Date Night

Rise and shine

The buttery golden light of dawn streamed in through the open curtain. It danced across Elemiel's eyelids with all the subtle insistence of a nosy neighbor tapping at the door.

The elf groaned and shifted among the satin sheets of her bed, trying to escape the pull of wakefulness, but the sunlight appeared to be hells-bent on dragging her out of slumber.

"Eugh."

Elemiel was many things, but a morning person she was not.

"Gods damn it," she grumbled into her pillow, the recollection of a pleasant dream already fading from her mind like dew evaporating from the leaves of a glade in summer. Something about being sandwiched between two clean-limbed young men, sighing and squirming while tangled among the sheets and their bodies?

She cracked one eyelid open, and saw one such clean-limbed young man sleeping next to her. She turned over and aha, yes, there was the other one.

Right. So it had been less a dream than a memory, really.

Elemiel briefly contemplated pulling a pillow over her head and seeking slumber again, but she knew herself well enough to understand that would be an exercise in futility.

"May as well get up," she mumbled, voice thick with the dregs of sleep.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and when her feet touched the carpet, she dug her toes into the thick pile. The carpet had been enchanted to remain warm even on a chilly winter's morning, which, judging from the rime of frost patterning the glass of the windows, this very much was. The carpet had cost Elemiel a pretty penny and a bit of flirting with the Sunlander merchant selling it, but money and charm were two things that the elf had in abundance.

The elven woman got to her feet and padded towards the doors to her bedroom. She passed by a sheer robe draped over the back of a velvet-upholstered chair without a second thought, preferring to remain in her sumptuous nudity. The two men still slumbering in her bed had explored the most intimate places of her body last night with touch and sight and taste, so there wasn't really any use in being shy at this point, was there?

Besides, Elemiel was an elf, and despite living in the lands of Divony for a goodly long while, she still couldn't quite get the hang of the whole 'modesty' thing that humankind seemed to put such stock in.

She pushed open the doors and stepped into her boudoir, where she found breakfast already laid out by some considerate maid. Her servants were well accustomed to her proclivities, and knew that Elemiel was usually quite ravenous after a night spent 'entertaining' guests.

Elemiel rifled through the contents of the breakfast tray, pouring herself a cup of steaming coffee from a silver pot and picking up a flaky pastry slathered in butter and jam.

The elf knew that some Divonian noblewomen preferred to only drink tea and smoke a cigarette when breaking their fasts, all in the name of preserving their girlish figures. Lucky for Elemiel, she was neither truly Divonian, nor a noble. Besides, she'd always found it far more enjoyable to be womanly, rather than girlish.

She munched and sipped while she browsed the broadsheets provided for her to read, catching up on the latest gossip and, more importantly, any news that might be relevant to running the several companies she'd inherited from her late husband. Erik had been an adept businessman, and although she'd met him when she'd still been an adventuring minstrel, Elemiel proved to be a quick study under his tutelage.

Dragonskull raiders are harassing caravans to the south, which will probably drive up the price of Southlander spices, she mused, and pestblight has infected the Daemorgrath barley warehouses in the docks. Probably a good idea to hold onto that shipment of beer for a little longer, then sell it when the demand goes through the roof.

Elemiel yawned, bored with doing work so early in the morning. The elven woman tossed aside the newspapers, then noticed a little cream-colored note on the shining platter of the tray. She unfolded it eagerly with her long, graceful fingers.

Meet me in the Watching Room when you've had your fill of both breakfast and those two strapping members of the Leatherworkers Guild lying in your bed. I found out that information you were after.

-Talina

P.S. I don't ask for much, but can you PLEASE try and take the screaming and moaning down a notch? This is an obscenely big house, but I still can't find a bedroom where your damn cat-yowls won't reach when you're really getting into it.

"Excellent," Elemiel murmured, and a grin teased the lovely bow of the elf's lips into a curve.

She dropped the note back on the tray, then rose and crossed back into her bedroom. As diverting as her handsome guests had been last night, she had a meeting with Talina and things to attend to. It was time for the boys to go.

Elemiel stood in the doorway and cleared her throat a few times. When that didn't work, she rolled her eyes and clapped her hands together sharply.

