by Nhys Glover
Reaching out, I caressed her short curls tenderly. "Sweet Fellica, the expression of mutual love and respect through the sharing of sexual pleasure is the greatest gift of the Goddess. And when the time comes you will find it neither disgusting nor demeaning. No one will service you or you them, no matter how many partners are involved in your marriage."
Calun leaned in and gently kissed the side of my head. Whatever he said was for Flea alone, and she smiled for the first time since her education started.
"So we have our first recruit," I announced, deciding to make the most of this moment of power to get my way. It wouldn't last. Standing against four stubborn men could get exhausting at times.
"Airsha..." Dark growled, knowing exactly what I was doing.
I grinned at him cheekily and intentionally made my tone childish. "I'm the next Godling. If I want Flea as part of my airling army then I can have her." And, just as I'd intended, it had everyone bursting into laughter.
Before Darkin could voice his reservations aloud, Flea jumped in, quite literally. She sprang to her feet and grabbed me in a big hug, jumping up and down with me, in her excitement.
"Thank you, thank you, Goddess. You won't be sorry. I promise. I'll be the best rider of them all."
"Not better than the Airluds, of course," I cautioned her with amusement.
Horror made her cheeks redden. I was pleased to note she had the same problem I did with easy blushing. It came with the pale skin, I reasoned.
"No, no, of course not. I meant the other riders."
"Airsha, she'll have the same problem here as she did when her gang realised she was a girl. With a shortage of women they're bound to try to make use of her," Darkin argued.
"Then I teach her to fight so she can hold her own against them. And if we make it clear that anyone who steps out of line with her will be thrown out, I think she'll be safe enough."
"I'm good with my slingshot," Flea offered.
"That will be useful as a rider. But against men on the ground you would be better with fighting skills. There are many you can utilize, even if you are smaller than most men," I answered, feeling the age gap between us again. At moments like this I felt old enough to be her mother.
Flea nodded her agreement happily and, with a quick glance at my husbands, probably to determine if they thought she could do it, crossed her arms as if the decision was made.
I was definitely going to enjoy having her around, no matter how much she might cramp my love life.
Chapter Four
FLEA
I sat on the veranda of the homestead that had so suddenly become my home, and wondered at my incredible change of fate. One minute I was living on the streets of a border town, only thinking as far ahead as my next meal, and the next I was here with the most wanted renegades in the world.
It had been remarkably easy to wriggle my way in. All I'd had to do was listen to their thoughts and fit in with them. The Airlud called Darkin had given me my first lead. When his shock over being caught by a stranger pleasuring his wife had passed, he had thought how much like Airsha I was. A girl trying to pass as a boy. But in her case her tunic had been torn and it had been immediately obvious what her gender was. So when I was found out so quickly, thanks to my courses starting earlier than I'd expected, I'd incorporated the torn tunic into my tale to build more empathy. It hadn't been my first blood either. I was nearly sixteen and I'd been a woman for nearly three suns. But looking younger than I was had its advantages.
Mam had taught me early on that the more similarities between themselves and you a mark could find, the easier it was to win them over. And sticking to as much truth as possible also saved you being caught out in a lie later on.
And my own story fitted the situation well enough. I had grown up in a fishing village. My father had died at sea. But we didn't leave the village because of unwanted attentions directed my way, but because Mam almost got caught stealing. She'd been a thief and a conster before she married Dah. He'd been one of her marks, but she'd ended up falling in love with him and giving up the life for him. But when he died and left us with no way to support ourselves she turned back to her old ways, and trained me in them too.
She'd never been a whore. I'd picked up from one of the Airluds that their mother had been one and it seemed a good way to build more rapport. Though Mam had taught me that anything was better than being a whore. That part was true. I guessed her attitude stemmed from having had a mam who worked on her back. I'm not sure, as she never spoke much about her early life. But that's what I thought was likely.
We'd moved to the capital of Westsealund when I was ten and made a good living for ourselves conning rich bastards out of their coin. I even became a handy pickpocket and burglar. But those paths tended to attract the attention of the constabulary more than Mam's usual pursuits, so I did them rarely.
I'm not sure how old I was when I realised I could pick up on people's feelings. It seems like all my life. If I hadn't been told different, I would have thought everybody could read the feelings people tried to keep hidden. But reading thoughts came later. After Mam died, I think. It felt like they developed to protect me. I felt very alone and frightened when she died. Not of some whore's disease, as I'd told them, but when one of her marks found out what she'd done, got mad and killed her. I was just twelve suncycles old when that happened.
I had to leave the capital because the man who killed her wanted me. So I dressed as a boy and took off. My name had been Fellica, that part was true enough. But I only became Flea, and a boy, later. She would have been horrified that I'd taken to passing myself off as a boy. As far as she was concerned, girls could get away with so much more than boys, especially pretty ones like me.
