Tiamat's Kittens: Dust

[aithne]

3/10/978

Palil:

We all stopped in Yaroslav for a day or so, to report in. I reported our status and position to Harbin, and he came back with a list of assignments we could choose from. I wrote down the list, and said I'd get back to him, and added, "By the way, do you know what the status of our squadmates is? They're not responding to message spells, and we're worried."

His response was a little slow coming back. "We don't know. They're still alive, but they're not responding--whether they can't respond, or are just ignoring us, we don't know."

I looked down at the mission list, frowned, and signed off. I consulted with the rest of my team, and decided to send Jordan's group off to escort Yafa's ambassador to a summit with Gada's and Isla's respective ambassadors at Chertkovo, the city that Gada and Isla had captured. We figured it would play to their strengths, while giving them some practice in outthinking a determined and sneaky enemy.

Paloma and her squad, we sent to investigate the rumors of a Capricorn fleet heading towards Pskov. Hypatia's team we sent to investigate four becalmed and unmanned Aires vessels that had been found.

For ourselves, we picked three different but probably related missions: investigating the mysterious disappearance of every soul in a town called Zainsk, investigating the crooked carnival at Soshi, and looking into the frost giant cache in the north. We messaged in with the assignments, and Harbin told us that Oberan's group was being assigned to deep cover. (This is code for "say your goodbyes now, because it will probably be months and maybe years before you see them again".)

We all had one last night together, before we headed out. There was a bit of quiet rearranging of who was sleeping where, and Olin and I made good use of the time we had left.


Sondirra:

I spent the night with Oberan, of course, and when I woke up in the morning, he was gone. His stuff was still in the room, so I figured he'd gone to have a bath or get breakfast or something. The shirt I'd worn the night before had gotten a bit torn somehow, probably in our hurry to get naked after we went to bed after dinner. After all, who knew when we were going to see each other again? It had been a very good night.

I thought I might borrow a shirt from him. I swear I wasn't prying.

Okay, maybe I was prying a little. But it wasn't like he'd hidden it. Under a few packed layers of clothing, I'd heard the telltale rustle of parchment. I dug it out, a folded piece of parchment that was worn and tattered around the edges, like it was handled a lot.

It was a smudged charcoal drawing of a woman. An elf, I thought, then saw the sharply pointed ears, too sharp for plain elf. It was hard to tell the woman's skin color from the drawing, but her hair was definitely lighter than her skin. Half-drow, probably, I thought. She'd been caught smiling a secretive little smile, her hand cupping her chin. She was beautiful, and it was obvious that the person who had made the picture had loved whoever she was very, very much. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder, and fell in a cascade towards her lap. A single wispy strand fell over her forehead, and I could well imagine that the artist had adored brushing that one lock of hair away from the woman's face.

My eyes went to the bottom of the page, and my suspicions were confirmed. The writing on the bottom was Oberan's, and the careful lettering read, Amanda, the day after the wedding.

Oberan's wife, who he'd killed. Unexpectedly, my heart ached for both of them, and for myself. They hadn't known how it was going to end the day the portrait was drawn. I wondered what Oberan thought, what he did when he looked at this picture. Did he speak to the captured likeness of the woman he'd loved? Did he simply stare and try not to loathe himself?

He wouldn't talk about her to me, even though I'd asked several times. He always told me, "Maybe later." Later, I realized, looking at the picture, was probably years away.

Oberan was still in love with a dead woman. I knew he cared about me, but...not wholeheartedly. There were so many places in him I couldn't touch. So many things he just wouldn't share. Those places still belonged to Amanda.

Can I live with that? I wondered. Can I wait for as long as it takes for him to heal? I cared about him, too, even probably loved him in some ways. But I wasn't in love with him. Amanda's ghost hung between us too often, silently taking up the space between us.

I folded the drawing and stashed it where I'd found it, then rubbed my stinging eyes. Just in time, too, as I heard a step in the hallway outside. I pulled on the shirt I'd gotten from his pack as Oberan opened the door and walked in.

