Chapter 78: Chapter 78 – Decompression After Something of a Scene

“... and then I ate some more food, took a shower, and left Keyhome.” I deliver the words to the floor, eyes closed and head tilted down, Amber’s clever fingers at work in my braid. I can hear her occasional murmur of contentment as Zidanya does the same for her in turn, though given that her usual bun-under-helmet look is simpler enough to have long since been completed, I figure that’s mostly flirtation at this point. “Any further questions?”

“Fell asleep to thinking of Lily, did you, my lord?” Amber’s voice is, I think, trying to be stern, as are her fingers as they pull a little bit harder at the plait, but I know better. “Thoughts sliding from your Reca to Lady Sheid?”

“Seems that way.” I give it a nonchalant air. “Wouldn’t care to speculate as to why.”

“There remain but two question to my mind, though belike I might ask another, depending. Didst dream of her, for the first, and for the second…” Zidanya’s voice trails off suggestively for a moment. “Took you your pleasure in the thought of her?”

“Are you asking,” I say somewhat incredulously, “whether I masturbated to the thought of our overwhelmingly, overpoweringly attractive hostess?” I try to give it three beats, at least, but my snickering escapes me before I even get to two. “No, I was literally too tired. And I don’t know if I dreamed of her; like I said, I can’t remember any of my dreams. Only that I had them, and that they were nightmarish, and some of the themes.”

“Like as not she left neither mark nor seed, then.” Zidanya’s voice is contemplative. “Odd. She has in her a yen for the return stroke; to have you simmer, and find your way to her side of what you think is your own accord.”

“Perhaps she thinks it unnecessary.” I can hear Amber’s smirk. “My lord was as a flower to the sun, sitting as a pet upon the throne.”

“Honestly,” I say, grinning, “as easy as I am, I’m also spectacularly easy to, mmmmrrrrr.” My voice cuts out for a moment. “That feels good. Derail. This is good, I needed this.” Amber ties off the end of the braid, this time without incorporating any Motes as ornamentation since the element of surprise is gone, and tugs my head back up. Her fingers knead my scalp and temple, and I make another vaguely purr-like sound in hopes of providing positive reinforcement. “Anyway, if I do go drooling after Lily, which would be a terrible idea, you have my permission to stop me by whatever means you feel best.”

“That,” Zidanya says in a contemplative tone, “is some manner of offer. What think you, Dame Ashborn? Ropes, should the time come? Chains?” Her voice drops a register, marred only by Amber’s laughter. “A leash, or manacles?”

“Zanya, dear Zanya. Neither of us needs anything more than a word and the crook of a finger.”

My face is scarlet, and not just because of their laughter; I’d say something in protest, but Amber’s thumbs have moved down to the muscles of my shoulders and neck, and her legs are pressing in on my sides in an unmistakable hug, so words are currently being set aside in favor of agonized noises as those thumbs expunge the tension that built up over the night.

Besides, this, all of this, is nice. Really nice.

“So, Sara’s still out?”

“Went to a library various discussions had mentioned, in company with some other mage-types.” Amber’s voice and her hands pause on my back as she hisses, and then she resumes; by the sounds of it, Zidanya found a knot of soreness to work on to rival my own. “I spoke with Maarah on your behalf. She was only slightly discomfited, and I explained to her the lack of understanding that led to your… abruptness.”

“We oughta… make a deal with her. For gear. Do business, make nice.” I crack my neck left and then right under Amber’s hands, feeling the crunching and popping. There’s no actual relief, but it always feels like there should be, so I keep doing it. “You, though, Amber. Zidanya’d pick a fight, I’d get all…”

“All what, Magelord?”

“Mmmrrr.” I don’t bother saying anything for a while, the three of us laughing together. It’s cozy, it’s intimate, and it’s an act of will to bring up the question that’s been on my mind for a while when all I want to do is turn around and pull myself up onto Amber’s lap. “I have a question I should ask.”

“You were right not to take her offer, I think.” Amber’s hands pause for a moment. “Short with her as you were, better that than to risk any ill-will among us.”

