Mage Assassin 3 Chapter 5

I woke up to the light of four of the Ardere’s suns falling through the skylight onto the sleeping forms of Ephy and Cinis. It bathed them in a golden glow. Cinis looked like royalty even sprawled out naked and mumbling in her sleep, and Ephy looked serene and angelic as she slumbered peacefully.

She hadn’t been so angelic last night, though. I smirked at the thought as I sat up in the bed.

A wave of dizziness washed through me that forced me back down to the pillow, but after a few moments it dissipated, and I realized I still felt as amazing as I had last night.

Cinis had warned me that the scorpion venom we drank would knock me on my ass for a good forty-eight hours, but I felt like I could move a mountain as I stretched my supple-feeling limbs. I felt as if the cool energy I felt last night had softened and spread through every bit of my body.

Even though I was kind of used to the feeling by now, the fact that it was enough to punch through the potency of the scorpion venom stunned me.

I was just about to roll out of bed when I realized Cinis’ eyes were wide open, and she was watching me.

The queen looked like a mess in the hottest way imaginable. Her dark, shiny hair tumbled around her and contrasted with the pale skin of her nude form under the morning sun. She had faint dark shadows under her eyes, but they just made their amber glow even more striking around her galaxy-filled pupils. Her kiss-bruised lips made her look even more effortlessly sensual than normal.

I wished I could stay and fill the new queen’s room with more of her sultry moans, and she didn’t make it any easier not to when she rolled over and put her head right in my lap. She captured my finger between her soft ripe lips and sucked it provocatively.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” I managed to say.

“Mmmmm,” she mumbled wordlessly in her husky voice.

Next to us, Ephy rolled over and stretched like a cat. I felt another surge of desire as she arched her bare green back and shook out her long, periwinkle hair. When I saw her and Cinis next to each other, it was all I could do not to push both of them back down on the bed and have my way with them again.

But I reminded myself that I had to get home and make sure my little nipitar was okay.

I had instructed Mazne to look after it, and she’d been thrilled, but I still felt a little pang every time I thought about the little creature.

And Cinis would likely have things to do considering it was her first day as the official ruler of the Ardere.

The fact that I had despoiled the queen crossed my mind, and I allowed myself a small half-smile at the thought.

“What are you smirking about, Mr. Morgan?” Cinis asked me.

“You,” I told her, and then I rolled off the bed before she could tempt me into anything.

We all got dressed, some of us more than others. Cinis slipped into a long black silk robe that parted perfectly at her back to allow for her wings, but she wore nothing underneath. It was belted so loosely around her waist that it was practically falling open on the top half, so her lush cleavage was on full display.

Ephy wore what might generously be called a dress. Its thin shoulder straps were overly long, so her perky breasts were half-visible from the front and side, and it was barely long enough to cover her perfectly-formed ass. It was a loose dress, but the cotton was so thin that it clung close to her form, and seeing the outline of her taut, lithe body through it made me want to tear it off her.

Ephy was gorgeous when she wore her usual lily pad skirt, and last night she had looked fucking ethereal in her pale blue gown, but something about this little scrap of white cotton was thrilling in its own way.

The queen was more radiant than the four suns overhead when me and Ephy turned back to wave goodbye to her from down on the black sand beach.

A ferry master greeted us in a cheery voice and sprang to give us a hand with mounting a turtle. The last time I’d seen him, he was emptying six shots of scorpion venom into a massive goblet that was half-filled with a bubbling golden liquid. The substance had emitted a little burst of sparks every time a bubble popped on its surface. He had chugged the entire bowl-sized goblet in less than a minute, and then hiccuped out some sparks and trotted off singing in a high-pitched voice with his top hat dangerously askew.

But now he was bright-eyed and cheery. Apparently what Cinis said about the fire beings was true. That stuff was like water to them.

“I had so much fun last night,” Ephy said dreamily while the turtle propelled us smoothly through the lava water.

“I know you did.” I winked at her to remind her of last night, and her pale green skin blushed faintly pink.

