Kara’s mind kept returning to the departure of the hotel’s most famous guest. Attending the Duchessa the few times she had, left Kara with more and heavier coins in her hand after any single occasion, than some entire months combined before. She went through the restaurant she served in, laying down drinks for the nobles connected enough to get seating even without a reservation.

They tipped well, some of them. ‘Except the Starwatchers.’ She groused about the few veiled figures from the temples. ‘Always hit or miss. Oh they may say it’s ‘star given fate’ that whatever they hand us is what we get for bringing them expensive food and drinks… but I’d like to slit open one of their coin purses one of these days. I’ll bet a month of their tips that ‘fate’ is helped along by having nothing but coppers in there to tip us with!’ She may have groused, the dark haired server, but she didn’t lose her consummate professionalism for even a moment.

However, she kept her ears perked up. ‘Karlo, you were a good guy… but you were dense. Never get too closely involved.’

A member of the priests was drinking with a nobleman of great age, “We just had a series of sacrifices from the Komestrans. But losing Sobella is an unpleasant thing. She was very popular among the slave populations for her reforms, and even well liked by the nobility, including myself.” The old man looked down into his cup where ripples were still expanding and contracting in the rich dark red waves. He took a sip and set the cup down.

‘Drinks in sips so he doesn’t look like a drunk, but takes a ‘lot’ of sips.’ Kara rolled her eyes when her back was to them and she was well out of sight, when she returned, she caught the rest.

“The bottom line here is that with a fresh boost in the slave population and having just sacrificed a number to the Tlalmok, tensions are going to be uncertain, if you want to quell uncertainty, you’ve got a few options. Loosen their belts and fatten them up, or take off your own and beat them with it. The new Duchessa…” The old man began to say, only to be cut off.

“The one that had your wife with the prince and his mistress and left her walking funny when she came home to you?” The priest asked, Kara didn’t have to see past his black veil to know there was a mocking smile there.

The old man turned purple with rage. “Not again, she’s back at my estate now and won’t be leaving again. Not for a long time anyway.” The old man looked morosely down into his cup. “She’s my wife… not some foreigner’s whore…”

Kara topped off the old man’s cup and waited while the priest lifted his dark veil and drank as well before setting his cup down. Kara refilled it while they spoke.

“Listen all I’m saying is that a little reminder of the true faith of Pas’en would help raise spirits and… maybe remind certain other elements that as those from afar have come into a new land, maybe they should adapt to our ways. When in Pas’en, she should do as Pasenians do. If she doesn’t like how we do things, she can leave… one way or another. Perhaps it’s just her fate to die here, or out there. If that’s the case, just don’t let her take any escorts with her. Enough people have died to feed the Tlalmok emperor. Let her fate be what it is, and make her the only escort for Sobella. Oppose an escort to the Prince beyond the Duchessa herself. Let fate be, don’t try to change it.” He shrugged and took another drink, while Kara walked away. ‘I wonder, should I spring for a carriage on this one, or just walk there after work… out of uniform?”

“Does it hurt?” Prince Rasgen asked, touching Sobella’s belly with the tips of his fingers. Her belly was exposed in her clothing today, her breasts half bared and her dress slit to the thigh, purple silk adorned her and silver bangles hung from her demon horns. When he asked, she took his hand at the wrist, put her forehead to his, and then brought his hand to her heart.

“Here. Here is where it hurts. Everything else? That is nothing. Promise me something though… when I’m gone from here.” She whispered to his lips. Within their private chamber, where every intimacy from flesh to soul had been explored, she now bared herself again.

“Anything. Anything I can, even if it is to take your place…” Rasgen left his hand where she’d placed it, savoring the beating of her heart beneath his hand.

She kissed his lips with a loving caress, her skin like silk, or the gentle softness of a peach and shook her head. “No. I want you to marry. Wait until the moment my escort is out of sight, watch me go, and then when I am not even a dot in the distance? Then regard me as dead. Do your duty. Produce an heir, if it’s a girl… and the mother doesn’t mind, give her my name so some tiny piece of me survives. If she does, keep me here.” She took his cheeks and tilted his head forward, and placed another kiss to his forehead.