By then there had been a few men like the one I said had shown an interest in me in our village. Mam's murderer was just the last one of those. Mam used to dangle me in front of them to get us the coin we needed, then turn on the righteous indignation at their sick interest once she'd sucked them dry and before they got their filthy hands on me.
Those men, and others, frightened me more than I was willing to admit. And without Mam to guide me and protect me, I eventually got in trouble. I grew scared of the attention I attracted as a girl. And knowing the thoughts of those men and what they wanted to do to me had me running for my life and eventually hiding as a boy.
So Flea was born, and I moved from one town to the next, finally ending up in Bordertun. I ran small, short-term cons in my disguise, but took more and more to thievery. I never joined a street gang or was rescued by a kindly fisherman called Beyen. I pulled that out of Jaron's thoughts. Dropping names can be very useful like that, especially when someone like Rama is pushing so hard for the truth. And the truth was the last thing I was prepared to give these rebels.
So I wove the fabricated details into the skeleton of truth, and won the trust of strangers who should have known better.
Of course, the one called Rama wasn't easy to convince. I'm not sure he's convinced, even now. He has the rare ability of being able to block his thoughts from me, especially now he knows what I can do. That made things harder. But not impossible. Nothing was impossible if you wanted it enough. And I wanted what these rebels could give me. Which wasn't being an airling trooper. Though the thought appealed more than it should.
I cursed my own stupidity for giving my abilities away. I'd never let anyone know what I could do before. Of course, most people don't even suspect it's possible, so they aren't looking for it. But these people are different and know the signs to look for. Though I'd made it pretty blatant when I got excited and answered the silent man. I'd been sure he'd spoken aloud. As I was looking elsewhere at the time, I hadn't seen that his mouth didn't move.
I'm not sure how I feel about their idea that my mind-reading makes me an Air Mistress. That's a very dangerous possibility. Women with magic died. And I had no desire to be one of them.
It was going to be far harder to keep my secrets with these peo
ple than I thought. But it would be worth it in the end. Or that's what I have to believe.
Chapter Five
AIRSHA
I assigned Flea the apartment furthest from ours so we didn't have to worry about the sounds of our lovemaking being overheard. Rama was still suspicious of our newest recruit and Darkin was still against turning her into an airling trooper, but they would do as I wanted.
The little performance Jaron had staged for Flea's benefit still worried me. Being idolised like that felt wrong on so many levels. It separated me from the people I loved most. It made me different. And yet, if the rebels won their war, I would have to get used to that kind of homage, and more, from my followers. Mayhap, once it was all over, I could install Moyna in my place and go back to a more simple life. Which would probably include a constant flow of magical babies, if the prophesy was to be believed.
How could I live the life I wanted if I was constantly big with child or had my arms full with a breast-feeding babe? For a girl who wanted to be a boy, that was the worst possible life.
I needed to stop getting ahead of myself. Right now I only had two priorities... no, three. I had to love my husbands, tame airlings for the rebels, and successfully birth a magical son. Beyond that... only the Goddess knew.
In the week following her arrival, Flea became familiar with the workings of the newly established Centre. Calun had put out a call for airlings who would willingly carry riders into a war. It was the last thing any of us wanted, but we had been told that as creations of the Goddess, her Will was theirs. She wanted a change in human affairs and so it would be.
So far thirty new airlings had joined our regular flock of eight. Four of the huge flying beastlings were part of the Airluds original pod. They had grown up with them, as siblings might. Calun's airling had agreed to take me on as her rider, while he was accepted by one of the raw airlings they had been taming for the Godslund army. Part of the agreement they had come to with the army, when they had gone against orders to rescue Rama, had been to provide them with four newly tamed airlings per suncycle. It had gone against their conscience to agree to it, but the alternative had been death. And as the Godslunders were determined to have airlings, and would buy 'broken' ones if necessary, my men felt that humanely trained airlings were better than the cruel alternative.
That was what we had: four tame airlings, four semi-trained airlings, and thirty wild airlings. With more on the way, if Calun's messages were accurate. It was a daunting task.
Firstly, an airling had to accept a rider. It was a fallacy to believe a rider owned his airling. It was actually the other way around. And like all partnerships, this bond had to be established over time, building trust and affection on the way.
Second, an airling had to learn that flight was better with a rider. This was usually the hardest and most demoralising part of the process. It was not how the Airlud's pod operated, but it was how the raw airlings were tamed. Or had been up until the Goddess' Will was made clear.
The cruel airling breakers used a technique called pinning. They drove a metal spike into the shoulder of one, leathery, bat-like wing and ran a chain from it to one of the creature's two claw-footed legs. With the chain on, the airling could not extend its wing properly and was therefore unable to fly. Those awful pins regularly became infected and could kill an airling if not treated.
My men had devised a far less cruel method of taming. They usually asked young, flexibly minded airlings to agree to a relationship with a rider. They used a soft rope around the wing and leg to keep the beastling grounded. Each creature then grew used to flying with increasing weight on their backs.