“Did… did you like what we did, Dex Morgan?” she asked. I almost couldn’t believe she was still so shy sometimes considering the things that we’d done, but it made me chuckle.

“Ephy,” I said. “I cannot even put into words how much I liked what we did.”

She blushed an even rosier shade of pink. “And… what Cinis and I did together?”

I nodded vigorously in response, and she gave a thoughtful little hum.

“I liked it, too,” she confessed with a shy giggle.

After we dismounted our turtle and Ephy patted its bright yellow head in farewell, we took our time ambling all the way down the long, spongy rock path to the border of the Ardere. Then we continued through the sunlit trees of a calm and peaceful Hud. I was still on my guard with the forest, just in case, but it seemed to be in oddly good spirits today. Even the canopy had loosened up a bit to let the daylight in.

When we neared the estate, I suddenly heard a commotion from somewhere inside that made me pick up my pace. The vines seemed to sense my urgency, and they slid rapidly out of my way. The patterned snakes slithered quickly like they were trying to give me space, too, when I pounded across the carpet with Ephy trailing behind me.

The frantic, keening, humming noise was audible through the door of my office when I reached the hallway, accompanied by something clawing and scraping against the inside. I could faintly hear a voice cooing something in a soothing tone, and some thumps and bumps like some sort of struggle was taking place.

I tensed. That was my little nipitar. And… who? It didn’t sound like Mazne.

When I reached the door, the sounds ceased abruptly, except for some soft shuffling. I motioned for Ephy to stay back and tensed myself for a possible fight while I opened the door slowly.

Before I could blink, the tiny little nipitar came hurtling at me with such force, I had to steady myself against the door frame to stay upright. Its loving hum rang out while it wrapped itself around my neck like a scaly gold scarf, and I patted it affectionately on the head and looked sharply around the room.

Half the things in my office looked like they’d been overturned, rifled through, or attacked by a vicious wolverine who had decided to do both. Then I saw a scuffling in the shadowy corner.

I approached and saw Elis locked in a battle with my overturned fountain on the ground as he tried to push it upright. The fountain was winning.

“Elis?” I asked cautiously.

The kid cringed and then quickly scrambled to his feet. He stood with his hands behind his back and fidgeted nervously while he looked down at the ground to avoid meeting my eye.

“Elis,” I repeated in a calm voice.

He met my eyes reluctantly.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I heard the crying in here, and it sounded so sad, so I just let myself in to check, and everything was all torn apart, but I didn’t want you to think I did it, and--”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “Seriously, Elis, it’s not your fault. It was nice of you to check in.”

From the claw marks that gouged some of the wooden surfaces in my office, I gathered that the little nipitar was responsible for the mess.

Then I heard Ephy’s little gasp as she saw the disheveled state of the room. I’d been so distracted that I had forgotten to go back into the hallway for her, but the siren must have realized it was safe to enter and crept in behind me.

“What happened?” she asked as she stared around at the mess with her big teardrop-shaped eyes.

Elis had been looking at her with a dazed expression on his face, but when she spoke, he seemed to snap out of it a little. He seemed to be struggling to remember how to talk, though, so he just pointed wordlessly at the scaly creature on my shoulder.

I bit back a laugh.

“Oh, poor little nipitar,” Ephy lulled. “It must’ve been scared you weren’t coming back!”

“There there, my friend,” I cooed as I petted the scaly creature. “Mazne was supposed to watch you. Elis, have you seen her  anywhere?”

“I saw her come out of your office last night,” the kid said and then lowered his voice to an ashamed mumble. “When I was… Just hanging around in the hallway. That’s when I saw a glimpse of Nimith.”

The nipitar on my shoulder turned its head to look at him at the same time I did.

“Who?” I asked.

Elis gestured at the nipitar.

“Nimith,” he repeated more loudly.

As if in response, the nipitar pushed off my neck with its clawed feet toward Elis. It couldn’t fly yet, but it spread its wings to help it sail toward him and then sank its claws into his sleeve when he hurriedly held out his arms to catch it.

