Chapter 3 - The Accounting

Winter arrived while Felix and I were underground.

The first snow of the season came sideways through Ashbourne, wet enough to soak and cold enough to hurt. It landed on the blood covering my shirt and turned pink as it ran down my trousers in little streams. By the time we reached the Crooked Nail, my boots squelched, and Felix’s glorious hair hung in damp ropes around his face.

He still looked good, good enough that my cock stirred inside my frozen, blood-soaked trousers, which I took as proof that I had come through the night with my priorities intact.

I looked like a murder victim who had objected halfway through.

The inn’s windows glowed amber behind the snow. Smoke rolled from the crooked chimney and flattened beneath the low gray sky. I could smell woodsmoke and the stew Maple kept simmering for people who arrived at unreasonable hours covered in reasonable amounts of blood.

Felix’s stomach growled. Mine answered. We had missed dinner, spent the night fighting and fucking in a catacomb, and looting proved less nourishing than advertised.

I wanted a fire, a bath, food, and perhaps three days without anyone tearing a hole in the air above my head.

The moment I pushed through the door, chains moved overhead.

Metal struck wood in a quick, descending rhythm.

Kaniz appeared at the top of the stairs.

Her thin shift ended high on her thighs. The iron collar at her throat looked almost black in the firelight. Wrist braces hugged both arms. A short length of chain joined the heavy cuffs around her ankles, and she had learned to take stairs quickly without tripping, which was either impressive or deeply concerning. Each step bounced her tits under the thin linen and flicked the hem higher up her thighs, and I stood with the door still open behind me until somebody at the bar yelled about the draft.

She saw me.

Her entire body stopped except for her eyes.

They traveled from my face to the bruises around my throat, the cut at my ribs, my blood-soaked shirt, and the dagger hanging from my belt, and from there they moved on to Felix. His mouth was bruised. Blood stained his chin. His robe was belted badly over clothing that had been rearranged in a hurry, mostly by me.

Kaniz had the whole story off our bodies before Maple even looked up from the bar.

She came down the rest of the stairs.

“How much is yours?”

She skipped the greeting, the gasp and the thank the gods. Kaniz had priorities.

“Enough to ruin the shirt.”

She put two fingers on the cut at my ribs.

“The damage.”

“Mostly bruises. This is a scratch. My throat works. Everything important remains attached.”

Her fingers followed the line beneath my shirt. The touch should have hurt. It did hurt. It also made my cock twitch, because I had known Kaniz for eight months and apparently learned nothing useful during that time.

“He killed the leader,” Felix said behind me. “Dagger through the throat.”

Kaniz’s eyes lifted to mine.

The worried crease left her brow, and her eyes went wide and bright so fast that I nearly stepped backward.

Her tongue passed slowly over her lower lip, and I went hard against the wet laces of my trousers before my brain had finished noticing the tongue.

“Tell me how.”

I had wanted a warm room, and Kaniz wanted to hear about a killing. The sensible answer was bed, because I was wrecked and Felix and I had already celebrated once against a tomb wall. My cock had no use for the sensible answer, and neither did my pride, since any woman who looked at a killer that hungrily deserved to hear him brag.

“In through the throat, then sideways,” I said. “Sideways was important.”

Felix made a thoughtful sound. “It removed most of the throat.”

Kaniz closed her hand around my belt.

“Upstairs.”

Felix looked at her fist, then at me. “Again? Greedy.”

“Yes,” Kaniz said.

“I was speaking to Samuel.”

“Bath first,” I said.

“Later,” Kaniz said.

“Food?” I tried.

“After.”

“If she kills you, I’m eating your share,” Felix said.

Kaniz pulled my belt tighter. “He will need his strength.”

“Sleep?” I asked.

Her gaze dropped below my belt. “Eventually.”

Maple planted both paws on the bar. Her tawny ears flattened as she looked at the bloody footprints spreading across her floor.

“Samuel Thornwood.”

“Good morning, Maple. Lovely weather.”

“You are leaking on my boards.”

