Terrible Company - Chapter 14 - Part 3

Chapter 14 - Part 3

Ivy suddenly blinked and looked around.

"What's wrong?"

"I sensed something," the bard said, her eyes unfocused in the distance..  "As if millions of voices cried out, and then suddenly fist-pumped.  I feel something... terrible has happened."

Katsa folded her arms and turned toward the big orc.  "Do you think she means terrible like everyone in the world means when they say terrible, or do you think she means terrible like she thinks it sometimes means something good?"

"What are you asking me for?  She's standing right there."

Katsa rolled her eyes with untold fury and kicked a rock with the tip of her heeled boot.  "How much longer are we going to wait for them?"

"They're coming," Ivy said loudly.

Val and Katsa turned, looking in every direction.  "They are?"

"They who?" Ivy asked.

"Mathilda and Ayen," the orc grumbled.

"What about them?"

Katsa's face was marked with apoplectic rage, but Val stepped between her and the bard before she could unleash it.  Thick green fingers wrapped around her throat, and the arcanists eyes went wide.

"I love it when you act like such a bitch," Val whispered softly, right into her ear, "because it reminds me that you're my bitch."

"Here she comes," Ivy said.

Val turned away, and Katsa was grateful to be able to have her hategasm go unnoticed.  She both loathed and loved how well the orc knew her, and her expression was under control by the time Val looked back.

"And there's Ayen too!"

"Where the hell have you two been?" Val barked.

"Oh, Ah didn' realize i' was yer turn ta keep tabs on us!"

Val narrowed her eyes, but the dwarf continued to march toward her unafraid.  

"I think we figured out why your Beer God sent us here."

"Liquor, Ale, Beer, an' Spirits," Mathilda said, counting off loudly on her fingers.

Val narrowed her eyes again and sniffed at the air.  And then sniffed again.

"Ge' on with i'," the healer growled, "unless yer big revelation involves standin' around an' wastin' my time."

"Look around," Katsa said, stepping up next to Val.  "What don't you see."

"Purple alliga'ors," Mathilda said.

"Long-necked geese," Ayen added.

"Some 'umpty backed camels, and-"

"Temples," Val interjected, more harshly than she needed to.  "There's no temples."

Mathilda blinked and turned around.  "None?"

"None," Katsa said.

"Well wha' the'ell d'they worship?"

Val nodded behind them.  "C'mon.  We'll show you."

"Now I've got that song stuck in my head," Ayen grumbled.

---

Terrible Company marched, as much as they ever really march which is to say not, across the main road in town and down a side road.  Many of the buildings had billowing white decorations.  Every home, and at least half of the businesses.  Quite a few decorations were being erected and installed as they walked by.  There was a gazebo, near the center of town, surrounded by a sea of cotton puffs so vast that it engulfed the green they'd seen when they'd arrived hours earlier. But that was not the main attraction.

All of them saw it coming as they walked, between and above the buildings.  Objects were floating through the air; some traveling up while others traveled down.  As they rounded a low home at the end of the dirt side street, they saw the stone circle that was the beginning and end of both paths.  A old man stood in the circle as they approached, staring upward at a chicken that was descending toward him.  There was a line behind him, outside the edge of the circle.  The serving girl, second in line, gave them all sour looks as she stood there with the table she'd so recently brought for them.

"Where is all that crap going?"

Val turned toward them, with a dramatic flourish, and said, "The Cloud."

"The Cloud," an elderly man repeated reverently, as he passed them with a garden hoe under his arm.

" 'ow d'ye pu' something in a cloud?"

Val shook her head.  "You can barely see it, but apparently there's a mountain over there."

Mathilda and Ayen both leaned and squinted at a low rise that disappeared quickly in the overcast sky.

"From what we're told it's all really going in some cave way up on the mountainside, but they all treat this cloud like it's magic."  Val looked at the people lined up and grumbled.  "Apparently, we're just in time for some big shindig where they all get together and celebrate how great it is."

The healer and the thief stared up in stupefied incredulity as an assortment of objects rose into the air or came down from it.  Animal, vegetable, and mineral.  For the home and for work.  In every color of the rainbow.  Even though they'd already seen it, Val, Ivy and Katsa were only slightly less dumbfounded by the ongoing spectacle.  They watched for minutes on end.

"Some of that," Katsa said eventually, pointing into the air, "is just standard arcane stuff.  There's an air wheel, and that's... well I'm not really sure what that is.  The items are all sitting on little platforms of air, and then the platforms are what's doing the floating.  I just can't see what's making it all go like that."

