He was worn down from the day. Not even twelve hours ago he had been expecting to return to the same home he had left, and since then he had had his whole world turned upside down and had hardly any time to deal with it because he was stuck playing a character whenever anyone else was around. It was worse at that moment, sharing such an intimate space with his enemies at the end of the day. Kertankuse he had misgivings towards for obvious reasons. Eirk, although at least cleaned up now, was, from what Rewjeo had heard, despicable in the eyes of even the Guldarans. The very nature of the Pikeman’s being disturbed Rewjeo. And as for the colonels, Bear seemed nice enough, but Buck bothered him, and Rewjeo didn’t know what to make of Slize yet.
“Kygao,” Kertankuse said commandingly.
“Yes, sir?” Rewjeo said, nervous for what was coming.
“How has your first day gone?” Kertankuse asked, to Rewjeo’s relief. “What have you managed to get out of my soldiers so far?”
“Well,” Rewjeo said, delicately placing his silverware down, careful to keep his guard up, “I’ve learned that your assault last night started with the use of some experimental weaponry which no one I spoke to seems to understand, then went relatively smoothly, involving relatively few casualties on either side. With the exception of a small group of holdouts in the cellars, the takeover has been relatively painless thus far. You have lost four soldiers so far to the holdouts, however. Other than that, I am given to understand that Lofur has its own set of problems for the time being and that you are quite the esteemed man, general.”
“Is that all?” Kertankuse inquired further.
“As far as specific facts, yes, sir,” Rewjeo started, “but from my dialogues I’ve also gathered that this operation has strong popular support, although it does seem rather ahead of itself on the dehumanization-of-the-enemy front. Er, if it’s not out of line for me to say such, general.”
“Oh, no, that’s quite in line,” Kertankuse said. “I’m sure as an outsider you don’t understand the cultural conflicts, except perhaps academically, of this area.” Rewjeo simply stared at Kertankuse for a moment, trying to fit together the coolness of that response with the stories of a rash young general Rewjeo had been told and the disdain certain individuals had shown earlier. Kertankuse, conscious of Rewjeo’s confused gaze, explained. “Yes, you may find that my motivations are not entirely in line with those of some of my soldiers. I have a history here myself. I don’t see it as a reclamation of territory which by right of blood should be under the rule of a Royal.”
The explanation did little for Rewjeo. Now the tranquility made little sense to him even in comparison to the man he had been hauled before that morning.
“Well, I think that’s enough on me,” Kertankuse said. “Now I want more on you. A fair trade of information. I must say that it is quite remarkable that you might stumble into all this on your own and so very far from home.” By the end the touch of menace Rewjeo remembered from the morning had seeped back in.
“Oh,” Rewjeo said, taking a moment to collect his thoughts, “yes, yes, of course, general! I suppose that’s a reasonable enough request on your part. Well, I’m a member of the Dulardi family,” he began recounting the history he’d plotted out that afternoon. Kertankuse nodded approvingly at the name. The Dulardis were a famous trading family based in Ilyarium. “Nothing too close to the top, mind you. Just a minor branch. My parents used their portion of the family funds to send me on a bit of a research trip to compliment my education with knowledge from the real world areas I’ve studied.”
“And you’ve just gone your way alone?” Kertankuse asked. Whatever skepticism he may have been feeling didn’t make its way into his voice.
“Oh, heavens no!” Rewjeo said. “Sir. I’ve stopped along the way with a number of people with connections to the family. Er, ‘the family’ meaning the Dulardi family as a whole. Anyways, my way forward has been paid through them to minimize the risk of me being targeted by any brutes along the way. I have had small troops of mercenaries accompanying me most of the way, of course, general, but I was assured that it wasn’t worth my money to pay for protection through this valley. Ironically it was because the peace had allowed any bandits to be rooted out,” Rewjeo said the last bit mostly to himself.
“Should you send word forward to explain your stay here?” Kertankuse asked.
“Oh, no, I’m quite certain they’ll expect a delay when they hear of what has happened here,” Rewjeo assured.
