helping me with the Shifter Royale case and rescuing the Chief Mage. And depriving the Resistance of Noria’s talents has got to be worthwhile in itself. No one would dream of faulting you for wanting to go after your sister.” I turned my head to glare at Comenius. “Right?”
He sighed, looking away. “I suppose not,” he admitted. “And perhaps while you’re there, you may learn something useful that will help the Federation in their fight against the Resistance.”
“We are planning on gathering as much intel as possible,” Elnos acknowledged. “Comenius has agreed to receive my transmissions by ether pigeon and deliver any urgent information to the Mages Guild.”
I arched a brow. “Ether pigeon?”
He nodded, then held out his hand and spoke a few Words. Magic swirled above his palm before taking the shape of a ghostly, glowing blue pigeon. “Mages used to send these to carry messages between war camps, during the Conflict. They’re used much less often since the advent of telegrams, but the spell is far from obsolete.”
“That’s fascinating.” I crouched down to get a better look at the pigeon. It turned its head to look at me in that strange, stilted way birds have about them, and I could swear I saw it ruffle its feathers. But when I reached out to touch it, my finger simply passed through it, though a magical tingle skipped up my nerves. “So how does it work? And can it travel very long distances?”
“Not more than a few hundred miles, unfortunately,” Elnos admitted. “And imbuing it with the message you want to transmit is a tricky business. You certainly can’t send more than a few sentences. Thankfully, from what we’ve been able to determine, Noria is still in Canalo for now, so we should be able to use these.”
“But won’t somebody notice a glowing blue pigeon flying through the air?” I asked. “If someone catches you at the camp, you’ll be outed for sure.”
Elnos shook his head. “When the pigeons are launched into the air, they turn into a blue mist that blends in with the atmosphere, and they don’t regain their shape again until they arrive at their destination. Once they deliver their message, the spell is finished, and the pigeon will disappear. I’ll have to be careful I’m not seen when I send messages, and I won’t be able to receive them, but otherwise, this should work.”
“Well, it’s very brave of you to be willing to do that, and I hope you’re extra careful,” I told him. Should I warn him not to underestimate the Resistance? But no, Annia already knew how dangerous they could be. Between an experienced, wily enforcer and a resourceful mage, surely they would be all right. Besides, someone needed to go knock some sense into Noria, and I couldn’t go. Annia was the best person for the job, and who was I to stop her from going after her little sister?
“Here you are.” Elania brought me a steaming mug of faintly purple liquid. It
tasted like lavender, mint, and something so bitter that I nearly gagged at the first sip. “Drink up.” She winked at me.
I downed the entire thing in one go, then sat back in my chair and waited.
“Well?” Elania arched an eyebrow. “Anything?”
I smiled apologetically. “It’s helped a little,” I said, and that was true. The ache had eased off slightly, and I didn’t feel quite so hot. “But not that much. I’m afraid my shifter metabolism is working against me in this case.”
Elania pouted. “Well, that’s unfortunate. I’ll see if I can work on an alternate version that can stand up to your stronger system. It should be ready the next time you come by.”
I shook my head, standing. “I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be necessary. I don’t think I’ll be coming by again until the danger has passed and I can be sure the Resistance no longer has me marked for death.”
“But Sunaya,” Comenius protested.
“No.” I turned to face him. “I can’t risk putting you and Elania in danger by association. The Resistance has already proven on more than one occasion that they’re not overly concerned with killing bystanders, and I’m pretty sure they consider anyone who aids me to be their enemy as well. They won’t hesitate to harm any one of you to get to me.”
Comenius sighed, raking a hand through his ash-blond hair. “I can’t argue with that,” he said ruefully. “But promise you’ll keep up your teenage-boy disguise when you’re out and about.”
“Yeah,” Annia agreed. “Nobody would dream of mistaking that disguise for the great and powerful Sunaya Baine. You looked even nerdier than Elnos.”
“Hey!” Elnos complained, and we all laughed, the tension broken.
“I think ‘infamous’ might be a better adjective than ‘great and powerful’,” I told her, coming over for a hug. “But I’ll keep it in mind. Good luck on your trip, both of you. And if you need anything from me at all, let me know.”
I gave everybody goodbye hugs, promising I would see them again once this was all over. Elania pressed a flask of the anti-aphrodisiac into my hand, and I tucked it into one of my pouches before donning my teenage-boy disguise and heading out.
Director Chen had said I was free to join the enforcers if I wanted to make myself useful. So that was exactly what I was going to do.
6
I kept the teenage-boy disguise long enough to make it past the two shopkeepers who guarded the entrance to Witches End, then ducked into the first available alley and changed my illusion to that of Riley Tansom, an enforcer who had retired earlier this year. I hoped that the real Riley hadn’t decided to get back into action, because he’d been well known enough that people would definitely notice if two of us showed up at the Enforcer’s Guild. But since he was getting old and wanted to be with his family, he probably would have gotten them out of the city at the first sign of disaster rather than stay and fight.
I got back onto the bicycle, then headed down to the Enforcer’s Guild in Rowanville. Thankfully, the trip was mostly downhill this time, and the legs pumping the pedals were still my own even if they looked like Tansom’s. Before too long, the tall, dingy grey building that represented Solantha’s law enforcement system came into view, an ugly but necessary eyesore that stood at the edge of Rowanville, and the center of the city. It was rectangular, four stories high, and there were cracks and miniature craters blown out of the stone exterior that hadn’t been there before. All the windows had been boarded up except for one at the very top.