I was taken aback and a little bit cross that he had named the nipitar, but I also couldn’t keep my curiosity at bay, and I was sure the kid hadn’t purposely broken into my office just to name it.

It seemed to have taken a liking to him, and it gave him a friendly little warble before it launched itself back at me. It jumped without hesitation like it knew I would be there to catch it, and I smiled as I helped it resume its perch on my shoulder.

“Nimith,” I repeated thoughtfully. “How’d you come up with that?”

The nipitar gave a little caw when I said its name.

Elis shrugged.

“She just looks like a ‘Nimith’ to me,” he said.

“She?” I was even more interested now, and Ephy looked surprised, too.

I started to press Elis for details.

“How’d you know--” I started to ask.

“Where’d you get--” he said at the exact same time.

But both of us were interrupted by Mazne entering the room. She was tottering under the weight of a huge wooden crate she had clutched in her arms.

“Maz,” I said with surprise and rushed to take the heavy crate from her. I set it on the ground, and then I turned back to her with concern. “Where have you been? Are you okay?”

I was more relieved to see her than anything else. Mazne didn’t usually just take off.

“I’m okay,” the secretary assured me, but she still had a distracted look on her face. Then she looked around the room and the expression turned to a mixture of  shock and guilt. “Did… did the nipitar do this?”

“I think so,” I told her, and I looked at Elis questioningly.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Just about an hour ago, I heard her crying, and I came in and everything was all…”

He gestured around the room.

“Oh, Dex,” Mazne sighed. “I’m so sorry! I’ve been spending every second with the nipitar because it was so sad without you, and it would just cry and cry, but this morning I had to do some of my usual estate business, and I knew no one could see the nipitar! So I lef--”

“It’s okay, Maz,” I interrupted her. She’d been talking faster and faster in the way she did when she was extremely stressed, and she sounded like she might cry from how guilty she felt.

“Are you sure, Dex?” she sniffled a little.

“Absolutely,” I told her firmly. “It will be easy enough to clean up my office.”

Mazne’s expression lifted a little, but her usual bubbly smile was still tempered by a slightly strained expression that hung around even when the nipitar gave her outstretched finger an affectionate nibble.

“What is it?” I asked.

She hesitated and shot a glance at Elis like she wasn’t sure whether the kid should hear what she had to say.

I picked up on this and turned to look at Elis. He had his head perked up eagerly waiting to hear what was going on, and it was so characteristic of him that I had to bite back a laugh.

Then I reluctantly did the only thing I knew would eliminate any chance of him sneaking back to eavesdrop: I gently unwound Nimith from my neck and passed her over to him. She gave a slightly forlorn mew back at me, but allowed Elis to hang on to her.

“Would you mind taking Nimith to your room with you and keeping her company while I go over some, er… business matters?” I tried to make it sound as boring as possible.

“Yes, our grain shipment has arrived,” Mazne added helpfully. “I need to go over some logistics with you for…”

She didn’t even need to finish her sentence before Elis gave a gleeful yip and hurried off with the nipitar cradled in his arms.

I chuckled and then turned serious again when Mazne looked at me and twiddled her thumbs nervously.

“You can have a seat, Maz,” I told her. “What is it?”

I bent over to turn a chair upright for her to sit in, but she shook her head.

“I think you should come see for yourself,” she said.

I glanced over at Ephy. The siren was just standing looking at the empty fountain that lay on its side where it had apparently been knocked over in the nipitar’s anxious fit.

“I’ll be back in just a minute, Ephy,” I told her.

She looked up like I’d startled her out of a daydream.

“Okay, Dex,” she murmured with a sweet smile at me, and I saw her meander toward the slightly shredded-up couch to sit down.

