Rysha followed Kaika and Blazer down the docks and to the street fronting the lagoon, doing her best to look like a woman who loved her attire and dressed in such clothing every day. She tried not to feel self-conscious about the pale skin on display, some of it very pale. She also tried not to worry about how much it would hurt if the tops of her boobs were sunburned. Ow.
Instead, she thought of how amazing it was that she’d been chosen for this mission, exactly the kind of mission she’d dreamed of one day going on when she’d applied for the elite troops. Artillery officers didn’t get to infiltrate distant pirate bases, and who ever read about them in the newspapers? She was sure to make a name for herself this way, and she hadn’t even had to pass her training to receive the assignment. She decided that was a testament to her unique qualifications, not a sign that the army was desperate right now.
“So, Ravy,” Kaika said, dropping back to walk beside her while Blazer strode ahead, glowering at anyone who gave them cross looks—granted, that wasn’t many people, as the only pirates they passed appeared very hung over. “Got any history on this place that might be useful?”
“Ravy? Is that my spy name?”
Kaika rolled her eyes. “You can’t very well have a noble Iskandian name out here. You’ll get shot.”
“Captain Trip promised me that wouldn’t happen while I was in this outfit.”
“I bet he did.”
“As to history, the structures appear to be less than a hundred years old with the docks having been built even more recently. Either this hasn’t been a pirate hold for long, or occasional hurricanes have forced major rebuilding. They’re very common in this part of the world. The islands themselves have been included on the maps for centuries and centuries—a couple of the dragon riders of old were cartographers and flew all over the world when they had the opportunity. They left us with quite accurate maps. Did you know that Iskandar the Traveled, the man for whom our country was named, was one of those early map-making dragon riders? Modern editions of our textbooks leave out the fact that he rode dragons and shared some of their blood. Sadly, they reflect the current attitude toward magic. It’s extremely unfortunate when the biases of a population are allowed to influence the way history is portrayed.”
“When I asked if you could tell me anything useful, I wasn’t fishing for a sleep aid. Come on, Ravy. What have you got about this place?”
“Uhm.”
A drunk whistled at them from an alley between two of the taverns. Fortunately, nobody lurched out of it to hit on them. Or worse.
“Was that for you or for me, ma’am?” Rysha asked.
“Either, both. Might be for Blazy. Some men like a challenge. Also, use ‘captain’ if you have to tack on an honorific.”
“Right. Captain.” Rysha was beginning to think spy names simply involved adding a “y” to the end.
“What I’d really like is the history of this pirate king who’s got the sword,” Kaika said quietly. “Did he take over the fortress on the other side of the island by force or did he build it? And how loyal are the legions he’s got living there with him? Will they truly defend him, or are they secretly hoping someone will kill him, so they can take over?”
“Ah, I can definitely enlighten you on Neaminor. He’ll likely be in his fifties or sixties, as he’s been raiding southern and eastern Iskandia, Far Western Cofahre, and Nu-yen for at least twenty-five years. He’s reputed to have Cofah origins, a former soldier who went rogue.”
“Like Tolemek, huh? The Cofah must not treat their soldiers well.”
“The empire’s just huge, I think. Half the global population is on their main continent. Lots of people to eventually go pirate. Anyway, Neaminor wasn’t the first to form an entire fleet, with himself set up as king and numerous pirates working under him and giving him a cut, but he’s done it better than most pirates in this century. He also has an entrepreneurial streak, and he’s reputed to own land and businesses in many of the countries he’s—”
Kaika lifted a hand. “I think Blazy has her eye on that tavern with the people eating on the covered porch. Sum up, please. Fortress? Legions?”
“I do think it’s likely he built it, Captain. He may run the entire island chain. Also, if there have been dragon attacks here, and he’s got a dragon-slaying sword that he’s good at using, his people may feel quite loyal to him right now. And if he’s also got a sorceress working for him… I definitely recommend sneaking in rather than assuming his people won’t give their best to defend him. He, alone, should prove a formidable opponent.”
“Any idea how close the sorceress is to him?” Kaika asked, lowering her voice further as she followed Blazer up steps to the tavern. “Is he married?”
“Are you thinking of proposing to him if he’s available?”