“I thought you’d say ‘here’.” He said and touched his own heart. She laughed so hard as she shook her head in vigorous, decisive denial that the silver bells dangling from her horns gave their little chiming noise to the room.

“No, not that, never that. That belongs to the living, the dead have no claim on it. As long as you’re alive, as long as I’m remembered, that’ll have to be good enough, it was not the legacy I wanted for myself… but everybody knows that the dreams of slaves only come true in heaven, in this world… we rarely get what we want. I’m greedy to ask for more than I’ve already had. Now, will you do as I ask? Please?” Sobella’s voice cracked and she drew him into her embrace.

“Yes. If that is what you want… I’ll pick someone suitable. Someone who will make a good advisor… and who won’t mind a daughter named after you. I’ll do all that you ask.” Prince Rasgen replied, letting his hands fall to hers, “Let’s walk through the garden one more time.” They said in unison, and exited the door of his quarters together.

When they were surrounded by lilacs, roses, and flowing waters from small flowers, among other things, Sobella broached the unpleasant. “Who will be my escort?”

“We’re hiring a mercenary for the job.” Prince Rasgen said, pausing at a small waterfall to splash the clear water to his face. He shook his head to cast off the cooling drops, and took her hand again.

“I’m guessing the new Duchessa?” Sobella asked more or less rhetorically, reaching up to a rose tree and tilting its branch down to inhale the fragrance within its blue petals.

“That’s right… how…?” Rasgen asked and then rolled his eyes. “Never mind.”

She giggled a little despite her mood, “It’s obvious really. She has the fewest connections, the most to gain from success, we lose the least from her failure, and we… you, gain the most if she dies in the attempt. Plus Minister Ulmin hates her, he thinks Nua had sex with his wife, I promise you.”

“What… why?! She hasn’t even had sex with… me… yet…” The Prince trailed off under the mocking, withering gaze of his paramour.

“He thinks his wife has a lot more sex than she really does. Sometimes I think she plays it up just to mock his old age. Poor Lodira, a woman like that saddled with a man who either can’t get it up or can’t get her to notice if he does.” Sobella’s titter was somewhat pitying as she reached up to a fruit tree and plucked a hand sized blueberry.

“You could say ‘Poor Ulmin’ what with the anxiety of having his wife so openly running around on him… but then I’d probably have to stop sleeping with her… and that isn’t going to happen.” The Prince countered with a sharp denial that was also at once, ‘sympathetic’ to the old man.

Sobella took a bite of the succulent fruit and passed it to her Prince. As he began to eat from it as well, his paramour sighed and said, “Ulmin may have practically raised you, but he’s a proud man and not stupid. He may be insecure about his wife and her escapades with us, but he wouldn’t tolerate Lodira playing around with a newcomer like that. He’s never liked outsiders even from other cities, how much do you think he’ll put up with out of someone from the other side of the continent?”

The tinkling noise of the bells accompanied them with every step, before Rasgen acknowledged, “I’ll need to have him retire soon. The others too, it’s time for new blood in the system… not that I’m not grateful to them, but it’s not my grandfather’s time.”

“No, my Prince… my perfect Prince Rasgen… it’s your time. Yours and yours alone, and nobody will take it from you. Don’t let our yesterdays take your tomorrows… just enjoy today…” Sobella whispered and kissed him with sudden passion as they passed beneath the weeping willow. The slow swaying green tendrils kissed her back as she pressed him slowly onto his own in the grass.

Her hands fumbled with his belt, but long practice made even haste easy, the clinking and rattling of his belt and the sound of the ringing bells were the erotic music to which their bodies danced to, when she freed his manhood, he was already prepared for her. She swept aside the front of her dress to expose the intimate dripping petals of her own garden, and sank herself on him with a satisfied sigh that matched his own.

There were no words after that.

Kaiji sat behind the desk in her office, laborers were coming and going still and had been for hours. The noise of banging and the shouting of one slave to another through the halls as the estate of her mistress was furnished and readied for her life, it was all a huge distraction. She pinched her forearm at the disrespectful thought. ‘This is the home of a goddess, not your personal demesne. Just deal with it, it won’t last long!’ Satisfied she’d punished herself with the brief pinch, she shouted out, “Next!”

