Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 13

...

"Ser, are you alright?" Damon looked at her, noticing something not quite right in her reaction. "Would you care to sit?"

He moved closer, and she flinched away from him as one might a snarling dog or drunken spouse looking to lay hands on them. Damon's hands dropped limply to his sides.

"Forgive me, ser, that I have offended you." He stepped back, looking at the floor. "How may I serve?"

"Oh, please..." She managed a laugh, careful to avoid looking directly at his face -- hoping he thought it was only nervousness of the uninitiated to the ways of a brothel and the bartering of sex for coin.

Clearly someone's daughter... someone's betrothed or a petty noble with aspirations of learned independence. She couldn't be any older than he... well, in fact, she could be a number of years his senior, as pristine as her skin looked... it was possible and even likely that her family paid for magical treatments -- expensive in any market -- to keep her looking as young as a maiden ready for her first groom. Damon swallowed uneasily, not certain how to proceed and genuinely against the notion that she might actually be several years his junior. Her clothes were rich... too rich for the Fancy... and pale blue to make her eyes seem darker than the deepest lake. A bodice trimmed with cloth-of-gold in spare amounts -- enough to shine at the corners or angles of her form and accentuate a very small bust.

"May I..." Damon managed to not move his hands or lift his head, and yet he knew she had flinched again. "...inquire as to ser's age?"

"Twenty-six." If it was a lie, she lied easily, and she seemed to be getting hold of her composure again. "I'm not so dainty a thing as that."

But you are. Damon assured her silently. You very much are, if I frighten you.

"What name do you call yourself, Serpent?" She put on the haughty, noble's air and Damon could imagine that her voice had changed in part because her chin had tilted upward slightly like her nose.

"Whatever name ser wishes." Damon shrugged into a slight bow, head still lowered.

"Dog?" There was laughter, genuine laughter in her voice... and perhaps a viciousness that he knew nobles, especially fearsome nobles, were wont to possess. "Will you answer to dog?"

"If ser wishes, I can answer to dog." Damon nodded again, blushing mightily and wondering if this client would prove his most cruel. Lucky, then, if she was the last of them -- his only regret being that the last client would not, then, be Marteja.

"What about fool?" She continued, perhaps seeing if she could rile him or mustering her own courage. "Slime? Whelp? Bastard?... Filth? Degenerate..."

The list grew, and each title or name became less a question and more a statement. By the time she arrived at "Piss-bucket", Damon was certain she had taken more delight in her own voice than in his reaction to it -- though he found his hands were clenched with something not entirely unlike anger.

"If ser cannot choose a name..." Damon managed to keep his voice flat -- but her immediate silence told him that she could hear the edges in it. "I shall be very confused and unable to serve, ser."

"Fraud, then." She struck an elegant pose full of authority and disdain for him, even if he wasn't looking directly at her. "I'll call you 'fraud' -- for that is what I believe you to be: a fraud."

"If ser believes that to be so, then Fraud will not waste ser's time arguing." Damon grit his teeth and steadied himself. "How may Fraud serve, ser?"

"Admit you are a fraud and a liar." She stepped toward him, yet she didn't seem any closer and Damon was weary of her bizarre game.

"That is not a service that Fraud can provide, ser." Damon straightened, tired of bowing to this interrogation. "Fraud is paid for his very specific service, as ser well knows."

"Oh, ser knows." She didn't hide her disgust, and Damon couldn't parse-out any other emotions at odds behind those deep, clear blue eyes. "Ser knows you are a hedge wizard, peddling enchantments and swindling coin in a flesh house rather than serving as the useful cock that should be in such a place."

Something in her posture made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. She looked a fragile slip of a woman, a few fingers taller than Ginga perhaps and a full two stone lighter. Perhaps she was also a sorcerer. That made him swallow his own fear.

"Yes... I know about you." She crossed her slender arms beneath her small breasts, over the blue fabric that made her skin look almost chalk-white in contrast. "Rumors abound from Renks Cairn to Tsuro of the cocksman who can sow his seed on a whim -- to any maid's delight... rubbish."

"If..." Damon tried to relax, telling himself she wasn't from the Guild... certainly not an assassin. "If ser chooses to believe rumors, and will not listen... not listen to Fraud, then no truth will convince ser otherwise."

"What truth?" She sneered at him -- a dainty, pretty, ugly little sneer that looked like it belonged in a portrait somewhere. "That your only skill is in deception and theft? No magic does what these rumors claim -- the Guild would not allow it!"