"Ah can," Mathilda said softly.

Val frowned and unfolded her arms.  "This all looks way outside of Rhogan's purview."

"S'no' tha' miserable bastard," she said, shaking her head.  "I's some o'her miserable bastard.  I's divine."

"What's divine?" Katsa asked.  "The Cloud?"

"The Cloud," echoed a pair of young girls as they skipped past with matching dolls.

"Is someone going to do that every time?" the arcanist shrieked.  "It's creepy!"

"All Ah'm sayin is there's a ligh' up there an' i's no' natural."

Katsa, Ayen, Ivy, and Val looked up as one.

"I don't see a light," Ivy said.  "All I see is The Cloud."

"The Cloud," mimicked the serving girl as she stalked back to her tavern, though when she said it there was slightly less awe.

"Could we all just stop saying the C-word," Katsa said.  "Please?"

One by one, the members of Terrible Company gave a thumbs up, and Ivy marked the motion as having passed unanimously and unopposed.

"Okay," Ayen said.  "We came, we saw.  We..."  He looked around and shrugged, leaving the quote unfinished.

"We should ask her," Ivy said, pointing to a young woman standing on the far side of the stone circle.  She had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, and her eyes were bloodshot.  The bard promptly started off, and the warrior, healer, and thief were right behind her.

"So now we just do whatever she says?" Katsa whined.  "Without question?"

---

Mathilda grinned smugly as she grabbed Val's wrist and hauled the big orc up the last few steps.  "Ah told ye so," she said.

As soon as they were on flat ground again, Ayen climbed down from her back with a sickened expression.  "Yes," he groaned.  "My legs were tired!  Congratulations!"

"Ah told ye so."

"It was really annoying to have you point that out every twenty feet," Val grumbled.  The orc stretched and twisted, and then went back to the edge to help Ivy and Katsa finish their climb.

"Tha' was th' price 'e paid fer a free ride up th' mountain."

"Whoa," Ivy said, as she came up into the cave and looked back.  The C-word was still too thick to see through, even a few thousand feet higher into the air, so very little of the path they'd taken up the mountainside was visible.  More objects appeared out of the C-word and floated into the cave while others moved toward them as if on rails.  "Neat!"

Katsa immediately stopped nodding in agreement when Val looked at her, and began sulking.  "What?" she hissed defensively.

"Is there more God stuff going on up here?" the Thief asked.

"Aye," Mathilda said, nodding.  "Li'le bits 'ere an' there."

"I've heard ghost stories of Arcane spells being put into permanence," Katsa said, "but nothing on this scale."

The cave was enormous, expanding outward beyond sight.  Objects were piled everywhere, and though it at first looked like the biggest dump any of them had ever seen, some semblances of order began to present themselves.  It wasn't all one big pile, but hundreds and hundreds of small piles.  They watched as a rolling pin seemingly dredged itself up from the bottom of a heap of women's clothes and hurtled through the air toward the mouth of the cave.

"Can I help you?!"

Everyone turned, with varying degrees of surprise, at the resonant voice.  The man was tall, if not quite so tall as Val.  His long white hair and beard flowed in the light breeze that seemed to permanently flow through the cave.  Great bushy eyebrows highlighted sharp eyes.  Val and Mathilda stepped forward while the others moved behind them, adopting a fairly standard formation for Terrible Company.

"We're... um..."  Val cleared her throat harshly.  "We're looking for a... a boy?"

"Ticket number?!"

Val turned around, looking nervously at the others.  "She... we didn't..."

Katsa looked back and forth between the Orc and the Dwarf.  Val was sweating bullets, and the others looked little better.

"We don't have that?"

"Then I don't know how I can help you," the man said simply.  He came to a stop in front of them, and even Mathilda felt compelled to take a half step back.  "I have too many objects in storage to bother keeping track of any one thing."

"Yeah, but-"  Katsa cut off when the man turned his attention toward her, and swallowed hard.  "It-it's a boy.  How many boys could you possibly have?"

"Sometimes none," he said, shrugging slightly.  "Sometimes dozens."

"Dozens?"

"Oh absolutely!  The Cloud provides universal all-purpose storage, up to and including 8 square feet, for free.  Extra space is allotted for a small fee."

"And they can jus' put' wha'ever they wan' inta tha' space as long as i' fits?"

