“His is posh.” The man pointed toward the opposite side of the island. “Kind of like every boy’s fantasy. He built it out of logs, and there are all these platforms and rope bridges, but it’s not as rustic as it sounds. It’s got all kinds of luxurious things in it from his plunders. Almost like a palace now. I got to see it once when I was doing deliveries for Yoro. It’s five levels like this.” He gestured with his hands, stacking them in the air. “I only got to see the bottom, where the deliveries go, but I hear it’s all real nice. Some of the boys around town are always talking about plundering Neaminor.” He laughed. “But not real seriously. Not with the witch. And he’s no slouch, either. He got a magic sword of his own. It’s what convinced the dragon to leave, I hear. They say it glowed all green when they battled, and he could cut into the dragon with it when nothing else could.”
Rysha’s detached intellectual side marveled that Kaika was getting all this information when she wasn’t even asking any questions. But her emotional side had trouble studying the technique, since she couldn’t stop worrying about the hand on her thigh, the hand that kept trying to shove her skirt higher. She was holding it down with her other hand, but the pirate seemed to like a challenge.
“Why don’t you come over here,” he murmured to her, his gaze on her breasts again. He’d checked out of the other conversation, perhaps not interested in the details of that fortress. Kaika, without asking, was somehow extracting more information on the layout and where deliveries went.
“I’m not interested in you,” Rysha told the man, looking him in the face and trying to be blunt. But he wasn’t looking at her face.
“If that was true, you wouldn’t have sat down so close.” He smiled, his nails digging into her inner thigh and trying to tug her leg closer. To tug her closer. “Come here.”
Rysha made herself a brick. She’d had enough of his groping, and that palm-strike fantasy was swelling in her imagination. The only reason she hadn’t enacted it yet was that she didn’t want to ruin Kaika’s information gathering.
But his hand traveled higher up her thigh, and he pinched her. Hard.
She couldn’t hold back any longer. She snarled and launched her palm strike so hard and fast that he didn’t have a chance to defend himself. He surely hadn’t expected it.
His head snapped sideways, and his hand finally left her thigh. He balled it into a fist and lunged out of his seat, snarling, “You bitch!”
He swung at her, but Rysha was up by then, too, and she swept her arm out in a block, knocking the attack aside. She threw another palm strike, this time at his exposed sternum. She rotated, turning her hip into the thrust, and the adrenaline surging through her veins gave her more power than usual. He stumbled backward, tripping over his chair, and fell against the railing. The wood gave way with a snap, and he fell through the railing and into the sand below.
Kaika gaped at Rysha in surprise. Her man stood to stare over the side and down at his buddy.
The front door slammed open, and a woman in an apron came out, carrying a broom.
“All of you, out,” she barked. “We’ll have no troublemakers here.”
“Does that mean we can’t order breakfast?” Blazer asked, standing up.
“Out!” The woman swatted at Kaika with her broom.
Kaika dodged the weak attack, and she, Blazer, and Rysha hurried from the porch.
As they headed down the road, Rysha looked at the fallen man, worried he would chase after her and retaliate. He had found his feet. But he was yelling back at the woman in the apron, who seemed to believe he should pay for the broken rail.
Rysha hurried to get out of his view, but neither Kaika nor Blazer was hurrying, so she reluctantly slowed down to match their pace. They were looking toward other eating establishments.
Thinking of trying it all again? Rysha couldn’t hold back a groan.
She didn’t realize the noise came out so loudly until Kaika looked over at her.
“I’m sorry I messed up your intel gathering, ma’am,” Rysha said, now feeling that she had overreacted. Weren’t female spies supposed to let themselves get groped? Or even sleep with people? That’s what seduction led to, wasn’t it? So what if he had pulled her into his lap and she had been forced to sit on his happy stick?
“I’m not,” Blazer said, eyes glinting. “That was beautiful.”
“Major,” Kaika said, sounding somewhere between amused and exasperated.