"Ah..." He took a deep breath and tried to give himself a more sage bearing -- in spite of his half-naked state. "And ser is very concerned with the Guild's rules, Fraud sees. Fraud cannot serve, ser... Fraud must humbly... respectfully decline you."

He's only telling me no? It seemed an impossibility. Unthinkable. What man could stand against such an attack on his manhood? What man could bear it when confronted by something so especially frail-looking and comely? Something...

"I'm sorry, Fraud." Her tone changed. Her stance remained, upright and commanding, but her voice dropped and the edge vanished from it. "I just... I knew it had to be a trick. There's no way... My father serves in the Guild... in the lower ranks of the Guild, but still a man of station. I thought... I'm sorry."

"It's... uh, it's fine, ser." Damon found himself thoroughly confused at this transformation... she had been so certain and furious... now fidgeting and demure? "Did ser come here just to exchange insults, pleasantries, or accusations?"

"No!" She blurted, stepping forward and almost reaching for his hand.

She stopped herself a full pace away from him, but had crossed most of the distance between them to get to that point. Damon's eyes were widened in surprise, and he watched the war of conflicting emotions on her face. She looked at the floor, finally, and mumbled -- still too refined to mumble anything but she spoke in a low, enunciating manner.

"How does it work?"

"The magic or the sex, ser?" Damon didn't bother hiding this one barb of cynical amusement... she had been rather rude at the outset.

"The magic, of course." She blushed deeply, from a dazzling pink to something darker than peach that might, in some blotches on her face and beneath the slope of her bare collar bone, be called fuscia. "I... I know about the... the other."

"Ser plays at being very delicate."

"Ser does not play at anything, Fraud." She bit her lower lip, the angry challenge still bright in her eyes. "I just... I can't do magic like Father... and he told me it was all foolishness and a sham, your magic."

"Did he?" Damon tried to seem thoughtful, but could really only just contain a spiteful sort of vindication. "And I suppose: that I refuse to service male patrons would give him exactly what first-hand knowledge that Fraud is... well, a fraud?"

"My father wouldn't lie!" She defended her good father's name soundly, as any dutiful daughter would. "He wouldn't."

"Would he, perhaps, make a guess based on what he already knows?"

"Of course."

"And learned as he is -- would he claim to know everything between heaven, hael, death, life and all?"

"Snrk." She snorted when she laughed -- that was, if not especially endearing, certainly mildly amusing to Damon. "Of course he can't know everything... though he sometimes tries."

"As our fathers would have us believe." Damon nodded sagely, a genuine smile twitching on his lips -- though it made the wiry lines on his face contort horrendously. "And may we for our children, some day."

"Our children?" She seemed scandalized, blushing again and stepping backward.

"No -- I mean... May I for my sons or daughters... may any parent for their sons or daughters, ser." Damon assured her, involuntarily taking a step closer.

A knock at the door.

"Ser, time's up." Damon gave her an apologetic smile.

"Wait!" She reached for a small purse that gave a false filling of her bodice, which also caused Damon to smile. "I... I can pay... for more time?"

...

"You're a wild mage!" She hissed the word, perfumed and wine-sweet breath gushing over his face as she leaned very close to him, her mouth a grin of perfectly straight teeth behind her brilliant ruby lips. "No wonder you don't want to go into the city!"

"Is my secret safe, ser?" Damon nodded, leaning in as well, though he also placed a hand on the side of her face and thought he might kiss her and get the matter of her custom settled more quickly for taking the initiative.

If horror or disgust had not crossed faces of those he knew in life to that point, perhaps he would not have noticed the sudden and fleeting contortion of her mouth and eyes as she pulled back from him. He couldn't discount that he might be imagining it -- but her manner had been so push-pull, dodging around the very obvious reason that predicated her position as a patron of the Fancy (and Damon's room in particular). She, therefore, had to be hiding something -- but he was no closer to understanding what when a knock came to the door well ahead of her paid time.

"We're not done." She looked fearfully at the door, and he guessed she must be thinking someone had broken her trust... was her presence the secret she so desperately wanted to keep?

"Too bad." the heavy brogue of Abhilash thudded through the door as Damon stood up to answer the ork's beckon.

"What is it?" Damon had only opened the door a sliver, offering his distraught guest a wan smile, and just had enough time to register the she-ork sniffing deeply before she shoved her way into the room.

