Chapter 2-54

I carried Sati back to camp after our tryst, as she’d fallen asleep. It was dark, and mostly quiet, only a few murmurs of conversation rising above the forest noise. Myta held open the tent’s entrance for me, giving me a small smirk. While Sati’s teasing had an edge to it, designed to make me annoyed enough to do something about it, Myta’s was just affectionate humor.

“I thought I was your toy?” My flame kept her voice low as I tucked the apsara into her bedroll, ignoring her **** protests. Myta’s voice held quiet laughter, but I caught the slight edge of vulnerability in the question.

”It seemed appropriate in the moment, but I can use something else if you like.” I pulled her into an embrace, kissing her lips, and then her ear. “You are more my strong right hand. You have strength and skill that she does not, and she’s more enamored of the idea of being displayed and toyed with. But I’m serious, if you want me to call her something else I will. You are my ****, and my flame. And while I am growing fonder of her, you are still first in my heart.”

“It’s fine,” she pulled back so that she could smile warmly at me. “It makes me nervous sometimes, but I can still feel your love for me hasn’t dimmed. It’s just hard, when the company requires so much of my time she’s more available to you than I am.“

“That makes sense.” I nodded in thought, and then pulled her back into a tighter embrace. “Is there work among the company that she can take over? If we spread the load then there might not be such a mismatch.”

“Not now,” she answered. “But I think when we reach Ket’s lands that will change. Our princess learned a lot about politics and diplomacy from her father’s court. Now that you’ve healed her spirit, she can put those skills to work for her daddy.”

That made me chuckle, but also made me curious.

“I thought that Siobhan would end up handling that sort of thing for us? At least once we’d proved ourselves, and earned her goodwill.”

Myta sighed, and I could feel that this was a sore subject for her. I felt a spike of guilt and concern, as this was the first I’d heard about the matter.

“She’d like that,” my flame groaned. “Mother warned me against letting her speak for us though. Metic clans are collections of families, who each see themselves as allied, but independent. The main family carries Ket’s bloodline, her aspect, but they're first among equals, not absolute rulers. If we let her speak for us, then we will be seen as part of her strength, not as partners in our own right.”

“That’s not inherently a bad thing,” I offered.

“No, if we didn’t have Sati I’d say we should let Siobhan handle it. Even Peta doesn’t have the skills to navigate all those individual relationships. It won’t just be inside Clan Ket, but with every other clan as well. But, if we want to b seen as an actor in our own right, we need to speak for ourselves.”

I considered the issue. Even I could see the clear benefit to being seen as allies rather than, effectively, servants. In the latter case, any disagreement we had with Siobhan, even a minor one, could sour the opinion of all of Clan Ket. We’d be beholden to Siobhan and all our deeds would ultimately be credited to her. As long as we only worked through her, we wouldn’t lose much, but even so I chafed at the idea.

“You think Sati can handle it?”

“I can.” I was surprised to hear my apsara’s voice join the conversation. Her mind felt muzzy, as though she were still asleep.

“Perhaps wake up first, little flower.” I smiled as I turned toward her, but Sati shook her head.

“We talked about it already, master.” Myta’s response pulled my gaze back to her, and I pulled her around and took a step back, so that I could look at both of them at once.

“This feels like a fairly major commitment,” I noted. “I’m much closer to being able to alter or remove the Pure seals safely. If you,” I nodded to indicate Sati, “decide to leave us to pursue your own goals, then we could be in a much worse position.”

“We talked about that as well.” My apsara was rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and apparently, her mind. “I don’t believe I will be leaving you. Even if something unforeseen happens, Peta may be able to take up this job with Kota’s assistance. And if she can’t, then Saoirse thinks the consequences of changing tack wouldn’t be so bad.”

“You talked to Saoirse about it?” I couldn’t help my surprise. The shifter wasn’t our, my, biggest supporter, but Sati nodded.

“We needed to speak to someone who would understand the situation, but minimize bias. She was really the only option. Everyone else has too much to gain or lose, even if they wanted to give a fair assessment. Saoirse doesn’t hate you as much as you think, and she doesn’t care about the politics, even if she has to understand them.”