"You're quite the sight," he said, teasing. The look he gave me was definitely not teasing, though, with me wearing nothing but a shirt that was too big for me. He was carrying a plate with fruit and bread on it. "I got breakfast for us."

I grinned and came over to kiss him. "You kind of tore my shirt. I thought I'd borrow one of yours long enough to get me back to my own packs."

Oberan smiled, pulling me close to him with his free hand and setting the plate down on the small table in the room. "Keep it," he said fondly. "I'll keep yours, and have it fixed next time I see a seamstress. We can trade back when we see each other next."

"Whenever that is," I said, teasing, kissing him again. "I'm going to miss you."

I'd have missed the tension that briefly ran through him if he hadn't been holding me at the time. "Me, too. Look, Sondirra..." He took my shoulders in his hands, turning me to face him. I frowned, confused. "It may be some time. If something comes up, do whatever it is you need to do. We'll get squared with each other next time we see each other."

I was briefly confused, and then I realized-- "You've been talking to Paquita, haven't you?"

"Cowan, actually." He gave me a half-smile, and squeezed my shoulders.

I couldn't quite figure out what to do with my eyes, or my hands. "I--I don't know, Oberan. I just don't--"

"That look in your eyes is answer enough," he said, his face serious. "If you have something you need to resolve--don't let whatever is between us stop you."

I looked at him, then shrugged, helpless. "I think we both have things to resolve. I like you a lot, and I care about you. Like you said, we'll get square when we see each other again." I kissed him, this time harder, trying to distract myself from the thoughts that were babbling in the back of my brain. "Now. Breakfast, since you went to the trouble of getting it?"

He laughed and we sat down to eat, the mood lightening.

I didn't forget the conversation, though. It kept playing in my mind, over and over, on our way east and north...


Palil:

We'd decided to start with a brief investigation of what had happened to the town of Zainsk. The town itself was easy enough to find, a little farming and fishing village with a harbor deep enough to have a couple of larger ships in. And it was also clear that nobody was there.

Nobody except the animals, that is. There were dogs and cats, and horses running in herds. There were carts in the street, full of rotting vegetables, dropped hoes in gardens and buckets of water that had been dropped. It appeared that the entire population of the town had been taken or killed...all at once. Just people. No animals or buildings had been harmed.

It had been twelve days or so, so there were no lingering traces of magic. We located the edges of the circle--it was about a mile across. There was nothing in the epicenter but a spot of burned grass.

Galen went scouting inside the houses, and it was him who found the first definite sign of what happened. There was a cradle in one of the houses that had rumpled blankets in it, as if there had been a baby lying there. When he pulled back the blanket, he was confronted with a tiny handful of grey dust. Just like the dust that a Disintegrate leaves.

Now that we knew that, we found the dust everywhere. It looked like a wide-range Disintegrate spell had gone off...but there had been no survivors. You always have a chance to resist a Disintegrate; if one had gone off, we would have expected there to be survivors.

Because there were none, something else had happened.

The other strange thing was that there was evidence of someone having been in town after everyone had died. All of the horses that had been harnessed to carts had been cut free, and though some where still wearing bridles, all of them had had bits removed. someone had been by to make sure that they had a chance to survive.

The same person? Someone else? Sondirra cast Speak with Animals and found out that the person who had cut the horses loose was an elf, one that he had seen before, but had not seen since he'd cut the horse free. Tchar, doing a flyby, had found a place to the east that was probably this guy's house. Whoever it was walked with a staff or a cane, and there was evidence around of a dragon living here or nearby.

We traipsed up there so see if we could talk to him. I was suspecting that he hadn't been the one who did this, based on the evidence I'd seen, but he might have been. We simply walked up and knocked on the door, however. He opened the door, a middle-aged elf starting to go a little grey at the temples, carrying a steeled staff. He introduced himself as Piers, and said his bondmate (who wasn't present) was named Marmara.