“Well, then, Kygao, I think that’s enough for this evening. If you don’t mind, there are some things I need to discuss with my colonels,” Kertankuse said. Then he turned to the Pikeman, “Escort our guest back to his room, sirrah,” he commanded. Rewjeo stood up, confused, and left with the help of some pushing from the Pikeman. “Oh,” Kertankuse added just before Rewjeo exited, “and watch your etiquette, sirrah!”
~~~~~
Hours of searching the walls of the cellars for any sign of a way out had ended in exasperation for the Gassadian holdouts. Every inch of stone had been examined in excruciating detail, boards had been pulled down from the ceiling, and the four of them had come up with nothing.
They had removed most of their equipment after enough time had passed for them to assume that an assault wasn’t coming anytime soon. Fligner lay in a ball under a table, fast asleep with a half-eaten loaf of bread in one hand and the only cup they had found the whole time in the other. Fyrro was alternating between sitting on the floor, fingers and hair hopelessly entangled, coming to grips with his fate and then checking stone bricks over and over again in a flurry of adrenaline. Seloh and Lemina, meanwhile, had spent the last half hour sitting against the cold rocks, tossing a pebble back and forth wordlessly.
Lemina ended the game when she tossed the pebble back intentionally beyond where Seloh could catch it and stood up and walked away. Seloh took it with an empty acceptance and simply swung around so that he was laying facing the wall and resumed the game, bouncing the pebble off the wall and catching it on the way back. Lemina scooped up a torch and walked over to where she had first treated the Guldarans’ injuries. The gauntlets from the one with the broken wrists were still lying on the table. She picked them up in her exhaustion, pulled a knife from her belt, sat down, and set to work. She absentmindedly picked her way through the knots tying the sheets of metal together one by one until she found herself with a pile of metal and leather strips.
“Hey, Seloh!” she called, realizing she had a use for the pile in front of her.
Her call jerked him into full consciousness and he shot up from the ground. Once he, like her, got his bearings, he walked over. “Yeah?” he said.
She held up some metal strips in her hand. “That guy’s wrists aren’t going to heal right the way they’re set right now. I want to make him a splint or something.”
“Lemina,” Seloh sighed.
“Don’t give me that!” she snapped quietly. “It’s not like anyone else is getting anything done right now.”
“Fine,” Seloh said, shaking his head. “What do you need me for?”
“I need you to make it,” she said, thrusting the materials towards him.
“I have no idea how,” Seloh protested.
“I’ll show you what it needs to look like in the end,” she said, “but you’re better at stuff like this.”
“No I’m not,” he groaned. “I have absolutely no medical training.”
“I meant puzzles,” Lemina explained. Then she demonstrated with loose sheets from the gauntlets. “Anyways, I need pieces in these places to support the bones.”
Seloh knelt down next to the table and set to work. “Remind me why I’m doing this for the guy,” he said after a pause.
“Because you’re a good enough person to put aside your personal problems and help out a guy who might lose use of his hands,” she said cheerily.
“They’re not personal problems, we’re at war,” Seloh retorted.
“That’s the spirit, Seloh!” she said. “He wasn’t in here because he wanted to do anything to you. It was just his job, and he can’t help that.”
“Y’know, it’s a good thing your brother’s not paying attention to us right now,” Seloh said. Fyrro wouldn’t have been happy with them taking care of the Guldarans under normal circumstances, let alone their current situation.
“Yeah, I do know,” Lemina replied, “so you’d better hurry up before he checks us out.”
“I’m going as fast as I can. Just let me finish tying these together to see if this works…” he said, satisfied that he had a design that might work. “Yeah, that looks like it’ll do it.”
“Great. Do you have enough left over to do another one for the other side?” Lemina asked.
Seloh sighed. “Yeah, just gimme a minute.” She sat there quietly as he put the second one together. “All right, here they are,” Seloh said, handing them to her. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to playing with that rock until the door opens up again.”
“No,” Lemina said, grabbing his arm. “I’m gonna need your help with them. Someone found a cup down here, right?”
“Yeah, one, why?” Seloh asked.
“Well, they’ve got to be dehydrated by now,” she said. Seloh sighed. “Oh, c’mon, Seloh! If not for them, at least do it so that we might get off a little easier if the Guldarans get in here.”