“Most of it belongs to other people.”

“That does not improve matters, dear.”

Kaniz towed me toward the stairs.

Maple pointed a claw at Felix. “You. Kitchen. Eat while you explain.”

“Finally, someone with priorities.”

He had a hand in the bread basket before finishing his first sentence. “The cult had poor discipline and worse accounting. Samuel impersonated a warehouse owner. There was a sacrifice, an opening in the air, and a great deal of blood. We rescued a wine merchant. He intends to murder someone named Henslow.”

Maple stared at him.

Felix took another roll. “And I require eggs.”

Kaniz dragged me upstairs before Maple found a ladle to throw. I climbed behind her with my eyes on her ass, which rolled under the short shift on every step, and I tracked blood up every stair without once remembering my boots.

My room had been warm when I left it. With Kaniz, the Tome, and an iridescent egg that gave off heat all packed in there for eight months, warmth was about the only thing the room had going for it. This morning the window rattled under the winter wind. Frost feathered the lower panes. The fire had burned low, and the floorboards held enough cold to bite through my wet boots.

The egg rested in its padded crate beside the hearth, warm and quiet, the only member of my household that never wanted anything from me.

I dropped the pack by the hearth, and Kaniz shut the door.

“Take your clothes off,” she said.

“I thought you wanted me to give the commands.”

“You are learning. Take them off anyway.”

She reached for the hem of my shirt.

I caught her wrists.

The iron braces were cold. Her skin beneath them was hot.

“Kaniz.”

“Yes, master.”

Her pupils widened. Her wrists turned in my grip, testing it without trying to escape.

“I spent the night in a catacomb.”

“That makes it nicer.”

“I smell like blood, smoke, Felix, and a dead goat.”

“I noticed.”

“I have slept perhaps two hours in the last two days.”

“Then do not waste time explaining.”

She pulled against my hands again. Her chains shifted around her ankles.

“Use me and sleep.”

Kaniz never pleaded. She ordered submission like a meal she had already paid for. I knew what she was after. She wanted me to admit I owned her.

I didn’t want to own anybody.

I also wanted her so badly that I was rock hard against the cold, wet wool of my trousers, and the laces were biting into my cock.

Samuel Thornwood, moral philosopher. Available for lectures after breakfast.

I tightened my hands around her wrists. “On your knees.”

Kaniz smiled.

“Yes, master.”

She dropped hard enough that her ankle chain struck the floor. I let go of her wrists, caught the iron collar, and held her where I wanted her.

She stopped smiling and licked her lips.

“Open my trousers.”

Her fingers went to the laces. They were quick, confident, and impatient. Cold air hit my cock, which had already suffered enough of it that morning. Before I could complain about it, Kaniz’s mouth closed around me, and winter became somebody else’s problem.

I braced one hand against the door.

She took me deep right away, because she knew me now, and because the Tome had been whispering lessons into her for years. Her tongue pressed beneath the head. Her hand closed around the base. The collar shifted beneath my grip with each movement.

“Slow,” I said.

She slowed.

She did it perfectly, and I could tell she hated every second of it.

Her eyes stayed on mine. I pulled her back by the collar until my cock slipped from her lips. “Hands behind you.”

She obeyed.

“You waited up?”

“Yes, master.”

“All night?”

“You were gone.”

She said it with annoyance, as if my absence had been a personal failure I could correct by putting my cock back in her mouth.

She leaned forward.

I held her collar and stopped her an inch away. “Ask.”

Her nostrils flared.

“Use my mouth, master.”

“Better.”

I guided myself between her lips.

This time I set the pace. Her hands remained behind her back. Each forward movement carried me deeper, and each withdrawal pulled a wet breath from her. She accepted everything I gave her, throat working, dark eyes bright with tears. My knees tried to fold, and I locked them, because a man who had just killed a cult leader was not going to slide down a door over one good mouth.

The cold metal collar warmed beneath my hand.

I pulled out of her mouth before I came.

Kaniz made a frustrated sound.

“Stand.”

She rose quickly.