"Boys!" she said loudly, and was rewarded by the sight of the two comely lads blinking the sleep from their eyes and blearily sitting up in the bed.

"It's been a load of fun- several loads actually, if I remember correctly- but it's time you got up and were on your way."

They stared at her like a pair of starving basilisks looking at a wounded ibaux, all but drooling at the sight of her voluptuous nakedness. Being obedient lads, Elemiel saw that indeed parts of them began to rise, although not in the way she'd meant when she'd instructed them to 'get up.' A familiar, luxuriant warmth kindled between Elemiel's thighs, but she suppressed it with an effort.

"That's very flattering, but I mean it. I've got things to do, and I'm sure you've got... leather to work or something. Feel free to stop by the kitchens on your way out, and my cooks will fix you a plate."

"Yes mistress," they intoned sullenly, then began to dress.

Mistress? What on earth had she done to them last night?

Perhaps she should've had a little less Synstrian wine. A paddle and a pair of leather cuffs caught her eye lying among the tangle of sheets, and Elemiel smiled at the sudden recollection. She'd picked up leather workers for a specific reason, after all.

With a few desperate entreaties that she call upon them whenever she felt the need arise, the two men finally left with a last, longing look at the lushness of her shameless elfin dishabille. Elemiel deigned to throw on her robe, figuring that as amusing as it would be to show up to the Watching Room naked, Talina would probably just be irritated.

As Elemiel belted her robe and cinched the knot, she contemplated the events of the night before. The two men had been attractive and diverting, if a little inexperienced, and had made for an extremely pleasant way to pass the evening.

They'd satisfied her well enough, although she'd had to coax them past a few patches of embarrassment. When two men shared a woman in a carnal embrace, it was inevitable that certain things would rub together unexpectedly.

'Friendly fire', as she believed the soldiers called it, was also a distinct possibility, as the young men had discovered.

Reflected in the mirror of her vanity, Elemiel's grin was wolfish. She ran a finger across the heart-shaped beauty mark on her left cheek, then set about the task of arranging the long, silken tresses of her dark, purple-streaked hair, taking it from 'just-got-out-of-bed-after-a-long-night-of-sex' to 'still-had-a-long-night-of-sex-but-hey-at-least-I-ran-a-brush-through-it'.

Indeed, the leather workers had been entertaining, but as Elemiel worried her kraken-bone brush at a particularly stubborn knot, she was forced to admit that the entertainment had mostly been a distraction. As much as it irked her, she suspected that her treacherous, overactive libido had chosen the two attractive (if slightly foolish) men as a stand-in for another.

Asper.

Even with the two of them working in concert, the leather workers hadn't been able to set her blood aflame like Asper DeNallare did. He was infuriating and irreverent, arrogant and self-assured. They'd met when he had technically broken into her house to crash a party she was hosting, earlier that week.

The tines of her brush worked through the knot in her black-and-violet hair. Elemiel rolled her eyes and scolded herself, attempting to derail that particular train of thought. She was mooning over some infuriating man like an elfmaid with a crush on an orc.

Idiot. She wasn't certain if she meant herself, or Asper.

Asper did have certain redeeming qualities, she was forced to admit. He was confident, and exciting, and clever, in a way she hadn't found in a man since Erik had died. But there were plenty of fish in the Western Sea, and Elemiel knew she could have her pick of them. Men and women were practically banging down her door to- well, bang down her door- and there was no reason to get all worked up about one man with granite-grey eyes and a stupidly charming smile.

Even if said man was annoyingly attractive, with a body toned and sculpted by four years of adventuring in the wilds beyond the Godswall.

And also if said man happened to be a famous knight and the Queen's cousin, returned to the Yvlynes incognito to uncover a plot put into place by his treacherous friend who'd left him for dead in the wilds.

And he'd crashed her party and fucked her six-ways to Solana's sacred slit earlier that week.

And he was the most interesting thing to happen to her since Erik had died.

And- Oh my gods, shut up already.

Elemiel put the brush down on her vanity a little harder than was strictly necessary, then set her jaw and headed out to meet Talina.

It's tonight?!

Elemiel didn't have to go very far to reach the Watching Room, as it happened to be right down the hall from her bedroom in the north wing of the ancient and noble hôtel that served as Elemiel's home.

