A Perverted Path to Victory

Mui Thom

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A brief few hours ago, Mui had thought he was someone who understood chaos. He had been a soldier for his entire adult life. He had been in battle after battle, breathing in the scent of panic, fear, and blood. He had spent hours seeing nothing other than the friends at his side and the enemy ahead of them, ignorant of the greater battle. Spells had flashed overhead, lightning colliding with flung earth. He had cowered from flames so hungry and so bright their light turned his fur orange, and he had held strong. He thought he knew chaos. He’d even twice been in a situation much like this, part of an army which besieged a city, but both times they’d been turned away. He’d never conquered one.

And so he’d never known how awful victory could be.

“You! You there! Get back to your- No! No, do not run!”

The woman he’d been shouting at ignored him, scooping her child up into her arms and sprinting away.

“I have nothing!” She cried shrilly. “Nothing!”

“And you will never have anything more if you do not get back to your- Shit!”

Mui barely restrained himself from throwing his sword to the cobblestones in frustration as the woman disappeared into an alleyway, white dress fluttering against the darkness. She was heading west, to the center of the city.

It was where the bulk of the Imperial Army had gone. Towards the homes of the city’s elite, who needed to be caught and pacified before they could begin fomenting rebellion across Ta-Pet.

It was also, naturally, the richest part of the city.

Occasionally, Mui thought he could hear crashes and screams echoing down the streets.

The area had to be taken, regardless. Sara had wanted to sit Borek’s army outside the walls, giving them time to cool their blood, but for perhaps the first time since Sara had aligned herself with the Imperial Army, Borek had dismissed her suggestions outright. Even with the surviving Garrison sitting outside the city walls under the dark glare of blackened musket muzzles, Ta-Pet was still a city of tens of thousands. Given time to organize, the rebellious elite would turn the city into a deathtrap.

Not that it felt any less a deathtrap to him at the moment. He was marching with a squad of the Powdered Lead, acting as an interpreter for the northern mercenaries, whose strangled grasp of Kemari was still nigh-incomprehensible.

Despite his years in the army, Mui did not consider himself particularly well-traveled. He did not know the true variety of the Empire, and did not know if his appraisal of Ta-pet was fair. To his sensibilities, at least, it was among the smallest and poorest cities he had ever seen, with its central spires barely reaching twenty stories in height. Only Tulian had been poorer, and that was a city four-fifths abandoned. Seen from the walls (which were as tall as any Imperial city’s, of course), Ta-Pet had a squat, cylindrical appearance, like a batch of bread that had failed to rise out of its pan.

Seen from those same walls, which he had scaled with Sara as she and Borek sought a vantage point from which to plan their subjugation of Ta-Pet’s people, he could also see the signs of its poverty. The poorer sections of the city, recognized from afar by their dirty streets, unpainted buildings, and the prevalence of wood in place of stone, creeped inward like the red veins of an infection. Even the spaces of Ta-Pet which would have been highly valued in other cities, intersections of major thoroughfares and the aqueduct’s spouts, showed signs of rot.

These regions, of course, were the ones Sara had the most concern for. She had sent her Powdered Lead to the places where things would be worst, and when Mui volunteered, he’d been sent with them.

Here in the outer city, where buildings rarely rose above three stories, every street they turned down was a new travesty, each showing new reactions to the fall of the city. Some streets, mostly those which contained a large number of shop fronts, were practically abandoned. Their doors and shutters were left swinging in the wind, the silence an eerie contrast to the dull rumble of panic rolling in from beyond.

Other streets were the source of that dull rumble. He had seen fires in the distance, some from torches in the hands of civilians, others from the flash of musket fire. A thin pallor of smoke coated the skies over Ta-Pet. Not everyone was Sara Brown, after all. They couldn’t cast their voice over a mountain, striking the hearts of the enraged as surely as any arrow. No, an occupying army had only one way to put down a crowd of rioters. Whether their tools were sword, musket, or cannon, the act remained the same. Take those that sought to resist, the last-minute defenders, the loyal zealots, the hidden enemies, and prove to them that their resistance was too late.

If they’d wanted to make a difference, he thought, turning his head from the sight, they should have made it on the walls. Not in the streets where their children play.

Mui’s squad, out on the edges of the city, was dealing with a different sort of chaos. The tenements and poor-houses of the city were filled to bursting, the turn of phrase nearing literal. Those who had lived in the understreets had fled aboveground, whispered stories and town criers having told them the Imperial Army would breach the aqueducts, directed rivers down the tunnels in order to drown all who lived there. Mui had heard the same stories himself as he grew up, though always that it was always the vindictive Visyas of the enemy who had done the deed, trying to deny the righteous Imperial Army their prize.

Back then, he’d always thought it foolish to believe such atrocities had occurred at all. Why would an army, any army at all, allegiance disregarded, do such a thing? There was no point to such senseless slaughter, nothing to be gained.

That faith had been shaken. He had been at Sara’s side as she barked off orders for the Powdered Lead’s most veteran troops to secure the city’s aqueducts as rapidly as possible, in addition to sending her precious artillery to the areas where the manmade rivers entered the city. He’d thought she feared the Visya of Ta-Pet would concoct such a disaster, but then she had instructed her quartermasters to deny all requests for large quantities of powder from Imperial troops, even if it was Borek himself demanding it. He wondered if she was taking simple precautions, or if she had been given reason to fear sabotage.

He hadn’t found the courage to ask.

And so it was fear like that which led to a woman fleeing with her child at the very sight of soldiers. Fears like that were what led to shoddy tenements being so filled with civilians that those inside were breaking open the highest windows and leaping to their deaths, less concerned for the fall than they were of being crushed to death by the press within. If not a single soul grabbed a weapon within Ta-Pet’s walls this day, the deaths might still be counted in the hundreds, the thousands. Already he had seen one building collapsing under the weight of those trying to take shelter, killing all within.

More appalling than even that, however, were those who could not find shelter at all.

He and the squad of Powdered Lead had passed one group of civilians who were prostrating themselves on the side of the street, noses and elbows touching the cobblestones, their cupped hands holding their most precious belongings. Even the poorest of the city often had some small thing that was dear to them. Family heirlooms, he could only assume. A necklace here, a golden ring there, always some trinket that would have been trivial to hide, yet was instead revealed and offered freely. For those who didn’t even have that, there were coins piled high in their hands. And that was only the choicest of their selection: the civilians had laid all their valuables before themselves, from bottles of wines to cookware to simple bundles and bags of fresh food.

Their message was clear: “We are giving you all we have. Please do not destroy our homes in your search for more.”

The squad he was assigned to had walked straight through that street in dead, absolute silence. Every man and woman’s eyes were locked forward, both hands raised to their chests and clenched over their rifles. Sergeant Cagan, a massive, hulking orc, was walking backward ahead of them, his eyes unblinking as he scanned the hands of every soldier, ensuring they were frozen in place.

When this is done, I will have to offer thanks to the gods for protecting the cities we tried to take.

Talk only resumed when they passed the offerers by. Mui let out a great, tired sigh. The chaos of civilians running every which way was almost welcoming compared to that alien silence.