I turned her and pressed her against the door. The shift bunched around her hips and left her bare, because Kaniz considered underclothes an obstacle invented by people with uncertain plans.

She was already wet.

I ran two fingers through her, and her forehead touched the wood. “A dead man excites you?”

“You killed him.”

I pushed two fingers inside. Kaniz opened around them with a low sound. Her hips chased my hand, grinding for more, while the rest of her stayed still against the door.

“You came home wearing his blood,” she said. “You returned to me.”

“I returned to the inn.”

She looked back over her shoulder.

“And yet.”

Her ass was pushed back at me, full and dark under the bunched linen, and my hand had been wanting it since the stairs. I slapped it.

The sound cracked through the room. Her body jolted. She let out a happy little gasp.

“Do that again,” she said.

“Was that a command?”

“A correction.”

I slapped her harder.

Her ankle chain rattled as her stance widened. She pushed back into my fingers, smug about it. Somehow, Kaniz could obey me and win at the same time.

I withdrew my hand, shoved my trousers down around my boots, and pressed the head of my cock against her. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want what is mine.”

“That sounds confused.”

“I am yours.” Her cheek rested against the door. “What uses me is mine.”

My brain was in no condition to untangle that. Fortunately, my cock had developed a strong interpretation.

I drove into her.

Kaniz cried out. Her palms struck the door. I filled her in one hard thrust and held there while her body tightened around me. Heat surrounded my cock. The shift gathered between us. Her iron collar touched the wood each time she breathed.

“Again,” she demanded.

I caught the back of her neck. “Ask correctly.”

Her mouth curved.

“Fuck me again, master.”

I pulled back and gave her exactly what she asked for.

The door shook in its frame. Wind gusted against the window. Wet snow hissed against the glass while I fucked her hard enough to make the chain between her ankles jump across the floorboards.

Kaniz met every thrust. She pushed back, tightened around me, and reached behind to drag my hand from her hip to her throat. My fingers curled over the collar. Her hand covered mine and pressed.

I held her by the iron and drove deeper. “Whose?” I asked.

The word came out rougher than I expected.

Kaniz shuddered.

“Yours.”

“Say it properly.”

“Yours, master.”

She was completely sure of it, and that went straight to my cock. I could object over breakfast. I could explain freedom until my tongue fell out. Here, with her body taking everything I gave and her hand keeping mine against the collar she refused to remove, all my arguments went out of my head.

I wanted this too.

I reached around her and found her clit. She was slick enough that my fingers slid easily. I circled it while thrusting, and she lost it. Her head fell back against my shoulder. She gasped my name, then corrected herself.

“Master.”

“Come for me.”

Her body obeyed before she could make a show of it.

She clenched around me in hard pulses. Her thighs shook. The ankle chain snapped tight as her feet spread wider, and she cried out with no concern for Maple, Felix, the guests below, or the fact the entire Crooked Nail knew exactly which room belonged to me.

She squeezed so hard that I went over with her.

I buried myself as deep as I could and came inside her, holding her upright by collar and waist while exhaustion, pleasure, and the surviving pieces of my dignity left together.

For a moment, the only sounds were our breathing and snow brushing the glass.

Kaniz turned in my arms.

Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair had come loose. She looked serene and satisfied, if you ignored her licking my blood from the corner of my mouth.

“Now you may sleep,” she said.

“Generous.”

“Yes, master.”

I fell onto the bed without removing my boots.

Kaniz climbed over me and settled full-length across my chest. Her head rested beneath my chin. One thigh slid between mine. Cold iron pressed against my calf.

“This is cuddling,” I said.

“I am occupying my place.”

“Your place is crushing my damaged ribs.”

She shifted half an inch. “Sleep.”

I was too tired to argue with that. My eyes closed while the wind scraped at the window and Kaniz’s weight held me against the mattress.

I remembered the ribbon on the edge of sleep. My trousers were still tangled around my boots, and digging it out of the pocket took some doing with Kaniz lying on me. I held it up between us: a length of red silk from the cult leader’s receipt bundle. “I took this for you.”