"As long as it fits," he said simply. Mathilda shivered.  "I'm hoping to get that base free amount up to three square yards per SHEEP."

"Sheep?" Val snickered.

"Shared High-Efficiency Entrepot Patrons."

"That's a fancy word for warehouse," Ivy whispered.  Katsa shot her a dirty look that Ivy seemed oblivious too.

"You call the people who put things up here 'sheep'?"

"I forget I can't tell people that," the man said, rolling his eyes.  "That was the working name I gave them, but the... people down there objected to the term.  I had to bring in an image consultant when I was trying to get out of the beta phase.  It was a whole thing."  He flexed his hands and smiled.  "Let's try that again.  Three square yards per Patron."

"Ah be' they like tha' be'er."

"Why wouldn't they?  It's an extra foot in every direction."

Mathilda dug her thumb into her brow and sighed as the Arcanist cleared her throat again.  

"Can we look around?"

"Why?"

"The boy's mother is frantic."

"What boy?"

"Some boy that's up here somewhere," Katsa said impatiently.

"Ticket number?"

Terrible Company gave a collective groan.

"What about a SHEEP number?"  Then he shook his head and added,  "Sorry.  Account number?"

Another groan, and a few of them shook their heads.

"Very well.  Let's have a look."  The man half-turned and paused.  "Pardon my manners.  It's been so long since anyone came up here of their own accord.  I am the Wizard of the Mountain."

The Wizard turned and walked away before Terrible Company could ask any further questions, or introduce themselves, and they had to hustle to keep up with him.  Ivy bent low as she walked, testing the structural integrity of her blouse more strenuously than ever before.

"He's floating," Ivy whispered, upon standing up and leaning toward Katsa.  "He's walking an inch above the ground."

"He can also hear you," Katsa whispered back.  Ivy nodded in understanding, and ran the tips of two pinched fingers over her lips to signify them as 'zipped' per article 8 section 4 of the Terrible Company bylaws.

The five of them followed the Wizard in varying degrees of awe.  The further they went, the more the cave opened up .  Katsa noticed two vertical shafts, with objects coming up from one and going down the other, and she shook her head.

"How many floors are there?" Val asked.

"Four main levels and two sub-levels."

"And they're all this big?"  

Katsa looked around, seeing nothing that looked like a wall in any direction save the one they came from.

"The sub-levels aren't quite finished yet, but eventually I should be able to hollow them out the rest of the way.  There's room to have eight levels without bringing the mountain down on myself."

" 'ang on," the Dwarf said, as she came to a stop.  "Even if we spli' up, it'd take days t'look through 'ere."

"Mr. of the Mountain?" Ivy said timidly.  "Is there any reason something might not go back down the mountainside, even if it's being recalled and everything is working perfectly?"

The Wizard turned back around to them, and for just a moment his eyes flickered.  "Oh," he said, eyes opening wider.  "Right.  This way."

---

"Here we are," the Wizard said, as they rounded a corner.  "I suspect we have found our 'boy'."

Val held out her arm, barring the others from reacting as the Wizard came to a stop in front of them.  There, at the end of what seemed to all of them like the hundredth identical row of piles and piles of stuff, was a young boy sitting frustratedly on a stool in an area delineated with yellow and black striped tape.  On the wall behind him, in great big letters, read 'Time Out'.

"What am I even looking at?" Katsa whined.

"Young Ashton here didn't think the rules applied to him."

"Ohhh," Ivy said, nodding slowly.  "Yeah.  Bard Rule number 1."

"See?" the Wizard said.  "She gets it."

The Bard brought her arms up over her breasts and folded them in disapproval.  The boy finally noticed them, but did nothing as he sat glumly.

"What did 'e do?"

"He broke the rules," the Wizard said simply.

"Yeah, bu' which one?"

"Does it matter?" Ivy asked loudly.

"Ah..."  Mathilda blinked in consternation.  "Ah guess no'?"

The redhead frowned, muttering under her breath about the audacity of youth.

The Arcanist cleared her throat, knowing even as she spoke up that she would likely regret it.  "Are these rules posted somewhere?"

The Wizard pointed, without looking, to his right where a large sign hung from the ceiling.  It was a sign Katsa had seen duplicated elsewhere in the building but not really paid attention to.  She squinted, trying to discern the tiny lettering from a distance, and then looked over at the boy whose age she guessed was no more than five.  "Can he even read?"

When no one answered after a few seconds, the Wizard looked around.  "Were you asking me?"

"Yes."