“It wouldn’t be my first proposal on a mission.” Kaika winked.
Rysha barely kept herself from gaping at her. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but now she wondered just how far one was expected to go when it came to seducing the enemy. She’d imagined flirtation, perhaps a kiss, but proposing? Did that mean Kaika ended up having sex with a lot of her unwitting informants? Even though Rysha wanted to emulate her career, she couldn’t imagine throwing herself into bed with strangers.
Kaika lifted a finger to her lips to end the conversation as she tilted her head toward the outdoor tables.
The men eating on the porch were eyeing them with speculation. A couple of women, women dressed more like Blazer than Kaika or Rysha, eyed them with more hostile gazes.
Kaika took the lead from Blazer and sat down at a table large enough for six. Two men sat across from each other on the end nearest the railing. The people eating in the outdoor restaurant appeared less hung over and more awake than the others their group had passed.
“Those eggs smell good,” Kaika said, sidling close to one of the men. “Worth ordering again?”
Both of them looked at her breasts, and neither objected to her closeness.
Blazer sat on the far end of the table from them, watching their surroundings, apparently content to let Kaika do the seducing, or whatever she intended to do. Rysha would have been far more comfortable emulating Blazer, but Kaika was in her unit and did the work she one day might be sent to do. Though she had doubts, Rysha sat down across the table from her and next to the other man.
His eyes lit, and he spent a long time examining her chest as his buddy explained the limited meal options to Kaika while slinging an arm around her shoulders. Kaika looked like she enjoyed the familiarity, though Rysha couldn’t see how. The men weren’t hideous—in fact, Kaika had chosen the better-looking options on the porch—but Rysha didn’t care for their unshaven beard scruff or the way they were so open with their leers. Gentlemen wouldn’t stare so.
She thought of Trip, the way his eyes had bulged when she’d walked out in her skimpy costume. He’d glanced at her breasts, but he’d been quick to look away. When he’d looked back, he’d kept his gaze on her face. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d been a little less of a gentleman, in truth. Instead, that Leftie had been the one less subtle about his scrutiny. Though even he hadn’t been as brazen as these pirates.
“…all-women pirate outfit?” Kaika’s man snorted, and Rysha made herself focus on the conversation. She was supposed to be learning how to extract information, not thinking about which men she approved of eyeing her boobs. “That can’t work. Women aren’t strong enough.”
“How strong do you need to be to shoot someone?” Kaika asked, leaning into the man’s side. Rysha was fairly certain she had a hand on his thigh too. Kaika plucked a small, oval fruit off his plate and lifted it to her mouth. “We’re not looking to invade Cofahre. We just find likely prospects and go visit them when they’re not ready for visitors.”
“You’d need some brawn for when they try to visit back.”
“We disappear after and make sure they never see us again.” Kaika slid the fruit part way into her mouth, half sucking on it, half exploring its texture with her tongue. Then she drew it out again.
The man watched, his gaze riveted. Kaika took a tiny nibble from the end.
“Mm, tart but sweet,” she said. “I bet there are some women here on the islands that are good enough to work in an operation like ours.”
Under the table, a hand came to rest on Rysha’s thigh. Her bare thigh. The damn skirt had slid up. She froze. It was all she could do not to bolt.
The man smiled and slid his hand up and down her leg. She wanted to avoid looking at him in the hope that he would get bored and move it, but she doubted that would happen. She reached under the table, gripped his hand, and moved it off her leg. Just because she was dressed as a promiscuous pirate didn’t mean she had to be an easy promiscuous pirate.
“Maybe Tronya,” Kaika’s man said, “but she’s a real mean witch, and she’s got that sword.”
Rysha wondered if he was fondling her thigh. She was probably too busy fondling his.
“Sword?” Kaika laughed, a very sultry laugh, and her breasts brushed his shoulder. She wasn’t a gorgeous woman, but she sure knew how to use what she had. “How quaint. What century does she think this is?”
“It’s a magic sword,” Rysha’s man said, leaning forward. “A witch sword. And that’s what she is. A witch. Some men wanted to hang her a few years back, and she incinerated them. I was there. I saw it. Nearly crapped myself. A real live witch.”