“Yeah, or if we have to give ourselves up,” Seloh said, pulling at his face with his hands in vexation. “Whatever, I’ll do it.”
The two of them walked over to the four bound soldiers. They’d been blindfolded and had cloth bunched up in their ears so that they wouldn’t know about any way out the Gassadians might have found. The one with the broken wrists also had also been gagged.
“Who did that?” Lemina whispered angrily to Seloh when she saw.
“You know how he was moaning. Someone had to do it,” he said back. She gave him a slap at that. “It wasn’t me!” he whispered indignantly.
“I don’t care,” she countered. “It’s barbaric.”
“Hey, you’re the one who quit medicine to swing a sword,” he retorted placidly, “against what just about everyone else thought you should be doing.”
“Gassad has a proud tradition of woman warriors, you know. It’s not like I was the only one.”
“Yeah, but you’re too pretty for the army.”
“Oh, c’mon, you know I could kick your butt,” Lemina said, nudging Seloh jokingly. “Besides, what did ‘everyone else’ think I should do?”
“Marry Rewj, most likely,” Seloh stated matter-of-factly.
“Rewjeo?” Lemina laughed. “Why on earth would we – I mean, that’s… absurd.”
“But it would have made such a good story!” Seloh said sarcastically. “And you probably had some people convinced that you were a couple, anyways.”
“Whatever, let’s just get to fixing these guys up. It wouldn’t hurt to clean their wounds again, on top of putting the splints on and hydrating them,” Lemina said, changing the subject.
“I mean, I suppose you could’ve gone with Fligner or me if we made our way up high enough into the military while you were still of a marriageable age,” Seloh went on.
She scoffed. “Either help me get this guy up onto the table where I can put the splints on or go fill that cup up.”
“Should I be offended?” Seloh asked with feigned indignance.
“Cup!” Lemina commanded.
“Yes, ma’am!” Seloh said with a goofy salute.
Lemina chuckled as she knelt down. She pulled out the ear plugs and lifted the blindfold off the soldier’s eyes. “Just let me get this out of your mouth,” she said. The soldier opened his mouth as wide as he could as she did so.
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“Now, if you’ll give me just a minute," she said as she hoisted him up to his feet, “I’ll get you something to drink and I’ve got some splints for your wrists. How are they doing?” The soldier grimaced but didn’t say anything. Seloh walked up with the cup. “Put that down and help me get him up onto the table,” she said to her comrade. Once he was up there, Lemina asked Seloh, “So how strong is that drink?”
Seloh took a sip to see and immediately spat it back out. “It’s strong,” he said, scraping his tongue against his teeth to get rid of the taste.
“Then this is going to sting,” Lemina said as she unbound the soldier’s wrists. “You’ll thank me later.” She poured out the cup onto the man’s hands and the pain knocked the wind out of him. “Sorry,” she said to him. “Get the splints,” Lemina ordered Seloh while the Guldaran regained his composure. He did so. “Now go get something else for the poor guy. Something good for drinking,” she said, handing Seloh the cup. She then set about putting the repurposed gauntlets onto the soldier. “This is going to hurt, too. But not so much.”
Seloh returned with the cup this time full of something much sweeter. “Here,” he said, offering the cup up to the wounded man on the table.
Lemina snatched it from him “He’s in no shape to be using his hands right now,” she snapped. Then she put a warm smile back on her face and slowly brought the cup up to his face and poured it down, supporting his head with her other hand. “Well, it’s time to get you back down again,” she said when he was finished. With Seloh’s help, they lifted him up and walked him back over to the wall and sat him down again. “Do we really have to tie him up again?” Lemina asked. “It’s not like he’s going to do much with his arms in the state they are.”
“It’s not what he might do right now that we’re worried about,” Seloh said, “so yeah, we do have to.”
“It’s fine,” the soldier said.
Seloh and Lemina went about binding his wrists carefully in front of him, plugging his ears, and blindfolding him, although Lemina made it quite clear that there would be no gagging.
“I think somebody likes you!” Seloh cooed jokingly when they were finished.