"Fucking elf." The ork was on her in two paces, one hand at the woman's throat and the other cocking back with the magical weapon and delivering a vicious pommel blow aimed at her temple.

Damon was cursing, lunging after the she-ork, caught by one arm from behind by Ginga shouting the word "wait" so loud he couldn't hear what his client said to the ork.

But he saw the transformation. It wasn't a magical shimmer, or a changing of color -- the illusion looked to be purely one of poise. The dainty, demure mannerisms vanished for precise combative movement. She grasped Abhilash's throttling hand and bent the thumb backward until the joint popped, twisting savagely with both arms in effort to wrench the she-ork's elbow the wrong way round and then dislocate the shoulder.

It wasn't enough to even slow the she-ork down. Like a hammer, she brought the pommel of the sword down on the woman's skull. When she didn't drop at the first blow, Abhilash howled in a rage as her arm broke in several places -- and she struck again.

And again. She was about to strike a fourth and fifth time, maybe even turn the blade on the bitch, when Damon threw himself in the way of her wrath.

"Stop! Abhi, stop!" he was screaming at her, arms raised, on his knees between her and the limp, bloody form that had been an alabaster swan of a woman in a blue dress with cloth-of-gold accents on her bodice.

Arrested suddenly, Abhilash snarled and snapped her teeth at him -- grunting and spitting at the comatose object of her anger. He couldn't understand a word, but he could see that her arm had been cruelly twisted and purple blotches were rising to the surface where bone and muscle warred for space and the loser of the fray was her own blood.

"Cosima..." Damon panted, glancing at Ginga who seemed just as dumbstruck as he felt. "Call Mistress Cosima... we need a healer..."

"And rope." Abhilash growled, lowering the point of the blade to one side and motioning with her jaw for her human mate to move out of her way. "Git... I'ma use this cunt to heal myself."

"Abhi, no." Damon shook his head, not daring to look behind him, thinking the worst already. "You'll kill her."

"Who cares?" She kicked him aside, wincing and staggering as she did so.

"Stop!" He cried out.

...

"Shit! Fuck! Shit!" Damon was cursing and holding his face; Abhilash had twisted to avoid hitting him as he threw himself between her and the girl on the floor again -- the resulting fall and collision had bloodied his nose. "Leave it, for fuck's sake!"

"I want to kill her." Abhilash growled, aiming the sword again and sniffing angrily in spite of the dizzying buzz in her head and blood pouring out her own nose. "Get out of my way."

"No killing!" Damon shouted. "We're not killing her, for fuck's sake! Put the sword down."

Ginga was returning with Mistress Cosima, her bouncers, and what must have been every whore there that night. The largest entertaining room was swiftly overcrowded.

"What happened?" Cosima frowned in her perfect face paint.

"She knocked her out." Damon nodded and gestured, pointing from the ork to the unconscious human in blue. "Needs a healer."

"I need a healer." Abhilash snarled at him, moving her mangled left arm from the shoulder and unable to do much more than wobble it a little. "She almost tore my arm off."

"Damon..." Ginga was trying to get his attention from amid the crowd.

Abhilash shrugged one of the bouncers off of her. Cosima wisely directed her retinue out of the room, to prevent further bloodshed.

"Ork." Cosima knew Abhilash's name, but her haste called for short, precise words. "Your arm waits. Why did you attack this client?"

"It's an elf in human skin." Abhilash snorted, winced, snorted again, and spat a mouthful of blood into the wash basin.

"Not good enough." Cosima turned to Damon. "And you?"

"She fell on me." Damon glowered at Abhilash, then gestured to the prone human/elf. "She needs a healer."

"We got a messenger, earlier." Abhilash coughed, motioning Ginga forward.

"That can wait." Cosima's small, curt wave stopped Ginga in her tracks. "Elf or human, our client's healing is first."

"Fuck that." Abhilash looked at her mangled arm. "I need it more -- she's tough as a mammoth... had to hit her three times to knock her out."

"Wonderful." Cosima rolled her eyes dramatically and gave a long-suffering sigh. "So she's a wizard, then."

"That's... oh, shit." Damon and Ginga's eyes met. "We need to leave... I'm sorry, Mistress."

"No, I am." Cosima slapped Damon smartly in the side of the face.

Abhilash growled and grimaced, her right hand (still holding her sword) trying to cradle her left arm to her and she was staring hatefully at Cosima.

"Too good to be true, indeed." Mistress Cosima sighed again. "Go on. I'm sure your cut of the wages will cover my damages."

