Chapter 7 #2
I had spent my first days in Ashgate in these caverns, browsing them day and night. I had bared their stares that ranged from curious to hostile. I’d made sure that Ashgate would grow used to seeing me and my otherworldly chair. I’d been training them to ignore me.
It hadn’t happened yet. The stares were still there, but they had grown less intense and less frequent. Only a few heads turned my way when I steered my chair into the tavern where many of Ray’s men preferred to hang out.
The walls here were of rock, but the sand blown in from the beach covered the floor, making this a shared space.
Both Ray’s and Mazra’s people mingled here freely.
The owner of this place paid rent to both Mazra and Ray.
As a result, the price of water was exceptionally high, and everyone who came in was expected to buy at least a glass. Those who couldn’t pay were kicked out.
“Water?” A server appeared at my side almost immediately.
I handed him the coin that I held in my hand for that very purpose, then accepted a small glass of water in exchange.
I directed my chair toward a table in the back.
The chair was cumbersome to maneuver through the crowd.
It required space. People gave me annoyed looks but rarely stepped out of my way.
A single sweep with my tail would clear the way, but I controlled the impulse to lash out with it, keeping my tail hidden under my cloak.
Slowly and carefully, I made it to a small table by the wall and set down my glass. While sipping the outrageously expensive water, I scanned the crowd for Zayr, one of Ray’s men who often came here at this hour.
Renting the shack from Mazra had made me a beach dweller, which extremely limited my access to the places where I could meet with anyone who lived in a cave of the Wall, like Zayr did. This tavern was one of the very few places in Ashgate where we could talk.
On my third sip of water, a group of Ray’s men entered. Clearly used to being feared and obeyed, they shoved away anyone who dared stand in their path. The owner rushed from behind the counter with a tray of water glasses to personally serve them.
Zayr, Ray’s top enforcer, was impossible to miss.
Larger than the average male, he was also completely bald.
They said he shaved off his hair to keep it from getting in the way in a fight.
Massive gold rings decorated both his ears.
A piece of amber twinkled in the piercing in his left nostril.
And a thick chainmail of bronze and onyx stretched over his broad chest. A spacious satchel hung across his torso.
The satchel looked fairly empty at the moment, but it’d fill up by the time Zayr had completed his rounds at midday.
The patrons of the cavern shrank away from Ray’s men. A man ducked, trying to sneak past them, but Zayr caught him by his braid.
“We need to talk,” he rumbled quietly.
I’d never heard Zayr raise his voice. I’d seen him get angry, but his anger ran cold, which didn’t make it any less deadly.
Three days ago, I witnessed Zayr killing someone who couldn’t pay back the gold he owed to Ray.
Zayr had slit the poor debtor’s throat with the long, curved knife he carried strapped to his hip, then severed the man’s head calmly like slicing a loaf of bread for midnight meal.
The man whom Zayr caught tonight shook in his grip. The poor man’s shape wavered as he tried to dissolve into shadows to escape.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Zayr slashed with his massive iron knife, chopping the debtor’s arm off.
The man screamed in pain and horror, but with two tendrils now missing, he could no longer turn into shadows.
Zayr kicked his severed arm aside.
“No running,” he growled into the man’s face. “Now, how about that talk?”
The tavern was nearly empty now. Most of the patrons had fled, but I didn’t move from my place at the table by the wall.
It’d taken me time and effort to find someone who’d lend me money when I arrived to Ashgate.
Now that I was officially on the list of Ray’s debtors, I could rest assured his collectors would find me sooner or later, but I preferred to deal with Zayr.
He treated me with respect when all others had run away in horror or disgust.
The collectors grabbed a few more customers of Ray’s who had the misfortune of defaulting on their payments, then took them outside. Zayr left too, dragging the now one-armed debtor out of the cavern with him. I waited until Zayr returned a few minutes later and headed my way.
Not waiting for an invitation, he took a seat at my table.
“How are things, General?”
I winced at the word he used to address me.
I’d only told Zayr about my past to make him trust me and help me get the loan I needed, but he’d been using my old rank ever since, even after I had firmly asked him to stop and call me by my name only.
Maybe it made him feel more important to know he was dealing with a former general of the royal army rather than just a crippled freak.
There was no point in correcting him again. I just placed on the table the heavy purse with gold that Lady Saedi had paid for Elaine’s pleasure earlier tonight.
“My first payment,” I said. “The rest is coming as agreed.”
His eyebrows flinched. He pulled the purse across the table to him and loosened the strings to peek in.
“You got all this in one night? From just one Joy Vessel?” His mouth fell open, and he didn’t try to hide his surprise.
I took a gold coin out of the purse and flicked it his way. “Keep this one and add it to the sum I still owe Ray.”
He caught the coin, smirked, and slipped it into the pocket of his skirt, giving me a nod.
My deal was with Ray. Zayr was just a middleman, managing my debt and collecting payments.
But by paying him directly, I hoped to ignite in Zayr a personal interest in ensuring that my business thrived unimpeded.
Zayr tied the strings of the purse, then lifted it, weighing it in his hand.
“What did you make her do to earn this much gold in one night?”
That was my business, mine and Elaine’s. No one else needed to know what we did or how we did it. But if I refused to tell him, Zayr had other ways to find out everything, and I didn’t want him snooping around too close to Elaine.
“Eat,” I said.
Even that one word felt like too much sharing already.
Zayr stared at me incredulously. “Just eat? Nothing more?”
“What more do other Joy Vessels do in Ashgate?” I turned the questions back at him.