Rysha hoped this sudden interest in the conversation meant he would be distracted from leg fondling, but he reached over and captured her thigh again, his grip firmer this time, a warning in it. As if to say, he wouldn’t appreciate it if she moved his hand again.
Despite getting a late start with kissing, Rysha wasn’t completely uninitiated to men and sex, but she found the situation alarming. It had taken Brafford Brambleridge three months to do more than kiss her, and they hadn’t had sex for closer to nine. She tried to tell herself this oaf wasn’t going to do anything at a public table, but the way his thumb was now rubbing her made panic well up in her chest.
Why hadn’t she sat at the end with Blazer? Nobody was molesting her.
“A magic sword,” Kaika said with a dismissive snort.
“It’s true,” her man said. “She’s killed a lot of pirates who’ve crossed her path and plenty of others too.”
“Yeah?” Kaika looked to Blazer. “We’ve done well of late with just the three of us, but I could use another enforcer in my outfit. Think she wants to join the Black Rose?”
Rysha tried to scoot farther from her man as he pushed her skirt higher. His grip tightened even further. She would have had a hard time moving without slamming a palm strike into his jaw. A fantasy that was taking root in her mind.
Kaika’s man laughed. “Oh, sure. Tronya’s going to leave the pirate king’s bed to join some nobodies that I’ve never heard of.”
“We’re new. You’ll hear about us lots soon.” Kaika bit off half of the piece of fruit she’d been playing with, her face blissful as she chewed. Her tongue slipped out, moving along her lips.
“You’re only recruiting women?” her man asked, watching her tongue like a hawk.
“Only interested in women,” Kaika said agreeably.
“What do you three do alone out there? Without any men?” He leered, including Blazer and Rysha in his gaze.
“Oh, we keep ourselves entertained. I’m sure this Tronya would find us fun. Hard to believe she’s happy with some geezer. Neaminor has been around forever. He’s got to be a hundred or more.”
“He’s not that old. Maybe sixty. Real fit, though. He comes into town sometimes, and he was the one that led the charge to drive off that dragon last month. Most people here respect him fine. Even though he sleeps with a witch out in his fortress. I doubt she’s fun—” he shuddered, “—but she’s a beauty, so it’s not impossible to see why he likes the arrangement.”
“Must be nice to have a fortress,” Kaika said. “I figure we’ll have the kind of money for that in a couple years.”
“His is posh.” The man pointed toward the opposite side of the island. “Kind of like every boy’s fantasy. He built it out of logs, and there are all these platforms and rope bridges, but it’s not as rustic as it sounds. It’s got all kinds of luxurious things in it from his plunders. Almost like a palace now. I got to see it once when I was doing deliveries for Yoro. It’s five levels like this.” He gestured with his hands, stacking them in the air. “I only got to see the bottom, where the deliveries go, but I hear it’s all real nice. Some of the boys around town are always talking about plundering Neaminor.” He laughed. “But not real seriously. Not with the witch. And he’s no slouch, either. He got a magic sword of his own. It’s what convinced the dragon to leave, I hear. They say it glowed all green when they battled, and he could cut into the dragon with it when nothing else could.”
Rysha’s detached intellectual side marveled that Kaika was getting all this information when she wasn’t even asking any questions. But her emotional side had trouble studying the technique, since she couldn’t stop worrying about the hand on her thigh, the hand that kept trying to shove her skirt higher. She was holding it down with her other hand, but the pirate seemed to like a challenge.
“Why don’t you come over here,” he murmured to her, his gaze on her breasts again. He’d checked out of the other conversation, perhaps not interested in the details of that fortress. Kaika, without asking, was somehow extracting more information on the layout and where deliveries went.
“I’m not interested in you,” Rysha told the man, looking him in the face and trying to be blunt. But he wasn’t looking at her face.
“If that was true, you wouldn’t have sat down so close.” He smiled, his nails digging into her inner thigh and trying to tug her leg closer. To tug her closer. “Come here.”
Rysha made herself a brick. She’d had enough of his groping, and that palm-strike fantasy was swelling in her imagination. The only reason she hadn’t enacted it yet was that she didn’t want to ruin Kaika’s information gathering.