“Oh, shut up,” Lemina said, jabbing a pressure point in Seloh’s arm. “We’re still enemies, even if I bother to treat him like a human being.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s all torn up about it on the inside,” Seloh said, trying to regain his composure after his jerking reaction to the pressure point. “Good thing he’ll have a whole bunch of time to think about it with no other distractions!”
Lemina shoved the cup into Seloh’s chest. “Go fill this up again with the stronger stuff.”
“All right,” Seloh said, acquiescing. “You sure you don’t need me here since the rest of these guys can actually use their arms?”
“I’m not gonna cut them loose,” Lemina said obviously. “He was the only one we needed to move anywhere. I just figure I should clean up this next guy’s face again. The other two only need to be hydrated.”
“Well, plus the rest of them might actually be willing to take a swing at you if they get the chance!” Seloh joked as he walked away.
~~~~~
“You know,” Seloh said as he tossed the pebble, “that story’s not nearly as funny as I was expecting it to be. I kind of wish I hadn’t asked.” Once they were finished with the other three prisoners, Seloh and Lemina had gone back to their game of catch.
“Well it would be if you had been there,” Lemina said, tossing the stone back. “Anyways, your turn.”
“Geez, I don’t know what’s left,” Seloh said, returning the rock again.
“You’ve lived how many years, Seloh, and you’re out of stories already? This is why my brother and Fligner were always trying to get you out of your books!”
“Hey, if it were me ‘n’ Rewj down here we’d be able to talk about those books for hours, no problem!”
There was a moment of silence as Lemina held onto the stone, thinking. “Poor Rewj. He’s probably on his way back now, all excited to see everyone again. He has no idea what’s happened.”
“Yeah,” was all Seloh could muster in response at first. “His dad’s probably dead,” finally came out, too.
“Oh, don’t start that, Seloh, we don’t know that!”
“Why would they keep him around?” Seloh asked.
“Respect.”
“Oh, really, Lemina, you know his chances aren’t good. Why would they keep him around?”
“Respect, Seloh!” she insisted. “If it wasn’t for him, then they-”
“Without him they’ll have an easier time keeping Gassad, and that’s that. You can’t expect Guldar to go out of its way to make splints for all of us when they attacked us in the first place!”
Fyrro’s voice ripped across the room. “Hey, shut up and get over here, guys!”
Seloh and Lemina shared a quick glance and then got up and walked over to Fyrro. “What’s up?” Lemina asked.
“Listen,” Fyrro whispered.
There were scuffling and creaking sounds. “Where’s it coming from?” Seloh asked.
“It sounds like it’s above us…” Fyrro said, lifting the torch in his hand up to more fully illuminate the ceiling.
A plume of dust dropped down on the trio from above, momentarily blinding them. When they turned their eyes back up, one of the boards in the ceiling was gone. “Grab your weapons!” Fyrro whispered urgently to his friend and sister. While they did that, he went over to Fligner, shook him with one hand and covered his mouth with the other. “Get your bow and get ready. Don’t make any sound,” he said, then picked up a sword himself from the pile of arms and armor they had made. Guess we didn’t check the right part of the ceiling, he thought to himself.
The four of them stood, weapons at the ready, around the now two missing boards. They held perfectly still as another and then another board disappeared upwards. Eventually a head pushed its way down through the hole. The four soldiers all leapt at it, and the head pulled itself back up in a hurry.
”Get down here and fight us!” Fyrro shouted upwards.
There was a moment of silence, then a word came out of the hole that none of them were expecting. “Fyrro?” The four soldiers looked at each other, none of them with an idea of what to do next. “Is that you, Fyrro?”
“That sounds like…” Seloh said, the four still looking around at each other. “Rewj!” he called up. “Rewjeo?”
There was a moment of silence before an old, battered ladder dropped down from the ceiling. Rewjeo clambered down as quickly as he could, being careful for the missing rungs. As soon as he stepped onto the cellar floor and turned around, Lemina hurled her arms around him. He froze for a moment, thinking that maybe he had made a mistake and that he had been found out and someone had jumped him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, and he hugged her back
“You’re the ones down here?” Rewjeo said incredulously as Lemina stepped back and Seloh stepped in for his embrace.