Mui watched a crowd of people walk around a corner, a large family of orcs. They saw the squad of Powdered Lead and stopped, turned, and ran the other direction, the oldest lifting the youngest into their arms so they could move all the faster. He kept moving, thoughts a whirl.

I was sixteen when that first siege started, Mui recalled. Five years ago. So small a number to contain the lifetimes that had passed him by. I was so young. I followed the others without thinking. If we had won, if our mages had broken down the walls, if I had charged in with the army, what would I have done? Would I have been what these people fear?

He did not know. Another thing to thank the gods for, he supposed.

The patrol wandered on, searching for signs of looting and violence. That was why they were there, after all. To make sure the city did not tear itself to pieces. Thankfully, he had seen little of it. His squad had been assigned to patrol a vaguely-defined portion of Ta-Pet, lacking as they were in maps of the city streets, and so they were snaking their way up and down the city blocks in rudimentary fashion, trying to trace out a perimeter of a section they ought to be responsible for.

Seeing as Sara had been most interested in sheltering the poorest regions of the city, the areas which would not have House Guards and sturdy doors to hide behind, they were in places where there was less to steal. He had hoped that this would make his sector a more peaceful one. And it had, to a certain degree. People here were not interested in stealing from their neighbors, who they knew had just as little as them. Most of those such opportunists had gone out in droves, heading to the richer portions of the city. He began to garner some vague sense, a nascent hope, that perhaps this would be an uneventful patrol. That through luck and coincidence, theirs was a stabler region of the city.

Yet as they circled deeper into their assigned zone, treading off the main thoroughfares, conditions steadily deteriorated. The cobblestones were loose and uneven, conspiring to trip him with every step, and the tiled gutters which should have lined each street became forgotten relics, replaced by wide, muddy ditches. The buildings, though they may have started as solid stone constructions, had been chiseled by time into shabby half-things, supported by rotten timbers and rusted nails. Men and women scrambled in the streets at their approach, banging on locked doors with desperate, pleading cries.

This area was poor. Very poor. So poor, in fact, that everyone in it seemed to be wondering why soldiers, after weeks on the march, exhausted by battle and drunk on pilfered wine, would ever bother to show their faces.

They all seemed to come to the same conclusion. There was no wealth here, but there were people. Vulnerable people. People who lived in a place so putrid that there was no crime so horrible that its alleyways could not swallow their screams.

Mui’s fur began to stand on end as they marched. The people who had been turned out into the streets had stopped trying to flee. There was nowhere left, after all. So they’d begun to gather. To mutter. To look for broken bits of wood and loose cobblestones. The streets were filling, piece by piece, person by person, with the dull rumble of an angry crowd watching them pass.

“Calm!” Mui called out, preempting Sergeant Cagan, who he was nominally only the translator for. “Be calm! We are only patrolling! We are no threat to you!”

Mui didn’t know what the right thing would have been to say, but he learned he hadn’t picked it. A brick came from a dark alleyway, aimed remarkably well, sailing straight at his forehead. He stepped aside easily, holding up his empty hands as he made calming gestures.

“I apologize for our intrusion! There is no need for concern! We seek only to maintain order-”

Something slammed into the back of Mui’s head, accompanied by a burst of blinding light. He fell a few drunken steps forward, beginning to topple, only to be caught by a sturdy green hand.

“Back!” Sergeant Cagan shouted. “Everyone in close! Form solid square! If I see a single fucking one of you reaching for a goddamn trigger, I’ll tear your fucking head off!”

Mui found himself dragged into a tight press before he could gather his wits about him. He reached up and felt at the back of his helmet, finding a dent there that was just the right size for a brick. His ears were ringing.

Why…?

“Get your head on straight!” The sergeant screamed into his ear. “We’re getting the fuck out of here!”

Mui shook his head, his sensibilities coming back by degrees. He first realized he was being half-held up by the shoulders pressing into his own, the Powdered Lead troop’s armor scraping and scratching against him. The mercenaries had become a solid, unassailable slab of steel in the middle of the street, bayonets pointed in every direction.

The first brick had been the calm before the storm, or perhaps the lone source of inspiration to turn an entire chunk of the city into newly-minted artists of the improvised weapon. All sorts of things were flying through the air. Cobblestones, bricks, chunks of wood, mud– gods, Mui prayed it was mud– and even cutlery, the last of which was the most dangerous of all. Without shields to shelter under, the centermost soldiers of the formation were raising their rifles overhead, doing their best to deflect the debris.

He felt something scrape across his cheek, wetting his face in blood, and found the object responsible a moment later by virtue of a pained cry: there was a knife caught between the armored joints overlapping the shoulder of the mercenary to his left. Somehow, the blade had slipped through the thinnest of gaps to land in the muscle. A luckier shot Mui didn’t think he’d ever seen, but every soldier knew that death required nothing more than a bit of luck on the wrong side of the field.

It was the feeling of blood matting his fur that finally shook Mui to full wakefulness. He shouted in dismayed fury, joining the other mercenaries in raising his rifle high, holding the stock over the heads of the soldiers in front of him, who couldn’t protect themselves while also warding off the crowds of people who were gathering in the street, many of whom were gripping improvised clubs.

The crowd had become a mob. These were a people who knew riots, he could tell. They kept hopping forward and back, almost close enough to get stabbed, teasing at the very edge of the bayonets, either testing their reactions or, perhaps, trying to work up the courage to give in and rush the Powdered Lead.

It was a miracle in its own right that no shots had been fired. If he’d been on the outside line, Mui truly couldn’t say if he would have shown the same discipline. He was losing track of the street, so filled was his vision with furious faces. Even those who had been hiding in their homes were now emerging, smelling blood in the water.

He wondered what price a stolen Powdered Lead rifle might fetch, when sold to the right bidder. Enough to feed a family for weeks, he imagined. In a place like this, that was a dangerously alluring thought.

The Powdered Lead began marching their way awkwardly down the street, answering every shout and jeer with an insult of their own, though it was plain each side couldn’t understand what their opposite was saying. Mui was glad for that. For once, nothing good would have come of mutual understanding.

Though it likely only took a minute or two for them to march their way out of the thin street, it felt like an hour. The moment they returned to a larger thoroughfare, the Sergeant ordered them to turn around and surround the entrance to the street, forming a cordon that prevented the mob from continuing their harassment.

That didn’t mean they weren’t trying, however. Spirits flying high on their ‘victory,’ they kept pressing forward, trying to convince the Powdered Lead to break and run entirely. They kept throwing things, kept shouting, and some brave few began to dart forward, wailing clumsily at the bayoneted rifles with long bits of debris, trying to knock them out of the mercenary’s hands.

“Into the skies!” Mui heard Sergeant Cagan yell, though it was near impossible to pick out over the crash of stones and hurled insults. “Aim at the sky and fire off a volley!”

Mui pointed his rifle up at a forty-five degree angle and, without thinking, pulled the trigger.

