A Tek-nical update

Saruka’s fingers were dangerously good at what they were doing.

Winston had barely settled into the chair before she appeared behind him, and now her thumbs were working slowly through the muscles at the base of his neck while a wooden table waited in front of him beneath bowls of food, bread, fruit, and whatever Penthascara had decided counted as an acceptable evening meal. Every time Saruka found another knot in his shoulders, a pleased little hum sounded behind him. Once or twice she even giggled when he sank farther into the chair despite himself.

He was beginning to understand why queens kept handmaidens.

The thought immediately made him wonder why he had never asked any of the others to do this, though the answer followed almost as quickly. However much their feelings had changed, the four women around him were still Amazons. Xanthibarqa looked capable of driving a tent peg into the earth with one hand, and Winston had no particular desire to discover whether she understood the difference between loosening a muscle and crushing it into obedience.

Aurascyra, Penthascara, and Helisparga were smaller, though none of them had spent her life cultivating the sort of careful hands now moving across his shoulders. They were warriors first. He suspected all three would attempt a massage if he asked, and suspected just as strongly that at least two of them would turn it into something requiring standards, instruction, or criticism before he managed to relax.

Hippolyta presented a different problem entirely. The idea of ordering the former queen of the Amazons to stand behind his chair and work the tension from his shoulders had a certain ridiculous appeal, particularly after everything that had happened between them. The amusement faded when he considered it for more than a moment. She was already doing more than anyone to make his rule possible, arranging the household, managing the women around him, and preparing an island that did not yet know it had a king. Whatever affection she felt for him had become tangled with power because he had made it so. Using that same authority to turn her into a personal servant simply because he could felt petty even by the increasingly flexible standards he had developed for himself.

Another slow pass of Saruka’s thumbs eased more tension from his shoulders and nearly carried the thought away with it. Only then did Winston realize something he had somehow overlooked since sitting down: he had never asked her to do any of this. The massage had begun as naturally as if she had already decided the matter for him, and that quiet assumption unsettled him more than the touch itself.

The moment Winston sat down earlier, Saruka had moved behind him and begun working at his shoulders as naturally as Penthascara might have arranged the plates or Xanthibarqa might have checked the flap. No command, no suggestion, not even enough time for him to think that a massage sounded pleasant. Apparently she had simply decided that a king sitting down before dinner with tension in his neck was a problem falling within her responsibilities.

Perhaps that was what being a handmaiden meant.

Before this whole thing, Winston would have found the entire profession faintly absurd. He was an adult. Adults washed themselves, dressed themselves, carried their own clothes, and generally managed to sit in a bath without somebody standing nearby to make certain they survived the experience. A week ago the idea of another person being assigned to wash him would have seemed almost embarrassing.

Now Saruka had done exactly that, and she seemed to regard the privilege with far more enthusiasm than Winston knew how to handle. Remembering where that enthusiasm had come from made the comfort harder to accept cleanly. He had wanted her contempt gone, and during the bath each careful correction had carried him a little farther than the last. By the time she finished, the guarded woman who had entered the tent had been looking at him with warmth that had not been there before.

Those same hands were now working happily across his shoulders, guided by feelings he had helped reshape one suggestion at a time. Winston could still tell himself that he had only made it easier for Saruka to enjoy serving him, though each repetition of that thought sounded less convincing. Somewhere along the way, permission had become preference, and preference had begun turning into desire. He was no longer certain he could identify the point where one had given way to the next.

Saruka hummed softly behind him as her fingers found another knot and worked patiently through it. The pressure drew Winston farther into the chair before he quite noticed how completely he had relaxed, and the comfort made his earlier unease much harder to hold onto. Whatever moral argument he eventually meant to build around what he had done to her, his shoulders were proving remarkably unwilling to help him make it.

Across the table, Hippolyta had been watching the massage with increasingly obvious amusement. One elbow rested beside her plate, her chin supported lightly against her hand while Saruka worked another knot from Winston’s shoulders with enough enthusiasm to draw a contented sound from him despite himself. The smirk finally won when Saruka gave a pleased little hum behind him.

“It is heartening to see you have taken so readily to your new duties,” Hippolyta observed.

A soft laugh answered from over Winston’s shoulder. “Thank you, Lady Regent.”

The title caught Wintson's attention immediately. Saruka used it without hesitation, as naturally as she had once called Hippolyta queen, and the ease of the correction unsettled him almost as much as the massage had relaxed him. Before he could decide what to make of it, the hands at his shoulders slid forward and Saruka leaned over the back of the chair, wrapping her arms loosely around him. Her cheek settled against the side of his shoulder with an affectionate little nuzzle that would have been unimaginable when she first entered his tent.