Blazer patted Rysha on the shoulder. “If the elite troops assignment doesn’t work out, you come on over to Wolf Squadron. We’ll train you up as a pilot. All you have to do to pirates with us is shoot them.”
“She’s going to work out,” Kaika growled. “Keep your pilot mittens off her.”
Blazer lifted her hands, but she was still smiling as she ambled ahead of them, once again watching their surroundings for trouble. A few more pirates were out now, a few more interested parties eyeing the group of women.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Rysha told Kaika again, certain that Kaika had been letting her man grope her under the table. And it had worked. He’d spilled all that information about the fort, all unasked for. “I know I volunteered to dress this way. I thought I could do it, gather information by being… appealing. But I’m not appealing, ma’am. When I imagined going on spy missions, it always involved getting in and gathering intel by being underestimated and ignored as a wallflower.”
“I think you’d have a harder time being a wallflower than you imagine,” Kaika said dryly. “But you should go with your strengths. The quickest way to being discovered is by pretending to be something you’re not.”
“Don’t spies have to pretend to be something they’re not?”
Kaika chuckled. “I’m not talking about the surface stuff. Don’t try to change your personality on a mission.”
“But don’t you have to… I mean, as a spy, isn’t it expected—Captain, I don’t know if I can learn to be comfortable getting pawed over to get information.”
“Relax, Ravy,” Kaika said. “That’s not in the job description.”
Rysha looked at her.
“My commanders have certainly found my lack of certain inhibitions useful over the years,” Kaika went on, “but that’s not what the elite troops is all about. You think Colonel Therrik gets sent out to seduce people?”
“I haven’t met Colonel Therrik.”
“If you have an option, don’t. Most of the missions are incursion and combat-related. The people who go undercover have a knack for it, but there’s plenty to be done if you don’t. We’ve got lots of men who are strategists, others who are just muscle.” Kaika flexed her biceps and winked. “Both of which I think you’ll have a knack for. And both of which,” she added, her humor fading, “we’ll likely need tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“When we infiltrate the fortress and deal with a legendary pirate and his sorceress.”
15
“Are they the odd duo, or are we?” Leftie asked, watching Duck and Dreyak head down the docks to find a place to cut through the city and into the wilderness.
Trip looked at his friend’s pink shirt. It was more of a blouse with poofy sleeves that billowed when the breeze kicked up. “I think we’d have to put that to a vote. Let the squadron decide.”
“I’m not sure that vote would come down in our favor.”
“Perhaps not.”
Trip sat on the railing of their purloined airship, keeping an eye out in case trouble headed their way. On an island chain run by pirates, it seemed inevitable.
“If I take the shirt off, I’m back to normal,” Leftie said. “If you take your shirt off, you’re still talking to a sword.”
“We’re not talking currently. And you’re not normal, shirted or shirtless.”
“As if you’d know.”
“Like recognizes like.”
Leftie grunted and swung himself up onto the railing, dangling his legs over the side. Trip watched him warily, hopi
ng he wouldn’t take this private moment to point out how much oddness truly had been revolving around Trip in the last week.
Had Leftie had time to wonder how the squadron had truly taken down that dragon? Trip still wasn’t sure he believed he’d done something, but he also didn’t have another explanation for it.
“I feel it’s a little unmanly to be sitting here, polishing the railing with our butts, while the women go out among the pirates,” Leftie said.
“Then I guess you don’t want to hear my suggestion that we wash the windows on the wheelhouse and tidy up all the wood chips stuck between the deck boards after our carpentry projects.”
“Wash? Tidy? Trip, we became officers so we wouldn’t have to do those things.”
“True, but we’re the lowest-ranking officers along, and there are no privates to foist the menial tasks onto.”
“Damn, you’re right. No, wait. Ravenwood is only a few months out of the academy. That means I have seniority on her. We can make her clean. Preferably while wearing her pirate costume.” Leftie grinned at him.