It was likely the least coordinated musket volley he’d ever seen, rattling gunshots filling the air for a solid two or three seconds, but it got the job done. The sudden explosion of light, sound, and smoke startled the mob into a panic, ruining any momentum they had. Even though they’d likely heard of the weapons by now, none of them had ever seen muskets fired, much less fired a bare few feet in front of their face.

By the time the smoke cleared, the mob had evaporated. Mui was left trembling, still aiming his musket high, breathing hard. He’d never been so surrounded, so thoroughly cut off from help, in all his life. Even in the worst battles, he’d always had an army at his back. Not one lone squad of twenty-odd soldiers. He kept gasping air over and over again, as if he’d just broken the surface of a lake after nearly drowning. It had felt like he was drowning. That’s what it had felt like.

“Shit,” he heard Cagan mutter. Then, louder, “Shit! Fuck! Who did that?!”

Mui looked around, baffled. None of the mercenaries were injured, at least not any worse than a few cuts and bruises–

A woman was half-lying in the street. Not a mercenary or soldier. A civilian. Her feet were pushing her backward, her upper body supported with one arm, the other clenched over her sternum. Blood had already poured down her shirt to her knees, a long smear of crimson covering the stretch of dirty street she’d managed to drag herself across. She’d been hit by a good shot. Center mass, right beneath where the ribcage stitched itself together.

The kind of shot that would leave her dead in minutes.

Mui looked left and right, searching for the culprit. One soldier stood out from all the others. She was holding her rifle level, not into the sky. Smoke still trailed from the barrel. Her face grew ashen, and her hands began to tremble. She turned to Sergeant Cagan.

“I-I-I- didn’t hear y-you-”

“Then why the FUCK did you shoot?!” Cagan roared, one massive hand clamping around the back of the woman’s neck as he dragged her out of the line.

“Everyone else w-was, and I-I-I thought th-th-they were gonna-”

“What? What?” He brought his face down to hers, spewing saliva across her trembling features. “You thought a bunch of fucked-up Imperial peasants were gonna run the goddamn Powdered Lead under? You were scared of some prissy little city kids with fucking sticks and stones?!”

“I’m s-s-s-s-”

“Save it for the fucking Champion!” Sergeant Cagan roared. It was the first time Mui had ever heard someone from Tulian refer to Sara as such. The sergeant shoved his soldier forward, pointing. “Give her your fucking kit!”

“Wh-what? My-”

“Not your fucking gun!” The sergeant bellowed, a vein visibly pulsing in his head. Mui watched as the man sucked a long breath through his tusks, clenching his fists to help calm his shaking arms.

He’s scared, Mui realized. He’s scared of what will happen when Sara finds out one of his squad shot a civilian.

The sergeant’s hands unclenched. He spoke again, but quietly this time, without shouting. There was a deadly intensity in his words.

“Give her your healing supplies, Private Maunti. All of them. Make sure she takes them.”

The woman– Maunti– looked at her sergeant with wide eyes.

“B-but sir, if I g-get i-injured-”

He clapped a hand on her shoulder, dragging her close. He whispered something into her ear that even Mui could not hear. It was only a few words, but Maunti nodded, swallowing hard. She turned around, looking at her handiwork.

The injured civilian had managed to drag herself another twenty feet or so back up the street. Color seemed to be draining from her skin by the second, leaving her shaking and pale, and the trail of blood behind her was so thick that, even though he couldn’t see for sure, Mui felt certain the bullet had pierced her straight through. There was too much red on the stones to be explained by what little was leaking between her fingers.

Two men from the original mob returned. Brave men, to be doing that. They glanced nervously at Mui and the other soldiers as they tried to grab the woman under the arms, only to drop her when she let out a hideous, prolonged shriek at their first tug. The crowd— which Mui realized hadn’t fully dissipated, but instead fled far down the street, watching the unfolding scene in a mixture of horror and anger— recoiled at the scream. It was an ugly one, primal, the sound of a wounded, dying animal.

Private Maunti grit her teeth and, after a final moment of indecision, unslung her rifle, handing it to another soldier.

In a strange sort of way, Mui thought the sight of Maunti diving back into that dirty, bloody street, unarmed save for a cloth package clutched to her chest, was perhaps the bravest thing he had ever seen.

The two men leapt in front of their friend at Maunti’s approach, brandishing table-leg clubs. Private Maunti froze, holding her hands out.

“I-I’m going to h-help her-”

The men stared blankly, uncomprehending.

Mui found himself at Maunti’s side a moment later, unsure of how he got there.

“She has healing goods,” he said in Kemari, gesturing to her package. “She misunderstood the order. This is a mistake. We did not want to hurt anyone. Now we want to fix our mistake.”

Maunti jumped at the sound of his voice, that sudden movement in itself nearly sending the two men either running away or swinging for her head, but nothing so awful transpired.

They were just five people in the street, unsure of who was going to walk out of here alive.

“Show them, Private Maunti,” Mui said.

The woman unlaced her fingers, managing to open the flap on the package she held.

Its contents shocked even Mui. When Evie had presented him with a similar sack, he’d assumed it to be specially-prepared for him, on account of its expense. It had contained two rolls of gauze, a length of tightly-wound stitching material, a steel needle, steel scissors, steel tweezers (who made tweezers out of steel?), a tiny, unreasonably sharp knife, and a small vial of healing potion. It was an excellent gift, one he’d treasured because he knew it might someday save his life.

It was also, he was now shocked to discover, exactly what Maunti held, too. Private Maunti. The lowest rank in the Powdered Lead.

Good gods. How can Sara afford it? What must it cost, to give a healing potion to every soldier?

The two men leaned over, inspecting the pack’s contents. A whispered conversation began between them, the two arguing back and forth.

“I don’t wanna…” A tiny voice whispered from down low. “I don’t wanna die…” The woman blinked as she looked around, tears beading at the corner of her eyes. “Where’s my Dad?”

That put paid to any further discussion.

All of them dropped to their knees, taking positions around the woman. Maunti was near the woman’s head as she began fumbling the potion out of the bag. She uncorked it with the tip of the knife included in her pack, then tried to tip it into the woman’s mouth.

The woman pursed her lips and turned away, a confused, panicked expression on her face. Her eyes were dazed, unfocused.

“No,” Maunti whispered in garbled Kemari, “No, no, no, sorry, sorry, please open, please do not-”

“We need to get her mouth open,” Mui said in Kemari, pointing. “You. You will hold her jaw like this,” Mui showed the proper grip on his own face, “With all your fingers around her chin, pulling hard. Then you, you will help keep her lips open, but be careful. She’s not sensible. Some try to bite.”

Acting in instinctive respect to the cool, practiced authority in his voice, the two did exactly as ordered, wrangling their bleeding friend like she was a feral dog.

The woman barely put up a fight. That was deeply concerning.

After a painful moment of back-and-forth, Maunti was pouring the potion down the woman’s throat, occasionally stopping to put a palm over her lips, so her sudden coughing would not allow any of it to be spat back up. It took almost twenty seconds before the entire potion was down her throat, but when it was done, everyone sagged in relief.

“Thank you,” one of the men said, beginning to lift her up.