In came a pair of young men, twins with large almond eyes that hinted at an ancestry farther east, with very tiny points to otherwise very human ears. ‘Distant elven ancestry.’ They had sharp, clever eyes, but an anxious look about them that only increased when the door was closed at their backs and they were alone with the voice of Aiwenor.

Kaiji tapped her quill impatiently on the desk, she looked at them through her blood red eyes and exuded impatience. “I’ll be blunt, I don’t have time to waste. You have one decision with three choices. I can have you sold if you would rather take your chances elsewhere, I have no time for people who will only make problems, no matter how handsome they are.”

She let them savor the compliment for a moment with sudden synchronized blinking, then forged ahead, “Your other options are domestic staff, in which case you’ll be trained as butlers, footmen, grooms, cooks, or whatever the Steward decides… or you can be part of my administrative staff. That however, requires that you be able to read, write, and do simple math. Questions?”

“Is there a difference in how we’re treated?” The left hand twin asked, looking over his shoulder at the closed door for longer than was really polite.

Kaiji ignored the rudeness, and let her face light up. “The mistress… she is not the sweetest of women, but she won’t allow you to be mistreated for no reason. But the benefit of working under me, is a chance to be close to my goddess. There is no higher service I know of, than to be close to her, to serve her… she will terrify you… at first. But in time, well if someone told me I could be Lady Kaiji of Komestra… or slave Kaiji of house Aiwenor? I would fling myself to her feet and beg her not to make me go.”

She could see the doubt in the eyes of the twins, and added one more thing. “It was the mistress’s own instruction, to let you make this last choice for yourself, not mine.”

That did it. The twins thin lips froze for a moment, and they said as one, “We can read and write, we’ll work with you.”

‘And two more on the path to knowing the true company of a goddess…’ Kaiji suppressed her sigh of relief. ‘Praise be to her giving hand… a lesser mistress might have had me thrashed by now for not fully staffing myself.’

The sun was setting when Onimeus presented himself before Solution in the unoccupied building on the great estate of the Duchessa.

“Not very impressive, is it?” Solution asked, gesturing to the many scattered bones along the dusty building. It was a large open area that might have once been a stable, but had since been repurposed into a warehouse and then completely abandoned. A spider crawled across the floor, while another spun its trap around one of the many victims it had snared by weaving its web in a window that some negligent person had left open.

The orange light of the receding sun gave everything a haunting air, and many of the scattered bones still had faint scraps of meat on them. Or perhaps more disgusting, they had a sheen on them from the light where ‘gristle’ was left in place.

The curly haired blonde sadist waited for his answer, he could feel it wasn’t rhetorical.

“No, nothing about this is impressive, Lady Solution. So may I ask, why was it important for me to see this?”

She shrugged. “I had to start with someone.” Solution replied with a faint grin on her face, “I figured it might as well be one of the smarter ones, and the other smart one is busy. So, here you are.”

“What am I to see?” Onimeus’s broad shoulders were squared off while he mentally prepared himself for some kind of horror. The evil seeped off this creature near him even more than it came off the one who gave the orders. He clenched his hands behind his back, holding one hand closed in a fist while the other gripped its wrist.

“You’re supposed to be the greatest strategic mind in the fifty, so tell me, why did you lose your war?” Solution answered his question with a question, and he flung his mind back into the meetings before it all went wrong and plucked an answer from his history.

“Pasenian cavalry was the deciding blow, there were a lot of reasons, but Komestra wasn’t the largest city, we could stand toe to toe with any men on foot, or better, any three or even any five if we got to pick the field and the time to fight. But Pas’en’s cavalry could always get around our flanks, stop our messengers, raid our supplies. They were just too fast, too many. We were forced back into a siege, and then…” He clenched his aged jaw, his thick white beard all but bristled with frustration.

“What if you had horses that never tired, say… a hundred.” Solution pushed the question while she watched Nua’s distant approach.