"But..." Ginga stammered.

"Get out." Cosima waved again. "Someone will bring our good friend Rafal, soon."

"I'm sorry, Mistress..." Damon was panting, wiping blood from his face and stumbling to move out of the way.

"You're still here?" Cosima gave him a hard look. "Get what things you have and be gone. You have until she wakes up before the guards are set on you."

"I'm sorry." Damon repeated, still dazed and having trouble moving his feet.

"Let's go." Abhilash nudged him and motioned to Ginga with her jaw. "Grab him."

"Come on." Ginga hauled on his arm, pulling him from the room. "We have to leave."

They walked out the main hall, through the gauntlet of suspicious eyes that mixed fear and loathing almost in equal measure. For each of the prostitutes that had shared camaraderie with them, there was at least one glad to see them gone and doubtless feeling vindicated that the trio had been bad news from the start. The opinions of the bouncers were, at best, professionally indifferent.

"You need to fix my arm." Abhilash grumbled, as Ginga was leading Damon out the front of Your Inn Fancy.

"Can it wait?" Ginga hissed. "We need to get some distance between us."

"Can it?" Abhilash shifted the muscles of her shoulder and groaned. "Never seen it bent like that... it hurts."

"It's broken." Damon stated the obvious, as if only now noticing. "Fucking hael, how did a little slip of a woman..."

"Elf."

"Elf?" Damon stared dumbly at Abhilash. "She was an elf? Her ears were round."

"Then her cunt was pointed." The ork's grim chuckle put a shiver of rage in Damon's spine.

"Why the fuck did you attack her?" He demanded, trying to keep his voice down as they walked briskly.

"Same elf as before -- in your room." Her yellow eyes were looking glassy. "She was doing no good."

"You think she was a thief?" Ginga managed to form a more coherent argument than either of them, at that point, and was also leading them toward the docks. Not the back of the Fancy, where Damon had thought they needed to go to get their possessions.

"Thief, assassin." The she-ork only shrugged, then groaned again.

"Mateja is waiting for us." Ginga saw the searching look in Damon's eyes. "That's what the letter was about."

"What letter?" Damon felt a flush of heat in his neck and a knot of fear hit the bottom of his stomach. "I didn't see a letter."

"In my shirt, just..." Abhilash looked down at her bosom, pursing her lips to point toward her left breast. "...just there."

"Fuckin'..." Damon stopped the ork and dug a hand into her chest wrapping. "Let me..."

No sooner had he retrieved the crumpled folded paper than Abhilash shoved him backward.

"Don't grab!" The ork snarled, her eyes narrow but not focusing well.

"I'm... no. I'm not sorry." Damon shook his head and turned his attention to what appeared to be a folded note. "If you want my apology, stop beating the shit out of people just because you don't like the look of them."

"Hff."

"She wanted us to deliver this to you, let you know she'd be seeing you in the morning." Ginga explained. "Come on, you can read it later -- it won't matter. We took care of it."

"Took care of what?"

"Everything's at the dock." Ginga managed to give him a bit of a smile over her shoulder, still leading him by the hand through the dark under the light of a full moon.

"We're sailing." Abhilash groaned the words out. "But only on the river."

"Once we get settled, he can have a look at your arm, alright?" Ginga hoped to placate the surly ork, not wanting to go over the same argument again.

She got the guttural acknowledgment indicating that Abhilash would comply, for now.

"Wanna smash into a shop and steal some shit?" Abhilash offered after another dozen paces, evidently looking for a distraction from her injury.

"Not the time, Abhilash." Ginga tried to quicken her pace. "We don't need to add trouble onto trouble."

"Yeah..." Damon thought he was starting to realize the severity of their circumstances. "Wouldn't want to be broke, no provision, and all that whoring to be for nothing..."

"Exactly." Ginga said without irony.

...

"Well, well." Mateja was indeed surprised to see them. "Good as your word, you are, ser."

"Thank you." Ginga responded with a toothy, breathless smile; a bit winded from the hustle to drag Damon and the whinging Abhilash to the docks. "I hope you won't mind another minor delay? Our... bodyguard... is injured."

"Y'don't say? I've got some splints and salve." Mateja nodded thoughtfully, looking at Abhilash's arm. "I couldn't say as it'll mend right -- that's a nasty break, that."

"I can mend it." Damon wiped gently at his nose, the bleeding stopped and he knew he must look a disgusting mess. "I just need some time and... and some quiet."