“No!” Maunti cried in Kemari, holding her hand out, bandages fluttering. “No! She need help, help!”

“What? You gave her help!”

“More, more!” Maunti insisted helplessly, shaking the gauze wrap in her hands, as if that would make the men understand.

“Your friend only received a small potion,” Mui explained for her. “It may not be enough on its own. She needs simpler healing, too.”

“What? You a fuckin’ sawbones or somethin’?” The man spat to the side. “Don’t trust them fucks far as I can throw ‘em. She took the potion, and we shouldn’ta even let you do that.”

“Look at her,” Mui pleaded, gesturing to Maunti. “Does she look like a scheming, vindictive woman? Or just someone who wants to help?”

The two men glanced at Maunti. The mercenary woman made a strange sight. Wearing heavy, foreign armor, a thick gambeson wrapped around her torso, her muscles turned to thick ropes by long hours of march and drill, she could have been an artist’s template for a thousand heartless soldiers. Yet her eyes were red with tears, her hands jittering in obvious, unsteady panic.

“Looks like a fuckin’ scared little girl, is what she looks like,” the other man said. “And I don’t know if I want a scared little fuckin’ girl putting a knife in anyone’s guts.”

“She is scared,” Mui confirmed. “But not of helping your friend. She is terrified of what her commanding officer will do if it is discovered she killed an innocent civilian. She wants to help.”

The men looked at each other, as confused by hearing the statement as Mui felt speaking it. It was true, however. Even if Mui had just recognized it. He knew Sara had a reputation among the Tulians for heavy-handed punishments to things other armies outright ignored, but Maunti and Sergeant Cagan were in a panic. He hadn’t seen any of the Powdered Lead look half as scared in the midst of actual battle as they were at the prospect of facing Sara’s ire. He wanted to ask her what, exactly, had them so terrified, but there wasn’t time.

“Fine,” one of the men eventually spat. “Just… help her. But we’re watching you, a’right?”

Mui hung his head. “Thank you. Thank you.” He switched to Continental, addressing Maunti. “You can help her now. I will translate as needed.”

A bloody, muddy, shit-filled street was not the environment Sara’s lessons on disease and germs had taught him was appropriate for a delicate procedure, but it was what they had. He relayed instructions between Maunti and the soldiers, guiding the injured woman into a splayed position so Maunti could patch her up.

Mui found himself shocked by the expertise with which Maunti bound the wounds, almost as shocked as he had been by the contents of her healer’s pouch. She was utterly professional as she pulled the woman’s blood-stained shirt over her head, even as the other two men looked away, trying to preserve their friend’s modesty. Mui didn’t, accustomed as he was to battlefield wounds, but he still felt the instinct.

Not Maunti, apparently. She poured water from her canteen over the woman’s bloody breasts without a second thought, revealing the center of the wound. Maunti put her thumb beneath the ragged hole to mark the position just before oozing blood hid it once more.

Such a tiny thing, to cause such havoc, Mui reflected. He had always struggled, in some odd way, to understand how so minor a cut as those created by arrows– now bullets– could kill. This wound could have been hidden by a creasing of skin as one bent forward. It seemed wrong that it could kill an entire person.

Maunti stuffed the wound with a plug of gauze, then began unraveling more of the white cotton. She spoke as she worked, explaining her actions, which Mui translated for the two men.

“You need to keep pressure on it. Stop as much of the bloodflow as you can. Okay. Good. Now, we’re going to have to roll her onto her side. It’s the only way I’ll be able to wrap the bandage all the way around her. You will have to take that plug out the first time you change the bandages.”

“When should we change the bandages?” One of the men asked through Mui.

“Twice a day, or whenever the blood soaks all the way through,” she said. “Make sure you boil the bandages after every change, if you can’t take her to a healer.”

Mui hesitated before he translated this. “They will not understand why they should boil the bandages, Maunti.”

“They don’t need to know why,” she huffed, preparing to lift the limp woman onto her side. “Only that they do.”

Mui knew they wouldn’t do it, though. Just the thought of it was absurd to anyone who didn’t understand what Sara had brought from her world. These men were already suspicious enough of them as it was.

“The bandages are enchanted,” he told them in Kemari. “They burn away rot and disease, but they need to be recharged with flame.”

“What?” The man’s eyes went wide. “Flame? Will they not burn?”

“They will, which is why you must put them in a cauldron of only water, first. They will absorb the energy of the fire much slowly this way, but they will not burn. Give them a quarter hour or so, then they are ready.” Mui hesitated, realizing the men would be seeing this as some great gift of enchanted goods. They might just sell the things off. A cynical concern, but a valid one. “And,” he hastily added, “they will only work for a few charges. Three if you are unfortunate, five if you are not. When the bandages begin to unthread, you will know they are failing.”

The men nodded seriously at this. That caveat was comforting to them, in some strange way. To be gifted powerful potions and enchanted healing devices from a conquering army was absurd, unbelievable. To be given a half-dose of healing concoction and a shoddy artificer’s failed project, however? That was far more believable.

“Alright,” Maunti said, “Roll her over in three, two, one…”

Mui helped the others as they all worked to roll the unfortunate woman on her side. She had long since passed out, but even still, the motion forced a terrible groan to gurgle out her lungs. At least there was no blood in her breath.

“Careful, careful, careful,” Maunti chanted, mostly to herself. “There. Good. Hold her there.” She smiled up at the men, sweat now joining the tears on her cheeks. She tried her best at speaking Kemari. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

“You’re… welcome,” they awkwardly replied, once they managed to understand what she was trying to say. They would not have expected this treatment from their own city’s guards, much less this bizarre, pale foreigner.

“Now, it’s going to take a lot of wraps to cover this big of a wound, so I’ll need you to lift her off her side each time so I can reach under her…”

Confused even as he translated the words, Mui and the two men leaned over the woman’s side, inspecting the exit wound. The wound was tiny, after all, barely more than a half-inch…

One man turned away to wretch, while the other just swore profusely.

Mui nearly reacted the same. It seemed impossible that such a wound had come from the shot Maunti fired. Ridiculous. A little thumb-sized piece of lead doing all that? How?

But there was no denying the placement. Directly on the opposite side from the bullet hole, there the exit wound gaped. Four or five inches of skin were entirely missing from the woman’s back, a crater the size and depth of Mui’s fist ripped from her body. The work of the healing potion had stopped the bloodflow, but that only made the sight more gruesome. He could see sinew and bone intermixed, all of it caked over by the half-healed scabs indicative of the potion’s aid. It was as if she had been chained in some awful dungeon, unable to move while rats chewed a hole into her body for days upon days.

This is what I have been doing to people when I fire my rifle?

“Don’t need to look at it,” Maunti said, and at first he thought she was talking to Mui and the others. Then she kept talking, keeping up a breathy mantra. “Don’t need to look at it to wrap it, just need to wrap it, that’s what the sarge always said. Just gotta wrap and wrap and wraaaaaap…” she trailed off, biting her tongue as she continued to wind the pearly-white gauze around raw, pink flesh.