“Then I’ll bow to your judgment,” I shrugged. “None of that matters for now. First we need to deal with the Pure here, then I can finish healing, and then I’ll focus on the bonds. Once they can be altered, our personal situation should come more into focus.”

Both my vas nodded, and we all settled in to sleep for the night.

***

The next few days passed relatively uneventfully. I chafed at the missed opportunity to reforge more of my spirit, but I just wasn’t comfortable risking our window of opportunity, not with an unknown number of souls hanging in the balance. So I occupied my time with study, avoiding anything that would consume much energy. The rest of the company did likewise, with the exception of our scouts.

Sati suffered some soreness from our licentious activities. Far less than an unawakened person would have, given how little preparation I’d given her. I had deliberately pushed the bounds of her physical limits in order to overwhelm her with sensation, however, and even an awakened body can be pushed too far. Though I offered, she declined healing, and even asked Hati to shape her a smooth stone plug to wear back there.

According to the apsara, she wanted a reminder of the experience, and to keep herself ready for similar activities at a moment’s notice. Both Myta and I enjoyed the fruits of her heightened libido while wearing that toy, and she rarely went without it.

When the call to action came, it came abruptly, as we knew it would. I was deep in meditation, examining the interactions of the runes of Sati’s seal, when Myta sent me an urgent summons. Six Pure had emerged from the ruin, pulling three wooden carts.

Our plans had already been set, and I burst into motion to join a score of others in executing our ambush. Jito gave me a cocky grin as he twirled his glaive in anticipation. Guta stood by, ready to guide us through the woods. I was nearly the last to arrive, having taken a little extra time to rouse from my meditation.

The carts made things easier for us. There were far fewer viable paths for the two-wheeled vehicles that there were for individuals moving on foot. What we thought would be a foraging party turned out to be something else, however. Rather than hunting and gathering, the small group headed directly for a shipment of supplies that had been recently left for them.

Guta conveyed this information to us as we moved to intercept the party on their return toward the monolith. I could sense him communicating with one of the other scouts over the network of bonds between Myta and the rest of the company. I clearly wasn’t the only one who had been honing my more esoteric skills.

My job in this encounter had become dramatically more important. As I had done beneath Bani, I needed to conceal the mana from this battle from outside observers, and I needed to do it while conserving as much of my mana as possible. Even if the Pure within the ruins wouldn’t be able to sense the battle, their allies on the outside could. When we’d discussed this originally, those allies were only theoretical, but this delivery of supplies made them a certainty.

As soon as we were in position, I began to spill out my presence to veil us. Timing was an issue, as the first enemy to touch the veil would immediately become aware of it. I’d need to push back the edges of the veil as soon as that happened, and then our forces would immediately attack. After that we’d have little time to assume our target’s roles and return to the ruin. It was all still well within our capabilities, but the margin for error would be much narrower than I’d hoped.

“Will you still be able to hold the illusion with six?” I murmured the question to Sati in order to distract myself from my nerves.

“We have good matches for most of them.” She replied just as quietly. “We’ll need to take Saoirse, and Oistin, but it shouldn’t be much worse than we planned for if…”

“Quiet!” Guta hissed. “They’re here.”

Unlike the Bani tunnels, we didn’t have Ket muffling our sound. It shouldn’t matter for long, unlike our mana the forest would keep the sound of our clash from traveling too far, but we needed to take this group by surprise. The Pure were not so disciplined as we were, audibly chattering as they approached. Either they’d been here long enough to grow complacent, or their discipline had been poor to start with.

Not that I had any room to criticize, given Guta’s interjection. But I took solace in the fact that neither Sati nor myself were actually fighters.

The voices approaching were indistinct, irregularly muffled or projected by the forest. I sent a silent thanks to Guta for quieting us earlier. It might not be clear enough to eavesdrop, but the Pure were distinctly audible for an agonizingly long time.

After what seemed to be hours of taking shallow breaths, and suppressing a particularly tenacious urge to sneeze, I felt the first monk touch the edge of my veil. In an instant I began pushing as hard as I dared, sweeping my presence over the enemy in a wave. I felt like I was wading through water with how slow my mana was moving, but it was apparently fast enough, as the last of the Pure were surrounded before shouts of surprise went up.