"I have no idea.  He's not my child."

"Well don't you think it's a little harsh to punish a kid for rules he can't understand?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," Ivy said, straightening and turning slightly, "for the sake of our friendship."

"None of that matters now," Val said, stepping in.  "We're going to take him back down to his mother, alright?"

The Wizard's eyes flashed with an unearthly glow.  "His punishment is to continue for another four hours, nineteen minutes, and thirty seven seconds."

"Come on.  His mother is losing her-"  

Val took a half-step forward as she talked, conversationally, and the Wizard struck so quickly and so casually that Katsa barely registered it happening in front of her.  It seemed like all the old man did was wave his arm in dismissal of Val's continued-but-muted belligerence, but there was a flare along the length of his arm and suddenly the big Orc was tumbling backwards through the air.

Ayen immediately tried throwing one of his knives, but it flew well wide of its intended target.  He swallowed hard as the Wizard turned to him, but before the old man could respond in kind, Mathilda launched herself forward.  Swinging her big hammer like it weighed nothing.  The heavy iron head struck a solid, invisible barrier around the Wizard, ringing like a gong, and before the Dwarf could bring it around for another strike the Wizard lashed out.  He sent the Healer tumbling, and she in turn knocked out Ayen with her panicked flailing.

Katsa looked back over her shoulder.  Val was crumpled in front of a support beam, unconscious.  Ayen was moving, but the Dwarf was on top of him and unresponsive.  Katsa raised her arm, rune-embroidered gloves at the ready as always, and shrieked when the Wizard grabbed her by the wrist and lifted her off the ground.

"Is this what they're teaching at the Guild these days?" the Wizard asked, peering at her elbow-length glove.  "Parlor tricks and shortcuts?  This is what passes for an Arcanist anymore?"

Katsa grunted and twisted, the tips of her boots a full six inches off the ground.  She knew Val could lift her like this, but Val was also a walking mountain of muscle.  The Wizard was an old man, if not quite elderly.  He should not have been so strong.  He peered at her, and Katsa felt a terrible chill pass through her.  A feeling of being judged.

"Put her down!" Ivy demanded, planting her feet firmly, "or you will live to regret it!"

"No!" Katsa shouted, but she knew, as she soared through the air after being thrown, that nothing she did or said, and nothing she could have done or said, would have had any impact.  She landed hard on her left shoulder and cried out as she slid.  Her arm badly sprained if it wasn't broken, to say nothing of the bruises.

Ivy stood as the Wizard of the Mountain rose above her, features transfixed in defiance.  She reached into the pile of someone else's stuff and pulled out a ukulele.  The bearded old man scowled at her, but the turn of his lips did nothing to stop her from playing a low C in rapid triplets.  Whatever the Wizard had been expecting her to do, it wasn't that.  Katsa tried to lift herself up, but the pain shooting down her side made her cry out.

Chord.

Chord, chord, chord.

Chord, chord, chord.

Chord, chord, chord.

The Wizard rolled his eyes and sighed, but then flinched.  Katsa groaned as she moved, trying to follow his eyes, and gasped when she saw Mathilda floating into the air.  Her body was still limp, limbs and head slumped as if only suspended by her torso.

"Rising Uuuuuup!  Baaack on the street!"

Mathilda's hair wafted ephemerally, as if caught in a faint breeze, as she rotated in the air to be oriented as if standing.  Her eyes shot open, each emitting a shaft of blazing yellow light that bathed the area around her in warmth.  The brightness was such that Katsa had to shield her face.  The Wizard made no such move to protect himself, and merely stared in detached curiosity over Ivy's head.

"Did my tiiiime!  Took MY chaaaances!"

Mathilda's mouth opened, casting another beam of yellow forward.  The voice, and the sound, that poured from her was as incomprehensible as it was deafening.  A slithering roar, like all the waterfalls in Ephacia gathered together.  Katsa could only lift one arm to cover her ear, and had to settle for mashing the left ear into her shoulder through great pain.  Even then, the vibrations in her skull were so intense as to blur her vision.  Still she forced herself to watch, as much as she was able to, and bore witness to one of the greatest sights she'd ever beheld.

The Wizard, seemingly aware that the power imbalance had shifted against him, took a step backwards, but no small distance at this point would remove him from the attention he had brought upon himself.  He raised his arms, unleashing an assault on Mathilda that Katsa only recognized a small portion of as being Arcane in nature.  The rest of it she could see but not understand, and in the end, none of it fazed Mathilda in the slightest.