I followed Mazne outside curiously and saw a canvas-covered wagon so big it had spots for two horses to pull it. But only one horse stood harnessed to the wagon. A separate pair of hoofprints led away from the empty spot next to it, and for several strides there were human footprints beside them. The human prints were deeper than the prints Mazne left as she walked next to me, but pretty similar to mine, and looked like they came from big, sturdy boots of some kind. The last few footprints were especially deep where the person had pushed off the ground to vault onto their horse.

Footprints? I came to a sudden halt. It hadn’t rained for weeks, and there was no reason I could think of why the ground should be a mudslide here.

“Wait a second,” I said sharply, and Mazne came hurrying back.

“What’s wrong, Dex?” she asked.

“Why is the yard so muddy?”

She stared at me for a second, and I could tell this wasn’t what she’d expected me to say.

“I have no idea,” she responded. Now that I had brought it to her attention, Mazne looked as perplexed as I was.

Then she held up a finger to pause me before I responded.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

I nodded and frowned while I scanned the ground with my eyes. I could distinctly hear the noise of rushing water close by, and I followed it.

When I rounded the corner of our estate wall, I saw a bubbling stream surging over the ground from the edge of the forest and heading directly toward me. I had barely even taken in the sight before it came spilling over my boots.

“What the hell?”

This was the last straw. I almost stalked off to investigate where the stream was coming from, but thought better of it. I was the Master of the estate, and I couldn’t just leave the wagon there without seeing what was going on. Why would the cart’s driver ride away without the cart and half its team after he made his delivery?

When I came around the back of the wagon and lifted aside the canvas flap, I forgot all about the question.

Because along with sacks of grain, the wagon was filled with stacks upon stacks of gold. I knew it must be the two kilos promised to me by the king.

Mazne came to stand by me.

“So… the driver just rode up, hopped down, leaped onto his horse, and took off?” I asked her in total confusion.

“Yep,” she responded in an equally mystified tone. “Just a few minutes ago, when I was getting back from the city centre. He didn’t even look my way or say anything when I called out to him.”

She paused, and I glanced her way and waited for her to continue.

“I was expecting someone to come by around this time with the grain shipment, but they never leave the cart here, especially not with a horse attached to it.”

She cast an admiring look at the horse. It was huge and muscular, and its coat was a glossy, smoky, silvery-gray color. It had a proud, refined face, and its bright black eyes blinked down at us while it snorted and stamped a little. Its hooves made a squelching noise in the mud underfoot.

The horse certainly looked strong enough to pull the cart, but not at all like that’s what it was bred or trained for. And it was wearing a rich, fancy-looking leather saddle, with a matching bridle.

“Hold on,” I said as something else occurred to me. “You were expecting this?”

“I was expecting our usual grain shipment,” she clarified. “But when Master Abbot was alive, if a grain shipment came in a wagon this big, then he told me to let him worry about it. But this time, I thought I’d take care of it myself, and when I saw all the gold I was shocked, and--”

“And these big shipments happened regularly?” I cut across Mazne’s babbling as politely as I could manage.

“Just every now and then,” she said a little impatiently, like there was something else she wanted to get to.

I gave her a questioning look, and she held out a rolled up parchment for me to take. The thick, ornate paper was edged with gold leaf, and the ribbon tied around the scroll was made of soft silk. Even if the scroll had arrived on its own, I would’ve known right away who it was from.

“Thanks, Maz,” I said as I tucked the scroll into my elbow with a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Mazne looked like she wanted to ask a million questions, but she held back. I knew she had experience with holding her tongue from her time spent assisting Master Abbot, but she was still practicing at showing the same restraint with me. I shot her an appreciative smile.

“I’ll help you unload this,” I told her, about to reach into the wagon, but she stopped me with a touch on my arm.

“No, Master Morgan,” she said in a firm voice. “You go handle… whatever that is, and I’ll go wheedle Incrassatum into helping me.”

I laughed at the thought of Mazne’s charms working their magic on Incrassatum. Or anyone’s charms working on Incrassatum, for that matter.

“Good idea,” I said. “Just the gold, though, and have her cover it with something and bring it into my office. I don’t want anyone else knowing about the king unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

Mazne nodded.