“Okay, I have two questions.” I hadn’t even thought about whether it was right not to take Maarah’s offer; it had seemed blazingly, obviously a mistake, for a completely different reason than what Amber offered. I wasn’t about to make Maarah a slave to my purpose, and I can’t offer her the less-constraining bindings without going through a Kazir-blessed pylon. “What happened with Lily? With your, uh, audience after the hour?”

“Of my torment, she made a public spectacle.”

My feet try to surge me upwards, and my body tries to twist around. All that happens is that Amber’s hands and legs tighten minutely, and I might as well have been trying to bend steel. “What?”

“She made sport of me with a void needle she said she had the knowledge of from your use of it against her.” Zidanya’s voice is weirdly cheerful, and Amber lets me crane my neck around to look at her. She’s smiling, smiling like she’s going to drift away; it’s a smile I’ve seen on her face once before. “Lady Sheid is an artist with that needle.”

“Oh.” I blink a few times. “A public spectacle?”

“It was needful; must not defiance be punished? Look you here, what designs she had upon my body.”

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My jaw drops when she shrugs out of the enormous, enormously fluffy bathrobe she’s wearing. The patterns of violet and red and black run across most of her body, from the spirals around her legs and arms to the dense cross-hatching at her inner thighs, breasts, and… itinerant fortune, her lips and eyelids?

“Stars.” I don’t know what to say to that. “I’m… stars, I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t my intention to make you take responsibility for something stupid I did.”

“My lord.” Amber’s smirking and shaking her head.

Oh. Of course. The knot in my shoulder that’s re-developed despite Amber’s touch loosens again in relief. “I’m… not sorry about that?”

“See how the Paladin mocks the truth of my agony!” Zidanya flops backwards into the robe, waving her hands around. “No scream must have passed her ears, nor vision her eyes!”

“Zanya,” Amber says to me in an unquiet stage-whisper, “needed her brains screwed back into her head at length.”

“How extremely gracious of you to oblige her,” I say by way of somewhat snarky reflex, as I process that. There’s a fair bit of snickering from both of them, and I lean my head against Amber’s knee, grinning. I raise my head again to watch Zidanya belting the bathrobe on; the coloration is a work of art, and everything related to that is just… too much to think about seriously, especially if they’re making jokes about it. “So what’s the plan? For the day, that is. I don’t even know what time it is, or what’s going on.”

“Late in the first shift, which is as close to morning as the Tournament sees. Today begins the mass melee.” Amber’s hand is plucking at her gauntlet idly. “Began, now. The second group, or perhaps the third, is proceeding.”

“Huh.” I realize I have my arms wrapped around the lower leg whose knee my head rests on, and I hug it almost out of idle habit before releasing it and standing up to stretch. Amber lets me go; her fingers have been idle, distracted by something. “Two days of that, right, and then a day with nothing much? Anyone we know competing?”

“Our old friends,” Amber says with a smile. “Victorious in the first group, the two of them, with five of their friends and three strangers.”

“Our old… oh!” I break into a grin. “What’s her name, who broke my sternum while also throwing the fight!”

“Clan Berger; Starbreaker and Surefoot.”

“Whom,” I say, stretching and trying to remember the line, “the winds and storm broke on for a millenium, who reached into the air with their bones in the flames below?”

“Close. Sky, not air; there’s a true difference.”

“Well, I’m starting to get hungry. Maybe we can meet up with them for… lunch? Are there places we can get lunch? Is there… is there some sort of medium of exchange, a currency? We didn’t have one of those where I was from, not one relevant to, like, food. Oh! I should probably, like, get dressed.”

“If you must.”

“Perhaps the Magelord’s closet contains something appropriate.” There’s a look in Zidanya’s eyes that, given that she’s talking about my clothes…

“Did you take all of the regular clothes out and leave me with only the leggings?”

“Technically,” Amber says with an almost perfectly straight face, “I believe them to be footless tights.”

“Really?” I blink at her, forgetting that I’m supposed to be annoyed. “I thought the foot thing is, like, definitional.”

“Ah, my lord, you have much to learn on the subject of fashion.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I wave a hand at the two of them as I start walking over to the bedrooms. “You two can figure out how we can get a message to the Bergers while I find pants and, oh yeah, underpants. And don’t forget,” I call over my shoulder, through their snickering, “to figure out if we need money!”

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