Kaniz took it with both hands. “Mine?”

“That’s generally how gifts work.”

She threaded it through the front of her iron collar without getting off me. The red silk looked obscene against the black iron, and her tits were pressed against my chest while she tied it, and my cock, which I had believed was finished for the day, made a weak and hopeful attempt at a second career.

“It is mine,” she said, and put her head back down under my chin.

I was nearly gone when Kaniz spoke against my throat.

“When we have a house, I want a wall with rings in it.”

My eyes opened. “What house?”

She was asleep, or she was pretending, and with Kaniz I had never once been able to tell which.

I woke after midday with my mouth dry, my ribs aching, and Kaniz’s ass tucked against my groin beneath the blankets. I was already hard against her by the time my ribs reminded me about the catacomb.

Snow had covered the alley roofs. It piled on the window ledge, already turning gray where chimney soot settled over it. The room had gone cold enough that my breath showed above the bed, and I seriously considered staying under the blankets until spring.

The egg remained warm in its crate.

Kaniz opened her eyes the moment I moved.

“Again?” she asked.

“Food.”

“That was not my question.”

“It was my answer.”

Her hand moved beneath the blanket.

I caught it at my hip. My dick, which had no loyalty to stew, strained toward her fingers. “Maple has stew.”

“I have better things.”

“Whatever you have in mind needs a full stomach.”

She considered this and nodded. “Practical.”

We ate standing up in Maple’s kitchen, because Blackthorn’s boy had come and gone while we slept and left word that he wanted Felix and me at the Guild before the streets froze. Felix had heard the message first and eaten my breakfast while he waited.

The upper streets turned white and quiet. The lower ones had turned to rivers of brown slush. Wind drove between the stone buildings and found every gap in my cloak. Kaniz followed half a step behind, her chain leaving a dotted line in the snow. She refused the wool stockings Maple offered because they would have covered the ankle cuffs, so her bare calves went red above the iron, and I kept looking back at them.

I stopped arguing about the stockings after the third block.

Felix walked beside me with his hood up. Snow gathered on his shoulders without seeming to wet him. The gods maintained standards for some people. I spent the next block staring at his mouth, which had been on me against a tomb wall a few hours earlier, and walked straight into a puddle of slush that came over the top of my boot.

The Guild Hall smelled of wet wool and the hundred adventurers sheltering inside. A clerk led us past every one of them straight to Blackthorn’s office, and I made sure they saw me go.

Marcus had built his fire high. Heat pressed against my face when we entered. Our wet boots dripped on his carpet. There were two chairs. Felix took the one beside mine and sat close enough that his knee rested against my thigh under the edge of the desk. He left it there and moved it a little higher every time Marcus dropped his eyes to his papers.

Marcus looked at Kaniz, the chains, Felix, and me, and I could tell he had decided not to ask.

“The rescued man arrived at the eastern watchhouse at dawn,” he said. “Wearing one slipper and carrying a knife large enough to qualify as agricultural equipment.”

“He was in excellent spirits,” I said.

“He has accused six merchants, two magistrates, a Guild factor, and his own brother-in-law of participating in a blood cult,” Marcus continued. “He has also threatened to purchase the building over the eastern watchhouse and evict the watch captain.”

“Imported silk nightshirt,” I explained.

Marcus closed his eyes briefly.

Felix placed the membership receipts on the desk.

Blackthorn unfolded them. His jaw tightened.

“Henslow,” he said.

“Six warehouses,” I said.

“Seven. He purchased the south granary last month.”

“That explains the confidence.”

Marcus read the remaining names. One eyebrow climbed when he reached the altar donation. He rang a little brass bell and handed the receipts to the clerk who entered, along with instructions that would ruin several wealthy breakfasts.

Business done, he turned and looked at the Tome strapped to my back.

“Tell me about the opening.”

I had everyone in that office figured out. Felix wanted facts. Marcus wanted control. The Tome wanted to reveal nothing. I wanted the locked drawer at Blackthorn’s right hand, because he had opened it before paying me for Malkor and I remembered the sound coin made inside.