“Well how’d you end up down here?” Seloh said. He, too stepped back and Fligner pulled in for a sturdy side hug.
Fyrro stuck out his hand. Rewjeo grabbed it and raised his eyebrows as if to say “Really?” Fyrro rolled his eyes and said, “All right,” before pulling in for the final hug.
“So what’s going on out there?” Fyrro asked once they were finished greeting, getting right to business.
“How much do you guys need filled in?” Rewjeo asked.
“We got… separated from the rest of the army before any fighting broke out,” Fligner slurred groggily, looking at Fyrro out of the corner of his eye.
“So we don’t know anything other than that Guldar won,” Seloh added.
“General Kertankuse is the one in charge. Things are still a bit of a mess up there. Apparently the fighting ended pretty quickly. Kertankuse’s second-in-command took out General Kliszer,” Rewjeo stated quickly.
“And your father?” Seloh asked quickly, really cutting to the chase.
“Dead, too, they say,” Rewjeo started.
Lemina looked over at Seloh, thinking back to the conversation they’d had just a moment before. Seloh just closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief, whatever he might have said before. Fligner stood, stunned into sudden sobriety, and Fyrro, chest deflated, simply stared forward.
“But I don’t think he is,” Rewjeo went on. “No one’s seen him dead, except Kertankuse, supposedly. He wouldn’t just disappear like that.”
It would make perfect sense, Seloh thought to himself. Guldar doesn’t want to give the Gassadians anything to rally behind. A body or a grave is more than enough to get the people up in arms. But he spared Rewjeo his thoughts.
“And how’d you get here?” Fyrro asked, continuing along the line of business.
“I ran into a Guldaran patrol on my way back this morning,” Rewjeo explained. “They hauled me in front of Kertankuse. As far as he knows I’m just a traveling scholar. I’ve convinced him to let me stay here for now.”
“And what time is it now? How long have we been stuck down here?” Fyrro continued the inquiry.
“It’s the middle of the night. That’s how I managed to sneak into here. It’s been about twenty-four hours since the first attack, I would guess.”
“All right,” Fyrro said, mulling over the facts. “What do we do from here?”
“My plan was to get you guys out of here and down to Malra’s.”
“What about them?” Lemina cut in, pointing towards the bound Guldarans.
“Who?” Rewjeo asked, peering over where she was pointing. He hadn’t noticed the captives bundled against a wall across the room.
“We captured some Guldarans when they attacked earlier,” Fyrro explained briefly to Rewjeo. Then he turned to his sister. “We’re leaving them,” he stated. “Doing anything else makes no sense.”
“We’re just going to leave them tied up like that?” she asked disgustedly. “Why’d we bother doing anything other than slit their throats in the first place?”
“Because I didn’t really want to be staying down here with four corpses if I didn’t have to,” Fyrro retorted.
The statement was too aloof for Lemina to buy it, but Seloh cut in before she could say anything. “He’s right, Lemina. If we do anything other than leave them where they are it’ll give us away.”
“Can we just go already?” Fligner moaned. “It’s dark in here and smoky and cramped and I’m sick of it!”
~~~~~
The five of them stood in the space above the cellars that Rewjeo had come from, the boards put back in place, carrying their own equipment as well as what they had stripped off of the Guldarans and some food.
It wasn’t the reunion the friends had been expecting. They hadn’t seen each other in more than a year, but asking about anything that had happened while Rewjeo was gone didn’t make much sense given what had happened in the last day.
“You know,” Rewjeo started proudly, trying to get something resembling small talk out there while they moved through the hidden space in the castle walls, “the guys I’ve talked to said that there must have been a whole lot more than four of you guys down there.”
“Ha, we sure gave ‘em hell,” Fligner reminisced smugly.
“Just goes to show you what happens when Gassadians know what’s coming,” Fyrro added. “On that topic, what was it like staying in a castle full of Guldarans?” he asked in greedy anticipation of the incompetence he imagined must have been going on above them.
“Oh, I don’t think that I’ve got words for that,” Rewjeo said. “The Guldaran army is home to some of the most insufferable people I’ve ever met. I mean, they’re headed by Kertankuse to begin with. But I’m making do.”