“Tireless horses wouldn’t need to be replaced, we could go for hours, if it felt no pain or fear, then one would be worth at least ten normal horsemen. A hundred would be a force multiplier like nothing I’ve ever had at my disposal. But it’s a useless question. Like asking how much it would help if a god showed up on the field.” He restrained the urge to spit on the floor in anger, lest it be treated as an insult. “It’s useless to ask about what can’t be.”

“It can be, in both cases.” Nua said as she entered the room through the single door.

Onimeus began to descend to his knees, however a waved away hand from Nua made him stop in mid gesture. “It’s fine, I will make this exception for you in deference to your great age. It must have been unpleasant enough to be in that cage.” Nua said as she walked past him at a brisk pace.

The way the green leaf patterned outfit clung to her, he saw every outline of muscle and if there was any part of her that was soft or supple, he missed it or it was very well hidden by her clothing.

“Does he understand, Teacher?” Nua asked, drawing in close to her, and to the bones.

“If he doesn’t, or he loses it, he’s mine.” Solution rubbed her hands together and licked her lips.

“Fine, but I still think he’ll be an asset.” Nua retorted and walked past her to just beyond arm’s reach of the bodies.

“If you can’t win without him, you can’t win.” Solution replied without looking behind her, she was instead eyeing up the broad old man in front of her like he was a side of ham waiting to be sliced up and devoured.

Nua’s answer was to extend her left hand, ‘It’s time, Yersin. Do it, give me cavalry, so I can give you death.’ She sent the thought to the gem, and her partner acted on her orders.

The black gem glowed, a deep dark aura pulsed and a slow tendril of black mist or smoke emerged, it spread like lava on a slow downhill slope. Covering the dusty floor and drowning the bones of the once great horses.

Onimeus understood it almost immediately. ‘Death worshipper… of course, necromancy… why would death worshippers have an issue with… by the second stars of paradise…’ He felt a cold wind sweep over him as the bones assembled themselves, and from the dread mist, a hundred undead mounts stood, ready to be ridden.

His aged eyes stared at the casual use of the ultimate taboo. A lifetime of fear and teachings against what stood only a few feet away, ran across his face. His skin flushed and even his beard shook with horror.

Nua however, took it in stride, returning to his side and with surprising gentleness, placed her left hand over his heart. “Tell me, old man, wisest of the Komestran military, greatest strategist in the east, what could you do with ten thousand of these?”

The fear fell away at the instinct to answer a question. The cold feel of her false hand on his body was all but forgotten as golden eyes stared into his, he lost sight of even those.

“We could ride from city to city in a day, we could best an army in the morning and then another in the evening. Our messengers would be all but impossible to catch outside of an ambush, arrows would lose seventy percent of their worth against them…” He rattled off the possibilities again and again, and Nua tapped her forefinger over his heart.

“Now, tell me, Onimeus… will you choose the life of your Prince, the future of your people as a force to be feared, and service to myself and more importantly, the god that will save you all along the way… or?” She looked at him with a clenched jaw beneath her golden shining priestess eyes.

“Will you serve the gods that failed, will you leave your people in collars to become synonymous with the word ‘slave’. I know you spoke with the Prince, that he told you about how the auctioneer called your people, ‘natural slaves’, your legacy is already a fading memory. Which will it be, Onimeus. The future with me, or the past?”

The sight of his precious Prince, the boy he loved, dragged off in chains, the memory of the boy who raised a sword up high and seemed invincible but for his hopeless idealism, all broken down… all that he saw pass in the recent weeks, and the pattern of horror he worked out for his people without a change to things, it all ran through his brilliant mind.

“You said, Mistress, not to kneel till I mean it.” Onimeus’s voice went gruff and bold and he grasped her false hand at the wrist.

“I did.” She answered without a hint of kindness in her words.

‘This is the change I sought…’ Onimeus told himself, and slowly sank to his knees, he kissed the left hand at the black gem. “Give my people a future, and I will give you my soul. Just please… also spare my boy… my Prince… My Sado.”

“Accepted, Onimeus. Be ready to lead your people to war. And by the way… when that happens…” She let the words fall away, as he chose to finish them for her.

Onimeus answered without any hint of reservation, his dark old eyes staring upward, “I will call you my Prince… Prince Nua Calen Aiwenor. And put to grass anyone who won’t.”