We argued for half an hour.

Felix described the circles and blood channels. I described the sideways eye. The Tome disputed my use of eye, tear, red, large, and eventually the. Kaniz listened from behind my chair, one hand resting on the iron collar at her throat.

“The congregation summoned nothing,” the Tome said. “Their ritual attracted notice.”

Marcus’s fingers stopped against the desk. “From what?”

“An interested party.”

“Which party?”

“One whose interests will not be improved by your understanding of them.”

“It knew me,” I said.

The Tome went still.

Marcus looked at me. “Explain.”

I told him what the man with the merchant crest had said in the fight. Blackrock. He saw you. I told him about the pressure in my skull and Malkor appearing alive behind my eyes.

Kaniz’s fingers closed around my shoulder.

“Magical inquiry,” Marcus said. “The chamber, every object you recovered, the residue on your clothing, and the grimoire.”

The Tome exploded against my back.

“THE GRIMOIRE WILL SUBMIT TO NOTHING CONDUCTED BY YOUR PERFUMED HEDGE WIZARDS! THE LAST MAGE WHO ATTEMPTED TO PROBE MY BINDINGS SPENT FOUR YEARS BELIEVING HIS TESTICLES WERE GIVING HIM LEGAL ADVICE!”

“Give my people a week to examine the site and evidence,” Marcus said. “You will remain available.”

“Payment first,” I said.

He stared at me.

I stared at the drawer.

Marcus kept waiting for solemn cooperation. I was after enough money to drink through the winter in my own room, which I still shared with a book, an egg, and a woman whose preferred morning greeting required structural reinforcement.

He opened the drawer.

The sound of gold improved the entire meeting.

The Guild had promised a substantial bonus if the threat beneath Ashbourne proved real. Apparently a hole opening in the air above a bleeding wine merchant met the definition. Marcus counted out the remainder of our investigation fee, added the recovery award, then placed a sealed note of credit on top.

“Two thousand gold,” he said. “Total.”

My brain quit.

Hearing it was one thing. Seeing it written over Blackthorn’s seal made my palms sweat. Two thousand gold could buy horses, armor, years of ale, or an extremely committed series of bad decisions.

It could buy a year of saying no to work I didn’t want: nobles who needed their spouses followed, anything Marcus offered that didn’t get my blood up. I could drink the good wine at the Nail instead of the wine Maple called good, and I could still come home every night to the same narrow bed above the same loud common room. I had loved that bed since the first night I slept in it.

Felix eyed the note, then me.

“Half,” I said.

“Buy something with a decent guest room.”

I pushed the note toward him. “You opened a man from stomach to hip. That earns more than lodging.”

“A guest room with a lock.”

“Felix.”

“And a southern window.”

He pushed the note back.

I had a room, and Felix knew it, because he had climbed through its window often enough. Guest rooms belonged to houses, and houses belonged to men with wives, debts, and gutters to clean. I went cold down my back, colder than the snow melting in my collar.

Kaniz leaned over my shoulder. “A house.”

“No.”

“Ours.”

“There is no house.”

Her lips brushed my ear, and my cock stiffened right there across the desk from the Guildmaster. I crossed my legs and smiled at Blackthorn with all the innocence I had left.

“And yet,” Kaniz whispered.

Blackthorn looked like he regretted ever hiring me.

“One week,” he repeated. “Do not leave Ashbourne. Do not sell, destroy, conceal, or activate any object recovered from the chamber.”

“That last one feels directed at the Tome.”

“It is directed at everyone near you.”

That was fair.

Outside, the snow had thickened. It buried the city roofs and hid the mountains beyond the walls. I tucked the note inside my shirt where the cold couldn’t reach it and walked downhill with my fortune against my ribs.

Two people had pushed a house at me inside a single minute, and neither of them had asked what I wanted. I checked over my shoulder twice on the way down to the Nail. Nobody was following me, which somehow made it worse.