Eventually, mercifully, the work was done. The healing potion had stopped the worst of the bleeding, which meant the bandages weren’t immediately soaked through. That was apparently the extent of what the small vial could achieve, however. The rest would be up to the woman.

“I’m done,” Maunti announced, snipping off a bit of gauze, which she patted into place. “The bullet passed all the way through, so you won’t have to worry about lead poisoning.” Mui omitted that detail from his translation. “Just keep her as still as you can, and make sure to change the bandages regularly.”

“And boil them,” one of the men said, raising a disbelieving eyebrow at Maunti.

“And boil them,” Maunti confirmed through Mui. She wiped her hands on a bit of leggings left exposed by her armor, a useless effort. Every part of her from the waist down was bloody, even the steel. “You should get her to a healer as soon as you can, of course. Their magic will do everything I couldn’t. But until you can do that, since I know the city’s gone to even worse fucking shit than it already was–” Mui translated this more politely, “–just keep her still, quiet, and clean. Don’t let her walk or anything stupid like that.”

“We will,” the men said, when Mui finished his translation. They slowly took the woman between them, one holding her limp legs, the other taking her arms. They stood together, readying themselves to leave. Then the one holding the woman’s arms paused.

“I… you’re the one who shot her?”

Mui did not want to translate this, but they waited, staring at him. Reluctantly, he repeated it in Continental.

“I am,” Maunti said. There was no tremble in her voice. Having apparently accepted whatever fate Sara would bring down upon her, she was a soldier once more.

“Then… I don’t know why…” The man shook his head, cursing. “Thank you,” he said, spitting the words as fast as he was able, as if they burned his tongue on the way out.

And with that, they left. It was over. Perhaps the longest five minutes of Mui’s life. He stood in a daze, looking back at the squad of Powdered Lead, who were barely fifty feet away. They didn’t even look impatient. It hadn’t been nearly so long for them.

“Well?” The sergeant called “Come on! We need to get moving.”

Mui followed after Maunti. He tried to rest his hand on his sword, only to realize that it wasn’t there. Without even realizing it, he’d discarded his weapons before going to help, just as Maunti had.

Behind him, at a distance the human men likely didn’t realize he could still hear them, he heard the men whisper to one another.

“Do you know where she lives?”

“Don’t even know her fucking name.”

“Shit.”

There was something profound in that, Mui thought, but he was too exhausted to parse it. He accepted his sword and rifle back from one of the other mercenaries and, at Sergeant Cagan’s barked order, resumed the patrol.

Far across the city, there was a lone, desolate thud. Somewhere, for some reason, a cannon had been fired.

When no gunfire accompanied it, Mui paid no attention. It would be hours yet before they could stop their patrolling.

------------------------------------

Sara Brown

------------------------------------

“I don’t think you quite caught my implication, Sir Choeun,” Sara called, her voice piercing the many walls of the rebellious compound she and her troops had surrounded. “I know I am a woman famed for my subtle, underhanded threats, but when I told you that I will happily kill you and everyone in that compound without a second thought, it was no metaphor.”

The response was delayed, relayed from the hidden Visya to some subject or another, then another, and then to the poor, unfortunate bastard hanging out a window. The man who must have been liked by none, seeing as he’d been given the task of poking his head out to speak with Sara.

The soon-to-be former Visya of Ta-Pet was holding out in his tower, which his mages had painstakingly warded against all comers. The Imperial Army, meanwhile, had surrounded it in a cordon of soldiers twenty deep, a thick, hot crowd sweating under the sun. Sara had brought four Napoleons to point at each wall, placed far enough away that their operators wouldn’t be at risk of getting killed by stone shrapnel should the weapons fire.

Sara didn’t know what the Visya was hoping to achieve with this farce, impossible as his situation was, and she’d been impatient long before discovering each of his responses would involve a solid ten seconds of wholly unnecessary waiting.

“I am not alone in this tower!” The relaying man called out from his perch on the third story, sweating bullets as he addressed Sara. “I have hundreds of administrators, staff, and servants within my home, as well as dozens of the slaves you think so dearly of! You would not dare raise your hand against me, not when so many innocent lives are on the line!”

Sara laughed, taking care to cast even this automatic reaction across the air. It was an ugly laugh, full of scorn and self-reproach.

“Really? You don’t really understand what innocent means, do you?”

Another mind-numbing delay dragged on. Sara resisted the urge to tap her foot.

“You have killed many, Chosen, but never in cold blood! Never in the light of day, before all, where everyone can see you for the beast you are!”

Sara looked down at herself. Since the battle’s conclusion, she hadn’t done much more than dunk a few buckets of water over her head. Even the quickest glance could have told the Visya that she was wounded in a dozen places, her shredded armor soaked in dried blood, almost none of which was hers. She looked like a woman who’d gotten in a wrestling match in a butcher’s shop.

Guess that means he can’t see me from wherever he’s hiding.

“You’ve got a fucked-up idea of what innocent means, Sir Choeun,” Sara replied, allowing a the barest sliver of the boiling contempt she felt to slip through her professional facade. “I know some of your Warriors made it back into the city. Some of them probably saw me fight. Did none of them give you a report on what I did to your army? What I, personally, did to your army?”

Someone coughed. There was a lot of foot shuffling, and a few whispers. For a city square packed to the brim with heavily armed soldiers, that level of quiet was profound.

“You killed our Garrison,” the Visya eventually said through his intermediaries, “and fought our Warriors, but that was all. We have learned much about you, Sara Brown. Though you lack the grace and gentility of a true Divine Chosen, you have still never killed those who do not resist. You will not strike me and my House down. They are innocent.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Sara called. One of Borek’s flunkies tried to step forward and put a hand on her shoulder, perhaps catching the dangerous glint in her eyes, but she waved him off. On account of her Divine patronage, Borek had unequivocally put her in charge of this negotiation, without limit or caveat. “You think that I don’t kill innocents. You’re wrong. I’ve killed hundreds of innocent people. Thousands, if you count the ones whose deaths I ordered. And I do count them.”

The gathered crowd shifted in place, boots scuffing the cobblestones, the whispers growing louder. Sara ignored them as much as her Blessings would allow her to.

“Your garrison?” She said, “those conscripts? The people you forced into battle under threat of imprisonment, slavery, or death? They were innocent. They didn’t deserve what I did to them. But I did it anyway. I shot them. I stabbed them. I gutted them like pigs, and I put their heads on pikes, and I did it all so I could break into your city. All so I could get to you.”

The response came quicker this time. Sara wondered if the former Visya had been trying to cut her off.

“Do you take me for a fool, Sara Brown? You claim to see my garrison as equal to your person, yet they sought to kill you on the field of battle. You claim you view them as possessing the same innocence as those with me now, who stand alone and unarmed? Even you are not so mad as that! Your heart is weak, Sara Brown. You do not have the callouses, the ruthlessness, to drag me out of my home.” A brief pause, the intermediary turning around to ask someone to repeat something, then continued. “I thank you for that, in fact! It is because of your mercy that so many who do not deserve death shall live. When you see reason and begin to negotiate, you may do so happily, knowing you have saved the lives of many!”

