Warsinger

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Their immortality?” I frowned.

  “Yup. ‘After restoring the Caul, Sachara was no longer Starborn. She returned north as a mortal woman to the ‘the Great Grass Sea, the open lands of the plains-riders and the dragons’ to help them deal with Aesari stragglers. She was planning to settle there, but returned to Dalim after, and I quote, ‘she found her lover fornicating with his mount’.”

  Rin giggled. Istvan shot me a pointed look.

  “If she was talking about Grigori, his mount was a dragon and she probably was like… totally into it,” I flushed, feeling maybe slightly called out after my brief experience with Karalti in the sewers.

  “Mm hmm!” Karalti bobbed her head, sucking on her fingers. She had put away the entire fish, including the skin, bones, and fins.

  Suri cocked an eyebrow at her. “Anyway, after that, Sachara went back to Dalim, took a harem of nubile young gentlemen to cheer herself up, and apparently ruled wisely and well for the rest of her days. The historian notes, however, that when Grigori and his Queen were murdered-”

  “Whoa.” I held up my hands. “Wait: the founder of the Order of St. Grigori was murdered?”

  “Martyred, murdered, same diff,” Suri replied.

  “Did it say how?”

  “This book didn’t, no.” Suri shrugged. “Anyway, Sachara went to his funeral and shaved her head out of grief, and apparently never appeared in public ever again. Her daughters carried her bloodline on.”

  “The Fireblooded were the original inhabitants of Dakhdir?” Ebisa said. “Interesting.”

  “Well, humans and Lys have only been on Archemi about five thousand years, and Mercurions only a little less than that,” Rin added. “That’s really possible.”

  “For real?” Suri looked up sharply.

  “Yes,” Ebisa replied. “Your kind were brought here by the Drachan. Humans hadn’t been here even two generations when the first of us were created.”

  Rin pressed her lips together and nodded. “The Phaedra say humans were the slaves of the Drachan who broke free and joined the battle against their old masters. The Zaryans say humans remained loyal to the Drachan, and that’s why they hold them in contempt.”

  “It was probably a bit of column A, a bit of column B,” I said. “Humans are dumb like that.”

  “Why do you think I play a Mercurion?” Rin flashed me a shy crystal-toothed smile, which faded as she spotted something and cocked her head. “You said you took some more rubbings?”

  “Yeah. Here.” I pulled them out of my Inventory and spread them out. “I figured we wouldn’t be able to translate any of these-“

  “That’s Tlaxi’ca,” Ebisa said quickly, leaning over the scroll with the weird spiral writing. “The Elder Script, the same language used by Mercurions today.”

  “Can you understand it?” I asked, craning my neck.

  “Yes.” Ebisa didn't have normal eyes: she had a row of six large red gems in a band across her face. She didn't blink, and she had to move her head to track the sentences as she read, her lipless mouth pressed into a thin line.

  “And?” Suri craned her head in.

  “This is a description of a battle,” she replied. “It picks up from the middle of it. 'We routed the Aesari through the pass and they fled out into the snows ahead of the Empress. She hounded them screaming and burning through the mountains, turning the snows to rivers and then turning the rivers red with the blood of the slavers. After the battle was concluded, the Diamond Queen and her Bonded returned to their land of Hyrsinii, parting from Her Eminence, who paid her respects at the grave of the Dark God and knelt here, in Karad, so the Burned Rose of Dakhdir might be repaired by her Artists, Phaedra and Zarya, and the Arch-Smith Malech Ba’nadi. To Khors we give praise and honor for our victory, victory led by his divine child, Taltas.’”

  “Taltas again.” I scratched my jaw. “Could ‘Taltas’ be another name Sachara used?”

  “It must be. Maybe she got turned into a man in the stories… wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.” Suri frowned. “Was there any more script? Anything we could use to date this, make sure it’s not about someone else entirely?”

  “There’s plenty down there, but the books and scrolls were too fragile to touch. The only other thing I brought back was this.” I pulled the medallion off and held it out to her.