"You lot are the first to have come by since whatever it was happened. I saw a bright flash one afternoon, and when I arrived all the people were gone. I cut the horses loose--wanted them to at least have a chance--and I haven't gone back. No reason to."

"Was there anyone in town who might have done this? Even accidentally?"

He shook his head. "We had a few minor mages, but nothing on this scale. And I don't understand why anyone would have done this--Zainsk was just a little farming village in the middle of nowhere."

Beamer asked, frowning, "Was there anyone unusual in town beforehand?"

"I'd last gone into town about three days before," Piers said. "When I was there, there was a dwarf down from Soshi, from the carnival there, trying to see if there was enough demand to bring his carnival down here. He left that night, though. Guy was named...Hershel, I think."

We talked a bit more, enough to know that the guy really didn't know much of anything, and we went back to town. Galen and Tchar decided to fly low over the road going north, and Bambi and Beamer went to look at the harbormaster's logs.

The logs noted that a military ship, part of a troop transport convoy, had pulled into harbor the day before the flash. The ship had been taking on water, and they wanted to repair it. There was no reference to it leaving.

Sondirra, on a hunch, sent Bambi out to look along the harbor bottom and see if there was a scuttled ship. She did indeed find a newly sunken ship, with the hull torn out and the masts broken off by what seemed to have been dragon claws. As everywhere else, there were no bodies. But were there no bodies because they'd been dusted, or because whoever was on the ship had done their work here and departed?

About then, Tchar and Galen returned. "You guys should come see this. Come on, harness up, it's a short flight."

Ten miles north of Zainsk, there was a place on the road where a set of tracks just...began. It looked like a trick that we occasionally do when there's not enough room for a proper landing--we start a descent, then change to our small forms while still in the air, then land hard. It's hard to do, and nearly impossible to do with a bond on our backs. There were ten of them, and it looked like they'd landed one after another.

We followed their tracks a couple of miles north to a campsite. They'd kept a neat camp, burying the leftovers of their meals, and the empty water flasks they'd used. A couple of those flasks had military markings on them, and several more weren't water flasks at all. They carried the seal of Gikar of Chelyabinsk, who makes very good (and very, very expensive) vodka.

We auguried and confirmed that the people who'd camped here had been the ones who'd come on the ship, and were the same people who'd done the disintegrate.

They'd headed north, towards Soshi. At that point, we had no idea what was going on. Was this accidental? Was someone testing a new weapon? And why here, why now?

Troubled, we flew towards Soshi, hoping it was still there.


Sondirra:

Fortunately, Soshi was still there, still bustling. We split up into non-bond pairs--me and Beamer, Tchar and Bambi, Palil and Galen.

Beamer and I headed towards the highest-class bar we could find. We figured that people who drank Gikar, and Mithril Gikar at that, had money. Money seeks out money. So we hung out, I nursed a very expensive (but very good) drink, and Beamer arranged to do a turn as a bard.

This bar was mostly populated by humanoids, but there was a group of three in the corner who were drinking quite a bit but not getting drunk. I wandered over to within earshot of them, and noted that they all had non-dragon looking eyes--they were either bonded, or used to have bonds and had lost them.

They were all drinking that very expensive vodka, and I thought that we'd found part of our folks. There was an elf named Zona, a drow named Tamika, and a human named Ivanka. They were joined, later, by a dwarf named Brites. Unfortunately, they weren't talking about anything interesting.

Palil spoke to me. Beamer says that those gestures they're using are part of rogue's cant. He'll get closer.

Beamer did his turn, and came over and started flirting with Zona. He's really cute, and I'd probably do him, her fingers told her companions. But we don't have the time.

Didn't have time? Uh oh.

Bambi and Tchar did some barhopping, and settled themselves at a bar where they found three people playing darts, but not the standard game. They were playing a game where you put a dark into the bullseye, and then the object was to try to hit the end of that dart with another dart. They succeeded more often than you might think.