“Making?” Seloh asked. “Are you planning on going back?”
“Yeah,” Rewjeo answered.
“Why?” Seloh asked.
“Because I don’t know what I want to do yet and I’m keeping my options open,” Rewjeo sighed. “Besides, they’re not all bad guys. I met one today who reminded me an awful lot of you, in fact.”
Fyrro and Fligner snickered at that.
“Oh, shut up!” Lemina said irately. “I’m starting to understand why no one could believe I wanted to be in the army with you guys.”
“Shhh!” Rewjeo hushed them. “Don’t forget that everyone’s asleep right now.”
There was quiet for a while as Lemina pouted and the boys felt chastised.
“Who else knows about you?” Fyrro asked later, going back to the business side of things.
“No one,” Rewjeo said. “Kertankuse has got all of the Gassadians locked up somewhere and he’s keeping me with all the Guldarans.”
“And how are you going to make sure your identity doesn’t get out when people do start recognizing you?” Fyrro pushed.
“I don’t know,” Rewjeo admitted.
“Well, you need to figure that out,” Fyrro said commandingly.
“Yeah, I know,” Rewjeo sighed as they reached a heavy door with a complex mechanical lock he had to undo. The tunnel went entirely out of the castle, and there were a series of doors like that to make it impossible for anyone who stumbled across it accidentally to make use of it.
“Give him a break,” Lemina said. “He’s got a lot going on.”
“And he’ll have a lot less going on, Lemina, if he’s not careful!” her brother snapped back.
“Whoa, settle down guys,” Fligner said. “Can’t we just take a minute to appreciate the fact that we’re out?”
Rewjeo pushed the door open and continued walking down the tunnel, his friends following. No, this was certainly not the reunion he had been expecting.
~~~~~
Malra stood at her bedroom window, watching the rain. She was thinking about the events transpiring. She had been put in charge of the royal safe house. It was one of the oldest, best kept secrets of Gassad. Everyone knew that there were secret passages within the castle itself, but no one knew about the tunnel leading out and into the building she occupied. Just what that meant for her from there, well, that was what she was trying to figure out.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Malra’s head whipped around from her bedroom window and to the doorway. “Probably just some shutters I forgot to close up,” she muttered to herself. She walked to the vacant room across the hall. There were more bangs as she entered. But the room was shut up properly.
She went downstairs from there, holding a candle out in front of her. More bangs. She walked over to each window and held her candle up. All the shutters were in place.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
She jumped and turned around. It was definitely coming from behind her.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A big chair wobbled. It covered the entrance to the safe house. Malra moved first to the kitchen and grabbed an iron pan. Then she moved over to the front door and unlocked it so she could run if she had to. She went over to the chair, placed her candle on the ground, and carefully pushed the furniture to the side. Then she reached down, pan in her right hand over her head, and gently grabbed the handle with her left. She took a breath, hurled the hatch open, and jumped back, ready to strike.
Muddy fingers gripped the wood floor where the chair had been a moment before. From there two arms and a head popped up. The arms tensed and pushed the body up into sight. One leg, then another. Finally, the figure stood there, vaguely illuminated from below by the candle.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?” it asked.
Malra dropped the pan down to her side. “Rewjeo?” she asked in frustration. “Why didn’t you say it was you?” The others started climbing out after him
“I don’t think I’ve met anyone that displeased to see me yet,” Rewjeo joked, “and I spent all yesterday with the Guldaran army.”
“How are you doing?” she asked, picking up the candle.
“Fine, fine,” Rewjeo said. “Listen, I’m sorry to do this to you, but… there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“What?” Malra rolled her eyes. Rewjeo springing things on her was old news.
“I need you to keep some friends here for a while,” Rewjeo said. Malra started to object, but he kept talking, “I know, I know, I’m sorry to do this, but I don’t have time to explain. Ask them, I’m sure they will, and I’ll be back as soon as I can!” With that, he disappeared back into the hole, the others all out.