  Suri took it curiously, then paused, an odd expression crossing her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This thing just gave me a quest update.” She frowned, scanning her HUD. “I’m supposed to take it to the Morning Stars. Remember them? ‘This medallion, a relic of the era of the Demon Queen’, will be of extreme interest to the Morning Stars. Take it to them and learn more about its origins and purpose.’”

  “Then I guess we’re going to Dakhdir,” I said. “Let’s take a couple days to level up, clear a few more local kingdom quests, and then head south before Suri’s quest gets any harder. All in favour?”

  Suri silently put her hand up.

  “Aye.” Istvan raised his hand. “Though I have to go and say my farewells, and make sure Vash stays in his damn bed.”

  “I don’t know if we can go to Dakhdir. Ebisa and I need to go to Litvy so I can at least finish one of my projects, otherwise I won’t level up,” Rin said, deflating slightly. “I can be in reserve and join you if you find a Warsinger, but if I’m way behind on EXP. If I don’t power-level, I won’t be able to work on anything more complex than Lovelace and Hopper. I’m sorry to ask, but would it be possible to get a lift back to the RCE tonight?”

  The RCE was the Royal College of Engineers. I motioned to my dragon. “That’s up to Karalti. I need to go level up and take care of some Voivoiding, but after that…?”

  “Sure!” Karalti chirped. “I don’t mind. I can change shape back and forth one more time today.”

  “Now you mention it, there IS something in Litvy I want to do,” Suri said, with a small, sly smile. “But we’ll talk about that later. After you’re done Voivoding.”

  Chapter 29

  There was, in fact, a great amount of Voivoding to do. So, for the first time in my twenty-seven years of life, I willingly sat at a writing desk and used it for its intended purpose: studying.

  I went back over Rutha’s testimony in Taltos and Ignas’s lesson to me about statesmanship. I vanished down the Archemipedia wikihole, reading what I could and letting Navigail read me the rest. Politics, kingdom management, the economics of early-industrial feudal societies… I munched on Count Bolza’s surprisingly fresh pistachios and read, and read, and read. And as I did, my under-exercised Int score began to rise, just as it had in the early days of me training my Strength and Dex. A point here, a point there… it didn’t make me FEEL any smarter, but I definitely knew more about Myszno by the time Suri knocked on the door to the Ducal Suite.

  “Coming!” I rolled up from the desk chair and went to answer. I opened the door to find her in the gold chain dress she had been wearing the other day, a heavy cloak draped over her arm. “Wow, I hadn’t intended to predict the future, but here we are.”

  “That’s what I hope,” she asked mischievously. “Ready to hear my proposal for the night?”

  “Suuuuurrrre,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away. “But I’d like to propose that you, me and your astonishingly hypnotic chest should go do something fun. I don't know what fun there is to be had in Myszno right now, though, other than motorboating you until you beg for mercy.”

  Suri laughed, the first real laugh I'd heard from her since coming back from Al-Asad. “I've got an idea, especially seeing as you and Karalti are taking the Wondertwins back to Litvy. Think Karalti is fine waiting around for us there while we go on a date?”

  “A date?” I perked up. Suri and I had literally only had time for one real date night in our nearly two-month-long relationship, which had been brunch at a kebab joint in Taltos. “Uhh... let me ask.”

  Suri came in and settled onto the sofa while I clo
sed the door and concentrated. “Hey, Tidbit?”

  “Yeeeessss?” Karalti answered after a few seconds. To my surprise, she was eating – again. As our minds connected, I sensed that she was a ways away from the castle, busily sucking the blood out of an igunandont dinosaur she had pinned under her claws.

  “In addition to giving Rin and Ebisa a ride to Litvy tonight, Suri wants to know if you'd be willing to hang around Litvy while she and I have some human time together.” Despite all of the delicious nuts, I found my own stomach rumbling in sympathy with Karalti’s. It was strange: she’d decimated that fish, and she normally didn’t eat more than once a day.