The three who were playing darts turned out to be Rogan, a human, Monroe, a dwarf, and Tia, an elf. Bambi passed along to us that Rogan was a black dragon, Monroe was a red dragon, and Tia was a silver dragon. Tchar wandered up to the group and offered to buy them drinks if they'd show him how to play darts like they were doing. They agreed, and spent a while drinking and showing Tchar how to play darts. Tia, the silver, went into full-on flirt mode about a half hour afterwards, and Bambi caught a couple of the rogue's cant phrases that were being passed between Rogan and Monroe. There goes Tia again, we don't have time for this but I don't think we can stop her. Might as well try for myself, his fingers said.

Rogan started flirting with Bambi, who decided that he was to her taste. Both Tia and Rogan said that they had been traveling a lot, and had a sick friend they were trying to find a cure for. The list of places that Tia rattled off all had something in common...they were frost giant cache sites.

Eventually, Tia and Rogan retired to their rooms with Tchar and Bambi, and Monroe took off for parts unknown.

Palil and Galen had gotten into the sewer system, thinking that if the disintegrate was in the form of a device, it might be hidden down there. That didn't pan out; hardly anyone had been down in the sewers but the rats. She and Galen came up, cleaned up by one of the fountains, and then something up high caught Palil's eye.

The top floor of the best inn in town, the one that I and Beamer were at, was glowing with magic, pulsing irregularly. Find rope, she said to me. We need to see inside.

I did, and Palil dropped me, Galen, and Beamer on the roof. I roped up quickly--I could probably climb this wall bare-handed, but I might need to leave quickly--and dropped down to a window.

Inside were a halfling, a drow, and a male human who was on the bed, thrashing and writhing. The human on the bed had solid gold eyes--a once-bonded dragon that had lost his bond, I guessed. From their conversation, I gathered that the human's name was Aires, the halfling was Natale, and the drow was Evande. I hung out for ten minutes before I heard anything interesting. Natale had sat down on the edge of the bed, using a cloth to wipe away the sweat on Aries's face. "How long, do you think?" he asked.

Evande shook her head. "Twenty, maybe twenty-four hours before it goes off."

"It's getting worse. How big do you think it'll be this time?"

Evande shrugged, spreading her hands. I decided it was a good time to retreat.

Palil messaged our frost giant contact, and he told us that the disintegrate wave was the result of running into a trap in a cache. It could not be contained by an anti-magic shell, it could not be removed, and the only way to shut it down was to kill it. It would get bigger and bigger, eventually taking out regions and then the whole world.

We had a couple of choices. One, we could kill him, which we were loath to do, in large part because his friends were all far tougher than we were. Two, we could separate his soul from his body, like that of the frost giants. Door number two it was, and for that, we needed to bring his friends into our confidence. Palil talked back and forth with Kane for a bit, and he agreed to try and help Aries.

Tchar and Bambi were both with their respective fly-by-nighters still, and both of them came clean. We agreed to all meet with Zona and the rest, in the outside room of the suite that part of the group was occupying. We told them what we knew about Aires, and Zona made a wry face. "You don't know the entire story. When it happened the first time, only four people were killed--mine, Tia's, Tamika's, and Evande's bonds. When it looked like it was going to happen again, we isolated Aries once, and then again. The third time it went off, after not killing anyone the second, it killed Aries, Ivanka's, and Rogan's bonds. Every time it doesn't kill as many people as it wants, it picks up another species that it kills. We're afraid that it's going to start in on dragons." She shook her head. "We've had to go to larger and larger towns to satisfy the curse. It killed five hundred people in Zainsk. It's going to kill a thousand here, maybe more."

"There's no real cure," Palil said. "We may have a solution, though. The frost giants have a way to separate souls from bodies. We have a mage that, given time, can probably repeat the performance. We can take his soul out, destroy the body, and find him a new body, eventually."

The team looked at each other. "If he can--"

"He can." Palil stopped, tilted her head. "You were military, weren't you?"

Zona shrugged. "Were. Gada's military, actually. Not any more, though."