“I have decided I rather enjoy my new duties,” Saruka murmured near his ear, her arms still resting loosely around him. “Very much, in fact. I think I shall devote myself properly to our king.”

Across the table, Hippolyta regarded that declaration with open amusement. “Properly? This is remarkable progress from a woman who began the afternoon looking as though bathing him offended her dignity.”

The accusation only made Saruka laugh. She gave Winston a small squeeze before meeting the Regent’s gaze across the table. “I have reconsidered, and wisdom should be encouraged whenever it arrives.”

“So I see,” Hypollyta hummed.

“Then you should be pleased, Lady Regent.” Playful formality entered the title as Saruka settled comfortably against Winston’s shoulder again. “I was honoured to serve you before, and I find myself very happy to be of service to both of you now.”

That earned a deeper curve from Hippolyta’s mouth, enough for Winston to realize the amusement had become shared between them. Saruka had entered his tent barely willing to conceal her distaste; now she was wrapped around his shoulders, calling Hippolyta Regent without hesitation and helping her tease him across the dinner table. Somehow that development unsettled him more than the massage had.

“It pains me to separate you from our king, even if only by a few feet, but withdraw to your chamber for a while, Saruka,” Hippolyta said, amusement still lingering in her voice. “Our king has a visitor to entertain.”

With a reluctant little chuckle, Saruka gave Winston’s shoulders one final affectionate squeeze before drawing her arms away. “As you wish, Lady Regent.” She crossed toward the rear of the tent and disappeared through an inner partition, revealing for the first time that the space beyond served as the sleeping quarters. Winston watched the curtain fall back into place, only then realizing that Saruka apparently had a chamber of her own within the larger tent.

The curtain had barely settled before Hippolyta’s amusement turned toward Winston, as though sending Saruka away had cleared the room for the next matter. “You will want your shoulders for this part,” she said. “I called for a mason. Tektonia oversees the lesser works on the western terraces, walls, channels, and the fittings the palace rarely concerns itself with. She is young, and she grew up listening to Diana’s accounts of the world beyond our shores. They left her with a curiosity about strangers that many of her sisters would be less comfortable admitting.”

Movement at the main flap cut across the explanation. A hand caught the post as a woman stepped through, and by the time she crossed the threshold, the other had already settled confidently against her hip.

Lamplight left her face bare under a pale band, short blonde hair cut close enough that nothing hid the clean line of her brow or the painted red of her mouth. Gold hoops hung from her ears. Blue eyes found him last, bright with a look that went over him the way a mason goes over fresh stone, interested and already measuring.

Fur framed the strong slope of her shoulders. Cream cloth knotted at one side left the other arm uncovered and pulled tight across the heavy swell of her breasts, each breath making the fabric work to hold them. A broad belt of worked leather cinched her waist and kept a metal punch and a wooden rule riding against her hip, while the frayed hem of the tunic climbed high enough on her thighs that the muscle there showed with every shift of her stance. She was younger than the women who had argued over his bed.

Whatever honour bound her did the rest in the space of a look. Interest flared first, bright and unguarded, the curiosity of a woman who had spent years listening to tales of Man’s World and had never expected the first man she met to be sitting at the Regent’s table. Recognition followed hard on it. Her chin dipped. Not deep. Not humble. The dip of someone who knew a king when she saw one and still thought herself the more useful person in the room.

“My king,” she said, the title bright with an eagerness that seemed to surprise even her. “I am Tektonia. A mason, mostly. I work metal too, when stone needs iron to keep it where it belongs. The Lady Regent sent for me, so I expected there would be work.” Her attention travelled over him again, slower now, taking in the chair, the table, and the simple fact that he was sitting there. “I did not expect you.”

Colour warmed Tektonia’s cheek as she continued studying him, her interest becoming harder to mistake the longer her attention lingered. Winston recognised the hunger in her expression easily enough by now. Beneath it remained something equally familiar, an unexamined Amazon confidence that a man from beyond the island would probably need certain things explained to him before he understood them properly.

“I wish to be of use, my king.” Once Tektonia began, the words gathered speed. “Stone will stand for whoever knows how to place it, and iron will hold for whoever knows where it belongs. Tell me what you need first. I could make you a throne, or a house. Walls, if you want something defended. A palace, if that is what suits you. If this camp is meant to grow, I could help make something permanent of it.”

Her hand shifted from the post as the possibilities seemed to multiply faster than she could sort them. “At the very least, you should have a proper residence, something meant to remain where it is. I would gladly build for you. Only tell me where to begin.”

From the other side of the table, Hippolyta let the offer run its course before looking back to Winston, amusement still lingering at the corner of her mouth. “Well, my lord husband, she has offered you half the island before the bread has gone cold. What do you want first?”