“All right, who do we have here?” she asked, holding the candle close to the four newcomers standing in her house. “Oh, geez, you guys are a mess!” she said once she got a better look. “You’re all Rewjeo’s friends, right? Gimme a moment and I’ll remember your names. Lucky for you all I’m supposed to be ready for this. Is that food? Put it on the table and dump all the other stuff you’ve got back in there,” she pointed to the tunnel, “yes, all of it. Anything not part of you comes off,” she added, “and go stand out in the rain for a bit to get cleaned off while I go grab you guys clothes. It’s damn late enough and stormy enough that no one else will be looking.”
“But you’ll be looking?” Fligner asked.
“It’s nothing that I haven’t seen before,” Malra said. “And besides, you all look like hell.” The three just stood there. “Well, go on. Take it off! If a Guldaran soldier comes by and sees you all wearing Gassadian military undergarments-”
“Ehem,” Lemina said shyly.
Malra threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, geez! Well turn around,” she said, twirling the pan around over her head. “Give the lady her privacy! And if I catch any of you peeking, after what I do you won’t be able to so much as look at a lady without having a full on panic attack!” They did as instructed. “And you’ll all stay out front until the lady’s all clean and set up and I come get you, clear, boys?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boys said in unison.
“Oh, geez! I’m not a ma’am!” she said, still waving the pan about. “I’m hardly older than you. And I know at least two of you have noticed that. Yes, I can see your eyes! Well, I’m afraid to say I am older enough than you that you’re not getting anywhere with me! Besides, with five of us in this place we’d never have the privacy.” All four soldiers cringed. Lemina handed Malra her clothes and then slipped out the back without a word.
“All right, boys,” Malra said once the back door had latched. “Your turn!” They paused. “I’ll have no bogeymen in uniform staying here. You’ve got fifteen seconds to be out that door, and I’m not letting you back in if you’re still wearing that crap!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The three stripped down and then headed out the front door in a hurry. “I’m not a ma’am!” she called after them. Once they were gone, she muttered to herself as she went upstairs to grab clothes for Lemina. “Geez, I’ve got three men naked on my doorstep and they’re calling me ma’am! At this rate I’m gonna end up a spinster.”
~~~~~
The “boys” stood outside in the rain. It was pitch black and the downpour was pelting their bare skin, but even that was a welcome sensation after their time in the cellars and then the long tunnel out of the castle.
“When’d she get so crass?” Seloh said rhetorically, thinking back to the days when she was supposed to watch Rewjeo and they’d all play together. She had been a perfectly lovely young lady then.
“When’d she get so hot is what I’d like to know,” Fligner cut in.
“Eh, I’d wait until you see her in the daylight to make that judgment,” Fyrro said.
“I imagine everything’s going to look good in the daylight now,” Seloh said.
“Sure, but I don’t think a day in the dark is going to make me fall for the first thing I see in the sun, Seloh,” Fligner said.
“That’s probably a good thing,” Fyrro joked. “I’m sure you’re going to sleep until the sun’s well up tomorrow, and if I was the first thing you saw, well, you’re a good friend, but I don’t think I could ever feel the same way about you.” He patted Fligner apologetically on the back, continuing the joke.
“Y’know we’re naked right now,” Fligner said, fully intending to make the situation as awkward as he could. Fyrro retracted his hand slowly, moving his eyes sheepishly about in the dark.
“I love the rain,” Seloh said.
“Me, too,” Fyrro concurred.
Fligner said, “That’s not what you were saying back in the tunnel.”
“Zip it, soldier,” Fyrro said flippantly, “or I’ll make it so you can’t so much as think about talking back to your senior officers without having a full on panic attack!”
“Geez!” Seloh added and they all laughed.
The door behind them swung open, Malra’s candle dimly lighting up the doorstep. “She’s all set up upstairs,” Malra said. “Get in here and dry off!” The three went in, quietly exchanging glances of “Do you think she heard?” and “I don’t know if she did.” Malra locked the door behind them and then thrust them some towels. “Dry yourselves off. Your clothes are up in your room. Go upstairs and swing right immediately. There’s only one bed. How you guys sleep is all up to you. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yes, ma’a- Malra,” Seloh said, correcting himself as she shot him a venomous glare.
“We’ll get up when it’s light and you all get to help me around the house and the garden. This isn’t a charity, you know! Good night!”
“Good night, Malra,” all three said.
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