Palil smiled, and sent to me, They were too big of a squadron to be one of ours. I could feel her scheming; this was an enormous favor we were doing for them. They owed us.

Zona and the rest agreed, and we carried him outside. Palil tossed him over her shoulder--it's still weird when she does that in her small form--and used a teleport spell to take Aries to Kane.

While she was watching Kane work at lightning speed, the rest of us were talking to Zona's group. We found out that the giant cache up here had been cleaned out--they'd checked it, hoping that there was something there to help their friend--and that Aries was completely unaware of the destruction he was causing. He remembered nothing but occasionally feeling ill, and his friends were reluctant to break it to him. I didn't ask what story they'd fed him about why all of their bonds were suddenly dead.

Over in Chelyabinsk, Palil watched Kane work, and about eighteen hours after she'd arrived, Kane walked up to Aires and shoved a potion down his throat. The gold dragon disappeared. "Where'd he go?" asked Palil.

Kane grinned. "About the fifth level of the Abyss. Might have been the sixth, I was in a hurry. He'll be back." Kane was right; five tense minutes later and Aries faded in, blinking in confusion and demanding to know where the hell he was and who Kane and Palil were.

Palil told him.

By the time she was done, and she was not merciful in the telling, Aries was sitting with his head in his hands. "You need to stay here. Kane, we think, can help you." And if Kane cannot help you, Kavan can come up with something that will kill you painlessly, she added silently, widening her thought to include me. I didn't like it, but I could see her point--Aries was too dangerous to live, if he could not be cured.

"I'll need a couple of weeks," Kane said. "I think I can do this, though." He had a strange, distant look in his eyes. Most of Kane was wherever mages go when they're busy being brilliant, it seemed.

Palil nodded and used another teleport potion to come back to us. Zona's squad agreed to wait here for Kane to finish with Aries; we didn't want to reveal his location to them, if we could help it.

Well, we could check the giant cache off of our list. The last thing we needed to deal with was the carnival.


Palil:

The parameters of the carnival mission hadn't changed much since we'd first seen the mission. There were a lot of military stores and artifacts flowing out of Soshi, and the sales had been traced to one of the carnivals in Soshi, run by a dwarf named Hershel.

There the trail had stopped. Nobody could trace the artifacts and stores back to where they'd come from, and the only other MI team to have gone in had all been killed. Now, we knew that they'd gotten killed because their backup, MI236, had been late in arriving, because message spells hadn't gotten through to them. The frost giants who controlled MI248 had likely interfered with the message spells, I figured, because they knew what Hershel was selling, where he was getting it from, and they'd probably seen the carnival mission come across.

Our job was to go into the carnival, find out what was going on, and not die. The first was easy. The second, less easy. The third, hardest of all.

We decided to send in Beamer, Tchar, and Sondirra; Beamer as a bard, Tchar as an illusionist to help with a stage show, and Sondirra as muscle. They were hiring temporary workers to break down tents--the carnival was moving west a for a bit, since Zainsk had been decimated. Though my bond's a very good dancer, she still has a bit of the 'rode hard and put away wet' look about her, since she's still too thin from the month she was down with the regeneration. We decided it was safer to have her simply be muscle.

The rest of us stayed outside, not knowing what would happen. We took some rooms near the carnival, and waited for the excitement to begin.

Sondirra worked on a crew with the strongman, a very tall dwarf named Obadiah. Obadiah had an eye on Ingrid, a human girl who worked the stages. (And when I say tall, I mean he was as tall as an average human woman! Positively a giant among dwarves.)

Tchar was taken into the stage magic show, which was fronted by an elf named Gillean. He was married to an elf named Sabina. He was the peacock, and she was the real power. He was also screwing pretty much anything female that would stand still long enough. Sabina was obviously miserable, hated being married to this man, and she also obviously thought that Tchar was the answer to her prayers. In his first hour after meeting her, she suggested no less than five times that she'd be willing to do almost anything to get away from here, up to and including warming his bed for however long he liked. In fact, she seemed to like that particular idea more and more the longer she talked to him.