The old man despaired at his impotence, but his hubris would not be so easily overcome.  He planted his feet and summoned the full extent of his strength.  The omnipresent light in the cave system blurred and tilted as he directed a torrent of pure energy at the radiant Dwarf but she redirected it into the surrounding stone with no more concern than if she were swatting an annoying bug.  Her counterstroke was not so easily cast aside, and though it happened quickly, only just slightly more than the blink of an eye, Katsa knew she would remember it forever.

"... oooooof the TIIIIIIIIIGER!!!!!"

Mathilda crashed to the floor in a heap.  Ivy stood there, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, looking exceedingly triumphant.  Of the Wizard of the Mountain, there was no trace.  Echoes of the raw power that had so recently surged through the massive room rang out through the cave, and Katsa's retinae burned purple and red.  Shadows of a shadow.

"Did I do it?" Ivy gasped.  "Did I win?"

Katsa groaned loudly as she pushed herself up onto her knees.  Already her shoulder was healing, though she knew it would be much better and less painful if-

"Mathilda," Katsa croaked.  For a few moments there, she'd been so awestruck by the unfolding of events that she'd almost forgotten that was her friend.  "Is she..."

"She's breathing," Ivy said, leaning over the unconscious Dwarf.

"What the hell was that?" the Half-Elf squawked.  He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around in near panic.  "Can anybody explain any part of what the hell just happened?"

Katsa weakly got to her feet and trudged over to the Orc.  It pained her to see the blood running from Val's nose and lip, and it had been a long time since she'd had enough emotion invested in anyone else to register.  The Blonde human dropped to her knees again, almost on purpose, and wrenched a small baggie from a hidden seam in her shoulder and a vial from her left hip.  She quickly mixed the two and fought to get as much of the contents of the vial into Val's mouth.

Val's eyes popped open, and she immediately turned and expectorated vigorously onto the concrete.  "Fugh," she groaned.  "Eugh.  Whah the heww!  Was thah thupposed to help?!"

Katsa tried to pass off her weak, failed smile as a smirk.  "The most that was going to do was wake you up."

"Mithon accomplithed."

"Seriously," Ayen said haggardly.  "What the hell just happened?"

"I did it," Ivy said brightly.  "With song!"

The Arcanist groaned and slid across the floor toward the pile of Dwarf.  "I don't know for sure, and I doubt Mathilda will know any better, but I think we just saw one God kill another one."

"Him?" Ayen asked, turning and pointing, and then losing a few seconds while he tried to figure out where the body was that he wanted to point at.  "He wasn't...  He was just a man."

"Gods get their power from worship.  From prayer.  From belief."

"That's not true," he balked, turning to Val.  "Is it?"

The big Orc scoffed.  "What the hell are you asking me for?"

"They are not immortal, omnipotent beings," Katsa said, distantly.  "They have not existed for all eternity.  I have seen the faces of the Gods, and there is no room at their table.  This right here?  This was a hit."

"Whyyyyyyy don't we circle back around to this creepiness later," Val groaned, as she slowly rose to her feet.  "I have no clue what it was that guy was doing in this cave, and I don't really want to be here to see what happens when he's not around to do it anymore."

Ivy smiled brightly as she rejoined the group, with the boy perched on one of her arms.  Katsa helped Ayen to his feet, and the two of them leaned on each other for support.

The big Orc sighed in resignation as they all stood around the sleeping Mathilda.  "I'm gonna have to carry her, aren't I?"

---

"Ah'm fine," Mathilda roared, as she stumbled and slid down the last few feet of steeply inclined path, though even she had to admit that her balance was shaky at best.

"Let her go."  The Arcanist shook her head and looked up.  Already, much of the C word had dispersed.  She could even see the mountain.

Ivy put the boy down and he ran crying to his mother, but a small crowd of angry townspeople stormed in their direction almost as quickly.  Ayen immediately disappeared.

"What have you done?!" shrieked a heavy-set man in a stained apron.  Others behind him yelled in agreement.  A few were carrying makeshift weapons and torches.  "The Cloud isn't responding!"

Ivy stepped forward, donning her black velvet top hat and clearing her throat.  "Despite great peril and grievous injury to our persons, we have valiantly rescued this boy child."

"Forget the boy," a woman shouted.  "What about the festival?"

"Forget the festival," another one shouted.  "All my stuff is up there!"

"How're we supposed to get it back?" asked a third.  There was a groundswell of support for that question from the assembled mob.