But his hand traveled higher up her thigh, and he pinched her. Hard.
She couldn’t hold back any longer. She snarled and launched her palm strike so hard and fast that he didn’t have a chance to defend himself. He surely hadn’t expected it.
His head snapped sideways, and his hand finally left her thigh. He balled it into a fist and lunged out of his seat, snarling, “You bitch!”
He swung at her, but Rysha was up by then, too, and she swept her arm out in a block, knocking the attack aside. She threw another palm strike, this time at his exposed sternum. She rotated, turning her hip into the thrust, and the adrenaline surging through her veins gave her more power than usual. He stumbled backward, tripping over his chair, and fell against the railing. The wood gave way with a snap, and he fell through the railing and into the sand below.
Kaika gaped at Rysha in surprise. Her man stood to stare over the side and down at his buddy.
The front door slammed open, and a woman in an apron came out, carrying a broom.
“All of you, out,” she barked. “We’ll have no troublemakers here.”
“Does that mean we can’t order breakfast?” Blazer asked, standing up.
“Out!” The woman swatted at Kaika with her broom.
Kaika dodged the weak attack, and she, Blazer, and Rysha hurried from the porch.
As they headed down the road, Rysha looked at the fallen man, worried he would chase after her and retaliate. He had found his feet. But he was yelling back at the woman in the apron, who seemed to believe he should pay for the broken rail.
Rysha hurried to get out of his view, but neither Kaika nor Blazer was hurrying, so she reluctantly slowed down to match their pace. They were looking toward other eating establishments.
Thinking of trying it all again? Rysha couldn’t hold back a groan.
She didn’t realize the noise came out so loudly until Kaika looked over at her.
“I’m sorry I messed up your intel gathering, ma’am,” Rysha said, now feeling that she had overreacted. Weren’t female spies supposed to let themselves get groped? Or even sleep with people? That’s what seduction led to, wasn’t it? So what if he had pulled her into his lap and she had been forced to sit on his happy stick?
“I’m not,” Blazer said, eyes glinting. “That was beautiful.”
“Major,” Kaika said, sounding somewhere between amused and exasperated.
Blazer patted Rysha on the shoulder. “If the elite troops assignment doesn’t work out, you come on over to Wolf Squadron. We’ll train you up as a pilot. All you have to do to pirates with us is shoot them.”
“She’s going to work out,” Kaika growled. “Keep your pilot mittens off her.”
Blazer lifted her hands, but she was still smiling as she ambled ahead of them, once again watching their surroundings for trouble. A few more pirates were out now, a few more interested parties eyeing the group of women.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Rysha told Kaika again, certain that Kaika had been letting her man grope her under the table. And it had worked. He’d spilled all that information about the fort, all unasked for. “I know I volunteered to dress this way. I thought I could do it, gather information by being… appealing. But I’m not appealing, ma’am. When I imagined going on spy missions, it always involved getting in and gathering intel by being underestimated and ignored as a wallflower.”
“I think you’d have a harder time being a wallflower than you imagine,” Kaika said dryly. “But you should go with your strengths. The quickest way to being discovered is by pretending to be something you’re not.”
“Don’t spies have to pretend to be something they’re not?”
Kaika chuckled. “I’m not talking about the surface stuff. Don’t try to change your personality on a mission.”
“But don’t you have to… I mean, as a spy, isn’t it expected—Captain, I don’t know if I can learn to be comfortable getting pawed over to get information.”
“Relax, Ravy,” Kaika said. “That’s not in the job description.”
Rysha looked at her.
“My commanders have certainly found my lack of certain inhibitions useful over the years,” Kaika went on, “but that’s not what the elite troops is all about. You think Colonel Therrik gets sent out to seduce people?”
“I haven’t met Colonel Therrik.”
“If you have an option, don’t. Most of the missions are incursion and combat-related. The people who go undercover have a knack for it, but there’s plenty to be done if you don’t. We’ve got lots of men who are strategists, others who are just muscle.” Kaika flexed her biceps and winked. “Both of which I think you’ll have a knack for. And both of which,” she added, her humor fading, “we’ll likely need tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“When we infiltrate the fortress and deal with a legendary pirate and his sorceress.”