It was Beamer who had the really interesting post. He got to go all around the carnival, and wandered by the fortune-teller's hut. An old woman came out of the hut, introduced herself as Kineta, and waved at the woman behind her and said, "That's my daughter, Albina."

Albina was a human, about our age, with startling green eyes and light hair. When she looked at Beamer she suddenly winced as if in pain, apologized for her headache, and wandered back inside.

The next day, she came to him and pulled him aside. She said, "Your birth name is Berthold, but everyone calls you Beamer. You have a bondmate, a black dragon named Bambi, and your military designation is MI255." When Beamer recoiled, startled, she said, "Yes, I have the sight. You're here about the weapons Hershel is selling. The two other people on your team here are Tchar and Sondirra. There's a girl named Lida on another MI team who is very much in love with you, so much that she'd do just about anything you asked, including run away with you. And your teammate Sondirra is seriously considering sleeping with someone named Jordan, who you don't like very much and I can see why you wouldn't. Need I go on?"

(Sondirra: I blushed when Palil relayed that last in an acerbic tone. I was glad nobody happened to be with me at the time. I, um, hadn't quite gotten around to realizing that's what I was considering, but she was right.)

Beamer shook his head. "No, I believe you. So why come to me?"

Her green eyes went dark. "MI254 died because I went to Hershel and told him that we had an MI team in the carnival. I didn't know until then that he was up to something illegal. He used Obadiah as well as some of the other muscle we have around here, and used something nasty to freeze the dragons in their small forms. My father was military. He shouldn't have killed them. Oh, and there's a fourth frost giant cache in Chelyabinsk."

Albina was feeling guilty, and was very willing to help us. Tchar and Sondirra joined them, to make communication go more quickly, and she told us what Hershel had been up to.

He'd been emptying the cache, and selling the weapons inside to the pirates and to Isla's army. Each evening that he had an appointment, he would open the circus and then walk down to the warehouse where the items he was selling were stored. That warehouse was guarded by twelve people.

"Oh, and the dragon he's meeting tonight is a pirate. Named...Andromeda."

(Sondirra: We were in a whole cartload of trouble. Maybe three or four cartloads.)

We talked about a lot of plans, and Albina went to wander by the ship that Andromeda had brought in with her. She came back and reported that Fenella was worried that the deal with Hershel was somehow a setup, and that she didn't know where he was getting all of the stuff he was selling. If Hershel was somehow blowing smoke, Andromeda was going to wipe him off the map. She was even suspecting that the meeting that night was an MI setup.

She added, "Oh, and she's planning to attend the carnival tonight."

The rest of us, sitting in our inn room and listening in to our bonds, looked at each other. did she just say...

Yes, she had. And so a plan was born.

We needed accomplices--Sabina, for one, who would help as long as Tchar promised to take her away forever. Obadiah, once he'd been told about what he'd unwittingly helped do, volunteered to help, as well. Albina warned her mother to get out, but declined to take her with us--she was tired of living under her thumb. We sent Harbin a message that something was about to go down, and the regular military was likely going to need to intervene.

It started so innocently. Fenella attended the magic show, and when Gillean called for volunteers, he obeyed Sabina's choice of accomplice...Fenella. It was the "make the lady disappear" trick, and the lady did indeed disappear...but not backstage.

Instead, she reappeared next to the very hot fire that the carnival's blacksmith kept running day and night. Beamer hit her with a sleep potion, and Tchar drove a knife from the back of her neck up into her brain.

At that moment, the boulder was in motion. We cut off her hand, put it in a box, and tossed the rest of her body onto the fire. The box was run by Obadiah to Hershel's office, then Tchar sent a message, using Hershel's voice, that he had Fenella and was holding her for ransom.