“What about the grain?” she asked.

“Once the gold’s inside, tell Incrassatum to find anyone else who’s lying around and uh… persuade them to lend a hand. Then send her to my office.” I grinned at her.

She nodded again and waved me away cheerily, and I turned to head back inside.

“Oh, hey Dex?” Mazne called like she’d just remembered something.

“Yeah, Maz?”

“I picked up some of those blue bubbly fruits for you from the fruit stalls when I was out, and the shop owner gave me some other stuff for you. That’s why I got held up, he made it fresh just for you.”

I thought she must be referring to Eroven, although I didn’t know how the wizard shopkeeper would’ve recognized her as working for me.

“What kind of stuff?” I asked her.

“He said it’s the special fruit you asked for, and... something about ‘looking far and wide to find it.’ It’s in the crate I brought into your office.”

I definitely hadn’t asked for any special fruit, so that seemed like an exceedingly odd thing for Eroven to say, but I nodded and gave Mazne a smile of thanks and then headed inside.

It wasn’t too unusual for Eroven to give me a little something special when I stopped by, especially when a new fruit was made or brought in. But he had never gone hunting after a type of fruit for me, or sent it to me through someone else. Something about that seemed off.

I remembered to retrieve little Nimith from Elis on my way back to my office. I was longing to ask him about why he seemed so sure she was a female, but there were so many things I had to do that I reluctantly postponed my interrogation.

I found Ephy on the floor of my office and engaged in the same battle Elis had lost against the heavy fountain that lay on the ground.

“Ephy!” I chided, and I hurried across the room to lift it and set it upright.

Nimith gave a little squawk of distress as she almost fell. The nipitar clawed her way onto my back, and then I felt her weight vanish as she leaped off and seated herself on my desk.

“I wanted to help,” Ephy said sadly while she gave up on her wrestling with the fountain and let me handle it.

I righted the fountain, and we looked down at the few droplets of water left in it. Then I looked around at the rest of it that was pooled on the floor over near where the fountain had originally tumbled over.

I almost couldn’t believe the puny little nipitar had managed to accomplish this, but as I studied the scene, I realized it had been a domino effect that looked like it started with some books on the shelf above my desk and ended with the fountain’s water puddled all over the floor in the corner.

Before I could contemplate finding a towel to sop it up with yet, the water on the floor started to glow a familiar luminous aquamarine shade. It caught Ephy’s attention quick as lightning, and we both stared in astonishment at the glowing puddles, and then at each other.

Suddenly, each puddle of water turned into a little stream, and they all trickled across the floor toward the fountain. I watched with my mouth open as they all made their way to it and then roiled up its sides like they were dripping upward. In less than ten seconds, the fountain was almost completely full again. Just a faint sheen of dampness had been left on the floor by the water in its passing.

“Well, that was helpful,” Ephy said with a cute little smile.

The water that had moved back into the fountain slowly lost the intensity of its glow and settled into a more muted, rippling shade of cyan.

But there was still a glow lighting the room. I frowned in puzzlement for a moment before I realized the light was coming from under my shirt.

My mark.

I stared down at it and then glanced over at Ephy to see if she had any idea what the hell was going on. Her face looked just as confused as mine now, and I was going to say something about all the weird and mysterious things that had been happening lately when I suddenly remembered the scroll Mazne had given me.

“Shit,” I grumbled, and I dropped into my seat as I was hit with a wave of frustration.

“What’s going on, Dex?” Ephy asked me in her singsong voice.

“Well,” I huffed and drummed my fingers against my thigh. “Weird things keep happening around me, and right when I’m trying to figure out why, I’m interrupted by something like this.”

I slapped the scroll down on my desk.

“What is it?” Ephy frowned at the innocent looking little scroll.

I was sure I knew exactly what it was, but I tugged the ribbon off and unrolled it to scan it over.

My suspicion was confirmed.

“It’s a summons to see the king.”