"Those are all negatives," Ivy said calmly.  "Focus on the positives."

"What positives?" the first man cried.

"We rescued the boy!"

"Rescued him from what?!" he roared.

"Time Out."

"What the hell does-"

"I said, Time Out!"  To further make her point, Ivy put the palm of one flattened hand over the fingertips of the other flattened hand and turned them to form a capital T.  "Don't you know what Time Out means?"

Several of the townspeople stammered and stuttered.

"It means pause."

Ivy nodded once, firmly, as if the matter was settled, turned back to the rest of the group and whispered,"So we're going to run.  On three."

---

Ayen met them a little down the road with their horses, and that made it much easier to escape their pursuers.  Once they'd put a few more miles behind them, their flight lost much of its urgency, and by that evening things had almost returned to normal.  Except for the quiet.

None of their trademark banter was present.  Everyone was somber and composed, and the longer it went on, the more sure Mathilda was that it was her.  The next morning, she volunteered to scout ahead so she could stop feeling like they were all trying to avoid staring at her.

The last thing she expected, especially given how weird it had gotten the previous afternoon, was for Ayen to ride up behind her in mid morning.  She said nothing, barely noting his presence as he drew his horse beside hers, and scowled forward.

"Hey," he said.

Mathilda nodded grimly.

"How're you doing?"  When Mathilda didn't immediately respond, he added, "You know, after yesterday."

"Fine."

"Really?"

"Ah said Ah was fine, didn' Ah?"

Ayen nodded, accepting, and was quiet for a few more moments.  "Am I allowed to be impressed?"

"By wha'?"

"I mean, a God used you as his meat puppet, and you were up and walking around an hour later.  That's fucking impressive."

" 'at's no' impressive.  Ah didn' do anythin'."

Ayen laughed.  "Look.  We're not going to argue about this.  I've seen enough healers in my time who'd get winded taking care of a deep cut.  The stuff you do on a daily basis is difficult enough, but channelling power like that?  For that long?  That's insane."

Mathilda grumbled wordlessly.  "Ah s'pose ye'd wan' me to keep on about Breta 'n me then?"

"Actually, " the Thief said, pausing briefly to clear his throat, "I thought maybe I'd tell you one this time."

The Healer blinked at him.  "Ye'll do wha' now?"

"I think it's my turn.  Don't you?"

"Ah...  Are ye..."  Mathilda frowned, and then narrowed her eyes even further.

"I mean, fair is fair, right?"

"...righ'..."

"Okay then.  So, about fifteen years ago, I was in this box suite, watching a really dreary rendition of The Count of Molieri. The Duchess, whom I was a guest of, was a big fan of public sex of all kinds.  Hand jobs.  Blowjobs.  Anything she thought she could get away with."

"Uh huh," Mathilda added, with a slow nod.

"She loved it so much that she could get off if she was going down on me where we might get caught."

"Uh huh."

"So there we are, in the balcony, and she's on her knees between my legs.  She had very... I mean... She had good technique, don't get me wrong, but it was the added thrill of fear that made it fantastic."

"Sure."

"So I'm sitting there, and the performance is bad.  On the stage, I mean.  The soprano can barely hit the notes she's supposed to and the blocking is awful, so I start looking around and there, straight across the theater, in another balcony is this woman.  And she's just watching us."

The Dwarf coughed, and used that as an excuse to adjust her seated position.

"She's got the binoculars and everything.  Just sitting there, cool as can be, watching the very married Duchess of Innister go down on me.  And the Duchess, she's just going to town.  I mean... it was as good as she'd ever been, and right in the middle of it, as I'm really about to reach a panic that we'd actually been caught, this woman turns and taps the shoulder of another man I hadn't even seen yet.  Like, he was blending in with a shadow."

"The Duchess' 'usband?"

"Better," Ayen said with a grin.  "Her brother."

"No," Mathilda said softly.

"Spitting image of her too.  Had to be twins.  They had the exact same eyes."

"Twins?"

"Twins," Ayen repeated, nodding.  "By the way, it is totally cool with me if you touch yourself.  I would even go so far as to say you'd be paying me a compliment."

Mathilda scoffed and shook her head, but immediately found herself looking back over her shoulder to see how far back the rest of the group was.  When she looked back Ayen was smirking, and she rolled her eyes.  "So then wha'appened?"

Ayen's grin widened, and he leaned a little closer.

Continued in Chapter 15

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