  “Hmmmmm.” Karalti made a show of thinking about it, and as she did, I felt a flash of heat pass over my skin. “Maaaaybe. But tell her that if you two are gonna go and chase each other's tails in Litvy, then I get to sleep with you when you go to bed, in your bed, for as long as we want.”

  “Sleep as in cuddle.”

  She growled. “Sleep as in whatever I want.”

  I nearly snipped back at her, but bit my tongue and rubbed my forehead instead. “I should have made you sleep in a kennel while you were growing up. You're spoiled rotten.”

  “I am perfectly ripe, thank you very much.”

  “You know I have to sleep in a bath full of sand, right?”

  “Yes, but I get to sleep in a bath full of sand with YOU, oh bonded one. After today's stinky poop adventure, I want to do that very much. I want to eat all of the food and snuggle with you for as long as I please, somewhere warm and dry and nice.”

  That sounded good. Given I was sitting on an Exhausted debuff right now, it almost sounded better than going all the way to Litvy to do whatever Suri was thinking about. Almost. “Alright. Let me check with Suri.”

  “Good boy.”

  Suri was waiting for me, lounging on the sofa and watching me with hooded golden eyes. “So, what’s the verdict?”

  “Her Scaly Highness decrees that we shall be permitted to date, but she calls dibs on post-date snuggling and sleeping,” I replied.

  “Deal. To be honest with you, I don’t know if I’m up for sharing a bed all night yet.” Suri’s smile faded slightly, and she looked toward the fire. “I'm gonna have shitty nightmares no matter how much fun we have, and I don't want to accidentally punch your lights out in my sleep.”

  “Fair enough.” Part of me was worried, part of me was grateful. Karalti and I were both comfort-seeking bedbugs, and damned if spooning her at night wasn't one of the best feelings in the world. “Thanks for being so tolerant of… you know. Me and her.”

  “Like I said: I knew you and Special-K were a package deal when I signed up for this. You guys are joined at the brainstem for the rest of your lives, minimum. Even if I was jealous, it wouldn’t change a damn thing.” Suri snorted, looking down. “But I've got you to myself for the rest of the evening, and that’s what counts. Want to know what we're doing tonight?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “I'm hoping it involves at least some motorboating.”

  “Depends how you play it.” Suri quite deliberately leaned forward in a way that displayed the girls to maximum effect. “Sooo… According to the KMS, there's a big night market on in Litvy tonight.”

  “A Night Market? With food? I don't know.” I grimaced, leaning back against the edge of the door. “Karhad's still in a bad way, and I don't want to be pigging out while the city's struggling along on rations. What if they find out?”

  “People in the city are celebrating the fact we brought their services back online today,” Suri said. “Our Renown went up by a shitton, we got a bunch of Build Points, and everyone knows food is on the way. You've got our best men and women on the biggest quests that need doing. Check and see where they're at.”

  I smiled briefly, then opened the KMS to take a look. My eyebrows shot up. Taethawn was already 80% done. His light cavalry and the artillery support of our only airship had crushed the bandits in the Freehold of Vyeshniki. The refugee situation was going more slowly, but it was already at 45%. I had an unread system message from Ur Gehlan saying that everything was going well and the first big caravan of peasants had been dispatched south. He had put in a request that we fund the building of shelters in the biggest harvest regions. According to him, we were likely to lose about a quarter of the harvest, which meant next year’s would have to be a good one. As I read that message, the quest updated with a sub-quest: It Takes a Village.

  The other quests were going similarly. I did a rough calculation: if we kept clearing Kingdom Quests at this rate, we'd have them all done three or four days before the harvest was due to start. There was only one active quest that was sitting at 0% - the one to return Kitti Hussar's lands to their rightful lady.

  “We need to do something about Kitti,” I said. “Are you really taking her on as a Zerkling?”

  “Yeah. Kind of fell into that one, didn’t I?” Suri's face flushed with a sheepish grin. “I like Kitti: the kid’s got what it takes. She wants to train as a Berserker, and I’m gonna teach her.”

  I tried to imagine Kitti, with her big brown eyes and cute blonde plaits, hauling a six-foot maul wading into battle the way that Suri did. “I can’t quite imagine that.”