Sara muted her Blessings, turning aside. “Evie.”

“Yes, Master?”

“Kill that guy.”

Evie plucked a rifle out of a nearby soldier’s hands, putting it to her soldier. The intermediary, a random man, just another forgotten member of the Visya’s staff, tried to duck at the last second.

Red blood and white bone painted the ceiling of the third-story room in a wide splash. The man dropped, hanging limply over the windowsill, down which ran a small river of blood. It soaked into the grout, falling in geometric lines. Slowly, so slow it was almost laughable, the man slipped backward, until his corpse all at once fell out of sight, thumping to the carpet below.

“Gun Sergeant Piktin!” Sara barked. “Load shell shot.”

“Already have solid shot loaded, ma’am.”

“Discharge it into that door there.”

“Aye, ma’am!”

The Napoleon’s wooden gun carriage creaked as the crew twisted it around, shifting its aim from the higher stories, the place where they’d guessed the Visya was holed up, to point it at the warded doors at the base of the tower.

Smoke and thunder filled the courtyard, half-deafening everyone in a dozen yards. The enchanted wooden gate was not so much as dented by the impact, but as was often the case, the door itself wasn’t the true weak point. It absorbed the shot so well that it was actually the hinges holding it to the stone which shrieked and bent, white marks spreading at the creases where the stress was greatest.

After listening to so many training videos on safety lines, proper rigging, and other OSHA-mandated coursework, Sara remained endlessly amused that even in this bizarre, magical world, people still forgot to account for every point of failure.

The moment the cannon stopped rolling from its recoil, Gun Sergeant Piktin’s crew were already shoving a wet swab down the barrel, cooling any lingering sparks with a loud hiss. A dry swab followed shortly thereafter, then a package of powder and iron ball.

This projectile, though it was difficult to tell from most angles, was very different from the first shot. Unlike its solid-iron predecessor, this iron capsule was hollow, with a visible cap attached to one end. A long specially-treated bit of string dangled in the breeze before the Gun Sergeant cut it down to an incredibly short length, thus setting it to explode barely a half-second after it left the barrel. It was risky to cut the fuse so short, since any minor miscalculation could end up with the bomb bursting before it cleared the muzzle, but she trusted her artillery officers. She watched as he tore off the pre-packaged load of powder, meant for firing at long ranges, and replaced it with a half-charge, the sort that would be used when they used the Napoleons more like mortars than cannons. He tucked the shortened fuse into the sphere, to keep the wind from blowing it out mid-flight, then handed it off to be loaded.

Explosive artillery shells were one of her army’s most effective weapons, and they hadn’t been forced to resort to them since she’d faced the Royal Army under Graf’s command.

Today, though, Sara thought it would send an excellent message.

Another voice called out, from the same window, but this time without showing themselves. It was a woman, and she seemed even less confident than her nervous predecessor.

“You dare attack under the auspice of a truce?”

“I want the fucking Visya!” Sara hollered back. “Fire!”

The cannon recoiled once more, spitting an iron shell straight through the open window. From this range, it was impossible to miss.

Sergeant Piktin’s cutting of the fuse hadn’t been perfect, but she couldn’t blame him. It was hard work, guessing the flight time of a cannon shell. The message Sara was more interested in was delivered all the same: it slammed into the roof of the third-story room, bursting straight up into the next floor where it detonated, flinging the entire fourth story down atop the third. Pieces of wooden shrapnel and shredded furniture were ejected from the open window like a cat coughing up a furball.

Screams began to echo from the tower. Neither room had been empty. Every time the intermediary had spoken, Sara’s Blessings had latched on, casting her senses further into the building. She knew approximately how many people had been in that room when she’d ordered that cannon fired: at least thirteen. She didn’t know how many had been in the room above, but she didn’t much care. Most of them were the Visya’s lesser staff members, accountants and tax reeves, those who weren’t important enough to be offered the true shelter of the warded room above. Some may have felt guilt over that, but not Sara. When the British had bombed a Nazi bureaucrat's office, she didn’t imagine the pilots shed too many tears for the typists and pencil-pushers caught in the blast.

“No one I just killed deserved their death!” Sara called out. “Not a single fucking one! The same as the garrison troops I killed! The same as the rioters I helped put down!” She took a deep breath. “But you know who does deserve to die? Who I would oh-so-love to have on the end of my sword, flopping and bleeding and sobbing?” Sara’s words cracked like lightning, audible across the entire city. “The one who put them there! The little fucking coward holed up in a room like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, thinking I won’t wade through an ocean of blood to drag them out and tie a noose around their neck! Borek wants you alive, Choeun, but me? I’m praying to Amarat that I’ll get to bring this tower down around your ears! And trust me, she’ll listen to my prayers before she does yours!”

Silence. Sara imagined they didn’t have anyone left who would willingly show their faces. Who could have guessed that was coming?

“Did you know,” Sara shouted, forcing an ounce of genial conversation into her voice, “that your fanciest wards only protect the room you’re in, Choeun? That the rest of your tower has barely more than the standard protective enchantments of your city’s walls? The walls that you didn’t trust to resist our cannons, which led to you sending the garrison out to fight us in the field? I know General Borek doesn’t want to find out, since he’s interested in keeping this city as intact as he can get it, but I gotta admit, I’m curious! How many shots do you think it’ll take for us to blow out the bottom floor so the entire tower comes crashing down? Think those wards will protect you from that?”

Once again, there was no response. Sara wasn’t concerned, however. She lifted a speaking crystal to her lips, lowering her voice.

“What’s he saying, Ketch?”

“It’s hard to tell,” the azarketi spy whispered back, keeping quiet from whatever hiding place she’d chosen. “He’s mostly just yelling at his mages. He’s not making much sense.”

“You sure you don’t want to just go ahead and kill him for me?”

“There’s a lot of people in here, Sara, and a lot of them are mages. Selly doesn’t want me to risk it.”

“Alright, no problem. Thanks for the help. I’ll see you later, alright?”

“See you later.”

Sara dropped the crystal into her pocket, turning to her Imperial liaison. “They’re gonna come out with their hands out in a little bit. Just give it a few minutes. I’ve got more important shit to deal with.” She looked across the crowd of Imperial Soldiers, who seemed to regard the Visya’s tower with all the apprehension of an adder’s nest, the sorcerous vipers within poised to strike. “I’ll also leave you two artillery pieces, but they are not under your command. Actually…” Sara whistled, waving over Gun Sergeant Piktin. “I was just telling this guy here-”

The Imperial officer drew himself up in affront, squaring the flowery lapels of his rank into Sara’s sight. “You will not be leaving me only two of your artillery pieces, nor will you so barbarically batter down the very heart of this city, which will be a disaster unto itself! You have not even had the decency to bathe since battle’s end, during which you clearly took several blows to the head! By the gods, what if there is an elf in there?”

“And?” Sara challenged. “What if there is? What then?”

The Imperial officer’s eyes shot wide open. “You may be Chosen by the Gods, but there are limits to what heinous drivel I will allow myself to be subjected to! I am Colonel Kiri Rotha of House Rotha, fourth in command of this Imperial Force, and you will-!”