Taking a deep breath, I secured my bike. As I did so, Captain Galling pulled into the lot, parking his steel-blue steamcar in his reserved spot right in front of the entrance. He looked freshly showered and clothed as he stepped out of his car, a large, imposing man with close-cropped grey hair. To my surprise and gratification, he was wearing mercenary leathers. He must have gone home to shower and change, then transport his wife to the Palace. It was a smart move for him to dress in leathers rather than the suits he usually wore – it would show the rest of the enforcers that he was prepared to join them in securing the city and standing against the Resistance, rather than hiding behind his desk as he’d become accustomed to doing in recent times.
Eager to see what he was planning, I hurried in behind him. The two enforcers guarding the door let me in without complaint, their nods of acknowledgement much better than the reception I would have gotten if I’d arrived here as myself. Yeah, so the Palace staff was being nicer to me, but I doubted the enforcers were prepared to welcome me back with open arms, especially since many of them hated the mages right now. It didn’t matter that I’d worked at the Enforcers Guild for years – right now, most of them only saw me as the hated Chief Mage’s apprentice.
Captain Galling called for a general meeting in the main hall on the first floor, and I filed in there along with the rest of the enforcers. The few who saw me clapped me on the back and asked me about my wife and grandkids, questions I tried to answer as evasively as I could, as I didn’t know Tansom that well.
“What the hell are you even thinking, Tansom, coming back out of retirement at a time like this?” Taren Widler, a Main Crew Enforcer who I usually found obnoxious, asked with a grin. “In case you haven’t noticed, most of us have already hightailed it out of here, and the rest of us are just biding our time for when the Resistance finally takes this place over.”
“I have noticed,” I said casually, my eyes sweeping over the crowd that had gathered in the hall. Only about a third of the Enforcers Guild was present, most of them humans, and none of the very few mage enforcers had remained. “But it’s hard to get accurate data about what’s really going on in this town, what with the papers being slanted this way and that, and nobody wanting to poke their head out of doors to have a conversation. So I thought I’d come here and see what I can find out. Looks like I’ve got good timing, too,” I added as Captain Galling stepped up to the small podium at the front of the room.
“All right, boys and girls,” he addressed us once the room had gone quiet. “I know there’s been some disagreement about what to do in the face of this catastrophe, but it’s time for us to pull together and do our job. The Enforcers Guild was originally founded to serve the people of Solantha, and the whole state of Canalo. Regardless of whether or not we think the Mages or the Resistance are in the right, the people still need our protection, and our help.”
“What about us?” a female enforcer close to the front shouted. “Don’t we deserve protection and help too? Or is the Mages Guild going to continue to arrest us and treat us like criminals? Let them fight their own battles. I’ve had enough!”
Several enforcers began to shout their agreements with her stance, and soon, the entire hall was in an uproar. Anger filled me at some of the more inflammatory statements, and I wished I could march back to the Palace and shove my boot up the asses of the idiotic Council members who had caused all this bitterness to begin with. Hopefully, Captain Galling could sway the crowd, because if not, we were in big trouble.
“See?” Widler muttered into my ear, pitching his voice so he could be heard despite the shouting. “It’s crazy town over here. You should go home.”
“Enough!” Captain Galling boomed, silencing the crowd again. “I understand your grievances, perhaps better than anyone else in the city. In case you’ve forgotten, I, too, was arrested, and in fact was only released this morning. The rest of the enforcers who were wrongfully imprisoned, and the citizens as well, are going to be released sometime today. I’ve spoken to the Chief Mage, and we’ve come to an agreement.”
“Is that why you’re so willing to forgive them?” someone sneered. “A pouch of gold is enough to make up for all the bullshit they’ve pulled?”
“It isn’t,” Captain Galling said, his voice hard as his gaze snapped to the enforcer who’d spoken. I smirked a little as the man in question hunched his shoulders beneath Captain Galling’s intense stare. “But this isn’t about me, you, or any one of us individually.
This is about making sure the people in this city stay safe, regardless of the outcome of this civil war. The Mages Guild has agreed to issue a public apology for the wrongful arrests, and now that the Chief Mage is back, things will be under control on their side once more. They’ve also agreed to double the bounty for any criminals we apprehend during this emergency – actual criminals,” he added with a scowl. “I don’t want to see you guys hauling in citizens unnecessarily, or for inflated or imagined infractions. We don’t have the time or the resources to deal with that kind of bullshit, and besides, we’re no better than the Mages Guild if we start pulling that kind of shit.”
There were a few cheers at the mention of the increased bounties, and the tension in the room began to ease off. Only a handful of the enforcers, mostly shifters, called Captain Galling a sell-out and stormed out of the hall, refusing to co-operate with the mage regime regardless of financial incentives. But once they were gone, the others seemed to relax. More questions were shouted, and details were hashed out between Captain Galling and the crew foremen. Eventually, an agreement was reached that the enforcers would concentrate on policing the streets, discouraging looting and other criminal activity. It was also agreed that in the event of an attack, the enforcers would be responsible for ensuring civilian safety, though they were not required to engage in any battles themselves. The paperwork for claiming the increased bounties would be simplified, so as to waste no time with red tape.
One of the shifters making his way out of the hall bumped into my shoulder. He was about to move off, but he froze, nose twitching, then swung his yellow wolf eyes in my direction.
“Oi,” he protested. “Who are you? You don’t smell like Tansom.”
I stiffened as suspicious gazes swung in my direction, cursing inwardly. I’d tried to get Tansom’s scent right, but evidently, I hadn’t quite succeeded.