“Well, humans derive the most intense pleasure from sex.”
“Sex?” I winced with a shudder, remembering the torturous, mind-blinding, bone-crushing lust of the mating fever I experienced ten years ago. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Beats me, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They clearly enjoy it. Ray has been with his two Joy Vessels since the auction. He hasn’t left his bedroom even once yet.”
“Is he not selling their pleasure then?”
“He says we will. Soon. But he’s keeping them both to himself for now.”
“And…are his Joy Vessels fucking all this time?”
Zayr nodded. “They have been, most of the time since the auction.”
I knew little about humans. Before the auction, their sex life hadn’t interested me at all. Now, with the tantalizing memories of Elaine riding on my lap with her ass pressing down on my engorged cock, my curiosity flared.
“Do humans go through a mating fever too?” I asked.
“No. With humans, it happens all the time, but…” With a quick glance around, Zayr took out a withered yellow flower from his pocket and handed it to me under the table.
I took a better look at the flower in my hand. It was a golden hyacinth, fairly crushed and beaten up from being carried in Zayr’s pocket for who knew how long.
“The demand on these is growing,” he said, leaning closer to me across the table and lowering his voice. “They’re really hard to find, but rumor has it that Mazra wants to plant and grow them, both to sell and for her own use.”
I turned the withered stem between my fingers. “What for?”
“To feed it to her Joy Vessels.”
I remembered Ray threatening Elaine with a flower like this one at the auction. She seemed to know exactly what it’d do to her, and she didn’t like it at all. In fact, she looked ready to start a fight over it with the male twice her size and ten times as strong.
“Did Mazra buy some Joy Vessels too, then?” I asked.
Zayr nodded. “She got the three remaining males. They say males are easier to please. But from what I’ve seen, female pleasure is more appealing somehow. Females also climax more often, which Ray enjoys the most.”
I tried to return his golden hyacinth under the table, but he moved his hand away, not taking it.
“Keep it,” he said. “Feed its juice to your Joy Vessel if you want to keep making money off her. You’re already overcharging for what you’re offering.
Trust me, General, when Ray starts selling the sexual joy of his Joy Vessels, all your clients will leave and go to him instead. Nothing beats the human joy of sex.”
“Did you taste it?” I asked, curious.
“No.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I’ve seen its effects on others.”
“You mean on Ray?”
“Right,” he said in a clipped voice.
His expression closed off, and I would’ve bet all three of my throwing knives that Zayr was hiding something from me, something that he might not be sure about himself yet.
Pushing him to elaborate would be useless. It would probably alienate Zayr even further, when I still needed a huge favor from him.
“Zayr, I’d like to move from the beach to the Wall. Does Ray have any caves available?”
I’d rented the shack because that was the only dwelling I could afford before the auction, and I needed something to keep Elaine out of sight.
I purposely didn’t search for clients in Ashgate, bringing them from Kalmena instead.
The fewer people that knew about Elaine’s whereabouts, the safer she was.
The only way I could protect her was to hide her from everyone.
But Ashgate was the city that never really slept.
Someone was always awake and lurking even during the peak hours of the day when the sun was the brightest. The danger of someone spotting Elaine was real, and I couldn’t be with her all the time.
I often had to leave to look for new clients or to deal with Zayr.
Unlike the flimsy shack, the caves had walls that no one could break through.
Zayr scratched his chest, making his chainmail clink and rattle.
“Well, you see…” he said slowly, stretching every word and clearly buying time to come up with an excuse to deny me.
I wouldn’t let him brush me away, however. Zayr might not know it yet, because I’d been rather agreeable with him so far, but I could also be very persistent, especially when Elaine’s safety was concerned.
“I just collect money and evict those who don’t pay,” he said. “Ray is the one who makes all the new renter decisions.”
“That’s fine, I’ll meet with Ray then.”
“Right, but…” He moved his shoulders uncomfortably, evading my eyes. “Ray is not meeting with anyone right now.”
“It doesn’t have to be right now.” I doubted Ray would rent me a cave before my debt was paid in full.
He wasn’t a charitable man or even a trusting one.
“But I’d like to have some kind of an agreement soon.
Maybe we could split the gold between the debt and the rent?
I’d be willing to consider any terms that would move me into a cave sooner rather than later. ”
Zayr shook his head. “Well, as I said, Ray is busy with his Joy Vessels. He’s not seeing anyone.”
“So busy that he’s no longer even looking after his business?” I pressed, not buying that excuse.
Ray didn’t climb to power in the city like Ashgate without making his business his priority. The fact that he would just abandon it now made no sense.
“Well, it is what it is.” Zayr rose from his seat, signaling that this conversation was over.
Before leaving, however, he propped his hands into the table and leaned toward me across it.
“A word of advice, General, just because I like you. Whatever you do with your Joy Vessel, don’t taste her joy yourself.”
“Why not?” I frowned, confused.
Not that I had ever intended to taste Elaine’s joy myself. To save enough gold, we had to sell every drop of joy she created. But Zayr’s advice sounded more like a warning, raising an alarm in me.
“It’s toxic,” he replied with conviction.
“Human pleasure may taste nice while you consume it, but it does something to our kind. It just wasn’t meant for us to feel.
Look at Prince Rha. He lost his mind over a Joy Vessel, tried to let them all go, which enraged the queen and nearly cost him his life.
And Ray is getting…” He shook his head, leaving his last sentence unfinished.
“Well, just stay away from her, General. You survived a bite of a virutu dragon. It’d be a shame if a human woman ended you now. ”