The proximity of the Watching Room was both convenient and worrying; convenient in that if she wanted to use its magic, it was only a few steps away; worrying in that she'd lived in the house for years, first with Erik and then on her own after he passed, and had only learned of the room earlier that week.

Another thing to thank Asper for, she thought sourly. He'd been the one to show it to her, after breaking into her party.

Elemiel pressed the stones of the wall in the correct pattern, and the hidden door swung open. The elf climbed the narrow wooden staircase and pushed through the door at the top, entering the hexagonal chamber of the Watching Room.

The Watching Room was, to put it indelicately, a place to spy on people. Many of the old hôtels in the Sapphire District had them, a remnant of the days when politics in Yvlynes had been more overtly cutthroat. Elemiel had already put the room to good use in her own business dealings, leveraging its magic to deal with some Lanevish merchants who were trying to overcharge her to import their icewine.

The chamber was relatively small, and upon each of its six walls hung a mirror. The mirrors were each taller than Elemiel, but their silvered surfaces didn't reflect anything. Rather, they acted more like windows, each providing a different view into the rooms inside the mansion.

Talina sat at an antique-looking desk in the middle of the room, idly picking her fingernails with the tip of a dagger. She was a Southlander, with emerald eyes and a long, straight nose. The woman tossed her head, shaking her short-cropped black hair from her eyes, and favored Elemiel with a smirk.

"Took you long enough," she said as Elemiel approached. "Did you have another go at those two sweet idiots you picked up last night?"

Elemiel perched on the edge of the desk and raised an eyebrow. "A proper lady doesn't kiss and tell," she said archly.

Talina snorted. "I'm not talking about kissing them."

At that, the elf threw her head back and laughed. Talina gave her a wide, toothy grin.

"Anyway," Elemiel continued when her mirth had subsided, "sadly no. I figured breakfast was more important, not to mention the note you left for me. You've got a lead?"

"Right," Talina said, excitement sparkling in her bright green eyes. "This is kind of like old times, isn't it?"

Years ago, before Elemiel had fallen in love with Erik and long before his death, she and Talina had been bandmates, members in good standing of the Adventurer's Guild. Their adventuring party, the Golden Bower, had toured the lands of southeastern Divony in search of fame, fortune and adventure.

When they couldn't find any fortune (which was rather more often than not), Elemiel would break out her lute, strum a tune, and sing for their suppers. It had been a hard, wild life, quite unlike the world of politics and business Elemiel inhabited now, but not without its allure.

After Erik had died, Elemiel had come to rely upon Talina. The olive-skinned Southlander was remarkably handy in a fight, whether that fight happened to be against bandits on the Queensroad, or a different sort of robber in the boardrooms of Yvlyen's merchant guilds.

"So," Talina went on, "I reached out to a few old friends, pulled some strings, and waved around a few coins. The end result was a juicy bit of information."

Here, she rubbed her hands together, unable to contain her excitement. "Would it interest you to know that somehow, that old crook Sharky Houndstooth got himself an invitation to the fête at the Divonian Museum of Natural and Unnatural History?"

"It would indeed."

"And guess who else is going to be there?" Talina asked. She continued, not waiting for a reply. "That's right. Duke Nigel Ladsbury Ditherington, Divony's most eligible bachelor."

Elemiel pursed her lips, considering the information. She was pretty sure that Duke Ditherington was only considered Divony's most eligible bachelor by those women who hadn't had the misfortune to spend five minutes in a room with him, but that was beside the point.

The gala at the museum was well beyond the circles that Sharky Houndstooth moved in, which were usually more akin to swirling around the various drains of the Yvlyenian sewer system. Criminals like him didn't rate invitations to fancy fundraisers, unless Sharky had really come up in life since the last time Elemiel had dealt with the slippery gnome fixer. She very much doubted that to be the case.

Elemiel would've been content to never treat with the likes of Sharky Houndstooth again, except she and Asper had witnessed a clandestine meeting between the larcenous gnome and Duke Nigel Ladsbury Ditherington himself through a mirror in the Watching Room.

Asper had explained that whilst exploring an ancient tomb deep in the wilds past the Godswall mountains, Duke Ditherington had betrayed him and left him for dead, apparently in order to steal an artifact of great power he'd found in the tomb. Ditherington had returned to Yvlynes with the artifact and Asper had followed, although he had chosen to remain incognito for now to take advantage of the fact that everyone thought him dead.