Trip didn’t grin back. He didn’t want to say anything disrespectful and didn’t want Leftie to say anything disrespectful. Even more, he didn’t want Leftie fantasizing about her.
Leftie grunted in disgust when he didn’t respond to the joke. “You’re too serious, Trip.”
“They’re our fellow officers. I don’t think you should say anything about them that you wouldn’t say about General Zirkander. Or Duck.”
“I doubt anybody wants to see Duck cleaning while in a pirate costume. Zirkander, I don’t know. My mom has a newspaper article about him on the ice box. A close-up of his face.”
Trip felt a familiar twinge of envy, the one that came up whenever other people talked about their parents. He was glad he had Grandma and Grandpa, and was grateful they had been there to raise him, but he still missed his mother. More, there were so many questions he wished he’d had a chance to ask her. To start with, who was his father? Someone she had known well and loved? A random fling in a port city? Was he still alive? Could Trip find him someday? Would his father know all about magic, and would he have any interest in teaching Trip? Or an interest in him in general? Did he even know Trip existed, or had his mother gone back to Iskandia without ever telling him she was pregnant?
“That looks like trouble.” Leftie jerked a thumb toward the dock.
Four burly thugs in dark clothing were heading their way, all bearing rifles as well as pistols and cutlasses at their waists.
“Is there such a thing as a police force here?” Leftie added.
Those are the toll collectors, Jaxi told Trip.
The soulblade dangled from his waist in its scabbard. Ever since going to that bar without Jaxi, he’d been loath to lean the sword out of the way somewhere. He wondered if Sardelle took it with her to bed.
Ridge would object to that. My scabbard goes on a stand by the front door of the house. I’m like a guard dog, ready to bite any intruders that try to break in. Except I’d be far more likely to fry their balls off than bite anything.
What if the intruders are women?
Women have parts that can be fried too.
“It sounds like they’re coming to collect a docking fee,” Trip said, deciding not to share any of the other dubious information Jaxi was sharing.
“Sounds like?” Leftie’s lips twisted as he looked at the soulblade.
“Maybe I can start asking her to direct her messages to you so you won’t feel left out.”
“No, thanks. That’s super creepy. All this magic stuff is. I can’t believe you’re so blasé about it.”
“So far, having Jaxi along has been an advantage,” Trip said, shifting to his feet since the “toll collectors” were definitely heading to their ship. “I have no problem with magic that’s on our side.”
“And what happens when you encounter some that isn’t? There’s a reason normal people rose up and started killing witches hundreds of years ago. They thought they were better than everyone else and wanted to enslave us, the same way the dragons want to today.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
“It’s in the history books, Trip. Didn’t you ever pick up anything except technical manuals at the university?”
“Not if I could help it.”
There were some rogue sorcerers a few hundred years ago that unfortunately made things difficult for the rest of the Referatu, Jaxi said as Trip walked to the gangplank. Most of us were loyal subjects who wanted to serve the king and our country. Sardelle used to go out with the army and navy, healing soldiers.
I believe you.
Perhaps you could convince your buddy.
I don’t want to talk about it with him. I’m afraid I’d lose a friend if he knew that I have… a sixth sense.
You could have a lot more than that if you wanted, Jaxi said. And he can’t be much of a friend if you would lose him over that.
He’s watched out for me a lot of times. He’s a good friend. Just superstitious. Trip occasionally wondered if something had happened to Leftie to make him so, or if it was just due to his upbringing.
“How much is the docking fee?” Trip asked as the men turned up their gangplank. He walked down it, hoping to deter them from coming aboard. The tarps covering the gleaming Iskandian fliers couldn’t hide their suspicious size or lumpiness. Trip couldn’t think of anything else that large that he could claim was under them.
“Fifty Cofah karvots,” one said, propping a meaty fist on his hip. “For most ships. But you didn’t come to the office and fill out a deposit envelope with your money as soon as you landed, so there’s a late fee. Now it’s two hundred karvots.”
