“That’s just it…,” Leopold moaned as she bumped him with her bottom. “I think you do, so I shall.”
The effervescent glory that surrounded ‘Sand Bastard’ was by now iridescent. It blotted out the sun overhead, piercing the fog of dawn to midday resplendence.
“At least, I shall try. Sei was not specific about what I should do when I found you.” Given he was a she, and she was rather amorous, Leopold was tempted to give in there and then. Something stung. Annoyance? Frustration? Decorum?
“There’s a surprise.” Again the bump. Again, the sandstone Templar teased the merchant with teetering peaks of happiness amidst the deadly skill.
“Can I level with you?” There was rhetoric there, and no question. Gods did not ask permission. “Sei Orlouge owes my wife a great debt. He does not know it. She knows it too well. I, as the dutiful husband, am stuck in the middle.” With a flex of his wrists, he balled his fists and through the shadowy twists, away went the spear. The light danced over the disturbed sand, new forms and new hopes on old tapestries.
“Isn’t that what marriage is about?” Astarelle’s tone suggested she might have been married once. Leopold had to ask who would marry a sandstorm.
He puckered his lips and frowned. Undefended, at least conventionally, he folded his arms across his chest. Every breath he took stung and every beat of his heart jolted lightning into his bones. The exchange, a furious epitaph to his confidence, had left him with little energy.
“When you’ve been married to a woman for over a thousand years the vows you made on the snowy altar of yesterday break apart.”
That day had been the same day the Old Gods made their greatest mistake. They, like Sei Orlouge, began to dream too big and crave too much. Berevar, their home, their icy palace was no more their contentment. Beyond those pallid, frozen wastes, they turned and gave their all to claim it. They failed. They lost. They died. They slept.
“Lucky her,” she quipped.
Leopold smiled from ear to ear, mirroring the ochre wound on her lithe form.
“Lucky me,” was the natural extension. He was, by all accounts and comparisons, the luckiest man in love. That love would make his next action easy to perform.
Unlucky for Fallien, the testimony of Mr and Mrs Winchester was going to quit literally tear reality apart. Leopold knew all too well what failure here would cost him. First, Sei’s riposte. He would disarm Leopold’s advantage with the dwindling providence of the Ixian Knights. The sunset over the miniature Fallien would be glorious a shade of red compared to the trail of blood and torment the mystic left in Leopold’s business and reputation.
“Let’s continue,” He gestured with a friendly hand extended, “The dance, I mean.”
Secondly, there would be Ruby’s wrath. She had been working to mould the mystic to her whim, to the whim of Chronicle, for over a year. Ever since the troupe had defended Ixian Castle, and more recently, Duffy Brandybuck had died, plots were pottered, plans were plans, and maps mapped.
“I thought you’d never ask!” the Fallieni chirped. Though battered, the adrenaline alone made the sand in her dance and the blood in her boil.
With a bruised lip, sweated shirt, and ruffled mop of hair, Leopold readied himself. Instead of dancing with honour and integrity, he reached into the Aerie. There, he found a woman more threatening than Astarelle, Ruby Winchester, or Sei Orlouge combined. With a storm in a teacup of stored energy, out into the Citadel came Isabella.
“I was telling,” he spat.
The flintlock pistol cocked, locked, and loaded and fired. A singular bullet, twenty-five gold coins worth of final say-in-the-matter shot forth and gave Astarelle an ultimatum. Be reined in, or rained on.
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