“I know exactly who you are,” Sara snapped, cutting the man off. “But I don’t know why you think I should give a shit about the sixth-born child of House Rotha, especially considering the depths your mother and father are undertaking in order to scrape the last shreds of silver out of your family’s flooded mines. Of course, Tulian has mechanical pumps which could solve your problem far cheaper than the mages you rely on, but the sale of our machinery to a foreign national still requires my permission, doesn’t it?” She waggled a finger at him. “Best not piss me off.”

Leaving Colonel Kiri sputtering, she resumed her commands to Piktik. “Ignore him. Borek assigned the negotiations to me, which means he’s the only one who can countermand my orders. If the Visya isn’t in chains an hour from now, your job is to put him in a coffin. Try and do it without knocking over the tower, but if it happens, it happens.” Sara shaded her eyes, analyzing the streets and nearby buildings. “And if it does, try and take out the northwestern corner first, so it falls along the widest thoroughfare. Less chance of hitting other buildings. Not like we’re gonna be doing a controlled demolition with cannons. I’m leaving you two Napoleons and an extra ammunition caisson, in case the wards prove harder to crack than the Borek’s mages estimated. If you need even more than that, you’ve got permission for it. Evie, send word to the quartermasters, so they won’t fight him on that.”

“Of course, dear,” Evie said.

Colonel Kiri jumped, startled by the feline’s sudden appearance. Or, more accurately, at his abrupt recognition that she’d been there the entire time. Evie didn’t have any of Ketch’s skills for stealth, but she’d proven surprisingly adept at adopting the peculiar unnoticeability that experienced servants cloaked themselves in. That made her all but invisible to those used to overlooking the servile class, like Colonel Kiri.

“Will you be back, ma’am?” The Gun Sergeant asked. “Or should we find our way to wherever it is we’ll be bunking in Ta-Pet once the job’s done?”

“I want the other two cannons returned to the aqueducts we pulled them from, so we can relieve the soldiers who took their place. Until things settle down, I want every aqueduct under guard.” Thankfully for Sara, the aqueducts ran straight and narrow, with a nice little plinth at the start of their journey for her cannons to be emplaced. “Anyone wants to screw this entire city, that’s how they’d do it.” She spat. “You ask me, it was fuckin’ stupid, putting an entire river over a city’s head. Especially without a way to shut the water off at the source.”

Sara took a moment to eye the stone constructions. She wouldn’t have dared walking under a similar-looking thing on Earth. The aqueducts were made of mortared stone bricks, with an impressively wide, flat path for water to bubble along. Yet the pillars which rose up to support each portion were pitifully thin, and far too sparse. Even if their graceful curves had been made of welded structural steel, she would have expected twice as many to be required to hold the weight. As with nearly every other impressive bit of architecture she’d seen in this world, magical reinforcement had been the crutch used in place of actual skill.

No, she reprimanded herself, it’s not a crutch. It’s just a tool we didn’t have back home. Dad’s right, and he has the tests to prove it. If you want to make something worthwhile out of Tulian, you have to stop thinking of magic as a worse version of technology.

Not letting her self-administered lecture show on her face, she sent Gun Sergeant away with a few parting words.

“Pitch a tent in the street if you have to, but I want at least a few eyes on the aqueducts at all times. Enough to raise a shot and get the gun fired on any saboteurs before they can complete the job, alright?”

“Yes ma’am!” He said, saluting.

Sara saluted back, then, as soon as the last of the Powdered Lead had trundled their way out of sight, bullishly swung her head back to Colonel Kiri.

He turned his nose up. “A ridiculous assertion you have made, General Sara. Even if my family were interested in–”

“No,” she cut him off. “Absolutely not. I’m not selling House Rotha any pumps for your mines. That was a polite farce I offered you in public, because I know the true straits your family’s in. Yes, there’s water in your mines, but that’s not it. Considering the depths you’ve been digging at and how much your lineage has extracted, you’ve almost certainly exhausted everything of worth. Even if our pumps sucked the ground dry as a bone, you’d never find enough to pay back the debt. You’d be better served turning what little liquid cash your House has to other ventures, if you wish to maintain even a fraction of your current prestige.”

Fourth in Command of the First Imperial Blackpowder Army, Nobleman and Sixth In Line to House Rotha, Colonel Kiri Rotha, was not showing the result of his elegant upbringing. The man could barely control his anger. He began to sputter, starting and stopping a sentence every few words, pounding his fist into his palm between every failed exclamation. Sara let him flounder, content to choose her moment.

“That is such a foul-! You cannot seriously believe-! If you dare-! Do you think yourself an-”

“An expert?” Sara shook her head. “No. But my father is. He spent the first twenty-something years of his adult life at various academies studying rock and mineral formations. I heard about your family’s situation from my agents–” by which she meant her Blessings and far too many conversations Kiri had incautiously held in public areas, “–and asked for his advice. After describing the terrain, the methods, and the yields you’re getting right now, he basically confirmed it.” Sara clapped a hand on Colonel Kiri’s shoulder, as if to comfort him. “That mine’s fucked, dude. You got a few more productive years left, then you’re gonna be shit outta of luck.” Sara’s fingers tightened as she dragged Kiri in, whispering straight into his ear. “And if you don’t want me to go around telling every other House that, you won’t try and pretend your Noble rank matters more than my military rank ever again, yeah?”

She released the man, flitting away as casually as if they’d just finished making an appointment for brunch. He was left standing in place, half in a daze, half vibrating with impotent rage.

“Was my estimate of his Level incorrect, dear?” Evie murmured as they began diving back into the crowd of Imperial soldiers, who hastened to make way. “You dragged him to and fro quite easily, I noticed.”

“Mm, no, I don’t think so. He’s too experienced to be that low-Level, even if he was a command-from-the-rear type, which he’s not. I think he was just too shocked to put up much of a fight.”

“Hm. That’s reassuring.” Evie flicked one ear back at Sara pointedly, the rest of her senses turned to assuring herself of the street beyond. “I must say, however, that I don’t believe it was wise to reveal the volume of information your agents had gathered on his House. It exposes our assets to dangers I would rather avoid.”

The undercurrent of the conversation, of course, was the secrecy of Sara’s Blessings. There were no agents, no assets in danger. If their enemies and their spies knew that Sara could hear half the conversations in a city at once, however, they would end up far more circumspect about what they discussed and where they did so. The exact limits of her Blessing– that she had to overhear a conversation from someone who could overhear a different conversation, who could themselves overhear another one, on and on again until it reached something of relevance, was so obscure Sara doubted an outside observer would ever fully intuit its precise nature. That said, they didn’t know if she was the first Champion of Amarat to possess it, and if she wasn’t, there may be a record of it somewhere. It was an advantage Evie was dearly in love with, and one she was equally terrified of losing.

Sara waved her hand, unconcerned. “I’ve been in the Empire for months. More than enough time to set up enough redundant agents–” plausibly, anyway, “–and it’s not like I gave him anything to actually work off of.” That is, Kiri would be looking for spies in his House, not guarding his mouth better in public.

