Chapter 13 That Confidence Is Mostly Deserved
That Confidence Is Mostly Deserved
Alobaz Hawxley accepted the ale Ed thumped in front of him with an automatic smile so tight that she hesitated, her hand still wrapped around the frosted mug’s handle, next to four empty ones like it.
He sighed inwardly and forced his eyes to light up with what he hoped would pass as genuine enthusiasm. “Thanks, Ed. Just what I needed.”
The ale made from fermented olvidian root was neither what he needed nor wanted.
For starters, it tasted like water that had steeped a day-old sock.
But Ed grinned so wide she revealed her missing molar that a pygmy ogre had knocked out over a month ago and still hadn’t grown back.
Though she was the largest and most muscular of the two females in his trusted inner circle, she lacked the brimming confidence of the rest of his crew.
That confidence was mostly deserved, sure, but still stupid as fuck.
They had a whole host of enemies that would love to knock any one of them down.
Even more, their enemies would love for them to stay down.
He—he had the enemies, not them.
They were just foolish enough to insist on fighting at his side.
“Let loose n’ get as sloppy as you want tonight, Baz,” Lev slurred, sloshing his own ale as he raised it to his lips. “I’ll be looking out for ya.”
Alobaz was never sloppy.
Aziza snorted and eyed Lev. “You’re already too sloshed to look out even for yourself.”
“Aw, sweetums, you know that just ain’t true.”
Aziza, a tiny, formidable female, ground her jaw. “Don’t call me that.”
Lev’s glazed eyes sharpened. “I wouldn’t, you know that, doll, save for the fact that I’m so sloshed I’m not quite right in the head.”
“Don’t call me ‘doll,’ fuckface. Do I look like a fucking doll to you?”
Lev laughed, a deep, easy rumble that had the rest of them, including Alobaz, setting down their drinks. Alobaz shifted a leg to the outside of his bench seat, readying to rise.
Lev drained his mug, belched softly, and told Aziza, “You’re pretty and pink where it counts most.”
Aziza rocketed to her feet so fast the table wobbled. She had a knife to Lev’s throat before he could finish putting down his empty tankard.
Not a speck of fear sparked across his face. He smirked around Aziza’s blade. “I do love it when you play with me.”
“You keep pushing her, she’ll cut you,” Moncho said, on his feet beside Lev. “You think otherwise, maybe she should kill you for being plain stupid.”
“And a dickhole,” Aziza added.
Moncho shrugged.
“There you go talking about my dick again,” Lev said, his throat bobbing against the dagger that was so shiny and sharp it glimmered in the lumoonlight. “It’s like you can’t help yourself. And really, I can’t blame you. Won’t blame you. It is quite the dick.”
“By Fuerin,” Aziza scoffed with an eyeroll, withdrew her dagger, hesitated, then sheathed it. She shook her head. “Fuck a guy once…”
“Ten times.”
“Fuck a guy ten times and he won’t let you forget it.”
“Aw, love, ain’t no chance of you forgetting, and if you try to tell me otherwise, I won’t believe ya.
” He smiled his charmer smile, the one that got him out of the trouble he caused more times than not—with most people, anyway.
“I ain’t gonna be forgetting you either, honey. Not a scorching chance.”
She snorted. “Great. Just what I need. A stalker.”
“I wasn’t planning on stalking you, but whatever lights your fire. I’ll hunt you if you want.”
She harrumphed. “Whatever, man.” Turning quickly, she pretended to fiddle with her weapons belt.
Moncho sipped his ale. “Glad that’s done. Can’t afford to be banned from this place too.”
Lev signaled the server for another ale. Everyone sat back down.
“This place isn’t great,” Lev said. “No big loss.”
Moncho hunched his massive shoulders over the table. “It is unless you wanna stay at the castle all the damn time.” The big man shuddered.
Baz took a gulp of his steeped-sock drink.
Lev’s brow scrunched. “We’ve still got other places that’ll have us.”
Moncho frowned. “Only ’cause Baz keeps lining their pockets.”
Lev shrugged and received his refill. “That’s what deep pockets are for. What’s the point if not to make our lives better? If not, all it’d be is fighting. That’s all we’d have.”
Alobaz, who’d been about to comment how, actually, they were running low on funds, didn’t.
Serious for once, Lev asked Baz, “When do we get to leave the castle?”
Ed, Aziza, Moncho, and the final two soldiers that made up their questionable band, Félix and Night, looked at Baz too.
He sighed.
Night asked, “How long?”
It was at least twice as much as he usually said.
Alobaz sighed again. Ran a hand through his hair, which he shouldn’t have done, because then a thick strand kept tumbling into his face.
“I don’t fucking know. Every time I ask, they don’t really answer.”
They, of course, were the emperor and empress of Domdurro. Worse, they were his parents. Worse even than that, they were his commanding officers, and he was obliged to follow their every order without question.
“Fuck,” Lev growled.
Moncho upgraded to, “Titfucker.”
Aziza stretched her legs out under the table, bumping Alobaz’s. “So we just have to wait it out.”
“Yeah, but for how long?” Lev said.
Alobaz took another sip, not bothering to hide his wince—at the bitter taste and the conversation topic. “As long as they want. Nothing I can do about it.” He scowled so ferociously that he got lost to it for a few moments. “We’d better make ourselves comfortable.”
“There is no ‘comfortable’ at Castle Hawxfure,” Lev said. “How the dragonfire are we supposed to get proper sleep?”