At this point, we messaged Harbin and told him what was going on, where the artifacts were, and the fact that we were pulling out. Then we got the hell out, because Andromeda didn't wait to try to ransom Fenella. She knew from Xavier, Fenella's bond, that her diviner was dead, and she went directly after Hershel and then proceeded, with her people, to level the carnival and a good section of that area of town before the regular military caught up with her and stopped her.

They also got the artifacts, but with the manpower we had, there was no way we would have gotten them on our own. Overall, I was pleased with how things turned out.

Including the fact that we now had a very powerful mind-reader on our side, grateful to us and willing to help us if we could keep her fed and hidden. We spent some time discussing it, and finally she agreed to travel around the region for us, going from place to place and seeing what she could pick up. We'd find a permanent MI group to assign to her and the three others--Oberan could help with that, if we could raise him. They'd take the three around the region, and they would be roving eyes and ears for us.

We talked about it, and decided that there was a mission up north of #2 that we could look into while crossing the mountains to Petrozav and the mission that I'd wanted to do from the outset. Major Bonita, who'd taken off with Major Tessa and our missing friends, had been sighted in the black markets of Petrozav. If we could find her, she might tell us about what had happened to the rest of our team...or might lead us there.

Strangely, Sondirra and I didn't really even fight after Albina's declaration. My bond came to me that night, as we camped out east of Soshi. I was in my large form, getting ready to go hunt, when she came and found me. I dipped my head down--when had my large form gotten so big?--and she twined her arms around my neck. I'm sorry, she said, silently, and I knew exactly what she was apologizing for.

Don't be, I told her. I trust you, Sondirra. I have my opinions about this, but I trust your judgment.

She held on to me for a few moments longer, squeezing tight, sending waves of wordless affection to me. "Go on," she whispered. "Hunt. I'll see you when you get back."

Except that by the time I got back, she was in the grip of one of the headaches she's been getting with more and more regularity since the regeneration finished. I remembered what the clerics told me--that withdrawal from the painkiller Sondirra had ben on can last for months, and sometimes years. She dosed herself with a half a bottle of vodka and finally managed to fall into a light sleep that deepened as the headache loosed its grip on her.

I reminded myself that I needed to send her to the clerics when we got back to Petrozav. Maybe they would have something that would help when the headaches hit. Left to her own devices, my bond would just self-medicate with vodka, but there had to be something better she could use.

The next day, the teams under our command started checking in. Hypatia reported in and said that the four becalmed vessels had piles of dust on them, as if they'd been hit by a large-scale Disintegrate spell. According to the logs, there had been five ships in that convoy, not just four.

We knew what had happened, and what had happened to the fifth ship--scuttled in the harbor at Zainsk. We assigned her team to find out why there was increased pirate activity in Tura. Paloma reported that there were fifty Capricorn ships headed towards Pskov. That was all we'd needed to know, so we passed that information up the chain and assigned Paloma's team to go look into reports of a Slayden temple that had just risen up out of the swamp in black dragon country.

Jordan, too, reported in. They were in Chertkovo, and between them and the other teams that were guarding the other two ambassadors, they had repelled no less than seventeen assassin attacks so far. "They're saying the talks may last another couple of weeks," he told Sondirra in his message. I was listening in, and I thought I could hear a bone-tired note in his voice. I also noted that he was reporting in to my bond, and not me. I wasn't surprised, really.

"You need a resupply?" she sent back. "What do you need?"

A pause, then he came back with a list of potions and weapons that they needed. This time, there was hope in his voice. Had he imagined that we would stint him, or keep from him the things he needed to keep his team and his charge safe?

She told him that she'd take care of it, then messaged Eaton with the list of what they'd need couriered in. I made our own report with the list of the missions we'd managed to knock off, and then we took off once more for the east, and for the mountains...


Quotes:



"How are we dressed?"
"Seductively!"
--Graham, Derek

"Yay, everyone gets laid!"
--Sondirra

"They'll have equipment and stuff..."
"They will?"
"Bondage stuff!"
--Graham, Derek, Storm

"You will be happy to know that all the clowns die."
"YAAAAAAAAY!"
--Storm, the rest of us