When we were planning the rescue of my mother a moon or so ago, the partly tamed airlings carried harnesses on their backs with rocks that could be dropped on a target from the sky. It had worked brilliantly until another Air Master had sent a gale-force wind their way and the last airling was unable to drop his load.
It was our plan to train more airlings to carry such loads, rather than riders.
The goal of pinning or taming had been to convince an airling that flight was only possible with a rider on their back. They had to forget that free flight was possible. That meant getting the airlings in the air as often as possible with some weight or a rider on their backs, and grounding them the rest of the time with ropes.
But the Goddess' call had changed things, we'd discovered in the last moon. The raw airlings didn't need to be grounded to make them stay with us. They did so willingly. They still had to become accustomed to a rider, and understand his signals, but their freedom was not taken from them.
I knew that once the war was done these wild airlings would likely leave us. Unless the bond they established with their rider became strong enough to make them want to remain, as was the case with my husbands' pod.
The biggest problem we faced, other than the physical work of accustoming airlings to riders and finding suitable riders they would accept, was feeding a large flock through winter.
The plains of the Badlunds were covered with wild grasses the herbivorous airlings loved. They would move around the plains in small pods in times of scarcity and large flocks in times of seasonal plenty. As one area became grazed out, the flock would move on to the next. The Badlunds surrounded Godslund, the Godling's kinglund, and divided all of the other kinglunds from each other. It was so named because there was no ruling order there, like in the kinglunds, and the people's lives were comparatively deprived, given the poor quality of the land and lack of rain there. It was unforgiving land, on which only those of stout heart could survive.
My brothers had grown up in the Badlunds, where they had been befriended by wild airlings. Because of Calun's ability to communicate with them, a relationship had developed that had lasted nearly twenty suncycles. And when they were banished from Godslund, it was to the Badlunds my men returned.
When I thought about how I had found my way to my husbands, only three moons ago, I could see the Goddess' Will at work. Of all the places in the world I could have ended up when I had escaped in a wagon heading for one of the kinglunds, I ended up being discovered in the Badlunds just when two of my men were in town getting supplies. The chances of that happening were monumental.
I drew my mind from such thoughts and focused on our plans. We needed to find fresh fodder for the airlings and harvest it for the coming moons of winter. To that end Calun had taken several airlings out with him to explore safe territory we could harvest unmolested.
But without Calun the taming of the airlings was a slower process because he was not there to calm their fears. I had been working on developing my own connection with the breed, but except for transmitting and receiving emotions such as love, fear, trust and anger, I was woefully bad at it. Still, if an agitated airling could be calmed by me sending it love and trust, then surely we could get somewhere without Calun.
At that moment Flea came running toward the homestead, her expression one of determination. By the time she slowed her breakneck speed to a standstill in front of me, her face was as bright red as her hair and she was puffing frantically.
"Surely your message wasn't so important that you had to kill yourself to get it to me," I teased.
"Dark wants you right away," she said between gasping in-breaths. The way she said it implied I was at his beck and call. Even though she had witnessed the homage given me as the incarnated Goddess and the next Godling, she still continued to treat me as if I was the subservient one.
I noted with a little annoyance her use of my nickname for Darkin. I was the only who called him Dark.
I nodded. "I assume you're having trouble with one of the wild ones?"
She nodded back and continued to puff, her hands on her knees as she did so.
"Fine, I will just check on the midday meal and be with you shortly." I didn't have to do any such thing, but I was not going to dance to Flea's tune. There was no way Dark had given such an order.
"But..." she began to blust
er.
I interrupted her. "But nothing. I will come down and help when I can. Not before."
She scowled at me and huffed. "If he gets mad at you, don't blame me."
I laughed. My husbands, all but Calun, had notoriously bad tempers when the situation called for it. But I had never been fazed by them. Where another person might fear violence, I did not. In fact, I was the one more likely to exact retribution when aroused. I hated that I did it and felt awful afterward, but when I lost my temper things happened. Husbands ended up on their backs, the earth opened up and swallowed people.
One of the justifications made for castrating magical daughters was their inability to control their magic because of their volatile natures. I sometimes feared they were right. But Jaron told me that I was just learning how to manage my magic, and even sons would struggle with it at first. It had only been four mooncycles since I started using mine, and it seemed to be growing at a phenomenal rate. Faster than I could manage, if I was honest.
"I won't blame you," I told her as I turned from her annoyed stare to flounce inside. I was behaving immaturely, I knew it. But Flea had a way of bringing out the petulant child in me.
What had amused me when I first met her, was beginning to rub on me now. Flea believed a girl could do anything a boy could do, and yet she looked down on women as inferior, and put men on pedestals. We females were all indoctrinated to believe we were not as valuable or important as men. It was shocking when that belief was threatened, and it took time to readjust. So I understood what the girl was dealing with. But Flea's way of vying for my husbands' attentions, even in small matters, annoyed me.
I would have made a terrible harem wife, I decided absently, as I waited just another minute before opening the door again and heading down to the paddocks.