Asper swore he didn't have the first clue about what the artifact was or did, nor why Ditherington wanted it badly enough to betray Asper, but the incognito knight meant to find out.

"He doesn't know what it is?" Talina had asked skeptically. "Seems awfully convenient."

Under normal circumstances Elemiel might've agreed, but these were not normal circumstances. "This is the Sunstriker we're talking about, Tal," she'd said. "If even half the stories are true, he's too honorable for his own good."

Whatever Ditherington was up to in the city, it seemed that Sharky Houndstooth was somehow involved. It was thrilling to be involved in a plot with such apparent stakes, and Elemiel was forced to admit the adventurous streak she'd thought long gone was still shot through her soul like a vein of silver through rock.

That night at her party, Elemiel had agreed to help Asper, and she told herself it wasn't just because of their enthusiastic, sweaty 'negotiations.' The memory of his body pressed upon hers was vexingly distracting. It had been several days since she'd allowed the knight to joyously ravage her upon the desk in this very room, but her keen elven nose could still pick out the scent of their lust.

The smell of sex perfumed the scent of the dust and old wood that was the room's predominant olfactory attribute. Her cheeks grew warm at the recollection, and she felt the pink buds of her nipples stiffen under her silk robe. She thought of the two leather workers with a tinge of regret. It would've been good to clear her mind with another round wedged between the young men, but it was too late for that now.

Her mind bent back to the task at hand with some difficulty.

"Oh shit," Elemiel swore, "that party is tonight, isn't it?"

She vaguely remembered seeing the Museum's invitation, one of scores she was sent every day. The presence of the comely, wealthy elf was a boon to any society party, and the nobles of the Sapphire District always made sure to include Elemiel on their guest lists.

Talina nodded. "You got it. So if you want to find out what they're doing, we've got to act quickly."

"Right," Elemiel clapped her hands together decisively, then slid off the desk. "I'm going to need a new dress; something I can hide a knife in and still look fabulous."

"A knife?"

"Well, a stiletto perhaps. I still want to show off as much of this as possible," she said, her gesture encompassing the landscape of her shapely body.

Talina rolled her eyes. "Sure. And I'm guessing this has nothing to do with Asper?"

"Nothing whatsoever," Elemiel sniffed primly.

Not quite a palace

Elemiel felt the carriage pull to a halt, and twitched aside the lacy curtains covering the window. The street outside was framed unflatteringly by the early afternoon light. The traditional Yvlyenian blue-slate roof tiles were chipped or missing on most of the buildings nearby, and the few pedestrians on the street either ignored her carriage or threw sullen, jealous glances in its direction.

The trash-strewn avenues were roughly cobbled and full of potholes, and despite the wonderfully engineered undercarriage of her coach, Elemiel's bottom had taken quite a pounding on the ride over them.

And not in the enjoyable way.

"Ah, the beauty of charming Tin Town," Elemiel muttered, pinching her nose at the smell wafting out of the sludge-filled gutters.

She'd spent plenty of time in Tin Town back in her adventuring days, but hadn't had much cause to visit since she'd moved to the Sapphire District.

She gave a grateful nod to Talina as her friend helped her out of the carriage. Talina wore a black doublet which displayed the bulge of her biceps, and the weight of a broad-bladed shortsword hung at her hip. These things, as well as the fierce scowl she'd affixed to her face, all helped dissuade any of the Tin Town residents who were looking at the finely made carriage with covetous eyes.

Elemiel looked back at the carriage and frowned. It was a fine thing, all lacquered black and gold trim. She'd had to take the covered one, as her uncovered coach had been stolen and driven off a bridge a few months ago, but that was an entirely different story. Either way, it wasn't the ideal vehicle to take into a neighborhood like this, and she knew that both she and the carriage stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs.

Despite her misgivings, this was where Asper had evidently decided to hunker down during his self-imposed stint as an incognito royal. She supposed laying low wasn't a terrible idea on his part. No one would suspect that Asper DeNallare, the famous knight otherwise known as the Sunstriker, cousin to the Queen herself, would ever be caught dead in a place like this.