Sara caught a glimpse of herself in a narrow shop window as they passed it. The glass had been smashed, but enough remained to reflect her bloody grin. Sara’s nose scrunched up.

“He was right about me needing a bath, though. Can’t go out like this.”

“We will be late.”

“You think I look good enough like this?”

Evie paused her neck’s impression of a swiveling security camera for long enough to look Sara up and down, her eyes lingering particularly long on her fists, which still sported the raw, tender flesh of healing magic’s regrowth. Old blood was smeared along her shredded gauntlets, broken gorget, and pierced cuisses had turned into thick black sludge. Flies swarmed her constantly, picking at the strings of coagulating viscera that were the consistency of mucus, strung between her swinging limbs.

Evie licked her lips, the tip of her tail flicking.

“If these streets were under better control, I’d be begging you to you fuck me in the nearest alley.”

Sara laughed. “Okay, well, how about I ask it a different way? Do you think everyone else would be happy about me showing up like this.”

Evie’s tail stilled, drooping in disappointment that she didn’t let reach her face. “No. Of course not, dear. We should be near the Powdered Lead’s assigned garrison building soon enough, where a heated bath can be drawn up in short order.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They made small, light conversation as they made their way through the chaotic streets of Ta-Pet. Sara could have taken an escort of Powdered Lead, of course, but there was little need of it. The last of the enemy’s effective fighters were holed up in tiny strongholds, erroneously confident that their magical wards would delay long enough to earn them a negotiated ransom. Instead of that, however, the cannons would be gathered into one force again, so they could put an end to the last stands of a hundred different miniature tyrants.

Tonight, however, was something much worse. Something she had miraculously avoided thus far in her time with the Imperial Army, but was painfully inevitable. Something that Hurlish– who was waiting with folded arms at the gates of the Powdered Lead’s garrison, looked all too eager to remind her of. She wore a deep scowl, and drew in a deep breath when she caught sight– and probably scent– of Sara.

“Where the fuck have you been?” She called out, the deep, angry baritone shaking the cobblestones. “You know how late you are?”

At least there’s some positives to this shitstorm, Sara reflected as she waved her greeting to Hurlish. She didn’t trust herself to not stumble over her words or bite her tongue while she was still taking in her wife’s appearance, after all. Or, more accurately, her clothes.

It turned out that, in the eyes of the Imperial accountants, outfitting a mercenary general and her wives in clothing appropriate for a noble ball was an expense so routine, so unremarkable, that they hadn’t even questioned it when Evie had slipped them the requisition order. Attending this party, which would be composed of the ‘loyalist’ nobles in the city who had been surreptitiously supporting Borek with a trickle of information and funds, was well within the bounds of necessary expense.

Sara had abused the proverbial blank check. Relentlessly.

Hurlish was dressed in nothing less than a gorgeous, luxurious, curve-hugging tuxedo. A classic black and white three-piece, of course, with sharp edges and firm creases, but exquisitely tailored to accommodate the bulk of her muscles and her prodigious chest, her breasts wrapped just tight enough that if Sara popped open a few too many buttons in just the wrong order, the rest would would give out in one great snap, spilling her out entirely. Sara had gotten Hurlish into a suit before, back in Tulian, but those had been sewn by local seamsters, the sort who were more used to making clothes for farmhands and passing sailors than otherworldly party styles. The Imperial artists, on the other hand (and Sara could call them nothing other than artists, after seeing their work) had breathed life into Sara’s deepest fantasies. The illusory tux she had shown them had been measured, notated, recreated to the exact dimensions, then hacked apart and tossed aside, so they could get to work on creating something for Hurlish.

The end result was something that took every feature that made Sara’s wife wonderful and, knowing it could not improve upon perfection, put it on display. If the tuxedo had been worn by anyone else, anyone at all, even another woman with Hurlish’s exact sizes, it wouldn’t have worked.

And with the aid of a few pilfered noble stewards, Hurlish herself had never looked better. Her short black hair was slicked back like every dyke Sara had ever drooled over in Detroit bars, and her ivory tusks were polished to a mirror sheen, the very picture of orcish excellence. She looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger had made an attempt to play James Bond, though unlike Schwarzengger, Hurlish’s muscles didn’t show a trace of steroids, nor were they built for display. Endless hours in a forge had sculpted her body to an ideal very divorced from Earthly femininity, and seeing it framed by that tuxedo was everything Sara could have ever asked for.

“Hi,” Sara said as she reached the gate, staring up at her wife.

“You need to get all that crap off you,” Hurlish said. Her nose wrinkled. “You smell like shit, and you fucked up the gauntlets I made you. Again.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Evie, I don’t want all that shit on my hands. Slap her for me.”

Sara tried to duck, but it was laughable to think she could dodge a swing from Evie. The sharp pop and sting across her cheek woke her up, but only slightly. She straightened, still grinning even as a red handprint spread across her face.

“Sorry,” Sara lied, “I just got distracted. I love the tux. It looks great on you.”

That didn’t get Hurlish’s frown to crack, but it did get her to roll her eyes. She stepped out of the way, allowing Sara and Evie entrance to the garrison.

“I thought you said we were leaving an hour ago.”

“And I thought we were, too. Then things got busy downtown.”

“I heard the cannons.”

“Nothing to worry about. Just trying to show them they didn’t need to bother with talking any more bullshit.” She followed Hurlish into a room, one that, judging by the thick layers of bird-down comforters that had been added to the walls as sound-proofing, was going to be theirs for the duration of their stay in the city.

“Strip.”

Sara wiggled her eyebrows at the orc. “I’ll never say no to that.”

“Evie.”

Sara made it further away before the palm landed on her cheek this time, but not much further.

“Ow,” Sara half-heartedly complained, turning her eyes on her other wife for the first time in a few minutes. “Why’d it have to be on the other cheek?”

“To even out the marks,” Evie explained offhandedly, unbuckling her chestplate and dropping it to the ground. Sara began undressing as well, Hurlish helping with the straps she couldn’t reach. “That way, you won’t even have to apply blush with your makeup. The red is already there.”

“Don’t think I’m gonna need any help blushing, if Hurlish is going to be dressed like this all night.”

“Evie.”

Sara laughed as, this time, the slap landed squarely across her freshly-exposed ass. She tossed a coquettish grin over her shoulder. “Now, be honest. Was that for you, or for me?”

“I do as my mistress demands, of course,” Evie replied, her face a mask of stone. “But please do start getting clean. Every minute you are not in that party is another bit of information your Blessings will miss.”

Sara sighed theatrically, but finished stripping naked. She turned around their room, looking for the tub. She found one, but it clearly wasn’t heated, so she kept looking.

“It’s over there,” Hurlish grunted, pointing.

At the cold tub of water.

“It’s not heated?” Heating baths with firewood was very nearly the only ‘noble’ luxury Sara allowed herself.

“It was,” Hurlish said. “Then you were late. Now it’s cold. Get in.”

“You’re not gonna let me-”

“No.”

“...Shit.”

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