  “You’ll see. Once she’s got a few levels, we’re gonna go south to Bas and cream that dickhead squatting in her family home. We’ll need to take about a hundred men with us.”

  “We could send Taethawn in,” I said, flicking over to take a look at his army in the Combat Management System display. “They look like they've got one campaign left in them before we need to rotate them out. Or the Knights of the Red Star?”

  “We need the knights for the castle.” Suri stood up, and walked toward me in a way that immediately drew my attention from the translucent holographic screens and riveted it on her. “My point wasn't to get you working again, lover. My point was to show you that we can take a night off and not feel bad about it.”

  I closed everything down, and slid my hands up and over her waist as she drew in close and pressed up against me. The chains weren’t hard and metallic: the warmth of her skin and the way they draped made them feel soft against my palms. “I might feel bad about taking the night off no matter what you say, but that doesn't mean I can't make you feel good.”

  “Make me, huh?” She took my hands in hers and slid my hands up over her chest. “Feeling a bit less bitey?”

  “Still pretty damn bitey.” I squeezed gently, leaned in, and licked the side of her neck. Suri shuddered and tipped her head back, then let out a breathy moan of pleasure as I gently, carefully pressed the sharp points of my teeth into her skin.

  “Arse.” Suri playfully shoved herself back, licking her lips. “Come on: if we don't get ready now, we won't end up leaving the castle.”

  “Is that so bad?” I grinned at her, tamping down the dark urge I had to stalk her across the room, pin her to the bed, and bite her for real.

  “The night market only runs ‘til midnight.” She made a face at me. “Go on, lover. Rin and Ebisa said they’re ready. I'll meet you in fifteen.”

  ***

  It was hard to imagine Litvy was in the same province as Karhad. It was a younger, busier, and hotter city, with a lot more industrial sprawl and less planning than the provincial capital to the cooler, more mountainous south. It was also completely untouched by the war: the only sign of the invasion here were the refugee camps that had sprung up around the city walls like mushrooms after a storm. Litvy glowed by night, the product of a hundred thousand magelamps, torches, and late-night workshops churning out all kinds of weapons, devices and parts. Litvy was one of the major military Artificing hubs of Vlachia, if not all of Artana. It was where a large number of the world’s airships and repeating rifles were designed and manufactured.

  Our first stop was the Royal Shipyard, where Nocturne Lament was being stored. The hundred-foot-tall mech lay in pieces around the largest construction hangar at the college, the one normally us
ed to produce Destroyer-class airships. A salvaging ship had managed to recover about two-thirds of the massive machine, minus the head and parts of its torso. Its legs were mostly intact, and the engineers had mounted them upright within a brace of scaffolding. It was there, on the scaffold, that we found Lord Lorenzo Soma.

  The Count of Litvy was more blue-collar than jeweled-collar most of the time. The huge man, close to seven feet tall and as solid as a ham, was dressed in coveralls and chatting to three other engineers. He and everyone else stopped what they were doing as Karalti swooped into the warehouse, backwinging gracefully to land just inside the entrance. I saw Soma startle: he ran his hands through his hair and straightened his clothing like a high schooler who’d just spotted his crush crossing the road. Not Suri, not Rin, and definitely not me. He only had eyes for one woman in the whole wide world - and that woman was Karalti.

  “By my oath, my queen, I swear you look more lovely every time your divine presence graces my vicinity!” he boomed, vaulting to the ground. Karalti strutted over, head bobbing on every step and he swept into a flourishing bow before extending his palm. I felt the dragon’s amusement as she offered him the tip of a single claw, which he kissed like the back of a lady’s hand. “I trust you have been well?”

  “Mmm, yes. Very well, thank you.” Karalti put her nose in the air, every inch the royal dragoness.

  Rin peered over Karalti’s neck and waved with both hands. “Hi, Soma! We’re back! And we have some really exciting stuff that I, uh, have to go and look at right now, actually.” She let out a nervous little laugh, then turned to me and Suri to whisper. “How long do you think you guys will be?”