“That’s quite a late fee,” Trip choked out, trying to guess what the exchange rate was between karvots and Iskandian nucros. “I have a hard time believing your typical clientele trots up to an office with a fist full of karvots for a deposit box.”
“Believe what you want while you hand over the money.”
“We’ve been pillaging in Iskandia of late. What’s the fee in nucros?”
“Iskandian money.” The man sneered and looked at his comrades.
It was somewhat deflating to realize that his country’s money wasn’t as greatly desired as the empire’s, even though these islands were much closer to Iskandia.
“Five hundred nucros, then.”
Floored, Trip looked at Leftie. That couldn’t possibly be the going rate. They could have fed and housed a whole flier squadron for a month on that. He didn’t believe anyone else was paying that much. Maybe he and Leftie looked young, so these thugs meant to swindle them.
Leftie only shrugged back, as if to say, “You’re the one who got promoted, so you’re in charge.”
“We’re only staying for a day,” Trip told the men, who had sauntered farther up the gangplank. The leader was eyeing the soulblade scabbard. “I’ll get you a hundred nucros.”
“Not enough, runt.” The leader pointed at the sword. “We’ll take that blade as payment for your fee.”
An indignant surge of emotion came from Jaxi. Trip hadn’t realized she could project feelings as well as words, but he agreed with the sentiment.
“The sword’s not for sale,” he said.
“Then you better cough up my five hundred, or we’re coming aboard to look for it ourselves.”
“Maybe we can just leave,” Leftie offered, sidling closer, his hand resting on his pistol. “Figure out a way to pick up the others later.”
“You’ve already been using that docking space for hours,” the thug said. “You don’t get to leave without paying. Five hundred.”
“Just take the sword,” one in the back said, slapping his rifle in his palm.
Jaxi? Trip thought. How would Sardelle deal with this?
She likes to give men like these genital rashes.
Uh, what? That was so far from the answer Trip had expected that it stunned him. He wasn’t ready when the men charged.
/> Fortunately, Jaxi was. An invisible barrier flared to life around him, and the lead thugs bounced back.
I must warn you, Jaxi told him, that my methods of dealing with people are less subtle.
That’s all right. Trip drew the soulblade and looked sternly at the startled men. Pilots aren’t subtle people.
Oh, I know that, but I mean that a trained sorcerer might sense me using my magic. I do tend to be spectacular and noticeable, even when I’m not trying.
The men murmured to each other on the gangplank, eyeing Trip and eyeing the spectacular soulblade. Jaxi wasn’t glowing or throbbing or doing anything obviously magical yet, but if they were familiar with sorceresses and magical swords, maybe they had their suspicions about the origins of that barrier.
“Go get a hundred nucros, Leftie,” Trip said. “We’ll give it to them and fly away as soon as our people return. Sound reasonable, gentlemen?”
He lifted the soulblade, and this time, Jaxi flared with a bright golden light, as if to remove all doubt from the men’s minds that she was magical.
A little dramatic flair doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to intimidate people, Jaxi said.
One of the men in the back waved vigorously toward an office on the waterfront. Trip hoped that wasn’t the signal for reinforcements.
“Just get him,” the other man in back said, nudging the two in front of him.
“He’s got a sword.”
“We’ve got guns.”
“They don’t glow.”
“Shit, we’ll get you some special paint if you need that.” The man nudged his comrade again.
Trip didn’t think any of them would have come forward, but the door to that office flew open, and unexpected objects flew out. The sun glinted off their metallic surfaces.
At first, Trip thought them some kind of miniature fliers, but they had butterfly-like wings instead of horizontal bi-wings.
They’re a mix of magical and mechanical constructs, Jaxi said.
Oh? Trip couldn’t help but look toward them. Is that a thing you can do? Mixing the magical with the mechanical to invent new things? And if so, where did he find a course where he could study that?