Aziza frowned. “We aren’t.”
“You offerin’, love?”
Ed brought a hand to Aziza’s arm, half the size of hers. “Zi … the keep’s got an eye on us.”
Alobaz glanced toward the bar. A man about his size stared back with the yellow glowing eyes of a changeling. He dried a glass that didn’t need drying—repeatedly.
Eyes on him too, Aziza finally nodded, daintily sipping at her glass of blood—a deer’s, and fouler-tasting than the ale.
Alobaz was wise enough not to laugh at the contrast between some of her delicate mannerisms and her kill count—second only to his.
The barkeep caught Alobaz’s eye, not for another unreasonably generous tip, but for the other—feeders.
Alobaz nodded once at the single furry unibrow arched in silent question.
Before Lev could order another round, the keep’s wife sauntered out from the back room.
She was also a changeling, but her eyes flashed like deep-winter ice when they caught the lumoons.
Behind her walked eleven of her finest feeders, most a bit on the rougher side, much like her and her mate’s bar.
Their garish makeup seemed only to accentuate that very roughness they were trying to hide.
She slid an arm along his shoulders before purring against the shell of his ear in a mist. “Hello there, Alobazzzzz. How nice to see you again, and so soon too. You’re a man of … hearty … appetites.” With all the subtlety of a pygmy ogre, she licked her lips.
From behind the bar came the snap of cracking glass. The she-changeling didn’t so much as glance over at her mate.
“What’ll it be for you today, Alobazzzzz?”
So fervently did she believe in her sexual prowess—due in large part to the regular adoration of her mate—that she missed the way Alobaz tensed beneath her touch, how he was resisting the urge to throw off her arm.
His friends, however, with evident apprehension, all watched her squeeze his bicep. Even Félix, who never lost his composure, nibbled ever so subtly at the inside of his lip.
She ran her hand up and down his arm. “I got your reg’lars. But I also got some … specials.”
“What kind of ‘specials?’”
“The kind that tailor to … more partic’lar tastes.” She wagged her brows suggestively. They were penciled on.
He affected his best I’m unimpressed look; he was very good at it. Still, the woman missed the messages.
She gestured to a boy and a girl, who shuffled over, their wide eyes flicking from their feet to Alobaz and back. The boy’s face was still smooth. The girl’s chest was dotted with the rosebuds of not-yet-developed breasts, pressed against her thin, gauzy dress.
“No,” Alobaz said.
“Then perhaps for your friends.” She looked pointedly at Félix, an elf with as much elegance as stealth; he was the designated thief of their group. “He seems like a man of … refined tastes.”
“He is.”
She glanced at Ed. “And she looks like an adventurous woman.”
“She is. Don’t see what any of that has to do with those two there.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the boy and girl.
“This is no place for them.”
The she-changeling’s smile froze on her face, grew brittle. “She is my niece. This is exac’ly where she belongs. With family to look out for her. This here’s a shit world and she gotta learn to survive it. I’m teachin’ her.”
Alobaz waggled his jaw to loosen its sudden tightness. “And the boy?”
She flicked a look at him. “He’s new.”
“How new?”
She jiggled her brows again. The smarmy grin was back. “All the way new. Never used. You’d get to break him in. Be the first ever. Though that privilege’ll cost you extra. It’s real special. Only get one shot at it.”
Alobaz’s teeth clenched so tightly they squeaked. “How much to buy him off you?”
“Buy ’im?” she asked, surprised, scratching absently at her neck. “You misunderstand. He’s not for sale. Rent only. But I can letchou have him for a few days. I’ll give you a fair price. With the special bonus extra as an add-on, of course.”
When Alobaz stood, so did Moncho and Aziza. “I’ll give you a ruby for the boy.”
“And you throw in a feeder for each of us too,” Lev said. “The usual.”
“A ruby, you say?” She licked her lips again. This time, they reminded Alobaz of glistening, sizzling sausage links.
“I’ll give you two rubies—for the boy and the girl and a whole month with us for the rest. All the rest of them. Every one you got.”
The woman’s hand was in Alobaz’s so fast that Aziza drew and pointed her blade at her.
The woman yanked her hand back before Alobaz shook it. “Let me see the rubies, and then you’ll get your goods.”
Alobaz dragged the final two rubies in his possession from the very bottom of his deepest pocket, where no thief dared venture, and handed them—and some lint which he’d purposefully left—to her.
Her eyes glittered. Her mouth hung open, revealing blunt teeth.
It actually pained him to roll the rubies into her waiting palm. Immediately, she clenched her fingers around them like they’d have to be pried from her dead, stiff fingers.
Through gritted teeth, Alobaz asked, “What are the names of the boy and girl?”
The woman laughed with a kind of dark delight that sent shivers skittering along his skin. Those of his crew who weren’t already standing hastily drained their tankards and rose.
“Call ’em whatever you want. Do whatever you want with ’em … to ’em. You own ’em now.”
“No one owns people,” he said, despite the fact that he’d so glaringly just bought some.
She shrugged and brought her closed fist, and its treasure within, to her chest. “Whatever helps ya sleep through the night.”
He mostly tried to sleep in the daytime, and then he never slept enough.
“Nice doin’ bus’ness with you, Alobazzzzz. Come back anytime ya want.”
He already understood neither he nor the rest of his crew would ever return again—save for Félix. He’d return just once more.
For Félix, once was enough.